Lifeboat Foundation

CAPE CANAVERAL, Fla. – If you missed the last few Space Coast launches because they happened late at night or during the workday, this weekend’s SpaceX launch will be a good opportunity to see one.

SpaceX is targeting Saturday morning to launch another round of internet-beaming satellites on a Falcon 9 rocket from Cape Canaveral Air Force Station Launch Complex 40.

The launch window opens at 10:46 a.m. and ends at 11:02 a.m.

It’s a ways off from use, but this dream could be a waking reality soon.

The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention said Wednesday it is preparing for the new coronavirus, which has killed at least 1,115 and sickened more than 45,000 worldwide, to “take a foothold in the U.S.”

“At some point, we are likely to see community spread in the U.S. or in other countries,” Dr. Nancy Messonnier, director of the CDC’s National Center for Immunization and Respiratory Diseases, told reporters on a conference call. “This will trigger a change in our response strategy.”

All the elements are there to begin with, so to speak; it’s just a matter of figuring out what they are capable of—alone or together. For Leslie Schoop’s lab, one recent such investigation has uncovered a layered compound with a trio of properties not previously known to exist in one material.

With an international interdisciplinary team, Schoop, assistant professor of chemistry, and Postdoctoral Research Associate Shiming Lei, published a paper last week in Science Advances reporting that the van der Waals material gadolinium tritelluride (GdTe3) displays the highest electronic mobility among all known layered magnetic materials. In addition, it has magnetic order, and can easily be exfoliated.

Combined, these properties make it a promising candidate for new areas like magnetic twistronic devices and spintronics, as well as advances in data storage and device design.

U.S. Northern Command is bracing for an outbreak of the new coronavirus on U.S. soil, if it should occur.

Practice teams are urged to share details with clients about this canine longevity study, whose long-term goal is to help pets and people live longer, healthier lives.

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The rapidly falling cost of getting into orbit has spurred a boom in the space industry as a host of new applications become economical. Now a secretive startup plans to slash the cost to just $250,000 by flinging rockets into space rather than firing them.

Over the last decade, the pioneering work done by SpaceX has shown that getting stuff into orbit doesn’t need to be so expensive and that there are viable business opportunities to be had in the private space industry. Combined with advances in satellite technology, there’s now a thriving market for small, inexpensive spacecraft in low- E arth orbit doing everything from remote sensing to delivering broadband internet access.

But while costs have fallen dramatically, the cheapest option for reaching low-Earth orbit —a rideshare on SpaceX’s Falcon 9—still starts at $1 million, and launches only happen twice a month at best. California-based startup SpinLaunch says its technology will allow up to five launches a day for as little as $250,000.