A joint Russian-European mission to Mars has been postponed for two years, the Russian and European space agencies said Thursday, citing the coronavirus and technical issues.
“We have made a difficult but well-weighed decision to postpone the launch to 2022,” said Dmitry Rogozin, head of Russia’s Roscosmos agency.
The unmanned ExoMars mission aims to place a robot on the Red Planet to find out whether life is present.

The Russian Orthodox Church is instigating an unprecedented list of measures aiming to combat the spread of the coronavirus in its sacred spaces nationwide, it said in a statement Tuesday.
The Church drew controversy in recent weeks after video showed hundreds of worshippers lining up to kiss a holy relic in St. Petersburg’s Kazan Cathedral as a worker stood nearby to wipe it with a cloth after every few uses.
The new orders, approved by Church leader Patriarch Kirill, include new sanitary standards for general liturgy services as well as baptism, communion and other sacraments. They also outline general hygiene recommendations for churches.
Churches are advised to refrain from allowing worshippers to kiss the cross at the end of a liturgy, the document says. Instead, priests should touch the cross to the tops of worshippers’ heads. Worshippers will still be able to kiss icons, the document says, but churches are ordered to disinfect the icons between each use.

Russian scientists have begun to test vaccine prototypes for the new coronavirus, and plan to present the most effective one by June, a laboratory chief at a state biotech institute said.
Russia has reported 93 cases of infection but no deaths, according to official numbers published Tuesday.
“The prototypes have been created. We are starting laboratory testing on animals, to ensure effectiveness and safety,” Ilnaz Imatdinov of the Vector Institute in Siberia told the Vesti Novosibirsk television channel on Monday.
“In June we will present one or two showing the best results.”

Moscow authorities have denied reports that they will introduce a near-total shutdown of the city to contain the spread of the coronavirus.
Vedomosti reported Tuesday that officials are considering a state of emergency that would close all public transport, shut all nonessential businesses, impose a strict curfew and prevent anyone from leaving or entering Russia’s capital. Fifty-seven of Russia’s 114 confirmed coronavirus cases are in Moscow.

Russian President Vladimir Putin is being protected from coronavirus around the clock, the Kremlin said on Wednesday, saying all Kremlin staff involved in his events schedule were undergoing mandatory testing for the virus.
Russia has recorded 147 cases of coronavirus so far and the authorities have temporarily barred foreigners from entering the country in an effort to prevent it spreading further. “Everything needed to protect the president from viruses and other illnesses is being done around the clock,” Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov told reporters.

Polar bears in Russia’s Arctic are increasingly turning to cannibalism as growing human activity and development in the region shrinks their hunting grounds, scientists at the Russian Academy of Sciences said Wednesday.
While cannibalism is a recognized part of polar bears’ natural behavior, its frequency has climbed sharply in recent years, Ilya Mordvintsev, a senior researcher at the Academy’s Severtsov Institute of Ecology and Evolution, told Interfax.
According to Mordvintsev, increased development of the Yamal Peninsula and the Gulf of Ob by oil and gas companies have fueled the degradation of polar bear hunting grounds and disrupted the animals’ feeding habits. The region is a hotspot of development for major gas and oil producers like Gazprom and Novatek.

A Moscow court ruled on Tuesday that the city’s facial recognition system does not violate the privacy of its citizens, a lawyer for one of the plaintiffs told Reuters — a blow to activists who had hoped to ban the technology’s use.
Lawyer and activist Alena Popova and opposition politician Vladimir Milov of the Solidarnost party had filed a case against Moscow’s Department of Technology (DIT), which manages the capital’s video surveillance program, seeking to ban the technology’s use at mass events and protests.

Russia’s oil giant Rosneft and the Russian government will join forces to develop gene-editing technology, according to a government decree published Wednesday.
The deal, which President Vladimir Putin ordered in December, aims to accelerate Russia’s $1.6 billion program to create 30 new varieties of genetically modified crops and animals by 2027.
Rosneft is tasked with helping Russia stimulate genetic research and lower its dependence on foreign technology, according to the decree signed by Prime Minister Mikhail Mishustin.