Science, Space, & Robotics - Page 88

Walmart has announced it has expanded its commercial agreement with Symbotic -- a "revolutionary A.I.-powered supply chain technology company" -- to install warehouse robots at all of Walmart's distribution facilities across the US.

Until now, there were 25 distribution plants by Walmart using Symbotic warehouse robotics... but now they'll be pushed to every single facility. It's not just robotics but Symbotic's software automation platform.

The end-to-end software-enabled high-density robotics platform "plays a strategic role in supporting the retailer's goal of modernizing its vast supply chain network and allows Walmart to transform its regional distribution centers to provide faster responsiveness to store orders, increased inventory accuracy and higher capacity for receiving and shipping freight to stores".

NASA has confirmed that Boeing's CST-100 Starliner spacecraft has successfully docked to the International Space Station.

NASA has taken to its blog and social channels to announce that Boeing's Starliner successfully attached itself to the Harmony module aboard the ISS on May 20 at 8:23 pm EDT. Starliner launched on the back of a United Launch Alliance Atlas V rocket from Cape Canaveral Space Force Station in Florida on May 19.

NASA writes that Starliner will only be aboard the ISS for a few days, with it being scheduled to disconnect on May 25 to return back down to Earth, carrying back more than 600 pounds of cargo where it's expected to land in a western US desert. Additionally, NASA has reported that the hatch to Starliner was opened on May 21, marking the first time ISS astronauts have opened a hatch to Boeing's CST-100 Starliner.

An amateur astrophotographer named Brendan O'Meal from New York has recently gone viral after taking an incredible photograph of two galaxies colliding.

O'Meal took to his TikTok and Instagram account to share an awesome image of ARP271, a pair of similarly sized interacting spiral galaxies more specifically named NGC 5426 and NGC 5427. The two colliding spiral galaxies reside in the constellation Virgo and are located about 130 million light years away from Earth. Notably, the ARP271 pair has a diameter of 130 million light years across, and judging by the comment section of the viral TikTok video, many people have just realized what a light-year actually means.

The TikTok video has, at the time of writing, been liked 1.8 million times and viewed 9.7 million times, with many commenters realizing that the image captured by telescope is of events that happened 130 million years ago. One commenter realized the same principles apply to viewing planets in search of life. If we observe a planet that's 100 million light years away, and see an alien civilization, it means that what we are seeing happened 100 million years ago.

An asteroid that is estimated to be around four times the size of the Empire State Building in diameter is approaching Earth.

According to NASA's Center for Near Earth Object Studies (CNEOS), the asteroid named 7335 (1989 JA) is scheduled to make its closest approach to Earth on May 27, which means the giant space rock is currently hurtling toward Earth right now. The CNEOS database indicates that the asteroid will safely pass by Earth at a distance of about 2.5 million miles, or about 10 times the distance between Earth and the Moon, which is approximately 250,000 miles.

Furthermore, estimates put the diameter of the asteroid at an extremely large 1.1 miles, and due to its proximity to Earth and its enormous size NASA has classified 7335 as "potentially hazardous (PH)". The PH classification means that if the orbit of the asteroid were changed and put on track to hit Earth, it would cause severe impact damage.

New cases of the rare monkeypox virus first resurfaced in England, Spain, and Portugal from May 17th.

Outbreaks of the virus were first recorded in England, with officials warning of potential spread given the unknown origin and chains of transmission. Since then, cases have doubled in England to 20, and following cases appearing in Spain and Portugal, cases have also appeared in more European countries, including France, Germany, Belgium, Italy, and Sweden.

Cases have also been reported in the United States, Canada, and Australia. The monkeypox virus is endemic to Africa, and cases are seldom seen outside of the region, though currently, at least 11 non-African countries have reported a combined 120+ confirmed and suspected cases of it.

NASA's Voyager 1 spacecraft appears to be operating normally; however, it's sent back data that says otherwise.

Voyager 1 is continuing to execute commands it receives from Earth as expected and gathering and returning science data. However, Voyager 1's attitude articulation and control system (AACS), which controls the spacecraft's orientation, is sending back invalid telemetry data that appears either randomly generated or reflects an impossible state for the AACS.

Voyager 1 hasn't been triggered to put itself into safe mode due to the issue, a state in which only essential functions remain active to give engineers time to diagnose and fix any problems. The team is continuing to monitor the signal closely to determine the nature of the issue. However, Voyager 1 is currently 14.5 billion miles (23.3 billion kilometers) from Earth. This means it takes about two days to send a message to the spacecraft and receive a response, though the mission team has become well adjusted to that delay.

The Department of Defense's (DoD) Defense Innovation Unit (DIU) has awarded two Prototype Other Transaction (OT) contracts to develop nuclear-propelled spacecraft, with launches expected in 2027.

