Lifeboat Foundation

Every three seconds, a person somewhere in the world breaks a bone due to osteoporosis—a progressive disease that decreases bone density, making bones weak and fragile. Osteoporotic fractures greatly reduce quality of life, and immobilization following a fracture can lead to further bone loss which puts these patients at risk for breaking another bone.

When SpaceX CRS-11 launched to the space station last June, it carried 40 mice to the ISS National Lab for a mission aimed at improving treatment for the millions of people with osteoporosis back on Earth. The Rodent Research (RR)-5 mission successfully proved the robustness of a new potential osteoporosis therapy based on a naturally produced protein, NELL-1, and also led to significant improvements in the delivery of the therapy.

As far as humans are concerned, Mars has two stories. One is in the present: We’re trying to send our ships and our astronauts to the Red Planet in order to understand what it’s like today. But much of that work is meant to tell a second story—what the planet used to be like.

IT’S a moment of conception on an interstellar scale. Australian astronomers have watched the death — and rebirth — of a distant solar system. Now they’re watching its embryonic nebula form.

Professor Lisa Harvey-Smith of the CSIRO has told the annual meeting of the Astronomical Society of Australia hosted at Swinburne University this week that the opportunity to observe the climactic phase in the life cycle of a star was extraordinary.

Continue reading “Astronomers capture moment of interstellar conception” »

After nearly four years of traveling through space, the Hayabusa2 spacecraft has successfully rendezvoused with the Ryugu asteroid, the Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency confirmed Wednesday. Let the next stage of this historic sampling-and-return mission begin!

Earlier today, mission controllers at JAXA triggered Hayabusa2’s chemical propulsion thrusters, bringing the spacecraft into orbit around Ryugu, an asteroid that’s just shy of one kilometer (0.6 miles) wide. Confirmation of the rendezvous was made at 9:35 am Japan Standard Time (JST). JAXA says Hayabusa2’s thrusters worked normally, and that the spacecraft is maintaining a constant distance from Ryugu.

Buzz Aldrin wants people to know that he has some cool new ideas about how to get to the moon — not just because they’re cool, but also because they show his mind is working.

“That’s not an inactive, incapacitated, dependent mind,” the 88-year-old Aldrin, who became one of the first humans to walk on the moon during 1969’s Apollo 11 mission, told me today during a wide-ranging telephone interview.

Continue reading “Buzz Aldrin shares his latest space vision even as questions swirl about his state of mind” »

Chemical innovation plays a key role in developing cutting-edge technologies for the military. Research chemists design and synthesize new molecules that could enable a slew of next-generation military products, such as novel propellants for spacecraft engines; new pharmaceuticals and medicines for troops in the field; lighter and longer-lasting batteries and fuel cells; advanced adhesives, coatings and paints; and less expensive explosives that are safer to handle. The problem, however, is that existing molecule design and production methods rely primarily on experts’ intuition in a laborious, trial-and-error research process.

DARPA’s Make-It program, currently in year three of a four-year effort, is developing software tools based on machine learning and expert-encoded rules to recommend synthetic routes (i.e., the “recipe” to make a particular molecule) optimized for factors such as cost, time, safety, or waste reduction. The program seeks to free chemists so that they may focus their energy on chemical innovation, rather than testing various molecular synthesis pathways. The program also is developing automated devices that uniformly and reproducibly create the desired chemical based on the software-generated recipe – this one-device, many-molecules concept is a departure from the traditional dedicated reactors in chemical production. Make-It research teams have recently demonstrated significant progress toward fully automated rapid molecule production, which could speed the pace of chemical discovery for a range of defense products and applications.

“A seasoned research chemist may spend dozens of hours designing synthetic routes to a new molecule and months implementing and optimizing the synthesis in a lab,” said Anne Fischer, program manager in DARPA’s Defense Sciences Office. “Make-It is not only freeing chemists to expend brain power in other areas such as molecular discovery and innovation, it is opening chemical synthesis and discovery to a much broader community of scientific researchers who will benefit from faster development of new molecules.”

China’s hypersonic progress ranges from increasing scramjet testing and cheaper drones, to keeping its lead in railguns.

The NASA James Webb telescope could prove to be the biggest leap forward to humankind’s exploration into deep space.

The Webb telescope will give us the ability to investigate the cosmos, unlocking secrets from the beginning of the Big Bang to how galaxies are formed and beyond, bringing us light years ahead of our current understanding of planetary evolution.

Continue reading “Why the James Webb telescope launch could be the most exciting astrological event of the millennia” »

Space is the next frontier for war.

• President Donald Trump’s proposed “Space Force” could help fuel the $1 trillion intergalactic economy, Morgan Stanley says.
• The bank is tracking 100 private companies poised to profit from interstellar industries.

If President Donald Trump successfully organizes his so-called Space Force, it could speed up investment in what Morgan Stanley sees as the next trillion-dollar economy.

In a note to clients Friday, the bank doubled down on its intergalactic thesis from last October, saying the Space Force “could address critical vulnerabilities in national security, raising investor awareness in the formation of what we see as the next trillion-dollar economy.”

Continue reading “Trump’s ‘Space Force’ could fuel a new $1 trillion economy, Morgan Stanley says” »