Added 1 new A* page:Space news mini round-up! BBC News had a trio of mildly interesting space articles late last week: (auto-playing video) Lost in space: 'Peggy, I don't have a shield' - When you see people working with things on space walks and everything is tethered or tied down, it's because if something gets loose, even for a moment, then something like this—which just occurred during a long space walk repair at the International Space Station—can happen. : o Success for SpaceX 're-usable rocket' - SpaceX successfully re-launched and re-landed a rocket booster they'd launched and flown before; being able to re-use rocket boosters routinely would help quite a bit in bringing the cost of spaceflight down (the Space Shuttle did this with the casings of its white solid fuel boosters). Most of Mars' air was 'lost to space' - An analysis of the ratio of argon isotopes on Mars suggests that Mars once had an atmospheric pressure comparable to Earth's; 80-90% of it was subsequently lost to space: stripped away by the solar wind, which was able to get to it due to Mars' lack of a strong magnetic field. That atmospheric pressure it may have used to have would have enabled liquid water to exist on the Martian surface.
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