Experimental US Air Force space plane breaks previous record for orbital spaceflight (2 minute read)
The US Air Force's Boeing-built X-37B space plane has broken its previous record for time spent in space at 719 days and counting. It was launched with a SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket on September 2017. The plane's mission is classified, but it involves spending time in space and conducting experiments that can be returned to and examined on Earth. It is completely autonomous, with no crew on board, and it can land itself horizontally on a runway. The X-37 program began at NASA in 1999, after which it was transferred to DARPA, and finally to the US Air Force in 2004. It has flown four times, with a total of 2,085 days in space.
Mutant sheep are being bred in lab to fight lethal child brain disease (3 minute read)
Batten disease is a genetic disease where the waste disposal system for cells is affected, causing a loss of vision, impaired cognition, mobility problems, seizures, and early death. It affects between 100 and 150 children in the UK. There are several types of Batten disease, which is inherited from parents that both carry a rare recessive gene mutation. Scientists have used CRISPR-Cas9 to create sheep that have the disease in order to test treatments. Treatments that are successful in a large mammal with a brain that is of similar size and complexity to a human child's brain are more likely to be relevant to humans than treatments only tested in mice, rats, and cell cultures. Several treatments, all of which were developed first using traditional methods, will be tested on around 10 animals.