The highly contagious delta variant is the fastest and fittest coronavirus strain yet, and it will "pick off" the most vulnerable people, especially in places with low Covid-19 vaccination rates, World Health Organization officials warned Monday. From a report: Delta, first identified in India, has the potential "to be more lethal because it's more efficient in the way it transmits between humans and it will eventually find those vulnerable individuals who will become severely ill have to be hospitalized and potentially die," Dr. Mike Ryan, executive director of the WHO's emergencies program, said during a news conference. Ryan said world leaders and public health officials can help defend the most vulnerable through the donation and distribution of Covid vaccines. "We can protect those vulnerable people, those frontline workers," Ryan said, "and the fact that we haven't, as Director-General (Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus) has said, again and again, is a catastrophic moral failure at a global level." The WHO said Friday that delta is becoming the dominant variant of the disease worldwide. The agency declared delta a "variant of concern" last month. A variant can be labeled as "of concern" if it has been shown to be more contagious, more deadly or more resistant to current vaccines and treatments, according to the health organization.

Wired published a long extract from Amit Katwala's book Quantum Computing: How It Works and How It Could Change the World — explaining how it's already being put to use to explore some of science's biggest secrets by simulating nature itelf: Some of the world's top scientists are engaged in a frantic race to find new battery technologies that can replace lithium-ion with something cleaner, cheaper and more plentiful. Quantum computers could be their secret weapon... Although we've known all the equations we need to simulate chemistry since the 1930s, we've never had the computing power available to do it...

In January 2020, researchers at IBM published an early glimpse of how quantum computers could be useful in the Noisy Intermediate-Scale Quantum Computing era. Working with the German car manufacturer Daimler on improving batteries for electric vehicles, they used a small-scale quantum computer to simulate the behaviour of three molecules containing lithium, which could be used in the next generation of lithium-sulphur batteries that promise to be more powerful and cheaper than today's power cells..
Some other examples:

• "Chemistry challenges just waiting for a quantum computer powerful and reliable enough to crack them range from the extraction of metals by catalysis through to carbon dioxide fixation, which could be used to capture emissions and slow climate change. But the one with the potential for the biggest impact might be fertiliser production... Some plants rely on bacteria which use an enzyme called nitrogenase to 'fix' nitrogen from the atmosphere and incorporate it into ammonia. Understanding how this enzyme works would be an important step towards...creating less energy-intensive synthetic fertilisers."

• "Solar panels are another area where quantum computers could help, by accelerating the search for new materials. This approach could also help to identify new materials for batteries, and superconductors that work at room temperature, which would drive advances in motors, magnets and perhaps even quantum computers themselves...."

• "Quantum computing could help scientists model complex interactions and processes in the body, enabling the discovery of new treatments for diseases such as Alzheimer's, or a quicker understanding of new diseases such as Covid-19. Artificial intelligence is already being used by companies such as DeepMind to gain insight into protein folding — a key facet of growth and disease — and quantum computers will accelerate this effort."

USA Today reports: Companies like Moderna and Pfizer's partner BioNTech, whose names are familiar from COVID-19 vaccines, are using mRNA to spur cancer patients' bodies to make vaccines that will — hopefully — prevent recurrences and treatments designed to fight off advanced tumors. If they prove effective, which won't be known for at least another year or two, they could be added to the arsenal of immune therapies designed to get the body to fight off its own tumors...

Over the last decade, pharmaceutical companies around the world have been developing new ways to train the body's immune system to fight off tumors, particularly melanoma. They had learned how to remove a brake installed by tumors, unleashing the warriors of the immune system. Ten years ago, only about 5% of people with advanced melanoma survived for five years. Now, nearly half make it that long. Trials of mRNA cancer vaccines aim to boost that number even higher by adding soldiers to the fight... Once a tumor has been largely removed through surgery, a vaccine can help generate new immune soldiers known as T cells... A computer algorithm analyzes the mutations distinct to the cancer cells, looking for ones that trigger the production of T cells, said Melissa J. Moore, Moderna's chief scientific officer, of platform research. So far, she said, Moderna, working with partner Merck, has tested these personalized vaccines in about 100 patients. They aim eventually to make a personalized mRNA vaccine within about 45 days after the patient's cancer surgery, during their recovery...

