page_title: 2018 in science
section_title: May
hierarchical_section_title: 2018 in science / Events / May
caption_attribution_description: English: PIA22460: Mars Helicopter (Artist's Concept) https://photojournal.jpl.nasa.gov/catalog/PIA22460 This artist concept shows the Mars Helicopter, a small, autonomous rotorcraft, which will travel with NASA's Mars 2020 rover mission, currently scheduled to launch in July 2020, to demonstrate the viability and potential of heavier-than-air vehicles on the Red Planet. NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory will build and manage operations of the Mars 2020 rover for the NASA Science Mission Directorate at the agencys headquarters in Washington. For more information about the mission, go to https://mars.nasa.gov/mars2020/.
context_page_description: A number of significant scientific events occurred in 2018.
context_section_description: 1 May – The Genome Project-Write announces a new 10 year initiative to attempt to make human cells immune to viral infections.
  2 May – Scientists discover that Helium is present in the exoplanet WASP-107b.
  5 May – The InSight spacecraft, designed to study the interior and subsurface of the planet Mars, successfully launches at 11:05 UTC, with an expected arrival on 26 November 2018.
  9 May – Scientists report that the curious physical phenomenon of quantum entanglement is even more supported based on recent rigorous Bell test experimentations.
  10 May – NASA's Carbon Monitoring System (CMS) is cancelled by the Trump administration.
  11 May – NASA approves the Mars Helicopter for the Mars 2020 mission.
  14 May
  Astronomers publish supporting evidence of water plume activity on Europa, moon of the planet Jupiter, based on an updated critical analysis of data obtained from the Galileo space probe, which orbited Jupiter between 1995 and 2003. Such plume activity, similar to that found on Saturn's moon Enceladus, could help researchers search for life from the subsurface European ocean without having to land on the moon.
  Anthropologists provide evidence that the brain of Homo naledi, an extinct hominid which is thought to have lived between 226,000 and 335,000 years ago, was small, but nonetheless complex, sharing structural similarities with the modern human brain.
  17 May – Scientists warn that banned CFC-11 gas emissions are originating from an unknown source somewhere in East Asia, with potential to damage the ozone layer.
  22 May
  Scientists report another CPU security vulnerability, related to the Spectre and Meltdown vulnerabilities, called Speculative Store Bypass (SSB), and affecting the ARM, AMD and Intel families of cpu processors.
  Scientists from Purdue University and the Chinese Academy of Sciences report the use of CRISPR/Cas9 to develop a variety of rice producing 25-31% more grain than traditional breeding methods.
  Significant asteroid data arising from the Wide-field Infrared Survey Explorer and NEOWISE missions is questioned.
  23 May – Paleontologists report finding the skull of a new species of haramiyida (a long lived lineage of mammaliaform cynodonts), called Cifelliodon wahkarmooshuh, underneath the fossilized foot of a large dinosaur that lived 130 million years ago in North America.
  24 May
  Based largely on government data, including data from NASA, FEMA and others, The New York Times reports an exhaustive overview of recurrent natural disasters in the United States since 1900.
  Astronomers claim that the dwarf planet Pluto may have been formed as a result of the agglomeration of numerous comets and related Kuiper belt objects.
  Researchers at the University of Leeds report that climate change could increase arable land in boreal regions by 44% by the year 2100, while having a negative impact everywhere else.
  30 May
  The first 3D printed human corneas are created at Newcastle University.
  The FDA approves the first artificial iris.
  Physicists of the MiniBooNE experiment report a stronger neutrino oscillation signal than expected, a possible hint of sterile neutrinos, an elusive particle that may pass through matter without any interaction whatsoever.
caption: 11 May: NASA approves the Mars Helicopter for the Mars 2020 mission.[142][143][144]
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