NASA’s upcoming Laser Communications Relay Demonstration could revolutionize the way the agency communicates with future missions across the solar system.
These lasers could lead to more high-definition videos and photos from space than ever before, according to the agency.
“The Earth was very water-rich compared to other rocky planets in the Solar System, with oceans covering more than 70% of its surface, and scientists had long puzzled over the exact source of it all,” said Professor Phil Bland, director of the Space Science and Technology Centre at Curtin University.
“An existing theory is that water was carried to Earth in the final stages of its formation on C-type asteroids, however previous testing of the isotopic ‘fingerprint’ of these asteroids found they, on average, didn’t match with the water found on Earth meaning there was at least one other unaccounted for source.”
“Our research suggests the solar wind created water on the surface of tiny dust grains and this isotopically lighter water likely provided the remainder of the Earth’s water.”
Meta, the company formerly known as Facebook is pulling the plug on its facial recognition program. The company is planning to delete more than one billion people’s individual facial recognition templates, and will no longer automatically recognize people’s faces in photos or videos as a result of this change, according to its own post. The use of facial recognition technology has a disparate impact on people of color, disenfranchising a group who already face inequality, and Facebook seems to be acknowledging this inherent harm. The Breakdown You Need to Know.
CultureBanx reported that Meta seems to always be embroiled in corporate drama and with intense scrutiny. When you add that to the growing concern from users and regulators that facial recognition space remains complicated, an exit makes sense. More than 600 million daily active users on Facebook had opted into the use of the face recognition technology.
Research shows commercial artificial intelligence systems tend to have higher error rates for women and black people. Some facial recognition systems would only confuse light-skin men 0.8% of the time and would have an error rate of 34.7% for dark-skin women. Just imagine surveillance being used with these flawed algorithms. A 2018 IDC report noted it expects worldwide spending on cognitive and AI systems to reach $77.6 billion in 2022.
The chance that ESA’s Solar Orbiter spacecraft will encounter space debris during its upcoming Earth flyby is very, very low. However, the risk is not zero and is greater than any other flyby ESA has performed. That there is this risk at all highlights the mess we’ve made of space—and why we need to take action to clean up after ourselves.
On 27 November, after a year and eight months flying through the inner Solar System, Solar Orbiter will swing by home to ‘drop off’ some extra energy. This will line the spacecraft up for its next six flybys of Venus. These final gravity assists will hone and tilt Solar Orbiter’s orbit, enabling the heat-protected probe to capture the first-ever direct images of our star’s poles, and much more.
Before NASA deploys its Artemis Gateway in orbit around the moon, the agency will launch a different, but related “Gateway” at its Kennedy Space Center Visitor Complex. “Gateway: The Deep Space Launch Complex” is slated to open in March 2022.
Help us turn December BLUE… register here for the space party:
www.f4f.space/bluemarblenight.
F4F is launching Blue Marble Night as a new spacer holiday, commemorating the Blue Marble photo taken by Apollo 17 on 7 December, 1972.
NASA’s Parker Solar Probe has completed a record-setting swing by the Sun, breaking two world records while making its pass.
As particles travel through the Universe, there’s a speed limit to how fast they’re allowed to go. No, not the speed of light: below it.
Outlandish Deep Space project will seat four, have all-wheel drive and cost more than £2 million.
