compiled by David Kaplan

Credit: NYT

Where Will NASA Go in the Age of Trump?
Two weeks after a presidential election that could have vaulted him to the head of NASA, John Grunsfeld reached across his peanut curry at a small restaurant on the Far West Side of Manhattan, grabbed his notebook and sketched out a plan….more

Rock from Chicxulub Crater. Credit: BBC

Chicxulub ‘dinosaur’ crater drill project declared a success
The effort to drill into the Chicxulub Crater off the coast of Mexico has been declared an outstanding success. A UK/US-led team has spent the past seven weeks coring into the deep bowl cut out of the Earth’s surface 66 million years ago by the asteroid that hastened the end of the dinosaurs….more

The asteroid impact removed 75% of all life on the planet. – BBC

Nickel clue to ‘dinosaur killer’ asteroid
Scientists say they have a clue that may enable them to find traces of the asteroid that wiped out the dinosaurs in the very crater it made on impact. This pointer takes the form of a nickel signature in the rocks of the crater that is now buried under ocean sediments in the Gulf of Mexico….more

Credit: ESO, ESA/Hubble, M. Kornmesser

Black hole ‘swallowed star’, say Queen’s astronomers
Belfast-based astronomers have helped to discover a very rare celestial event – a star being “swallowed” after it passed too close to a black hole. Queen’s University, Belfast, (QUB) was involved in a European project to solve the mystery of an “extraordinarily brilliant” light in a distant galaxy….more