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Category: space – Page 829

NASA space probe shot an asteroid with lasers

Pew face_with_colon_three

NASA’s OSIRIS-REx mission has been steadily progressing since the spacecraft arrived at the diamond-shaped space rock known as Bennu a few months back, but not everything has gone completely to plan.

The rock ended up being far more, well, dirty than NASA originally expected. Bennu’s surface is absolutely packed with debris, posing a challenge for NASA’s team that still has to decide where to have the probe touch down on the asteroid to collect samples. Now, using a laser instrument built into OSIRIS-REx, NASA has a detailed look at how dangerous the surface truly is.

In a new blog post, NASA explains how it used a tool called the OSIRIS-REx Laser Altimeter (OLA) to scan much of Bennu’s surface. The instrument paints a 3D picture of the hard surfaces the laser bounces off of, giving NASA researchers a detailed glimpse at the asteroid’s rocky surface.

Samsung’s take on the world of 2069

Samsung is looking forward to what life might be like in the year 2069. The new report, called Samsung KX50: The Future in Focus, draws on the opinions of six of Britain’s leading academics and futurists to look at a range of new technologies that will affect people’s everyday lives.

Trying to predict the future is a dodgy business that has a notoriously low success rate. If the world of 2019 was anything like past predictions, we should have flying cars, personal jet packs, robot butlers, 100 percent atomic power producing limitless energy, little bottles containing nanobots that can grow cars on the front lawn, colonies on the Moon and Mars – and all in a society that hasn’t changed much since 1960, except it’s a bit nicer.

Blockchain Apogee

The astronaut training billionaire Richard Branson to be the first passenger on Virgin Galactic has seen the Earth from 56 miles away. Now, the long-time bitcoin advocate wants to share what she saw: how blockchain and other technologies are enabling a borderless world.

Psychosensory electronic skin technology for future AI and humanoid development

Professor Jae Eun Jang’s team in the Department of Information and Communication Engineering has developed electronic skin technology that can detect “prick” and “hot” pain sensations like humans. This research result has applications in the development of humanoid robots and prosthetic hands in the future.

Scientists are continuously performing research to imitate tactile, olfactory and palate senses, and is expected to be the next mimetic technology for various applications. Currently, most tactile sensor research is focused on physical mimetic technologies that measure the pressure used for a robot to grab an object, but psychosensory tactile research on mimicking human tactile sensory responses like those caused by soft, smooth or rough surfaces has a long way to go.

Professor Jae Eun Jang’s team has developed a tactile sensor that can feel and temperature like humans through a joint project with Professor Cheil Moon’s team in the Department of Brain and Cognitive Science, Professor Ji-woong Choi’s team in the Department of Information and Communication Engineering, and Professor Hongsoo Choi’s team in the Department of Robotics Engineering. Its key strengths are that it has simplified the sensor structure and can measure pressure and temperature at the same time. Furthermore, it can be applied on various tactile systems regardless of the measurement principle of the sensor.

NASA will test quiet supersonic jet using 30-mile-long microphone array

Quiet supersonic jets may one day fly over land to offer faster commercial and passenger flights. Before that can happen, however, the FAA will need to establish new rules regarding these typically noisy flights. To help usher in that era, NASA plans to test Lockheed Martin’s X-59 QueSST, an experimental supersonic jet that produces a ‘thump’ instead of a ‘boom,’ something the space agency will verify using a microphone array that is 30 miles long.

NASA Considers Robotic Lunar Pit Mission; Moon’s Subsurface Key To Exploration

The Moon’s subsurface is the key to its longterm development and sustainability, says NASA scientist.

A view of the Apollo 11 lunar module “Eagle” as it returned from the surface of the moon to dock with the command module “Columbia”. A smooth mare area is visible on the Moon below and a half-illuminated Earth hangs over the horizon. Command module pilot Michael Collins took this picture.