A powerful new telescope in Australia has mapped vast areas of the universe in record time. The Australian Square Kilometre Array Pathfinder was able to chart about 3 million galaxies in just 300 hours – 1 million of which have never been seen before.Galaxies are the building blocks of the universe. From a remote corner in the Western Australian outback, a new telescope, which has turned radio signals in space into images, has examined the entire southern sky in sharper detail than has ever been done before.The Square Kilometre Array Pathfinder, 800 kilometers north of Perth, is run by the Commonwealth Scientific and Industrial Research Organization, or CSIRO, Australia’s national science agency.The telescope is not just one dish or antenna, but 36. They are three stories high and connected by fiber-optic cable, so they combine to work as one supertelescope.The array is helping scientists study black holes, the nature of gravity and the origins of the first stars.By cataloging millions of galaxies, scientists hope to unlock the secrets of how the universe has evolved.“If we can look at the statistics of them, where they are on the sky, and how they interact with each other, then we learn about how galaxies like our own can form and how we came to be here on this Earth,” said Douglas Bock, he CSIRO’s director of astronomy and space science. “And if we look at a galaxy that is far away, perhaps 12 billion light years away, we are looking back in time. So, we are looking at the light from that galaxy that was emitted when it was only a few billion years after the beginning of our universe.”Researchers say the array’s isolated location in Western Australia is ideal for this type of astronomy because it’s quiet and far away from Earth-based radio transmissions. Much work lies ahead. The CSIRO estimates the universe could contain as many as 1 trillion galaxies.
…

Swedish Prime Minister Stefan Lofven announced Thursday that high schools would switch to distance learning beginning Monday through early January to slow the rate of COVID-19 infections in the country. Lofven made the announcement at a Stockholm news conference alongside Swedish Education Minister Anna Ekstrom. He said he hoped the move would have a “breaking effect” on the rate of COVID-19 infections. He added it was not intended to extend the Christmas break for students and he said he was putting his trust in them that they would continue to study from home. The distance learning will be in effect until January 6.People walk past shops under Christmas decorations during the novel coronavirus pandemic in Stockholm, Dec. 3, 2020.After a lull during summer, Sweden has seen COVID-19 cases surge over the past couple of months, with daily records repeatedly set. Deaths and hospitalizations have also risen sharply. Meanwhile, earlier Thursday, Swedish State Epidemiologist Anders Tegnell told reporters he did not think masks were necessary, just two days after the World Health Organization (WHO) expanded its advice to use masks as part of a comprehensive strategy to combat the spread of COVID-19. Tegnell said that in some situations, masks might be necessary, but that the current situation in Sweden did not require it. He said the evidence for wearing a mask was weak and he believed social distancing was much more important. In its expanded guidelines, the WHO said that where the virus was circulating, people — including children and students age 12 or older — should always wear masks in shops, workplaces and schools that lack adequate ventilation, and when receiving visitors at home in poorly ventilated rooms. On Thursday, Sweden reported 6,485 new COVID-19 cases and 35 new virus-related deaths, bringing the nation’s total COVID-19 fatalities to 7,007. 
…

The World Health Organization’s (WHO’s) European director Thursday called Britain’s approval of the Pfizer-BioNTech coronavirus vaccine “phenomenal” but urged Europeans to remain vigilant.
 
Speaking at his headquarters in Copenhagen, Dr. Hans Kluge said the Pfizer-BioNTech vaccine, the vaccines on the verge of approval elsewhere, along with 50 candidate vaccines currently in human trials, provide phenomenal promise. He said the vaccines, combined with other public health measures, can bring the end of an acute phase of the pandemic.
 
While the rest of Europe awaits the vaccine, Kluge called on nations to have plans in place and take immediate stock of their preparedness.  
 
“This is a time for responsible leadership. To those countries seeing a decline in transmission: Use this time wisely,” he said.
 
Considering the initial limited supply of vaccine that will be available, Kluge said WHO recommends health and social care workers, adults over 60 years of age and residents and staff of long-term care facilities should be prioritized.  
 
He said nations should be scaling up public health infrastructure and preparing for the next surge. He warned that the virus still has the potential to do enormous damage “unless we do everything in our power to stop its spread.”
 
Kluge said there have now been 19 million COVID-19 cases and over 427,000 deaths reported in the WHO European Region, with over 4 million more cases in November alone.  
 
 Last week, for the third consecutive week, the number of new cases declined, Kluge said, but Europe still accounts for 40% of new global cases and 50% of new global deaths.  
 
He said the resurgence appears to be moving eastward, with the hardest hit countries now in central and southern Europe.
…

IBM security researchers say they have detected a cyberespionage effort using targeted phishing emails to try to collect vital information on the World Health Organization’s initiative for distributing COVID-19 vaccine to developing countries.
The researchers said they could not be sure who was behind the campaign, which began in September, or if it was successful. But the precision targeting and careful efforts to leave no tracks bore “the potential hallmarks of nation-state tradecraft,” they said in  a blog post Thursday.
The campaign’s targets, in countries including Germany, Italy, South Korea and Taiwan, are likely associated with the development of the “cold chain”  needed to ensure coronavirus vaccines get the nonstop sterile refrigeration they need to be effective for the nearly 3 billion people who live where temperature-controlled storage is insufficient, IBM said.
“Think of it as the bloodline that will be supplying the most vital vaccines globally,” said Claire Zaboeva, an IBM analyst involved in the detection.  
Whoever is behind the operation could be motivated by a desire to learn how the vaccines are best able to be shipped and stored — the entire refrigeration process — in order to copy it, said Nick Rossmann, the IBM team’s global threat intelligence lead. Or they might want to be able to undermine a vaccine’s legitimacy or launch a disruptive or destructive attack, he added.
In the ploy, executives with groups likely associated with the initiative known as  Covax  — created by the Gavi Vaccine Alliance, the World Health Organization and other U.N. agencies — were sent spoofed emails appearing to come from an executive of Haier Biomedical, a Chinese company considered the world’s main cold-chain supplier, the analyst said.
The phishing emails had malicious attachments that prompted recipients to enter credentials that could have been used to harvest sensitive information about partners vital to the vaccine-delivery platform.
Targets included the European Commission’s Directorate-General for Taxation and Customs Union and companies that make solar panels for powering portable vaccine refrigerators. Other targets were petrochemical companies, likely because they produce dry ice, which is used in the cold chain, Zaboeva said.
The EU agency has been busy revising new import and export regimes for coronavirus vaccines and would be a gold mine for hackers seeking stepping stones into partnering organizations, she said.
Covax has struggled to raise enough money to compete for vaccine contracts against the world’s wealthiest nations in the race to secure doses as fast as they can be produced. But the UN and Gavi have invested millions in cold-chain equipment across Africa and Asia. The investment, in the works well before the pandemic, was accelerated to prepare for an eventual global rollout of coronavirus vaccines.
Whoever was behind the phishing operation likely sought “advanced insight into the purchase and movement of a vaccine that can impact life and the global economy,” the blog post said. Coronavirus vaccines will be one of the world’s most sought-after products as they are distributed, so theft may also be a danger.
Last month,  Microsoft said  it had detected mostly unsuccessful attempts by state-backed Russian and North Korean hackers to steal data from leading pharmaceutical companies and vaccine researchers. It gave no information on how many succeeded or how serious those breaches were. Chinese state-backed hackers have also targeted vaccine makers, the U.S. government said in announcing criminal charges in July.
Microsoft said most of the targets — located in Canada, France, India, South Korea and the United States — were researching vaccines and COVID-19 treatments. It did not name the targets.
On Wednesday, Britain became the first to country  to authorize a rigorously tested COVID-19 vaccine, the one developed by American drugmaker Pfizer and Germany’s BioNTech.  
Other countries aren’t far behind: Regulators not only in the U.S. but in the European Union and Canada also are vetting the Pfizer vaccine along with a shot made by Moderna Inc. British and Canadian regulators are also considering a vaccine made by AstraZeneca and Oxford University.
 
