Monday 27 June 2016

Juno snaps images of Jupiter's moons as rendezvous approaches



Like any tourist, Juno is sending back snaps of its journey. The unmanned spacecraft was 6.8 million mi (10.9 million km) from Jupiter when it captured an image of the banded giant planet and its four largest moons, Io, Europa, Ganymede, and Callisto on June 21. The image was taken by the probe's JunoCam, which NASA describes as an "outreach instrument" to increase public participation in the US$1.1 million mission.

.. Continue Reading Juno snaps images of Jupiter's moons as rendezvous approaches

Category: Space

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Sikorsky CH-53K King Stallion does some more heavy lifting



The Sikorsky CH-53K King Stallion helicopter has flexed its muscles, lifting a 27,000-lb (12,245-kg) payload at Sikorsky's Development Flight Test Center in West Palm Beach, Florida. The demonstration flight, which saw the aircraft hover while carrying a little less than the weight of a double-decker bus, was part of the development and testing program for the transport helicopter slated to enter service with the United State Marine Corps by the end of the decade.

.. Continue Reading Sikorsky CH-53K King Stallion does some more heavy lifting

Category: Aircraft

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Hubble investigates dark spot on Neptune



If Neptune seems a bit blemished of late, it's because NASA has confirmed that a dark spot has shown up in its bluish atmosphere. Observations by the Hubble Space Telescope taken in May show that a dark vortex has appeared in the southern hemisphere. This high-pressure system is accompanied by brighter "companion clouds" and is the first such dark spot to be seen this century.

.. Continue Reading Hubble investigates dark spot on Neptune

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Surprise package: Juno nears rendezvous with Jupiter



On July 4, Americans usually celebrate Independence Day with parades, fireworks and picnics, but this year NASA is adding its own contribution to festivities as the Juno deep space probe becomes just the second spacecraft in history to orbit Jupiter. After a five-year journey, the solar-powered unmanned explorer will autonomously fire its main engine for 35 minutes as it starts a 20-month mission to study the gas giant. What will be found remains to be seen, but if history is any indicator, it's likely to be very unexpected.

.. Continue Reading Surprise package: Juno nears rendezvous with Jupiter

Category: Space

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NASA

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Small-brained elephantnose fish can think big like humans



Fish may be smarter than we thought. Not only can some recognize human faces, but others can use their senses in a way that it was believed only humans and other mammals could manage. A team of zoologists at the University of Bonn has discovered that, despite lacking a complex brain, the African elephantnose fish can swap between its electrical and visual senses in the same way a person can switch between sight and touch.

.. Continue Reading Small-brained elephantnose fish can think big like humans

Category: Biology

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Thursday 23 June 2016

Britain is FREE!

RESULT!


Forty three years after the duplicitous Ted Heath conned Britain into joining the European Economic Community under the lie that it was a free-trade zone and decades after that "community" morphed into the rotten edifice of the EU, Britain is now free. Or, at least, it has the chance to be free. Given that the self-serving swine that backed Remain are also the ones holding the reins of power, I would heartily recommend that they be watched closely so they don't find ways to drag their feet or even ignore the result.

Once everyone sobers up in the morning and downs an Alka Seltzer, those who backed Leave should form Free Briton Brigades to assemble outside Parliament and Downing Street with ample supplies of tar and feathers along with large stacks of rails to remind those inside of what the alternative is to obeying the will of the people and that being thrown off Westminster Bridge means a very unpleasant swim.

And to our brothers on the Continent: Come on in, the water's lovely!

In the meantime, God save the Queen.


Boston Dynamics' SpotMini robot helps out around the house




Boston Dynamics has gone from the battlefield to the home with a smaller, quieter quadruped robot that can navigate around the house and even fetch you a drink – if you can get it to let go of the can. The focus of a new video released today, the SpotMini is a more compact and streamlined version of the Spot robot unveiled in 2015 and boasts an articulated arm with a manipulator that looks like a cross between a sheep's head and an oven mitt.

