Boeing’s CST-100 capsule (short for Commercial Space Transportation-100) is being designed to ferry astronauts to and from the space station and other destinations in low-Earth orbit. The spacecraft will initially launch from Florida atop United Launch Alliance’s Atlas 5 rocket, but the company is not ruling out other booster options in the future, officials have said.

The capsule is being designed as part of a NASA program that supports the development of a new fleet of commercially built spaceships to fill the gap made by the retirement of the shuttle program.

“It’s been an interesting last couple of years for us,” Roger Krone, president of Boeing’s network and space systems, told reporters this month. “I think many people in the industry associate Boeing with the shuttle program and the International Space Station. [This is] kind of a chance for us to rethink what our space strategy is.”

A private space race

Boeing is one of several competitors, including SpaceX and Sierra Nevada, who are engaged in a private space race to build new manned space taxis. Boeing is aiming to have the CST-100 ready to launch the first crew in 2015, but this is heavily dependent on the amount of funding received by NASA, said John Elbon, vice president and general manager of Boeing’s space exploration division. [Photos: Boeing's Space Capsule CST-100]

“We could launch as early as 2015, depending on funding, but the way the budget is laid out, it most likely will be 2016,” Elbon said.

Over the last two years, NASA’s Commercial Crew Development program has divided $320 million among four American spacecraft builders: SpaceX, Blue Origin, Sierra Nevada and Boeing. So far, the agency has awarded Boeing with approximately $120 million for the company’s work on the CST-100 capsule.

But funding for the program has been an ongoing challenge.

In 2012, Congress gave just $406 million for commercial crew development in 2012, which was less than half of the $850 million originally requested by NASA.

The bleak budget environment has already delayed NASA’s first planned launch aboard a commercial spacecraft by two years, and the agency will likely face more financial constraints going forward.

In its fiscal year 2013 budget, NASA has requested $830 million for the commercial crew program, but two bills that were recently approved in the House and Senate would set aside only $500 million and $525 million, respectively, for the agency to support the development of these new spaceships.

Building a spaceship

Still, Boeing is forging ahead with the development of the CST-100. The capsule recently underwent a parachute drop test from a helicopter on April 3 at the Delamar Dry Lake Bed near Alamo, Nev.

“The CST-100 is set up to land in the desert on airbags,” Elbon said. “On this test, we dropped from a helicopter and checked the deployment and operation of three large chutes.”

Boeing will conduct another test in early May to evaluate the performance of the parachutes that are designed to slow the capsule’s descent after it re-enters Earth’s atmosphere, he added.

The gumdrop-shaped CST-100 spacecraft will be able to seat as many as seven astronauts. The capsule measures 14.8 feet (4.5 meters) across at its widest point and will be reusable for up to 10 flights, company officials have said.

The CST-100 design is similar to NASA’s cone-shaped Apollo spacecraft, and the capsule utilizes proven technology from the Apollo and space shuttle programs. While the CST-100 is expected to make ground landings, the spacecraft will also be able to land in the water in case of an abort situation. [Inside Boeing's CST-100 Space Capsule (Infographic)]

NASA is relying on commercial spaceships to eventually carry astronauts to and from the International Space Station. After 30 years and 135 missions, the agency retired the space shuttle program to focus on exploration beyond low-Earth orbit, such as an asteroid or Mars. The agency hopes to be able to pay for flights aboard American-made commercial vehicles by 2015, to close the current gap in human spaceflight.

“Its role is to provide affordable transportation to the space station so there’s money left in the budget to develop beyond [low-Earth orbit] capability,” Elbon said.

Building a commercial market

Boeing is also partnered with Nevada-based Bigelow Aerospace, which is developing commercially operated inflatable space habitats, and Virginia-based Space Adventures, a space tourism firm that intends to sell open seats on the CST-100 for paid jaunts to destinations in low-Earth orbit.

These combined ventures should help Boeing develop a dynamic and viable business case, Elbon said.

“There is significant potential for a commercial market to grow once transportation to low-Earth orbit is available,” Elbon said. “There’s definite interest there. It’s certainly a doable thing to have [Bigelow's] customers, which are primarily countries that can’t afford their own space programs.

“Whether or not you can close a business case on that alone is something we haven’t determined is a feasible thing if that’s the only market we’re going after. Transportation to the space station and allowing the commercial market to develop in parallel is something very workable,” Elbon added. “I think if NASA was the only business, this wouldn’t be such an exciting venture — it wouldn’t be such an attractive business case.” Yahoo Daily News

“Our models tell us that if there is water present in the Martian sub-surface, then it could be habitable,” said doctoral student Eriita Jones from the Planetary Science Institute of the Australian National University.

