In 1969, Apollo 11 astronaut Neil Armstrong stepped onto the moon's surface ' a momentous engineering and science feat marked by his iconic words, "That's one small step for a man, one giant leap for mankind." Three years later, Apollo 17 became NASA's final Apollo mission to land humans on the brightest and largest object in our night sky. Since then, no humans have visited the moon or traveled past low Earth orbit (LEO), largely because of shifting politics, funding, and priorities. But that is about to change. Through NASA's Artemis II mission, scheduled to launch no earlier than September 2025, four astronauts will be the first humans to travel to the moon in more than 50 years. In 2022, the uncrewed Artemis I mission proved the ability of NASA's new spacecraft Orion ' launched on the new heavy-lift rocket, the Space Launch System ' to travel farther into space than ever before and return safely to Earth. Building on that success, the 10-day Artemis II mission will pave the way for Artemis III, which aims to land astronauts on the lunar surface, with the goal of establishing a future lasting human presence on the moon and preparing for human missions to Mars....

MIT Lincoln Laboratory and the National Strategic Research Institute (NSRI) at the University of Nebraska (NU), a university-affiliated research center designated by the U.S. Department of Defense (DoD), have established a joint student research program. The goal is to bring together the scientific expertise, cutting-edge capabilities, and student capacity of NU and MIT for critical issues within global health and agricultural security, aiming to foster solutions to detect and neutralize emerging biological threats. "We are excited to combine forces with NSRI to develop critical biotechnologies that will enhance national security," says Catherine Cabrera, who leads Lincoln Laboratory's Biological and Chemical Technologies Group. "This partnership underscores our shared commitment to safeguarding America through scientific leadership." "In an era of rapidly evolving dangers, we must stay ahead of the curve through continuous innovation," says David Roberts, the NSRI research director for special programs. "This partnership harnesses a unique combination of strengths from two leading academic institutions and two research institutes to create new paradigms in biological defense."...

In a quiet New York town, an amateur scientist has constructed a fully equipped research laboratory in which to advance plant biology research. Sebastian Cocioba wears the word 'amateur' as a badge of honor. He's an educator, molecular florist, and founder at Binomica Labs, a small biology research group focusing on providing an alternative to 'exposure-driven and marketing-centric research.' Earlier this year, we sent a photographer to Sebastian's home laboratory. Our aim was to showcase the ingenuity behind the building of his lab from the ground up, assembling and repairing second-hand equipment. But as we pored over the photos and learned more about Sebastian's journey, a far more interesting story emerged: one about the role of amateur science. The word 'amateur' can carry a negative connotation, but as Forrest Mims wrote in Science magazine in 1999, the word 'retains the meaning of its French root amour, love, for amateurs do science because it's what they love to do.' Before the 19th century, virtually all science was amateur science. And even in the modern era, amateurs continue to make important discoveries. Backyard astronomers discovered 42 new planets in 2012, hobbyist paleontologists discovered the world's largest dinosaur footprint near the Yorkshire coast in 2021, and Sebastian himself open-sourced protocols that make it easier for scientists to engineer plants....

E. coli, the most studied microbe of all time, was first discovered in baby poop by German pediatrician Theodor Escherich in 1885. He had been isolating microbes from newborn baby feces to study the effects of breastfeeding on gut health. He originally called the cells 'bacterium coli commune,' though the name was later changed to Escherichia coli in his honor. Before World War II, few scientists used E. coli in their experiments. But in the 1950s, at the dawn of molecular biology, scientists gained a new appreciation for it after searching for organisms that were easy to work with and quick to grow. Escherich's microbe, which divides in just 20 minutes and can thrive in a plethora of liquids, fit the bill. In 1952, when the famous Hershey-Chase experiment indicated that DNA'and not protein'was the source of genetic material, just 285 papers mentioned E. coli. But the bacterium's prevalence swelled from there. Last year, more than 14,000 articles reported the use of E. coli, and the actual number is likely far higher.1 This singular organism has become the de facto microbe for molecular biology....