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So close! SpaceX holds up launch (and landing)

A SpaceX Falcon 9 sits on its launch pad at Cape Canaveral Air Force Station. (Credit: SpaceX)

For the second day in a row, SpaceX scrubbed the launch of the SES-9 telecommunications satellite as well as the Falcon 9 rocket landing attempt that was due to follow.

The abort came with just 1 minute and 41 seconds left before the scheduled 3:47 p.m. PT (6:47 p.m. ET) liftoff from Cape Canaveral Air Force Station in Florida.

“Right now, preliminary [word] is that we were still evaluating the liquid oxygen propellant load, looking at how much time we had left in the count to finish loading the liquid oxygen, and at that time the launch team decided that we would need to hold the countdown,” SpaceX launch commentator John Insprucker said.

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How much should drones and people mix?

Photographer Chase Jarvis with a drone at Gas Works Park in Seattle.

What are the rules for letting a drone get in your face? Right now, there are no rules, but today the Federal Aviation Administration said it’s setting up a committee to come up with a proposal.

The announcement marks the latest step in the FAA’s effort to get a handle on the rapidly rising fleets of small drones, also known as unmanned aircraft systems or UAS.

A year ago, regulators issued draft rules for the operation of commercial drones, like the ones Amazon is working on for package deliveries. Last December, the FAA set up a system for registering recreational drones. Now the FAA and industry representatives will be taking on one of the thornier questions relating to drones: How close can they get to the folks who aren’t operating them?

The newly announced aviation rulemaking committee is due to begin its work in March, and issue its final report to the FAA on April 1.

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‘X-Files’ climax shines spotlight on gene editing

FBI Agent Einstein (Lauren Ambrose) takes a blood sample from Dana Scully (Gillian Anderson) in the season finale of “The X-Files.” (©2016 Fox Broadcasting Co. Credit: Ed Araquel / Fox)

Spoiler Alert! This post doesn’t reveal any major plot twists, but it does explore significant elements of the “X-Files” season finale. Stop reading now if you want it to remain a surprise.

This week’s season finale of “The X-Files” is one of the first prime-time TV shows to reference the revolutionary gene-editing technology known as CRISPR-Cas9, but it won’t be the last.

We won’t delve into the details of how CRISPR figures in the alien conspiracy. Let’s just say that the ability to snip out and insert genetic coding with molecular-scale precision is as good a match for the “X-Files” mythology as Scully is for Mulder.

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Next-gen robot bounces back from bullying

A researcher gives the next-generation Atlas robot a good, hard push. (Credit: Boston Dynamics)

We already know that Boston Dynamics’ robots can run with the big dogs and go dashing through the snow. But can they pick up and put away 10-pound boxes? And can they pick themselves up after being pushed down by bullies?

Yes, they can. Heaven help us, they can.

A newly released video shows the company’s next-generation, two-legged Atlas robot keeping its balance while it walks through the woods on a rough, snowy trail. But things get really eerie when Atlas is put in a warehouse setting, where the robot picks up boxes and slides them onto shelves. It just keeps going, even when a bothersome human takes a hockey stick and slaps the box out of its arms.

When the human goes into full Terminator mode and pushes Atlas over, the machine pushes itself back on its knees, straightens up, and just walks out the door.

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Low-power Wi-Fi system wins high praise

UW researchers have generated Passive Wi-Fi transmissions that use 10,000 times less power than current methods. (Credit: UW via YouTube)

Computer scientists and engineers from the University of Washington say they’ve figured out a way to generate Wi-Fi transmissions using 10,000 times less power than conventional methods.

Not even low-power options such as Bluetooth Low Energy and Zigbee can match the system’s energy efficiency, based on a study to be presented in March at the 13th USENIX Symposium on Networked Systems Design and Implementation.

That level of performance has earned the UW team’s Passive Wi-Fi system a place on MIT Technology Review’s latest top-ten list of breakthrough technologies.

Other technologies on the list include rocket reusability, which is being pioneered by SpaceX and Blue Origin; Tesla’s Autopilot system for autonomous driving; and T-cell-based immunotherapy, which is the focus for researchers at Seattle-based Juno Therapeutics and other companies.

