Lifeboat Foundation

The Ingenuity helicopter on Mars has now completed its 12th flight, where it acted as a scout, looking ahead for dangerous terrain for it’s partner in crime, the Perseverance rover.

The 4-pound autonomous rotocraft climbed over almost 10 meters (33 ft) high, and traveled a total of 450 meters (1,476 ft) in 169 seconds. It flew over the over an area dubbed the ‘South Seitah’ region of Mars, where Perseverance will explore.

“A dozen for the books!” said JPL on Twitter. “The Mars helicopter’s latest flight took us to the geological wonder that is the ‘South Seitah’ region.”

Astronauts Nie Haisheng and Liu Boming performed a spacewalk outside the Tiangogng space station core module Tianhe on Aug. 20 2021. See the highlights here.

Credit: Space.com | footage courtesy: China Central Television | produced & edited by Steve Spaleta (http://www.twitter.com/stevespaleta)

NASA reopened the Apollo mission control center after a complete restoration.

The goal was to transform the room back to its Apollo-era configuration.

From ashtrays to coffee mugs to clothing items…

Continue reading “NASA reopened the Apollo mission control after a restoration back to its Apollo-era configuration” »

The universe is (nearly) 14 billion years old, astronomers confirm.

With looming discrepancies about the true age of the universe, scientists have taken a fresh look at the observable (expanding) universe and have estimated that it is 13.77 billion years old (plus or minus 40 million years).

Jupiter’s hotter-than-expected upper atmosphere may be caused by high-speed charged particles slamming into the air high above the poles.

Gravity is the weird, mysterious glue that binds the Universe together, but that’s not the limit of its charms. We can also leverage the way it warps space-time to see distant objects that would be otherwise much more difficult to make out.

This is called gravitational lensing, an effect predicted by Einstein, and it’s beautifully illustrated in a new release from the Hubble Space Telescope.

Continue reading “Hubble Captures a Stunning ‘Einstein Ring’ Magnifying The Depths of The Universe” »

FM radio waves reveal a side of the universe invisible to the human eye.

The most detailed radio images of galaxies outside the Milky Way have been captured by the LOFAR network of 70,000 radio antennas spread over nine European countries.

Baidu’s autonomous driving unit, Apollo, has developed a new vehicle capable of Level 5 vehicle autonomy, meaning the car requires no human intervention during operation. Notably, it has no steering wheel, gas pedal, or brake pedal, signifying that drivers are completely unnecessary.

The “robocar,” as Baidu founder and CEO Robin Li called it, was showcased during a livestream event on Wednesday. It is equipped with two passenger seats, a large curved screen, an intelligent console, and electrochromic glass with varying tints based on natural brightness. This follows Apollo’s showcase of its Moon model in June.

During the event, Apollo indicated that the new vehicle will incorporate machine learning to analyze passengers’ needs and respond to verbal commands. In some scenarios, the system may even anticipate demands made by people in the vehicle.

The more Mars rovers, the merrier.