Mutated cancer cells have proteins on their surface that can be targeted by an mRNA vaccine. For a tumor that has, say, five common mutations, a patient could get a combination of five of these vaccines. On Friday, BioNTech announced it was launching a new trial for this approach, testing it in 120 melanoma patients Europe, the United Kingdom, Australia and the U.S. The new treatment, given in connection with an antibody from Regeneron, is aimed at four tumor-associated antigens. More than 90% of melanoma tumors contain at least one of the four.
The U.S. federal government now lists 29 studies underway or that will be soon investigating mRNA cancer vaccines, according to the article.

And Dr. Stephen Hahn, who had a career as an oncologist before running the Food and Drug Administration from 2019 until early this year, "said he's more optimistic this time because of how much researchers have learned about the role the immune system plays in cancer. 'That gives us an edge to maybe finally get to the place where we need to be.'"

The Hubble Space Telescope was launched into low-earth orbit in 1990 with an even older computer. Over the next 13 years it received upgrades and repairs from astronauts on five different visits from America's Space Shuttle.

But now in 2021, "NASA continues to work on resolving an issue with the payload computer on the Hubble Space Telescope," reports SciTechDaily — though "The telescope itself and science instruments remain in good health." The operations team will be running tests and collecting more information on the system to further isolate the problem. The science instruments will remain in a safe mode state until the issue is resolved...

The computer halted on Sunday, June 13. An attempt to restart the computer failed on Monday, June 14. Initial indications pointed to a degrading computer memory module as the source of the computer halt. When the operations team attempted to switch to a back-up memory module, however, the command to initiate the backup module failed to complete. Another attempt was conducted on both modules Thursday evening to obtain more diagnostic information while again trying to bring those memory modules online. However, those attempts were not successful.

For the next three months, three Chinese astronauts will live on a cylinder-shaped module measuring 16.6 metres by 4.2 metres (54 feet by 13.7 feet) while carrying out further construction work for China's orbiting space station.

It's the first time in five years China has sent humans into space, reports NBC News. : Shenzhou-12, or "Divine Vessel," is one of 11 planned missions to complete construction of China's 70-ton Tiangong or Harmony of the Heavens space station that is set to be up and running by next year... China has long been frozen out of the International Space Station, or ISS, a project launched 20 years ago that has served as the ultimate expression of post-Cold War reconciliation between Russia and the United States. American concerns over the Chinese space program's secrecy and connections to its military were largely responsible for that. But the aging ISS that hosted astronauts from the U.S., Russia and a number of other countries is set to be decommissioned after 2024. As broader U.S.-Russia relations deteriorate, Moscow has hinted that it may withdraw from ISS cooperation in 2025, meaning China could be the only country with a functioning space station.

Roscosmos, the Russian space agency, also signed an agreement in March with the Chinese National Space Administration to build a base on or around the Moon, which they will call the International Scientific Lunar Station.

"All the firsts that the U.S. and the USSR did in the Cold War, China is just ticking them off," said Jonathan McDowell, an astrophysicist at the Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics. "Now they're at the point where they're starting to think, 'OK, we're not just copying the West anymore, we're going to start doing our own thing'. And that's going to be very interesting to watch."

The U.S. government spent more than $18 billion last year funding drugmakers to make a Covid vaccine, an effort that led to at least five highly effective shots in record time. Now it's pouring more than $3 billion on a neglected area of research: developing pills to fight the virus early in the course of infection, potentially saving many lives in the years to come. From a report: The new program, announced on Thursday by the Department of Health and Human Services, will speed up the clinical trials of a few promising drug candidates. If all goes well, some of those first pills could be ready by the end of the year. The Antiviral Program for Pandemics will also support research on entirely new drugs -- not just for the coronavirus, but for viruses that could cause future pandemics. A number of other viruses, including influenza, H.I.V. and hepatitis C, can be treated with a simple pill. But despite more than a year of research, no such pill exists to treat someone with a coronavirus infection before it wreaks havoc. Operation Warp Speed, the Trump administration's program for accelerating Covid-19 research, invested far more money in the development of vaccines than of treatments, a gap that the new program will try to fill.

