Science, Space, & Robotics - Page 185

If you happened to miss the news, NASA officially touched down on Mars with its Perseverance rover last week.

Last week, NASA landed its Perseverance rover and Ingenuity helicopter on the surface of the Red Planet, and now we have a video posted to Bloomberg Technology YouTube channel of the rover landing on the surface. The video can be found below.

Now, the Perseverance rover has captured its first 360-degree view of the Red Planet's surface where it landed. NASA explained that the video was captured with the rover's color Navigation Cameras, or "Navcams". For those that don't know, Perseverance is equipped with 19 cameras located all over the rover, which makes Perseverance the most equipped Mars rover to date when it comes to cameras. For more information on this story, visit this link here.

NASA has successfully landed its Perseverance rover on Mars, with ground controllers at NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, California celebrating the news just hours ago.

The Perseverance rover took just over 11 minutes to land on the Red Planet, with NASA reaching the tip of Mars' atmosphere at 3:48PM EST (8:48PM GMT). It was at this point that NASA refers to as the "seven minutes of terror" which is the time between the entry, descend, and landing of the Perseverance rover.

Once the rover had landed on the surface of Mars, it took 11 minutes and 22 seconds for the signal of its confirmed landing to transmit between Mars and back here to Earth. That journey is pretty long though, at close to 300 million miles... a journey that NASA started back on July 31, 2020.

Hewlett Packard Enterprise (HPE) has teamed with Microsoft on getting a PC onto the International Space Station connected to Azure. HPE has now sent their new Spaceborne Computer-2 system up and onto the ISS.

The new Spaceborne Computer-2 system will be connected to the cloud and into Microsoft Azure, through NASA and HPE ground stations. What this new Spaceborne Computer-2 system allows astronauts on the International Space Station to do is work on data processing up on the ISS, versus having to send it back down to Earth.

The news release for the Azure connection says: "Astronauts and space explorers deserve access to the best cloud computing technologies and advanced processing at the ultimate edge. Sometimes analysis needs to be done immediately at the edge where every passing moment counts, and other times the analysis is so massively complex that it can only be performed with the power of the hyperscale cloud".

Researchers have made a discovery about what kind of conditions life can still live in as experts drilled deep into the Antarctic ice shelf.

The discovery of this new life has challenged the assumption that life cannot live in the conditions below the Filchner-Ronne ice shelf. Scientists from the British Antarctic Survey drilled through 2,860 feet of ice, and used a Go Pro to make the discovery, which also wasn't intentional. Huw Griffiths, one of the researchers who made the discovery, said in a Twitter video, "The area underneath these ice shelves is probably one of the least-known habitats on Earth."

Griffiths also said to The Guardian, "Never in a million years would we have thought about looking for this kind of life, because we didn't think it would be there." The researchers discovered the stalked animals can be found in the image below outlined in red. For comparison, the sponges have been highlighted in white, and as you can see, the animals in red have long stalks, and the sponges don't.

NASA is no stranger to capturing absolutely stunning images of planets in our solar system, and this time around, the space agency is highlighting Jupiter.

Jupiter is the largest planet in our solar system, and being a gas giant, the surface can show off some incredible storms with some beautiful combinations of colors. Since 2016, NASA's June spacecraft has been orbiting Jupiter, and throughout that time, the satellite has managed to capture some stunning photos of the distant giant planet.

On the NASA website, NASA has detailed what we see in the image that can be found here. NASA says that "scientists discovered that Jupiter's powerful atmospheric jet streams extend far deeper than previously imagined." Additionally, NASA also points out the Great Red Spot, which can be seen on the horizon. If you are interested in reading more about this story, visit this link here.

Elon Musk has recently been featured in an episode on Joe Rogan's podcast, and within the first five minutes of the interview, Musk reveals something quite amusing about the Starship rocket design.

Elon Musk has been hot in the news lately with all of his Twitter posts about DOGE coin, and now Musk has appeared on The Joe Rogan Experience podcast, where he talked about many different topics over a few hours. To kick the podcast off, Musk asked Rogan if he had ever seen the movie The Dictator starring Sacha Baron Cohen, Rogan said, he "never saw that one".

Musk continues to explain a scene in the movie where Sacha Baron Cohen, playing the character Aladeen, a brutal dictator. A team of researchers is building Aladeen nuclear weapons, and when shown what the researchers have built, Aladeen says that the missile "needs to be pointy". Musk says that the reason the SpaceX Starship nose is pointy is because of this scene.

Researchers from MIT's Computer Science and Artificial Intelligence Laboratory (CSAIL) have created a super interesting new system, which is capable of building drones, robots and other electronic devices all on its own.

Introducing, the LaserFactory:

MIT's interesting new LaserFactory is a two-part system that uses not just the machine itself, but also software for designing electronic devices. This makes it much easier, as it shows in the video above, to make electronic devices at a much faster rate.

