The 11 biggest space missions of 2021 (and their chances of success)

Singapore's police now have access to contact tracing data

The Download Your daily dose of what's up in emerging technology What's coming up in space exploration 01.05.21 Good morning! Today: the space missions to watch out for in 2021, Singapore's police now have access to contact tracing app data, and one man's crusade to end the global anemia scourge with better salt. If you enjoy The Download, get your friends to sign up here to receive it every day too. The 11 biggest space missions of 2021 (and their chances of success)   Spaceflight in 2020 did not go as planned. Like nearly everything else in the world, space activity was hit hard by the pandemic. Last year we listed the seven space missions that we were most excited to see take flight throughout 2020. Some of those went brilliantly: SpaceX sent astronauts into space! China brought moon rocks back to Earth! But unfortunately, a lot of other stuff didn’t happen: Europe and Russia’s Rosalind Franklin rover got delayed to 2022. SpaceX’s Starship did not go into space (though it did go high). Artemis 1, the first mission in NASA’s new lunar exploration program that’s supposed to return people to the moon later this decade, didn’t happen.  And yet, 2021 looks to be a pretty exciting time for space. Arguably, more is in store, especially as NASA’s ambitions to go back to the moon ramp up and the private space industry continues to grow more rapidly than ever. Here are the 11 missions we’re most excited to see launch or hit new milestones next year, from a trio of Martian missions in February to NASA trips to the moon in June and October. Just remember: space is unpredictable, and there’s a good chance many of these missions may get delayed for months or even years. So we’ve given each trip a success rating out of 10. Read the full story. —Neel V. Patel One man’s crusade to end a global scourge with better salt  When he was growing up, Venkatesh Mannar and his siblings treated the family saltworks as their playground: they would slide down mountains of salt drying in the sun the way other children might sled down snow-covered hillsides. The salt operation, in the southern Indian port city of Thoothukudi, had been founded by his grandfather’s grandfather. As they had for generations, men stood in the brine, using wooden trowels to rake thick crusts of salt that formed on shallow pools of seawater, and then piled it high to dry into crystals.  After several years in the United States, first studying and then working at salt producers that used giant mechanized harvesters, Mannar returned to India in 1972, intent on building a large, modern saltworks facility near Chennai with the mechanical know-how he’d gained. Then, in the early 1980s, the world began to take an interest in eliminating iodine deficiency, which causes problems ranging from hypothyroidism to learning difficulties. Mannar, while continuing to run his business, became a consultant for UNICEF and the World Health Organization (WHO). He visited over 50 countries in Asia, Africa, and Latin America to persuade them to iodize their salt, a practice that has been common in much of the developed world for decades. Today, an estimated 6 billion people globally have access to iodized salt, in no small part thanks to Mannar. But Mannar was also concerned with another element that many people don’t get enough of: iron. A lack of it is one cause of anemia, which affects over 1.6 billion people. Its symptoms include dizziness, poor maternal and infant health, decreased cognitive function, and the telltale listlessness that Indians call “lack of blood.” Mannar thought salt, which is consumed nearly universally and with almost every meal, might be the best vehicle to deliver small amounts of iron that would have a huge public health impact.  But adding iron to salt that is already iodized—resulting in so-called double-fortified salt—has turned out to be a technical challenge orders of magnitude harder than iodization. Getting manufacturers and the public to adopt it is another problem again. But if the effort succeeds, Mannar and his backers hope to add yet more essential minerals, turning humble table salt into one of the most potent public health tools the world has at its disposal. Read the full story. This story is from the latest issue of MIT Technology Review, all about food. Read the full magazine, and if you haven’t already, you can subscribe to MIT Technology Review for the year for as little as $50. Singapore’s police now have access to contact tracing data The news: Police will be able to access data collected by Singapore’s covid-19 contact tracing system, a senior official said on Monday. The announcement contradicts the