Science News Summary: Bezos's Blue Origin partners with Lockheed, others on moon lander

Following is a summary of current science news briefs. Bezos's Blue Origin partners with Lockheed, others on moon lander

U.S. billionaire Jeff Bezos said on Tuesday his space company Blue Origin has signed agreements with Lockheed Martin Corp, Northrop Grumman Corp and research and development organization Draper for development of its lunar lander designed to help NASA put humans on the moon by 2024. Blue Origin's so-called Blue Moon lunar lander, unveiled by Bezos in May, is in development and sits at the center of the space company's ambition to ferry humans into deep space and land key contracts from the U.S. space agency for space exploration. "I'm excited to announce that we put together a national team to go back to the moon," Bezos, founder, and CEO of online retail giant Amazon said at the International Astronautical Congress. Manure, trash, and wastewater: U.S. utilities get dirty in climate fight

Joey Airoso has always been proud of his cows, whose milk goes into the butter sold by national dairy company Land O'Lakes. Now he has something new to brag about: the vast amounts of gas produced by his 2,900-head herd is powering truck fleets, homes and factories across the state of California. "It's pretty incredible if you think about it," Airoso said during a recent tour of his 1,500-acre farm, as a stream of watered-down manure flowed from cow sheds into a nearby pit. There the slurry releases methane that is captured and eventually piped into fueling stations and buildings. Musk's satellite project testing encrypted internet with military planes

The Air Force is using SpaceX's fledgling satellite network to test encrypted internet services for a number of military planes, the space company's president said on Tuesday, detailing results for the first customer of Elon Musk's planned constellation of thousands of broadband-beaming satellites. "We are delivering high bandwidth into the cockpit of Air Force planes," SpaceX President and Chief Operating Officer Gwynne Shotwell said on Tuesday. "Right now we're just testing the capability and figuring out how to make it work." German WW2 U-boat base in France reboots as data center

The thick concrete walls of a long-abandoned World War Two German submarine base in Marseille, southern France, are set to find a new purpose: keeping banks of computer servers safe and cool. Dutch cloud services firm Interxion plans to invest 140 million euros to turn the "Martha Base" bunker - which was built in 1943 to accommodate up to 20 U-boats but was never completed - into a data center for corporate clients. The first part of the restoration is set to be completed by March. Two thumbs up - or is it four? Odd lemur has evolved extra 'finger'

For a strange little lemur native to Madagascar that boasts one of the most unusual hands in the animal kingdom, a "high five" is more like a "trick six." Scientists have discovered that this nocturnal tree dweller, called an aye-aye, possesses an anatomical structure that serves as an extra thumb to go along with its five spindly fingers, an evolutionary innovation helpful for grasping small objects and branches. U.S. tech firm Maxar taps startup's robotics for moon mission

U.S. technology company Maxar Technologies Inc said it picked software developed by space startup Olis Robotics to run a robotic lunar lander that's part of NASA's broader goal of human moon missions by 2024. A robotic arm attached to Maxar's SAMPLR lunar lander, one of 12 payloads on a mission to the moon around 2022, will use the software to fetch samples from the moon's surface, collecting data crucial to future crewed missions to earth's satellite.

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