Intuitive Machines' Odysseus has started making its way to the moon and could make history as the first privately built lander to touch down on the lunar surface.
Since 1979, Arctic ice has shrunk by 1.35 million square miles, a new JPL study found ice loss in Greenland is far worse than previously thought and Antarctic ice is now at the lowest level since records began.
Houston-based space company Intuitive Machines is gearing up for an actual moonshot at the end of this month, when it’ll try to land a spacecraft named Odysseus on the lunar surface — ideally without it breaking in the process. The mission follows Astrobotic’s unsuccessful attempt in January; that company’s lander, Peregrine, never made it to the moon due to a propellant leak that cut its journey short.
Against all odds, Japan’s SLIM lander managed to turn back on more than a week after it plopped upside down onto the surface of the moon — but now, it’s gone dormant for the duration of the lunar night, and it may not be able to wake up again.
The first metal 3D printer that will be used in space is on its way to the International Space Station.
An MIT biotech researcher has been able to run the iconic computer game Doom using actual gut bacteria. Lauren Ramlan didn’t get the game going on a digital simulation of bacteria, but turned actual bacteria into pixels to display the 30-year-old FPS, as reported by Rock Paper Shotgun.
We may have an adequate understanding of the human body in that, well, we invented aspirin and sequenced the genome, but researchers still find out new things about the humble homo sapien all of the time. Case in point? Scientists just discovered a previously unknown entity hanging out in the human gut and mouth. The researchers are calling these virus-like structures “obelisks”, due to their presumed microscopic shape.
The first human patient has received a Neuralink brain implant, according to Elon Musk. The procedure was apparently successful, with Musk saying the individual “is recovering well” one day after the surgery.
Meta is teaming up with the Center for Open Science (COS) to start a pilot program that studies “topics related to well-being.” It looks like the program will dive into our social media data, but on a voluntary basis, as COS says it will use a “privacy-preserving” dataset provided by Meta for the pilot program.