Science News Roundup: SpaceX set for test flight; stratospheric sunlight barrier may curb warming

Following is a summary of current science news briefs.

SpaceX's crew rocket set for January test flight

The first flight of a SpaceX rocket tailored to fly astronauts to the International Space Station is set for liftoff from Kennedy Space Center in Florida on Jan. 7, NASA said on Wednesday. The launch test is a crucial milestone in the space agency's Commercial Crew Program, which aims to launch humans to space from U.S. soil for the first time in nearly a decade.

Scientists weigh up stratospheric sunlight barrier to curb warming

Spraying sun-dimming chemicals high above the Earth to slow global warming could be "remarkably inexpensive", costing about $2.25 billion a year over a 15-year period, according to a study by U.S. scientists. Some researchers say the geoengineering technique known as a stratospheric aerosol injection (SAI) could limit rising temperatures that are causing climate change.

Radical experimental plane with no moving parts wows scientists

Some 115 years after the first powered flight, scientists have developed a radical new approach toward flying in the form of a small, lightweight and virtually noiseless aeroplane that gets airborne with no moving parts like propellers or turbine blades. Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) engineers on Wednesday described successful flight tests at an indoor campus gymnasium of the unmanned airplane powered not by engines that burn fossils fuels but by ion wind propulsion, also called electro-aerodynamic thrust.

Surprising elephant-sized mammal cousin lived alongside dinosaurs

A stoutly built mammal cousin the size of an elephant that munched on plants with its horny beak roamed the European landscape alongside dinosaurs during the Triassic Period about 205 million to 210 million years ago, scientists said on Thursday. Scientists announced the surprising discovery in Poland of fossils of a four-legged beast called Lisowicia bojani that demonstrated that dinosaurs were not the only behemoths on Earth at that time and that the group of mammal-like reptiles to which Lisowicia belonged, called dicynodonts, did not die out as long ago as previously believed.