NASA’s box-shaped space probe will launch aboard a SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket on Tuesday, November 23 from Vandenberg Space Force Base in California. Less than a year later it will hit its target.
Using NASA’s Transiting Exoplanets Survey Satellite (TESS), an international team of astronomers has detected a new sub-Neptune exoplanet orbiting an M dwarf star. The newly found extrasolar world, designated TOI-2406 b, is nearly three times larger than the Earth. The discovery is reported in a paper published July 29 on arXiv.org.
TESS is conducting a survey of about 200,000 of the brightest stars near the sun with the aim of finding transiting exoplanets. So far, it has identified over 4,400 candidate exoplanets (TESS Objects of Interest, or TOI), of which 144 have been confirmed so far.
Recently, a team of astronomers led by Robert Wells of the University of Bern in Switzerland confirmed a new TESS planet around the star known as TOI-2406 (or TIC 212957629). TESS observed TOI-2406 in 2018 and 2020, which resulted in the detection of a transit signal in the light curve of this object. The planetary nature of this signal was confirmed by follow-up photometric and spectroscopic observations using various ground-based telescopes.
sustained technological superiority, and asset security and repair for current and future operations.
To meet this unique challenge, DARPA announced it is taking an initial step to explore and de-risk manufacturing capabilities that leverage biological processes in resource limited environments with its Biomanufacturing: Survival, Utility, and Reliability beyond Earth (B-SURE) program. https://www.darpa.mil/news-events/2021-11-22
Samsung is building a new $17 billion factory in Taylor, Texas to produce its processors. While the company is a giant in producing memory chips, it’s currently lagging behind companies like TSMC when it comes to processors.
Featuring endless calculations in black ink on wrinkled, lightly yellowed paper, the manuscript challenges Einstein’s popular image as an absolute genius, because it shows that even he made mistakes.
Circa 2021
By varying the presence of different building blocks in a computational model, Jackson et al. reverse-engineer the architecture for controlled semantic cognition and test this model against evidence from anatomy, neuropsychology and functional imaging.
iFLY, a leading provider of indoor skydiving facilities, today launched their iFLY VR initiative which combines the company’s indoor skydiving experience with immersive visuals powered by a Gear VR headset. I got to try to experience for myself at the company’s SF Bay location.
Now available at 28 locations in the US, the iFLY VR experience is an optional $20 add-on to the usual indoor flight experience offered by the company (which starts around $70). After training and getting a feel for stable non-VR flying, customers don a purpose-built helmet which incorporates a Gear VR headset. They can choose between several different skydiving locations—like Dubai, Hawaii, or Switzerland—where iFly has recorded real skydives specifically for use in the iFly VR experience.
I went to the company’s SF Bay location to try the iFly VR experience first hand, and came away feeling like I got to experience the ultimate haptic simulation.
NASA will launch a mission to crash into an asteroid (on purpose) overnight tonight and you can watch it lift off live online.
The agency’s Double Asteroid Redirection Test (DART) mission will travel millions of miles out into the solar stem to smash into an asteroid, altering its orbit around a larger space rock to practice in the event of a rogue Earth-bound asteroid. The mission is set to lift off from Space Launch Complex-4 at Vandenberg Space Force Base in California early Wednesday, Nov. 24, at 1:20 a.m. EST (10:20 p.m. PST on Nov. 23/0620 GMT).