QUICK TAKES

SLS SLIPS AGAIN

NASA called off a wet dress rehearsal for its new Moon rocket, the Space Launch System (SLS), due to a series of issues including a leaking hydrogen supply line and a faulty valve. The rocket’s first uncrewed flight, Artemis 1, is now expected to launch no earlier than August.

NOT-SO-STANDARD MODEL Scientists at Fermilab pinned the mass of the W boson, a fundamental forcecarrying particle, to about 80 times the mass of a proton (with an unparalleled precision of 0.01 percent). This puts the measurement in tension with the Standard Model of physics.

STEP ASIDE STARLINK

On April 5, Amazon announced it had inked deals with three rocket companies for up to 83 launches over the next five years, which will deliver more than 3,200 satellites into lowEarth orbit to provide internet connectivity around the globe.

ALIEN ETHER

For the first time, astronomers have detected dimethyl ether — a precursor to larger organic molecules that can spur life — within the planet-forming disk around another star. With nine atoms, the compound is the largest yet found in such a disk.

LUNAR SENTRY

The Earth-Moon system could serve as an enormous gravitational-wave detector capable of picking up microhertz signals from the ancient universe. These waves would create tiny changes in the distance between the two bodies, which scientists currently track to within 0.04 inch (1 millimeter).

OLDER DRYAS

A new analysis of the 19-mile-wide

(31 kilometers) Hiawatha Crater beneath Greenland’s ice shows the impact scar is some 58 million years old. That means the impact responsible was not related to Younger Dryas — a period of global cooling some 12,000 years ago — as previously speculated.