compiled by David Kaplan

Gas to solid. Credit: Harvard Univ.

Claim made for hydrogen ‘wonder material’
Scientists in the US say they have at last managed to turn hydrogen into a state where it behaves like a metal. If that is true – and it is a controversial claim – it fulfils a more than 80-year quest to produce what many have said would be a wonder material…more

The UK could have a spaceport by 2018. -BBC

Plans for Kintyre spaceport discussed at Westminster
The area’s MP Brendan O’Hara is hosted a reception detailing plans for the former NATO base at Machrihanish to be the center of space tourism in the UK.
Machrihanish is among five sites across Britain – three of which are in Scotland – hoping to be a spaceport…more

Peggy the, bright smudge at the edge of Saturn’s A-ring. – NASA

To see finally the face of Peggy
Scientists studying the splendor of Saturn’s rings are hoping soon to get a resolved picture of an embedded object they know exists but cannot quite see. The moonlet is named after London researcher Carl Murray’s mother-in-law, and was first noticed in 2013. Its effect on surrounding ice and dust particles has been tracked ever since…more

Hakuto “White Rabbit”, Japan

Five in final stretch of Moon race
The race to put a privately funded spacecraft on the Moon has just five teams left in the competition.
The surviving groups all met an end-of-2016 deadline to obtain launch contracts – and these have now been verified by the organisers of the Google Lunar X-Prize…more