Lifeboat Foundation

OAKLAND, Calif. July 25 (Reuters) — U.S. chipmaker Intel Corp (INTC.O) said on Monday it will produce chips for Taiwan’s MediaTek Inc (2454.TW), one of the world’s largest chip design firms.

The manufacturing arrangement is one of the most significant deals Intel has announced since it launched its so-called foundry business early last year.

A foundry business builds chips that other companies design and Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co (TSMC) (2330.TW) is the top player in that space. Intel has mainly built chips it designed itself.

In 2017 and 2018, scientists spotted the first two interstellar objects ever recorded in our Solar System. JWST could tell us more about them.

The July issue of Scientific American magazine has a terrific review of the Voyager space mission that details the trips Voyagers 1 and 2 have made through the Solar System. The article is titled “Record-Breaking Voyager Spacecraft Begin to Power Down.” Both spacecraft have now entered interstellar space and are the first human artifacts to do so. Tim Folger wrote the article for Scientific American. Towards the end of the article, Folger points out that Voyagers 1 and 2 were designed before the advent of the microprocessor and that the mission has lasted 44 years, so far, which is about 40 years longer than the planned design life for the spacecraft.

The article then quotes Stamatios Krimigis, a PhD physicist and space scientist who’s spent more than half a century at the Johns Hopkins Applied Physics Laboratory. Krimigis says, “The amount of software on these instruments is slim to none. On the whole, I think the mission lasted so long because almost everything was hardwired. Today’s engineers don’t know how to do this. I don’t know if it’s even possible to build such a simple spacecraft [now]. Voyager is the last of its kind.”

Continue reading “Voyagers 1 and 2 Take Embedded Computers into Interstellar Space” »

China’s space station is almost complete after the country launched one out of the two modules left.

China’s space agency continues to make steady progress as the country aims to become one of the world’s leading space powers.

On Sunday, July 24, it launched one of the two laboratory modules required to complete its orbital space station, a press release reveals.