Lifeboat Foundation

How did NASA’s Perseverance Mars rover pick its exact landing spot? Believe it or not, the Mars rover decided precisely where to land just moments before it touched down. It’s thanks to the work of engineers like NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory’s Swati Mohan and new technology called Terrain…

Mars rover pick its exact landing spot? Believe it or not, the Mars rover decided precisely where to land just moments before it touched down. It’s thanks to the work of engineers like NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory’s Swati Mohan and new technology called Terrain Relative Navigation.

When NASA decides to send a rover to Mars, a whole group of experts gets together to figure out where it needs to go for the best science for that mission. Perseverance’s mission was to find the signs of past life on Mars. So, all the experts got together and picked Jezero crater.

Continue reading “We Asked a NASA Expert: How Did Perseverance Mars Rover Pick Its Landing Spot? [Video]” »

It’s long been known that exposure to radiation damages DNA, but a new study has found an additional risk for astronauts: DNA replication is more prone to errors in microgravity.

Scientists tested whether enzymes accurately copy DNA in cells during microgravity — the weightlessness produced during the freefall of a jet on a parabolic flight pattern. When the so-called “vomit comet” descends more than 2 miles in 20 seconds, the near-weightlessness replicates conditions in space. Accurate DNA replication in space is crucial for astronauts and the future of space travel.

“So-called DNA polymerases are essential enzymes that copy and repair DNA. Inevitably, they aren’t perfect: even under optimal conditions, they sometimes make mistakes. Here, we show that DNA polymerases derived from the bacterium E. coli are considerably more prone to errors under microgravity, such as occurs in space,” said Aaron Rosenstein of the University of Toronto, corresponding author of the study published in Frontiers in Cell and Developmental Biology.

What the discovery of alien life means for our human society. For more info, see.

Ready or not, this discovery is likely to happen soon. In anticipation of discovering alien life, conferences have been held on what such a discovery would mean for humanity. But how would we as humans react to this discovery? That reaction would depend on how advanced the alien life is and whether it would be considered a danger to us. Let´s start with the possibility that we find microbial life on another planet. In a seminal paper published in Frontiers of Psychology, a team of scientists led by Jung Kwon from Arizona State University reported that people would react more positively than negatively to discovering alien life. They partially based their findings on how people reacted to the announcement of fossil life in the Martian meteorite ALH84001, which created excitement in the scientific community (the discovery itself, however, has remained controversial till today and it is unclear whether it is evidence for the existence of past life on Mars).

The pan-coronavirus one that’s variant-proof.

Science.org/doi/full/10.11… See more.

COVID-19 vaccines go through many tests for safety and effectiveness and are then monitored closely.

America’s newest air-dropped nuclear weapon variant has entered production. The U.S. Department of Energy’s National Nuclear Security Administration (NNSA) announced that on November 23, it had successfully completed the first production units of the B61-12 Life Extension Program (LEP), an updated version of the warhead used on weapons dropped from fighters and bombers. This paves the way to create an estimated 480 of the weapons, which will homogenize four existing variants of the bomb.

The B61-12 LEP helps modernize America’s nuclear weapons stockpile and sustain the Nation’s air-delivered nuclear deterrent capability. The nuclear security enterprise and the U.S. Air Force worked together to deliver the B61-12 FPU after more than nine years of design, development, qualification, and component production.

Deployed from U.S. Air Force and North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) bases, the B61 nuclear gravity bomb has been in service for over 50 years. Since the first B61 entered services in 1968, many modifications have been made to improve the B61’s safety, security, and reliability. Currently, there are four B61 variants remain in the stockpile: the 3, 4, 7, and 11. The B61-12 will replace the B61-3, 4, and 7.

DHS is taking action due to reports of spying and these airlines being used to capture and threaten US based individuals. It was also mentioned that personnel from these airlines are using their phones and other electronic equipment to record interviews, CBP operational procedures and questions during inspections.

Read article for more details.

Crew members of a Chinese state commercial airline are suspected of spying at U.S. airports, according to a Department of Homeland Security intelligence bulletin obtained by Yahoo News.

Continue reading “DHS eyes Chinese airline employees suspected of spying” »

A new technology is allowing one company to produce full-spectrum cannabis without growing the plant itself.

Sounds like something out of a science fiction movie, but it’s very real. In what could be a global first, this week, a publicly traded Canadian-Israeli biotech firm company, BioHarvest Sciences, will announce that it has managed to produce at least 10kg of full-spectrum cannabis without the plant itself.

According to information procured exclusively, the biomass in question was created using the company’s proprietary BioFarming technology platform, which allows it to grow natural plant cells in bioreactors. In addition, management assures, the product is not genetically modified, and is “uniquely consistent and clean.” This could provide an interesting solution to two of the cannabis industry’s main pain points: product variability and contamination — the aseptic, controlled environment means the product isn’t affected by fungi, yeast, mold or any other contaminants or pesticides.

Continue reading “Producing Cannabis Biomass Without Growing A Cannabis Plant: How One Company Is Doing It” »

Launched in 2010, DARPA’s Living Foundries program aimed to enable adaptable, scalable, and on-demand production of critical, high-value molecules by programming the fundamental metabolic processes of biological systems to generate a vast number of complex molecules. These molecules were often prohibitively expensive, unable to be domestically sourced, and/or impossible to manufacture using traditional synthetic chemistry approaches. As a proof of concept, DARPA intended to produce 1,000 molecules and material precursors spanning a wide range of defense-relevant applications including industrial chemicals, fuels, coatings, and adhesives.

Divided into two parts – Advanced Tools and Capabilities for Generalizable Platforms (ATCG) and 1,000 Molecules – the Living Foundries program succeeded not only in meeting its programmatic goals of producing 1,000 molecules as a proof-of-concept, but pivoted in 2019 to expand program objectives to working with military mission partners to test molecules for military applications. The performer teams collectively have produced over 1,630 molecules and materials to-date, and more importantly, DARPA is transitioning a subset of these technologies to five military research teams from Army, Navy, and Air Force labs who partnered with the agency on testing and evaluation over the course of the program.

“Biologically-produced molecules offer orders-of-magnitude greater diversity in chemical functionality compared to traditional approaches, enabling scientists to produce new bioreachable molecules faster than ever before,” noted Dr. Anne Cheever, Living Foundries program manager. “Through Living Foundries, DARPA has transformed synthetic biomanufacturing into a predictable engineering practice supportive of a broad range of national security objectives.”

A novel super-white paint may be the creative solution needed to fight global warming. Read the article to learn how that might be.