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Two much-loved characters and some LEGO minifigures have been assigned to NASA’s Artemis I mission to the Moon. Shaun The Sheep and Snoopy are scheduled to lift-off during a two-hour window that opens at 8:33 a.m. EDT on Monday, August 29. If all goes to plan they’ll flyby the Moon and eventually return to Earth in the Orion spacecraft 42 days later.

This won’t be Snoopy’s first trip to space, having orbited Earth in a Space Shuttle in 1990. Snoopy will go to space this time as a visual indicator when a spacecraft has reached the weightlessness of microgravity. Interior cameras will capture the moment when Snoopy floats.


In the abscence of humans on NASA’s Artemis-1 mission around the Moon a cute selection of pop dolls, characters and “moonikins” will go to space.

Two-dimensional materials, which consist of a single layer of atoms, exhibit unusual properties that could be harnessed for a wide range of quantum and microelectronics systems. But what makes them truly special are their flaws.

“That’s where their true magic lies,” said Alexander Weber-Bargioni at the Department of Energy’s Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory (Berkeley Lab).

Defects down to the atomic level can influence the material’s macroscopic function and lead to novel quantum behaviors, and there are so many kinds of defects that researchers have barely begun to understand the possibilities. One of the biggest challenges in the field is systematically studying these defects at relevant scales, or with atomic resolution.

Tohoku University scientists in Japan have developed a mathematical description of what happens within tiny magnets as they fluctuate between states when an electric current and magnetic field are applied. Their findings, published in the journal Nature Communications, could act as the foundation for engineering more advanced computers that can quantify uncertainty while interpreting complex data.

Classical computers have gotten us this far, but there are some problems that they cannot address efficiently. Scientists have been working on addressing this by engineering computers that can utilize the laws of quantum physics to recognize patterns in . But these so-called quantum computers are still in their early stages of development and are extremely sensitive to their surroundings, requiring extremely low temperatures to function.

Now, scientists are looking at something different: a concept called probabilistic computing. This type of computer, which could function at , would be able to infer potential answers from complex input. A simplistic example of this type of problem would be to infer information about a person by looking at their purchasing behavior. Instead of the computer providing a single, discrete result, it picks out patterns and delivers a good guess of what the result might be.

As any driver knows, accidents can happen in the blink of an eye—so when it comes to the camera system in autonomous vehicles, processing time is critical. The time that it takes for the system to snap an image and deliver the data to the microprocessor for image processing could mean the difference between avoiding an obstacle or getting into a major accident.

In-sensor , in which important features are extracted from raw data by the itself instead of the separate microprocessor, can speed up the . To date, demonstrations of in-sensor processing have been limited to emerging research materials which are, at least for now, difficult to incorporate into commercial systems.

Now, researchers from the Harvard John A. Paulson School of Engineering and Applied Sciences (SEAS) have developed the first in-sensor processor that could be integrated into commercial silicon imaging sensor chips–known as complementary metal-oxide-semiconductor (CMOS) image sensors–that are used in nearly all commercial devices that need capture visual information, including smartphones.

The NQISRCs integrate state-of-the-art DOE facilities, preeminent talent at national laboratories and U.S. universities, and the enterprising ingenuity of U.S. technology companies.

As a result, the centers are pushing the frontier of what’s possible in quantum computers, sensors, devices, materials and much more.

In a new medical breakthrough, scientists have successfully grown a synthetic embryo of a mouse without male sperm and a female womb. They used stem cells from mice to recreate the first stage of life and successfully developed an embryo with a brain, beating heart, and vitals for other organs.

The natural process of life was mimicked in the lab without eggs or sperm but with the body’s master cells, which can develop into almost any cell type in the body. The embryo was developed 8 ½ days after fertilization, containing the same structures as a natural one.

The study published in the journal Nature states that their result demonstrates the self-organization ability of embryonic and two types of extra-embryonic stem cells to reconstitute mammalian development. The researchers induced expression of a particular set of genes and established a unique environment for their interactions and got the stem cells to ‘talk’ to each other.

Watch live as our mega Moon rocket launches an uncrewed Orion spacecraft on a six-week mission around the Moon and back to Earth. During #Artemis I, Orion will lift off aboard the Space Launch System (SLS) rocket, and travel 280,000 miles (450,000 km) from Earth and 40,000 miles (64,000 km) beyond the far side of the Moon, carrying science and technology payloads to expand our understanding of lunar science, technology developments, and deep space radiation.

Liftoff from Launch Pad 39B at NASA’s Kennedy Space Center in Florida is currently targeted for 8:33 a.m. EDT (12:33 UTC) Monday, Aug. 29, at the start of a two-hour launch window.

Through Artemis missions, NASA will land the first woman and the first person of color on the Moon, paving the way for a long-term lunar presence and serving as a steppingstone to send astronauts to Mars. We are going.

More: www.nasa.gov/artemis

The Space Launch System is an American super heavy-lift expendable launch vehicle under development by NASA since 2011. As of April 2022, the first launch is scheduled for no earlier than August 2022, pending the success of a wet dress rehearsal test.

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Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg outlined the company’s approach to neural interface technology — tech which lets you control technology with your mind — in an interview on podcast The Joe Rogan Experience.

Zuckerberg said Meta is researching neural interface tech as part of its push into the metaverse.

He said the company is primarily focused on tech which can receive signals from the brain but does send any information back to it.