SCIENCE

U.S. astronauts Bob Behnken and Doug Hurley, home two days from a landmark mission as NASA's first crew to fly a privately built vehicle into orbit, recounted on Tuesday the loud, jarring ride they experienced through Earth's atmosphere before a safe landing at sea.

Billionaire Richard Branson will fly into space on a Virgin Galactic rocketship early next year, the space tourism company he founded said on Monday, adding that it would raise new funds with a share offering.

When scientists first unearthed fossils of a horned dinosaur called Centrosaurus in the badlands of Dinosaur Provincial Park in Canada's Alberta province in 1989, they spotted a badly malformed leg bone they figured was a healed fracture.

Singapore researchers have developed "electronic skin" capable of recreating a sense of touch, an innovation they hope will allow people with prosthetic limbs to detect objects, as well as feel texture, or even temperature and pain.

U.S. astronauts Bob Behnken and Doug Hurley, who flew to the International Space Station in SpaceX's new Crew Dragon, splashed down in the Gulf of Mexico on Sunday after a two-month voyage that was NASA's first crewed mission from home soil in nine years.

(This July 30 story refiles to add details on previous NASA rovers, landers)

Scientists have solved an enduring mystery about Stonehenge, determining the place of origin of many of the megaliths that make up the famed monument in Wiltshire, England, thanks to a core sample that had been kept in the United States for decades.

Australian scientists said on Wednesday they have given five fly species scientific names that pay tribute to the Marvel comic universe, including one named for wise-cracking anti-hero Deadpool and another after superhero creator Stan Lee.

Scientists are using drones and other technology to study great white sharks along the coast of Southern California to better understand interactions between these marine predators and people and assess the risks to human beachgoers.