Mars and Earth are getting closer (for now) and other top stories.

• Mars and Earth are getting closer (for now)

  

  8 photos: Mars Opportunity and Spirit rovers From its perch high on a ridge, Opportunity recorded this image of a Martian dust devil twisting through the valley below. Just as on Earth, a dust devil is created by a rising, rotating column of hot air. When the column whirls fast enough, it picks up tiny grains of dust from the ground, making the vortex visible.8 photos: Mars Opportunity and Spirit rovers Opportunity photographed its tracks in the soft sand between the Endurance and Victoria crate..

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• ALMA 'Weighs' Monster Black Hole to Highest Precision

  

  Though we know black holes are kinda big, how do astronomers measure their mass? It’s not as if we can go out there and simply “weigh” them. Fortunately, astronomers have many tricky ways to work out the mass of objects in the universe and black holes are no exception. Using the biggest and most powerful observatory on the planet, astronomers have been able to zoom in on the central region of an elliptical galaxy called NGC 1332, around 75 million light-years away, to get a high-precision view ..

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• Wow! SpaceX Nails Rocket Landing At Sea Again

  

  For the second time in less than a month, SpaceX has landed the first stage of its Falcon 9 rocket on a ship at sea. The booster settled softly onto the deck of SpaceX's robotic "Of Course I Still Love You" droneship at 1:30 a.m. EDT (0530 GMT) on Friday (May 6), nine minutes after launching from Cape Canaveral Air Force Station in Florida on a successful mission to carry the Japanese communications satellite JCSAT-14 to orbit. Chants of "USA! USA! USA!" erupted at SpaceX headquarter..

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• Six new fossil species form 'snapshot' of primates stressed by ancient climate change

  

  A left lower jaw of Yunnanadapis folivorus, one of six new fossil species found in southern China. Credit: University of Kansas. In a study to be published this week in the journal Science, researchers describe unearthing a "mother lode" of a half ...

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• Leopards Have Lost 75 Percent of Their Historic Range

  

  Worldwide, leopards have lost about 75 percent of their historic range, according to a new survey – the first to attempt to get a glimpse of the big cat’s remaining global paw print. The analysis was produced by a group of partner organizations, including the National Geographic Society’s Big Cats Initiative, the Zoological Society of London (ZSL) and Panthera. Snow Leopards Caught On Camera: Photos The researchers, whose findings have been published in the journal PeerJ, studied more than 1,30..

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