.. Continue Reading Boston Dynamics' SpotMini robot helps out around the house

Category: Robotics

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Boston Dynamics

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Solar Impulse 2 completes first solar transatlantic flight



Solar Impulse 2 has flown into the history books again as it completed the first solar-powered flight across the Atlantic. With Bertrand Piccard at the controls, the single-seater aircraft touched down in Seville, Spain, at 7:38 am CET – over 71 hours after it left JFK airport in New York. Covering a distance of 6,273 km (3,900 mi), this completes the 15th leg of the experimental aircraft's bid to be the first solar-powered aircraft to circumnavigate the world.

.. Continue Reading Solar Impulse 2 completes first solar transatlantic flight

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Wednesday 22 June 2016

Rolls-Royce predicts robotic ships will be on the water by 2020



In 2014, Rolls-Royce unveiled its vision of the robotic cargo ship of the future that it believes will become a reality by 2020. This week at the Autonomous Ship Technology Symposium 2016 in Amsterdam, the Rolls-Royce-led Advanced Autonomous Waterborne Applications initiative (AAWA) presented a white paper outlining what such autonomous vessels might be like and what hurdles stand between them and the open sea.

.. Continue Reading Rolls-Royce predicts robotic ships will be on the water by 2020

Category: Marine

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Catch up



DNA may be one of the most basic molecules of life, but it's not easy to study. Despite being a very long molecule, it's only about 2.2 nanometers wide, so it's hard to see. Attaching fluorescent dyes to it can help, but until now, knowing how those dye molecules were behaving wasn't possible. A team of scientists at Stanford University has built on a technique called "single-molecule microscopy" to see just how DNA-bound dye molecules orient themselves, flop around and glow in the presence of polarized laser light.

.. Continue Reading Polarized lasers zap dyed DNA into super resolution

Category: Biology

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molecular biology
Stanford University
DNA

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Two hundred years ago, the modern stopwatch, or chronograph, was invented by Louis Moinet. To celebrate the bicentenary of Moinet's Compteur de Tierce, Ateliers Louis Moinet has released its Memoris Anniversaire wrist chronograph, which made its world debut at Baselworld in March as part of the company's Memoris line... Continue Reading Louis Moinet celebrates bicentenary of the chronograph with Memoris Anniversaire

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An unmanned Cygnus cargo ship left the International Space Station today, and then NASA set it on fire. At 4:55 pm EDT, ground control activated the Saffire-I experiment in the hold of the Orbital ATK Cygnus Pressurized Cargo Module as it drifted away from the station, triggering the largest fire ever started in space. The controlled burn inside an insulated container is part of a study to learn more about the nature of fire in zero gravity and improve spacecraft safety... Continue Reading NASA sets fire to unmanned cargo ship in the name of safety

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SpaceX founder and CEO Elon Musk has never made a secret that he wants to go to Mars, and soon. Plans for an unmanned landing in 2018 using a Red Dragon capsule were announced earlier this year, and now in an interview with the Washington Post the tech entrepreneur has given a broad outline of a proposal that could see a manned mission touching down on the Red Planet in 2025... Continue Reading Musk wants to land a manned mission on Mars by 2025

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The latest attempt by SpaceX to land a Falcon 9 booster on a sea barge ended in what founder and CEO Elon Musk called a "rapid unscheduled disassembly." After three successful sea landings in a row by the company, the unmanned rocket impacted on the deck of the droneship "Of Course I Still Love You" at 10:37 am EDT after successfully sending its payload of two communications satellites into orbit. According Musk, the fiery crash was due to an engine malfunction... Continue Reading Falcon 9 landing ends in "rapid unscheduled disassembly" (Translation: it crashed)

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The ExoMars 2016 mission passed a major milestone this week as the Trace Gas Orbiter mothership captured its first images of Mars. ESA said today that the spacecraft sent back the images on Monday, June 13 when it was 41 million km (25 million mi) from the Red Planet... Continue Reading ExoMars sends back first Mars images

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If there's one place in our solar system you would expect to be as frozen solid as a box of forgotten ice lollies, it would be Pluto. However, PhD student Noah Hammond at Brown University says that data returned in 2015 by NASA's unmanned New Horizons deep-space probe indicates that the dwarf planet may have a subsurface ocean similar to those suspected to exist on some moons of Jupiter and may be responsible for the unusual surface features... Continue Reading Does Pluto have an ocean hiding beneath its surface?

