Reuters Science News Summary
Following is a summary of current science news briefs.
U.S. astronauts perform seven-hour spacewalk outside station
Two U.S. astronauts sailed through a seven-hour spacewalk outside the International Space Station on Thursday to pack up a spare cooling radiator and tackle other maintenance, a NASA TV broadcast showed. In their second spacewalk in two weeks, Commander Jeffrey Williams and Flight Engineer Kate Rubins left the station's airlock around 8 a.m. EDT (1200 GMT) as the station orbited 250 miles (400 km) above Earth.
SpaceX assessing launch pad damage after explosion at Cape Canaveral
Damage to a launch pad from the explosion of a SpaceX rocket on Thursday may send the private space services company run by billionaire entrepreneur Elon Musk scrambling to finish a second Florida launch site, officials said on Friday. The Federal Aviation Administration has sent seven people to Florida to supervise investigation of the disaster, said FAA spokesman Hank Price. The agency, which oversees U.S. commercial rocket launches, requires that SpaceX's flights be suspended pending results of the probe.
Dogs use same parts of brain to process speech as humans, Hungarian study says
"Super, well done," her trainer says, and Maya, a Hungarian golden retriever, happily holds up her left paw, responding to the praise. Maya works with a group of Hungarian researchers at the Eotvos Lorand University in Budapest, who have scanned the brains of 13 dogs, finding that dogs process words and intonation to work out messages similarly to humans.
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