India has administered 1 billion doses of COVID-19 vaccine, officials said Thursday, passing a milestone for the South Asian country where the delta variant fueled its first crushing surge earlier this year. From a report: About 75% of India's total eligible adult population have received at least one dose, while around 30% are fully immunized. The country of nearly 1.4 billion people is the second to exceed a billion cumulative doses after the most populous country China did so in June. Coronavirus cases have fallen sharply in India since the devastating months at the start of the year when the highly transmissible delta variant, first detected in the country a year ago, was infecting hundreds of thousands daily, sending COVID-19 patients into overwhelmed hospitals and filling cremation grounds. Officials have bolstered the vaccination campaign in recent months, which experts say have helped control the outbreak since. The country began its drive in January. Still, there remains a worrying gap between those who have received one shot and those fully immunized. Ramping up the second dose is "an important priority," V K Paul, the head of the country's COVID-19 taskforce, said at a briefing last week.

Nanoracks, Voyager Space and Lockheed Martin announced today (Oct. 21) that they plan to get a free-flying private space station up and running in low Earth orbit (LEO) by 2027. Space.com reports: The outpost, called Starlab, is envisioned to be a tourist destination as well as a research and manufacturing hub that helps foster the growth of an off-Earth economy. "To meet U.S. government, international space agency and commercial needs in space, these industry leaders will develop Starlab specifically to enable the growing space economy and meet pent-up customer demand for space services such as materials research, plant growth and astronaut activity," the three companies said in a press release.

The four-person Starlab station will be lofted in a single launch, which is expected to take place in 2027. The outpost will feature a habitat module with 12,000 cubic feet (340 cubic meters) of internal volume, a power and propulsion element, a laboratory setup and a large external robotic arm to service payloads and cargo, according to Nanoracks' Starlab page. For comparison, the International Space Station (ISS) has 32,333 cubic feet (916 cubic meters) of internal volume, which is equivalent to that of a Boeing 747 jet.

Scientists have used a new form of hardened wood to create a steak knife that is nearly three times sharper than a stainless steel dinner table knife. It can even be washed in the dishwasher! New Atlas reports: This hardy new form of wood is the handiwork of scientists at the University of Maryland, who set out to supercharge the material's natural strength, which lies in the cellulose packed inside. Cellulose is the primary component of wood, accounting for 40 to 50 percent of the material, and itself has a higher strength-to-density ratio than many engineered materials, including ceramics, metals and polymers. But the remainder of wood, made up of the binding materials hemicellulose and lignin, dilutes its overall strength and limits its applications. The authors of the study set out remove these weaker parts of the wood while preserving the cellulose structures.

"It's a two-step process," says senior author Teng Li. "In the first step, we partially delignify wood. Typically, wood is very rigid, but after removal of the lignin, it becomes soft, flexible, and somewhat squishy. In the second step, we do a hot press by applying pressure and heat to the chemically processed wood to densify and remove the water." The hardened wood was then carved into a knife and coated in mineral oil, which counters the natural tendency of cellulose to absorb water, extending the lifespan of the material, preserving the blade's sharpness and making it dishwasher safe. According to the team, the hard wood knife is almost three times sharper than a stainless steel dinner table knife and is 23 times times harder than natural wood. It was used to cut through a medium-well done steak with ease. The team was also able to produce nails using the new hard wood. Not only were they rust-resistant but they were just as sharp as regular steel nails.

The research was published in the journal Matter.

The Food and Drug Administration approved a virtual reality-based treatment for children with the visual disorder amblyopia, or lazy eye, the company behind the therapy announced today. The Verge reports: Luminopia's approach uses TV and movies to develop the weaker eye and train the eyes to work together. Patients watch the show or movie through a headset that shows the images to each eye separately. The images shown to the stronger eye have a lower contrast, and the images are presented with overlays that force the brain to use both eyes to see them properly. Kids using the therapy and wearing glasses had more improvement in their vision than a similar group of kids who did not use the therapy and just wore corrective glasses full time during a clinical trial of the technology. After 12 weeks watching the shows one hour per day, six days per week, 62 percent of kids using the treatment had a strong improvement in their vision. Only around a third of the kids in the comparison group had similar improvements over the course of the 12 weeks.

