Environment

China is working on a mission to land a rover on Mars by 2020 aiming to become a global aerospace power by 2030. China’s National Space Administration envisages a joint China-US cooperation on a Mars rescue mission, as depicted in the Hollywood blockbuster “The Martian,” where the agency saved both NASA and Matt Damon from an awful situation. Shanghai Daily reports: Announced in January, the Mars voyage will attempt to recreate the success of the United States’ Viking 1 mission that landed a rover on the Red Planet four decades ago.

Satellite imagery has revealed evidence of an enormous lake buried beneath the East Antarctic ice sheet.  Gizmodo reports: The first hints of the lake, presented at the European Geosciences Union Meeting in Vienna this week, include a series of mysterious linear grooves, which appear to cut across more than 600 miles (1000 kilometers) of Princess Elizabeth Land, toward the eastern coast of Antarctica.

If Bill Nye had his way, Weather Channel founder John Coleman would be heading for jail. Having spent more than 60 years as a meteorologist, Coleman penned a pointed rebuke to "the science guy's" vehement faith in the 'science' of climate change, exclaiming that "science has taken a back seat at The UN... get politics out of the climate debate."

Just hours after we reported that a "mysterious illness" resulting from inhalation of toxic chemical fumes was causing hundreds of school children to fall ill in China's Jiangsu Province, we're now learning that a massive chemical explosion and fire has taken place in the same province.

Activists in Peru have forced the second-largest gold mining corporation in the world, Newmont, to abandon its $5 billion Conga copper and gold mining project. Indigenous Peruvians say the conga mine project, which was intended to replace the nearly-depleted Yanacocha gold mine nearby, threatens the local environment At the forefront of the local resistance was Máxima Acuña de Chaupe, a 47-year-old grandmother who lives off a plot of farmland in Peru’s northern Cajamarca region, an area that would have been used by Newmont to drain a nearby lake to collect mining byproducts.