“We know that there is a hot, deep biosphere on Earth that extends to around five kilometres. If there is a hot deep biosphere on Mars, our modelling shows that it could extend to around 30 kilometres,” study co-author Charley Lineweaver added.

The same scientists had modelled the earth earlier and identified water that was inhabited and water that was not, the Astrobiology Journal reported.

In this research, they applied the same technique to Mars and found that a large fraction of the Martian sub-surface could be harbouring habitable water, according to a university statement.

“We found that about three percent of the volume of present-day Mars has the potential to be habitable to terrestrial-like life. This is compared to only about one percent of the volume of the Earth being inhabited,” said Lineweaver.

“Our conclusion is that the best way to find water – or potentially microbes – on Mars is to dig. Sadly, NASA’s Curiosity Rover, which is scheduled to land on Mars in August, has a limited capacity to scratch the surface to 10 or 20 centimetres,” he added. Zeenews

A defunct German research satellite crashed into the Earth somewhere in Southeast Asia on Sunday, a U.S. scientist said — but no one is still quite sure where.

Most parts of the minivan-sized ROSAT research satellite were expected to burn up as they hit the atmosphere at speeds up to 280 mph (450 kph), but up to 30 fragments weighing a total of 1.87 tons (1.7 metric tons) could have crashed, the German Aerospace Center said.

Jonathan McDowell of the Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics in Cambridge, Massachusetts, said the satellite appears to have gone down over Southeast Asia. He said two Chinese cities with millions of inhabitants each, Chongqing and Chengdu, had been in the satellite’s projected path during its re-entry time.

“But if it had come down over a populated area there probably would be reports by now,” the astrophysicist, who tracks man-made space objects, told The Associated Press in a telephone interview.

Calculations based on U.S. military data indicate that satellite debris must have crashed somewhere east of Sri Lanka over the Indian Ocean, or over the Andaman Sea off the coast of Myanmar, or further inland in Myanmar or as far inland as China, he said.

The satellite entered the atmosphere between 0145 GMT to 0215 GMT Sunday (9:45 p.m. to 10:15 p.m. Saturday EDT) and would have taken 15 minutes or less to hit the ground, the German Aerospace Center said. Hours before the re-entry, the center said the satellite was not expected to land in Europe, Africa or Australia.

There were no immediate reports from Asian governments or space agencies about the fallen satellite.

The satellite used to circle the planet in about 90 minutes, and it may have traveled several thousand kilometers (miles) during its re-entry, rendering exact predictions of where it crashed difficult.

German space agency spokesman Andreas Schuetz said a falling satellite also can change its flight pattern or even its direction once it sinks to within 90 miles (150 kilometers) above the Earth.

Schuetz said the agency was waiting for data from scientific partners around the globe. He noted it took the U.S. space agency NASA several days to establish where one of its satellites had hit last month.

The 2.69-ton (2.4 metric ton) scientific ROSAT satellite was launched in Cape Canaveral, Florida, in 1990 and retired in 1999 after being used for research on black holes and neutron stars and performing the first all-sky survey of X-ray sources with an imaging telescope.

ROSAT’s largest single fragment that could have hit is the telescope’s heavy heat-resistant mirror.

“The impact would be similar to, say, an airliner having dropped an engine,” said McDowell. “It would damage whatever it fell on, but it wouldn’t have widespread consequences.”

A dead NASA satellite fell into the southern Pacific Ocean last month, causing no damage but spreading debris over a 500-mile (800-kilometer) area.

Since 1991, space agencies have adopted new procedures to lessen space junk and having satellites falling back to Earth. NASA says it has no more large satellites that will fall back to Earth uncontrolled in the next 25 years. By Juergen Baetz, Knox News

Now, Radio 4 is launching its search for the next BBC Amateur Scientist of the year.

A panel of judges, chaired by Nobel Prize-winning geneticist Sir Paul Nurse, will select four finalists. The shortlisted entrants will then have their ideas turned into real experiments, with the help of a professional scientist.

Last year, 70-year-old gardener Ruth Brooks won the award for her research into the homing distance of garden snails.

She found that Helix aspersa, the common garden snail, can find its way home from up to 30m away. But for gardeners to be sure that their snails will not come back, they should be moved over 100m.

“If anyone is thinking of entering this time I would just say go for it, I have had such an amazing year,” said Ruth Brooks.

