Digest July 30 / 2023

Virgin Galactic blasts into commercial service with Galactic 01 flight

After years of setbacks, Virgin Galactic has completed its first commercial flight that saw it carry 13 research payloads and three passengers from the Italian Air Force and National Research Council of Italy to the edge of space.

New venomous cocktails from cone snail have huge drug potential

In a world first, researchers have reared cone snails in a laboratory aquarium, which presents huge potential for understanding and unlocking the power of their complex venom for a vast range of human therapeutics.

It’s estimated up to 1,000 different cone snail species exist, each with their own special recipe of venom. Each type of venom contains hundreds of compounds, so it's no surprise it's already of huge interest to scientists who have so far discovered the potential for painkillers, insulin regulation and more.

Bacterial cellulose used to create new edible packaging material

By incorporating soy protein into a structure made of bacterial cellulose and coating it with an oil-resistant composite, researchers have created an edible, transparent, and robust composite packaging

We may soon be finishing off a box of cereal and then eating the bag it came in. Researchers have turned to bacteria-produced cellulose to create a composite packaging material to replace plastic. The material is not only robust and sustainable to produce, but it’s also biodegradable and, what’s more, edible.

Plastics can take anywhere from 50 to 200 years to decompose, depending on what they’re made from. The use of petroleum-based plastics in packaging has led to significant pollution over the decades, leading to a push to develop more environmentally friendly and sustainable packaging materials.

Scientists copy krill to develop swarms of aquatic robots

The Pleobot replicates the pleopods on the underside of actual krill

While most of us may just think of krill as baleen whale food, the tiny crustaceans are also very adept swimmers … enough so that scientists have now developed a krill-inspired robotic platform in hopes of one day creating swarms of ocean-exploring swimming robots.

Measuring about two inches long (51 mm), krill move through the water via what is known as metachronal swimming.

France enters hypersonic missile race with first VMaX launch

The French Directorate General of Armaments (DGA) has announced that France launched its first hypersonic missile on June 26, 2023 at 10.00 pm CET from the DGA Biscarrosse site on the southwest coast of France near Bordeaux.

Though few details of the flight have been released, it's known that the VMaX hyper-speed glider demonstrator was lifted into the air by a sounding rocket, which accelerated to a speed in excess of Mach 5 after which it released the glider that continued in flight while returning telemetry data for later analysis.

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Science Digest 29 June 2023 here