AAAS Lifetime Mentor Awardee Gary May Believes in Mentorship aaas.org - get the latest breaking news, showbiz & celebrity photos, sport news & rumours, viral videos and top stories from aaas.org Daily Mail and Mail on Sunday newspapers.
Government Executive
email
Three challenges stand out as testing our nation’s ability to counter emerging biological threats. Sezin A. Palmer |
By Sezin A. Palmer
The past year has been both a devastating and illuminating experience for those responsible for protecting the United States from biological threats. With its significant toll on millions of lives, the national and global economy and national security, COVID-19 has been a wake-up call to how fragile our systems are and has tested our national response teams with its historic challenges.
The Johns Hopkins Applied Physics Laboratory was called to the national response in the early weeks of COVID-19, collaborating with our university partners on the newly created Johns Hopkins Covid Dashboard, which emerged as the global tool for maintaining situational awareness. Our government sponsors then invited us to support FEMA’s National Response Coordination Center and Health and Hu
Virgin Galactic prepared for another human spaceflight attempt from New Mexico
May 22, 2021
Virgin Galactic will attempt to perform the first human spaceflight from Spaceport America again, just south of Truth or Consequences, New Mexico, today, using the VSS Unity SpaceShipTwo spacecraft. VSS Unity is mated with its WhiteKnightTwo carrier aircraft VMS Eve. Together, Eve will climb up to an altitude of 50,000 feet before releasing VSS Unity for a rocket-powered flight to space.
Flight restrictions in the airspace above Spaceport America indicate a launch window that opens at 8:00 AM MDT (14:00 UTC) on Saturday May 22, continuing until 4:00 PM MDT (22:00 UTC) on Sunday May 23.
Novel Technologies Bolster Cybersecurity at Water Treatment Plants By Hannah Longstaff
Without defensive technologies in place, water treatment facilities like this one can be left vulnerable to cyberattacks.
Credit: Bigstock
At 8 a.m. on Friday, Feb. 5, a municipal water plant operator in Oldsmar, Florida, noticed the city’s water treatment control system was being accessed remotely. Assuming it was his supervisor, the operator saw no cause for alarm, until a few hours later when he witnessed the cursor moving across the screen of its own accord and adjusting the level of sodium hydroxide, or lye, to more than one hundred times what it should be.
(State Dept./D. Thompson)
It sounds like the plot of a Hollywood blockbuster, but it’s real. NASA scientists will soon launch a mission to change the course of a distant asteroid in a test of technology that could one day save planet Earth from disaster.
The Double Asteroid Redirection Test (DART) spaceship could launch as early as July. It will travel 11 million kilometers and slam into the smaller part of the Didymos binary asteroid system, knocking the moonlet slightly off its current path. The asteroid punch is planned for September 2022.
Shortly before impact, a shoebox-sized satellite built by NASA partners in Italy will break away from the rocket to help scientists study the asteroid’s trajectory after the collision and determine if the mission is a success.