The DIU has awarded one contract to the Ultra Safe Nuclear Corporation (USNC) and the other to Avalanche Energy Designs, "to demonstrate the next generation of nuclear propulsion and power capability for spacecraft." The companies' will be testing nuclear-powered prototypes that allow small spacecraft to "maneuver at-will in cislunar space" and "enable high-power payloads."

A study on the new solar cell titled "Triple-junction solar cells with 39.5% terrestrial and 34.2% space efficiency enabled by thick quantum well superlattices" has been published in the journal Joule.

Researchers from the United States Department of Energy's National Renewable Energy Laboratory (NREL) have created a solar cell with the highest efficiency under 1-sun global illumination conditions. The new cell has an efficiency of 39.5%, up from the previous record of 39.2% efficiency, which was previously set by NREL researchers as well in 2020.

A study on the updated Hubble constant titled "A Comprehensive Measurement of the Local Value of the Hubble Constant with 1 km s⁻¹ Mpc⁻¹ Uncertainty from the Hubble Space Telescope and the SH0ES Team" has been accepted for publication into The Astrophysical Journal.

Data from the Hubble Space Telescope has been used since it was launched to measure the rate of the universe's expansion. However, there is a discrepancy between the rate derived from Hubble's observations and what other independent observations predict. The SH0ES team (standing for Supernova, H0, for the Equation of State of Dark Energy) and others have been working to refine the universe's rate of expansion, known as the Hubble Constant.

Starlink customer Steve Birch has posted a photo of his off-grid Starlink setup powered exclusively by solar energy.

Birch took to Reddit to post about his "remote fully off-grid Starlink station installed in the Sawtooth mountains of Idaho." The three solar panels produce a combined 300 watts of solar power and are supported by a 450 amp hour (Ah) battery bank for when the panels can't produce enough power. According to Birch, the system has "been running like a champ 24/7 for the last week."

The campsite where Birch set up the system has a diesel generator that provides power during the day, which Birch sought to bypass for his Starlink setup. Birch calculated that he would need roughly 200 Ah for 24 hours of operation and opted to use four 6V lead acid batteries for his battery bank because lithium wouldn't be viable due to charging issues in the cold.

A study on the Wow! signal titled "An approximation to determine the source of the WOW! Signal" has been published in the International Journal of Astrobiology.

The Wow! signal was detected by Jerry Ehman using Ohio State University's Big Ear telescope on August 15th, 1977. It was named as such after Ehman wrote "Wow!" on the printout from the telescope. The Big Ear telescope was conducting a SETI (search for extraterrestrial intelligence) using a frequency of 1420.4056 megahertz, a frequency associated with the element hydrogen.

SpaceX and Tesla CEO Elon Musk has been accused of sexual misconduct by exposing himself to a flight attendant and offering to pay her for sexual favors.

BusinessInsider has learned that a flight attendant that worked at SpaceX as part of Musk's private jet cabin crew was encouraged by the crew to become a licensed masseuse so she could give Musk massages throughout travel. The flight attendant told her story to a friend that has now spoken to Insider, and according to the friend, on a flight to London in 2016, Musk allegedly asked for "a full body massage", and when the flight attendant arrived, she found Musk with just a sheet covering his bottom half.

According to the friend's declaration, Musk "exposed his genitals" and then "touched her and offered to buy her a horse if she would 'do more,' referring to the performance of sex acts." The flight attendant is interested in horses and said to Musk that she "is not for sale," adding, "She is not going to perform sexual favors for money or gifts." Insider interviewed the flight attendant's friend, only speaking on the condition of anonymity, and said that "He whipped out his penis, it was erect."

The Mars Curiosity rover snapped an image of a rock formation on the surface of the Red Planet, and the image has picked up quite a lot of traction online.

The image was posted to the NASA subreddit, where it gained many upvotes, with many people speculating what the "door" was and how it formed. Looking at the image, there are many shadows cast by the rock, which has lent to the theory of the alien "door" being formed, which was quickly shut down by NASA officials.

NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL) spoke to Snopes and said that the rock formation gives the appearance of a "portal" or a "door" due to it being a "very, very, very zoomed in shot of a tiny crevice in a rock." Notably, NASA JPL said to the publication that the "door" is only 11 by 17 inches, and to understand its true size, you can look at the below full-sized image.

On their fourth attempt, the U.S. Air Force and Lockheed Martin launched a hypersonic missile, the AGM-183A Air-launched Rapid Response Weapon (ARRW).

The Air Force completed the launch on May 14th, 2022, deploying the missile from a B-52H Stratofortress off the coast of Southern California. Hypersonic flight refers to speeds over five times the speed of sound, otherwise known as Mach 5. This allows hypersonic weapons to be deployed further away while flying at lower altitudes, as well as making them more difficult to detect and intercept than conventional missiles.

