Lifeboat Foundation

Amazon CEO Jeff Bezos wants to send its first passengers to space as soon as this year. Bezos spoke during a private event at the Yale Club in New York City, Business Insider reports.

“This year. This is the first time I’ve ever been saying, ”this year.” For a few years, I’ve been saying, ”next year,” Bezos told Jeff Foust, senior staff writer at Space News, during the event.

The billionaire’s private space tourism company Blue Origins has been making some big strides towards that goal in recent years. Its flagship suborbital vehicle New Shepard reached the so-called Kármán line (62 miles or 100 km), widely agreed to be the edge of outer space, for the first time during a test flight in 2015.

NASA has given the green light for Elon Musk’s SpaceX to launch the first unmanned test of its seven-seat Crew Dragon capsule on March 2 after passing a full day of reviews, bringing the space agency one step closer to replacing the retired Space Shuttle program after years of delays and ending its dependency on contracted Russian Soyuz rockets.

The test flight was originally scheduled for January, but was later delayed to complete hardware testing and other reviews. Per Space.com, NASA and SpaceX officials have now completed an in-depth review of the Crew Dragon’s capabilities called a flight readiness review, with NASA Commercial Crew Program manager Kathy Leuders telling reporters they needed to verify the craft “can safely go rendezvous and dock with the space station, and undock safely, and not pose a hazard to the International Space Station.”

Now, the team is trying to better understand what he and the team found and its practical implications.

“One way or another, this technology is coming. These cars are already being tested in cities,” Richard Ezike, the lead author of the study, said in an organization-published press release. “If we do not plan and set out thoughtful policies, driverless cars could exacerbate the challenges we see in transportation today — especially for underserved communities.”

Take the Bus

The researchers argue that cities that introduce autonomous vehicles should also invest in public transit, to make sure that those who have longer commutes and would get stuck in the newly-introduced congestion can still find and make it to their jobs.

Roche could pay $5 billion for biotech company Spark Therapeutics. The pharma giant likely wants to expand its presence in hemophilia, a lucrative market.

Neuroscience.

The director general of Cern talks about discovering the Higgs boson, women in science and the next generation of colliders.

Recently University of Glasgow developed a Graphene based E-Skin for prosthetic limbs. The research started with making a prosthetic arm that could sense even the minutest of pressure for gripping soft objects. It eventually yielded a prosthetic limb that was also self powering.

This was because of the development of Graphene based supercapacitors.

Continue reading “Solar Powered E-Skin for Prosthetic Limbs” »

This is awesome and WAY deserved.

A NASA facility in Fairmont, West Virginia, will be renamed after native Katherine Johnson, a pioneering mathematician who was depicted in the 2016 film “Hidden Figures” for her critical role in the success of the U.S. reaching space.

The Herbert Henderson Office of Minority Affairs announced the recognition of Johnson on Friday, according to The Register-Herald.

Continue reading “NASA facility in West Virginia renamed after native and ‘hidden figure’ Katherine Johnson” »