Archive for the ‘space travel’ category: Page 320
Apr 10, 2019
Scientists Have Created A Star Trek-Like Plane That Flies Using ‘Ion Thrusters’ And No Fuel
Posted by Quinn Sena in categories: futurism, space travel
Scientists have taken a major step towards creating an aircraft of the future, one powered by an ion drive rather than using moving parts and fuel like conventional aircraft.
In a paper published today in Nature, a team led by Steven Barrett from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) described how they created a so-called electroaerodynamic-powered plane, one that uses solid-state propulsion, meaning no propellers or jet engines with expendable fuel.
Apr 9, 2019
Israeli Moon Lander Poised for Lunar Touchdown Thursday
Posted by Alberto Lao in category: space travel
If Beresheet succeeds, Israel will become just the fourth nation to land a spacecraft softly on the moon, following the Soviet Union, the United States and China.
Beresheet is currently orbiting the moon and remains on an “excellent” track, said its operators, the nonprofit group SpaceIL and the company Israel Aerospace Industries (IAI).
Apr 8, 2019
Testing ion thrusters for space exploration
Posted by Quinn Sena in category: space travel
Engineers are testing ion propulsion systems for the next generation of aircraft now, writes Paul Willis.
Apr 8, 2019
British engineers complete test of their new high-speed ‘spaceplane’
Posted by Tracy R. Atkins in category: space travel
Reaction Engines, which is based in Oxfordshire, has tested their new pre-cooler’ technology — which allows aircraft to travel faster than ever with a Sabre engine designed to take planes into orbit.
Apr 7, 2019
Can Robots Build a Moon Base for Astronauts? Japan Hopes to Find Out
Posted by Klaus Baldauf in categories: robotics/AI, space travel
Japan’s space agency wants to create a moon base with the help of robots that can work autonomously, with little human supervision.
The project, which has racked up three years of research so far, is a collaboration between the Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency (JAXA), the construction company Kajima Corp., and three Japanese universities: Shibaura Institute of Technology, The University of Electro-Communications and Kyoto University.
Recently, the collaboration did an experiment on automated construction at the Kajima Seisho Experiment Site in Odawara (central Japan).
Continue reading “Can Robots Build a Moon Base for Astronauts? Japan Hopes to Find Out” »
Apr 6, 2019
Link Observatory Space Science Institute
Posted by Alberto Lao in categories: science, space travel
Apr 5, 2019
Using AI to Make Better AI
Posted by Quinn Sena in categories: information science, robotics/AI, space travel
Next month, however, a team of MIT researchers will be presenting a so-called “Proxyless neural architecture search” algorithm that can speed up the AI-optimized AI design process by 240 times or more. That would put faster and more accurate AI within practical reach for a broad class of image recognition algorithms and other related applications.
“There are all kinds of tradeoffs between model size, inference latency, accuracy, and model capacity,” says Song Han, assistant professor of electrical engineering and computer science at MIT. Han adds that:
“[These] all add up to a giant design space. Previously people had designed neural networks based on heuristics. Neural architecture search tried to free this labor intensive, human heuristic-based exploration [by turning it] into a learning-based, AI-based design space exploration. Just like AI can [learn to] play a Go game, AI can [learn how to] design a neural network.”
Apr 5, 2019
SpaceX’s Starship Hopper Completes First Tethered “Hop”
Posted by Genevieve Klien in category: space travel
Apr 4, 2019
Scientists Say They Can Make Light Travel 30x Faster Than Normal
Posted by Quinn Sena in category: space travel
“This is the first clear demonstration of controlling the speed of a pulse light in free space,” Abouraddy said in the statement. “And it opens up doors for many applications, an optical buffer being just one of them, but most importantly it’s done in a simple way, that’s repeatable and reliable.”
READ MORE: Researchers develop way to control speed of light, send it backward [Phys.org]
More on light: New NASA Animations Show How Slowly Light Travels Through Space.