Science, Space, & Robotics - Page 208

NASA astronauts Christina Koch and Jessica Meir made history this past Friday with a successful spacewalk mission to replace a broken part on the International Space Station's (ISS) power grid.

The astronauts main goal was to replace a faulty 19-year old charge-regulating device for one of the new batteries that was installed last week. NASA Administrator Jim Bridenstine spectated the historical event from the NASA's HQ in Washington, here is what he had to say about the achievement "We have the right people doing the right job at the right time. They are an inspiration to people all over the world including me. And we're very excited to get this mission underway."

For those that don't know, the astronauts aboard the ISS are replacing old nickel-hydrogen batteries with new next-gen lithium ion batteries that are expected to last the rest of the floating laboratories lifespan. If you are after a more in-depth explanation at what these batteries are powering, check out my breakdown post here. In summary, congratulations to both Christina Koch and Jessica Meir for this achievement, women around the world are no doubt looking up to them both.

In some news that should be categorized as "why the hell did they do this", researchers from Telecom Paris have made an artificial skin that has some truly unique properties. Check out this video:

The new artificial human skin is interesting, as it reacts to stroking, pinching, tapping, and even tickling... with the researchers covering a smartphone with it and using it on the back of the device. They also used it on a smartwatch, and I'm sure it'll have a million-and-one use cases, but for now I'm just scratching my head.

Skin-On Interfaces are "sensitive skin-like input methods than can be added to existing devices to increase their capabilities" which is explained on this website. This project saw the researchers wanting to make the "perfect human interface that is the skin for existing devices". The researchers took inspiration from human skin in order to design the "perfect artificial skin".

Researchers out of the Johns Hopkins University have performed numerous experiments on mosquito's regarding their sense of smell and how repellents affect the insects.

According to the above video, Chris Potter, Associate Professor of Neuroscience at the Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine discusses that him and his fellow scientists have been studying a specific type of mosquito called Anopheles. The scientists took Anopheles and genetically engineered them to produce a color on their nose when the neurons detect a sense of smell.

Once the scientists successfully genetically engineered the mosquito's they gathered to most common insect repellents and puffed the oder onto their noses. To the scientists surprises, the repellents didn't raise any color in the mosquito's noses, meaning that the insect repellents actually hide the natural 'human scent' that mosquito's would usually detect. This means that insect repellents act as an 'invisibility cloak' for humans.

Rocket Labs can now add another successful rocket launch to its already eight launches the company has under its belt.

The rocket launched from the LC-1 launch site in New Zealand and as the 'As The Crow Flies' mission took to the at precisely 9:22 PM ET (6:22 PM PT) well deserved celebrations were underway for the company. Rocket Labs now has nine successful Electron launches in total and eight for commercial customers. This launch in particular carried Astro Digitals next-generation geocommunications satellite called 'Palisade'.

According to Rocket Lab founder and CEO, Peter Beck who spoke to TechCrunch, "Electron is a launch on demand service - we're ready when the launch customer is". From this comment it seems that Beck is attempting to showcase how versatile the launch services are for his company and how well Rocket Labs can adapt to the needs of the consumer wanting to get something up into space.

So you want to go to space? Well, you will have to save every penny you have got because commercial spaceflight company Virgin Galactic are raising their ticket prices.

Back in 2004, more than 600 space tourists purchased tickets to go to space via Virgin's SpaceShipTwo for $200,000 each. In 2013, the company raised the ticket pricing to $250,000 and now according to Virgin Galactic CEO Georgo Whitesides, space tourists should expect another raise in ticket price before commercial launches expect to begin in 2020.

Due to the many delays of the tourist spaceflight, such as in 2014 Virgin's SpaceShipTwo Unity trial ending in a tragedy that killed one pilot and critically injured another. Virgin has had to continuously delay commercial spaceflights so much that purchasing tourists have been asking the company for refunds on their tickets. Whitesides says that "I think it's going to be a few years" before ticket prices reduce to the expected $60,000 each, but before that happens prices will actually increase due to the company believing they accidentally undervalued initial pricing.

