Lifeboat Foundation

WASHINGTON — The United Arab Emirates plans to send a small rover to the moon in 2024, the latest step in the country’s growing space ambitions.

Sheikh Mohammed bin Rashid, vice president and ruler of Dubai, formally announced the Emirates Lunar Mission Sept. 29. That mission will place a small rover on the moon carrying several instruments that officials with the country’s space agency say will complement lunar missions by other nations.

“Primarily, we would like to advance our capabilities and technologies,” said Hamad Al Marzooqi, project manager for the Emirates Lunar Mission at the Mohammed Bin Rashid Space Centre, in an Oct. 5 interview. “Since we’re going to the moon, it would be a shame if we don’t do interesting science there.”

#SpaceX just partnered with the U.S. military’s #Space Development Agency (SDA) to manufacture four new satellites that the Pentagon will use to detect and track missiles from space.

The $149 million contract is for four satellites, according to Reuters, which are scheduled to be delivered by the end of 2022. The actual #missile-tracking sensors will be developed by a separate subcontractor and attached to the #satellites later, but the military is hoping to piggyback on SpaceX’s recent success in ramping up satellite production for its #Starlink network.

It’s the first time SpaceX is building satellites for the military.

Continue reading “The Pentagon Commissioned SpaceX to Build Missile-Tracking Satellites” »

The disk-wiping feature is present in the code but has not been used yet.

Russia’s Space Agency will team up with a private company to build a reusable spacecraft, in a bid to compete with Crew Dragon, built by Elon Musk’s SpaceX. Estimates suggest the Russian project will be significantly cheaper.

On Friday, Roscosmos and the company ‘Reusable Transport Space Systems’ (RTSS) signed a five-year cooperation agreement with the aim of developing a spacecraft capable of carrying cargo to and from the International Space Station (ISS). According to estimates, the cost of a return trip for Musk’s Crew Dragon is $150 million, whereas Russia intends to make it as cheap as $69 million.

The cargo ship, named Argo, is due to be completed by 2024, and from 2025 will complete up to three launches per year to the ISS.

Watch Liz Parrish’s talk given on Sunday October 4, 2020, during the celebration of the annual event “Revolution Against Aging and Death Festival” (RAADfest 2020).

During her presentation Liz describes for the first time what BioViva Sciences and its exclusive partner Integrated Health Systems (IHS), are doing on the fronts of 1) Patient Access: 2) Research & Development and 3) Data Science.

Continue reading “Liz Parrish online talk during RAADfest 2020” »

- Silicon Valley Tech News

The last few decades of astronomical surveys have revealed several thousand exoplanets in the cosmos, but very few have ever been seen directly. We can only infer the presence of most exoplanets from their gravity or ability to block starlight. However, researchers using the Very Large Telescope (VLT) in Chile recently turned it toward a star 63 light-years away called Beta Pictoris to hunt for a gas giant (Beta Pictoris c), and they snapped an image of it.

Our current level of technology makes it almost impossible to image exoplanets directly. Compared with stars, planets are so dim that we usually can’t resolve them in the halo of light. Beta Pictoris c joins a list of less than two-dozen extrasolar worlds (including Pictoris b) that scientists have spied directly, and some of those are still highly contentious.

Scientists were able to get this new image thanks to all the interest in the Beta Pictoris system over the years. Beta Pictoris c and its sibling world Beta Pictoris b are less than two million years old. Pictoris b was discovered via direct imaging, which again, is quite rare. However, anomalies in its radial velocity prompted astronomers to look closer. Radial velocity analysis is a less common way of detecting exoplanets that relies on using telescopes to detect small wobbles in stars caused by the gravity of their planets. Just last year, a team discovered Beta Pictoris c while attempting to explain those anomalous radial velocity readings.

What will astronauts wear on the big day when they step foot on the moon as the first humans to do so in more than 50 years?

From predicting viral load to identifying antiviral drugs, discover some of the AI projects working to fight COVID-19.

What can AI do in the race to contain COVID-19 and potential future pandemics? Discover how machine learning is powering collective pandemic intelligence.