In this section, the editors recommend every week what the best or most interesting articles on the website were. This time: Starliner launch postponed again, mysterious holes in ice caps, and why Venus is bone dry.
First manned test flight of Starliner spaceship postponed again
Boeing’s Starliner spaceship already had one in 2018 first manned test flight have to make. But due to technical problems, this was further postponed. In the night from Monday to Tuesday the time should have finally come. But the launch time has been moved again due to technical problems with an oxygen valve on the Atlas V rocket.
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Mystery of giant holes in Antarctic ice sheets solved
In the 1970s, a large hole formed in the Antarctic ice caps, a so-called polinia, the precise origin of which has always remained a mystery. It often happens that holes form in the ice, and they often close themselves again.
Although small polinias usually do no harm, larger ones – hundreds of kilometers in diameter – can cause shifts in water flow, thereby raising the temperature of the ice ocean. So it is important to find out the cause of this icy phenomenon, and the missing piece of the puzzle has now finally been found.
It is like this
Why the once water-rich Venus is now bone dry
With an average temperature of 464 degrees Celsius, it is not surprising that Venus does not have large oceans. Yet you would expect that there would be water vapor in the atmosphere, but even there you hardly find it. Scientists from the University of Colorado Boulder (USA) now think they know why our neighboring planet is so bone dry.
The planet is being deprived of a water ingredient
