Science, Space, & Robotics - Page 221

Amazon is making big moves to take over the skies with drone deliveries, teasing its purported Prime Air delivery service during the Super Bowl this year.

The company ran what would've been a very expensive ad spot, showing a couple sitting on the couch - with the man licking the Doritos' dust from his fingers, with the woman then gives a sarcastic reply to Amazon Echo. She says: "Alexa, reorder Doritos from Prime Air", with Echo replying with: "Ok, look for delivery soon" and then a drone comes into focus... beautiful, convenient - and the future of me being even lazier.

After more than 12 years studying Saturn, its rings, and moons, NASA's Cassini spacecraft has entered the final year of its epic voyage. The conclusion of the historic scientific odyssey is planned for September 2017.

Cassini already sent some impressive images of the Saturn's atmosphere, and now it has shown us detailed images of Saturn's rings.

The views are some of the closest-ever images of the outer parts of the main rings, giving scientists an eagerly awaited opportunity to observe features with names like "straw" and "propellers." Although Cassini saw these features earlier in the mission, the spacecraft's current, special orbits are now providing opportunities to see them in greater detail. The new images resolve details as small as 0.3 miles (550 meters), which is on the scale of Earth's tallest buildings.

While the Chinese are still banned from the Space Station, that hasn't stopped the country from developing a strong space exploration program. Last year, China had the highest number of launches in space so far, and now they are developing new plans for further space exploration, including sending spacecraft to Mars and Jupiter.

Their plan is to send its first probe to Mars by 2020, said Wu Yanhua, Vice Director of the China National Space Administration. The second probe should bring back samples that will help them get a better understanding of the environment on the Red Planet.

China also plans to launch a large modular space station in 2023, and if the International Space Station finishes its work in 2024, as planned, China will be the only country with a permanent station in space.

If there was something that could change the world, it would be a cancer-detecting app on your smartphone - all powered with AI. We know that artificial intelligence is something that will be a part of our future, but now a group of researchers from Stanford are coming out with some exciting things.

The researchers published their findings in the latest issue of Nature this week, training a neural network with 129,450 photos that displayed to the system over 2000 different types of skin conditions. Mixing one of Google's own image recognition algorithms, the researchers trained the neural network to identify both malignant, and benign skin lesions.

The team also worked with 21 human dermatologists, showing the experts the same, common and deadly forms of skin cancer, and asked what treatment they would recommend. Comparing their answer to the AI, the humans performed at the same level. Sebastian Thrun from Stanford's AI Lab wrote in a blog: "We realized it was feasible, not just to do something well, but as well as a human dermatologist. That's when our thinking changed".

After a longer break, SpaceX recently launched their Falcon 9 rocket and successfully returned it to Earth. Their second this year's launch is scheduled for January 30th.

However, this time they won't even try to land the rocket. Musk himself confirmed this on Twitter explaining that the problem is heavy payload that the Falcon 9 rocket has to carry.

GOES-16, the first spacecraft in NOAA's next-generation of geostationary satellites, has sent the first high-resolution images from its Advanced Baseline Imager (ABI) instrument.

The GOES-16 is the latest step in a new age of weather satellites that should help us monitor the weather conditions.

Boeing has unveiled its new spacesuit for future passengers of its CST-100 Spaceliner spacecraft, which they'll wear to and from low-Earth orbit destinations, such as the International Space Station.

Boeing explains their new Starliner spacesuit as it: "provides greater pressurized mobility and is about 40 percent lighter than previous suits. Its innovative layers will keep astronauts cooler as well. The touchscreen-friendly gloves allow astronauts to interact with the capsule's tablets while the boots are breathable and slip resistant".

"Zippers in the torso area will make it easier for astronauts to comfortably transition from sitting to standing. In addition to protecting astronauts during launch and the return to Earth, the suit also helps connect astronauts to ground and space crews through the communications headset within the helmet", they continued. Adding: "The suit's hood-like soft helmet sports a wide polycarbonate visor to give Starliner passengers better peripheral vision throughout their ride to and from space".