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Sunday 12 June 2016

Robotic microscope locks on to wiggly worm's brain



Microscopes are an indispensable scientific instrument, but they don't do much good if the object under study keeps crawling out of view. To keep things in focus, a team of scientists from Osaka University and Tohoku University led by Professor Koichi Hashimoto has developed a new robotic microscope that automatically tracks moving objects as part of a study of brain activity.

.. Continue Reading Robotic microscope locks on to wiggly worm's brain

Category: Science

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Osaka University
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Saturday 11 June 2016

Sideways elevators could ease London commutes



Sometimes solving a problem takes a bit of lateral thinking – and maybe a bit of lateral movement. A recent debate panel in London made up of government and industry representatives discussed the problems that the city's Underground system faced from growing passenger demand and how "Willy Wonka" elevators that move sideways as well as up and down could take some of the pressure off.

.. Continue Reading Sideways elevators could ease London commutes

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Seiko creates insanely complex machine that does very little, beautifully



Watchmaking may seem like the ultimate in humorless efficiency, but Seiko has created an extremely complicated machine that does one very silly task beautifully. The centerpiece of a three-minute video, the "Art of Time" takes watch parts and turns them into a playful mechanical cityscape that recalls the Rube Goldberg or Heath Robinson contraptions of the last century – or possibly the boardgame Mouse Trap.

.. Continue Reading Seiko creates insanely complex machine that does very little, beautifully

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SpaceX raises prices to lower them



SpaceX has done so well in bringing down launch costs that it's raising its prices. That may seem paradoxical, but all is not what it seems. As well as making great strides towards its goal of a reusable launch system with three sea landings in a row, SpaceX has made improvements in rocket engine technology which mean that while launch prices look like they are going up, they're actually going down.

.. Continue Reading SpaceX raises prices to lower them

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Astronauts enter BEAM module for the first time


The Bigelow Expandable Activity Module (BEAM) was unsealed today by the crew of the International Space Station (ISS) without incident. At 4:47 am EDT, NASA astronaut Jeff Williams, with the assistance of Russian cosmonaut Oleg Skripochka, opened the hatch of the experimental habitat module as part of a two-year project to assess the technology of the inflatable unit.

.. Continue Reading Astronauts enter BEAM module for the first time

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The stopwatch: 200 years old and still ticking



Time stopped 200 years ago … then it was restarted, stopped again, and reset. No, this isn't some obscure retrospective application of relativity, we're talking about the invention of the stopwatch. In 1816 Louis Monet created a device known as the compteur de tierces – a fascinating tale in itself that only came to light a few years ago – and the era in which intervals of time could be accurately measured began. The advent of these little second counters has not only had a profound impact on our daily lives, but changed our very definition of time. Let's take a look back at how it all started.

.. Continue Reading The stopwatch: 200 years old and still ticking

Category: Inventors & Remarkable People

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BAE Systems bid provides glimpse into the future of Britain’s battle tanks



In service since 1998, the British Army's Challenger 2 main battle tank is reaching middle age, and the Ministry of Defence is looking to extend its life until 2025. BAE Systems originally built the Challenger 2 and has put in a bid for replacing many of the key systems, which gives us a look at what the British battlewagon of the next decade could look like.

.. Continue Reading BAE Systems bid provides glimpse into the future of Britain’s battle tanks

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ESA's potential space garbage collector nets itself a drone



ESA has provided a preview of its plan to net space debris by unveiling a prototype net gun designed to envelope and capture tumbling dead satellites. Wojtek Gołebiowski of Poland's SKA Polska, which is developing the gun under a contract with the space agency, used a small version to target and take down a low-flying drone at the Industry Days event for ESA's Clean Space initiative.

