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The European Space Agency (ESA) is launching the first mission to remove a piece of space debris, set for 2025. The ClearSpace-1 mission will collect a piece of the Vespa (Vega Secondary Payload Adapter) second stage which was left by an ESA mission in 2013, which weighs approximately 100 grams and is the size of a small satellite.

The ESA selected a Swiss startup called ClearSpace to lead the mission. “This is the right time for such a mission,” Luc Piguet, founder and CEO of ClearSpace, said in a statement. “The space debris issue is more pressing than ever before. Today we have nearly 2000 live satellites in space and more than 3000 failed ones. And in the coming years, the number of satellites will increase by an order of magnitude, with multiple mega-constellations made up of hundreds or even thousands of satellites planned for low Earth orbit to deliver wide-coverage, low-latency telecommunications and monitoring services. The need is clear for a ‘tow truck’ to remove failed satellites from this highly trafficked region.”

The problem of space debris is becoming increasingly urgent, with more and more potentially hazardous objects in orbit around the planet, some at extremely high speeds. Debris can pose a risk to manned missions and the International Space Station as well as satellites and other unmanned missions.

“Jackson is a smart guy and probably under-appreciates that about himself,” said his dad.

He’s onto planning his next reactor using the spherical tokamak method, which traps energy differently than the reactor that he’s already built. He’s also decided that he wants to pursue nuclear physics as a career because he thinks he’ll be the one to make a fusion reactor that is actually efficient.

“He certainly has a head start,” said his dad.

As part of the LEAF Longevity Bookclub and to celebrate the launch of Dr. David Sinclair’s new book, Lifespan: Why We Age and Why We Don’t Have To, we hosted a special webinar on the 18th of September. The new book takes us on a journey through the biology of why we age and spotlights the exciting research being done in the lab today which could potentially change the way we treat the diseases of aging.

Dr. David Sinclair is a professor of genetics at Harvard Medical School. One of the leading innovators of his generation, he has been named by Time as “one of the 100 most influential people in the world” and in the top 50 most influential people in healthcare. He is a board member of the American Federation for Aging Research and has received more than 35 awards for his research and major scientific breakthroughs. Dr. Sinclair and his work have been featured on 60 Minutes, Today, The Wall Street Journal, The New York Times, Fortune, and Newsweek, among others. He lives in Boston and enjoys hiking and kayaking with his wife and three children.

Multiple prominent personalities and channels, including Joe Rogan, David Pakman, and Utah Public Radio, have interviewed him about his book, and we took the opportunity to allow the community to directly contact him. The webinar was an open event that offered up to 100 people a chance to join the video conference with Dr. Sinclair and to participate in the Q&A session following a reading of some of the exciting sections of the new book. We are delighted to announce that the webinar was an outstanding success, with over 90 people joining the call live to take part as well as many more watching via the livestream on our Facebook page. Five lucky attendees also won a copy of the book courtesy of Dr. Sinclair, and we would like to thank him for this kind offer as well as for taking the time to conduct this webinar with us.