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You may have seen reports that a massive asteroid the size of a football field is hurtling toward Earth. Although the European Space Agency (ESA) has placed asteroid 2006QV89 on its Risk List, there's no reason to sound the alarms just yet. First of all, it's probably not as big as you think it is. The object is roughly 40 meters in diameter, according to the ESA. A football field is 48.5 meters wide and 109 meters long. The Risk List might sound scary, but that simply means that ESA calculated a non-zero impact probability. ESA says this particular asteroid...

The 194 members of the World Health Organisation have recognised 'gaming disorder' as an illness at the 72nd World Health Assembly today. The WHO finalised the eleventh revision of its International Statistical Classification of Diseases and Related Health Problems (ICD-11) in June last year, which included gaming disorder. The disorder is described as: 'a pattern of behaviour characterised by impaired control over gaming, increasing priority given to gaming over other activities to the extent that gaming takes precedence over other interests and daily activities, and continuation or escalation of gaming despite the occurrence of negative consequences'. The WHO stated at...

The name of a Navy veteran may be cleared after he was convicted, fined, and imprisoned for digging ponds in a wooded area near his Montana home, to supply water in case of fire. The Supreme Court has vacated a lower court ruling against Joe Robertson, who was sent to federal prison and ordered to pay $130,000 in restitution through deductions from his Social Security checks. Any definitive legal victory for Robertson would be posthumous, since he died March 18 at age 80. But his lawyers describe the Supreme Court’s action as a “big win” for Robertson’s widow, Carrie, who...

The parent Rosetta spacecraft is working well in orbit and still transmitting images of the comet while Philae hibernates in a shady spot below. This latest image here shows a clear view of where the European Space Agency thinks the lander arrived — somewhere in the rim of that shadowy crater you see up front.

NASA and the ESA... about to start a study that will explore how artificial gravity might keep astronauts in good shape. Volunteers at the German Aerospace Center will spend 60 days in bed ... at an incline that will send blood away from their heads. Once a day, a "selection" of the subjects will take a spin in the Center's short-arm centrifuge in a bid to send blood back toward their legs. The scientists can tweak the intensity of the centrifugal force as well as decide whether to spin around a person's head or chest, but it's not clear just...

Scientists have finally been able to accurately calculate the weight of the Milky Way, overcoming the difficult hurdle of measuring dark matter, the European Space Agency (ESA) announced Thursday. After years of struggling to estimate the size of our galaxy, astronomers with NASA and the ESA used data from the Hubble Space Telescope and the ESA’s Gaia mission to determine the Milky Way weighs about 1.5 trillion solar masses within a radius of 129,000 light years from the center. Because dark matter makes up about 90 percent of the galaxy, estimates of the Milky Way’s weight have differed widely in...

Twitter post in article. The Trump administration announced it will propose a rule to strip gray wolves of their endangered species protections, a U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service spokesperson confirmed in a statement to The Hill. Acting Interior Secretary David Bernhardt announced the decision during the North American Wildlife and Natural Resources Conference in Denver, the spokesperson said. "The U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service will soon propose a rule to delist the gray wolf in the lower 48 states and return management of the species to the states and tribes," the spokesperson said in a statement. "Recovery of the gray...

The proposed mission would be launched on an Ariane 64, a version of the Ariane 6 with four strap-on boosters. PTScientists, a German company that started as a team in the now-defunct Google Lunar X Prize competition for privately developed lunar landers, is responsible for the spacecraft. Belgian company Space Applications Services will provide ground control and communications services. The study contract has a value of several hundred thousand euros, ArianeGroup spokesman Julien Watelet said Jan. 22. The study is intended to study the feasibility of such a mission, including whether it could be done using a more commercial approach....

"An Arianespace Ariane 5 rocket will launch a new mission to Mercury tonight, to send a set of spacecraft to the innermost planet! The joint mission by the European Space Agency and Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency will lift off at 9:45 p.m. EDT (0145 GMT) from a pad at the Guiana Space Center in Kourou, French Guiana. You can watch the launch live here, beginning at 9:15 p.m. EDT (0115 GMT), courtesy of ESA."

It is a picture perfect Christmas card image from another planet. The European Space Agency's Mars Express has returned an incredible new series of images showing a giant crater on the red planet. It shows the Korolev crater, a 50 mile (82 km) wide feature in in the northern lowlands of Mars. Just south of a large patch of dune-filled terrain that encircles part of the planet's northern polar cap (known as Olympia Undae), ESA says it is 'an especially well-preserved example of a martian crater.' It is filled not by snow but ice, with its center hosting a mound...

