Axios

China's space agency said on Thursday that it landed a probe, Chang'e-4, on the far side of the moon for the first time in history, reports the New York Times.

Why it matters: China's space program is a late bloomer, but its recent achievements indicate that it's quickly catching up to the U.S., marking a potential "challenge ... for supremacy in artificial intelligence, quantum computing and other fields," per the Times.

Scientists are seeing signs that global weather patterns toward the latter half of January and into February may shift significantly to usher in severe winter weather for parts of the U.S. and Europe.

How it works: The possible changes are being triggered by a sudden and drastic warming of the air in the stratosphere, some 100,000 feet above the Arctic, and by a resulting disruption of the polar vortex — an area of low pressure at high altitudes near the pole that, when disrupted, can wobble like a spinning top and send cold air to the south. In this case, it could split into three pieces, and those pieces would determine who gets hit the hardest.

The early data from the historic New Year's flyby of a space object nicknamed "Ultima Thule," located about 4 billion miles from Earth, reveals that it's comprised of two joined spheres that are reddish in color.

Why it matters: This is the first so-called "contact binary" ever studied closely by a spacecraft, according to Alan Stern, principal investigator of the New Horizons mission. Ultima Thule used to be two separate, icy objects that are now fused together, according to NASA. It is located in a region of our solar system known as the Kuiper Belt and thought to be a time capsule dating back to the formation of the solar system itself about 4.6 billion years ago.