Luminopia has over 700 hours of programming in its library, and it partnered with kids' content distributors like Nelvana and Sesame Workshop to develop the tool. The authors of the clinical trial wrote that they think that the option to pick popular videos might be one reason users stuck to the program -- people followed the treatment plan 88 percent of the time. Less than 50 percent of patients stick to eye patches or blurring drops. With the approval, Luminopia joins only a handful of companies with clearance to offer a digital therapeutic as a prescription treatment for medical conditions. Last year, the FDA approved a prescription video game called EndeavorRx, which treats ADHD in kids between eight and 12 years old. Luminopia said in a statement that it plans to launch the treatment in 2022.

Even as world leaders vow to take stronger action on climate change, many countries are still planning to dramatically increase their production of oil, gas and coal in the decades ahead, potentially undermining those lofty pledges, according to a United Nations-backed report released Tuesday. From a report: The report looked at future mining and drilling plans in 15 major fossil fuel producing countries, including the United States, Saudi Arabia, Russia, Canada, China, India and Norway. Taken together, those countries are currently planning to produce more than twice as much oil, gas and coal through 2030 as would be needed if governments want to limit warming to 1.5 degrees Celsius (2.7 degrees Fahrenheit) above preindustrial levels. Scientists and world leaders increasingly say that holding global warming to 1.5 degrees Celsius is crucial if humanity wants to avoid the most catastrophic consequences of climate change, such as ever-deadlier heat waves, large scale flooding and widespread extinctions. The world has already heated up roughly 1.1 degrees since the Industrial Revolution.

But the planned global expansion of fossil fuel extraction clashes sharply with those climate goals, the report found. If the world remains awash in oil, gas and coal for decades to come, then many countries could find it more difficult to shift to cleaner sources of energy. At the same time, many of the oil wells and coal mines now being approved and developed could prove deeply unprofitable if demand for fossil fuels shrinks, creating economic disruption. By 2030, the report found, the world's nations are planning to produce 240 percent more coal, 57 percent more oil and 71 percent more natural gas than would be needed to limit warming to 1.5 degrees Celsius.

An anonymous reader quotes a report from NPR: The World Health Organization has hired the company, called Afrigen Biologics and Vaccines, as part of a $100 million plan to figure out how to make an mRNA vaccine against COVID that is as close as possible to the version produced by Moderna. Until recently, Afrigen specialized in developing veterinary vaccines using fairly traditional methods. Now, says Afrigen's managing director, Petro Treblanche, the company's labs are a hive of research into the cutting-edge technology behind mRNA vaccines. Once Afrigen has sorted out all the complicated steps to make Moderna's shot on an industrial scale, WHO and other partners plan to pay Afrigen to become a teaching center.

"We call it a 'technology transfer hub,' " says Martin Friede, the WHO official in charge of this effort. "Manufacturers from around the world will be invited to come and learn the entire process. So this will accelerate the availability of the technology, not to one manufacturer but to many manufacturers." Friede says it makes sense to set up more manufacturers of mRNA vaccines in particular because the technology appears so effective against COVID -- and because it shows promise against other diseases including malaria and tuberculosis. As to why WHO has chosen to try to copy Moderna rather than the other mRNA COVID vaccine, which is made by Pfizer BioNTech, Friede says the choice was practical. "Moderna has reiterated on several occasions that they will not enforce their intellectual property during the pandemic," says Friede. In other words, a manufacturer probably won't face a lawsuit for producing a vaccine that's virtually identical to Moderna's. Also, says Friede, compared to Pfizer's vaccine, there just happens to be a lot more information in the public domain about how Moderna's vaccine is made.

