Cosmic Log
NASA has tapped a type of SpaceX cargo craft that hasn’t yet been built to deliver supplies to a moon-orbiting outpost that hasn’t yet been launched.
SpaceX’s robotic Dragon XL, a cylindrical, supersized version of its workhorse Dragon spacecraft, will handle shipments to the Gateway space platform as the first commercial provider to receive a Gateway Logistics Services contract from NASA.
Seattle-based Xplore isn’t due to launch its first Xcraft space probe until late 2021, but it’s already landed in an educational board game.
Amazon CEO Jeff Bezos and the World Health Organization’s director-general are trading ideas on how to get the COVID-19 pandemic under control, using tools ranging from Amazon Web Services’ firepower in cloud computing and artificial intelligence to distribution channels for coronavirus test kits.
Bezos recapped today’s talk with Director-General Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus in an Instagram post, featuring a screengrab of Bezos’ videoconference view with the billionaire’s own visage in the upper right corner of the frame.
If gaps in health care resources aren’t filled, more than 80,000 Americans will die over the next four months due to the coronavirus pandemic, epidemiologists at the University of Washington predict.
The grim forecast — based on an analysis of statistics from the World Health Organization, as well as from national and local governments and hospitals — is laid out today in a research paper that’s being submitted to the MedRxiv preprint server but hasn’t yet been peer-reviewed.
Researchers at the UW’s Institute for Health Metrics and Evaluation say their forecast takes current policies on social distancing into account. The problem is that shortages of hospital beds and medical supplies are projected to boost the death toll nevertheless.
The first satellite mission conducted under the name of the U.S. Space Force got underway today with the launch of the AEHF-6 military communications satellite atop a United Launch Alliance Atlas 5 rocket.
Masses of location data gathered in China show that intensive testing, tracking and restrictions on mobility are effective strategies for fighting a coronavirus outbreak. They also show that the strategies need time to work.
And although it’s still early, similar evidence suggests that the strategies are working in Seattle as well.
UW Medicine is implementing its plan to deal with a surge of patients with COVID-19 respiratory symptoms, including the erection of tents outside hospital emergency departments for initial screening.
The surge plan should be fully in place by April 1, the University of Washington’s medical system said today in a news release. UW Medicine manages four hospitals in the Seattle area, including Harborview Medical Center, Valley Medical Center, UW Medical Center – Montlake and UW Medical Center – Northwest.
Are you looking for educational activities to occupy the kids while you’re cooped up due to the coronavirus outbreak? One option is to make space postcards for the Club for the Future, an educational campaign created by Amazon CEO Jeff Bezos’ Blue Origin space venture.
Even as Boeing begins a 14-day production shutdown in the Puget Sound due to the coronavirus outbreak, the aerospace giant is in line for a financial booster shot, thanks to provisions in the $2 trillion relief package drawn up in the Senate.
Boeing’s stock ended the trading session with a 24% gain. Airline stocks rose as well, thanks to $50 billion in promised loans and grants for passenger airlines, and another $8 billion for cargo carriers.
The Senate bill, which hasn’t yet come up for a vote and could still undergo revision, doesn’t specifically call out Boeing. But it does set aside $17 billion in loans for businesses that are considered “critical to maintaining national security.” Sources told The Washington Post that this provision was meant to cover Boeing’s needs, although other companies could be eligible for some of that aid.
That $17 billion by itself doesn’t fully address Boeing’s request for $60 billion in assistance. Other sources of funding — public as well as private — could fill the gap.
Researchers at the University of Washington are launching a study aimed at answering the question that’s on a lot of people’s minds as the coronavirus epidemic spreads through the Seattle area: How are you holding up?
The King County COVID-19 Community Study, a.k.a. KC3S, is recruiting King County residents to tell their stories. The study is scheduled to collect data through April 19.
“We want to start collecting this information now — as the COVID-19 pandemic is unfolding — about how families and communities are being impacted, and how they are adapting,” Nicole Errett, a lecturer in the UW Department of Environmental and Occupational Health Sciences, said today in a news release. “Our goal is to understand how individuals are dealing with these new and far-reaching public health response measures and document how communities are rising together to meet unprecedented challenges.”
The results could help researchers and public health officials figure out what works, and what doesn’t, for the current epidemic as well as for future crises.