Google it utilizing the near unlimited power of artificial intelligence in order to reduce the amount of data consumed with images online, using new image compressions technology called RAISR (Rapid and Accurate Super Image Resolution).

Google's Alphabet subsidiary has been tapping AI to save data on high-res images, but and it's already here - except, it's limited to Google+ for now. Using the new RAISR technology, up to 75% of mobile data can be saved - all without any change in the image quality. How does RAISR work? The technology takes the image, analyzes it, and creates duplicates of the images using fractions of the pixels from the original image.

The company talked about RAISR in a recent write up, where it explained: "Doing so reduces the data cost of each image by up to 75 percent. The technique is currently being applied to more than a billion images a week, and the company says doing so has reduced users' total bandwidth by about a third".

Don't worry guys, Skynet is going to be born and we're not going to be slaves to the machines... if the founders of LinkedIn and eBay have anything to do with it, that is.

Reid Hoffman, LinkedIn's founder and the Omidyar network - a philanthropic investment firm set up by eBay founder Pierre Omidyar, are both donating $10 million towards the Ethics and Governance of Artificial Intelligence Fund. The $20 million investment will be used by researchers to handle the ethical problems that will stirred up by AI.

Hoffman said: "There's an urgency to ensure that AI benefits society and minimises harm. AI decision-making can influence many aspects of our world - education, transportation, healthcare, criminal justice and the economy - yet data and code behind those decisions can be largely invisible".

CES 2017 - Every year CES gathers many interesting startups and this year was no different. One of the most interesting things that caught our eyes is a little spider-robot that appeared to be dancing.

The robot, named STEMI Hexapod, is a product of a Croatian startup that wanted to create a learning experience in a fun and easy way. The robot comes in parts that you can then put together on your own. You will also need an app that will let you control the robot's movement by tilting the phone.

The mannequin challenge has been spreading through social media for the last couple of months, and so far we have seen many recordings of the challenge.

The latest footage, published by astronaut Thomas Pesquet, shows one of the best challenges we have seen so far, and also the only one that hasn't been recorded on Earth.

The video shows astronauts and cosmonauts aboard the International Space Station 'frozen' in everyday poses. The only female astronaut aboard the ISS appears as if she is taking photos of her colleagues.

According to scientists and experts at NASA's Langley Research Center, we could be one step closer to colonizing mars with their new 'The Mars Ice Home'.

The inflatable tube is lined with a shell of water ice, using materials found on Mars - with the water protecting the inhabitants from cosmic rays, and could even be repurposed as rocket fuel for the Mars Ascent Lander.

Right now, NASA's impressive Mars Ice Home is a concept with some issues, as experts have said it would take around 400 days to fill the shell with enough water from Mars. Robots could help, inflating and pumping the shelter while the human astronauts are on their journey from Earth to Mars. The Ice Home will continue to evolve, but this is an exciting new step.

Tesla has announced alongside Panasonic, that they will start production of solar cells in a factory on American soil - in Buffalo, New York.

The two companies have settled on an agreement for Panasonic to pay the capital costs for the manufacturing, while Tesla has made a "long-term purchase commitment" to Panasonic - but no official figures have been thrown around. The production factory in question is under development by SolarCity Corp., a solar power company that Tesla owns.

The announcement said that the photovoltaic cells and modules that are used in solar panels for non-solar roof products and solar glass tile roofs that Tesla will soon be making. Production kicks off mid next year, with Tesla creating 1400 jobs in Buffalo, and 500 more jobs in manufacturing as it expands its operations in Buffalo.

The Cassini space probe was launched in 1997, and after a long trip, it entered orbit around Saturn in 2004. Since then, Cassini has been sending valuable data and photos of the Saturn.

The newest image, taken on December 18th, is one of the highest-resolution views ever taken of Saturn's moon Pandora. The spacecraft captured the image during its closest-ever flyby of Pandora, during the third of its grazing passes by the outer edges of Saturn's main rings.

The image was taken at a distance of approximately 25,200 miles (40,500 kilometers) from Pandora.

