FeedaMail: Science News Headlines - Yahoo! News

	Science News Headlines - Yahoo! News
	(Sponsor this newsletter) Scientist at NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory dies in small plane crash LOS ANGELES (Reuters) - A 47-year-old scientist at NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory who worked on robotic systems for exploring Mars and extreme environments on Earth has died in a small plane crash in Los Angeles, officials said on Saturday. Alberto Behar spent 23 years at the Jet Propulsion Laboratory where he worked on instruments for the rover Curiosity which landed on Mars in 2012 and the Mars Odyssey orbiter that launched in 2001, the Pasadena, California-based institution said in a statement. ... Read More » Scientist at NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory dies in small plane crash LOS ANGELES (Reuters) - A 47-year-old scientist at NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory who worked on robotic systems for exploring Mars and extreme environments on Earth has died in a small plane crash in Los Angeles, officials said on Saturday. Alberto Behar spent 23 years at the Jet Propulsion Laboratory where he worked on instruments for the rover Curiosity which landed on Mars in 2012 and the Mars Odyssey orbiter that launched in 2001, the Pasadena, California-based institution said in a statement. ... Read More » Astronauts Get Their Own LEGO Minifigures on Space Station The astronauts and cosmonauts onboard the International Space Station now have three new crewmates who look a lot like them — only much smaller. LEGO minifigures customized to look like NASA astronaut Terry Virts, Roscosmos cosmonaut Anton Shklaperov and European Space Agency astronaut Samantha Cristoforetti were recently revealed as being on the orbital outpost. Read More » Mars Microbe Traces Spotted by Rover? Probably Not, Curiosity Team Says Intriguing features photographed by NASA's Mars rover Curiosity probably don't have a biological origin, mission team members say. An outside researcher recently analyzed photos Curiosity took of an ancient sedimentary outcrop called Gillespie Lake, and noted some similarities to "microbially induced sedimentary structures" (MISS) here on Earth. Study author Nora Noffke, a geobiologist who is not a member of the Curiosity team, said the Gillespie Lake features could be consistent with a biological origin, but stressed repeatedly that this was just a hypothesis, and that she didn't regard the structures as proof of past Mars life. Curiosity team members also noticed the Gillespie Lake structures (which include domes, cracks and pockets, among other shapes), said mission project scientist Ashwin Vasavada, of NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, California. Read More »