Lifeboat Foundation

Apple delivered an early holiday gift to the eco-conscious and the do-it-yourselfers: It said it would soon begin selling the parts, tools and instructions for people to do their own iPhone repairs. It was a major victory for the “right to repair” movement.

Apple said it would soon provide parts, tools and manuals to those who wanted to fix their own iPhones and Mac computers.

In the wee morning hours of Tuesday (Nov. 16), the seven-person crew of the International Space Station (ISS) awoke in alarm. A Russian missile test had just blasted a decommissioned Kosmos spy satellite into more than 1,500 pieces of space debris — some of which were close enough to the ISS to warrant emergency collision preparations.

The four Americans, one German and two Russian cosmonauts aboard the station were told to shelter in the transport capsules that brought them to the ISS, while the station passed by the debris cloud several times over the following hours, according to NASA.

Ultimately, Tuesday ended without any reported damage or injury aboard the ISS, but the crew’s precautions — and the NASA administrator’s stern response to Russia — were far from an overreaction. Space debris like the kind created in the Kosmos break-up can travel at more than 17,500 mph (28,000 km/h), NASA says — and even a scrap of metal the size of a pea can become a potentially deadly missile in low-Earth orbit. (For comparison, a typical bullet discharged from an AR-15 rifle travels at just over 2,200 mph, or 3,500 km/h).

Continue reading “Russia’s missile test could have easily obliterated the International Space Station” »

The era of space exploration brings with it a new risk: invasion. The peril comes not from little green men arriving on flying saucers but, rather, from microbiological contamination of Earth from extraterrestrial environments and vice versa. Writing in BioScience, Anthony Ricciardi, of McGill University, and colleagues describe the dangers posed by such organisms and outline an approach to address the threat.

The authors caution that biological contamination endangers both ecosystems and human well-being. “Owing to their massive costs to resource sectors and human health, biological invasions are a global biosecurity issue requiring rigorous transboundary solutions,” say Ricciardi and colleagues. And that threat may be more immediate than previously anticipated. Despite considerable microbial caution among space agencies, say the authors, “bacterial strains exhibiting extreme resistance to ionizing radiation, desiccation, and disinfectants have been isolated in NASA

Established in 1958, the National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) is an independent agency of the United States Federal Government that succeeded the National Advisory Committee for Aeronautics (NACA). It is responsible for the civilian space program, as well as aeronautics and aerospace research. It’s vision is To discover and expand knowledge for the benefit of humanity.

The arrival of the second Orion European Service Module (ESM) at the Kennedy Space Center (KSC) in October signified the beginning of months of final assembly of the first crewed Orion spacecraft that will fly four people on the Artemis 2 mission. Following the delivery of the ESM from prime contractor Airbus Defence and Space to Orion prime contractor Lockheed Martin, the two primary elements of the Artemis 2 Orion Service Module are now being bolted together.

Lockheed Martin is processing Orion flight hardware for Artemis 2 and Artemis 3 as a part of their Assembly, Test, and Launch Operations (ATLO) in the Armstrong Operations and Checkout (O&C) Building at KSC. As they process the Artemis 2 Orion Crew and Service Modules to be mated next year, the ATLO team also received the next Crew Module (CM) pressure vessel and is also simultaneously beginning build-up of the Crew Module and Crew Module Adapter (CMA) structures for Artemis 3.

Showdown in a Kentucky Cavern: @WashingtonPost highlights DARPA’s latest Grand Challenge — #SubTChallenge — in Sunday (11÷14) magazine story Super Bowl of R… See more.

This three-year competition raises the question: How long until humans are obsolete?

Sporting neon hair and flawless skin, Bangkok Naughty Boo is one of a new generation of influencers in Asia promising to stay forever young, on-trend, and scandal-free — because they are computer generated.

Blurring the lines between fantasy and reality, these stars are hugely popular with teenagers in the region and will yield increasing power as interest grows in the “metaverse”, industry experts say.

“I’m 17 forever, non-binary, with a dream of becoming a pop star,” Bangkok Naughty Boo — who uses they/them pronouns — said in an introductory video sent to AFP.

A team of researchers from Tri Alpha Energy Inc. and Google has developed an algorithm that can be used to speed up experiments conducted with plasma. In their paper published in the journal Scientific Reports, the group describes how they plan to use the algorithm in nuclear fusion research.

As research into harnessing nuclear fusion has progressed, scientists have found that some of its characteristics are too complex to be solved in a reasonable amount of time using current technology. So they have increasingly turned to computers to help. More specifically, they want to adjust certain parameters in a device created to achieve fusion in a reasonable way. Such a device, most in the field agree, must involve the creation of a certain type of plasma that is not too hot or too cold, is stable, and has a certain desired density.

Finding the right parameters that meet these conditions has involved an incredible amount of trial and error. In this new effort, the researchers sought to reduce the workload by using a computer to reduce some of the needed trials. To that end, they have created what they call the “optometrist’s algorithm.” In its most basic sense, it works like an optometrist attempting to measure the visual ability of a patient by showing them images and asking if they are better or worse than other images. The idea is to use the crunching power of a computer with the intelligence of a human being—the computer generates the options and the human tells it whether a given option is better or worse.

The newly passed infrastructure bill could lead to a boom in solar production requiring a lot more land, including farmland. But research is showing solar panels might actually help grow some crops.

SpaceX launches Crew-3, Tesla crashes, Elon Musk considers selling… again?

SpaceX launches Crew-3 and Starlink, Tesla’s Full Self-Driving potentially causes a crash, angered by Bernie Sanders, Elon Musk considers selling stock… again?