First Private Moon Lander Sparks New Lunar Space Race Israeli Craft Heralds Era of National and Private Cooperation to Exploit Lunar Resources

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two months later, Congress blocked any Recombinetics, an animal-biotechnology But Brazil bans the import of goats and marketing of the salmon by ordering the company in St Paul, Minnesota, has also even goat eggs or sperm. Murray and his FDA to establish labelling requirements for decided to look beyond the United States. The collaborators then tried to clone their goats genetically engineered meat. company’s gene-edited dairy cattle do not have from cells that they were able to legally import. The agency has not released those require- horns, which could be a boon to both animal This proved unexpectedly difficult in the semi- ments, nor finalized guidelines for regulating welfare and dairy farmers, who surgically arid climes of northern Brazil, says Murray, gene-edited livestock. “The FDA is excited remove the horns from conventional cattle to who thinks that the problems arose because of about the promise of some of these newer prevent the animals from hurting each other differences in the goats’ diet. technologies and the products being devel- or their handlers. The team eventually sorted out its cloning oped, including genome-edited animals,” an In 2016, Recombinetics petitioned the FDA problems and created a herd of transgenic, agency spokesperson said. “While helping to to declare its gene-edited cattle “generally rec- lysozyme-producing goats. Then the research- bring innovative products to market, the FDA ognized as safe”, a designation that would have ers’ grant ran out, and Murray’s collaborators also needs to ensure they are safe and have largely freed the ani- moved to a different university. “At present, we consumer confidence.” “We don’t need mals from regulatory are on hold,” he says. Meanwhile, researchers and companies the United oversight. Hornless And not everyone is convinced that it will are hesitant to wait for US approval. “Nobody States. It’s cattle also occur nat- be so easy to dismiss the powerful US market. wants to do it based on what’s happened to just a reality.” urally, the company Wells is working with a company called Genus us,” says Sylvia Wulf, chief executive of Aqua- argued, noting that it to develop disease-resistant, gene-edited pigs. Bounty Technologies, the company in May- used genome editing to turn off only one gene. “To up and go to Brazil — that doesn’t help you nard, Massachusetts, that developed the fish. The FDA declined the petition, but the at all in reality,” he says. “Anyone who claims That leaves US researchers in a bind. Federal company has since received a green light from that they’re going to get their animal into agri- funding for genetically engineered or edited Brazilian regulators. The firm is focusing on culture by moving to Brazil doesn’t understand livestock is in short supply. Geneticist Kevin Brazil and other markets — including Argen- where they’re going to be selling their product.” Wells at the University of Missouri in Colum- tina, Australia and Canada — to market both Genus, which is based in Basingstoke, UK, bia can recall only one such grant in the past its hornless cattle and its genome-edited heat- is working with the FDA to gain approval for 30 years. To pick up the slack, researchers have resistant cattle. “We don’t really need the United its pigs in the United States. leant on industry funding — but this, too, States,” says Recombinetics chief scientific AquaBounty’s Wulf also doesn’t discount might run dry if companies can’t bring their officer Mitch Abrahamsen. “It’s just a reality.” the value of the US market, which imports animals to market. US$3-billion worth of salmon every year. “It’s AquaBounty’s salmon predates genome HAVE RESEARCH, WILL TRAVEL big to us,” she says. “But we’re not going to be editing, but the company has since used the It isn’t always easy to move a research project put in a box just because we have a regulatory technique to develop another fish, a fast- to a different country. About 10 years ago, dif- process that doesn’t work.” growing tilapia. But instead of trying for FDA ficulties finding funding for his research drove Last October, the FDA pledged to finalize approval, AquaBounty sought to bring the animal geneticist James Murray to relocate his its guidance on genome-edited animals that fish to market in Argentina. In December, the transgenic goat project from the University will be used as food. But the announcement company announced that Argentina would not of California, Davis, to Brazil. The goats were did nothing to dissuade Long from making his regulate the tilapia as a genetically modified engineered to produce milk that contained trip to Brazil. animal. Instead, the fish would fall under regu- lysozyme, an enzyme with antibiotic proper- “They move at the pace of molasses in lations governing new plant and animal breeds ties. Murray hoped that the milk could help to January,” he says. “Why would I sit around — a significantly shorter regulatory pathway. protect children from diarrhoea. and wait?” ■

SPACE FLIGHT First private Moon lander sparks new lunar space race Israeli craft heralds era of national and private cooperation to exploit lunar resources.