Dr. Anthony Fauci, the director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases and a key backer of the program, said he looked forward to a time when Covid-19 patients could pick up antiviral pills from a pharmacy as soon as they tested positive for the coronavirus or develop Covid-19 symptoms. "I wake up in the morning, I don't feel very well, my sense of smell and taste go away, I get a sore throat," Dr. Fauci said in an interview. "I call up my doctor and I say, 'I have Covid and I need a prescription.'" Dr. Fauci's support for research on antiviral pills stems from his own experience fighting AIDS three decades ago. In the 1990s, his institute conducted research that led to some of the first antiviral pills for H.I.V., "protease inhibitors" that block an essential virus protein and can keep the virus at bay for a lifetime.

Immortality and everlasting youth are the stuff of myths, according to new research which may finally end the eternal debate about whether we can live for ever. From a report: Backed by governments, business, academics and investors in an industry worth $110bn -- and estimated to be worth $610bn by 2025 -- scientists have spent decades attempting to harness the power of genomics and artificial intelligence to find a way to prevent or even reverse ageing. But an unprecedented study has now confirmed that we probably cannot slow the rate at which we get older because of biological constraints. The study, by an international collaboration of scientists from 14 countries and including experts from the University of Oxford, set out to test the "invariant rate of ageing" hypothesis, which says that a species has a relatively fixed rate of ageing from adulthood.

"Our findings support the theory that, rather than slowing down death, more people are living much longer due to a reduction in mortality at younger ages," said Jose Manuel Aburto from Oxford's Leverhulme Centre for Demographic Science, who analysed age-specific birth and death data spanning centuries and continents. "We compared birth and death data from humans and non-human primates and found this general pattern of mortality was the same in all of them," said Aburto. "This suggests that biological, rather than environmental factors, ultimately control longevity. The statistics confirmed, individuals live longer as health and living conditions improve which leads to increasing longevity across an entire population. Nevertheless, a steep rise in death rates, as years advance into old age, is clear to see in all species."

A new computer simulation shows that a technologically advanced civilization, even when using slow ships, can still colonize an entire galaxy in a modest amount of time. The finding presents a possible model for interstellar migration and a sharpened sense of where we might find alien intelligence. From a report: Space, we are told time and time again, is huge, and that's why we have yet to see signs of extraterrestrial intelligence. For sure, the distances between stars are vast, but it's important to remember that the universe is also very, very old. In fact, I'd go so far as to say that, in terms of extremes, the Milky Way galaxy is more ancient than it is huge, if that makes sense. It's for this reason that I tend to dismiss distances as a significant variable when discussing the Fermi Paradox -- the observation that we have yet to see any evidence for the existence of alien intelligence, even though we probably should have. New research published in The American Astronomical Society is bolstering my conviction.

The new paper, co-authored by Jason Wright, an astronomer and astrophysicist at Penn State, and Caleb Scharf, an astrobiologist at Columbia University, shows that even the most conservative estimates of civilizational expansion can still result in a galactic empire. A simulation produced by the team shows the process at work, as a lone technological civilization, living in a hypothetical Milky Way-like galaxy, begins the process of galactic expansion. Grey dots in the visualization represent unsettled stars, magenta spheres represent settled stars, and the white cubes are starships in transit. The computer code and the mathematical analysis for this was project were written at the University of Rochester by Jonathan Carroll-Nellenback. Astronomer Adam Frank from the University of Rochester also participated in the study.

California on Friday started offering residents a digital record of their coronavirus vaccinations that they can use to access businesses or events that require proof they got the shots. From a report: The state's public health and technology departments said the new tool allows Californians access to their COVID-19 vaccination records from the state's immunization registry and includes the same information as the paper cards issued by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. To access the information, Californians will enter into a state website their name, date of birth and email or phone associated with their vaccine records and they will be asked to create a four-digit PIN. The record will include a QR code that users can save to their mobile phones. With nearly 20 million people fully vaccinated in California and proof of vaccination already required in some circumstances such as travel, state health officials felt there would be demand for the tool, though it remains optional, said Dr. Erica Pan, the state's epidemiologist.

