1 History Made: NASA Spacecraft Lands On Asteroid, Collects Sample
NASA is making history with its first-ever sample collection of an asteroid in space. The OSIRIS-REx spacecraft touched down on the near-earth asteroid Bennu and it's believed that it successfully picked up pieces of the space rock. Not bad considering Bennu is moving through space at about 60-thousand miles per hour. The spaceship will now return to earth, but don’t get too excited – it’ll be a long while as ‘delivery’ isn’t expected until September 2023. What gives? Bennu is 205-million miles from Earth...that’s so far that it takes a radio signal 18-minutes to reach the spacecraft from mission control. And on that note, the spacecraft's return is when NASA will find out if OSIRIS-REx actually retrieved the samples expected. As for why anyone’s spending the time and the money to land on asteroids? Researchers say the samples could hold insights into the origins of the solar system.
2 Coronavirus Vaccine Study To Infect Health Volunteers With Virus
The British government is clearing the way for a coronavirus vaccine study that will infect volunteers with the virus. Researchers say young, healthy volunteers will be deliberately infected in a controlled setting and some will receive an experimental vaccine. Why would someone consider such a thing? Health experts who support these so-called “challenge trials” like this one say they're more efficient and require far fewer volunteers. They say when all volunteers are exposed to the virus, researchers can delivery scientific data more quickly. Meanwhile, President Trump was campaigning in Pennsylvania yesterday and at a rally, said that if he wins the election, his administration will have safe vaccines that end the pandemic, while Joe Biden would prolong it.
3 Trump Walks Out Of “60 Minutes” Interview
President Trump is threatening to release footage of an interview with CBS's "60 Minutes" before it's set to air next Sunday. According to reports, Trump cut the interview with Lesley Stahl short and stormed out after about 45-minutes. The reason would appear to be that he felt he wasn’t being treated fairly. Trump later took to Twitter and said that for "the sake of accuracy in reporting" he's thinking about posting his own footage of the discussion. He said doing so would highlight how biased the interview was. He also posted a clip of Stahl not wearing a mask in the White House. The clip was reportedly taken right after he left. As for why Trump would have his own footage, a rep for CBS says the White House had said they were taping the interview for archival purposes. At his rally in Pennsylvania last night, Trump appeared set on the release. “You have to watch what we do to ‘60 Minutes’,” he noted. “You’ll get such a kick out of it. You’re going to get a kick out of it. Leslie Stahl’s not going to be happy.”