This Week in Science: Cell Phones Turned 50, Plus a Great Shot of Uranus

It’s time for “Nerd News,” covering the most important news for your brain.

Here’s a quick rundown of this week in science . . .

1.  Cell phones and barcodes both turned 50 this week.  April 3rd, 1973 was a big day for tech.  It’s when we settled on an industry standard for barcodes, and also the day the first cell phone call was made.

An engineer for Motorola named Martin Cooper called the head of AT&T’s Bell Labs . . . basically to DUNK on him for being the first person to make cell phones happen.  (Here’s a photo of him holding the same prototype phone he used.)

2.  NASA announced the four astronauts for next year’s Artemis 2 moon mission.  They include the first woman and first person of color to orbit the moon . . . mission specialist Christina Hammock Koch, and pilot Victor Glover.  They won’t get to land on it though.  That’s set for 2025.

3.  In other space news:  Elon Musk’s newest batch of Starlink satellites are having issues and falling out of orbit . . . the Mars helicopter flew faster and higher than ever before . . . and the James Webb telescope just got a great shot of Uranus.

NASA tweeted a photo and said, “Uranus has never looked better.”