An unmanned Atlas V rocket will launch a powerful new broadband internet satellite into orbit from Florida today (Dec 18) and you can watch the action live online. Built for satellite operator Hughes, EchoStar 19 (also known as Jupiter 2) is being touted as the company's most powerful internet communications satellite to date. Hughes representatives said in a statement that EchoStar 19 "will be able to will provide significantly more capacity than EchoStar XVII (EchoStar 17), which was also built by SSL and launched in 2012. "Current weather forecasts predict a 70 percent chance of favorable conditions for today's Atlas V launch. The United Launch Alliance Atlas V rocket will launch the EchoStar XIX (or EchoStar 19) from a pad at Florida's Cape Canaveral Air Force Station at 1:27 p.m. EST (1827 GMT).

Last year the United Nations set a goal of eliminating extreme poverty worldwide by 2030. From space, at night, mild and extreme poverty look the same—dark. Researchers have tried to work around this limitation by searching nighttime satellite images for unusually dark areas. “Places lit up at night are generally better off,” explains Marshall Burke, an assistant professor of earth science systems at Stanford University. But this method is imperfect, especially for differentiating between grades of poverty.

23; December 5, 2013 (structure of small graphs); National Center for Health Statistics, 1971–2014 (data in small graphs) Since the 1970s more and more twins have been popping up across the developed world (large graph). 4; December 2015 (large graph); “Fertility Treatments and Multiple Births in the United States,” By Aniket D. Kulkarni et al., In New England Journal of Medicine, VOL. Credit: KATIE PEEK; Sources “Twinning Rates in Developed Countries: Trends and Explanations,” By Gilles Pison et al., In Population and Development Review, VOL. Because multiple births are dangerous for both mothers and babies, public health officials would like to reverse the trend.

Researchers need to actually photograph a potentially Earth-like planet to learn more about it. We called our mission Project Blue because we're hoping to find another blue planet in Earth's neighboring star system. Ten years ago, scientists didn't know if Earth-like planets were common in this galaxy. An illustration of habitable zones around different stars: Planets are plotted based on their orbital distance compared to Earth's and their star's mass compared to the sun's. Project Blue contributed this article to Space.com's Expert Voices: Op-Ed & Insights.

Godspeed, dad.”See more photographs and video from John Glenn’s memorial service at collectSPACE. "He gave what I think is probably the best description of John Glenn I've ever heard, and I knew John for 40 years. The life of John Glenn, the first American to orbit Earth, was celebrated at a public memorial service Saturday (Dec. 17), at Ohio State University in Columbus. Senator John Glenn during a ceremony to celebrate his life, Dec. 17, 2016, at The Ohio State University in Columbus. ""Colonel John Glenn has made his last takeoff and he'll be missed, but never forgotten," Dailey said.

Each week we uncover the most interesting and informative articles from around the world, here are 10 of the coolest stories in Science this week. The AirSelfie drone can capture photos and videos in midair. [Full Report]Excavations of Greek 'Village' Reveal Ancient Metropolis: Greek ruins turn out to conceal an ancient urban area. [Full Story]Mysterious Metallic Sound in the Mariana Trench Finally Identified: Around the deepest parts of the ocean, scientists eavesdropped on whale conversations. Likelihood Is 99 Percent: How likely is it that mountain glaciers' retreat is caused by climate change?

They have also built a soundproof room in which multiple marmosets with the electrical stimulation devices can run around and interact with one another. Common marmosets (Callithrix jacchus) are social and communicative in captivity, unlike the macaque that is more commonly used as a model primate. Wang hopes that marmosets will improve researchers’ understanding of the evolution of communication and help them refine devices such as cochlear implants for deaf people. And one of the world’s largest manufacturers of cochlear implants, Advanced Bionics in Valencia, California, is now beginning to test its next-generation devices in the marmosets. The researchers found that the electrical stimulation failed to activate many of the neurons that respond to sound, including some involved in pitch perception.