the lab." in may 2020, the open pandemics—covid-19 partnership was launched between scripps research and ibm's world community grid. the partnership is a distributed computing project that "will automatically run a simulated experiment in the background that will help predict the efficacy of a particular chemical compound as a potential treatment for covid-19." resources for informatics and scientific crowdsourcing projects on covid-19 can be found on the internet or as apps. some examples of such projects are listed below: the eterna open-vaccine project allows video game players to "design an mrna encoding a potential vaccine against the novel coronavirus." the eu-citizen science project provides "a selection of resources related to the current covid-19 pandemic. it contains links to citizen science and crowdsourcing projects." the covid-19 citizen science project is "a new initiative by university of california, san francisco physician-scientists" that "will allow anyone in the world age 18 or over to become a citizen scientist advancing understanding of the disease." the coronareport digital journalism project is "a citizen science project which democratizes the reporting on the coronavirus and makes these reports accessible to other citizens." the covid symptom tracker is a crowdsourced study of symptoms of the virus. it has been downloaded two million times as of april 2020. the covid near you epidemiology tool "uses crowdsourced data to visualize maps to help citizens and public health agencies identify current and potential hotspots for the recent pandemic coronavirus, covid-19." the we-care project is a novel initiative by university of california, davis researchers that uses anonymity and crowdsourced information to alert infected users and slow the spread of covid-19. the scientific community has held several machine learning competitions to identify false information related to the covid-19 pandemic. some examples are listed below: the first workshop on combating online hostile posts in regional languages during emergency situation, co-located with the association for the advancement of artificial intelligence conference (aaai-2021), focused on detecting fake news in english related to covid-19. the data sources were various social media platforms such as twitter, facebook, and instagram. given a social media post, the objective of the shared task was to classify it as fake or real news. the winner of the task presented an ensemble approach based on fine-tuning covid-twitter-bert models. the sixth workshop on noisy user-generated text: identification of informative covid-19 english tweets, aimed to automatically identify whether a covid-19 related english tweet is informative or not. the organizers provided the research community with a new dataset of tweets for identification. the selection of tweets included information about suspected, confirmed, recovered, and death cases, as well as the location or travel history of cases. the winning solution for the workshop task presented a neural network ensemble consisting of the covid-twitter-bert and roberta language models. space nasa the launch of the james webb space telescope was postponed to december 25, 2021 components of the space launch system nasa announced the temporary closure of all visitor complexes at its field centers until further notice and asked all non-critical personnel to work from home if possible. production and manufacturing of the space launch system at the michoud assembly facility was halted, and further delays occurred for the james webb space telescope, although work resumed on june 3, 2020. the majority of johnson space center personnel transitioned to telecommunicating, and mission-critical personnel on the international space station were ordered to reside in the mission control room until further notice. station operations were relatively unaffected, but astronauts on new expeditions are subject to longer more stringent pre-flight quarantine. nasa's emergency response framework varied based on local virus cases around its agency's field centers. as of march 24, 2020, the following space centers had moved to stage 4. glenn research center in ohio plum brook station in ohio armstrong flight research center in california wallops flight facility in virginia goddard institute for space studies in new york goddard space flight center in maryland, which also reported its first covid-19 positive employee case. two facilities were maintained at stage 4 after reporting new cases of coronavirus: the michoud assembly facility reported its first employee to test positive for covid-19, and stennis space center recorded the second case of a nasa community member with the virus. kennedy space center maintained at stage 3 after a workforce member tested positive. due to the mandatory remote work policy already in place, the individual had not been on-site for more than a week before the onset of symptoms. on may 18, the michoud facility began resuming work operations on the sls, but so far remains in a level 3 status. at level 4, mandatory remote work is in effect for all personnel except for limited personnel required for mission-critical work and to ensure and maintain the safety and security of the facility. esa the european space agency (esa) directed many of its science and technology facility personnel to telework whenever possible. developments, including increased restrictions by national, regional, and local authorities across europe and the first positive covid-19 test result among european space operations centre personnel, led the agency to further restrict on-site personnel at its mission control centres. esa director of operations, rolf densing, strongly advised mission personnel to reduce activity on science missions, especially on interplanetary spacecraft. the affected spacecraft had stable orbits and long-duration missions, so turning off their science instruments and placing them into a largely unattended safety configuration for a certain period of time would have a negligible impact on their overall mission performance. examples of such missions include: cluster – a four-spacecraft mission launched in 2000, orbiting earth to study our planet's magnetic environment and how it is forged by the solar wind, the stream of charged particles constantly released by the sun; exomars trace gas orbiter – launched in 2016, the spacecraft orbited mars, where it studied the planet's atmosphere and provided data relay for landers on the surface; mars express – launched in 2003, the workhorse orbiter has been imaging the martian surface and sampling the planet's atmosphere for more than a decade and a half; solar orbiter – esa's newest science