NASA on Friday published satellite photos of a powerful meteor which appeared just above the Bering Sea on December 18 but went unnoticed until months later.
The explosion unleashed around 173 kilotons of energy, more than 10 times that of the atomic bomb blast over Hiroshima in World War II.
The partnership could greatly enhance the productivity of a single officer in the field and decrease fatigue or strain — but the USSOCOM didn’t reveal the exact intended use case for the exoskeleton, which lets the wearer heft 200 pounds (90 kg).
Forklift Arms
It’s the latest sign that exoskeletons are finally hitting the mainstream. Automobile manufacturers are already considering the use of simpler exoskeletons on factory floors. And the Food and Drug Administration approved a lower-body exoskeleton last year for use by people with lower limb disabilities.
It’s cliché to describe something very noisy as “louder than a jet engine.” But supersonic jet engines, like those powering fighters flown by the U.S. military, are so much louder than regular jet engines that scientists have a special term for their sound—” broadband shock-associated noise.”
Now, a team of faculty and students from the Department of Aerospace Engineering at the University of Kansas will design and test innovative technologies to cut noise from supersonic military jets. The U.S. Department of Defense’s Strategic Environmental Research and Development Program (SERDP), the DoD’s environmental science and technology program, is supporting a one-year, $200,000 effort at KU, with the potential to expand that support in the years ahead.
“This project will test ideas to reduce jet noise from supersonic military aircraft,” said Z.J. Wang, Spahr Professor of Aerospace Engineering at KU, who is heading the new effort. “At the moment, the noise is so loud that it affects the health of personnel working in close proximity to the aircraft and people living close to the military base. This is a challenging problem, and we’ve suggested some novel ideas which have potential.”
Defense officials have asked for $304 million to fund research into space-based lasers, particle beams, and other new forms of missile defense next year.
Defense officials want to test a neutral particle-beam in orbit in fiscal 2023 as part of a ramped-up effort to explore various types of space-based weaponry. They’ve asked for $304 million in the 2020 budget to develop such beams, more powerful lasers, and other new tech for next-generation missile defense. Such weapons are needed, they say, to counter new missiles from China, Russia, North Korea and Iran. But just figuring out what might work is a difficult technical challenge.
So the Pentagon is undertaking two studies. The first is a $15 million exploration of whether satellites outfitted with lasers might be able to disable enemy missiles coming off the launch pad. Defense officials have said previously that these lasers would need to be in the megawatt class. They expect to finish the study within six months.
More than 70 years after it was torpedoed and sunk during the World War II Battle of Guadalcanal, the aircraft carrier USS Wasp has been discovered in the Coral Sea.
Wasp was spotted on the seabed, in 14,000 feet of water, by the research vessel (RV) Petrel, part of a research organization established by Microsoft Corp. co-founder Paul Allen, in January.
Scientists have known for a century that viruses attack and sometimes kill bacteria, much the way humans come down with the flu. But only recently have they begun to understand the biochemistry that happens as bacteria and virus strive for competitive advantage, with far-reaching implications for medicine and more.
Researchers explain how viruses make a molecular decoy that is used to subvert the CRISPR-Cas bacterial immune system.