“What has been the greatest pleasure has been seeing people take it seriously enough to carry on with the research.”

The snail investigations are being overseen by Dr Dave Hodgson, an ecologist at the University of Exeter. Initially sceptical that gastropods could “home”, he is now convinced that the little creatures could be more intelligent than previously thought.

“Many people are comfortable with the idea that organisms like homing pigeons and even lobsters and marine mammals use cues like polarised light or landmarks or scent to home over long distances,” he explained.

“This is a surprise that such a simple thing, which is so small compared to the environment, can do it.”

The university is now taking the research further. Biosciences student Claire Young is using metal detectors and copper tags in a new experiment to try and discover how snails complete this feat of navigation.

She attaches the metal tags, each labelled with a unique identifying code, to the snails’ shells. Then, over the next few days, she tracks their movement using a metal detector.

The team hope that by mapping their movements over the coming months they will be able to discover whether snails head straight home, or wander about randomly before stopping when they reach the right spot.

The finalists will have until June to complete their experiments, appearing on Material World, Radio 4′s weekly science show, to report on their progress. The judges will choose a winner during a live event at the 2012 Cheltenham Science Festival.

The judges for So You Want to Be a Scientist? will be talking about what they’ll be looking for in this year experiments on Material World, Thursday 29th September at 4.30pm, Radio 4. Entry is open to anyone over 16, who is a resident in the UK and applications can be submitted online until 31 October. By Michelle Martin, BBC

NASA chief Charles Bolden made the announcement of the design for the new Space Launch System, which the space agency touted as the most powerful rocket since the Saturn V rocket put US astronauts on the moon.

“President Obama challenged us to be bold and dream big, and that’s exactly what we are doing at NASA,” said Mr Bolden. “While I was proud to fly on the space shuttle, tomorrow’s explorers will now dream of one day walking on Mars.”

The launcher, which will take until 2017 to build and cost an estimated $US35 billion ($33.99 billion), will fill a gap in US manned flight program created by the retirement of the last US space shuttle in July after.

But NASA said it will be far more powerful, capable of carrying much larger payloads beyond low-Earth orbit deep into space, and eventually to Mars.

Still, the so-called Space Launch System borrows heavily from the space shuttle, said John Logsdon, the former director of the Space Policy Institute at George Washington University.

For instance, the first stage of the new launcher will use the shuttle’s cryogenic engine fuelled with a mix of hydrogen and oxygen kept at very low temperatures, he said.

The system will be topped with a capsule initially capable of carrying into space payloads of 70 to 100 metric tonnes, and expanded over time to carry up to 130 metric tonnes.

“The booster will be America’s most powerful since the Saturn V rocket that carried Apollo astronauts to the moon and will launch humans to places no-one has gone before,” NASA said.

“The SLS will carry human crews beyond low-Earth orbit in a capsule named the Orion Multi-Purpose Crew Vehicle,” NASA said.

The first test launch is scheduled for 2017 followed by manned flights in 2021.

NASA could use it for a mission to an asteroid in 2025. NASA has indicated that it expects to send astronauts around Mars before eventually landing on the red plan, but not before 2030. The Daily Telegraph Australia

A collision between the two created the mountainous highlands on the moon’s far side that have long puzzled scientists, according to this theory.

The side of the moon facing the Earth and the side facing away have strikingly different topographies. While the near side is relatively low and flat, the far side is high and mountainous with a much thicker crust.

Scientists have proposed different theories to explain this lack of symmetry. One leading idea is that gravitational tidal forces reshaped the moon’s crust and made it lopsided.

The new US theory builds on the “giant impact” model that explains the moon’s creation.

Many experts believe a Mars-sized object collided with the Earth early in the Solar System’s history, ejecting debris that was later drawn together by gravity to form the moon.

The “second” moon is also thought to have been generated by the giant impact, remaining in orbit for tens of millions of years.

The two moons collided relatively slowly, according to the theory described today in the journal Nature . Such low velocity impacts do not produce craters or cause much melting. Instead, most of the colliding material is piled onto the impacted hemisphere as a thick new layer of solid crust.

This could have formed the mountainous region now seen on the far side of the moon.

