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Solar-powered Odysseus drone will fly high in 2019

Odysseus illustration
An artist’s conception shows the Odysseus aircraft in flight. (Aurora Flight Sciences Illustration)

Aurora Flight Sciences, a pioneer in experimental flying vehicles that became a Boeing subsidiary last year, says its solar-powered, high-altitude, long-endurance Odysseus drone will take on its first flight in the spring of 2019.

Odysseus has been years in the making, part of an effort that dates back to the Daedalus Project in the 1980s, before Aurora was founded. MIT’s human-powered Daedalus plane set records in 1988 with a 72-mile flight over the Aegean Sea from Crete to Santorini. One of the leaders of that project was John Langford, who went on to become Aurora’s president and CEO.

“Aurora was founded by the idea that technology and innovation can provide powerful solutions to tough problems that affect all of humankind,” Langford said today in a news release. “Odysseus was an idea born out of Daedalus that is now a real solution to advancing the important research around climate change and other atmospheric chemistry problems.”

Aviation Week reported that Odysseus’ first flight has been scheduled to take place in Puerto Rico on April 23, 2019, the anniversary of Daedalus’ Aegean flight. The first battery-powered test craft is currently undergoing ground testing, and two more solar-powered aircraft are in the works, according to Aviation Week.

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Whew! Chukchi Sea polar bears are in good shape

Polar Bears
An adult female polar bear and a cub stroll on Wrangel Island in the fall of 2017. Hundreds of Chukchi Sea polar bears spend the summer months on the island. (University of Washington Photo / Eric Regehr)

The first census of polar bears living around the Chukchi Sea, straddling Alaska and eastern Siberia, suggests that the population has been stable and healthy over the past decade.

That comes as a welcome contrast to the problems facing polar bears in other Arctic regions as their sea-ice habitat shrinks. The loss of  sea ice is an issue for the Chukchi Sea as well, but the nearly 3,000 bears in that region don’t seem to be feeling the strain as much.

“Despite having about one month less time on preferred sea-ice habitats to hunt compared with 25 years ago, we found that the Chukchi Sea subpopulation was doing well from 2008 to 2016,” Eric Regehr, a biologist at the University of Washington’s Polar Science Center, said today in a news release.

Regehr is the principal author of a study about the census published in the open-access journal Scientific Reports. The census, conducted by researchers from UW and federal agencies, chronicles a decade’s worth of observations — and delves into why the Chukchi Sea bears seem to be faring better than their cousins elsewhere.

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Scientists report super-Earth at Barnard’s Star

Barnard's Star b
An artist’s conception shows what the surface of the reported planet known as Barnard’s Star b might look like. (ESO Illustration / M. Kornmesser)

The astronomical team that found the nearest exoplanet at Proxima Centauri has done it again with the reported detection of a super-Earth orbiting Barnard’s Star, the second-closest star system to our own.

The discoverers acknowledge, however, that they’re not completely sure yet.

“After a very careful analysis, we are 99 percent confident that the planet is there,” Spanish astronomer Ignasi Ribas, lead author of a study about the detection published today by the journal Nature, said in a news release. “However, we’ll continue to observe this fast-moving star to exclude possible, but improbable, natural variations of the stellar brightness which could masquerade as a planet.”

Assuming it exists, Barnard’s Star b would be at least 3.2 times as massive as Earth, tracing a 233-Earth-day orbit. It would be as close to its parent star as Mercury is to our own sun — but because Barnard’s Star is a dim red dwarf, surface conditions would be far too chilly for life as we know it. The surface temperature would be about 275 degrees below zero Fahrenheit (-170 degrees Celsius).

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Virgin Orbit gives its flying launch pad a trial run

Virgin Orbit's Cosmic Girl
Virgin Orbit’s Cosmic Girl carrier airplane taxis down a runway at Victorville Airport in California with a LauncherOne rocket slung under one of its wings. (Virgin Orbit via Twitter)

British billionaire Richard Branson’s Virgin Orbit space venture notched another milestone over the Veterans Day weekend: the first high-speed taxi test of its modified Boeing 747 mothership with a LauncherOne rocket tucked beneath its wing.

In a tweet posted today, Virgin Orbit said the Nov. 11 ground test revved up the plane, nicknamed Cosmic Girl, to a speed beyond 110 knots (125 mph) on a runway in Victorville, Calif. That’s fast enough to simulate an aborted takeoff.

“We also used the day as an opportunity to load real flight software onto LauncherOne for the first time,” the company said.

Branson signaled his approval in a follow-up tweet. “Congratulations to all the team on more exciting progress,” he wrote.

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How Blue Origin’s HQs blazed a trail for Amazon

Jeff Bezos and New Glenn
Jeff Bezos shows off the concept for the New Glenn orbital rocket during a Florida news conference in 2015. (Blue Origin Photo)

The process that Amazon went through to choose New York, Northern Virginia and Nashville as key sites for expansion isn’t the first HQ2 exercise for CEO Jeff Bezos: You could argue that the pattern was set when Bezos’ Blue Origin space venture decided where it’d manufacture and launch its New Glenn rocket.

