From the Editors

It defies belief that little more than a year has passed since the SARS-COV-2 genie escaped its biological bottle and began its capricious rule of our lives. Yet we wade into 2021 knowing that by year’s end, COVID vaccines will likely have been delivered to most Australians, plus many in the Western world and, we fervently hope, many others in the developing world.

Our story about COVID vaccines in this issue concentrates on a failed effort: we look in detail at the University of Queensland’s innovative molecular clamp approach – abandoned in December – and consider the valuable lessons learned and the tech’s possibilities for future vaccines.

In another Australian state – SA – people are innovating for outer space. We talk to the people working on technologies that will help humans return to the Moon, and in due course to journey beyond it. Seeing as we’re up there, we’re also taking a look at spacesuits – from modified jet-fighter flight suits, to moonwalkers’ wear, to great gear for Mars. And finally, this issue’s Indigenous astronomy focus is the Moon.

We venture below ground, too. We meet the researchers uncovering secrets of rare Slovenian cave salamanders, and join a wild caving team on Christmas Island that’s both mapping new underground terrain and taking a low-impact, high-success approach to biological surveys.

For fun and facts, we also cast an eye over technologies that draw inspiration from nature, meet Australia’s only dinosaur-skin specialist (“paleodermatologist” is his idea, and we like it) and knead the news of sourdough breadmaking – one of the great COVID-ERA distractions (or irritations, depending on one’s success).

Thus we beat on, boats against the pandemic current. Will science lead us back to “everything’s normal”? It’s hard to imagine so, but unreasonably querulous to say otherwise. Humans once said: if we can fly to the Moon we can do anything. Does it not remain true?