09.17 Conducting research in microgravity, generally understood as the weightlessness that’s experienced in space, presents an interesting challenge, he says.
“We were pretty busy [on the ISS],” he says, conducting 25 experiments a week. One example involved experimenting with tumor organoids in low-earth orbit, which helped to evaluate early pre-cancer and cancer changes under a high-resolution microscope.
09.15 López-Alegría isn’t a fan of the rising use of the term ‘space tourism’ to describe the increasing numbers of people heading into space.
“We don’t like the word tourism, that’s not what we’re about, says López-Alegría. “The ISS is a place to do meaningful work.”
09.12 Our first speaker is Michael López-Alegría, an astronaut with more than 40 years of aviation and space experience with the US Navy and NASA under his belt. During his time at NASA, he performed an impressive total of 10 spacewalks, totaling 67 hours and 40 minutes, and logged more than 257 days in space.
He’s now the Commander of Axiom Mission 1, the first all-private crew to go into orbit and to the International Space Station (ISS), and also duetted with pianist BLKBOK from space back in April, which I’m sure you’ll agree is pretty cool.
09.10 In the past, getting into space was limited to government agencies. These days, space is the next frontier for business, creating exciting new opportunities to improve our life back on Earth. Today we’re going to hear from the people shooting for the stars at the cutting edge of space commercialization.
09.05 Hello, and welcome to EmTech 2022! I’m Rhiannon, a reporter at MIT Technology Review, and I’ll be taking you through all the major news and announcements from the first day of the conference.
Today, we’ll be covering the technologies that are creating new opportunities for our planet, our bodies and our businesses. First up, we’re going to hear a few words from Jennifer Strong, our editorial director for audio and live journalism.
Come back to this page for rolling updates throughout the day as we kick off EmTech 2022, MIT Technology Review’s flagship event on emerging technology and global trends.
Global changemakers, innovators, and industry veterans will take to the stage ??to distinguish what’s probable, plausible, and possible with tomorrow’s breakthrough technologies.
We’ll be hearing from some of the biggest names in the industry, discussing everything from how to get promising ideas off the ground, to commercializing space, to building tomorrow’s AI and tackling the world’s biggest challenges.
Today we’ll be exploring some of the exciting technologies promising to change our lives, such as clean energy and CRISPR. Tomorrow will be focused on unpacking what the future holds for Web 3.0, body tech, and AI.
Programming starts at 9am ET, and you can follow along here to find out what’s being said on stage. It’s not too late to get tickets, if you haven’t already.