|  What Lies Beneath: Tiny Organisms Thrive Below Earth's Surface  | And scientists have failed to culture, or grow, the bacteria in the lab, making it difficult to understand how they survive the harsh, energy-starved environment below the planet's surface. How many of them are there?" said Jan Amend, an earth scientist at the University of Southern California's Center for Dark Energy Biosphere Investigations.
| Read More » China Targets Moon Sample-Return Mission in 2017  | As China's Chang'e 3 lander and Yutu rover mission to the moon unfolds, the country's space authorities are pushing forward on their next stage of lunar progress — gathering select samples of the moon and rocketing them back to Earth. China plans to launch the unmanned sample-return mission, known as Chang'e 5, in 2017, signaling the third stage in the country's lunar exploration plans, officials said. "The development of Chang'e 5 is proceeding smoothly," Wu Zhijian, a spokesman for China's State Administration of Science, Technology and Industry for National Defense, said in a Dec. 16 press conference. As reported by China's state-run Xinhua news organization, Chang'e 4 is the backup probe for the Chang'e 3 mission, which successfully put a lander and rover down on the moon on Dec. 14.
| Read More » 5 Most Amazing Spaceflight Feats of 2013  | The year 2013 marked an incredible one for spaceflight, with space agencies around the world making giant leaps in their own exploration of the solar system, while NASA welcomed the addition of a new commercial cargo ship to its list of supplies for the International Space Station. Also this year, Virgin Galactic and other private spaceflight companies made strides in their work to make space tourist flights a reality, while one Canadian astronaut became a social media mega-star by showing what life is truly like in space. When China's Chang'3 spacecraft landed on the moon on Dec. 14, it marked the first soft lunar landing in 37 years and the country's first-ever successful touchdown on an extraterrestrial surface. China is the third country to achieve a soft landing on the moon after Russian and the United States, Chang'e 3 beamed live views of its landing on the moon's Sinus Iridium (Bay of Rainbows), as well as the Chinese flag on Yutu — a symbol of how far China's space program has come in a short while.
| Read More » 'Neanderthal' Remains Actually Medieval Human  | Instead, the new study reveals the bones to belong to modern Homo sapiens. The teeth and the bone were found in the San Bernardino Cave in the 1980s in a rock layer dating back to Neanderthal times, approximately 28,000 to 59,000 years ago. But location alone is not enough for a firm identification, said study researcher Stefano Benazzi, a physical anthropologist at the Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology in Germany. "The taxonomical discrimination of the species was based mainly on the layer the human fossil was found instead of the morphological features," or shape and size of the bones, Benazzi told LiveScience.
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