The logistical challenges of distributing vaccines globally are huge. The Pfizer-BioNTech one must be stored and shipped at ultra-cold temperatures of around minus 70 degrees Celsius (minus 94 degrees Fahrenheit).
…

More than 100 world leaders and high-ranking government officials will convene a two-day virtual special session of the United Nations General Assembly Thursday to discuss the global response to the COVID-19 pandemic and to craft a recovery strategy.Brendan Varma, a spokesman for General Assembly President Volkan Bozkir, said the special session is aimed at creating a multilateral strategy among the countries, U.N. actors, the private sector and vaccine developers to craft a recovery strategy.UN Appeals for Record $35 Billion as COVID-19 Wreaks HavocWorld body says it must provide a humanitarian lifeline to 165 million of the world’s most vulnerable needy people in 56 countries in crisisThe Associated Press says Friday’s second and final day will include three virtual panels:  the global body’s response to the pandemic, the current progress toward a coronavirus vaccine, and the global economic recovery from the pandemic.   The U.N. Development Program has released a study predicting the COVID-19 pandemic could push another 207 million people into extreme poverty, bringing the total number to more than 1 billion by 2030.  A separate report released Thursday by the U.N. Conference on Trade and Development said nearly 50 so-called least developed countries will experience their worst economic performance in three decades, pushing as many as 32 million people into extreme poverty this year alone.Thursday’s meeting comes as the world nears 1.5 million deaths worldwide from COVID-19, out of a total of 64.5 million total cases.  Among the latest to succumb from the disease is former French President Valery Giscard d’Estaing, who died Wednesday at his home in central France at the age of 94.  Giscard was first diagnosed with the novel coronavirus in September with respiratory complications.In the United States, which leads the world with more than 13.9 million total COVID-19 cases and more than 273, 836 deaths, the situation is worsening with each passing day.  The nation topped 100,000 hospitalizations for the virus for the first time since the pandemic began Wednesday, according to the COVID Tracking Project, and nearly 200,000 new cases.Dr. Robert Redfield, the director of the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, warned Wednesday of a bleak winter ahead as the country continues to see nationwide surges of COVID-19 cases. “The reality is that December, January and February are going to be rough times,” Redfield said in a livestream presentation hosted by the U.S. Chamber of Commerce Foundation. “I actually believe they’re going to be the most difficult time in the public health history of this nation.”  Mass COVID-19 Immunization Plans Raise Huge ChallengesEuropean governments scramble to come up with COVID-19 vaccine distribution plans and need to answer key logistical and epidemiological questions as they try to counter anti-vaccine agitation   Redfield said the current surge in cases of COVID-19, the disease caused by the coronavirus, is worse than previous ones, noting the geographic scope and steeper trajectory of infection rates and deaths, as the U.S. is recording roughly 2,000 deaths from the virus daily.  Redfield also warned of the strain on hospitals across the country, which are running low on beds and have overworked staff.  Former U.S. President Barack Obama said he will take a COVID-19 vaccine when the drug has been considered safe and effective. In an interview scheduled to be aired Thursday on satellite radio provider SiriusXM, Obama said he is even considering taking the vaccine on television as part of a public campaign to convince Americans who may be skeptical about being inoculated, especially among Black Americans.CNN is also reporting that Obama’s predecessors, Bill Clinton and George W. Bush, are also considering taking an eventual approved vaccine on television. 
…