I'd like to say that I didn't see this coming, but I can't lie to you guys - AI is taking over the world, for better or worse. Now we have the world's largest hedge fund building software that will automate their day-to-day management of the firm, with the artificial intelligence in charge of "hiring, firing and other strategic decision-making", reports The Guardian.

Bridgewater Associates has assembled a team of software engineers after a request from billionaire founder Ray Dalio, who wants to see the company running towards the vision he created, even when he's not there. The Wall Street Journal reports: "The role of many remaining humans at the firm wouldn't be to make individual choices but to design the criteria by which the system makes decisions, intervening when something isn't working".

The company manages a mind boggling $160 billion worth of funds, with Bridgewater Associates forming a team of programmers that specialize in analytics and AI, something they have called the Systematized Intelligence Lab. This unit is led by the ex-boss of IBM's development of Watson - the supercomputer that beat humans at Jeopardy! in 2011, David Ferrucci.

NASA's CYGNSS spacecraft aboard an Orbital ATK Pegasus rocket was successfully launched after multiple delays during the week.

The initial launch was postponed because a hydraulic pump aboard the Orbital ATK L-1011 Stargazer aircraft, which is required to release the latches holding the Pegasus in place, was not receiving power.

The launch wasn't typical because the Pegasus rocket was carried aloft by Orbital ATK's Stargazer L-1011 aircraft to approximately 40,000 feet over the Atlantic Ocean, where it was then released. After around five seconds of free fall, the rocket ignited its first stage rocket motor. The Pegasus delivered the eight CYGNSS satellites into orbit in a little over 10 minutes.

NASA has announced that it will be increasing the network speeds on the International Space Station soon, without a new router or satellite - with the upgrades being mainly terrestrial.

TechCrunch reports: "The ISS and dozens of satellites rely on the Space Network, a more or less unified architecture for sending large amounts of data from orbit to base stations around the world. Its maximum bandwidth is 300 Mbps, which is of course much faster than most ISPs provide, and more than enough for everyone on the ISS to stream videos at once".

28TB of high-definition, real-time space data is transmitted back to Earth everyday, as well as the astronauts' internet browsing, video calls - and if it were me, Overwatch gaming. All of the transmission goes through a dedicated network of Tracking and Data Relay Satellites, which then blast the signals to base stations, and then pass them through to their destinations here on our pale blue dot.

SpaceX's Dragon spacecraft made history back in 2012 when it became the first commercial spacecraft in history to deliver cargo to the International Space Station and safely return cargo to Earth, a feat previously achieved only by governments. Although Dragon currently carries cargo to space, it was designed to carry humans, and it should have a major role in getting to Mars.

The Dragon spacecraft has yet to welcome its first crew onboard, which was planned for December 2017. However, according to NASA's Commercial Crew Program Target Flight Dates list, the 14-day test flight has been rescheduled for May 2018.

This decision is most likely related to Falcon 9's explosion in September and the company's investigation of the incident. Elon Musk said that the cause of the accident was "a combination of liquid helium, advanced carbon fiber composites, and solid oxygen," but earlier this month they rescheduled the launch of satellites for Iridium Communications because they are "completing the final steps necessary to safely return to flight."

The planned launch of NASA's CYGNSS spacecraft aboard an Orbital ATK Pegasus rocket has been postponed. According to the company, a hydraulic pump aboard the Orbital ATK L-1011 Stargazer aircraft, which is required to release the latches holding the Pegasus in place, was not receiving power.

The three-stage Pegasus XL will be used to deploy eight small satellites for NASA's Cyclone Global Navigation Satellite System (CYGNSS) mission into a Low-Earth orbit. Pegasus is carried aloft by Orbital ATK's Stargazer L-1011 aircraft to approximately 40,000 feet over the Atlantic Ocean, where it will be released and free-fall for five seconds before igniting its first stage rocket motor. With its unique delta-shaped wing, Pegasus will deliver these satellites into orbit in a little over 10 minutes.

CYGNSS will be used to study hurricanes and to learn about their rapid intensification.

NASA opened an official channel on Giphy and uploaded 462 GIFs. They range from historical moments in space exploration, fascinating views of our planet from space, to newer ones from International Space Station and first images of other planets in our system.

via GIPHY