Science, Space, & Robotics - Page 188

This past Saturday (August 29th), the launch of the newest US spy satellite was unfortunately delayed, and a new attempt at the launch won't be taken until a week's time.

According to Space.com, the launch of the new US spy satellite called NROL-44 was aboard the Delta IV Heavy rocket constructed by United Launch Alliance (ULA). United Launch Alliance said they had to abort the mission just three seconds before the planned launch due to a failure with the rocket's ignition sequence. A representative with the ULA said the team is currently reviewing all of the data to establish a correct path forward.

While the launch was aborted, ULA president and CEO Tory Bruno said on Twitter that "the bird is in good health", and that even though the mission was aborted, the system "functioned as intended to protect the vehicle and payload." As for the satellite itself, no one besides the National Reconnaissance Office and the US military knows what the exact purpose of the NROL-44 satellite is. The National Reconnaissance Office oversees all US spy satellite operations and has kept a very tight seal on NROL-44's mission and design.

The White House has just announced a large $1 billion plan to build out over 12 federal research facilities, where they will have the sole task of researching AI (artificial intelligence) and quantum computing.

A few issues have plagued the US in these areas, with a lack of talent in AI and quantum information science -- and then the Trump administration stopping high-skilled H-1B visa holders from coming into the US. This move by the Trump administration wants to see the US stop from falling behind other countries.

AI and quantum computing is the future, with the Trump administration and White House concerned that the US falling behind could be a matter of national security. This is where the $1.2 billion National Quantum Initiative Act comes into play, with 5 of the new research centers inside of the Department of Energy gets $625 million to play with a bunch of exciting technologies.

Astronomers have located an asteroid that is on track with colliding into Earth, and the expected collision date is a day before the U.S election.

If 2020 wasn't already filled with surprise curve balls, it certainly is now, or its at least close to it. Now, to add on top of everything the world has already experienced, scientists have identified an asteroid called 2018VP1, and according to the Center for Near Objects Studies at NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory its trajectory is on course to collide with Earth on November 2nd, which is one day before the presidential election scheduled for November 3rd.

Palomar Observatory in California found the asteroid back in 2018, hence the name it picked up. The observatory believes there's three potential impacts "based on 21 observations spanning 12.968 days", luckily, the observatory believes there's only a 0.41% chance that it will actually hit our planet. Additionally, NASA researchers don't consider 2018VP1 a "potentially hazardous object".

I've referred to Elon Musk as the 'real life Tony Stark' for years and years now, but now the man is actually going to do it -- put Jarvis in or around our heads through a BCI and Neuralink.

BCI and Neuralink? BCI = Brain Computer Interface, and Neuralink = the Elon Musk founded company that is making it happen. Neuralink is building out its brain computer interface, or BCI, with a robot that would surgically install it -- and all its required components, into your brain.

Once the BCI chips and components are installed into your brain (I can't believe I'm typing this) they will provide you with what would be the totally next generation of computing -- BCI. Giving you the ability of controlling computers and other technology devices with just your thoughts.

We are beginning to hear more about TSMC's next-gen 3nm process technology, with the company detailing it during its annual Technology Symposium.

TSMC, the Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Company, has detailed its new 3nm (N3) process node. The company said it would go into risk production in 2021, and then into mass production in the second half of 2022. In between now and then, it will have 5nm (N5) which it also provided some details on.

The new 5nm node will be followed up by the 5nm+ (N5P) -- and somewhere in the middle of that we have the 4nm (N4) node -- both N5P and N4 will be enhanced versions of N5 -- which is already in high volume manufacturing.

NASA has taken to its 'NASA Goddard' YouTube channel to release a great guide to 'near-light-speed travel', and what you need to consider.

The video NASA has released is quite funny, as it has assumed the viewer has already worked out how humans can travel at near light speed, which is 186,282 miles per second (299,792 kilometers per second). At the moment, humans haven't yet worked out how to effectively transport humans throughout the cosmos at those speeds, but NASA's video gives some pointers to consider once we figure it out.

The animated video touches on some facts that will need to be considered once humans reach this level of travel. NASA reminds us of travel times, the distances between popular destinations, and shielding for the spacecraft. If you are interested in watching the video for yourself, check out the above link. On a personal note, I really like these short animated videos containing a nice bite-size amount of interesting facts. If NASA happens to read this, keep doing these!

NASA has announced that an SUV-sized asteroid just made the closest-known approach to Earth, but it didn't collide with the surface.

According to a NASA blog post found on its website, an SUV-sized asteroid just fly by Earth, and as NASA states, this fly-by has marked the closest Near-Earth Asteroid. The asteroid is named Asteroid 2020 QG, and measures in at roughly 10 to 20 feet (3 to 6 meters) across, which is very small by asteroid standards.

