Lifeboat Foundation

This morning Mural, a startup that builds digital collaboration software with a focus on visual presentation, announced that it has closed a $50 million Series C. The new capital, co-led by prior investors Insight Partners and Tiger Global, values the startup at more than $2 billion.

Previously, Mural was valued at around $500 million when it closed a $118 million round last August. Mural also raised a $23 million Series A at the start of 2020.

Mural’s product focuses around a visual collaboration space, akin to a digital whiteboard. Given its product focus, it’s not hard to see why the startup had a good COVID cycle; the world’s companies moved to remote work en masse, leaving offices empty and physical whiteboards un-scribbled. Services like Mural helped fill that, and similar voids. TechCrunch caught up with Mural CEO Mariano Suarez-Battan and Insight managing director Nikhil Sachdev to learn more about deal mechanics.

The galaxies are located hundreds of millions of light years away from Earth and are leaving a trail of stars and dust as they merge.

The company’s head, Slyusar, also touted the aircraft’s features on Russian state TV, describing the planes as “unique in their class” and adding that they have “a combat radius of 1500 kilometers, the largest thrust-to-weight ratio, shortened takeoff and landing, more than seven tons of combat load, which is an absolute record for aircraft of this class.”

Russian President Vladimir Putin got a sneak peek of a new fifth-generation lightweight single-engine fighter jet at an air show just outside of Moscow on Tuesday.

Russian aircraft makers unveiled a prototype of the stealth fighter dubbed “Checkmate” for the 68-year-old leader at the MAKS-2021 International Aviation and Space Salon in Zhukovsky, ahead of its official unveiling later in the day, according to a statement from Rostec, the state-owned military giant which is responsible for exporting Russian technology.

Continue reading “Russia unveils new ‘Checkmate’ fighter jet” »

This is the first time an amateur astronomer has discovered a moon around Jupiter.

An amateur astronomer has discovered a previously unknown moon around Jupiter after poring over old telescope images, a major first.

Magnetic shields could help earth if we lost out outer shielding from atmosphere and stuff.

The space agency is considering an artificial magnetic field around the planet to defend against harmful radiation from the sun.

Thermoelectric cooling helmets for motorcycles can finally lead to spacesuits becoming electrically cooled.

530361 views • Aug 4, 2018 • The Feher ACH-1 is the world’s first and only self-contained air-conditioned motorcycle helmet. By utilizing thermoelectric technology, the patented full-face ACH-1 evenly distributes filtered, cooled air freely throughout the entire interior of the helmet. Integrating Feher’s patented Tubular Space Fabric with the helmets comfort liner allows the helmet to provide consistent, optimal temperature.

Following the success in 2019 of Bill Nye and the Planetary Society’s solar sail craft LightSail 2, NASA plans to launch its own solar sail project to investigate near-Earth asteroids.

The Near-Earth Asteroid Scout (NEA Scout) is a small satellite around the size of a shoebox that will sail through space powered by sunlight. The hardware will consist of a stainless steel boom structure across which a thin, aluminum-coated plastic sail will be stretched. The total area covered by the sail is around that of a racquetball court, and as photons from the sun bounce off the shiny surface, they will propel the craft forward.

As wacky as this idea sounds — it was made famous by, among others, science fiction author Arthur C. Clarke — it has been shown to work in low-Earth orbit by the LightSail project. Now NASA will take this one step further by deploying a solar sail in deep space.

For the first time, astronomers have mapped the surface of a pulsar in detail. And the result challenges our textbook picture of a pulsar’s appearance.