But Afrigen's Petro Treblanche says there are still a lot of unknowns. Take Moderna's patent. "It's written very carefully and cleverly to not disclose absolutely everything," says Treblanche. So while Afrigen has been able to determine most of the equipment and specialized ingredients that are needed, "what we don't know is the exact concentrations," says Treblanche. "And we don't know some of the mixing times -- some of the conditions of mixing and formulating." A particularly vexing question is how to replicate Moderna's "lipid nano-particle" -- a special casing around the mRNA strand at the heart of the vaccine that keeps it stable as it travels through the body to, as Treblanche puts it, "essential places like the spleen and lymph nodes." "We understand other encapsulations," says Treblanche. But for all the expertise at Afrigen, "my team has never formulated a liquid nanoparticle."

U.S. regulators on Wednesday signed off on extending COVID-19 boosters to Americans who got the Moderna or Johnson & Johnson vaccine and said anyone eligible for an extra dose can get a brand different from the one they received initially. The Associated Press reports: The Food and Drug Administration's decisions mark a big step toward expanding the U.S. booster campaign, which began with extra doses of the Pfizer vaccine last month. But before more people roll up their sleeves, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention will consult an expert panel later this week before finalizing official recommendations for who should get boosters and when.

The latest moves would expand by tens of millions the number of Americans eligible for boosters and formally allow "mixing and matching" of shots -- making it simpler to get another dose, especially for people who had a side effect from one brand but still want the proven protection of vaccination. Specifically, the FDA authorized a third Moderna shot for seniors and others at high risk from COVID-19 because of their health problems, jobs or living conditions -- six months after their last shot. One big change: Moderna's booster will be half the dose that's used for the first two shots, based on company data showing that was plenty to rev up immunity again. For J&J's single-shot vaccine, the FDA said all U.S. recipients should get a second dose at least two months following their initial vaccination.

For the first time, a pig kidney has been transplanted into a human without triggering immediate rejection by the recipient's immune system, a potentially major advance that could eventually help alleviate a dire shortage of human organs for transplant. Reuters reports: The procedure done at NYU Langone Health in New York City involved use of a pig whose genes had been altered so that its tissues no longer contained a molecule known to trigger almost immediate rejection. The recipient was a brain-dead patient with signs of kidney dysfunction whose family consented to the experiment before she was due to be taken off of life support, researchers told Reuters. For three days, the new kidney was attached to her blood vessels and maintained outside her body, giving researchers access to it.

Test results of the transplanted kidney's function "looked pretty normal," said transplant surgeon Dr. Robert Montgomery, who led the study. The kidney made "the amount of urine that you would expect" from a transplanted human kidney, he said, and there was no evidence of the vigorous, early rejection seen when unmodified pig kidneys are transplanted into non-human primates. The recipient's abnormal creatinine level - an indicator of poor kidney function - returned to normal after the transplant, Montgomery said.

Montgomery's team theorized that knocking out the pig gene for a carbohydrate that triggers rejection - a sugar molecule, or glycan, called alpha-gal - would prevent the problem. The genetically altered pig, dubbed GalSafe, was developed by United Therapeutics Corp's Revivicor unit. It was approved by the U.S. Food and Drug Administration in December 2020, for use as food for people with a meat allergy and as a potential source of human therapeutics. Other researchers are considering whether GalSafe pigs can be sources of everything from heart valves to skin grafts for human patients.

An anonymous reader quotes a report from People: Doctors around the world are seeing a rise in cases of tic-like behaviors in teen girls, which they believe could be caused by watching TikTok videos about Tourette syndrome. Pediatric hospitals have reported an increase in teen girls coming in after developing tics, sudden twitches or noises that are a common symptom of Tourette syndrome, during the pandemic. The sudden rise is unusual, with tics typically occurring in boys, not girls. Experts in the U.S., Canada, the U.K. and Australia studied the patients for months and consulted between hospitals, finding that the common factor between the girls was an interest in watching TikTok videos from influencers who said they have Tourette syndrome, The Wall Street Journal reported.

