On the Record

“Stranger things have happened and craft have been found in unplanned orbits, so we are still hoping.”

Louis Friedman, director of the Planetary Society, talks about the disappearance of the solar-sail experiment, Cosmos 1, shortly after its launch on a Russian rocket.

“The Russian navy is searching for the debris.”

Vyacheslav Davidenko, spokesman for Russia's space agency, offers his own assessment of Cosmos 1's fate.

Scorecard

Learned debate

A month after The Lancet's scathing attack on the Royal Society, the medical journal graciously adds that it would not go so far as to call the society a “stuffy, useless beast”.

Macho ventures

A French-Japanese consortium wants to build a jetliner that would travel at mach 5.5 — allowing scientists to zip to their meetings faster than a speeding bullet, literally.

Political science

The American Civil Liberties Union accuses President Bush of a sustained assault on scientific inquiry, but officials retort that its study lacks credibility. The same might go for White House climate reports.

Warm feeling

Doctors deliver the first baby definitely created from frozen ovarian tissue — a ray of hope for chemotherapy patients.

Datapoint

Percentage of citizens who think the United States can be trusted to protect the global environment:

United States 59%

Canada 16%

Britain 8%

France 6%

Germany 2%

Source: Pew Global Attitudes Survey