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Astronaut goes ape on the space station

NASA’s Scott Kelly floats through the International Space Station in a gorilla suit. (Credit: NASA)

Leave it to Scott Kelly, NASA’s record-holder for longest continuous time spent in space, to go big and go home: While winding down nearly a year in orbit, he donned an ape suit to terrorize a crewmate on the International Space Station.

At least British astronaut Tim Peake looks terrorized: It’s hard to believe he wasn’t in on the joke.

The prank started with the arrival of the gorilla suit – a gag gift from Kelly’s twin brother, Mark, that was sent up on a resupply flight. Scott Kelly climbed into the suit, and then climbed into a soft-sided storage container. NASA video shows Peake strapping down the container in the station’s Destiny lab as commentator Rob Navias narrates the scene.

The next shot shows the suit-wearing Kelly climbing out of the storage container, floating into the module next door, then chasing Peake in zero-G like a batty ape out of hell. Hilarity ensues.

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World View balloon venture picks chief pilot

NASA astronaut Ron Garan floats in the International Space Station’s Cupola in 2011. (Credit: NASA)

Former astronaut Ron Garan has a new vantage point for sharing what he calls “the Orbital Perspective”: his position as chief pilot for World View Enterprises.

Arizona-based World View wants to give passengers a near-space experience, by sending them up in a pressurized capsule that’s lofted to heights beyond 100,000 feet by a high-altitude balloon. During a leisurely ascent to the atmosphere, passengers would get a space-like view of the Earth below, with the black arc of space above. Then the capsule would be cut loose from the balloon for a parachute-assisted descent and landing.

Cost for the trip? $75,000.

Garan told GeekWire that his job will be to ensure the “safe accomplishment of all aspects” of flight – not only for the passenger flights in the future, but for the remote-controlled flights that are going on now.

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Pegasus will put you in touch with stratosphere

The sun shines above the clouds in a view captured by the Pegasus I balloon experiment. (Credit: MIcrosoft)

How high can the Internet of Things go? Microsoft Research plans to extend the IoT into the stratosphere with its Pegasus II high-altitude balloon experiment, and you’re invited to take a virtual ride.

The flight will build on years’ worth of research into creating networks that can take advantage of Microsoft Azure cloud services, even when part of the network is above the clouds.

Pegasus I sent a balloon from Othello, Wash., to an altitude of 100,000 feet in January 2015. The communication system experienced some glitches, but Microsoft Research’s Project Orleans team eventually recovered the instrument payload and extracted data that helped them prepare for the Pegasus sequel.

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Moon stamps make a full-moon debut

You can get 10 “Global Forever” moon stamps on a sheet that looks like the night sky looming above a row of trees. © 2016 USPS

Now you can moon your mail carrier … not in the scatological sense, but in the philatelic sense.

To celebrate this week’s full moon, the U.S. Postal Service officially released its circular moon stamp on Feb. 22. One stamp sells for $1.20, and provides “Global Forever” postage for sending a 1-ounce letter to most countries around the world. (Technically, they can go to any country that’s reachable by First Class Mail International service.)

You can buy the stamps at post offices or online. And if you’re a hard-core stamp collector, you can get a first-day-of-issue postmark or first-day cover by following the instructions in the postal service’s news release.

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Apollo 10’s moon music mystery revisited

Apollo 10’s Gene Cernan, Tom Stafford and John Young sit for their official portrait. (Credit: NASA)

Where did the weird, outer-spacey music that Apollo 10’s astronauts heard on the far side of the moon come from? The case was solved decades ago. Or was it???

“NASA’s Unexplained Files,” airing on the Science Channel, leaves the mystery hanging in a show that’s due to air this season. The program also makes it sound as if the case was hushed up until 2008, for fear that its disclosure would unsettle the public.

“Shall we tell them about it?” astronaut John Young is heard saying on an audio recording. Crewmate Gene Cernan replies, “I don’t know. We ought to think about it some.”

The show’s narrator says the mystery continues to this day. “I suspect there’s a very, very clear cause of what they heard on Apollo 10, which maybe we haven’t uncovered yet, ” Apollo 15 astronaut Al Worden says in an interview.

But the way NASA and other Apollo astronauts tell it, the mystery was solved soon after Apollo 10’s crew returned from their 1969 round-the-moon trip.

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