BY ELIZABETH GIBNEY The craft, named Beresheet — ‘in the that is puzzling, given the satellite’s lack of a beginning’ in Hebrew — was built by an Israeli global magnetic field. srael is heading for the Moon — and a non-profit company called SpaceIL that raised The mission is not wholly private, because it milestone. If all goes well, a lander that US$100 million for its mission, much of it involves government partners. And although launched on 21 February will become through philanthropic donations. Beresheet the craft is little more than a demonstrator — Ithe first privately funded craft to touch down lifted off on a SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket from its scientific mission is simple and the lander on the Moon. The feat seems set to kick off a Cape Canaveral, Florida, and should reach is expected to last just two days on the surface new era of lunar exploration — one in which Mare Serenitatis, a basaltic plain on the north- — the mission is symbolically important. It is national space agencies work alongside private ern hemisphere of the Moon, in April (see Israel’s first Moon mission, and would be the industry to investigate and exploit the Moon ‘Moon shot’). There, it will study the presence first privately backed craft to ‘soft land’ on the and its resources. of magnetism in lunar rocks, a phenomenon Moon’s surface — until now, the preserve of an

PAUL HENNESSY/NURPHOTO VIA GETTY HENNESSY/NURPHOTO PAUL

A SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket launched on 21 February, carrying the Israeli Beresheet Moon lander.

elite club of the space agencies of the United 2021. All the firms are vying to be the first — thanks to falling launch costs and a grow- States, China and Russia. fully commercial mission to make it. ing pool of customers willing to pay for a trip SpaceIL’s success would be a milestone, The Google Lunar XPRIZE deserves credit to the Moon, say firms. says Robert Böhme, chief executive and for the Moon’s popularity today, says Bob SpaceIL’s lead in this new space race is founder of PTScientists in Berlin, a private Richards, chief executive of Moon Express largely down to its funding, says Richards. company also shooting for the Moon. “It in Cape Canaveral, another former competi- Three young engineers founded the firm in would be a big proving point, because right tor. Launched in 2007 to spur affordable and Tel Aviv in 2011, but it has drawn $43 million now the only one with soft-landing capability commercial access to the Moon, the project from Morris Kahn, a South African software is China,” he says. offered $20 million to the first team to land a billionaire who is now the firm’s president. The Israeli success could herald a new crop craft on the surface and perform basic tasks. The mission has become a national pro- of landers, and flip the business model for The competition was cancelled in January ject, involving the Israel Space Agency — lunar exploration to one in which private firms 2018 when no firm looked set to meet the which chipped in $2 million — and Israel essentially sell a delivery service. Customers March launch deadline. At the time, the Aerospace Industries in Lod, the country’s could buy room on landers to ferry their cargo XPRIZE Foundation in Culver City, Califor- major satellite firm, which assembled the — from communications technology and sci- nia, put the failure down to teams’ difficulties craft. The project has also kept costs down entific instruments built by space agencies and in raising funding, as well as technical and by hitching a ride on the Falcon 9 along with universities to urns from companies promising regulatory challenges. other cargo. to put loved ones’ ashes on the Moon. In the The landscape for private Moon landers Fresh government interest is also spurring long term, firms might want to put technology has changed dramatically since then Moon missions. NASA and the European on the Moon to mine for water, which could be turned into fuel to power rockets or sustain a lunar settlement. MOON SHOT Lunar scientists are set to benefit from T I B A S E I a commercial fleet of landers. Aside from A China’s Chang’e craft — the latest of which landed last month and is the Moon’s only active robotic resident — the last surface missions were in the 1970s, says Barbara Cohen, a planetary scientist at NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Maryland. “This generation of lunar scientists hasn’t been able to do anything robotically,” she says. “We’re

really excited.” E XPRIZE LEGACY B SpaceIL is the first former competitor for the now-defunct Google Lunar XPRIZE to launch its mission to the Moon. But at least five other companies that competed for the prize plan to launch missions by the end of