Under Armour has teamed with Virgin Galactic on some new space apparel, something that Virgin Galactic passengers will wear when they're throwing down $250,000 to fly into space.

The new spacesuit looks pretty slick, like it's ripped right out of Star Trek with a blend of Fallout 76 with Under Armour retrofitting the UA RUSH -- the mineral-infused fabric that it sells to athletes. Under Armour says that its new spacesuit will help regulate temperatures and sweat management, which is very important.

I'm digging the blue style that UA has gone with here, but an interesting fact is that the gold accents used on the suit are inspired by rays of sunlight. Under Armour adds that each iteration of the spacesuit went through heaps of testing, with UA getting pilots, spaceship engineers, medical professionals and astronaut instructors to test them out.

Elon Musk must never sleep -- I think that much is a given, with SpaceX filing the necessary paperwork with the International Telecommunications Union (which governs the international use of global bandwidth) for its Starlink initiative. Starlink is SpaceX's grand plans of launching the world's largest low-Earth-orbit broadband constellation.

SpaceX wants to send 30,000 satellites into orbit for its Starlink global broadband constellation, with the private space firm already approved to launch 12,000 satellites. SpaceX needs more because it wants to ensure great network speed and wants to meet demand "responsibly".

In a statement to TechCrunch, a SpaceX spokesperson explained: "As demand escalates for fast, reliable internet around the world, especially for those where connectivity is non-existent, too expensive or unreliable, SpaceX is taking steps to responsibly scale Starlink's total network capacity and data density to meet the growth in users' anticipated needs".

Elon Musk, CEO of SpaceX, caused quite the fervor among viewers as he smoked from a joint on an episode of Joe Rogan's popular podcast, The Joe Rogan Experience.

If you would like to see the full 2hr podcast video, it can be found here. It gives a very interesting look at Elon Musk, the man behind Tesla and SpaceX.

Now with that understanding of the events prior. NASA took this as a warning sign and wanted to step in since SpaceX is a contractor for NASA projects such as the construction of space capsules. While California is one of many states that have passed laws allowing for recreational use of marijuana, the drug is still a controlled substance and illegal on the federal level.

NASA has debuted a new press release that details that some changes are coming to the spacewalk schedule that is going to happen aboard the International Space Station (ISS).

At 4:30pm today, NASA will be hosting a media conference that will be streamed on their website. Throughout this conference, Kenny Todd, manager of International Space Station Operations Integration, and Megan McArthur, deputy chief of NASA's Astronaut Office will be taking live questions about the recent changes that have been put in place regarding the spacewalk scheduling. For those out of the loop, NASA and the astronauts aboard the ISS are upgrading the space station's power system through replacing old batteries with new ones, more on that here.

The space station managers have decided to postpone three spacewalks that were previously planned to be executed this week and next week. Here's why, according to the press release "Space station managers have postponed three spacewalks previously scheduled for this and next week to install new batteries in order to first replace a faulty battery charge/discharge unit (BCDU)". The press release continues and says "The BCDU failed to activate following the Oct. 11 installation of new lithium-ion batteries on the space station's truss. The three spacewalks previously planned to continue the installation of additional lithium-ion batteries will be rescheduled."

The world of sex robots is an interesting one where I've previously reported that sex robots with "coding errors" could strangle, and kill you in the act -- but now let's move into the design of "ethical" sex robots.

These ethical sex robots will have to provide their partner with consent before they have sex, with university researchers from Australia and the Netherlands seeing a future where "consent modules" will be used in sex robots. These consent modules would require the sex robot to give consent before sex.

Anco Peeters of Australia's University of Wollongong and Pim Haselager, an associate professor at The Netherlands' Radboud University recently published an article that talked about a future where "ethical" sex robots were a thing. The research article explains: "We propose that virtue ethics can be used to address ethical issues central to discussions about sex robots. In particular, we argue virtue ethics is well equipped to focus on the implications of sex robots for human moral character. Our evaluation develops in four steps".

Astronomers that have been observing the comet that arrived in our solar system from deep space, discovered that the comet is much more ordinary than first expected.

