The Trump administration will not grant Hurricane Dorian refugees from the Bahamas temporary protected status (the same program applied to the victims of Haiti's 2010 earthquake), officials told NBC News and CNN this week.
The big picture: Temporary protected status would only be applicable to those in the U.S. at the time of designation. As of Monday, 1,500 Bahamians have come to the U.S. after being displaced by Dorian, with at least 3,500 people evacuated from the islands and the death toll currently standing at 50. The Department of Homeland Security said this week that displaced Bahamians traveling to the U.S. must have a valid passport and travel visa.
Scientists have found water vapor in the atmosphere of a world about 8 times the mass of Earth.
Why it matters: While this isn't the "Earth 2.0" scientists have been hoping to find, the discovery does mark another step along the path toward finding a truly habitable world beyond our own.
NOAA acting administrator Neil Jacobs on Tuesday both defended the Trump administration and thanked forecasters who contradicted the president’s claims about Hurricane Dorian threatening Alabama, AP and the Washington Post report.
Why it matters: Per AP, meteorologists have been concerned that NOAA had risked the credibility of the U.S. weather and science agency, and perhaps even lives, by issuing an unsigned statement Friday supporting President Trump's claim, after the National Weather Service's Birmingham office tweeted that Alabama would not be impacted.
The Event Horizon Telescope (EHT) collaboration hopes to produce the first-ever moving image of a black hole by the end of the 2020s.
Why it matters: Still images of black holes can give scientists a lot of information about the mysterious and fundamental objects. But videos can help them drill into the details of how black holes consume matter and affect the galaxies they find themselves within, EHT project director Shep Doeleman said.
India's attempt to land on the Moon last week first appeared to be unsuccessful but reports now suggest its Vikram lander is actually intact on the lunar surface.
What's happening: Mission Control lost touch with the Vikram lander when it was just above the Moon's surface, indicating that something went wrong during its descent. On Tuesday, India's space agency confirmed in a statement that the lander was found by the Chandrayaan-2 orbiter circling the Moon, but they haven't been able to communicate with it.
A former Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) official was arrested Tuesday after an investigation found she accepted bribes from the head of a company that won $1.8 billion in federal contracts for Hurricane Maria recovery, the New York Times reports.
What we know: Ahsha Tribble was a deputy administrator and oversaw the region that includes Puerto Rico. Reports indicate she took bribes from Donald Keith Ellison, the former president of Cobra Acquisitions. Prosecutors allege the 2 had a "close personal relationship," with Ellison gifting Tribble a helicopter tour, plane tickets, expense-free hotel accommodations and more in exchange for Tribble influencing FEMA projects to Cobra's benefit.
With thousands of small satellites expected to launch to orbit in the coming years, the risks of collisions will likely increase and a fight could break out over who should bear the cost of managing greater space traffic.
Why it matters: Some experts say the burden of moving satellites out of harm's way could increasingly fall on the operators of larger spacecraft, not those managing mega-constellations of internet-beaming small satellites. That could raise the cost of operating weather, Earth imaging or other types of satellites in lower orbits by forcing larger spacecraft to expend precious fuel more often.
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