mission, launched in february 2020, was en-route to its science operations orbit around the sun. esa science director günther hasinger said: "it was a difficult decision, but the right one to take. our greatest responsibility is the safety of people, and i know all of us in the science community understand why this is necessary." the temporary reduction in on-site personnel will also allow the esoc teams to focus on maintaining spacecraft safety for all other missions involved, especially the mercury explorer bepicolombo, which is en route to the solar system's closest planet and would need on-site support during its planned april 10 flyby of earth. the difficult manoeuvre, which uses earth's gravity to adjust bepicolombo's trajectory as it cruises towards mercury, was performed by a very small number of engineers and with full respect to social distancing and other health and hygiene measures required by the current situation. commissioning and initial checkout operations of the launched solar orbiter were temporarily suspended. esa plans to resume these operations in the near future, depending on the development of the coronavirus situation. in the meantime, solar orbiter will continue its journey towards the sun, with the first venus flyby to take place in december. jaxa the space and science operations of the japan aerospace exploration agency (jaxa) were virtually unaffected. however, all visits to their many field centers were suspended until april 30, 2020, to reduce contamination. commercial aerospace bigelow aerospace announced on march 23, 2020, that it was laying off all its 88 employees. it said it would rehire the workers when pandemic restrictions were lifted. tucson, arizona-based world view announced on april 17, 2020, that it had terminated new business initiatives and laid off an unspecified number of employees to reduce cash outflows. the company also received rent deferrals from pima county, arizona. oneweb filed for bankruptcy on march 27, 2020, following a cash crunch due to difficulties in raising capital to complete construction and deployment of the remaining 90 percent of the network. the company had already laid off approximately 85 percent of its 531 employees, but said it would maintain operational satellite capabilities while the court restructures it and new owners for the constellation were sought. rocket lab temporarily closed its launch site in new zealand, but operations continued at its wallops flight facility launch complex. major companies such as spacex and boeing were not economically affected, except that they took extra precautions and security measures for their employees to limit the spread of the virus in their workplaces. as of april 16, 2020 blue origin said that it was continuing to hire staff, with about 20 more people added each week. ula implemented an internal pandemic plan. although some aspects of launch-related outreach were scaled back, the company made clear its intention to maintain its launch schedule. telecommunications the pandemic resulted in a greater gap between digital and non-digital firms. from 2019 to 2020, the proportion of eu enterprises employing advanced digital technology in their operations expanded dramatically. from 2020 to 2021, this percentage remained relatively stable, reaching 61% in 2021, compared to 63% in 2020 and 58% in 2019. the pandemic has caused a huge strain on internet traffic, with bt group and vodafone seeing a 60 and 50 percent increase in broadband usage, respectively. at the same time, netflix, disney+, google, amazon, and youtube have considered reducing the quality of their videos to avoid overload. in addition, sony has begun to slow down playstation game downloads in europe and the united states to maintain the traffic levels. cellular service providers in mainland china reported significant declines in subscribers, partially due to inability of migrant workers to return to work as a result of the quarantine lockdowns; china mobile saw a reduction of 8 million subscribers, while china unicom had 7.8 million fewer subscribers, and china telecom lost 5.6 million users. firms that use advanced digital technologies and invested to become more digital as a response to covid-19 (in %) zoom video meeting in 2021 teleconferencing has been used to replace cancelled events as well as daily during the covid-19 pandemic, many firms began providing services online. business meetings and social contacts. teleconference companies such as zoom video communications have seen a sharp increase in usage, accompanied by technical issues such as bandwidth overcrowding and social problems such as zoombombing. however, teleconferencing has also contributed to the development of distance education. thanks to this technology, virtual happy hours for "quarantinis" (mixed drinks) and even virtual dance parties have been organised. a survey conducted in 2021 found that while the coronavirus outbreak has boosted overall digitization, it has also widened the digital divide, specifically across firms. leading businesses advanced digitization more frequently, but some enterprises fell behind and were less likely to convert digitally during the pandemic. 53% of surveyed firms in the european union had previously implemented advanced digital technology and invested more into other digital technologies. 34% of non-digital eu firms viewed the pandemic as a chance to begin investing in their digital transformation. according to the survey, 16% of eu enterprises regard to access to digital infrastructure to be a substantial barrier to investment. a growing digital divide is also emerging - in the united states, despite non-digital enterprises being more dynamic than in the european union, 48% of enterprises that were non-digital before to the pandemic utilized the crisis to begin investing in digital technologies, compared to 64% of firms that had previously implemented advanced digital technology. digital infrastructure is essential for digital transformation. many eu areas have the potential to enable investment in the digital transformation of firms by expanding access to faster internet. this influences organizations' decisions to go digital. across europe, access to digital infrastructure is already increasing, with the great majority of homes now having access to broadband, but more has to be done to promote the spread of fast connections. there is a large proportion of enterprises citing digital infrastructure as a key barrier to investment and development across nations and regions. one out of every five businesses in the region of europe and central asia launched or grew their online business or distribution of products and services, while one out of