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Category: space – Page 561

The Bay Area has several famous landmarks that stand out from the Space Station.

The winter months in the San Francisco Bay area offer a reprieve from the typically foggy summer days that shroud the city and water beneath a layer of low clouds. On this clear December day, an astronaut onboard the International Space Station shot this photograph of the area’s mixture of dense urban development and preserved natural spaces.

The Bay Area has several famous landmarks that stand out to astronauts. The Golden Gate Bridge is part of Route 101, the longest highway in California; it connects the city of San Francisco to Marin County. The San Francisco–Oakland Bay Bridge crosses over and tunnels through Yerba Buena Island. Both bridges stand high enough to allow large ships to pass under on the way to various docks, piers, and shipyards around the Bay.

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A person can weed about one acre of crops a day. This smart robot can weed 20.

Carbon Robotics has unveiled the third-generation of its Autonomous Weeder, a smart farming robot that identifies weeds and then destroys them with high-power lasers.

The weedkiller challenge: Weeds compete with plants for space, sunlight, and soil nutrients. They can also make it easier for insect pests to harm crops, so weed control is a top concern for farmers.

Chemical herbicides can kill the pesky plants, but they can also contaminate water and affect soil health. Weeds can be pulled out by hand, but it’s unpleasant work, and labor shortages are already a huge problem in the agriculture industry.

Continue reading “Farming Robot Kills 100,000 Weeds per Hour With Lasers” | >

The next era of astronomy will be defined by a wider view of the cosmos.

The next era of our investigation of the cosmos is about to be kick-started by the Vera C. Rubin Observatory, a ground-based telescope currently under construction on the El Penón peak of Cerro Pachón in northern Chile. The observatory is a federal project run by the National Science Foundation (NSF) and the U.S. Department of Energy.

The new observatory — named in honor of astronomer Vera Rubin — is scheduled to begin operations in October 2023, according to a statement published on the Rubin Observatory website. When it’s up and running, Rubin will allow astronomers to consider some of the universe’s most pressing mysteries.

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An international research team led by Michigan State University has helped create cosmic conditions at RIKEN’s heavy-ion accelerator in Japan.

Imagine taking all of the water in Lake Michigan — more than a quadrillion gallons — and squeezing it into a 4-gallon bucket, the kind you’d find at a hardware store.

A quick review of the numbers suggests that this should be impossible: that’s too much stuff and not enough space. But this outlandish density is a defining feature of celestial objects known as neutron stars. These stars are only about 15 miles across, yet they hold more mass than our sun thanks to some extreme physics.

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It’s clothing fit for a post-apocalyptic world, not our own. It’s unsurprising then that the company has found a large following in Silicon Valley, which is known for attracting vast resources and the kinds of people absorbed in questions of where we’re all headed. Many have, after all, bought up the boltholes and bunkers to prove it.

A Vollebak rack would sooner belong in a military surplus warehouse than a high street clothing store.

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Lockheed Martin Space hired 2700 people plus 700 interns in 2020, a year unlike any other for human resources managers. Almost overnight, the prime contractor with about 23000 employees switched from its traditional in-person approach to virtual recruitment, interviewing and training.

SpaceNews correspondent Debra Werner spoke with Lockheed Martin Space executives Nick Spain, human resources vice president, Renu Aggarwal, talent acquisition director, and Heather Erickson, organizational development director, about the opportunities and challenges posed by heightened demand for talent amid a pandemic.

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Despite virtual reality (VR) technology being more affordable than ever, developers have yet to achieve a sense of full immersion in a digital world. Among the greatest challenges is making the user feel as if they are walking.

Now, researchers from the Toyohashi University of Technology and The University of Tokyo in Japan have published a paper to the journal Frontiers in Virtual Reality describing a custom-built platform that aims to replicate the sensation of walking in VR, all while sitting motionlessly in a chair.

“Walking is a fundamental and fun activity for human in everyday life. Therefore, it is very worthwhile to provide a high-quality walking experience in a VR space,” says Yusuke Matsuda.

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