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For the month of November 2020, APBN takes a dive into the genetic links behind the diabetes epidemic in Asia. Looking specifically at genetic markers for diabetes in Asian populations, researchers have discovered unique identifiers that could promote development precision medicine for diabetes in the Asia Pacific region. In the Spotlights, we explore innovative research from the 2020 Tokyo Tech Research Showcase and how they are helping to build a greener and sustainable future. Check out in our columns the future of commercial space flight and how space tourism is becoming a reality.

The Polar Sitter mission provides a continuous observation of one of the Earth poles throughout the year. In order to perform this mission, equilibrium points of the circular restricted 3-body problem with radiation pressure have been chosen as candidate positions for the satellite. The tilt of the Earth spin axis with respect to the ecliptic plane prevents the sailcraft from keeping a constant equilibrium location over the poles, thus causing increasing values of the angle-of-sight between the satellite position and the North Pole. In this paper we show that, by studying the equilibrium points obtained with the use of solar sail propulsion, a minimisation of the angle-of-sight is possible, providing a significant improvement in the orbit geometry.