Over decades, researchers in the US government and programs it sponsored built up a tremendous number of climate resources, from comprehensive analyses to massive datasets to basic explainers meant to inform the public. And people within the government built the climate.gov website to make it all accessible. But if you try to navigate there today, you get redirected to the climate page of the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, and are greeted with the following message:

In compliance with Executive Order 14303 (“Restoring Gold Standard Science”), the White House Office of Science and Technology Policy’s June 23, 2025 Memorandum (“Agency Guidance for Implementing Gold Standard Science in the Conduct & Management of Scientific Activities”), 15 USC § 2904 (“National Climate Program”), 15 USC § 2934 (“National Global Change Research Plan”), and 33 USC § 893a (“NOAA Ocean and Atmospheric Science Education Programs”), you have been redirected to NOAA.gov. Future research products previously housed under Climate.gov will be available at NOAA.gov/climate and its affiliate websites.

Climate.gov was essentially gone, and the team that deleted implied that it happened because climate research somehow failed to uphold what the administration was calling "gold standard science."

But the people who put together climate.gov didn't go away. While the government didn't hesitate to delete inconvenient climate information, dedicated volunteers outside the government managed to preserve copies of much of the material, which the federal government is prohibited from copyrighting. The volunteers and former climate.gov admins got together and launched climate.us. On Tuesday, the team announced that it had completed the project to restore everything lost when climate.gov shut down.

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For decades, biologists thought that early tetrapods, ancient vertebrates that started conquering the land over 300 million years ago, developed like modern amphibians—beginning their lives as purely aquatic tadpoles and then metamorphosing into terrestrial adults. “A lot of that comes from this old ‘scala naturae’ idea that you had fish that evolved into the next stage up, which were amphibians, and then amphibians evolved into the next stage up, which were reptiles that evolved into birds and mammals,” said Jason Pardo, a research associate at the Field Museum.

We’ve never had evidence that early tetrapods had an amphibian lifestyle; we have assumed it because it made intuitive sense. “It’s easier to make the transition from water to land if you’re already making that transition as part of your life cycle,” Pardo said. But now, a new Science study that Pardo co-authored with Arjan Mann (the Field Museum's assistant curator of early tetrapods) shows our most basic assumptions about the first tetrapods that started living on land might be wrong.

Baby monsters

The researchers' study focused mainly on embolomers, an extinct group of large predators that lived roughly 300 million years ago. Embolomers looked like a cross between a crocodile and an eel, with large skulls full of sharp teeth, followed by long, eel-like bodies. It had short, stocky limbs adapted mainly for paddling in water, but also capable of powering brief, clumsy excursions on land. They are thought to be one of the first vertebrates that made a partial transition from an aquatic to a terrestrial lifestyle. These animals could reach over three meters in length, but to understand the very beginning of their life cycle, scientists focused on examining some of their centimeter-scale babies.

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A SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket lifted off on Tuesday to test a new reentry vehicle designed to deliver cargo anywhere in the world from low-Earth orbit.

The company developed the new saucer-shaped reentry pod, called Starfall, under a veil of secrecy. Its purpose is to support the "transport and delivery of goods through space," according to an environmental assessment published by the Federal Aviation Administration last month.

The first demonstration of the Starfall vehicle began at 6:53 am EDT (10:53 UTC) with liftoff aboard a Falcon 9 rocket from Cape Canaveral Space Force Station, Florida. At least one Starfall reentry pod rode to orbit on the Falcon 9, perhaps alongside another undisclosed payload. After circling the planet two times, the Falcon 9's upper stage was expected to release Starfall for atmospheric reentry, targeting a parachute-assisted splashdown in the Pacific Ocean around 800 miles west of California.

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Rocket Lab quietly launched a small satellite from New Zealand on Friday in a high-flying military exercise to test the US Space Force's ability to rapidly respond to a crisis in low-Earth orbit.

The launch was scarcely announced in advance. The only public indication of an impending launch was the release of a warning for pilots and sailors to steer clear of the rocket's flight path. Rocket Lab did not provide a livestream of the launch, as it does for most of its missions. As of Monday morning, officials from Rocket Lab and the Space Force had not acknowledged the launch in any official public statements.

But the US military's catalog of space objects was updated over the weekend to reflect the launch. A new satellite, designated Victus Haze Puma, showed up in the catalog with a launch date of Friday from Rocket Lab's privately run spaceport at Māhia Peninsula in New Zealand. The Space Force cataloged the spacecraft in a polar orbit ranging between 215 miles and 286 miles (347-by-461 km), with an inclination of about 97.5 degrees from the equator.

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In 2023, after years of pollution, equipment failures, and health concerns, the Cumberland Fossil Plant in Tennessee was slated to close within the decade.

The coal-fired plant had been part of a multibillion-dollar settlement in 2011 after its operator, the Tennessee Valley Authority, failed to install pollution control technology a decade earlier. Regulators cited the plant for more air-pollution violations in 2017 and 2023. TVA said it would shutter Cumberland’s units in 2026 and 2028.

Then the Trump administration replaced four of TVA’s board members, and the agency reneged on its retirement plan in February. Now, TVA has a federal pledge for $46 million to extend Cumberland’s lifespan—part of a nationwide push by President Donald Trump to keep older coal plants running.

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