Science & Technology

SEOUL, South Korea (AP) — South Korea’s military said Thursday it is carefully monitoring North Korean nuclear and missile facilities after the country’s spy agency told lawmakers that new activity was detected at a research center where the North is believed to build long-range missiles targeting the U.S. mainland.

Jerusalem, Mar 5 (AFP) An Israeli spacecraft on its maiden mission to the moon has sent its first selfie back to Earth, mission chiefs said on Tuesday.

The image showing part of the Beresheet spacecraft with Earth in the background was beamed to mission control in Yehud, Israel -- 37,600 kilometres (23,360 miles) away, the project's lead partners said in a statement.

06 Mar 2019; DW: North Korea has started restoring part of a long-range rocket launch site it dismantled last year, according to a report published on Wednesday by Washington-based think tank 38 North.

Satellite evidence suggests that work had begun at the Sohae Satellite Launching Station in the run-up to a summit in Vietnam between North Korean leader Kim Jong Un and US President Donald Trump, 38 North said.

BEIJING, March 5 (Xinhua) -- China announced Tuesday that the country's new solid rocket booster, with 200-tonne thrust engine, completed hot firing tests, proving its readiness for commercial launches.

With a diameter of 2.65 meters, the booster engine is expected to be used on the modified version of the Long March-11 rocket.

The rocket is the only series in the Long March family that uses solid propellants, and it can be launched within 24 hours.

SEATTLE (AP) — A London man appears to be free of the AIDS virus after a stem cell transplant, the second success including the “Berlin patient,” doctors reported.

The therapy had an early success with Timothy Ray Brown, a U.S. man treated in Germany who is 12 years post-transplant and still free of HIV. Until now, Brown is the only person thought to have been cured of infection with HIV, the virus that causes AIDS.

Such transplants are dangerous and have failed in other patients. They’re also impractical to try to cure the millions already infected.

BEIJING, March 4 (Xinhua) -- The China Manned Space Engineering Office (CMSEO) announced Monday that the core module of the country's space station, the Long March-5B carrier rocket and its payloads will be sent to the launch site in the second half of this year, to make preparations for the space station missions.

China is scheduled to complete the construction of the space station around 2022. It will be the country's space lab in long-term stable in-orbit operation.

04 Mar 2019; DW: A spacecraft built by Elon Musk's spacecraft manufacturer SpaceX successfully docked at the International Space Station (ISS) on Sunday, in the second stage of a critical test of the private company's technology.

The capsule, named Dragon, gradually climbed toward the ISS, which is orbiting the Earth at a distance of around 400 kilometers (248 miles) and a speed of 28,000 kilometers per hour.

MOSCOW, March 4 (Xinhua) -- The Russian Defense Ministry is planning to use the Angara-A5 heavy-class carrier rockets to launch its satellites from the Vostochny space center in Russia's Far East, Russia's Sputnik news agency reported on Monday.

Angara A5 is Russia's newest heavy-class rocket, developed by the Moscow-based Khrunichev State Research and Production Space Center. It is the first orbit-capable rocket developed by Russia since the fall of the Soviet Union, intended to replace older Proton-M rockets.

02 Mar 2019; DW: Germany's car industry association says billions will be spent on electromobility over the next three years to cement the future of the auto sector. Domestic car production is, however, expected to fall this year.

Germany's automotive industry is planning an aggressive investment in electric and autonomous cars, along with digitization, the president of the Verband der Automobilindustrie (VDA) car industry association said on Saturday.

01 Mar 2019; AP: NASA’s newest Mars lander has started digging into the red planet, but hit a few snags, scientists said Friday.

The German drilling instrument on the InSight lander struck what appeared to be a couple of stones. It only managed to burrow between half a foot (18 centimeters) and about 1 ½ feet (50 centimeters), far short of the first dig’s goal, said the German Aerospace Center.

The hammering device in the “mole” was developed by the Astronika engineering company in Poland.