NASA readies Orion spacecraft for Moon mission preparations

Washington: NASA’s Orion spacecraft has come a step closer to integrating with the Space Launch System (SLS) rocket that will take it to the Moon under the Artemis programme designed to land the first woman and the next man on lunar surface by 2024. After engineers put the spacecraft through the rigors of environmental testing at NASA’s Plum Brook Station in Ohio, it returned to the agency’s Kennedy Space Center in Florida on March 25, the US space agency said. IANS

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Three new species of flying reptiles found in Morocco

Washington: Scientists have discovered three new species of toothed pterosaurs — a community of flying reptiles that inhabited the Sahara 100 million years ago. The pterosaurs were part of an ancient river ecosystem in Africa that was full of life, including fish, crocodiles, turtles and several predatory dinosaurs, said researchers from the University of Portsmouth in the UK. The new fossils, described in the journal ‘Cretaceous Research’, are helping to uncover the very poorly known evolutionary history of Africa during the time of the dinosaurs. PTI