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Space Agency (ESA) are looking to fund BIOTECHNOLOGY private firms to ship scientific instruments to the lunar surface, in the hope that the agencies will eventually be among many customers using the service. Life’s genetic NASA, which turned its sights back to the Moon after a 2017 US presidential direc- tive, aims to provide a training ground for alphabet doubled Mars missions and to study lunar resources that could sustain a human presence on the Moon, for example by mining oxygen and Synthetic, eight-letter DNA behaves like the real thing. hydrogen for fuel, as well as purely scientific studies. BY MATTHEW WARREN bases, including a pair named S and B, and To help reach these goals, the agency another called P and Z, all of which are similar launched the $2.6-billion, 10-year he DNA of life on Earth stores infor- to the natural four (M. M. Georgiadis et al. J. Commercial Lunar Payload Services (CLPS) mation in just four key chemicals Am Chem. Soc. 137, 6947–6955; 2015). In the programme in 2018. Last November, NASA — guanine, cytosine, adenine and Science paper, the researchers describe how picked nine consortia that it deems eligible Tthymine, commonly referred to as G, C, A they combine these four synthetic bases with to fly its payloads to the Moon. Each is led and T, respectively. Now scientists have dou- the natural ones. by a US firm and includes multiple partners bled the number of life’s building blocks, cre- The team then conducted a series of exper- to cover launch, lander and operations capa- ating for the first time a synthetic, eight-letter iments to show that its synthetic sequences bilities. Scientists are currently submitting genetic language that seems to store and tran- share properties with natural DNA that are proposals to NASA for instruments or tech- scribe information just like natural DNA. essential for supporting life. The research- nologies that could make up the payloads to In a study published on 22 February in ers created hundreds of molecules of the be shipped commercially. Science, researchers led by Steven Benner, synthetic DNA, and found that the letters The programme is intended to “jump- who established the Foundation for Applied bound to their partners predictably, which is start” a private Moon-lander industry, says Molecular Evolution in Alachua, Florida, important for the reliable storage of informa- Richards, and mirrors NASA’s effort more suggest that an expanded genetic alphabet tion. They then showed that the structure of than a decade ago to encourage develop- could, in theory, support life (S. Hoshika the double helices remained stable, no matter ment of commercial space-flight firms such et al. Science 363, 884–887; 2019). “It’s a real what order the synthetic bases were in, which as SpaceX. The agency is now among many landmark,” says Floyd Romesberg, a chemi- is important for evolution because DNA clients that use these commercial services to cal biologist at the Scripps Research Institute sequences need to be able to vary without the send cargo to space. in La Jolla, California. The study implies that structure falling apart. This is a substantial there is nothing particularly ‘magic’ or special advance, says Philipp Holliger, a synthetic RAILWAY TO THE MOON about those four chemicals that evolved on biologist at the MRC Laboratory of Molecu- Böhme says that NASA is likely to pick dozens Earth, says Romesberg. “That’s a conceptual lar Biology in Cambridge, UK, because other of payloads as part of the CLPS programme, breakthrough,” he adds. methods of expanding the genetic alphabet giving several firms a shot at the Moon, prob- Normally, as a pair of DNA strands twist are not as structurally sound. ably from 2020. “We’re creating the railroad, around each other into a double helix, the Finally, the team showed that the synthetic a DHL delivery service to the Moon,” says chemicals on each strand pair up: C bonds DNA could be faithfully transcribed into John Thornton, chief executive of Astrobotic, with G, and A bonds RNA — a key step for translating genetic based in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, another with T. For a long time, “There is information into proteins. “The ability to firm hoping to land the first commercial scientists have tried to nothing store information is not very interesting for lunar craft. add new pairs of such particularly evolution,” says Benner. “You have to be able ESA is planning a single lander mission chemicals, also known ‘magic’ or to transfer that information into a molecule that would launch in 2025, aimed at dem- as bases, to the genetic special about that does something.” To demonstrate tran- onstrating the feasibility of harvesting water alphabet. For example, those four scription, Benner’s team created synthetic or oxygen from soil at the lunar poles. Last Benner first created chemicals DNA that codes for an aptamer, an RNA month, the agency contracted PTScientists ‘unnatural’ bases in the that evolved sequence that binds and activates specific (which was created in direct response to the 1980s, and Romesberg’s on Earth.” molecules rather than serving as a protein XPRIZE), rocket-makers ArianeGroup of laboratory inserted a template. The transcribed RNA was able to Paris and aerospace firm Space Application pair of unnatural bases into a living cell in bind and activate a fluorescent molecule. Services of Brussels to explore the viability of 2014. But the latest study is the first to sys- Benner’s team has also developed further such a mission. Böhme says that the agency tematically demonstrate that the comple- pairs of new bases, opening up the possibility hopes to secure the roughly €250 million mentary unnatural bases recognize and bind of creating DNA structures with 10 or even (US$283 million) it would need from mem- to each other, and that the double helix they 12 letters. But the fact that the researchers have ber states in November. Unlike in the CLPS form holds its structure and information. already expanded the genetic alphabet to eight programme, for which commercial partners Benner’s team created the synthetic is in itself remarkable, notes Romesberg. “It’s will cover launch costs, ESA would pay for the letters by tweaking the molecular structure already doubling what nature has.” mission’s launch and operations, as well as for of the regular bases, which pair up by form- Holliger says that the work is an exciting room on the lander, says Böhme. ing hydrogen bonds. Each contains hydrogen starting point, but that there is still a substan- Today, Richards estimates, a mission to the atoms, which are attracted to nitrogen or oxy- tial distance to go before a true eight-letter Moon’s surface could cost about $50 million, gen atoms in their partner. Benner says that genetic system is reached. One key question, half of what it cost a decade ago. Economies it’s a bit like Lego bricks that snap together for example, will be whether the synthetic of scale for subsequent missions could bring when the holes and prongs line up. DNA can be replicated by polymerases, the the price of individual payloads down to just By adjusting these holes and prongs, the enzymes responsible for synthesizing DNA hundreds of thousands of dollars, he says. ■ team has come up with several new pairs of inside organisms during cell division. ■