“Our model works well with models of the moon-forming giant impact, which predict there should be massive debris left in orbit about the Earth, besides the moon itself,” said lead researcher Professor Erik Asphaug, from the University of California at Santa Cruz (UCSC)

.“It agrees with what is known about the dynamical stability of such a system, the timing of the cooling of the moon, and the ages of lunar rocks.” UCSC colleague Professor Francis Nimmo, one of the authors of the “tidal forces” theory, said: “The fact that the near side of the moon looks so different to the far side has been a puzzle since the dawn of the space age, perhaps second only to the origin of the moon itself.

“One of the elegant aspects of Erik’s article is that it links these two puzzles together: perhaps the giant collision that formed the moon also spalled off some smaller bodies, one of which later fell back to the moon to cause the dichotomy that we see today.”

Right now there is not enough data to say which of the two hypotheses is most likely to be correct, he added. Irish Times

The Atlantis space shuttle launched into orbit Friday, marking the final flight of the 30-year-old space shuttle program. That leaves the United States without any vehicles capable of human spaceflight.

Some experts believe that the National Aeronautics and Space Administration’s abandoning of spaceflight could have far-reaching implications on scientific discovery. Others say the focus of tomorrow’s engineers will shift to new areas that may have been overlooked if their efforts were spent on the costly travel.

Either way, it is the end of an era.

“I grew up with the shuttle, it was my generation’s Apollo,” said Laura Venner, a NASA ambassador and educator for New Jersey. “It’s something that makes you so proud and patriotic.”

Venner – a Lyndhurst, N.J., resident who also works as a commander at the Buehler Challenger and Science Center in Paramus, N.J. – was in Florida to watch Atlantis lift off.

Five orbiters – Atlantis, Challenger, Columbia, Discovery and Endeavour – made up the fleet of space shuttles, which were the first reusable space vehicles. Challenger and Columbia were destroyed in explosions, which also killed their crews.

The shuttle program put more than 350 astronauts into low-Earth orbit and was vital in building the International Space Station, which remains operational.

“It probably could have continued,” said Dr. Haym Benaroya, professor of probabilistic mechanics and aerospace/space structures at Rutgers University’s School of Engineering and the author of “Turning Dust to Gold: Building a Future on the Moon and Mars.”

“Now we’re in a situation where we have to lease space on the Russian rockets, which will cost $30 million, $40 million a person,” he said.

“It’s a shame that the country that put people on the moon now has to beg for a ride.”

NASA has attributed the end of the shuttle program to cost-cutting. Each of the 135 missions cost about $450 million. Building Endeavour cost $1.7 billion.

The space agency is looking to shift low-Earth orbiting and human spaceflight to the private sector.

Benaroya, the Rutgers professor, wasn’t just dismayed about the end of the shuttle program, he’s also concerned about the reset that is taking place in the United States’ policy on space exploration.

President Barack Obama last year canceled the 6-year-old Constellation Project, which aimed to put American astronauts back on the moon by 2020. The $97 million program had hit some major planning problems.

“NASA was always underfunded, always had its budget cut by $1 (billion) to $2 billion a year, so the Constellation project was always being delayed and downsized, so that it was years behind schedule,” Benaroya said.

“This president was not interested in space,” he said. “He wanted to privatize it, which I support, but there are certain things which corporations cannot do. And sending men to the moon is not what they can do, because we need five to 10 years of research to do it, and there is no profit to be had there.”

Despite the loss of the Constellation Project and now the space shuttle program, the United States is still active in space.

The launch of commercial satellites, such as used in telecommunications and global positioning systems that are owned by private companies and that power satellite television, radio, cellphones and car GPS systems, are being overseen by the Federal Aviation Administration.

The FAA is also encouraging more commercial spaceflight systems, such as the one begun by Virgin Atlantic’s billionaire owner Richard Branson, which could bring premium-paying consumers into the space market.

And NASA has already begun to partner with private companies to see if the private sector, and not the government, can build and operate spaceships capable of transporting cargo to the space station at lower costs.

However, the science aspect of space still remains crucially important, and separate from manned spaceflight, according to Dr. N. Jeremy Kasdin, professor of mechanical and aerospace engineering and the director of graduate studies at Princeton University.

Crew members on the space station are working on more than 100 research projects in biology, materials, electronics and computers.

“I think people, in all the angst over the manned program, they’re forgetting what a robust space science program NASA has had a lead on,” Kasdin said. “Planetary science and astrophysics all have returned tremendous science over the last few decades.”

NASA will continue to send unmanned spacecraft and satellites to the moon, Mars, Jupiter and asteroids to collect data in the fields, said Kasdin, who works in exosolar planets, a field that he says is popular with students.

The field focuses on discovering and imaging planets that are at least 200 trillion miles from Earth to find out if any can sustain life.

