NASA's Perseverance rover — designed to further the hunt for past life on Mars — successfully touched down on the Red Planet Thursday.
Why it matters: Mars was once a relatively warm, wet and habitable world, and Perseverance — nicknamed Percy — could help NASA figure out if it was inhabited billions of years ago.
Millions of Americans are still without power during the winter weather emergency that's sweeping the U.S. — including nearly 1.8 million Texans, per utility tracker poweroutage.us. Some have also lost water services.
The big picture: Texas has been particularly badly hit by the deadly storm, with infrastructure damaged and pipes frozen. Officials told some 7 million Texans Wednesday to boil tap water before drinking it.
A publisher retracted several scientific papers after it was discovered they had been generated by a computer.
Why it matters: Computer-produced fraudulent papers have been a problem in academia for years, and as AI text-generation capabilities improve, it may become increasingly difficult to tell the real from the fake.
White House press secretary Jen Psaki said at a briefing on Wednesday that the Biden administration is sending emergency generators to Texas amid ongoing power outages and freezing weather.
Why it matters: Huge swaths of Texas have been without electricity for days due to critical failures in the state's power grid. The outages come while a winter storm continues to pummel the state, causing unsafe conditions and a desperate need for heat.
Scientists have extracted and sequenced DNA from mammoth specimens that are more than a million years old, the oldest genetic material analyzed to date.
Why it matters: The study pushes back how far researchers can trace genetic changes, allowing them to capture the variations in DNA that occur as new species emerge.
Axiom Space, a Houston-based developer of what would be the world's first commercial space station, raised $130 million in Series B funding led by C5 Capital.
Why it matters: Axiom represents what many believe is the future of space, whereby NASA becomes a customer everywhere in low-Earth orbit so that it can focus on the Moon, Mars and beyond.
