Lee Jeong-Ho

All four high school students on the Korean delegation at the International Biology Olympiad won gold medals. At the International Chemistry Olympiad, every member of the Korean delegation also took home medals (gold, silver, and bronze). With Korea also sweeping gold at the International Physics Olympiad and the International Young Physicists Tournament last week, global interest and expectations for science prodigies in Korea are likely to rise further.

Korean private space company Innospace will conduct the first test flight of its independently developed suborbital rocket ‘Sebit' on the 19th of next month. The relaunch of the small-satellite launch vehicle ‘Hanbit-Nano', which failed its first commercial launch late last year, is planned for November this year.

Starship stands by at the Starbase launch site in Texas, United States, under heavy cloud cover on the 23rd (local time). Courtesy of SpaceX

A technology to revive satellites that have exhausted all the propellant carried in their bus has entered a full-fledged commercialization phase. It attaches a separate propulsion unit to the exterior of a satellite that has spent its fuel and struggles to move on its own, giving it the force to change attitude or altitude.

Kim Yun-ha, a third-year pitcher for Kiwoom in professional baseball (21·photo), embraced an emotional victory. It was the win that finally put a period to an 18-game losing streak spanning about two years.

The ‘Korea Saebit Accelerator', a large-scale scientific facility that generates extremely bright lightup to a trillion times that of the Sunto resolve the minute atomic structures of specific materials, breaks ground on the 27th. With more than 1 trillion won in funding, the Korea Saebit Accelerator is expected to make significant contributions to advances in next-generation semiconductors and new-drug technologies in Korea once it is completed by the end of 2029.

An advanced robot hand that gently grasps objects by applying the motion of an elephant trunk has been developed. A defining feature of this hand is that it uses an ultra-compact camera attached to its body to produce just the right gripping force. This takes a different path from current robot-hand technology that relies solely on tactile sensors. It is expected to lay the groundwork for the rapid commercialization of robots in tasks such as housework.

A study has found that some moths have olfactory organs on their wings, which they use to locate by smell plants suitable for laying eggs. This is the first confirmation that moth wings serve a ‘nose' function.

To advance the ‘Artemis program', which aims to establish a permanent base on the Moon, NASA expressed its intention to pursue technological cooperation with Korea focused on ‘space communications' via satellite operations, ‘mobility' referring to vehicles for traversing the lunar surface, and ‘landers' to deliver people and cargo from Earth to the Moon. All are core technologies for operating a lunar base. This is the first time NASA has publicly mentioned the technical areas in which it will join forces with Korea for lunar base construction.

A serious malfunction has occurred on the uncrewed spacecraft launched by the National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) to save a space telescope whose altitude has fallen so low that it is at risk of crashing to Earth. With its attitude control system broken, the vehicle is spinning. It now looks as if the rescue spacecraft itself may need rescuing. NASA has begun preparing technical countermeasures.