Science News Roundup: Musk to visit SpaceX launchpad after mission aborts and Virus-hunting trio win Nobel for hepatitis C discovery

The discoveries by Harvey Alter, Charles Rice and Briton Michael Houghton mean there is now a chance of eradicating the hepatitis C virus - a goal the World Health Organization wants to achieve in the next decade.

Following is a summary of current science news briefs.

Musk to visit SpaceX launchpad after mission aborts, delays

SpaceX Chief Executive Elon Musk said he will visit his space company's Florida rocket facilities this week to investigate the cause of recent launch aborts and delays that have held up a busy mission schedule for the company's workhorse Falcon 9 rocket. The space company last week halted two back-to-back Falcon 9 missions - one packed with 60 SpaceX Starlink satellites and the other carrying a GPS satellite for the U.S. Air Force - over technical issues detected less than 30 seconds before planned liftoff from a launchpad in Florida.

Virus-hunting trio win Nobel for hepatitis C discovery

Two Americans and a Briton won the 2020 Nobel Prize for Medicine on Monday for identifying the hepatitis C virus, in work spanning decades that has helped to limit the spread of the fatal disease and develop drugs to cure it. The discoveries by Harvey Alter, Charles Rice, and Briton Michael Houghton mean there is now a chance of eradicating the hepatitis C virus - a goal the World Health Organization wants to achieve in the next decade.