Antarctica is one of the few places on Earth that is yet to be spoiled by humans, which is why many scientists and researchers are using it to study Earth's history.

Researchers and scientists have been planning for some time to drill through the overlying ice sheet. The main goal the researchers have is to drill through the ice and sample the untouched waters of a hidden lake that is located beneath the Antarctic ice sheet. According to Dr. John Priscu, "We joined up with NASA, and using satellite images, we could see flat spots all over the continent, and this is where the ice sheet floats over these lakes."

The researchers began their drilling, and as the drilling commenced, NASA snapped "something rising above the ice". According to Dr. Priscu, "We got to the bottom, and there was a lake there. 30 years of ideas, thinking this isn't a dead place, over 12 years of suggesting about the presence of lakes and rivers and there they were." Dr. Priscu also said that the researchers have gathered both indirect and direct evidence of "beautiful river systems like you would see coming out of the Rocky Mountains."

Elon Musk is on a huge roll right now, tweeting out about Bitcoin, DOGE and seeing the price skyrocket, and everything in between -- but now he's talking about Cyberpunk 2077 again.

In a tweet just a few minutes ago, the SpaceX founder re-tweeted Neuralink and then asked for people to please consider working at Neuralink. He said that their short-term goals were solving brain and spin injuries, while their long-term goals were the human/AI symbiosis, adding that the "latter will be species-level important".

But in the follow-up tweet to that, Musk said it "feels weird helping make (hopefully good version of) Cyberpunk come true". Cyberpunk 2077 is filled with body modifications that pretty much are like superpowers: enhanced vision, robotic arms, weapons coming out of your body, and everything in between.

Thousands, and if not millions of people around the world, have said they have seen a UFO at one stage in their life, and now the CIA has provided the public with "all" of its documents on the subject.

The CIA has made it possible to download "all" of its files on unidentified flying objects (UFO), stating that what is available for download is "all" of the agency's files on the UFO's. The documents have since been published on The Black Vault website, which is run by freedom of information activist John Greenewald Jr. John Greenewald Jr caused the CIA to release this information after submitting 10,000 freedom of information requests over many years.

RT reports that more than 2.2 million pages have been uploaded to The Black Vault website. Some of the documents' contents mention unexplained encounters with what the CIA calls an Unidentified Aerial Phenomena (UAP), or UFO, for layman's terms. Additionally, some of the documents mention a mysterious "wonder explosion" in a small Russian city. For more information on this story, visit this link here.

Everyone wants life before the global pandemic to come back, but unfortunately, 'normal life' globally won't be returning in 2021.

The devastating news came out on Monday from the World Health Organization chief scientist, Dr. Soumya Swaminathan, who said that even as countries around the world begin rolling out COVID-19 vaccination strategies, the world still won't achieve herd immunity in 2021. Dr. Swaminathan said, "Even as vaccines start protecting the most vulnerable, we're not going to achieve any levels of population immunity or herd immunity in 2021."

It was previously estimated that for the world to achieve herd immunity against COVID-19 that 70% of the global population would need to be vaccinated. Now, scientists and researchers are worried that due to the extremely infectious nature of the virus, 70% may not be enough, and a higher percentage of population may be required to get vaccinated to reach the herd immunity threshold. For more information on this story, check out this link here.

Petpuls Labs sure has unveiled something that feels like it's ripped right out of the future, or at least from Pixar's movie 'Up' -- a new AI-powered dog collar.

The new AI-powered dog collar uses Petpuls Labs' voice recognition technology in order to detect, and track 5 different emotional states of your dog. The AI-based dog collar will know if your dog is happy, anxious, angry, sad, or relaxed. We all know dogs love to sleep, so it will also act as a sleep tracker that gives you better insights into how you dog is sleeping, and how it might feel when it comes to its emotional, and physical well-being.

You just simply attach the silicon collar with the small AI-powered device installed into it, onto your dog and then pair it over Wi-FI to your smartphone through an iOS or Android app. The AI that the company has used uses an algorithm that determines the mood of your dog from a database of over 10,000 bark samples from over 50 breeds of dogs.

Kohler is taking a few steps towards the future with some more smart bathroom technology unveiling at CES 2021 this week, with the new Stillness Bath.

The new Kohler Stillness Bath is a technology-powered bath that the company took inspiration from a Japanese forest bath, which is means to be a sort of Fortress of Solitude from the noisy, hectic world. Kohler will have water filling from the bottom of the Stillness Bath, spilling into a wooden moat -- and I have to say it looks pretty damn incredible.

Splash in a bit of "full spectrum" mood lighting, fog generation, and an "experience tower" that emits nice aromas into your room. I'm sure with that full-body experience you're going to feel very, very relaxed after that.

Most people are happy to say goodbye to 2020 as it was a very rough year, but if it makes you feel any better, even the Earth was affected in 2020.