VOA contributor Greta Van Susteren interviewed the National Institute of Health Director Frances Collins. Among the issues discussed are the COVID-19 vaccine and its development.Here is a transcript of that interview:Greta Van Susteren: Nice to talk to you, sir.Francis Collins: Nice to talk to you, Greta.Van Susteren: Well, we Americans know what NIH is and we’re very proud of it but what is NIH?Collins: The National Institutes of Health, it’s the largest supporter of biomedical research in the world. Basically, everything that the U.S. is doing in terms of research and academic institutions Institute’s and our own intramural program is funded by the taxpayers through this budget, and I’m the director that’s supposed to make sure it gets spent wisely everything from basic science to clinical trials. Diabetes, rare diseases, cancer, and of course right now, COVID-19, and that’s what we are all about $42 billion a year.Van Susteren: For you the research you do a lot, a lot of research, all research. What does the FDA do the Food & Drug Administration we hear so much about in terms of the vaccine?Collins: So, FDA is a sister agency we’re both in the Department of Health and Human Services. FDA’s job is to be the regulator and it’s to look at some proposed new approach maybe it’s a diagnostic test. Maybe it’s a therapeutic, maybe it’s a vaccine and to get all the data together and look at it and decide if it’s going to be safe and effective, so we generally do the research trying to stimulate this kind of progress to happen and FDA decides whether it’s safe for the public to start to use it in general way.Van Susteren: All right, so we’re waiting breathlessly for these vaccines and some are farther along like Moderna and Pfizer than others, but once it gets the green light from the FDA, who decides who will get it first?Collins: Well, this is a big day for that, basically the CDC has an Advisory Committee on Immunization Practices, ACIP, and it’s their job to look at a circumstance where you have a vaccine that FDA has decided is safe and effective at least for emergency use, but there aren’t enough doses for everybody to receive them on day one. So, who gets first in line. That’s a big decision, it will include health care providers because we want them to be safe in their frontline experience and it will include people at high risk, particularly the elderly people with chronic illnesses. And that will get played out over the course of the coming months as more and more doses become available, but of course trying to protect the most vulnerable people first.Van Susteren: I’m old enough to know to remember polio vaccine when it first came out, am is the distance was, how was that distribution decision made? Do you know?Collins: I don’t know the total details — initially there was a big trial to see whether it worked just as we have been doing with COVID-19 with these vaccine trials involving tens of thousands of people. Once it was decided that it was working, then there was an issue about how many doses can be made available and it didn’t happen overnight. In fact, it took quite a long time, a year or two. In this instance, Operation Warp Speed has invested in doing the manufacturing of vaccine doses, even before we know whether it’s one of these six or more than one of these six vaccines is going to work with the expectation that if one of them didn’t, you’d have to throw those doses away happily now we have two that look as if they’re very likely to win FDA approval in the next couple of weeks. And there are others just a little bit behind that may get approved in January, ideally, we may even have multiple different vaccines, each of which have 10s of millions of doses, and we could really start to reach out and get immunization to happen to lots of us, not just the most vulnerable people.Van Susteren: Well, the vaccines, as I understand, talking to experts, is coming, very quickly. What has been the role of the U.S. government to sort of fast track this have gotten rid of some of the red tape or is it provided more funds or what’s the role of the U.S. government?Collins: It is astounding what’s been done here, Greta, because traditionally it takes eight to 10 years to develop a vaccine against a new pathogen, this has been done in less than a year. The U.S. government pulled all of the resources together to make sure that coordination was happening. operation warp speed made it possible also to get rid of some of those long delays that oftentimes vex the process where you go to phase one and then you have to wait many months before you go to phase two, all of those things were synchronized in an unprecedented way, but not by doing any compromising at all on safety these will probably be amongst the most highly tested vaccines ever in terms of their safety and efficacy and the good news is, the first two that are going to get looked at by FDA. In the coming weeks, look extremely good with efficacy over 90% which is better than most of us had dared to hope and safety record that also looks extremely good so we are in a good place to begin to see how we might get COVID-19 behind us but it’s going to take a lot of months to get there for everybody.Van Susteren: I don’t want to hope or expect as we another virus coming down the road, but I assume that it’s inevitable so –has the U.S. learned something new as government learn something like stripped away some of the red tape so that we can look forward in future times and that will take a shorter time to get a vaccine than eight or nine years?Collins: Absolutely. We’ve learned a lot, and we’ve documented all along the way ways that things can be done more efficiently and this. Our accomplishment of having vaccines that are ready to go into individuals in less than a year is certainly going to be the norm in the future and maybe we could even do it a little faster, although it would be pretty hard to go faster than this you just still have to run the trials and wait and see whether the vaccine works and you can only speed that up so much, but I do hope and I’m part of this decision and discussion that’s going on right now that we don’t slip back into complacency. Once we get past COVID-19 because there’s another pandemic out there. I don’t know whether it’s five years from now or 10 years from now or next year, and it probably could be another coronavirus or it might be an influenza virus. And this is just the nature of our world and anybody who thinks over over that look at history, we’re not likely to be.Van Susteren: All right, Moderna, and Pfizer as I understand it, both have something called the sort of a science behind is something called messenger RNA, are they very different vaccines are very similar?Collins: They’re quite similar basically messenger RNA is the part of a nucleic acid that codes for protein. And this is a very clever way to make a vaccine where you basically synthesize that messenger RNA that has the right information in it, inject that into Muscle, Muscle goes, Oh I know what to do with messenger RNA I’ll make a protein. And so it does, and it makes the spike protein, which is the stuff that decorates the coronavirus and those spike proteins, the immune system says oh no you don’t and makes an antibody to them. And it’s very quick. That’s why Pfizer and Moderna are the first two out of the gate because the messenger RNA approach can be started almost immediately upon the time the viruses isolated. So it is a new approach, it looks extremely promising, it is going to be transformational I think for vaccines for all kinds of things because it looks like it’s really worked, and this is the first time it’s been taken all the way through to these Phase Three trials and FDA approval.Van Susteren: One of the issues is gonna be distribution and the Pfizer requires that the vaccine be kept so called which refrigeration incredible refrigeration. What, why is it if they’re so similar the Moderna and the Pfizer one needs to be kept so much colder which is going to inhibit some of its distribution?Collins: Yeah, it’s a great question and all our people puzzled if it’s so similar. Moderna can just be kept in a regular freezer and can even be in a refrigerator for a week and it’ll be fine there too. But the Pfizer one, it’s wrapped in a different kind of envelope, it’s not just the messenger RNA by itself it’s sort of put into an envelope of lipids and the Pfizer liquid envelope is very tense sensitive to warming up, which is why it has to be kept at this minus-94-degrees freezer, which isn’t available a lot of places. Moderna’s envelope is less concerned about temperature issues and so it can be stable in a more forgiving way. Coming along I should say the next set of viruses next set of vaccines bay by Johnson and Johnson, and by AstraZeneca. Those are going to be also much more forgiving as far as the temperature requirements. The so-called cold chain will not be nearly as demanding for those which will be great, especially for places that don’t have a lot of freezer capacity like some of the low- and middle-income countries that are also going to need these vaccines.Van Susteren: Do Astra Zeneca and the Johnson & Johnson have the same messenger RNA approach to a vaccine are they different vaccines?Collins: They’re using a different approach one that has been tried and true and other situations takes a little longer it basically captures the energy of a different virus and adeno virus just as a carrier a delivery truck and uses that also to deliver the coating for this spike protein so it’s making the same kind of response happen in the immune system, but it’s getting it in in a different way. And this is something that’s been done successfully for Ebola so we know this vector system is likely to be safe and effective. The Johnson and Johnson one also is a single dose which will be very much easier to manage whereas Pfizer and Moderna requires two doses one on day one and other one three or four weeks later, it’s a little more complicated to set that up, we’d love it if we had at least one of these that was just one dose and you’re done.Van Susteren: You know I read early on, I’ve been following this virus like everybody else is that there was a possibility or some discussion about six months ago about a bridge vaccine which would be polio or TB, that if you got that vaccine the live vaccine that it would rev up your immune system, essentially, and fight out fight off COVID. Was there ever any sort of thought or did NIH look at that was that just a bridge it’s like health care workers in the short run?Collins: We did look at that, we have a group called active ACTA IV accelerating coronavirus therapeutic interventions and vaccines and they surveyed the entire landscape of opportunities for therapeutics and vaccines and they looked at this, they thought if we had nothing else, there might be a little enhancement of your immune response sort of in a general way by one of these other vaccines, but compared to the specific vaccine that we now see in front of us, the effect would probably not be nearly as powerful so we decided to focus on what really was needed something that would be 95% effective as opposed to a general benefit that might give you a few percentages of improvement but wasn’t really going to change the course of this pandemic in such a big way as what we need right now.Van Susteren: When I get, when I’ve got a tetanus vaccine I’ve since then. Over the years had to get boosters. Do you anticipate that with or can’t you tell now whether if you get this vaccine that at some period, sometime in the future you need a booster.Collins: I wish we knew more about that, because this is a new virus, we really don’t know how durable, your immunity is going to be, we don’t know for people who got the COVID-19 infection naturally, could they get it again if we knew more about that we have some sense about whether the vaccine would last for years and years. It’s going to take some time to tell. it might be that the virus also mutates over time and ultimately new version appears that the vaccine and your natural immunity don’t quite work anymore. So we might have to have not just a booster but a slightly redesigned the vaccine to cover