The Office of the Director of National Intelligence (ODNI) issued a public statement Thursday saying that U.S. intelligence agencies continue to assess data on potential origins of the new coronavirus and currently agree with the “wide scientific consensus that the COVID-19 virus was not manmade or genetically modified.”

The intelligence community said its experts respond to crises by coming up with intelligence on issues that are critical to national security and the IC has been offering support to policymakers and individuals who help in response efforts to fight the COVID-19 virus, which emerged in Wuhan, China.

“The IC will continue to rigorously examine emerging information and intelligence to determine whether the outbreak began through contact with infected animals or if it was the result of an accident at a laboratory in Wuhan,” the statement reads.

The U.S. has reported more than 1M COVID-19 cases with over 62K deaths and more than 150K recoveries, according to Johns Hopkins University’s Coronavirus Resource Center.

Vaneeza Rupani, a high school student from Alabama, has received the honor to name NASA's Mars helicopter, a small spacecraft that would support flight studies on the red planet.

She named the helicopter "Ingenuity" in her entry to an essay contest that originally sought what to call the next Mars rover, the space agency said Wednesday.

NASA received 2.8K entries to the Mars rover essay contest that was eventually won by Alexander Mather who coined the name "Perseverance."

The space agency then decided to look at the other entries for the helicopter's name.

"The ingenuity and brilliance of people working hard to overcome the challenges of interplanetary travel are what allow us all to experience the wonders of space exploration," Rupani stated in her contest entry.

The solar-powered helicopter will demonstrate flight on the red planet. NASA has already docked the helicopter to Perseverance.

"Ingenuity encapsulates the values that our helicopter tech demo will showcase for everyone when it takes off next year as the first aircraft on another planet's surface," said Jim Bridenstine, NASA administrator, who selected Rupani's entry as the helicopter's name.

NASA has partnered with the European Space Agency and Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency to launch a “virtual hackathon” to support COVID-19 research and development efforts.

NASA said Thursday the Space Apps COVID-19 Challenge, which will take place on May 30 and 31, requires participants to leverage open-source and geospatial intelligence data for a range of research applications such as the assessment of coronavirus spread.

ESA plans to provide its artificial intelligence-based EuroDataCube platform as well as data from its Sentinel satellite missions as part of the effort.

According to NASA, the COVID-19 Challenge will focus on assessing human and economic response to the pandemic and serve as the Space Apps program’s first virtual iteration.

The space agencies will begin accepting applications for the hackathon in mid-May.

The U.S. Army has received a version of a Lockheed Martin-made radar powered by Gallium Nitride that boosts the sensor's reliability and range.

GaN technology also poses the potential for future updates such as counterfire target acquisition, Lockheed said Thursday.

“Lockheed Martin recently delivered the first Q-53 system to the U.S. Army equipped with GaN,” said Mark Mekker, director of radar programs at Lockheed.

Mekker said the GaN upgrade will allow the Army to constantly tailor the system in response to changing requirements.

Q-53 is designed to identify and track enemies for the protection of deployed troops. Operators may use the radar in either 360- or 90-degree modes.

Lockheed delivered the GaN radars under a contract issued in 2018.

NASA engineers have developed a new high-pressure ventilator to treat COVID-19 patients and it has been approved by the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) for under the ventilator Emergency Use Authorization (EUA), the administration announced on Friday.

"This FDA authorization is a key milestone in a process that exemplifies the best of what government can do in a time of crisis," said NASA Administrator and 2019 Wash100 Award recipient, Jim Bridenstine. "This ventilator is one of countless examples of how taxpayer investments in space exploration – the skills, expertise and knowledge collected over decades of pushing boundaries and achieving firsts for humanity – translate into advancements that improve life on Earth."

Ventilator Intervention Technology Accessible Locally (VITAL) was developed by engineers at NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL) in Southern California to lift the nation's limited supply of traditional ventilators so they may be used on patients with the most severe COVID-19 symptoms.

The Office of Technology Transfer and Corporate Partnerships at Caltech will offer a free license for VITAL and will out to the commercial medical industry to find manufacturers for the device.

The EUA will enable device use for COVID-19 patients to address the acute demand for ventilators during the COVID-19 pandemic. VITAL will require patients to be sedated and have an oxygen tube inserted into their airway to breathe.

Prior to the FDA's review, the VITAL prototype passed a critical test at the Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai in New York. VITAL poses several benefits in the national response to COVID-19. 

It can be built faster than a traditional ventilator and is composed of far fewer parts that are currently available to potential manufacturers through existing supply chains. Its flexible design can be modified for use in field hospitals being set up in convention centers, hotels and other high-capacity facilities. The new device wouldn't replace current hospital ventilators.

"It's been exhilarating coming up with VITAL's design," said Michelle Easter, a mechatronics engineer at JPL who worked on developing the device. "Now that we have FDA approval, we're looking forward to seeing companies license this technology and share it with the rest of the world."

About NASA

NASA's legacy of human space exploration, research and technology development has yielded countless innovations that prove the direct and profound impact of taxpayer investment in America's space program on our quality of life on Earth, including improved technologies for water purification, air filtration, kidney dialysis and tele-medicine, as well as research that has led to improved vaccines, drug therapies, and mitigations for bone loss. 

We can only speculate as to the breadth of transformative benefits that will come from America's return to the Moon through NASA's Artemis program and our efforts to put the first humans on Mars.