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Following biochar’s recognition in the IPCC 2018 report, earlier this year Redmile-Gordon launched the society’s first trials to see how the material could improve plant growth. He estimates planting 10-20kg of biochar in your garden could offset the carbon from a five-mile return commute in a car for a month. Biochar is a form of charcoal produced when organic matter – for example wood, leaves or dead plants – is heated at high temperatures with little or no oxygen in a process called pyrolysis. The normal burning or decomposition of these materials would release large amounts of methane and carbon dioxide into the atmosphere. Instead, creating biochar traps this carbon in solid form for centuries; it becomes a carbon sink that can be buried underground.

The European Space Agency calls the crater a “cold trap,” where air moving over the frigid ice is cooled, creating a kind of chilly barrier between the ice within the crater and warmer parts of the atmosphere — even in the summer. This isn’t the first time that Korolev crater has had a moment in the spotlight. NASA snapped it making waves in the Martian clouds in 2003, and in April of this year, one of the first images the ESA’s Trace Gas Orbiter captured was a gorgeous shot of the crater’s rim.

During a test yesterday, SpaceX fired up the engines on one of its Falcon 9 rockets, a vehicle that will perform a crucial test flight for NASA in the months ahead. It’s the rocket that will carry SpaceX’s new Crew Dragon capsule to space for the first time to prove that the spacecraft is ready to ferry NASA astronauts.

GOES-17 went up to work with GOES-16, another NOAA weather satellite that was launched in 2016. The two probes, which are part of the so-called GOES-R series, are able to scan most of the Western Hemisphere from the coast of Africa all the way to New Zealand. Their observations from 22,300 miles (almost 36,000 kilometers) above Earth are key to monitor hurricanes, droughts, wildfires, lighting, and fog. The two spacecraft also provide us with stunning views of our planet.