Asteroid 2020 QG passed Earth at just 1,830 miles (2,950 kilometers), and if it happened to be on the trajectory with Earth, it would have become a fireball and broken up in Earth's atmosphere. Paul Chodas, director of the Center for Near-Earth Object Studies (CNEOS) at NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Southern California, said, "It's really cool to see a small asteroid come by this close, because we can see the Earth's gravity dramatically bend its trajectory. Our calculations show that this asteroid got turned by 45 degrees or so as it swung by our planet."

It's not every day that you hear environmental officials telling the public to kill life, but sometimes that is the best course of action to defend against an invading creature.

Wildlife authorities across the Eastern United States are now telling residents to be on the constant lookout for the bug seen in the above image. This species of bug is called a spotted lanternfly, and they are native to Asia, but unfortunately, they spreading in select areas across the United States. Wildlife authorities have warned that the spotted lanternfly can severely impact many native US plant species, including grapevines, apple trees, and hops.

According to the New York State Departments of Agriculture and Markets, Environmental Conservation, and Office of Parks, Recreation, and Historic Preservation, the spotted lanternfly is a big threat to over 70 plant species found in America. So, what is the correct course of action? Well, anyone who sees one of these bugs should file a report as officials want to keep track of the spread. Additionally, if you spot one of these bugs, you can always introduce it to the bottom of your shoe.

If you have ever seen lightning before, you would know its color just how fast it is, but what if you looked up at the sky and saw red lightning?

Well, red lightning isn't fake; in fact, it's actually a phenomenon scientists have been studying since 1989 when it was first discovered. The red lightning is called "sprites", and has been spotted on every continent except for Antarctica. Sprites only last a tenth of a second and are generally never seen by those observers on the ground, unless you are hunting for them like Stephen Hummel is.

Hummel is an expert on dark skies at the Austin McDonald Observatory, and back at the start of July, Hummel captured an incredible photo while he was on his vantage point on Mount Locke in the Davis Mountains of West Texas. Sprites usually look like alien jellyfish-style creatures hanging down from the above atmosphere, but in fact, they are the product of super-fast lighting bursts that occur 37 to 50 miles in the sky. If you are interested in more information, check out this link here.

You don't need to be a scientist to understand that the mining industry is, at least to some degree, impacting Earth negatively. So, how do we solve this problem?

Well, there are a few ways humans can solve the pollution issue from the mining industry, and one of them is to take our mining ventures off Earth and into space. As explained by Kurzgesagt in the above video, many of the metals found in very common devices are metals that are ripped out of Earth, and through the extraction process there's a loss of "biodiversity soil erosion, and contamination of surface water, groundwater, and soil."

Luckily, these same metals are also found in space but are trapped inside the surface of asteroids. If humans pooled their resources together to attempt landing on one of these asteroids to harvest its resources, and when considering the sheer size and resource capacity of some asteroids floating close to Earth, we could potentially rule out any mining done of Earth altogether. The idea would be to change one of the resource-heavy asteroids' trajectory and redirect it, so it was much closer to Earth.

It looks like the next big technological leap for mankind could be wireless power transmission, something New Zealand-based Emrod is working on right... now.

Emrod has created a method of both safely, and most importantly, wirelessly transmitting electrical power over long distances without the need of copper wire. Emrod is now in the starting stages of working with New Zealand's second-largest power distributor with this technology.

Wireless power isn't something new -- with Nikola Tesla first playing around with it in the late 1800s and then powered light bulbs over two miles away with a gigantic 140-foot Tesla coil in the 1890s. But now Emrod is coming out of nowhere and doing something very similar, with the backing of a gigantic power company in New Zealand.

This is quite possibly one of the largest game-changing discoveries of the last few decades, where scientists have effectively turned red bricks into supercapacitors.

How? By coating the bricks with a polymer containing intrusive nanofibers, that turn red bricks into something that can both conduct, and store electricity. The red brick is made up simple red clay, which is a key part of researchers making this discovery.

The researchers explained: "The red color of a brick originates from hematite, a pigment first utilized by humans 73,000 years ago and serving today as a low-cost naturally abundant inorganic precursor for catalysts, magnets, and alloys. State-of-the-art energy storage materials are also produced from hematite".

At the start of the year, astronomers were observing a massive star dimming, and the original synopsis was that it was about to explode.

Since then, astronomers think they have determined the cause of one of the brightest stars in the night sky rapidly dimming, and the reason is that Betelgeuse ejected a large hot dense cloud of material into space that later cooled to form dust. This cooled dust cloud then covered most of the star's light, which from Earth made it look like it was dimming.

If you are wondering what Betelgeuse is, it's a red supergiant, which is the largest form of star. To put things into perspective for just how big the red supergiant is, if Betelgeuse were in the center of our solar system its surface would reach out to Jupiter. Additionally, astronomers suspect that Betelgeuse's life is coming to an end, which will result in the red supergiant going supernova and explode.

I think at this point we all know UFOs are real and it's only a matter of time before we're introduced to another race of beings from somewhere so far away we can't even fathom it. We knew the Pentagon's UFO department would turn dark to light in regards to UFOs soon, but soon is now very soon.

