Month: August 2023

Enlarge (credit: Lorenzo Capunata/Getty)

The Advanced Research Projects Agency for Health (Arpa-H), a research support agency within the United States Department of Health and Human Services, said today that it is launching an initiative to find and help fund the development of cybersecurity technologies that can specifically improve defenses for digital infrastructure in US health care. Dubbed the Digital Health Security project, also known as Digiheals, the effort will allow researchers and technologists to submit proposals beginning today through September 7 for cybersecurity tools geared specifically to health care systems, hospitals and clinics, and health-related devices.

For more than a decade, health care providers in the United States and around the world have been plagued by criminal cyberattacks, particularly ransomware attacks, that take advantage of medical facilities’ high-stakes work to attempt to extort big payouts. Efforts in recent years to crack down on and deter cybercriminal actors have made some limited progress, but health care attacks still occur regularly, disrupting vital services and endangering patients.

Health and Human Service’s research agency Arpa-H doesn’t specifically focus on cybersecurity innovation. The agency has programs running, for example, to spur advances in osteoarthritis treatment and medical imaging for cancer removal. But Digiheals program manager and longtime security researcher Andrew Carney says there is a dire need to make progress on digital defense tools for health care that are both effective and usable for medical facilities in practice.

Enlarge / NASA's mobile launcher for the first three Artemis Moon missions. (credit: Stephen Clark/Ars Technica)

NASA's repaired and upgraded mobile launch platform moved back to its launch pad at the Kennedy Space Center this week. This marks a transition from refurbishment after the launch of the Artemis I mission last year into preparations for Artemis II—the Moon program's first flight with astronauts.

The giant structure sustained more damage than expected during the first launch of NASA's Space Launch System rocket last November. The 380-foot-tall (116-meter) launch tower has been parked just north of the iconic Vehicle Assembly Building since January, undergoing repairs and modifications to prepare it for its next use on Artemis II.

That work is now largely complete, and NASA's Apollo-era crawler-transporter began moving the launch platform back to Launch Complex 39B on Wednesday for about four months of testing. Then, if all goes well, NASA will declare the structure ready for stacking of the SLS Moon rocket for Artemis II.