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SpaceX Dragon Spacecraft Prepares For February 27 Flight
Sultan Al-Neyadi from the United Arab Emirates will join Crew-6 astronauts to travel to the International Space Station for a six month mission.
The SpaceX Dragon astronaut shuttle Endeavour has been positioned at launch pad 39A of NASA’s Kennedy Space Center in Florida as engineers prepare for this weekend’s scheduled flight to the International Space Station (ISS).
Crew-6 Dragon arrives at LC-39A ahead of flight pic.twitter.com/QhAKqPFl6t
— SpaceX (@SpaceX) February 19, 2023
At 1:45 AM EDT (06:45 GMT) on February 27th, Endeavour will blast off atop a SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket to commence the Crew-6 mission. Crew-6 is a team of four astronauts who will travel to the International Space Station for around 6 months and is composed of Russian cosmonaut Andrey Fedyaev, US astronauts Stephen Bowen and Woody Hoburg from NASA, and UAE’s astronaut Sultan Al-Neyadi.
When Al-Neyadi’s trip to the ISS is complete, he’ll become the first Arab astronaut to complete an extended stay at the station, beating Hazzaa Ali Almansoori’s 2019 eight-day mission.
Also Read: Emirates Is Preparing To Build A $135 Million Pilot-Training Facility
Endeavour will dock with the ISS on the morning of February 29th. After that, another Dragon spacecraft will return to earth with outgoing NASA astronauts Josh Cassada and Nicole Mann, Japan’s Koichi Wakata, and Russia’s Anna Kikinapa.
The Crew-6 mission will be the Endeavour spacecraft’s fourth trip to the ISS. SpaceX’s first crewed trip took place in 2020, followed by Crew-2 in 2021 and Ax-1 in April 2022, the first privately crewed journey to the ISS.
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Orchid Plans To Find Out What’s Wrong With You Before You’re Born
According to CEO Noor Siddiqui, the company isn’t on a mission to make designer babies, but aims to beat genetic odds and relieve suffering.
Each day, around 400,000 babies are welcomed into the world. However, among those, a growing number will experience some kind of birth defect or inherited disease.
Noor Siddiqui, CEO of Orchid, hopes to “mitigate” unpleasant genetic surprises using genome sequencing technology to reveal a wealth of genetic information on which newborns will grow into healthy adults.
Until 2019, IVF specialists had access to under 1% of the human genome. The tests, called PGT-A and PGT-M, scanned a mere 1,000 data points in a genome comprising around 3 billion bases, offering a very limited dataset compared to the technology used by Orchid.
“Our chromosomes are like chapters in a book that make up the table of contents.” Explained Siddiqui. “[PGT-A and PGT-M tests] only examine the table of contents, whereas what Orchid is doing is like a spellcheck on the entire book.” Orchid’s genome sampling technology assesses “100 times the data, covering many more conditions.” In essence, an Orchid report covers three categories of common genetic issues: monogenic disorders, polygenic conditions, and de-novo mutations.
Also Read: Advancing MENA Health Through AI Vascular Age Analysis
Orchid’s technology raises many questions. Aside from the obvious ethical concerns, data privacy is the most obvious potential issue with the tests. Noor Siddiqui is keen to alleviate any concerns: “No data at Orchid is ever sold to any third parties. Parents are in complete control of their data. If they want to delete the data, we’re happy to delete it off of our servers. If they want to export the data, they can export the data. And if they want us to re-analyze the data, we can re-analyze the data”.
Compared to a lifetime of medical bills, gene therapy, and suffering, Orchid’s genome screening report has the potential to change the future lives of thousands of newborns worldwide.
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