A South African man, Jason Esterhuizen, was tragically left blind in 2011 after a severe car accident. Sadly there was nothing doctors could do to restore his sight leaving him believing he’d be living in darkness for good.

That's until he heard about a brain implant called Orion II (fittingly named after the brightest constellation of stars) undergoing trials to help blind people to see again.

Jason travelled to the UCLA medical centre in Los Angeles to undergo the operation to surgically insert Orion II into his brain.

Externally, Jason wears a pair of sunglasses fitted with a video camera that sends data wirelessly to the implant positioned in the part of his brain that processes visual information.

During the first stimulation of the implant, Jason saw a single white dot. The device allows Jason to “see” using white dots and flashes. It creates more flashes when he's looking at bright colours or sunlight.

Our clever brains can soon re-programme themselves based on new inputs and stimuli.

It may not sound like much to us seeing dots and flashes but Jason is now able to safely cross busy roads, sort his laundry and find his wife in their house. He can now “see” but in a totally new and different way.

Jason compares his vision to “looking up at the stars at night”, sounds pretty beautiful to me.

[Hear Jason's Story]

The aptly named, the Europa Clipper* will set sail for Jupiter's icy moon Europa in 2024. 

Scientists have long held out hope that one of Jupiters 79 moons might host life, with Europa being one of the most promising targets in the search for life elsewhere in our Solar System. 

Interest in this Galilean moon as a potential habitat for extraterrestrial life was given a boost, in the 1990s when NASA's Galileo spacecraft provided evidence that Europa harboured an ocean of liquid water.

It's believed that Europa has a rocky core surrounded by around 50 miles of liquid water covered by a 12-mile thick shell of water-ice. 

"Europa's about the size of Earth's moon, yet we think it contains twice as much water as all of Earth's oceans," Dr Pappalardo said during a virtual talk organised by Arizona State University (ASU) last week.

He continued... "At the bottom of the Earth's oceans are places where water and rock interact, where water seeps down, contacts hot rock and emerges charged with chemical nutrients - reductants."

These reactions could "potentially power life at the ocean floor of Europa - even where there is no light to allow for photosynthesis".

* Clippers were a type of mid-19th-century merchant sailing vessel, designed for speed.

[Read more here]