According to the outlet, Texas Children's Hospital said they've had around 60 teens come in with tics since March 2020, compared to just one or two a year before then, while at Johns Hopkins University Tourette's Center, the number of patients reporting tic-like behaviors has jumped from 2 to 3% a year to 10 to 20%. And Rush University Medical Center in Chicago had 20 patients with tics over just four months this year, compared to 10 all of last year. Researchers from pediatric hospitals around the world found that referrals for tic-like behaviors soared during the pandemic, especially in girls aged 12 to 25, they wrote in a study published in August in the journal Movement Disorders. Since March 2020, referrals in the U.S., Canada, the U.K., Germany and Australia went from 1 to 2% to 20 to 35%. The researchers wrote that they've seen a "similarity between the tics or tic-like behaviors shown on social media and the tic-like behaviors of this group of patients." Another group of doctors say they "believe this to be an example of mass sociogenic illness," where people are copying the behaviors they see in the videos. Doctors recommend therapy to treat kids experiencing these symptoms. They also advise parents to require their teens to "take a social media break or block Tourette videos on their TikTok account," adds the report.

How Natalie Grams, who once abandoned her medical education to study alternative therapies, became Germany's most prominent homeopathy skeptic. From a report: The pseudoscience of homeopathy was invented in Germany in the 18th century by a maverick physician named Samuel Hahnemann. His theory was based on the ancient principle of like cures like -- akin to the mechanism behind vaccines. The remedies Hahnemann developed, meant to help the body heal on its own, originate as substances that with excess exposure (like pollen) can make a patient ill (in this case, with hay fever) -- or kill them: Arsenic is used as a treatment for digestive problems, and the poisonous plant belladonna is meant to counteract pain and swelling. These substances are diluted -- again and again -- and shaken vigorously in a process called "potentization" or "dynamization." The resultant remedies typically contain a billionth, trillionth, orâ...âwellâ...âa zillionth (10 to the minus 60th, if you're counting) of the original substance.

Today, homeopathy is practiced worldwide, particularly in Britain, India, the U.S. -- where there's a monument to Hahnemann on a traffic circle six blocks north of the White House -- and, especially, Germany. Practitioners, however, differ greatly in their approach. Some only prescribe remedies cataloged in homeopathic reference books. Others take a more metaphoric bent, offering treatments that contain a fragment of the Berlin Wall to cure feelings of exclusion and loneliness or a powder exposed to cellphone signals as protection from radiation emitted by mobile handsets. Grams, the daughter of a chemist, first turned to homeopathy in 2002. While she was attending medical school to become a surgeon, a highway accident left her car in the ditch with the windshield shattered. Grams walked away unhurt, but she soon began to suffer from heart palpitations, panic attacks, and fainting spells that doctors couldn't explain. Her roommate suggested she visit a heilpraktiker, a type of German naturopath that offers alternative therapies ranging from acupuncture and massage to reiki and homeopathy.

Homeopaths typically spend a lot of time with patients, asking not just about symptoms but also about emotions, work, and relationships. This is all meant to find the root cause of a patient's suffering and is part of its appeal. The heilpraktiker asked Grams about her feelings and the accident, things she hadnâ(TM)t spoken about with her doctors -- or anyone -- thinking they weren't important in understanding what was wrong. The heilpraktiker prescribed her belladonna globules and recommended she visit a trauma therapist. Steadily, her symptoms fell away. She was healed. Soon after, Grams dropped the idea of becoming a surgeon, opting for a future as a general practitioner while taking night courses in alternative therapies. After completing her medical degree, she began a five-year residency to qualify as a GP. But three years in, Grams abandoned conventional medicine and began an apprenticeship with a homeopath near Heidelberg.

People with mild or moderate hearing loss could soon be able to buy hearing aids without a medical exam or special fitting, under a new rule being proposed by the Food and Drug Administration. The agency says 37.5 million American adults have difficulties hearing. From a report: "Today's move by FDA takes us one step closer to the goal of making hearing aids more accessible and affordable for the tens of millions of people who experience mild to moderate hearing loss," Health and Human Services Secretary Xavier Becerra said as he announced the proposed rule on Tuesday. There is no timeline yet for when consumers might be able to buy an FDA-regulated over-the-counter hearing aid. The proposed rule is now up for 90 days of public comment. The Hearing Loss Association of America, a consumer advocacy group, welcomed the proposal. "This is one step closer to seeing OTC hearing devices on the market," Barbara Kelley, HLAA's executive director said in an email to NPR. "We hope adults will be encouraged to take that important first step toward good hearing health."

knaapie writes: It may still be fuel for hot debate on social media, but 99.9% of scientist actually agree on the fact that humans are altering the climate. The Guardian reports that the degree of scientific certainty about the impact of greenhouse gases is now similar to the level of agreement on evolution and plate tectonics, the authors say, based on a survey by Cornell University of nearly 90,000 climate-related studies. This means there is practically no doubt among experts that burning fossil fuels, such as oil, gas, coal, peat and trees, is heating the planet and causing more extreme weather.