privacy policy originally outlined when the government launched its TraceTogether app in March 2020, and is being criticized as a backpedal just after participation in contact tracing was made mandatory. The app is used by 80% of Singapore’s 5.7 million residents and was the first of the major Bluetooth contact tracing apps unveiled in the spring of 2020. Data is still important: This isn’t the first time the use of contact tracing data has intersected with law enforcement. Last July, German restaurants, bars and patrons raised objections when it was reported that police used information collected in contact tracing efforts to track down witnesses in investigations. And in late December 2020, New York Governor Andrew Cuomo signed a law that prohibits law enforcement and immigration authorities from accessing contact tracing data. Read the full story.  —Mia Sato We can still have nice things A place for comfort, fun and distraction in these weird times. (Got any ideas? Drop me a line or tweet 'em at me.)   + Read this beautiful essay about magpies.   + Have you had your daily tortoise yet?   + Finally, an explanation for why stormtroopers can’t shoot straight.    + Sometimes, we actually can’t have nice things. Like bucatini pasta.    + I don’t know how anyone had the time to construct this massive xylophone, but I tip my hat to them regardless. Likewise this trick shot video.   + What we will do when the pandemic eventually ends. (NYT $) The top ten must-reads I’ve combed the internet to find you today’s most fun/important/scary/fascinating stories about technology. 1 People in the UK have started getting the Oxford/AstraZeneca vaccine  The country is racing to vaccinate as many people as quickly as possible as infections spin out of control. (CNBC)   + The UK has gone back into full lockdown. (CNN)   + Why Britain failed (again.) (The Atlantic)   + India has approved the Oxford/AstraZeneca vaccine. (NYT $)   + Florida is using Eventbrite to dish out vaccines and it is not going well. (Vice)   + Scientists are debating the merits of different vaccination strategies. (NYT $)   + The case for delaying the second dose. (WP $)   + Israel has become the first country outside North America to authorize Moderna’s covid-19 vaccine. (Reuters)   + The new covid-19 variant has been detected in New York. (NYT $)  2 Trump is deep in internet conspiracy land  If you’re not enjoying reality, it seems you can just make up your own versions. (NBC)   + Facebook is contradicting its own policies and allowing misinformation in political adverts in Georgia. (Popular Information)  3 Amazon wants photos of us in our underwear 📸 It will at the very least need to buy me several drinks first. (WP $)   + Amazon can no longer use its AWS logo in China. (WSJ $)  4 Where is Chinese tech billionaire Jack Ma? He hasn’t been seen in public since he criticized China’s regulatory system in October. (Reuters)   5 Google’s union could herald a new wave of employee activism in tech The pandemic, automation, and changing public attitudes all suggest this sort of organizing will increase. (Quartz)   + Google’s new union, explained. (Vox)   + It’s taking the unusual step of including contractors. (Quartz)   6 What’s America’s problem with science? You can at least partly blame its federalist system of government and its role in the Cold War. (Mel)   7 Slack started 2021 with a huge outage And we all finally got some work done. (The Verge)   8 Wikipedia is planning big changes in 2021 It’s trying to drive out sexism and racism among its editors. (Wired $)   9 Uber wasted $100 million thanks to ad fraud Yes, really. (Input)   10 RIP Adobe Flash 👋 Or good riddance? (BBC) Our New Year's offer is extended through Friday. Get 2 additional months FREE when you subscribe to MIT Technology Review. With access to the leading voices on world-altering technologies, you'll be empowered to make better-informed, more conscious technology decisions. Claim your New Year's offer now. Quote of the day “Here in Italy people started to share this figure claiming that this is the diagram of the 5G chip that has been inserted in the COVID vaccine. In reality it is the electric circuit of a guitar pedal.” —Sometimes conspiracy theories can be tough to debunk. But sometimes, it is staggeringly easy, as Mario Fusco, a senior software engineer at Redhat, demonstrated. Top image credit: NASA Please send bucatini to hi@technologyreview.com. Follow me on Twitter at @charlottejee. Thanks for reading! —Charlotte Was this newsletter forwarded to you, and you'd like to see more? Sign up for free Intelligent computing Join us virtually | February 10-11, 2021 Follow us: MIT Technology Review One Main Street Cambridge, MA 02142

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