By Kelsey Tollefson | Executive Editor John Lenker
The notion of harvesting resources from extraterrestrial sources is not a new one. The lure of untold bounties—orbiting just out of reach—has prompted generations of poets and presidents alike to expound upon the potential applications of space mining. These days, “space mining” is no longer a mere pipe dream.
If you feel no awe when watching this video, then you are already dead.
On Jan. 14, 2005, ESA’s Huygens probe made its descent to the surface of Saturn’s hazy moon, Titan. Carried to Saturn by NASA’s Cassini spacecraft, Huygens made the most distant landing ever on another world, and the only landing on a body in the outer solar system. This video uses actual images taken by the probe during its two-and-a-half hour fall under its parachutes.
Most of today’s robot hands can perform easy tasks. They’re uber-practical grippers, simple and useful. But is it really so much to ask for robotic masterworks as dextrous as Luke Skywalker’s bionic hand in Star Wars? In short, yes, yes it is. It might have been a long time ago in a galaxy far far away—but most Star Wars tech is beyond us.
Still, it’s hard not to get in a Star Wars state of mind watching this beautiful robot hand engineered by Yale postdoc Joseph (Zhe) Xu and the University of Washington’s Emanuel Todorov.
Continue reading “This Remarkable Robot Hand Is Worthy of Luke Skywalker” »
Scientist Carl Sagan said many times that “we are star stuff,” from the nitrogen in our DNA, the calcium in our teeth, and the iron in our blood.
It is well known that most of the essential elements of life are truly made in the stars. Called the “CHNOPS elements” – carbon, hydrogen, nitrogen, oxygen, phosphorous, and sulfur – these are the building blocks of all life on Earth. Astronomers have now measured of all of the CHNOPS elements in 150,000 stars across the Milky Way, the first time such a large number of stars have been analyzed for these elements.
“For the first time, we can now study the distribution of elements across our Galaxy,” says Sten Hasselquist of New Mexico State University. “The elements we measure include the atoms that make up 97% of the mass of the human body.”
One of the most powerful observing instruments on Earth, the Very Large Telescope, will join the search for potentially habitable planets around the Alpha Centauri star system.
The survey will take place in 2019 under the terms of an agreement signed by the European Southern Observatory, which operates the VLT in Chile, and by the Breakthrough Initiatives.
Continue reading “Very Large Telescope joins Breakthrough search for Alpha Centauri’s planets” »
Luv this; definitely a great role model to young girls everywhere.
This was the first of two spacewalks astronauts will perform this month to finalize the replacement of 12 old nickel-hydrogen batteries six with new lithium-ion batteries.
Kimbrough is wearing the suit bearing red stripes marked as EV1 member 1, but Whitson is wearing the suit with no stripes, marked EV2, member 2.
Continue reading “First African-American Astronaut To Board The International Space Station” »
What should Donald Trump have NASA do? Today Amazon billionaire Jeff Bezos voiced his support for the idea that the space agency should help build a “highway in the sky” analogous to the interstate highway system that President Dwight Eisenhower ramped up in the 1950s.
The backing came in the form of an eight-word tweet, accompanied by a link to an article by Howard Bloom appearing in Salon (and as a guest blog posting on Scientific American’s website as well).