"It is really case closed. There is nobody of significance in the scientific community who doubts human-cased climate change," said the lead author, Mark Lynas, a visiting fellow at Cornell University. In contrast, the paper cites a 2016 study by the Pew Research Center that found only 27% of US adults believed that "almost all" scientists agreed the climate emergency was caused by human activity. And according to the Center for American Progress, 30 US senators and 109 representatives "refuse to acknowledge the scientific evidence of human-caused climate change." Several big media organisations and social networks also promote climate-sceptical views that have little or no basis in science. Lynas said the study should encourage them to review their policies. "This puts the likes of Facebook and Twitter in a quandary. It is pretty similar to vaccine misinformation; they both lack a basis in science and they both have a destructive impact on society. Social networks that allow climate misinformation to spread need to look at their algorithms and policies or to be forced to do so by regulators."

Albert Einstein's theory of general relativity has aced another test. From a report: Following nearly 3 decades of monitoring, researchers have detected a subtle shift in the orbit of the closest known star to the supermassive black hole at the center of the Milky Way -- and the movement matches Einstein's theory precisely. The star, known as S2, follows an elliptical 16-year orbit. It made a close approach -- within 20 billion kilometers -- to our black hole, Sagittarius A*, last year. If Isaac Newton's classic description of gravity holds true, S2 should then continue along exactly the same path through space as on its previous orbit. But it didn't. Instead, it followed a slightly diverging path, the axis of its ellipse shifting slightly, a team using the European Southern Observatory's Very Large Telescope reports today in Astronomy & Astrophysics. The phenomenon, known as Schwarzschild precession, would, in time, cause S2 to trace out a spirographlike flower pattern in space -- as general relativity predicts.

An anonymous reader quotes a report from New Atlas: California company Radiant has secured funding to develop a compact, portable, "low-cost" one-megawatt nuclear micro-reactor that fits in a shipping container, powers about 1,000 homes and uses a helium coolant instead of water. Founded by ex-SpaceX engineers, who decided the Mars colony power sources they were researching would make a bigger impact closer to home, Radiant has pulled in $1.2 million from angel investors to continue work on its reactors, which are specifically designed to be highly portable, quick to deploy and effective wherever they're deployed; remote communities and disaster areas are early targets.

The military is another key market here; a few of these could power an entire military base in a remote area for four to eight years before expending its "advanced particle fuel," eliminating not just the emissions of the current diesel generators, but also the need to constantly bring in trucks full of fuel for this purpose. Those trucks will still have to run -- up until the point where the military ditches diesel in all its vehicles -- but they'll be much less frequent, reducing a significant risk for transport personnel. Radiant says its fuel "does not melt down, and withstands higher temperatures when compared to traditional nuclear fuels." Using helium as the coolant "greatly reduces corrosion, boiling and contamination risks," and the company says it's received provisional patents for ideas it's developed around refueling the reactors and efficiently transporting heat out of the reactor core.

A new kind of fiber developed by researchers at MIT and in Sweden can be made into clothing that senses how much it is being stretched or compressed, and then provides immediate tactile feedback in the form of pressure, lateral stretch, or vibration. Such fabrics, the team suggests, could be used in garments that help train singers or athletes to better control their breathing, or that help patients recovering from disease or surgery to recover their breathing patterns. From a report: The multilayered fibers contain a fluid channel in the center, which can be activated by a fluidic system. This system controls the fibers' geometry by pressurizing and releasing a fluid medium, such as compressed air or water, into the channel, allowing the fiber to act as an artificial muscle. The fibers also contain stretchable sensors that can detect and measure the degree of stretching of the fibers. The resulting composite fibers are thin and flexible enough to be sewn, woven, or knitted using standard commercial machines. The fibers [are] dubbed OmniFibers [...].