CNN is now reporting that the Pentagon is forming a new task force that will investigate UFO sightings by US military aircraft, "according to two defense officials". Deputy Secretary of Defense David Norquist will oversee the task force, which will "be officially unveiled in the next few days, according to the officials".

Previously on UFOs we had Eric W. Davis who was a consultant on the Pentagon's UFO program, describing the mysterious UFOs as "off-world vehicles not made on this earth". That article blew up so much that Joe Rogan himself even shared it, with the The New York Times article titled 'No Longer in Shadows, Pentagon's U.F.O. Unit Will Make Some Findings Public' detailing it all.

NASA has had its eyes on Mars for quite some time, and as a result the space agency has put satellites around the planet to observe its beauty.

One of the satellites is the Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter (MRO), and its equipped its with incredible cameras that capture the true nature of the Red Planet. Since NASA's missions are funded with public money, the results of the missions are available for the public to view and download. Today, we have a bunch of gorgeous photos of the surface of Mars, and each are full resolution for you to download.

NASA announced on August 12th it was celebrating the Mars Reconnaise Orbiter's 15th anniversary by publishing the below selection of images. The images include impact craters from meteors, sand, smoke, and more. If you are interested in reading more about this topic, check out this link here.

NASA has used the famous Hubble Space Telescope to do science that will one day be used as a means of detecting alien life on other planets.

According to a recent blog post from NASA, and the above video, NASA took advantage of the lunar eclipse by using Hubble and the Moon to observe the light reflecting through Earth's atmosphere. As the video explains, NASA used Hubble to observe the light reflecting off the surface of the Moon and beamed back into Earth's atmosphere, and by observing the wavelengths of light, NASA was able to detect Earth's ozone.

So, why is this important? By NASA successfully doing this experiment with Earth, they have proven they could use the same technique with other high-power telescopes that are tasked with finding and examining exoplanets. Here's what NASA said, "Hubble did not look at Earth directly. Instead, the astronomers used the Moon as a mirror to reflect sunlight, which had passed through Earth's atmosphere, and then reflected back towards Hubble."

SpaceX has said that its satellite internet service Starlink, has received "extraordinary demand" throughout the United States, so much so that it has forced them to have further talks with the FCC to increase the authorized user terminals from 1 million to 5 million.

The US space agency was forced to file a request with the Federal Communications Commission on Friday, where the Elon Musk founded SpaceX asked the FXX to increase the number of authorized user terminals from 1 million, to 5 million.

This is how large the "extraordinary demand" for Starlink has been.

If you happened to miss what could be considered the biggest news for human space travel in a while, here's a quick update:

SpaceX successfully completed its round mission of taking NASA astronauts Bob Behnken and Doug Hurley to the International Space Station. This mission was historic, as the last time an American crewed space capsule launched and splashed down off the US coast was in 1975 from the Apollo-Soyuz joint U.S.-Soviet Union space mission. Overall, things went quite smoothly, but there were a few hiccups in retrieving both astronauts.

Those hiccups weren't technical, but more so, social, as what seems to be a dozen or so boaters came to check out the landing site for Crew Dragon. While everyone can probably understand a certain level of curiosity is justified, but to approach the craft itself is something else entirely. Things that arrive from space aren't automatically safe because they are back on Earth, and an example of that is the Crew Dragon capsule as the recovery team detected nitrous tetroxide, which is used as a propellant for the Dragon's maneuvering rockets and is also toxic when inhaled.

Elon Musk is undoubtedly jumping up and down in excitement as SpaceX has marked its first successful astronaut mission for NASA.

Back at the start of June, SpaceX launched the Crew Dragon capsule that had aboard NASA astronauts Bob Behnken and Doug Hurley. The destination was the International Space Station (ISS), and both astronauts, along with the Crew Dragon capsule, arrived there safely. Now, the end part of SpaceX's historic Demo-2 mission has come to fruition - landing both astronauts back on Earth safely.

Crew Dragon departed from the ISS and began its descent back down to planet Earth, and at precisely 2:48 p.m. EDT on August 2nd, SpaceX's capsule splashed down off the coast of Pensacola, Florida. SpaceX's Crew Dragon splashing down marked the first commercially built and operated spacecraft to carry humans to and from orbit, and also marked the first splashdown by U.S astronauts in 45 years.

Elon Musk is a man of scienec, but he's also a man of memes. Tesla Motors stock is pumping like an all-night party and it's only 4:20AM, and now Musk tweets that aliens built the pyramids.

Musk tweeted it a few hours ago, saying: "Aliens built the pyramids obv" out of nowhere.

The billionaire entrepreneur and real-life Elon Musk isn't shy of tweeting out what some people would think is ridiculous, but "aliens built the pyramids" is a pretty big thing to say when you're the founder of companies like SpaceX and Tesla.