“Traditionally, NASA has been divided up into two sections – science and human exploration,” Kasdin said. “So the end of the shuttle is not the end of NASA’s activities, and not even that much of a pause, because we still have people on the space station. The real question is what’s next.”

Meanwhile, the Department of Defense maintains several weapons systems, including missile defense technology, in space.

Yet Benaroya recognizes the inspirational aspect of the space industry, and worries what the absence of a wondrous feat – such as a moon landing – will have on students studying engineering.

“Many students, especially undergraduates, say they went into engineering because of the potential of man in space,” Benaroya said. “Obviously, there are many interesting areas in engineering, but space is one of the big ones.

“A kid can be inspired by it without knowing anything about it,” he said. “If kids go to engineering school, and there is nothing happening (in aerospace), that is one less big idea and vision.”

Venner says the loss of that vision could lead science in a whole new direction.

“Nothing inspires students as much as seeing humans in space, but that’s not a good enough reason to go into space,” she said. “The end of the shuttle doesn’t mean students can’t look to the future, toward the search for life. We want them to be inspired to one day lead and redirect the agency.” By Michael Palmer, Boston Herald

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The company is getting into the science fair business with its first Google Science Fair, a global competition for teenagers that spans sciences as diverse as computer engineering, space exploration and medical technology.

The event does not have the name recognition and deep roots of the science fairs from companies like Intel or Siemens, but for most children, Google is the most familiar company of the three. With the science fair, Google aims to play an even bigger role in their lives by encouraging young scientists to experiment — and to use Google products while they’re at it.

Google’s science fair is different from the others in a major way: entrants submit their projects online, using Google products like Gmail, YouTube and Google Docs and Sites. It’s the modern-day version of showing up at the school gymnasium to demonstrate lava-spewing volcanoes or bacteria colonies in petri dishes.

The goal, Google said, is for students to be able to enter even if they live too far from a science fair or if their schools lack the resources to travel to the most prestigious fairs. Monday is the last day for science-minded teenagers to enter the competition. “The science fairs of today have not changed much in years — they’re still in gymnasiums with cardboard and glue,” said Tom Oliveri, a Google spokesman for the science fair. “So we can use the Web to reach a lot more students.”

It also serves another purpose. By putting its products in the hands of budding scientists, Google is trying to make its brand central to students’ lives, just as Nike does when it outfits top high school football teams.

Vint Cerf, the chief Internet evangelist at Google and a science fair judge, insists that Google’s motivation is not to attract long-term customers. “The real motivation is to help stimulate kids’ interest in science and technology, and we hope infect other parts of the population in their excitement,” he said.

But Google’s marketing department is overseeing the science fair; Mr. Oliveri is the head of product marketing for Google Apps. “Part of this program is helping students use the apps to discover new things and develop their hypotheses,” he said. The strategy is similar to one Apple used in the 1980s and early ’90s, when it outfitted school computer labs with putty-colored computers, desktop publishing software and CD-ROM drives.

“This was a back-door approach — you get the kids focused on Apple IIs and Macs and the idea was as they grew up, they would demand them at work and in their homes,” said Tim Bajarin, a longtime computer industry analyst and president of Creative Strategies, a research firm. “Google is mapping that in the same context, but with the basic idea that the Google online tools will represent the productivity tools of the future. Get the kids used to them in education and it becomes part of their overall lifestyle.”

Google has struggled to make inroads into offices, where Microsoft software still rules. If Google convinces high school students that its products — for example, Google Sketchup, Google Scholar and Google App Inventor — are useful, they could use them at work later on.

The strategy has already made progress with young scientists. Gabriela Aylin Farfan, a geology major at Stanford, said she started using Google Maps and Earth for field work and Google Docs for group science projects in high school when other students introduced her to the tools.

Google reaches into schools in other ways, too, like offering free business-level apps to schools, recruiting college students to be campus ambassadors for Google Apps and sponsoring computer science workshops for middle and high school teachers.

Google’s mission is also part of a broader one to improve science and math education in the United States. Participation in science fairs nationwide has tapered off, largely because teachers facing budget cuts and overcrowded classrooms lack the time and resources to coach students.

Google winners will receive a trip to Google’s research lab in Zurich, a trip to the Galápagos with National Geographic, three days with astrophysicists at the CERN lab in Geneva or an internship at Lego.

While few people attend physical science fairs, more people will see Google science projects because they are posted online, Mr. Cerf said. Still, entrants of past fairs say that their concern about Google’s fair is that all entrants won’t attend in person.