whatever this coronavirus is trying to do to us. Those are all uncertainties in the best of all worlds. This will last a very long time, I’m guessing boosters are probably going to be needed. I just hope they aren’t too frequent tetanus we could live with a 10-year timeline if that’s what it takes, but we just don’t know.Van Susteren: I spoke to Dr. Fauci who works at NIH, several times and very early on and we were talking about vaccines and he said he would be very hopeful with a with a protection of 50, and that he was thrilled with 70. Now we’re reading you know 94,95 ish, is that you know the flu isn’t that good the flu vaccine doesn’t do that well- with this with this new approach messenger RNA can we expect that we’ll relook at like flu vaccines or is it just a completely different category, and that we can sort of up the protection there?Collins: I think it’s not so much the technology for the vaccine. it’s the nature of the actual virus. influenza has this nasty ability to change its coat, every year in a very substantial way. And no matter how clever your vaccine is if the virus is like completely changed its appearance the vaccine won’t give you immunity anymore so I don’t think we’ll be able, through this approach to solve the influence issue there may be other ways to do that by a Universal influenza vaccine. We just seem to be fortunate though that coronavirus is particularly susceptible to the vaccine. I didn’t dare to hope that we’d end up with efficacy over 70%, and to see these first two coming through at 95% is incredibly exciting and provides a great deal of hope that we will be able to get through the next few months and be able to put this in the rearview mirror, but we’ve got a long way to go.Van Susteren: With the influence of changing its code so to speak so often, in looking at the coronavirus with the virus that you saw last February, March is at the same virus you were looking at now or is it likewise trying to change its code.Collins: It’s pretty much the same. It’s an RNA virus, it does change its spelling when it gets copied and there’s lots of bad virus out there that has the chance to change its spelling and we’ve seen two or three instances where there’s a new version that maybe has a little bit of an advantage maybe it’s a bit more infectious and so that new version starts to rise up in its frequency so far nothing that we’re alarmed about in terms of affecting the likelihood that the vaccine is going to work, but we have to watch that closely and again over the course of many years it’s possible, a new a new version might arise that the vaccine doesn’t work very well for and then we’d have to redesign the vaccine.Van Susteren: You know I’m old enough to remember landed on the moon that was such a huge game changer, you know, for the United States, I likewise see this I mean moving so quickly in a vaccine something that is, you know, that is terrorizing the world I mean it really is quite extraordinary isn’t it.Collins: It is, Greta, and you know 2020 has been just a terrible year for so many people with the suffering and death of this terrible pandemic with economic distress it’s caused. And I must say, for science, it has been a challenge like one we’ve really not quite had to deal with before for life science, and it is really wonderful to see the way science has come forward. All of the partners in industry and academia and government, working together in an unprecedented way not worrying too much about who’s going to get the credit to make these things happen at a scale and a timetable that was unimaginable before and I hope that’s being noticed and I hope a lot of young people watching that might have the same reaction they did when we went to the moon saying, That looks like fun. I want to be part of that too because we have a lot more science to do in the future.Van Susteren: Well I guess we could use more help from the people who are watching the science I think it stopped congregating in huge, you know, huge herds of people, because you know this is all hands on deck, sort of, so to speak.Collins: Yeah. And that is something to really keep in mind even though we are seeing this promise of a vaccine that’s going to get us through this, it will be many months before we have enough people in the community immunized that we could stop worrying about transmission. So for the coming months. People need to double down on those careful measures — wearing your mask watching your distance washing your hands those three W’s more important than ever, and nobody should imagine that this is about somebody else and not about them even a young person who imagines that they’re pretty immortal and even if they get this virus, they’re going to be fine and they could be the next super spreader. and if you care about the people around you, your neighbors your parents, your grandparents, then it’s got to be up to you to all of us to take that responsibility seriously. We have holidays coming where the risks are going to go up, if people relax their guard. I’m not going to have Christmas with my family this year first time didn’t have Thanksgiving with my family this year either first time, but it’s the way that we all have to wrap our arms around responsibility for 2020, as a year of, we got to get through this. And we got to get through it together.Van Susteren: And I suspect that NIH is also working on treatments, new therapies to to fight this to the for the person who does get COVID.Collins: We are indeed and that’s an intense part of how I’m spending my time and we’ve made some real progress there. We have the drug remdesivir, which is an antiviral that helps people who are quite sick in the hospital. We have dexamethasone a steroid that also helps people who are the sickest of the sick in the ICU. And we have monoclonal antibodies developed from people who’ve survived COVID-19 basically purifying their antibodies that help them recover and giving them to other people, showing real promises, especially if you give those early to high risk individuals, and we have other trials that are going on right now that may very well yield up other immunosuppressives or antivirals that can add to this compared to where we were back in February and March where we didn’t have much of anything we’ve now got quite a menu of therapeutics and survival has certainly improved for people who get very sick with this but it’s still a very serious disease we’ve lost 275,000 people. And this is a scary few months that we’re looking at with wintertime, and with the vaccine not yet as widely available as it will be by the summer.Van Susteren: you talked about Remdesivir the other antiviral is to reduce the viral load, you get those when you get to the hospital, and you’re very sick. When I get the flu. I call the doctor calls in a prescription for something called Tamiflu and I get a pill and could just go to the drugstore sir I headed off at the past before I get so sick to the hospital is are there efforts being made to make these antivirals, not when you get real sick and end up in hospital but to back it up when you first get sick?Collins: Yes, there are efforts of that sort, so far, none of those antivirals have yet been approved for outpatients. remdesivir is an intravenous drug which makes it not so convenient for people who are not in the hospital, what is approved for outpatients what I mentioned a minute ago. these monoclonal antibodies from Lilly and from regeneron, which while they’re in somewhat limited supply can absolutely greatly help people who are at high risk, just got diagnosed get the monoclonal in the first three days after symptoms, and you can greatly reduce the likelihood that person ends up in the hospital.Van Susteren: Is dexamethasone so the last question I have is dexamethasone, which is the steroid, which is what you get in the hospital and when when you’ve really been when you’ve got a huge problem -would prednisone which is a steroid that is prescribed by pill. Would that be at all helpful in in minimizing the risk of how sick you get or not?Collins: It’s all about timing, Greta, and these steroids are basically keeping your immune system from overreacting and causing more damage than help and that is often what seems to happen with the sickest people in the ICU, who’ve developed really bad lung disease and other systemic problems. At that point the virus is almost gone but the immune system is going crazy. And by dialing it back sort of turning down the thermostat for your immune system you can help people survive. On the other hand, you need your immune system early in the course of a viral infection you want it to be out there cracking down that virus and taking care of it so it’s probably a bad idea to give prednisone or dexamethasone to somebody who’s early in the course save that for the people who are laid in the course and are still really sick, and you may help them.Van Susteren: Because under the theory that your immune system you don’t want to tell your immune system not to work. What you want to do is what, when you get to the point where the virus is gone is you don’t want your immune system to overwork and give you another problem and that’s when the steroid comes in to tell your immune system stop. Right?Collins: Exactly, exactly. And we’re looking at some other immune suppressive that might be even more specific than dexamethasone, which is a pretty broad acting anti-inflammatory drug. Maybe there’s a more subtle directed way to do this that would even be better and that’s under study right now, several trials. Also, one more thing here in that space. We know that those people who are really sick also developed a problem with too many blood clots in the lungs, clots in small vessels. And so using an anticoagulant to actually thin the blood may also help people survive and that’s another big study that’s underway right now it looks pretty promising.Van Susteren: Which is so interesting because older people tend to be on those types of drugs for heart, you know, medication so that they some of them are already on that.Collins: That’s right, they may be somewhat protected ironically against the worst aspects of COVID-19 if they’re already in the blood thinner, but a lot of people aren’t, and those folks may need one if they’re in that very serious circumstance where blood clotting is starting to be part of the problem.Van Susteren: Well, as Dr. Birx told me is you can’t get the virus if you don’t go near it. So, you know, keep your hands clean masks and stay out of groups, you know, that’s, you know, stay away from people.Collins: Absolutely, especially indoors where we know the spread is so easy and unfortunately that means a lot of family gatherings which tend to be indoors with people eating and not wearing masks and I’m fearful that with this holiday season upon us. People will be too careless about that. We are not out of the woods here, we have a very challenging few months ahead, and the best things we can do while cheering for the science and waiting for our turn to get the vaccine is to practice those three W’s absolutely wear your mask, watch your distance wash your hands.Van Susteren: What about surfaces boxes that come to the house, you know people who come into your house and we may not be near, but they touch the surface.Collins: You know, we worried more about that early on, I am there is some possibility of viral spread there, but it does not seem to be a major effect so at my house we stopped wiping off all the boxes that came to the front door. After seeing some of the data that’s probably a very low risk, compared to all of the other things which is basically these droplets, that are being expressed by all of us when we speak. Certainly, when we sing. All of those things where that’s the most likely place to catch this illness.Van Susteren: Doctor thank you very much and thanks to NIH and you know for, you know, I think the world’s very grateful for all the work that all of you do.Collins: Well, it’s a privilege to be able to be the guy trying to manage this effort with such an amazing team of dedicated scientists and we are going to get through this and science is going to be a big reason why.Van Susteren: Thank you, sir.
…

