Science News Roundup: Boeing tests space taxi, one of three parachutes does not open

Following is a summary of current science news briefs.

Boeing tests space taxi, one of three parachutes does not open

Boeing Co said on Monday that one of three parachutes failed to deploy during an otherwise successful safety test of its unmanned CST-100 Starliner crew capsule, being developed to ferry astronauts to and from the International Space Station. The deployment failure happened during a so-called pad abort test of a system designed to propel the crew to safety in the event of an emergency, Boeing spokesman Todd Blecher said by email.

NASA probe provides insight on solar system's border with interstellar space

The journey of NASA's dauntless Voyager 2 spacecraft through our solar system's farthest reaches has given scientists new insight into a poorly understood distant frontier: the unexpectedly distinct boundary marking where the sun's energetic influence ends and interstellar space begins. The U.S. space agency previously announced that Voyager 2, the second human-made object ever to depart the solar system following its twin Voyager 1, had zipped into interstellar space on Nov. 5, 2018 at a point more than 11 billion miles (17.7 billion km) from the sun. Several research papers published on Monday provided scientific details of that crossing.

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(With inputs from agencies.)