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NASA’s Perseverance rover has collected its first rock sample on Mars, marking an historic first step in a mission to return the sample to Earth later this decade.
Initially scientists couldn’t conclusively confirm whether the rover had gathered a sample due to poor sunlight conditions on the Red Planet. On read more

(quote) Elon Musk’s SpaceX lands Starship spacecraft in first full successful test flight The flight comes after NASA awarded SpaceX a $2.9 billion contract to develop Starship to land astronauts on the moon. Elon Musk’s SpaceX finally stuck the landing of one of its Starship spacecraft prototypes Wednesday, a key milestone in the test program and a dramatic statement coming just two weeks after NASA chose the vehicle to fly its astronauts to the surface of the moon. The Starship spacecraft, known as Serial Number 15 (SN15), lifted off from SpaceX’s launch site near the U.S.-Mexico border in South Texas, firing its three Raptor engines to an altitude of about 6 miles. It then turned itself sideways in a “belly flop” maneuver and headed back to Earth before righting itself, reigniting its engines and touching down softly. “The Starship has landed,” John Insprucker, SpaceX principal integration engineer, said during the live broadcast. The flight was the fifth high-altitude test of a Starship prototype, and the first that ended without the rocket destroyed. Musk’s company is developing Starship to launch cargo and people on missions to the moon and Mars. The landing caps off a busy period for SpaceX that has seen the return of astronauts to Earth aboard a Crew Dragon and a milestone Starlink launch, not to mention Musk is hosting Saturday Night Live this week. Nailed it! Elon Musk’s SpaceX blasts its Starship SN15 rocket six miles into the sky before returning it safely to the pad – a month after the last prototype exploded after landing The Elon Musk-owned company launched SN15 around 6:24pm ET on Wednesday, following a day of delays and anticipation, from its testing facility in Boca Chica, Texas. SN15 ignited its three massive Raptor Engines that released out streams of white smoke from the base before fire blew out to shoot the rocket into the air. The prototype climbed through the sky until it reached six miles, hovered for a moment and then performed the infamous sideways flip, dubbed a ‘belly flop’ maneuver by Musk. ‘Starship landing nominal,’ Musk tweeted moments after his pride and joy made a safe and successful landing on the pad. The successful landing brings the billionaire one step closer to fulfilling his dream of sending the humans to Mars. 27 Apr 2021 – Jeff Bezos’ Blue Origin challenges NASA over SpaceX moon lander deal

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NASA’s Perseverance rover just made breathable air on Mars
The Perseverance rover converted carbon dioxide into oxygen on Mars, marking the first time breathable air has been made on another planet, NASA announced Wednesday. A toaster-sized instrument called MOXIE – short for Mars Oxygen In-Situ Resource Utilization Experiment – made the feat possible. read more

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A massive container ship’s embarrassing and inconvenient predicament is visible from space.
Tiny Earth-observing Dove satellites operated by San Francisco-based company Planet have spied the giant cargo ship that’s blocking Egypt’s Suez Canal, as well as the traffic jam caused by the huge vessel’s plight. The Airbus-built Pleiades Earth-observing read more

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China launches Chang’e-5 Moon sample return mission
A Long March 5 rocket launched China’s Chang’e-5 spacecraft Monday to kick off a 23-day mission to deliver the first lunar samples to Earth since the 1970s.

The mission aims to collect the youngest samples so far obtained from the moon and later land in Siziwang Banner, read more

Cleanest country should keep the sea clean too.

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Oct 18, 2020
Forbes: Japan To Release Radioactive Fukushima Water Into Ocean
The new Prime Minister of Japan, Yoshihide Suga, is facing additional international pressure over the weekend, amid reports that Japan will be accelerating plans to dump read more

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In other words, it’s fast enough to see waves of light traveling and the fluorescent decay of molecules.
The camera technology is called compressed ultrafast spectral photography (CUSP) and it’s very similar in some respects to previous fast cameras he has built, such as his phase-sensitive compressed ultrafast photography (pCUP) device, which has the ability read more

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Like a Zumwalt Class Destroyer meets leftover Blade Runner prop, Tesla’s truck looks like none the world has ever seen before.
Its design is deceptively simple. Its profile is diamondlike, with five simple lines. Its nose is wedge-shaped, its sheetmetal quickly merging with a single massive pane of windshield glass—“bulletproof,” Elon read more

The Ripsaw M5 Robotic Combat Vehicle (RCV)

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Meet America’s newest military giant: Amazon

The fatal flaw that could make AI weapons useless
AI-guided missiles could be blinded by adversarial data, and perhaps even steered back toward friendly targets.

Robots cannot replace the problem-solving, decision-making abilities of human cognition in “direct fire”

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Image courtesy Pablo Delcan / Technology Review and Textron Systems

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The way hospitals respond to a cyberattack can result in a slower response to critical heart patients.
After an attack, corrective actions to improve security in hospital information technology systems may “disrupt care processes” and reduce the quality of care, according to a study published by researchers at Vanderbilt University and read more

“Two women work in hut 6 at Bletchley Park, Buckinghamshire, during the Second World War. Cryptographers deciphered top-secret military communiques between Hitler and his armed forces, which ultimately aided the victory of the Allied forces”

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The ‘Codebreakers’ poppy has special meaning for Kate because her paternal grandmother Valerie Glassborow was among those who worked to decipher the secrets of the German Enigma machine at Bletchley Park during the war.
It was the first time the royal has worn the elegant brooch, read more