The U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) warned Wednesday of a bleak winter ahead as the country continues to see nationwide surges of COVID-19 cases.”The reality is that December, January and February are going to be rough times,” CDC Director Robert Redfield said in a livestream presentation hosted by the U.S. Chamber of Commerce Foundation. “I actually believe they’re going to be the most difficult time in the public health history of this nation.”Redfield said the current surge in cases of COVID-19, the disease caused by the coronavirus, is worse than previous ones, noting the geographic scope and steeper trajectory of infection rates and deaths, as the U.S. is recording roughly 2,000 deaths from the virus daily.Redfield also warned of the strain on hospitals across the country, which are running low on beds and overworked staff.The U.S. topped 100,000 hospitalizations for the virus for the first time since the pandemic began Wednesday, according to the COVID Tracking project.Our daily update is published. States reported 1.4 million tests, 196k cases, and 2,733 deaths. There are 100,226 people currently hospitalized with COVID-19 in the US —the first time hospitalizations have exceeded 100k. pic.twitter.com/8QSKujBGao— The COVID Tracking Project (@COVID19Tracking) December 3, 2020While many Americans face “fatigue” following social-distancing and mask-wearing guidelines, Redfield urged people to adhere to these practices in the coming months.Millions of Americans traveled for the Thanksgiving holiday last week, despite advice from health experts against flying and gathering in large groups indoors.Also on Wednesday, the CDC said Americans should quarantine for 10 days after potential exposure to the virus, shortening the previous guideline of a 14-day quarantine.The United States has recorded more than 273,000 deaths and more than 13.9 million confirmed cases of the coronavirus this year, according to the Johns Hopkins University Coronavirus Resource Center.
…