If someone created a flying machine capable of tracking you down by listening for your voice, you might be creeped out. But what if you were pinned under a pile of rubble after a natural disaster and first responders couldn't locate you? Maybe then a human-seeking drone wouldn't be such a terrible idea. From a report: That concept is the focus for engineers at Germany's Fraunhofer FKIE institute, who've built a drone prototype designed to find people by detecting human screams and listening for other signs of distress. One of the lead engineers, Macarena Varela, showcased their progress last week at an annual conference hosted by the Acoustic Society of America. While it's easy to imagine human-seeking drones in a sci-fi horror movie, Varela says the gadget would be ideal for post-disaster scenarios, such as earthquakes, hurricanes and wildfires. They could hover over an area that rescue crews have difficulty getting to and pinpoint where people may be trapped.

"[Drones] can cover a larger area in a shorter period of time than rescuers or trained dogs on the ground," Varela said. "If there's a collapsed building, it can alert and assist rescuers. It can go places they can't fly to or get to themselves." Unmanned aerial vehicles or drones are commonly used for search-and-rescue missions when disasters strike. Most often, they take aerial images of structural damage. Some have thermal imaging capabilities to scan for body heat, while larger drones can deliver medical supplies and other goods to people in isolated areas. But researchers are finding more novel uses for an extra set of eyes in the sky -- and noses. The University of Washington imagines drones that use smell to locate disaster survivors. The Aerospace Corporation is working on drones that can visually identify dogs and share their location with rescue teams. The University of Zurich developed a drone to change shape midflight to fit into oddly shaped crevices. Locating people using aerial acoustics presents its share of challenges. An auditory system would need to decipher between human cries and sounds that often happen in nature, such as animal calls and wind. It might also need to recognize patterns associated with kicking, clapping or other ways people try to get the attention of rescue teams.

The Earth is trapping nearly twice as much heat as it did in 2005, according to new research, described as an "unprecedented" increase amid the climate crisis. From a report: Scientists from NASA, the US space agency, and the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (Noaa), reported in a new study that Earth's "energy imbalance approximately doubled" from 2005 to 2019. The increase was described as "alarming." "Energy imbalance" refers to the difference between how much of the Sun's "radiative energy" is absorbed by Earth's atmosphere and surface, compared to how much "thermal infrared radiationâ bounces back into space.

"A positive energy imbalance means the Earth system is gaining energy, causing the planet to heat up," NASA said in a statement about this study. Scientists determined there was an energy imbalance by comparing data from satellite sensors -- which track how much energy enters and exits Earth's system -- and data from ocean floats. This system of data-gathering floats, which stretches across the globe, allows for "an accurate estimate of the rate at which the world's oceans are heating up." Because about 90% of excess energy from an imbalance winds up in the ocean, the satellite sensors' data should correspond with temperature changes in oceans.

SpaceX successfully launched an advanced GPS satellite for the U.S. Space Force on Thursday (June 17), marking the 19th launch of the year here on the Space Coast. From a report: One of the company's two-stage Falcon 9 rockets blasted off from Space Launch Complex 40 at Cape Canaveral Air Force Station here at 12:09 p.m. EST (1409 GMT), carrying the GPS III SV05 navigation satellite to orbit. Nine minutes later, the rocket's first stage touched down on the deck of "Just Read the Instructions," one of SpaceX's two drone ships. "What a beautiful view of the first stage landing," Youmei Zhou, a SpaceX propulsion engineer, said during the company's live launch commentary.

The GPS III SV05 satellite mission is the second to launch so far this month for SpaceX, following the launch of a broadband satellite for Sirius XM on June 6. It was nothing but blue skies over the launch pad, and onlookers were treated to a gorgeous view as the rocket climbed to orbit. Today's flight marks the fourth GPS satellite delivery by SpaceX for the U.S. military. Three previous advanced GPS III missions also launched on Falcon 9 rockets, including two missions last year. Another of the satellites launched in August 2019 on the United Launch Alliance's final flight of the Delta IV Medium rocket. "If you've ever used your phone's mapping service or retrieved a location via a pin drop, you've used a satellite in this system," Zhou said.

Pie charts and scatter plots seem like ordinary tools, but they revolutionized the way we solve problems. From a report: John Carter has only an hour to decide. The most important auto race of the season is looming; it will be broadcast live on national television and could bring major prize money. If his team wins, it will get a sponsorship deal and a chance to start making some real profits for a change. There's just one problem. In seven of the past twenty-four races, the engine in the Carter Racing car has blown out. An engine failure live on TV will jeopardize sponsorships -- and the driver's life. But withdrawing has consequences, too. The wasted entry fee means finishing the season in debt, and the team won't be happy about the missed opportunity for glory. As Burns's First Law of Racing says, "Nobody ever won a race sitting in the pits."

