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

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.

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.

Musk's SpaceX wins Pentagon award for missile tracking satellites

Elon Musk's SpaceX won a $149 million contract to build missile-tracking satellites for the Pentagon, the U.S. Space Development Agency (SDA) said on Monday, in the company's first government contract to build satellites. SpaceX, known for its reusable rockets and astronaut capsules, is ramping up satellite production for Starlink, a growing constellation of hundreds of internet-beaming satellites that chief executive Elon Musk hopes will generate enough revenue to help fund SpaceX's interplanetary goals.

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.