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NASA Wants to Send a Mission to Neptune's Moon Triton

In the coming years, NASA has some bold plans to build on the success of the New Horizons mission. Not only did this spacecraft make history by conducting the first-ever flyby of Pluto in 2015, it has since followed up on that by making the first encounter in history with a Kuiper Belt Object (KBO) — 2014 MU69 (aka Ultima Thule ). Given the wealth of data and stunning images that resulted from these events (which NASA scientists are still processing), other similarly ambitious missions to explore the outer solar system are being considered. For example, there is the proposal for the Trident spacecraft, a Discovery-class mission that would reveal things about Neptune's largest moon, Triton. These findings were presented at the 50th Lunar and Planetary Science Conference 2019, which took place from March 19th to 22nd in The Woodlands, Texas. This annual conference allows planetary science specialists from around the world to come together to share mission proposals an...
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Researchers Create First Ever 3D-Printed Heart Using Human Tissue


Researchers Create First Ever 3D-Printed Heart Using Human Tissue


Small Heart

In what the Israeli media is calling a “world’s first,” scientists at Tel Aviv University have 3D printed a small heart using human tissue that includes vessels, collagen, and biological molecules — a breakthrough, according to Haaretz, that they hope could one day render organ donation obsolete.




Rodent Model

The technology is still many years out from human transplants, though — the team’s rodent-sized printed heart isn’t quite there yet.

“The cells need to form a pumping ability; they can currently contract, but we need them to work together,” lead scientist Tal Dvir told Haaretz. “This is the first time anyone anywhere has successfully engineered and printed an entire heart complete with cells, blood vessels, ventricles and chambers,” Dvir said.

Bioinks

To print the heart, the scientists created a “personalized hydrogel” to form “bioinks,” according to a paper published today in the journal Advanced Science. The hydrogel originated from fatty tissues extracted from human test subjects.

It’s not the first time 3D printing technology was used to print organs. For instance, a team of researchers at ETH Zurich created a 3D printed artificial heart back in 2017, but rather than using human tissue, those researchers used a flexible material.

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