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The launch of Artemis I will be a symphony of high-powered machinery.

The countdown is well underway to launch NASA’s moon-bound Artemis I mission. NASA is preparing to launch SLS to orbit as soon as Monday, August 29. Once there, the Orion spacecraft hitching a ride atop SLS will detach to make its way towards the moon.

The mission will kickstart NASA’s Artemis launches, which will send humans back to the moon for the first time since 1972, and also pave the way for crewed missions to Mars.

A lot of hard work has gone towards the August 29 launch, culminating in the launch of SLS. The powerhouse rocket’s many components were built by many organizations, each serving a vital purpose. Here is a visualization of the major components of SLS. Below we provide more information on each separate part.

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Ending cellular dead zones in the U.S. is the ultimate goal.

Cellular service provider T-Mobile has teamed up with Elon Musk’s SpaceX to provide universal coverage using the constellation of Starlink satellites, a press release reveals.

Cellular services have gone through many iterations since their first roll-out. Most countries around the world are currently seeing a roll-out of the fifth generation (5G) of mobile connections that allows the bandwidth for high-speed gaming and streaming high-definition videos.

In a live event today, T‑Mobile and SpaceX announced Coverage Above and Beyond: a breakthrough new plan to bring cell phone connectivity nearly everywhere.

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It doesn’t involve magic but mirrors and lenses.

Energy can be trapped in the form of electric charge and heat, but until now, it has been impossible to absorb it in the form of light using traditional methods. Now a team of researchers from the Hebrew University of Jerusalem and Vienna University of Technology (TU Wien) claims to have developed the perfect setup to trap light, according to a press release published by EurekAlert.

Although this isn’t the first time scientists have come up with a way to absorb light energy, it is probably the only “light trap” method using which light energy can be absorbed even by very thin and weak mediums.

Whether in photosynthesis or in a photovoltaic system: if you want to use light efficiently, you have to absorb it as completely as possible. However, this is difficult if the absorption is to take place in a thin layer of material that normally lets a large part of the light pass through.

Now, research teams from TU Wien and from The Hebrew University of Jerusalem have found a surprising trick that allows a beam of light to be completely absorbed even in the thinnest of layers: They built a “light trap” around the thin layer using mirrors and lenses, in which the light beam is steered in a circle and then superimposed on itself – exactly in such a way that the beam of light blocks itself and can no longer leave the system. Thus, the light has no choice but to be absorbed by the thin layer – there is no other way out. This absorption-amplification method, which has now been presented in the scientific journal Science, is the result of a fruitful collaboration between the two teams: the approach was suggested by Prof. Ori Katz from The Hebrew University of Jerusalem and conceptualized with Prof. Stefan Rotter from TU Wien; the experiment was carried out in by the lab team in Jerusalem and the theoretical calculations came from the team in Vienna.

Thin layers are transparent to light

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Researchers plan to use the James Webb Space Telescope for further observations.

An international team of researchers led by the University of Montreal discovered an exoplanet that could be covered entirely in water. The planet TOI-1452b is about 100 light years away from Earth, located in Draco Constellation. It’s larger in size and mass compared to Earth and is located in the “habitable zone,” which means the temperature is just right for the liquid water to exist. The team believes that it could be an “ocean planet,” a planet covered by a thick layer of water.

What’s so special about this ocean planet?

This isn’t the first time we’ve discovered an exoplanet or planets with water.

An international team of researchers led by Charles Cadieux, a Ph.D. student at the Université de Montréal and member of the Institute for Research on Exoplanets (iREx), has announced the discovery of TOI-1452 b, an exoplanet orbiting one of two small stars in a binary system located in the Draco constellation about 100 light-years from Earth.

The exoplanet is slightly greater in size and mass than Earth and is located at a distance from its star where its temperature would be neither too hot nor too cold for liquid water to exist on its surface. The astronomers believe it could be an “ocean planet,” a planet completely covered by a thick layer of water, similar to some of Jupiter’s and Saturn’s moons.

Continue reading “An extrasolar world covered in water?” | >

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.

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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.

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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.

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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.

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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.

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