The new fiber architecture has a number of key features. Its extremely narrow size and use of inexpensive material make it relatively easy to structure the fibers into a variety of fabric forms. It's also compatible with human skin, since its outer layer is based on a material similar to common polyester. And, its fast response time and the strength and variety of the forces it can impart allow for a rapid feedback system for training or remote communications using haptics (based on the sense of touch). As an initial test application of the material, the team made a type of undergarment that singers can wear to monitor and play back the movement of respiratory muscles, to later provide kinesthetic feedback through the same garment to encourage optimal posture and breathing patterns for the desired vocal performance. Though this initial testing is in the context of vocal pedagogy, the same approach could be used to help athletes to learn how best to control their breathing in a given situation, based on monitoring accomplished athletes as they carry out various activities and stimulating the muscle groups that are in action. Eventually, the hope is that such garments could also be used to help patients regain healthy breathing patterns after major surgery or a respiratory disease such as Covid-19, or even as an alternative treatment for sleep apnea.

The New York Times reports: Ruth Hamilton was fast asleep in her home in British Columbia when she awoke to the sound of her dog barking, followed by "an explosion." She jumped up and turned on the light, only to see a hole in the ceiling. Her clock said 11:35 p.m.

At first, Hamilton thought that a tree had fallen on her house. But, no, all the trees were there. She called 911 and, while on the phone with an operator, noticed a large charcoal gray object between her two floral pillows.

"Oh, my gosh," she recalled telling the operator, "there's a rock in my bed."

A meteorite, she later learned.

The 2.8-pound rock the size of a large man's fist had barely missed Hamilton's head, leaving "drywall debris all over my face," she said. Her close encounter on the night of Oct. 3 left her rattled, but it captivated the internet and handed scientists an unusual chance to study a space rock that had crashed to Earth.

"It just seems surreal," Hamilton said in an interview Wednesday. "Then I'll go in and look in the room and, yep, there's still a hole in my ceiling. Yep, that happened."
The Times reports that Peter Brown, a professor at the University of Western Ontario, places the odds of a meteor crashing into someone's bed at 1 in 100 billion.

"Humanity will return to the lunar surface in 2024 as part of the Artemis program," writes the Auto Evolution site. "However, before NASA begins shuttling people to our natural satellite, it has to build a network there that will go beyond Earth's low orbit and connect space to Earth in a sort of Internet connection..." The network's name? LunaNet: Astronauts will be able to use the LunaNet via numerous nodes and communicate with the crew on and around the Moon in the same manner that we use Wi-Fi here on Earth. In addition, missions using the network will have access to position and time signals, allowing astronauts and rovers to navigate the rugged lunar terrain and return to their base. LunaNet will also use space-weather instruments to identify potentially dangerous solar activity, such as flares that erupt from the Sun and send harsh radiation towards the astronauts. With this new connectivity, the crew can be directly alerted. This will cut down the time it takes for network management on Earth to do so. These warnings will be comparable to the ones we receive on our phones when there is hazardous weather. The architecture's capabilities will also include a lunar search and rescue capability...

Researchers could also use LunaNet antennas to peer into deep space and search for radio signals from distant celestial objects. Altogether, the architecture's capabilities will give scientists a new platform to test space theories, allowing them to extend their scientific knowledge. Recently, NASA released the "Draft LunaNet Interoperability Specification" in order to kickstart the development of this new "lunar internet." Technical discussions among industry experts from around the world are expected to follow.

Long-time Slashdot reader phalse phace quotes USA Today: The dwindling populations of the American bumblebee and their complete disappearance from eight states has led to a call for the bee to be placed under the Endangered Species Act before they face extinction.

Maine, Rhode Island, New Hampshire, Vermont, Idaho, North Dakota, Wyoming, and Oregon each have zero or close to zero American bumblebees left, according to a petition by the Center for Biological Diversity and Bombus Pollinators Association of Law Students...

