Lifeboat Foundation

The spacecraft successfully enters lunar orbit.

A toaster oven-sized NASA spacecraft will pave the way for a lunar orbital station that will help the U.S. space agency establish a permanent presence on the moon.

Continue reading “NASA’s CAPSTONE became the first cubesat mission to ever visit the moon” »

German-based technology company Continental Automotive claims to have secured its first significant order in the third quarter for its semi-dry brake system called ‘Future Brake System’ (FBS).

The mass manufacture of its semi-dry brake system (also known as FBS 2) is claimed to be worth approximately €1.5 billion (U.S. $1.55 billion), the company declared in a press release on Wednesday.

The idea that planets only develop when a star reaches its maximum size has been challenged by the observation that stars and planets “grow up” together.

Some of the oldest stars in the universe, the building blocks for planets like Jupiter and Saturn start to form when a young star is growing, suggests a new study published on Nov. 14 in the journal Nature Astronomy.

The recent findings indicate that stars and planets ‘grow up’ together, challenging a leading belief that planets only form once a star has reached its final size.

With 3,774 days in space under its belt, the solar-powered X-37B has already traveled more than 1.3 billion miles.

After a record-breaking 908 days in orbit for its sixth mission, a U.S. military drone touched down at NASA’s Kennedy Space Center, early on Saturday.

“Since the X-37B’s first launch in 2010, it has shattered records and provided our nation with an unrivaled capability to rapidly test and integrate new space technologies,” stated Jim Chilton, a senior vice president for Boeing, its developer.

Continue reading “US military drone lands safely after spending record-breaking 908 days in space” »

There might be room for everyone, or not.

At first glance, the connections between the world’s growing population and climate change seem obvious. The more people we have on this planet, the larger their collective impact on the climate.

Continue reading “Earth’s population will reach 8 billion next week — here’s what that means for our planet” »

The employees past and present are calling it a Twitter “takeover.”

Elon Musk, in a move to wrap himself up in a blanket of his own financing, has bought ad space on Twitter. SpaceX bought the ads for Starlink, and they will play on top of the Twitter platform’s feed for one day in Spain and Australia.

In a tweet in reply to another Twitter account Musk said of the deal, “SpaceX Starlink bought a tiny — not large — ad package to test effectiveness of Twitter advertising in Australia & Spain. Did same for FB/Insta/Google,”

Continue reading “Elon Musk’s Starlink buys ad time on Elon Musk’s Twitter” »

Burning plasma fusion reactions, thought to be crucial for building working fusion reactors, are producing more high-energy particles than researchers expected. Solving the mystery of why could be key to making fusion viable.

Omiefe Africa’s first humanoid robot has been built by a Nigerian company, Uniccon.

As the world takes a U-turn in inventions ranging from smartphones, and drones, and now with the latest inventions of humanoid (robots).

The humanoid robot was unveiled at the world’s biggest technology event, Gitex, which took place at Dubai World Trade Centre, from October 10th to 14th.

In a study recently published in Nature Materials, Prof. Wang Shutao from the Technical Institute of Physics and Chemistry (TICP) of the Chinese Academy of Sciences (CAS) and Prof. Liu Huan from Beihang University revealed the secret of ultra-slow motion of pine cones and developed mimicking actuators enabling unperceivable motion.

Responsive actuators have attracted extensive attention by virtue of their great potential applications in flexible robotics, sensors, energy conversion and other fields. Pine cones are a well-known bionic model for constructing artificial actuators.

However, little attention has been paid to the fact that the hygroscopic motion of pine cones is an ultra-slow process. Hygroscopic deformation has long been attributed to the uneven hygroscopic expansion of vascular bundles (VBs) and sclereids, controlled by their different microfibril orientations. The mechanism cannot explain the observation that VBs themselves are capable of reversible hygroscopic motion. Therefore, the mechanism of ultra-slow motion in pine cones has long been unclear.