Lifeboat Foundation

This week, a new asteroid mining startup emerged from stealth mode.

ESA astronaut Matthias Maurer spoke with German broadcaster ARD to recount his time in space watching as the Ukraine war unfolded.

Stuart Firestein Science is a fundamentally optimistic enterprise. More than a cheery disposition, it is the source of a philosophical outlook that we might call ‘optimistical’. It reliably produces fundamental and actionable knowledge about the world. We are able to take for granted, in a way even our recent ancestors never imagined, the idea of progress. The engines behind science, surprisingly, are ignorance, the unknown, failure, and, perhaps most vexingly, uncertainty. In recent decades, science has undergone a change in perspective and practice — from viewing the universe like a clockwork regimented by laws and formulas to recognizing it as irreducibly complex and uncertain. Perhaps counter intuitively this has freed science to exploit previously unimaginable possibilities and opportunities. It has led to a deeper understanding of the nature of things and to the production of technologies such as lasers, microchips, the internet, genetics, and many more. And yet socially and societally we remain mired in a 19th century view of deterministic science. We might instead learn to revel in the adventure of navigable uncertainty and take advantage of the creative opportunities of a world where we can confidently say ‘it could be otherwise’. Possibility of this sort is the rarest and purest form of optimism. Stuart Firestein is a neuroscientist and the former Chair of Columbia University’s Department of Biological Sciences, where he researches the vertebrate olfactory system. He is also a member of SFI’s Fractal Faculty.

A new bioprinter is proven to work in space. Researchers demonstrated they could 3D print human tissue cells on the International Space Station.

Watch: Boeing Starliner makes a cushy landing in the New Mexico desert.

The landing marks an important milestone for Starliner and future crewed missions to the International Space Station.

Webb going through the paces!

NASA’s next-generation space observatory successfully watched a moving asteroid as the telescope inches towards the end of its six-month commissioning period.

The successful tracking of a nearby object shows that the James Webb Space Telescope can keep a watch on solar system objects as well as the distant galaxies, stars and other faraway objects it is expected to observe in its perhaps 20-year lifespan.

Is this true?

NASA’s Kepler Space Telescope discovered an Earth-like planet circling a nearby star within the Goldilocks zone of our galaxy. Kepler-186f is around 500 light-years from Earth.

Continue reading “It’s Official: Astronomers Have Discovered Another Earth” »

Cosmic radiation remains a significant danger to spacefarers.

A new experiment that is set to accompany the Artemis 1 mission will analyze how brewer’s yeast fares against cosmic radiation.

Your Martian Dream Home, Made By Fungi ‘… it was the cheapest building material known.’ — Larry Niven, 1968.

3D Printed Glass Uses Stereolithography Techniques ‘All that with glass…’ — Frank Herbert, 1972.

Continue reading “Your Martian Dream Home, Made By Fungi” »