Over the last two decades, the American bumblebee population has decreased by 89% across the U.S. New York had a decline of 99% and they disappeared from the northern part of Illinois that has seen a 74% decrease in population since 2004, the petition said.

Climate change, pesticides, disease, habitat loss and competition from honey bees are listed as driving the bee to extinction... The loss of the insect could cause serious repercussions to the environment and crop production due to them being essential pollinators in agriculture. If the American bumblebee is added to the endangered species list, it will join the rusty-patched bumblebee, and If granted federal protection, anyone found to have killed or harmed the bee could face up to $13,000 in fines.

"China launched a three-person crew into space in the early hours of Saturday," reports CNN, calling it "a major step for the country's young space program, which is rapidly becoming one of the world's most advanced..." They will dock at China's new space station, Tiangong (which means Heavenly Palace), six and a half hours after launch. They will live and work at the station for 183 days, or just about six months... "This will certainly be their longest mission, which is quite impressive when you consider how early it is in their human spaceflight regimen," said Dean Cheng, senior research fellow at the Davis Institute for National Security and Foreign Policy.

This is the second crewed mission during the construction of the space station, which China plans to have fully crewed and operational by December 2022. The first crewed mission, a three-month stay by three other astronauts, was completed last month. Six more missions have been scheduled before the end of next year, including two crewed missions, two laboratory modules and two cargo missions. "For the Chinese, this is still early in their human spaceflight effort as they've been doing this for less than 20 years ... and for fewer than 10 missions," Cheng added. "In the past, the Chinese put up a crewed flight only once every two to three years. Now, they're sending them up every few months."

"If the Chinese maintain this pace ... it reflects a major shift in the mission tempo for their human spaceflight efforts...."

China successfully landed an exploratory rover on the moon last December and one on Mars in May. The first module of the Tiangong space station launched in April. Just last week, an international team of scientists released their findings from the moon rocks China brought back to Earth... "The European Space Agency, Russia, India, and Israel have suffered Moon or Mars probe failures in recent years; China succeeded with both on the first tries," David Burbach, associate professor of national security affairs at the US Naval War College, told CNN via email. Though the US still has the world's leading space program, he said, "there's no doubt that China is the world's Number 2 space power today."

China's ambitions span years into the future, with grand plans for space exploration, research and commercialization. One of the biggest ventures will be building a joint China-Russia research station on the moon's south pole by 2035 — a facility that will be open to international participation... Chinese astronauts have long been locked out of the International Space Station due to US political objections and legislative restrictions — which is why it has been a long-standing goal of China's to build a station of its own...

One reason space research cannot be divorced from terrestrial politics, and why the issue is so complicated, is because "the Chinese space program is heavily influenced, and its human and lunar programs are overseen, by the Chinese military," Cheng said. "Cooperating with China in space means cooperating with the Chinese military."

"Unplanned thruster firings by a Russian spacecraft briefly knocked the International Space Station off-kilter Friday, the second such incident in less than three months," reports Space.com: The spacecraft involved today was the Soyuz MS-18, which is scheduled to bring cosmonaut Oleg Novitskiy, film director Klim Shipenko and actor Yulia Peresild back to Earth early Sunday morning (Oct. 17)... "Within 30 minutes, flight controllers regained attitude control of the space station, which is now in a stable configuration," NASA officials wrote in an update this afternoon. "The crew was awake at the time of the event and was not in any danger."

The orbiting lab briefly tilted from its normal orientation this morning by 57 degrees, according to the Russian news agency Interfax, which cited communications between Novitskiy and Vladimir Solovyov, the flight director of the station's Russian segment.

Space station managers don't yet know what caused the anomalously long firing... It's also unclear why the MS-18's thrusters stopped firing, though the station's handlers have some ideas. "We think — and we haven't got confirmation — we think the thrusters stopped firing because they reached their prop[ellant] limit," NASA flight director Timothy Creamer told agency astronauts shortly after the thrusters shut down, according to The New York Times. "Moscow is checking into it and doing their data analysis."