Blue Origin’s selection process produced far less hype than the yearlong contest that Amazon conducted, and far fewer jobs were at stake. But like the HQ2/3/4 arrangement announced today, the exercise ended up producing multiple winners — as well as disappointed suitors.

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What did pilots know about 737 MAX risk?

Maria Bartiromo and Dennis Muilenburg
Fox Business Network’s Maria Bartiromo asks Boeing CEO Dennis Muilenburg about the Lion Air 737 MAX crash. (Fox Business Network)

What did 737 MAX pilots know, and when did they know it? That’s become a subject of debate in the wake of last month’s fatal Lion Air crash in Indonesia and the potential role played by an automatic control system that Boeing added to new-model 737s.

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Jeff Bezos unveils Amazon’s flying tribute to vets

Valor unveiled
Amazon CEO Jeff Bezos, right, pulls the wraps off Prime Air’s newest 767 freighter, christened Valor in honor of veterans. He is joined by Ardine Williams, left, VP of Worldwide People Operations, and Sarah Rhoads, director of Amazon Air. (Amazon Photo / Dan Krauss)

Amazon CEO Jeff Bezos is big on veterans, and in honor of Veterans Day, he presided over the vet-friendly christening of Valor, Amazon Air’s 40th Boeing 767 freighter.

In a tweet, Bezos said the name pays tribute to “the thousands of Amazonian veterans and military spouses delivering for our customers every day.”

A cheering crowd, including more than 100 Amazon veterans and military spouses, was on hand for today’s ceremony at Long Beach Airport in California. After an appropriate drum roll, Bezos pulled down a banner that was slung over the plane’s nose, revealing the plane’s name.

“Introducing Valor!” Bezos said. Amazon said the name was chosen by Warriors@Amazon, an employee affinity group for veterans.

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Elon Musk and Mars take the TV spotlight

Elon Musk
SpaceX founder Elon Musk watches February’s ascent of the Falcon Heavy rocket in a scene from National Geographic’s “Mars: Inside SpaceX.” (National Geographic / RadicalMedia via YouTube)

Science fiction blends with fact in tonight’s double dose of Mars from National Geographic’s TV channel.

Truth to tell, there’s more fact than fiction: The first show in the double feature is “Mars: Inside SpaceX,” which wraps a tale of past and future space exploration around an inside look at SpaceX’s first Falcon Heavy launch in February.

Then there’s the season premiere of “Mars,” the semi-scripted, semi-documentary series that’s serving up a second set of six episodes.

Both shows are eye-openers.

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Rocket Lab puts satellites in orbit from New Zealand

Rocket Lab Electron launch
Rocket Lab’s Electron rocket rises from its launch pad on New Zealand’s Mahia Peninsula. (Rocket Lab via YouTube)

Rocket Lab executed its second orbital mission today, sending six small satellites and an experimental drag sail into orbit from an oceanside launch pad in New Zealand.

Liftoff of the Electron rocket came at 4:50 p.m. New Zealand time on Nov. 11 (7:50 p.m. PT Nov. 10) at Rocket Lab’s Launch Complex 1 on the Mahia Peninsula.

This satellite launch mission was nicknamed “It’s Business Time,” in reference to its fully commercial nature as well as in tribute to one of the songs by Flight of the Conchords, a New Zealand parody-pop duo.

Rocket Lab’s business time had to be postponed twice over the past seven months, due to concerns about a motor controller for the first-stage Rutherford engines. But this time around, the countdown went off without a hitch, and the three-stage rocket rose into the southern sky to enter a pole-to-pole orbit.

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$43 million effort targets brain-blood connection

Salk researchers
Rusty Gage and Carol Marchetto study brain cells at the Salk Institute. Gage will lead one of three teams taking part in a $43 million research initiative created by the American Heart Institute and the Allen Institute’s Paul G. Allen Frontiers Group. (Salk Institute Photo)

Medical researchers know all about the blood-brain barrier, but Seattle’s Allen Institute and the American Heart Association have selected three teams to participate in a $43 million initiative to study the blood-brain connection.

The American Heart Association-Allen Initiative in Brain Health and Cognitive Impairment initiative, launched in May, is aimed at merging research focusing on the brain and on the blood circulation system to develop a new understanding of age-related brain disorders such as Alzheimer’s disease — and find new ways to counter such disorders.

Today the heart association and the Paul G. Allen Frontiers Group, a division of the Allen Institute, announced which researchers will take part in the effort. The three teams are headquartered at the Salk Institute for Biological Studies and the Stanford University School of Medicine in California; and at University Hospitals Cleveland Medical Center in Ohio.

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