New Changes Proposed for Planetary Protection Guidelines, especially Mars missions.
But spacecraft searching for life will still have to be sterilized.
The spacecraft could launch with just 8.5 days’ notice.
China just launched what is planned to be its longest crewed mission to date, but the next spacecraft in the series is ready to blast off should the Shenzhou 13 astronauts need rescuing.
Shenzhou 13 lifted off on Oct. 15 with commander Zhai Zhigang and colleagues Wang Yaping and Ye Guangfu arriving at the orbiting Tianhe module of the Tiangong space station 6.5 hours later. Back on the ground at the Jiuquan Satellite Launch Center in the Gobi Desert, Shenzhou 14 and its Long March 2F launch vehicle are already on standby.
Starship will be ready for its orbital launch next month, pending regulatory approval — Elon Musk.
SpaceX’s Starship rocket is still being built in southeast Texas, with significant work being made on crucial parts like the launch tower construction and the installation of the vacuum-rated Raptor engines that will power the spacecraft once it reaches space.
Elon Musk claims that it might be ready for its maiden orbital flight attempt next month if it receives the necessary regulatory approvals.
To make the effort, SpaceX will need clearance from the United States Federal Aviation Administration (FAA), as it has for all of its previous test flights of Starship from its development facility outside of Brownsville, Texas.
When the COVID-19 pandemic shut down experiments at the Department of Energy’s SLAC National Accelerator Laboratory early last year, Shambhu Ghimire’s research group was forced to find another way to study an intriguing research target: quantum materials known as topological insulators, or TIs, which conduct electric current on their surfaces but not through their interiors.
Denitsa Baykusheva, a Swiss National Science Foundation Fellow, had joined his group at the Stanford PULSE Institute two years earlier with the goal of finding a way to generate high harmonic generation, or HHG, in these materials as a tool for probing their behavior. In HHG, laser light shining through a material shifts to higher energies and higher frequencies, called harmonics, much like pressing on a guitar string produces higher notes. If this could be done in TIs, which are promising building blocks for technologies like spintronics, quantum sensing and quantum computing, it would give scientists a new tool for investigating these and other quantum materials.
With the experiment shut down midway, she and her colleagues turned to theory and computer simulations to come up with a new recipe for generating HHG in topological insulators. The results suggested that circularly polarized light, which spirals along the direction of the laser beam, would produce clear, unique signals from both the conductive surfaces and the interior of the TI they were studying, bismuth selenide—and would in fact enhance the signal coming from the surfaces.
Light offers an irreplaceable way to interact with our universe. It can travel across galactic distances and collide with our atmosphere, creating a shower of particles that tell a story of past astronomical events. Here on earth, controlling light lets us send data from one side of the planet to the other.
Given its broad utility, it’s no surprise that light plays a critical role in enabling 21st century quantum information applications. For example, scientists use laser light to precisely control atoms, turning them into ultra-sensitive measures of time, acceleration, and even gravity. Currently, such early quantum technology is limited by size—state-of-the-art systems would not fit on a dining room table, let alone a chip. For practical use, scientists and engineers need to miniaturize quantum devices, which requires re-thinking certain components for harnessing light.
Now IQUIST member Gaurav Bahl and his research group have designed a simple, compact photonic circuit that uses sound waves to rein in light. The new study, published in the October 21 issue of the journal Nature Photonics, demonstrates a powerful way to isolate, or control the directionality of light. The team’s measurements show that their approach to isolation currently outperforms all previous on-chip alternatives and is optimized for compatibility with atom-based sensors.
Researchers from the Harvard John A. Paulson School of Engineering and Applied Sciences (SEAS) have developed a shape-shifting material that can take and hold any possible shape, paving the way for a new type of multifunctional material that could be used in a range of applications, from robotics and biotechnology to architecture.
The research is published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.
Astronomers found reservoirs of organic molecules around young stars, suggesting the ingredients for life are more widespread in the universe.
China’s Race for AI Supremacy
Posted in business, economics, military, robotics/AI
Artificial intelligence is set to revolutionize the world, empowering those nations that fully harness its potential. The U.S. is still seen as the world AI leader, but China is catching up. The race is central to the U.S.-China rivalry and a critical facet of the economic and military competition that will define the decade.
#China2030 #AI #BloombergQuicktake.
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Last week, China launched what was seen as its most ambitious manned space mission. Shortly after this, the communist country has announced another breakthrough in its rocket engine technology.
On October 16 China launched a spacecraft with three astronauts (taikonauts) on board, including a woman, into the core module of what is believed to be China’s own future space station in the Earth’s orbit. The astronauts are expected to stay in space for six months, which is the longest duration for a Chinese manned space mission so far.
The MIT engineers are at it again — and this time, they’ve created a robotic cheetah that knows how to leap.
The designers installed a new system in the robot, dubbed the “mini cheetah,” that allows it to jump across gaps in the terrain, according to an MIT news release. The system relies on a real-time video sensor that detects potential obstacles like gaps and holes, and translates it into instructions on how the cheetah should react.