Thebiotechnology company Colossal Biosciences recently announced that it had revived thedire wolf—an extinct mammal featured in the hit seriesGame of Thrones—by altering parts of thegray wolf genome, the coding regions ofDNA, which encode all thegenes. The company claimed that technicians making20 edits to 14 genes in gray wolf embryos and implanting them in dog surrogates resulted in three pups with dire wolf fur color and texture, noting that these limited edits were enough to support its claim of resurrecting the species. Other geneticists remained skeptical, arguing that bringing back the species would require thousands of changes to thousands of genes.

This weekend features three significant anniversaries in the history ofspace exploration. Friday marks 55 years since the launch ofApollo 13, which suffered an oxygen tank explosion en route to theMoon, threatening the lives of three astronauts and prompting the now famous line “Houston, we’ve had a problem.” Saturday includes two major milestones: On April 12, 1961,Yuri Gagarin became the first person in space when he orbitedEarth once in 1 hour 29 minutes. Exactly 20 years later,NASA launched the firstspace shuttle,Columbia, which was designed to orbit Earth, transport people and cargo to and from orbiting spacecraft, and glide to a runway landing on its return.