Elon Musk's SpaceX successfully launched an updated version of its Falcon 9 rocket on Friday, and moments later the first stage booster stuck its landing on a drone ship in the Atlantic Ocean.
The launch was another in a string of resounding successes for Musk's aerospace company, whose ability to pioneer new advances in space technology have stood in contrast to the production struggles of his electric car company, Tesla.
It was the first landing of SpaceX's new Block 5 first stage and the 25th successful landing for SpaceX rockets.
The new Block 5 booster is seen as critical to SpaceX's plans to undertake crewed missions for NASA. The booster is designed to be reused up to 10 times with little maintenance between missions and up to 100 times overall.
SpaceX is also hoping that simple reusability of the booster will allow quick turnarounds with the potential of launching a Falcon 9 rocket twice within a 24-hour period.
Musk says he hopes to produce 30 to 50 Block 5s for the Falcon 9.
In Friday's launch, the Falcon 9 carried Bangladesh's first communications satellite. Thales Alenia Space, the French-Italian company that built the satellite, said it would provide citizens in Bangladesh "access to a wide range of broadcast and communications services, including phone services, backhaul, radio, direct-to-home TV and Internet."
Ellen Fitzsimmons-Craft, assistant professor of psychiatry at Washington University School of Medicine, joins Cheddar News to discuss how chatbots can help prevent eating disorders and the research that uncovered these findings.
Shoulder injuries are one of the most common orthopedic injuries – and they're also one of the most commonly ignored. But chimpanzees, with whom we share nearly 99% of our DNA, don’t encounter the same issues we do. So why are human shoulders such a design disaster? Well, we can trace the answer back to a very particular moment in our evolution.
As the Omicron variant continues to sweep across the country. The US Supreme Court is expected to hear arguments at the end of this week on whether or not the Biden administration can force private companies to vaccinate or test millions of their employees. In addition, the National Nurses United has spearheaded legal action to protect nurses and health care workers, patients, and the public while on the job. President of the National Nurses Union, Zenei Cortez, joined Cheddar to discuss more.
Digital medical care provider Pear Therapeutics rang the closing bell on the Nasdaq Friday and President and CEO Dr. Corey McCann, joined Cheddar to talk about how the company plans to grow the business of software-based therapeutics and how the first FDA authorized prescription digital therapeutics company will go about treating illnesses like insomnia and addiction. "These really are pieces of software. In many cases, they're apps and in the cases of our addiction products, these are based on something called cognitive behavioral therapy or CBT," he said. "These products change the patient's brain circuitry to help them be abstinent, to help them stay in treatment, and that's exactly what we see in randomized clinical trials and that's what we see in the real world." He also addressed the ongoing mental health crises brought on by the pandemic. **copy updated to remove IPO information as Pear Therapeutics went public in December**
Jake Carbone, senior data analyst at InfluenceMap joins Cheddar News to talk about a new report by The Guardian and InfluenceMap that reveals how companies are creating fossil fuel ads designed to look like Google search results.
Satellite launch service Virgin Orbit has gone public on the Nasdaq via a SPAC merger with NextGen Acquisitions with a valuation of about $3.2 billion. CEO Dan Hart joined Cheddar's "Between Bells" from in front of his LauncherOne rocket in New York City's Times Square to talk about what's next after the IPO, an upcoming "Above the Clouds" mission to deliver commercial and national security payloads, and the benefits of their rockets being launched from commercial 747 aircraft. "We can launch anywhere in the world," he said. "There are almost 80 space agencies across the world, for instance, and about 10 of them have space launch. We can give them a space flight capability overnight by taking a runway and turning it into a spaceport."
The year 2021 saw numerous natural disasters around the world, including extreme heat and wildfires, rare deep freezes, and historic flooding. This year's United Nations COP26 conference was key for getting world leaders on board with emissions reductions and other climate-focused policies as the UN Secretary-General said the agency's report on global warming is a 'code red for humanity.' In the U.S., President Joe Biden has focused most of his domestic agenda on slashing emissions and building climate-focused infrastructure. Guests from The Economist, UNC-Chapel Hill, Global Rescue, and more join Cheddar Climate's year-end special to discuss how the climate changed in 2021, and what to expect in 2022.
Digital mental health company Little Otter recently announced it closed a $22 million Series A round. Little Otter was founded in 2020 by a mother-daughter team, which based the company on the idea that a child's mental health can only be addressed by treating the whole family through technology available to everyone. Little Otter CEO and co-founder Rebecca Egger and her mother, Little Otter Chief Medical and Scientific Officer and co-founder Dr. Helen Egger joined Cheddar News' Closing Bell to discuss.
Among all the other events of the last few years, you may have missed this one: Spermageddon. This is the fun name for the idea that sperm counts among mainly ‘Western’ men are in freefall. The Spermageddon hype began with the publication of a 2017 study showing a nearly 60% drop in overall sperm counts in men living in North America, Europe, Australia, and New Zealand.
But four years later, it seems that Spermageddon has been overblown. By a lot. And all that hype has obscured the real issue behind declining male fertility.
Covid-19 has changed the way we view wellness. Jillian Hughes, communications director of Mental Health America, joins Cheddar News to discuss breaking the stigma around mental health. Justin Davis, CEO and co-founder of Spectrum Labs, weighs in on how social media impacts our wellbeing. Lastly, Precision Nutrition CEO Timothy Jones advices us on what trends to watch in 2022.
