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Ingenuity’s Flight 12 was a Tricky one, Flying Over Hazardous Terrain

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.”

Hubble Captures a Stunning ‘Einstein Ring’ Magnifying The Depths of The Universe

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.

In the center in the image (below) is a shiny, near-perfect ring with what appear to be four bright spots threaded along it, looping around two more points with a golden glow.

Baidu Apollo unveils autonomous vehicle with no steering wheel or pedals

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.

Chinese Space Station taikonauts conduct second spacewalk

The crew of Shenzhou-12 has conducted the second spacewalk of the mission, and the second spacewalk of the new Chinese Space Station’s lifetime. The extravehicular activity (EVA) comes two months into their planned 90-day mission in low Earth orbit.

Mission commander Nie Haisheng and first operator Liu Boming exited the Tianhe core module at 00:38 UTC on Friday, August 20. The goals of the EVA included the installation of a new panoramic camera (known as Panoramic Camera D) as well as a backup thermal control pump. Second operator Tang Hongbo stayed inside the station to support the two spacewalkers, similar to how crew onboard the International Space Station support American and Russian spacewalks.

Haisheng and Boming exited the depressurized docking node of the Tianhe module, which is being used as an EVA airlock until the Wentian lab module, equipped with its own airlock for crewmembers, arrives in the spring of 2022. Panoramic Camera D was successfully installed, and the station was prepared for future EVAs and module installations. To that end, the taikonauts finished installing additional foot restraints onto the station as well as a work platform on the station’s robotic arm.

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