In 2020, the 28 fastest days since 1960 were recorded for the Earth spinning. While that may not seem like a big deal for everyday life, it is a big deal for international timekeepers that are using the ultra-accurate atomic clocks to meter out the Coordinated Universal Time (UTC), which is then used by everyone's clocks in everyday life. The astronomical time is determined by how long it takes the Earth to do a full rotation, and when the recorded time deviates by more than 0.4 seconds, the UTC will be adjusted accordingly.

Since the late 1960s and early 1970s, scientists have observed through satellites that the Earth's rotation speed has been slowing, which has then caused researchers to add a "leap second" to the end of June or December. However, researchers have now observed that the Earth's spin has increased in speed, which has now caused scientists to begin a discussion about a negative leap second (subtracting a second).

Japan always feels like it is the country where these types of things from the future should be tested first, with Panasonic testing the public acceptance of delivery robots in a Japanese "smart town".

The first phase of this self-driving robot delivery system on public roads began in November 2020, and continued through the end of 2020. The second phase will begin in February 2021, in just a few weeks -- where the robots will begin delivering goods into residents in the area where Panasonic can "test the acceptability of the new delivery service experience".

Panasonic's new delivery robot will roll through neighborhoods at up to 2.5 miles per hour, or 4 kilometres per hour. They will be monitored remotely by human operators at a control center, who will take over if required -- but without them, the delivery robots are doing it all on their own.

Uh, I can't believe I'm writing this -- but here we are just five days into 2021 and we have something from the future released in a portable Spider-Man style bandage gun that sprays a web onto you, healing you with nanofibers.

Nanomedic Technologies is behind the new Spincare Wound Care System, which is a portable, battery-powered system that has its chamber loaded with the future tech, and shot out of it in a spider-style web that covers wounds and uses nanofibers to super-charge skin regeneration. Incredible stuff.

Chen Barak, CEO of Nanomedic explains: "The Spincare introduces an innovative treatment option into the advanced wound care arena. with inherent characteristics and advantages that outperform any and all traditional wound care methodologies, fit a vast spectrum of wounds and injuries, and allows the patients to live while they heal".

Boston Dynamics is showing off the latest, and quite simply incredible engineering prowess in having its most advanced robot yet dancing -- with fully choreographed moves I might add -- to "Do you love me" by The Contours.

The robots were dancing with incredible precision, doing the twist, mashed potato and other moves that Tesla CEO and AI enthusiast Elon Musk tweeting: "This is not CGI". Looking at the video it's a scary thought, first of how far AI and robotics has come and two that our robotic overlords are better dancers than most of us.

Boston Dynamics was recently acquired by Hyundai earlier this year, in a deal worth almost $900 million.

A new mysterious small marine reptile that dates back 150 million years ago, has been identified as a new species found in a Late Jurassic deep marine deposit along the English Channel coastline in Dorset, England.

Interestingly the new small marine reptile is known as the Thalassodraco etchesi or Etches sea dragon -- with SciTech Daily reporting that this newly-discovered species might have been able to dive to extreme depths. SciTech reports: "The aquatic reptile has been determined to be part of the group known as ichthyosaurs, which were streamlined marine predators from the Late Jurassic period".

Paleontologist Megan L. Jacobs said: "This ichthyosaur has several differences that makes it unique enough to be its own genus and species. New Late Jurassic ichthyosaurs in the United Kingdom are extremely rare, as these creatures have been studied for 200 years. We knew it was new almost instantly, but it took about a year to make thorough comparisons with all other Late Jurassic ichthyosaurs to make certain our instincts were correct. It was very exciting to not be able to find a match".

SpaceX will be testing its new Super Heavy booster in "a few months" from now according to Elon Musk, with the Super Heavy booster being used to fly Starship and its orbital launches and deeper space missions -- it'll also be how SpaceX will land on Mars soon.

Musk said that the company will be testing the Super Heavy booster at its two launch pads down in Boca Chica, Texas with new prototype rockets to be tested on each launch pad. The company recently began setting up its new SN9 prototype of Starship at its Texas testing facility, before this news began to float out.

SpaceX will have an engineering marvel with Super Heavy standing at a large 240 feet tall with 28 Raptor engines in total, with Super Heavy recently seeing a prototype of the next-gen heavy-lift rocket exploding once it landed after a high-altitude test flight in Texas.

The Korea Superconducting Tokamak Advanced Research (KSTAR) has set a new record, with the superconducting fusion device also known as the Korean artificial sun blasting away with an ion temperature of 100 million degrees (Celsius) for 20 seconds.

The test was conducted on November 24, 2020 with the KSTAR Research Center at the Korea Institute of Fusion Energy (KFE) announcing that it was working in a joint research program between the Seoul National University (SNU) and Columbia University of the United States.

This is a big first, as no other fusion devices have been able to maintain over 100 million degrees or higher for over 10 seconds -- they've breached the world record to end out 2020, but not been able to maintain it for long. KTAR was able to breach the 20 second mark by improving the performance of the Internal Transport Barrier (ITB) mode.