A joint European-Chinese spacecraft is set to blast off Tuesday to investigate what happens when extreme winds and giant explosions of plasma shot out from the sun slam into Earth's magnetic shield.

Three coronal mass ejections fired from the sun over the past 48 hours are now racing toward Earth, and the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration expects their combined arrival to push geomagnetic storm conditions to the G2 level on the evening of June 12,

The livestream will begin at 3:45 p.m. EDT on May 18, bringing near real time views of the asteroid from robotic telescopes in Italy, weather permitting.

Researchers expected to find "a gradual increase in artificial light at night," but instead saw "much more nuanced patterns," NASA said.

The first color image of the whole Earth prompted people to think of home, and the environment, in a new way, writes Stewart Brand.

The world needs more rare earth materials. A surprisingly few mines are responsible for global production.

By Laurie Chen and Lewis Jackson BEIJING, May 18 (Reuters) - China will address U.S. concerns about rare earth shortages, the White House said on Sunday in a recap of agreements struck at last week's leaders summit that fell short of calling for the removal of restrictions that have disrupted U.

US rare earth miners are seeing immense pressure today (May 18) due to a combination of cooling global commodity prices, geopolitical headline shifts, and company-specific supply-side risks. MP Materials (MP) and USA Rare Earth (USAR) – two of them in which the Trump administration holds direct equity stakes are each down more than 10% at the time