Sometimes space discoveries aren't all celebrations, as sometimes what was expected to be found is a bit more ordinary than originally thought. This is one of those times, as amateur astronomer, Gennady Borisov found back in late August a comet from deep space which was then named 2I/Borisov. This comet was the second interstellar object ever found to enter our solar system, and as astronomers studied its qualities it has been found to be quite the ordinary comet.

A team led by Piotr Guzik at Jagiellonian University in Krakow, Poland maned the telescopes at the Canary Islands and Hawaii to observe the visitor further. What they found is that the comet has a reddish color with a fuzzy tail extending from its 2-kilometre-wide nucleus. The team found that the comet is more normal than once thought, and is extremely similar to the comets that are currently floating around our sun. Astronomers will continue to study 21/Borisov as its trajectory is will closely approach the sun on the 8th of December. After that it will continue outwards to the edges of our solar system.

Scientists have managed to create a nano-electronic circuit that can vibrate and play guitar notes without any external force.

The scientists from the Lancaster University and University of Oxford have used a tiny suspended wire that is positioned much like a guitar string to showcase their experiment that reveals how a simple nano-device can generate motion by itself. Researchers used a carbon nanotube, a wire with a diameter of about 3 nanometers or to put it into a musicians perspective - about 100,000 times thinner than a normal guitar string.

Researchers mounted the nanotube onto metal supports at each end and then cooled it down to 0.02 degrees. Researchers then passed an electric current through the wire and measured its change in electrical resistance. Much like a normal guitar string when its plucked, the nanotube wire vibrated when the electric current passed through it, what was the surprising part was when the researchers stopped forcing the voltage and the wire continued vibrate by itself.

Its now official, astronomers have managed to locate another Earth-like planet, the news has recently come out of NASA's Kepler Space Telescope.

According to PhysicsAstronomy, astronomers using NASA's Kepler Space Telescope managed to discover another Earth located in the Goldilocks zone of our galaxy. The planet is titled Kepler-186f. Its about 500 light-years away from Earth in Cygnus constellation which is a known habitable zone due to its position next to a star and atmospheric pressure that can sustain liquid water on surfaces.

Scientists have recognized that there at least 40 billion Earth-sized planets currently floating around in our Milky Way galaxy. But this is the first time one of these planets has been discovered in the habitable zone of another star. Elisa Quintana, research scientist at the SETI Institute at NASA's Ames Research Center in Moffett Field, Calif., and lead author of the paper published in the journal Science said "We know of only one planet where life survives - Earth. When we hunt for life outside our solar system, we emphasis on discovering planets with features that mimic that of Earth. Discovering a habitable zone planet similar to Earth in size is a major breakthrough."

Humans have undoubtedly created some quite questionable weapons in our time, and nuclear weapons are definitely within the top five of that category. So what exactly happens if one was to be launched at any city on the planet?

Above we have a new video from Kurzgesagt - In a Nutshell, they explore the affects of a Nuke hitting a downtown city, and how the events of that explosion would roll out on the residents. Firstly, one millisecond after the detonation a 2km wide ball of plasma hotter than the sun erupts from the center of the blast zone, evaporating everything within its radius.

The light that's emitted from the blast is so hot it produces a thermal pulse which burns anything that is able to burn within 500 squared km, or a 13km radius. As the explosion progresses, a bubble of super heated and super compressed air begins to rapidly expand faster than the speed of sound, decimating most already burning buildings, people and anything else in its way. Then a mushroom cloud made from rubble, fire, dust and ash erupts from the center and rises kilometers into the sky, drawing in an abundance of oxygen fueling the already burning fires.

Just in time for Halloween... the world's largest Ouija board has arrived in Salem. Ouijazilla was created by New Jersey-based tattoo artist Rick Schreck, who is also the vice president of the Talking Board Historical Society, of which I did not know existed until just now.

Ouijazilla weighs a hefty 9000 pounds, and so long that the world's largest Ouija board could have five 18-wheel trucks park on top of it. For those unfamiliar with a Ouija board, the "planchet" is the part of the board that you put your hands-on and it moves around -- with the planchet on Ouijazilla a massive 15.5-feet in length and weighs a huge 400 pounds on its own.

