President-elect Biden on day one will begin his attempts to close off the prospect of oil drilling in the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge with an executive order that places a temporary moratorium on all oil and natural gas leasing activities.
Driving the news: ANWR is an ecologically rich part of Alaska, whose oil resources are unknown but could be vast. Republicans and oil companies have tried to drill there for decades.
President-elect Biden on Wednesday will begin the formal process for the U.S. to rejoin the Paris Climate Agreement, making good on a highly touted campaign promise.
Catch up fast: President Trump first announced his intention to abandon the accord in June 2017, angering countries worldwide. The U.S. became the only country to pull out of the pact on Nov. 4, 2020, the day after the election and the first possible day for the country to withdraw under the agreement's terms.
The first flight plannedfor NASA's Space Launch System rocket hangs in the balance as the space agency reckons with a major test that didn't go as planned this weekend.
Why it matters: The billions of dollars over-budget SLS is key to NASA's plans to send people to the surface of the Moon by 2024 and for the agency's deep space exploration goals for years to come.
The effects huge constellations of satellites could have on astronomy are starting to come into focus, and astronomers are grappling with what this industrialization of space could mean for the future of their field.
The big picture: Companies like SpaceX and Amazon have plans to launch thousands of internet-beaming satellites to orbit in the coming years.
The finest details of galaxies — from star explosions to halos of dust — are emerging via new techniques that allow scientists to peer deep into these cosmic behemoths.
Why it matters: How galaxies form, grow and change is key to understanding the evolution of the universe as a whole.
