News at a glance: South Korea ’s lunar orbiter, the U.S. monkeypox response, and a lost Earth-science satellite

PLANETARY SCIENCE South Korea sends orbiter to Moon to search for ice South Korea’s first Moon probe was lofted into space from Cape Canaveral in Florida on 4 August by a SpaceX rocket. The $200 million Korea Pathfinder Lunar Orbiter, also called Danuri—“enjoy the Moon” in Korean— will study the Moon from a polar orbit for at least a year. One of the probe’s five instruments will capture polarized light to measure the grain sizes of lunar dust, an indicator of “weathering” by the solar wind and hence of the age of features such as lava flows and impact craters. In another first, a highly sensitive camera on Danuri will peek into the depths of the Moon’s permanently shadowed craters to inventory the water ice known to lurk there. Other instruments on the satellite will find suitable locations for a lander, planned for the early 2030s, as South Korea’s next step into deep-space exploration. PUBLIC HEALTH U.S. boosts monkeypox response President Joe Biden’s administration last week designated the monkeypox outbreak a national public health emergency, allowing U.S. health officials easier access to funds and procedural flexibility as they respond to rising cases (more than 8900 as of 8 August). Earlier in the week, the White House appointed Robert Fenton, a senior official at the Federal Emergency Management Agency, as national monkeypox response coordinator. Demetre Daskalakis, a physician...
Source: ScienceNOW - Category: Science Source Type: news