In an interview between Schreck and Talking Board Historical Society's director Karen Dahlman, he explained: "The board that I used, actually, to replicate is the 1998 (board) for Hasboro. The glow-in-the-dark board. That's my favorite. ...Ouijazilla is big enough to put, I think, 2,300 of those boards on top of it".

The use of exoskeletons can and will be vast as the technology matures and time passes, with researchers over at the University of Grenoble releasing their results of a trial using a 4-limb robotic system that helps patients with tetraplegia, which is the loss of control of all four limbs.

The most tricky way of using the system is finding a patient with tetraplegia and getting them hooked into the system, with 28-year-old French man 'Thibault' using the suit. It's not a fully-baked and ready-to-use suit just yet, but in its current trial status the researchers along with the patients can train an algorithm that interprets brain signals which then converts them into physical movement.

Professor Alim-Louis Benabid, president of the Clinatec Executive Board, a CEA laboratory, and Professor Emeritus from the University of Grenoble, France, said in a press release: "Ours' is the first semi-invasive wireless brain-computer system designed for long term use to activate all four limbs".

NASA Administrator, Jim Bridenstine and SpaceX founder Elon Musk have addressed the public in a recently concluded Q&A session at SpaceX's HQ.

The Q&A was held at the SpaceX HQ in California where NASA Administrator, Jim Bridenstine and SpaceX founder Elon Musk stood next two two astronauts and answered some questions regarding their upcoming mission plans. While the talk was quite lengthy, Musk and Bridenstine were asked about the upcoming Crew Dragon project, and according to the administrator after some more testing the first crewed "Demo-2" test flight could launch as early as Q1 of 2020.

Musk also touched on the subject and said that drop tests are about to commence and SpaceX's team will be evaluating its "Mark 3" parachute design. The "Mark 3" design has replaced what was once nylon cords with much stronger "xylon" material.

The International Monetary Fund (IMF) has stepped out of the shadows and has called for the world's biggest carbon polluters to be taxed a fixed amount for their carbon emissions.

According to the IMF, the world's biggest carbon polluting nations should all agree on a worldwide tax that prices carbon emissions at $75 per ton. The IMF also says that this tax should be in place for the next 10 years to ensure the survival of the planet and to keep climate change at safe levels.

A report was released ahead of next week's annual meetings of the IMF and World Bank. In this report the IMF acknowledges that increase of pricing for carbon emissions from the current global average cost of $2 to $75 by 2030 could have catastrophic market effects. The report says that could prices would more than triple, electricity pricing could increase by 30% in Canada and Australia and gasoline prices could be raised anywhere between 5 and 15%.

Elon Musk is probably the most passionate man on this planet when it comes to traversing the stars, with the SpaceX and Tesla Motors founder having some interesting words to say during a recent event at the SpaceX HQ.

Musk was joined by NASA Administrator Jim Bridenstine at the SpaceX HQ in Hawthrone today, with Musk updating the world on the commercial crew launch program that SpaceX is collaborating with NASA on. During the chat, Musk talked about the state of the program, and what is coming next.

There was a Q&A session after the event, where Musk said that what the SpaceX team learned from the Crew Dragon parachute development program is open to the world -- making it available to anyone who wants it. Musk said that literally any of SpaceX's own IP is open to NASA and can feed it out as they want.

NASA are moving along quite nicely with their Mars 2020 rover mission as the space exploration company has announced a new milestone achievement.

NASA has recently completed testing the Mars 2020 spacecraft separation test at the Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, California. In the above image, we see can see engineers and technicians working on the assembly of the rover and according to Ryan van Schilifgaarde, a support engineer for Mars 2020 assembly at JPL, "Firing the pyrotechnic devices that held the rover and descent stage together and then doing the post-test inspection of the two vehicles was an all-day affair".

He continued and said "With this test behind us, the rover and descent stage go their separate ways for a while. Next time they are attached will be at the Cape next spring during final assembly." Since this test has been a success, the descent stage and the rover will be moved off to Cape Canaveral, Florida, this winter. Before both parts are shipped, engineers and technicians will also test the batteries for the rover, while also evaluating the computer and mechanical systems in simulated Mars-like conditions.