A mysterious object temporarily orbiting Earth is a 54-year-old rocket, not an asteroid after all, astronomers confirmed Wednesday.Observations by a telescope in Hawaii clinched its identity, according to NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, California.The object was classified as an asteroid after its discovery in September. But NASA’s top asteroid expert, Paul Chodas, quickly suspected it was the Centaur upper rocket stage from Surveyor 2, a failed 1966 moon-landing mission. Size estimates had put it in the range of the old Centaur, which was about 10 meters long and 3 meters in diameter.Chodas was proved right after a team led by the University of Arizona’s Vishnu Reddy used an infrared telescope in Hawaii to observe not only the mystery object, but — just on Tuesday — a Centaur from 1971 still orbiting Earth. The data from the images matched.”Today’s news was super gratifying!” Chodas said via email. “It was teamwork that wrapped up this puzzle.”The object formally known as 2020 SO entered a wide, lopsided orbit around Earth last month and, on Tuesday, made its closest approach at just over 50,476 kilometers. It will depart the neighborhood in March, shooting back into its own orbit around the sun. Its next return: 2036.
…

U.S. hospitals slammed with COVID-19 patients are trying to lure nurses and doctors out of retirement, recruiting students and new graduates who have yet to earn their licenses and offering eye-popping salaries in a desperate bid to ease staffing shortages.With the virus surging from coast to coast, the number of patients in the hospital with the virus has more than doubled over the past month to a record high of nearly 100,000, pushing medical centers and health care workers to the breaking point. Nurses are increasingly burned out and getting sick on the job, and the stress on the nation’s medical system prompted a dire warning from the head of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.”The reality is December and January and February are going to be rough times. I actually believe they are going to be the most difficult time in the public health history of this nation,” Dr. Robert Redfield said.Reaching out to retireesGovernors in hard-hit states such as Wisconsin and Nebraska are making it easier for retired nurses to come back, including by waiving licensing requirements and fees, though it can be a tough sell for older nurses, who would be in more danger than many of their colleagues if they contracted the virus.Some are taking jobs that don’t involve working directly with patients to free up front-line nurses.Iowa is allowing temporary emergency licenses for new nurses who have met the state’s educational requirements but haven’t yet taken the state licensing exam. Some Minnesota hospitals are offering winter internships to nursing students to boost their staffs. The internships are typically offered in the summer but were canceled this year because of COVID-19.Methodist Hospital in Minneapolis will place 25 interns for one to two months to work with COVID-19 patients, though certain tasks will remain off-limits, such as inserting IVs or urinary catheters, said Tina Kvalheim, a nurse who runs the program.”They’ll be fully supported in their roles so that our patients receive the best possible, safe care,” Kvalheim said.Landon Brown, 21, of Des Moines, Iowa, a senior nursing student at Minnesota State University, Mankato, recently accepted an internship at the Mayo Clinic Health System in Mankato. He was assigned to the pediatric unit’s medical-surgical area but said he might come across patients with the coronavirus.Brown’s resolve to help patients as a nurse was reaffirmed after his 90-year-old grandfather contracted the virus and died over the weekend.”The staff that he had were great, and they really took a lot of pressure off of my folks and my family,” he said. “I think that if I can be that for another family, that would be great.”Getting new grads workingThe University of Iowa’s College of Nursing is also trying to get graduates into the workforce quickly. It worked to fast-track students’ transcripts to the Iowa Board of Nursing so they could get licensed sooner upon graduating, said Anita Nicholson, associate dean for undergraduate programs.Nicholson said the college also scheduled senior internships earlier than normal and created a program that allows students to gain hospital experience under a nurse’s supervision. Those students aren’t caring for coronavirus patients, but their work frees up nurses to do so, Nicholson said.”The sooner we can get our graduates out and into the workforce, the better,” she said.Wausau, Wisconsin-based Aspirus Health Care is offering signing bonuses of up to $15,000 for nurses with a year of experience.Hospitals also are turning to nurses who travel from state to state. But that’s expensive, because hospitals around the country are competing for them, driving salaries as high as $6,200 per week, according to postings for travel nursing jobs.April Hansen, executive vice president at San Diego-based Aya Healthcare, said there are now 31,000 openings for travel nurses, more than twice the number being sought when the pandemic surged in the spring.”It is crazy,” Hansen said. “It doesn’t matter if you are rural or urban, if you are an Indian health facility or an academic medical center or anything in between. … All facilities are experiencing increased demand right now.”Nurses who work in intensive care and on medical-surgical floors are the most in demand. Employers also are willing to pay extra for nurses who can show up on short notice and work 48 to 60 hours per week instead of the standard 36.Laura Cutolo, a 32-year-old emergency room and ICU nurse from Gilbert, Arizona, began travel nursing when the pandemic began, landing in New York during the deadliest stretch of the U.S. outbreak last spring. She is now working in Green Bay, Wisconsin, and soon will return to New York.She said she hopes her work will be an example to her children, now 2 and 5, when the crisis passes into history and they read about it someday.”If they ask me, ‘Where were you?’ I can be proud of where I was and what I did,” Cutolo said.’Spreading like wildfire’Doctors are in demand, too.”I don’t even practice anymore, and I’ve gotten lots of emails asking me to travel across the country to work in ERs,” said Dr. Georges Benjamin, executive director of the American Public Health Association.The outbreak in the U.S. is blamed for more than 273,000 deaths and 13.9 million confirmed infections. New cases are running at over 160,000 a day on average, and deaths are up to more than 1,500 a day, a level seen back in May, during the crisis in the New York City area. Several states reported huge numbers of new cases Wednesday, including a combined 40,000 in California, Illinois and Florida alone.States are seeing record-breaking surges in deaths, including Illinois, Indiana and Kentucky in the middle of the country. Kentucky Gov. Andy Beshear said the virus is “spreading like wildfire.”A COVID-19 vaccine is expected to become available in a few weeks, and health care workers are likely to be given priority for the first shots. That could make it easier for hospitals to recruit help.To make room for the sickest, hard-hit institutions are sending home some COVID-19 patients who otherwise would have been kept in the hospital. They are also canceling elective surgeries or sending adult non-COVID-19 patients to pediatric hospitals.A hospital system in Idaho is sending some COVID-19 patients home with iPads, supplemental oxygen, blood pressure cuffs and oxygen monitors so they can finish recovering in their own beds. The computer tablets enable nurses to check in with them, and the oxygen monitors automatically send back vital information.Across the U.S., hospitals are converting cafeterias, waiting rooms, even a parking garage to patient treatment areas. Some states are opening field hospitals.But that does nothing to ease the staffing shortage, especially in rural areas where officials say many people aren’t taking basic precautions against the virus.Dr. Eli Perencevich, an epidemiology and internal medicine professor at the University of Iowa, said health care workers are paying the price for other people’s refusal to wear masks.”It’s sending everyone to war, really,” he said. “We’ve decided as a society that we’re going to take all the people in our health care system and pummel them because we have some insane idea about what freedom really is.”
…