Ms. Farfan, who was an Intel winner for her research on the scientific properties of Oregon sunstone, said that presenting her project in person taught her to speak plainly about science. For Li Boynton, a Yale freshman who won a top prize at Intel for her research on bioluminescent material, the most important part of the competition was meeting people.

“Simply being surrounded by the type of people who win Intel and the people who get there, they’re extremely self-confident and motivated and have taught me a lot about ways to live life,” she said.

It might take a while for Google’s fair to have the name recognition of the big fairs. Many schools that send students to Intel’s fair, like Catlin Gabel School in Portland, Ore., had not heard of Google’s fair.

Still, the name alone will be a draw, said Anita Chetty, chairwoman of the upper school science department at the Harker School in San Jose, Calif.

“As soon as you say Intel, they’re not thinking of a computer, they’re thinking of the competition,” she said. “Because it’s Google and it’s known for creativity and known for being cutting-edge, I think the kids are going to be really excited. Certainly the name affiliated with it adds that extra level of prestige.” By Claire Cain Miller, Herald Tribune

The patient began the pioneering treatment Friday with an injection of the biotech company’s human embryonic stem cells, as part of a clinical trial that aims to test safety and efficacy toward regaining sensation and movement.

The treatment took place at the Shepherd Center in Atlanta, Georgia, a spokeswoman for the hospital told AFP, declining to give further details due to patient privacy concerns.

The Phase I trial is expected to involve around 10 patients. Participants in the human trials must be severely injured and start treatment with Geron’s product, GRNOPC1, seven to 14 days after sustaining their injury.

Patients will be given a single injection of two million of Geron’s GRNOPC1 cells in the trial.

Those taking part will be followed up for one year to monitor safety and also to see if they have regained any sensory function or movement in their lower extremities.

If the initial group of subjects shows no negative side-effects, Geron plans to seek FDA approval to extend the study to increase the dose of GRNOPC1 and to include patients with “as broad a range of severe spinal cord-injured patients as medically appropriate.”

The ultimate goal for GRNOPC1 is to inject it directly into the spinal cord lesions of injured humans where it would, Geron hopes, prompt damaged nerve cells to regrow, enabling patients to eventually recover feeling and movement.

Geron began working with human embryonic stem cells in 1999.

Back then, “many predicted that it would be a number of decades before a cell therapy would be approved for human clinical trials,” Geron’s president and chief executive Thomas Okarma said in a statement.

Okarma described Monday’s start of the clinical trial as “a milestone for the field of human embryonic stem cell-based therapies.”

GRNOPC1 is made up of cells containing precursors to oligodendrocytes — multi-tasking cells that occur in the nervous system.

Oligodendrocytes are lost in spinal cord injury, resulting in myelin and neuronal loss which cause paralysis in many patients.

Preclinical studies of GRNOPC1 found that when it was injected into the injury site of animals with spinal cord injuries, it migrated throughout the lesion site and matured into oligodendrocytes.

Those oligodendrocytes then re-lined axons with myelin, the insulating layers of cell membrane that wrap around the axons of neurons to enable them to conduct electrical impulses.

The process produced biologicals that enhance the survival and function of neurons, resulting in significantly improved locomotion in the treated animals.

In the animal trials, GRNOPC1 was injected seven days after the injury was sustained.

Every year, some 12,000 people in the United States sustain spinal cord injuries, usually in automobile accidents or from falls, gunshot wounds and sports.

Geron got clearance in January 2009 from the Food and Drug Administration to conduct human trials of GRNOPC1.

Around six weeks later, President Barack Obama reversed a ban on federal funding for research on human embryonic stem cells, which had been imposed by his predecessor at the White House, George W. Bush.

But the clinical trials of GRNOPC1 remained on hold for more than a year while the US courts wrangled about whether lifting the ban on embryonic stem cell research was legal.

Backers of the research believe the field holds huge potential for treating serious diseases including cancer and Alzheimer’s, and even for reversing paralysis.

Opponents argue that living embryos are destroyed in order to obtain the potentially life-saving embryonic stem cells.

Legislation passed by Congress in 1996 bans federal funding for research in which human embryos are either destroyed or discarded.

In lifting the ban on embryonic stem cell research, the Obama administration argued the research does not require disposal or destruction of the embryos, which were created for in-vitro fertilization treatments but never used.

Last month, a US appeals court ruled that the federal funding can continue, dissolving a lower court’s ban. Breitbart