space.com: Over a few short months, Japan, China, and India will all have lunar probes orbiting the moon, sparking talk of a new space race in Asia.China, for one, takes exception at that characterization. On Thursday, a top official in its secretive military-backed lunar explorer program defended the probe launched last week as an innovation that is part of a future wave of cooperation, not competition, in outer space."It’s all peaceful,’' said Pei Zhaoyu, assistant director of the Lunar Exploration Program Center, when asked whether a space race was on. “The countries involved in lunar exploration are developing an understanding. They’re evolving a mechanism for cooperation.’'
The finding that the Saturnian moon may host layers of icy slush instead of a global ocean could change how planetary scientists think about other icy moons as well.
Modeling the shapes of tree branches, neurons, and blood vessels is a thorny problem, but researchers have just discovered that much of the math has already been done.
January 29, 2026 12:52 PM
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