The Transportation Department issued a final rule Wednesday covering animals on airlines. It decided that only dogs can fly as service animals, and companions that passengers use for emotional support don’t count. The rule aims to settle years of tension between airlines and passengers who bring their pets on board for free by saying they need them for emotional help. Under a long-standing department policy, all the passengers needed was a note from a health professional. Airlines argued that passengers abused the situation to bring a menagerie of animals on board, including cats, turtles, pot-bellied pigs and, in one case, a peacock. FILE – Oscar the cat, who is not a service animal, sits in his carry-on travel bag after arriving at Phoenix Sky Harbor International Airport in Phoenix, Sept. 20, 2017.The agency said Wednesday that it was rewriting the rules partly because passengers carrying unusual animals on board “eroded the public trust in legitimate service animals.” It also cited the increasing frequency of people “fraudulently representing their pets as service animals,” and a rise in misbehavior by emotional-support animals, ranging from urinating on the carpet to biting other passengers. The Transportation Department proposed the new rule in January and received more than 15,000 comments. While 3,000 commenters favored dropping protections for support animals, 6,000 spoke in favor of them, including people suffering from depression, anxiety and post-traumatic stress disorder, the department said. Pet feesThe Paralyzed Veterans of America said the mere presence of a dog, cat or rabbit — even if untrained — can help some travelers, and pet fees of up to $175 one-way are a hardship on low-income people. The new rule will force passengers with support animals to check them into the cargo hold — and pay a pet fee — or leave them at home. The agency estimated that airlines will gain up to $59.6 million a year in pet fees. The number of animals on planes took off several years ago, and a cottage industry grew around providing papers, doctor’s notes and even dog vests for support animals. Delta Air Lines says it carried about 250,000 animals including service dogs in 2017 and about 600,000 last year. Service dogsUnder the final rule, which takes effect in 30 days, a service animal is a dog trained to help a person with a physical or psychiatric disability. Advocates for veterans and others had pushed for inclusion of psychiatric service dogs. Airlines will be able to require owners to vouch for the dog’s health, behavior and training. Airlines can require people with a service dog to turn in paperwork up to 48 hours before a flight, but they can’t bar those travelers from checking in online like other passengers. FILE – Stranded passenger Danny Nguyen and his dog Lucky spend the night on the floor of LaGuardia Airport, in New York, July 22, 2013.Airlines can require that service dogs be leashed at all times, and they can bar dogs that show aggressive behavior. There have been incidents of support animals biting passengers and growling or barking at guide dogs for the blind. Airlines for America, a trade group for the biggest U.S. carriers, said the new rule will protect passengers and airline employees while helping people travel with trained service dogs. The Transportation Department stood by an earlier decision to prohibit airlines from banning entire dog breeds as service animals. That is a setback for Delta Air Lines, which banned “pit bull type dogs” in 2018, a move that was criticized by disability advocates. Delta, however, is giving no indication of backing down. In a statement, a Delta spokeswoman said the airline is reviewing the new rule, but “at this time, there are no changes to Delta’s current service and support animal policies.” 
…

China’s space program celebrated a major accomplishment this week when its Chang’e 5 lunar probe mission safely landed on the moon. The landing Tuesday brought Beijing a step closer to becoming the third country in the world to retrieve geological samples from the moon, but more important, analysts say, is that China is accruing experience for more ambitious plans.The goal of this mission is to extract 2 kilograms of sample from the moon’s northern Mons Rümker region and bring it back to the Earth. If the mission succeeds, China will join the U.S. and the former Soviet Union as the only countries to have collected lunar samples.Analysts say the complexity of Chang’e 5’s unmanned exploration mission shows the great progress of China’s space capabilities, and, if successful, will likely help Beijing realize future plans for manned moon landings and the construction of bases.Namrata Goswami, an Indian defense expert and now a space policy and geopolitical scholar living in the U.S., told VOA that Chang’e 5 would allow China to advance “their understanding of rendezvous and docking, especially when they are planning on human landing.”While reaching the moon remains a significant accomplishment for any space program, Beijing’s space program is still in its early stages and is still building experience.“They’re catching up to where the United States was in the 1960s,” said Todd Harrison, director of defense budget analysis and space security at the Center for Strategic and International Studies, a Washington think tank. “The United States has already sent not just probes to the moon but humans and returned to the Earth and brought back samples of lunar rocks. So China is catching up in that respect, but they’re still not where the United States is in terms of space technology. But it is nevertheless a competition for science.”Between 1969 and 1972, the U.S. brought back a total of 382 kilograms of lunar soil through seven Apollo manned spacecraft missions, six of which succeeded. The former Soviet Union used unmanned probes to take 301 grams of moon soil samples between 1970 and 1976.An image taken by the Chang’e 5 spacecraft after its landing on the moon is seen in this handout provided by China National Space Administration.Lunar missions’ importanceThe early detection results of lunar resources have given people a lot of hope. For example, the current director of NASA, Jim Bridenstine, said last July that collecting rare-earth metals from the moon would be possible this century.”There could be tons and tons of platinum group metals on the moon, rare-earth metals, which are tremendously valuable on the Earth,” Bridenstine told CNBC in an interview.Harrison said some of the metal resources that exist on the moon could become materials for future human space bases, “either structures on the moon itself for habitation or for other science missions,” as well as “structures in space around the Earth.”Some rare-earth metals are considered strategically important because they are an integral part of the manufacturing of electronic devices, electric vehicle batteries and military equipment. Currently, more than 80% of U.S. rare-earth imports come from China.Analysts say moon mining is not feasible in the near future, but recent observations confirming the presence of water on the moon may help promote further exploration of space.“Probably the most important material to look for on the lunar surface initially is going to be water ice,” Harrison said, “because you can turn that water into rocket fuel to power missions back to the Earth or to other places in space, and also use it to support life on the lunar surface.”With very low gravity levels, launching rockets from the moon will be more energy-efficient than from the Earth.FILE – An image of Chinese President Xi Jinping is seen inside a building at the Wenchang Space Launch Center, in Hainan province, China, Nov. 23, 2020.Another lunar resource of potential development value is helium-3, which can be used for nuclear fusion fuel. Helium-3 is scarce on the Earth. Early lunar exploration estimates put the moon’s shallow helium-3 content at millions of tons.Goswami said, “The fusion is the future because if you want to travel from the Earth to Mars in a very limited time, the helium-3 that is there on the moon is going to form a part of that extracted mineral that is going to be turned to support nuclear fusion.”Although China is still behind the U.S. in the space competition, experts believe that China’s lunar exploration project is making steady progress and could evolve into a space force with strategic military uses.Goswami said that if a country acquires the capability to use space weapons in lunar orbit, it will provide a superior military strategic advantage.“If you are in lunar orbit from a military scenario perspective, you can look down on the geosynchronous orbit satellite and even at times blind or disable them,” she said.Return to moonPresident Donald Trump said last year that he hoped NASA would send U.S. astronauts to the moon again by 2024. It is unclear whether President-elect Joe Biden will continue to support a moon landing.American space analysts suggest that the Biden administration could redirect NASA’s research to Earth observations, to focus on issues such as climate change, and that it isn’t a question of whether a U.S. return to the will be delayed, but how long.“If it’s more than just a few years of delay, that could handicap the program in the long run by causing it to stall, lose support and lead to cascading delays for years to come, in which case China very well could have time to press forward with its crew mission to the moon and put humans on the moon before the United States is able to return,” Harrison said. “But if the Biden administration sticks to the program and only proposes a delay of one or two years, then I think that the program is likely to build up momentum and be more likely to succeed.”China has drawn up an initial plan for landing on the moon and building a lunar base. It is making 2030 a goal for manned moon landings and planning to build a basic lunar research station between 2021 and 2030, as well as an integrated, human-friendly lunar base between 2036 and 2045.Adrianna Zhang contributed to this report.
…

