Nature Hub

  From BBC World News By Sue Nelson, Features correspondent Edited by - Amal  Udawatta Share Getty Images Astronauts living on the Moon will need lots of power – but they can't take fuel supplies with them. A new generation of miniature nuclear reactors could be the answer. The 1970s TV series  Space: 1999  began – like many a sci-fi drama – with a bang. A nuclear explosion tears the Moon out of Earth's orbit and sends Moonbase Alpha and its inhabitants on an exciting adventure through deep space. It obviously left an impression on a young Elon Musk. In 2017, when envisioning  SpaceX's plans for a future Moon base , he named it Alpha. Today, SpaceX is working with Nasa to return humankind to the Moon's surface as part of the US space agency's  Artemis programme . The planned lunar outpost, however, has a more pragmatic working title:  Artemis Base Camp . Nasa and the US Department of State have issued combined guidelines for peaceful lunar exploration in the form of

      From BBC World News      By Alessia Franco and David Robson, Features correspondent               Edited by  Amal Udawatta Share Nasa (Credit: Nasa/Johns Hopkins University Applied Physics Laboratory/Carnegie Institution of Washington) From its "absurd" core to the baffling chemical composition of its surface, Mercury is full of surprises – not least the planet's origins. But some answers could be held in rocks found in Cyprus. Curiosity has killed many an explorer, and Nicola Mari feared he was to be the next. Driving around Cyprus's remotest mountains, Mari had relied on his cell phone for directions. But as the light of the day faded, so did his phone battery – and he found himself stuck in the middle of nowhere with little idea of the way back to his lodgings. "I'd travelled for more than 50km (31 miles) without seeing another vehicle," he says. He thought he could remember the way to an inn, where he might refill his stomach, engine, and phone