It all started when California farmer John Duarte plowed a wheat field in Tehama County, about two hours north of Sacramento, and wound up paying a $1.1 million fine to the federal government for his efforts. On Tuesday, Duarte, who was embraced by conservatives nationwide as a victim of government over-reach, got vindication of sorts. In a victory for farmers and land developers throughout the West, the Trump administration announced a broad rollback of rules designed to protect wetlands and other small bodies of water. The decision means regulations put in place in 2015 by the Obama administration will fall...

The federal government can’t designate land as a habitat for an endangered species on the mere prospect that the species might eventually move there, the Supreme Court ruled Tuesday, delivering a victory to property owners. In a unanimous ruling the justices rejected the federal government’s attempt to designate roughly 1,500 acres in Louisiana as critical space for the dusky gopher frog.

NASA has accepted delivery of a key European part needed to power the world’s next-generation moonship. U.S. and European leaders gathered at Kennedy Space Center on Friday to mark the occasion. The newly arrived powerhouse, or service module, will propel NASA’s Orion capsule to the moon during a test flight without passengers planned for 2020. A mega rocket under development by NASA, known as SLS for Space Launch System, will launch the combo. […] Orion and the attached service module are meant to fly near the moon, but not land. Future missions will carry astronauts, with the goal of building...

The House passed a bill Friday that would remove federal protections for the gray wolf, allowing ranchers, hunters and others to kill the animals. The Manage Our Wolves Act passed 196-180, mainly with Republican support. It would direct the Fish and Wildlife Service (FWS) to end Endangered Species Act protections for the species and prohibit lawsuits challenging the removal. The GOP and many western states have long argued that four decades of federal protections have been too successful in bringing the wolf back from the brink of extinction, and the species now poses a significant threat to livestock, pets and...

TOKYO (Reuters) - A European-Japanese spacecraft set off on a treacherous seven-year journey to Mercury to probe the solar system’s smallest and least-explored planet. The BepiColombo mission, only the third ever to visit Mercury, blasted off from Europe’s spaceport in French Guiana aboard an Ariane 5 rocket at 10:45 p.m. local time on Friday (0145 GMT on Saturday), according to the Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency (JAXA). “Launching BepiColombo is a huge milestone for ESA (the European Space Agency) and JAXA, and there will be many great successes to come,” ESA Director General Jan Woerner said in a statement. “Beyond completing...

The Rosetta spacecraft may have crashed in 2016, but it still has secrets to share. The European Space Agency (ESA) recently released breathtaking images that the craft took in 2014 as it orbited just 16 miles above the surface of Comet 67P. The image was put together by amateur astronomer Jacint Roger Perez using three separate photos taken by Rosetta during the flyby. Comet 67P is approximately 2.7 by 2.5 miles at its longest and widest dimensions, and is made up of 26 unique regions, each named after an Egyptian deity. The photo captures four regions of the comet....

The liftoff of a European satellite to measure global wind fields has been delayed 24 hours to Wednesday in hopes of a better weather forecast at the Vega rocket’s launch base in French Guiana, officials announced Monday. The European Space Agency’s Aeolus satellite is ready for launch aboard a solid-fueled Vega rocket, the smallest booster in Arianespace’s fleet, to begin a three-year science mission to monitor wind speeds in Earth’s atmosphere. Officials from Arianespace, ESA and CNES — the French space agency — convened Monday for a launch readiness review. Managers confirmed the readiness of the four-stage Vega launcher and...

Recordings and summaries of emergency calls show Washington wildlife officials at first objected to an air rescue of a woman treed by wolves, or help from the Okanogan County sheriff. Washington wildlife managers initially opposed sending a helicopter or a search-and-rescue team to save a woman treed by wolves in the Okanogan-Wenatchee National Forest, according to recordings and summaries of emergency calls. ... Notes from a call between DNR dispatcher Jill Jones and a wildlife officer summarized WDFW’s position, and her position, shortly before the helicopter launched. “No helicopter. Federally listed species. 3 WDFW personnel saying so,” according to DNR’s...

Two convicts are in a prison common room, and one asks the other, “Watcha in for?” “Driving over a frog.” Such a seemingly innocent activity, along with building a house or hiking up a trail, could result in jail time if a lawsuit by the environmental group WildEarth Guardians succeeds, according to an opposition brief filed with the 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals. WildEarth contends someone doesn’t have to be aware of the Endangered Species Act or intend to violate it to be convicted, fined and jailed under the law. In the brief, the Pacific Legal Foundation attorney Jonathan...

The Idaho Fish and Game Commission on Thursday approved a limited hunting season for grizzly bears in eastern Idaho just a year after the animals were removed from the Endangered Species List. Under the plan, the Department of Fish and Game will hold a random drawing to award one Idaho hunter a grizzly tag for a hunting season running from Sept. 1 to Nov. 15. If successful, the hunter won't be allowed to reapply for future tags. Baiting or hound-hunting will not be allowed. Grizzlies in the Yellowstone National Park region were on the Endangered Species Act list until 2017,...