The World Meteorological Organization reports 2020 is shaping up to be one of the three warmest years on record and a year in which extreme weather events have wreaked havoc on the lives and livelihoods of millions of people around the world.The average global temperature in 2020 is set to be about 1.2 degrees Celsius above the pre-industrial level. WMO Director of Climate Maxx Dilley said that despite efforts to reduce greenhouse gas emissions in the atmosphere, temperatures are expected to continue rising.”So what we can expect next year, we cannot say whether it will be the warmest year or not, but 2011 to 2020 was the warmest decade on record. … We now have a prediction of at least a one-in-five possibility of the temperature at least temporarily reaching 1.5 degrees between now and 2024,” he said.That means climate change may be happening even faster than experts predicted.  The 2016 Paris Agreement sought to avoid dangerous climate change by limiting average global temperature rise to 1.5 degrees Celsius until 2050.WMO describes 2020 as another extraordinary year for the climate.  It says extreme temperatures have occurred on land, sea and especially in the Arctic.  It notes temperatures in the Siberian Arctic reached more than 5 degrees Celsius above average.WMO Scientific Coordinator Omar Baddour says that is particularly serious.“The Arctic part of the world is really suffering major changes. … We are breaking records after records. … The change in the Arctic is not only for the region but also for the whole global climate system … so anything changing in the Arctic affects also the weather in terms of heat waves.” Baddour said.This year, WMO reports wildfires have consumed vast areas in Australia, Siberia, the U.S. West Coast and South America.  It says particularly fierce hurricanes in the Atlantic have devastated several countries in Central America.It reports flooding in parts of Africa and Southeast Asia have led to huge population displacement, destroyed harvests and left millions of people short of food.
…

A Chinese spacecraft took samples of the moon’s surface Wednesday as part of a mission to bring lunar rocks back to Earth for the first time since the 1970s, the government said, adding to a string of successes for Beijing’s increasingly ambitious space program.
The Chang’e 5 probe touched down Tuesday on the Sea of Storms on the moon’s near side after descending from an orbiter, the China National Space Administration said. It released images of the barren landing site showing the lander’s shadow.
“Chang’e has collected moon samples,” the agency said in a statement.
The probe, launched Nov. 24 from the tropical island of Hainan, is the latest venture by a space program that sent China’s first astronaut into orbit in 2003. Beijing also has a spacecraft en route to Mars and aims eventually to land a human on the moon.
This week’s landing is “a historic step in China’s cooperation with the international community in the peaceful use of outer space,” said a foreign ministry spokeswoman, Hua Chunying.
“China will continue to promote international cooperation and the exploration and use of outer space in the spirit of working for the benefit of all mankind,” Hua said.
Plans call for the lander to spend two days drilling into the lunar surface and collecting 2 kilograms (4.4 pounds) of rocks and debris. The top stage of the probe will be launched back into lunar orbit to transfer the samples to a capsule to take back to Earth, where it is to land in China’s northern grasslands in mid-December.
If it succeeds, it will be the first time scientists have obtained fresh samples of lunar rocks since the Soviet Union’s Luna 24 probe in 1976.
The samples are expected to be made available to scientists from other nations, although it is unclear how much access NASA will have due to U.S. government restrictions on cooperation with China’s military-linked program.
From the rocks and debris, scientists hope to learn more about the moon, including its precise age, as well as increased knowledge about other bodies in our solar system. Collecting samples, including from asteroids, is an increasing focus of many space programs.
American and Russian space officials congratulated the Chinese program.
“Congratulations to China on the successful landing of Chang’e 5. This is no easy task,” NASA’s science mission chief, Thomas Zurbuchen, wrote on Twitter.
“When the samples collected on the Moon are returned to Earth, we hope everyone will benefit from being able to study this precious cargo that could advance the international science community.”
U.S. astronauts brought back 842 pounds (382 kilograms) of lunar samples from 1969 to 1972, some of which is still being analyzed and experimented on.
The Chang’e 5 flight is China’s third successful lunar landing. Its predecessor, Chang’e 4, was the first probe to land on the moon’s little-explored far side.
Chinese space program officials have said they envision future crewed missions along with robotic ones, including possibly a permanent research base. No timeline or other details have been announced.
The latest flight includes collaboration with the European Space Agency, which is helping to monitor the mission from Earth.
China’s space program has proceeded more cautiously than the U.S.-Soviet space race of the 1960s, which was marked by fatalities and launch failures.
In 2003, China became the third country to send an astronaut into orbit on its own after the Soviet Union and the United States. It launched a temporary crewed space station in 2011 and a second in 2016.
China, along with neighbors Japan and India, also has joined the growing race to explore Mars. The Tianwen 1 probe launched in July is on its way to the red planet carrying a lander and a rover to search for water.
…