.. Continue Reading ESA's potential space garbage collector nets itself a drone

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Friday 3 June 2016

Catch up



Solar Impulse 2 has completed the 13th leg of its solar-powered around the world flight, touching down at LeHigh Valley International Airport in Pennsylvania. With Bertrand Piccard piloting, the single-seater aircraft reached its destination at 8:49 pm CDT after a near 17-hour flight from Dayton, Ohio.

.. Continue Reading Solar Impulse 2 completes short hop to Pennsylvania

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If it could work with asteroids, why not the Earth? That's the thinking behind space mining company Planetary Resources' plan to adapt its asteroid prospecting satellite design to Earth observation. The Washington-based firm says that this Earth observation system, dubbed Ceres, will see a new version of its Arkyd spacecraft equipped with infrared and hyperspectral sensors developed for monitoring Earth resources and industries... Continue Reading Planetary Resources turns asteroid prospecting satellites toward Earth

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The first attempt to inflate the Bigelow Expandable Activity Module (BEAM) attached to the International Space Station (ISS) ended in failure today as astronauts and engineers assess the situation. At 6:10 am EDT, NASA astronaut Jeff Williams partially inflated the experimental habitat module docked to the station's' Tranquility module in what should have been 45-minute operation, but despite several hours of work, the balloon-like fabric only expanded a few inches instead of the planned several feet... Continue Reading First attempt to deploy inflatable habitat on space station is a no-go

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The daring became almost routine today as SpaceX pulled off a spectacular three-in-a-row by successfully landing a Falcon 9 booster on the deck of a sea barge for the third time running. At 5:48 pm EDT, the nine-engine rocket touched down in a powered landing on the unmanned drone barge "Of Course I Still Love You" in the Atlantic Ocean after delivering a telecommunications satellite into geosynchronous transfer orbit... Continue Reading SpaceX takes aquatic hat trick with third sea barge landing

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NASA will have another go at inflating the Bigelow Expandable Activity Module (BEAM) on Saturday morning. The second attempt at deploying the experimental habitat module attached to the International Space Station (ISS) will take place at 9:00 am EDT, when the station crew will again slowly introduce air into the balloon-like fabric structure in hopes it will expand properly... Continue Reading NASA to make second attempt at inflating BEAM on Saturday

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With the sound of popping corn, the Bigelow Expandable Activity Module (BEAM) aboard the ISS has successfully been inflated on the second try in three days. At 4:10 pm EDT today, the experimental habitat expanded to its full size after a nearly seven-and-a-half hour operation. During this time, NASA astronaut Jeff Williams slowly fed air into the module while being monitored by mission control at the Johnson Space Center in Houston... Continue Reading Inflatable module pops to full size on ISS

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Space travel can still be dramatic in 2016, but it's a cakewalk compared to half a century ago. Today marks 50 years since the unmanned Surveyor I probe lifted off from Cape Canaveral, and when it landed in the Oceanus Procellarum on June 2, 1966, it was more than the first US soft landing on the Moon, it was a leap into the unknown. Launched at the height of the Space Race and the depth of the Cold War, the stakes for the first of seven Surveyor missions were incredibly high, as NASA wrestled with untried technologies and questions about the basic nature of the Moon that could make or break any hope of a manned landing... Continue Reading Leap into the lunar unknown: Fifty years since the landmark launch of Surveyor 1

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The latest version of General Atomics' unmanned Predator drone has set a new endurance record for the aircraft. In a 10-hour improvement over the previous Predator, the company reported its next-generation Predator B/MQ-9 Reaper Big Wing aircraft flew for over 37 hours non-stop while carrying out a simulated reconnaissance mission over California... Continue Reading MQ-9 Reaper Big Wing sets Predator flight endurance record

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General Atomics Aeronautical Systems
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With the era of autonomous cars almost upon us, engineers at Stanford University are already working on something more difficult – robots that can share the pavement with pedestrians. Jackrabbot may look like a backyard BB8 with WALL-E's head stuck on, but its function goes beyond cuteness. It's designed to interact with pedestrians and learn from them how to get around without bumping into people or annoying them... Continue Reading Jackrabbot plays nice with pedestrians

Category: Robotics

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