One of the engine mechanics has a hunch about what's causing the blowouts. He thinks that the engine's head gasket might be breaking in cooler weather. To help Carter decide what to do, a graph is devised that shows the conditions during each of the blowouts: the outdoor temperature at the time of the race plotted against the number of breaks in the head gasket. The dots are scattered into a sort of crooked smile across a range of temperatures from about fifty-five degrees to seventy-five degrees. The upcoming race is forecast to be especially cold, just forty degrees, well below anything the cars have experienced before. So: race or withdraw?

This case study, based on real data, and devised by a pair of clever business professors, has been shown to students around the world for more than three decades. Most groups presented with the Carter Racing story look at the scattered dots on the graph and decide that the relationship between temperature and engine failure is inconclusive. Almost everyone chooses to race. Almost no one looks at that chart and asks to see the seventeen missing data points -- the data from those races which did not end in engine failure.

For something that was to have been done and thrown away three years ago, NASA's Juno spacecraft has a busy schedule ahead exploring Jupiter and its big moons. From a report: The spacecraft entered orbit around Jupiter on July 4, 2016, and has survived bombardment from intense radiation at the largest of the solar system's planets. It is now finishing its primary mission, but NASA has granted it a four-year extension and 42 more orbits. Last week, it zipped past Ganymede, Jupiter's largest moon. "Basically, we designed and built an armored tank," said Scott J. Bolton of the Southwest Research Institute in San Antonio, who is the mission's principal investigator. "And it's worked." Jupiter is essentially a big ball of mostly hydrogen, but it has turned out to be a pretty complicated ball. The mission's discoveries include lightning higher up than thought possible, rings of stable storms at the north and south poles, and winds extending so deep into the interior that they might push around the planet's magnetic fields.

"I think this has been a revelation," said David J. Stevenson, a professor of planetary science at the California Institute of Technology and a co-investigator on the mission. Juno's highly elliptical path, pitched up at almost a 90-degree angle to the orbits of Jupiter's moons, passes over the planet's north and south poles. On each orbit, Juno swoops in, reaching a top speed of 130,000 miles per hour as it passes within a few thousand miles of Jupiter's clouds.

Apple Chief Executive Tim Cook has said the company's greatest contribution to mankind will be in health. So far, some Apple initiatives aimed at broadly disrupting the healthcare sector have struggled to gain traction, according to people familiar with them and documents reviewed by The Wall Street Journal. From the report: Apple has envisioned an audacious plan for healthcare, offering its own primary-care medical service with Apple-employed doctors at its own clinics, according to people familiar with the plan and documents. To test that and other bold healthcare ideas, it took over clinics that catered to its employees and built a team with scores of clinicians, engineers, product designers and others. Today those ambitions, which aren't widely known, have largely stalled as Apple has shifted the focus of its health unit to something it knows well: Selling devices, specifically the Apple Watch, according to people familiar with its strategy.

The new primary-care service hasn't gotten off the ground, people familiar with it say. A digital health app launched quietly this year has struggled to keep users engaged, say people familiar with the app and the documents seen by the Journal. Some employees have raised questions internally about the integrity of health data coming from the company's clinics that has been used to support product development, according to people familiar with their concerns and the documents.

Sales of plexiglass tripled to roughly $750 million in the U.S. after the pandemic hit, as offices, schools, restaurants and retail stores sought protection from the droplets that health authorities suspected were spreading the coronavirus. There was just one hitch. Not a single study has shown that the clear plastic barriers actually control the virus, said Joseph Allen of the Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health. From a report: "We spent a lot of time and money focused on hygiene theater," said Allen, an indoor-air researcher. "The danger is that we didn't deploy the resources to address the real threat, which was airborne transmission -- both real dollars, but also time and attention. The tide has turned," he said. "The problem is, it took a year." For the first months of Covid-19, top health authorities pointed to larger droplets as the key transmission culprits, despite a chorus of protests from researchers like Allen. Tinier floating droplets can also spread the virus, they warned, meaning plastic shields can't stop them. Not until last month did the World Health Organization and U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention fully affirm airborne transmission. That meant plastic shielding had created "a false sense of security," said building scientist Marwa Zaatari, a pandemic task force member of the American Society of Heating, Refrigerating and Air-Conditioning Engineers.

