Science News Roundup: NASA draws back curtain on Webb space telescope's first full-color images; U.S. FAA in contact with SpaceX after booster rocket fire and more

"Damage is minor, but booster will be transferred back to the high bay for inspections, returning to the launch stand probably next week," Musk said in an email. China space tourism prospects boosted by cooperation agreement A Chinese space tech company said on Wednesday it had signed a cooperation agreement with the country's largest state-owned travel corporation, the latest sign that the arrival of a domestic "space tourism" industry is near.

Following is a summary of current science news briefs.

U.S. FAA in contact with SpaceX after booster rocket fire

The Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) said Tuesday it was in "close contact" with SpaceX as the company reviewed a fire that occurred as part of its Super Heavy booster rocket development, but that the agency was barred from investigating the matter. The FAA said U.S. law "limits the FAA's safety oversight to protecting the public during scheduled launch and reentry operations. Yesterday's event does not fall under the agency's jurisdiction."

NASA draws back curtain on Webb space telescope's first full-color images

NASA on Tuesday drew back the curtain on billions of years of cosmic evolution with the inaugural batch of photos from the largest, most powerful observatory ever launched to space, saying the luminous imagery showed the telescope exceeds expectations. The first full-color, high-resolution pictures from the James Webb Space Telescope, designed to peer farther than before with greater clarity to the dawn of the universe, were hailed by NASA as milestone marking a new era of astronomical exploration.

Biden unveils Webb space telescope's first full-color image of distant galaxies

U.S. President Joe Biden, pausing from political pressures to bask in the glow of the cosmos, on Monday released the debut photo from NASA's James Webb Space Telescope - an image of a galaxy cluster revealing the most detailed glimpse of the early universe ever seen. The White House sneak peek of Webb's first high-resolution, full-color image came on the eve of a larger unveiling of photos and spectrographic data that NASA plans to showcase on Tuesday at the Goddard Space Flight Center in suburban Maryland.

Science offers basis for national climate damage claims -study

A scientific basis exists to calculate how much one country's carbon emissions have damaged the economy of another, a study said on Tuesday of a development it billed as a potential game-changer for climate litigation. The research by U.S.-based Dartmouth College found that a small group of heavy polluters have caused trillions of dollars of economic losses due to warming caused by their emissions, with warmer and poorer Global South countries hit hardest.

Chinese scientists develop robot fish that gobble up microplastics

Robot fish that "eat" microplastics may one day help to clean up the world's polluted oceans, says a team of Chinese scientists from Sichuan University in southwest China. Soft to touch and just 1.3 centimetres (0.5 inch) in size, these robots already suck up microplastics in shallow water.

Test-fired booster rocket bursts into flames at SpaceX plant

A booster rocket developed by Elon Musk's SpaceX for its next-generation Starship spacecraft burst into flames during a ground-test firing on Monday in Texas, dealing a likely setback to Musk's aim of launching Starship to orbit this year. "Yeah, actually not good. Team is assessing damage," Musk said on Twitter after the early evening explosion of the Super Heavy Booster 7 prototype, as seen in a livestream recorded by the website NASA Spaceflight.

Ivory-billed woodpecker granted 6-month reprieve from U.S. extinction list

The ivory-billed woodpecker, a bird that few if any living bird watchers have ever seen, has been given a six-month reprieve from being placed on the U.S. government's extinct list, even though the last confirmed sighting was nearly eight decades ago. Last year, the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service put the bird - the largest known U.S. woodpecker - on the list for consideration as an extinct species, bumping it from the critically endangered list.

SpaceX Starship booster 'probably' returning to pad after explosion -Elon Musk

The Starship rocket booster SpaceX plans to use for an inaugural flight to orbit will "probably" return to its launch mount in Texas next week following a testing explosion on Monday, the company's chief executive, Elon Musk, told Reuters. "Damage is minor, but booster will be transferred back to the high bay for inspections, returning to the launch stand probably next week," Musk said in an email.

China space tourism prospects boosted by cooperation agreement

A Chinese space tech company said on Wednesday it had signed a cooperation agreement with the country's largest state-owned travel corporation, the latest sign that the arrival of a domestic "space tourism" industry is near. CAS Space signed a strategic cooperation agreement with a wholly-owned subsidiary of Hong Kong-based travel industry giant China Tourism Group, pledging to "jointly promote the application of commercial space technology and create a new space economy such as space tourism," according to a statement published on CAS Space's official WeChat account.