4. *
A rare bit of good news for the beloved โ and beleaguered โ western
lowland gorilla: New surveys this summer by the Wildlife Conservation
Society put the species' numbers far higher than scientists had thought.
The forests and swamps of the northern Republic of Congo are now thought
to be home to 125,000 gorillas, or up to twice the previous estimates. But
the good news was, as so often happens, followed by bad. War in the
neighboring Democratic Republic of Congo has spilled into the Virunga
National Park there, threatening the tiny and far more fragile population of
350 or so mountain gorillas โ half of the world's total.
5. *
China put astronauts in orbit. So what,
right? The U.S. has been doing it since
1962. Here's what: The Chinese launched
their first manned mission in 2003, their
second in 2005 and their third this year.
They began with a one-person ship, then a
two-seater, then a three-man version, and
during that last mission they completed a
successful spacewalk. By all spacefaring
measures, that's impressive โ going from
a standing start to a sprint in five years.
What's more, China's unmanned Chang'e
spacecraft is currently orbiting the moon
and Beijing wants to have humans on the
lunar surface by 2020. Think it can't pull
off something that big? Then you didn't
see the Olympics.
6. *
For all the times robot probes have
orbited or landed on Mars, none had ever
visited its polar region โ where the
greatest concentrations of ice and water
(and arguably the most evidence of life)
are to be found. That changed in May
when NASA's Phoenix lander touched down
in Mars's far north and began scraping,
sampling and sniffing its surroundings.
Phoenix found nothing that yet changes
the picture of Mars as a dead world, but it
reinforced the planet's image as a once-
wet place that could have teemed with
organisms. The ship was not expected to
survive the punishing climate for long and
in November, the encroaching darkness
and cold of the Martian winter silenced it
for good.
