The Third Era began in earnest in 1981, with the launch of the first Space Shuttle, Columbia, a mostly reusable workhorse designed to ferry astronauts, research experiments, satellites and equipment into Earth orbit.

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Miguel Nicolelis, a pioneer of research into brain-computer interfaces at Duke University in North Carolina, worked on the experiments with scientists at the Safra International Institute for Neuroscience of Natal in his native Brazil.

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