Winter through spring, the French Alps are wrapped in austere white snow. But as spring turns to summer, the stoic slopes start to blush. Parts of the snow take on bright colors: deep red, rusty orange, lemonade pink. Locals call this "sang de glacier," or "glacier blood." Visitors sometimes go with "watermelon snow." From a report: In reality, these blushes come from an embarrassment of algae. In recent years, alpine habitats all over the world have experienced an uptick in snow algae blooms -- dramatic, strangely hued aggregations of these normally invisible creatures. While snow algae blooms are poorly understood, that they are happening is probably not a good sign. Researchers have begun surveying the algae of the Alps to better grasp what species live there, how they survive and what might be pushing them over the bleeding edge. Some of their initial findings were published this week in Frontiers in Plant Science.

Tiny yet powerful, the plantlike bacteria we call algae are "the basis of all ecosystems," said Adeline Stewart, an author of the study who worked on it as a doctoral student at Grenoble Alpes University in France. Thanks to their photosynthetic prowess, algae produce a large amount of the world's oxygen, and form the foundation of most food webs. But they sometimes overdo it, multiplying until they throw things out of balance. This can cause toxic red tides, scummy freshwater blooms -- or unsettling glacier blood. While it's unclear exactly what spurs the blooms, the color -- often red, but sometimes green, gray or yellow -- comes from pigments and other molecules that the snow algae use to protect themselves from ultraviolet light. These hues absorb more sunlight, causing the underlying snow to melt more quickly. This can change ecosystem dynamics and hasten the shrinking of glaciers.

Slashdot reader AmiMoJo shares a report from Reuters: Scientific advances from deep brain stimulation to wearable scanners are making manipulation of the human mind increasingly possible, creating a need for laws and protections to regulate use of the new tools, top neurologists said on Thursday.

A set of "neuro-rights" should be added to the Universal Declaration of Human Rights adopted by the United Nations, said Rafael Yuste, a neuroscience professor at New York's Columbia University and organizer of the Morningside Group of scientists and ethicists proposing such standards. Five rights would guard the brain against abuse from new technologies — rights to identity, free will and mental privacy along with the right of equal access to brain augmentation advances and protection from algorithmic bias, the group says.

"If you can record and change neurons, you can in principle read and write the minds of people," Yuste said during an online panel at the Web Summit, a global tech conference.

"This is not science fiction. We are doing this in lab animals successfully."

The government in Pakistan's largest province, Punjab, has decided to block SIM cards of unvaccinated citizens, reports the Hindustan Times (one of the largest newspapers in India), citing reports from news agency ANI.
Dr. Rashid, the provincial health minister in Pakistan's Punjab, said that there has been a "considerable decrease" in Covid-19 cases in the province due to mass vaccinations. However, a report compiled by the Punjab primary health department shows that the province still failed to achieve its set target for Covid-19 vaccination, reports ARY News, adding that around 300,000 recipients of the first dose of the vaccine never returned for the second dose since the start of Pakistan's mass inoculation drive on February 2.

Slashdot reader ytene writes: The BBC are showing the first set of images of NASA's now-assembled "Space Launch System" (SLS) vehicle, noting that NASA intends to use it to launch a human crew back to the moon later this decade. Testing will take place before astronauts are expected to ride the vehicle to space some time in 2023.
It's enormous. From the BBC's report: On Friday, engineers at Florida's Kennedy Space Center finished lowering the 65m (212ft) -tall core stage in-between two smaller booster rockets... Nasa plans to launch the SLS on its maiden flight later this year. During this mission, known as Artemis-1, the SLS will carry Orion — America's next-generation crew vehicle — towards the Moon. However, no astronauts will be aboard...

The SLS consists of the giant core stage, which houses propellant tanks and four powerful engines, flanked by two 54m (177ft) -long solid rocket boosters.
In early 2020 the BBC reported that "Some in the space community believe it would be better to launch deep space missions on commercial rockets. But supporters of the programme say that NASA needs its own heavy-lift launch capability...

"The SLS was designed to re-use technology originally developed for the space shuttle programme, which ran from 1981-2011."