Though the AGM-183A supposedly has a top speed of Mach 20, extreme temperature and pressure at these speeds would make new materials for its construction and avionics necessary for it to withstand the stresses. The test did not involve assessing the missile's top speed, but its booster rocket managed to accelerate it to above Mach 5. It successfully handled operation at those speeds and the team behind it "made history on this first air-launched hypersonic weapon."

The Nuclear Regulation Authority within the Japanese government has approved a plan by the Tokyo Electric Power Company (TEPCO) to dispose of treated radioactive wastewater into the ocean.

TEPCO submitted the plan in December 2021 for gradually releasing the treated wastewater from the Fukushima nuclear power plant into the ocean beginning in 2023. The government made the decision last year that the wastewater was to be released as part of the ongoing cleanup and decommission of the plant following the 2011 Fukushima nuclear disaster.

A massive earthquake and tsunami at the time destroyed the plant's cooling systems, leading to the meltdown of three reactors. Water used to cool the damaged reactor cores has become irradiated and been collected and stored across a thousand water tanks on-site, with a capacity of 1.37 million tons that will likely be reached next year.

NASA has outlined the objectives for the Moon to Mars initiative following the early stages of its Artemis mission and is seeking feedback.

A new video posted to NASA's YouTube channel outlines a draft of NASA's objectives for reaching Mars, containing fifty points across four broad categories, including transportation and habitation; Moon and Mars infrastructure; operations; and science. NASA has also providing a document detailing each of these points and defining relevant terms.

NASA's grand plan involves the Artemis missions, which will return astronauts to the Moon, from where the agency can look to make the journey to Mars. With the latest draft of objectives for the Moon to Mars mission, NASA invites industries, academia, international communities, members of the public, and other stakeholders to provide input on the various points outlined. Comments can be submitted here, and are due by the end of May 31st 2022.

The U.K. Health Security Agency (UKHSA) noted six cases in England across London and Newcastle and has warned of potential spread within the community.

The monkeypox viral disease is caused by the monkeypox virus, which belongs to the same family of viruses that causes smallpox. Health officials warned on May 17th that the virus could potentially spread to other countries. On May 18th, cases were reported in Spain and Portugal, with eight potential cases in Spain and five confirmed cases with over a dozen probable cases in Portugal.

Monkeypox is a rare infection that results in symptoms including fever, headache, muscle aches, exhaustion, and swollen lymph nodes. As the infection progresses, rashes appear across the body, resulting in discolored patches of skin, blisters, scabs, and bumps.

Officials have shared images on Facebook of three women posing with the strangely shaped plants and have asked the public to refrain from picking them.

The Cambodian Ministry of Environment has asked the public to stop picking the rare plant species, writing in its Facebook post that what the three women in the included images are doing is "wrong", "and please don't do it again in the future!". LiveScience spoke to Jeremy Holden, a freelance wildlife photographer and the discoverer of the Nepenthes holdenii plant species, and Francois Mey, a botanical illustrator.

The two informed the publication that despite numerous reports of the plant in the photos being Nepenthes holdenii, it was more closely related to Nepenthes bokorensis, which is more widely found across southwest Cambodia. These Nepenthes plants survive by producing nectar that attracts insects that climb inside of the plant and become trapped in digestive fluids.

NASA Administrator Bill Nelson spoke at a recent House Appropriations Committee hearing about space-related matters.

The hearing addressed the $26 billion budget request by U.S. President Biden to be allocated to NASA for the 2023 fiscal year, more than has ever been allocated to NASA. During the hearing, Nelson said he believes NASA is "in a space race with China" and that "they've done some impressive stuff," according to this series of tweets quoting Nelson.

However, he followed this up by saying, "yes, they are good at stealing," after citing their rover on Mars and their Tianhe space station. Nelson believes that cybersecurity needs to be taken more seriously in the government and private sector, likely to prevent their technologies from being used by others.

A study on the fusion fuel breakthrough titled "First-Principles Density Limit Scaling in Tokamaks Based on Edge Turbulent Transport and Implications for ITER" has been published in the journal Physical Review Letters.

Physicists from the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology Lausanne (Ecole Polytechnique Federale de Lausanne, or EPFL) have updated one of the foundational laws governing nuclear fusion research since 1988, the Greenwald limit, named after Martin Greenwald. They have shown that much more hydrogen fuel can safely be used in fusion reactors.

Nuclear fusion (the process of fusing two atomic nuclei, typically of hydrogen, and releasing large amounts of energy) experiments are conducted within reactors called tokamaks. The tokamak is designed to contain the plasma created from the fusion fuel, in this case, hydrogen atoms, which is heated to about ten times the temperature of the sun's core.