Items tagged with mars
For the first time ever, NASA has put a helicopter on the surface of Mars, the fourth planet from the Sun that is located more than 168 million miles from wherever you are reading this right now. NASA is planning for the helicopter, called Ingenuity, to take its first flight on Mars, during which it will hover several feet above ground for around half a minute. Why bother, you might be wondering? It is really about data collection, which could help with bigger projects in the future. NASA describes it as a technology demonstration in an effort to test a new capability, with limited scope (Ingenuity does not carry any science instruments). "NASA’s Ingenuity Mars Helicopter is the first aircraft...
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We can expect one small step for man and one giant leap for SpaceX and their SN8 Starship in approximately a week from now. Yesterday, Elon Musk tweeted that the SN8 Starship is being prepared for static fire tests and a flight to 60,000 feet and back. Back in August, we reported on SpaceX doing 150-meter hops with the SN5 Starship. More recently, the SN6 did a 150-meter hop test as well. These tests were powered by the SpaceX Raptor engine, which should also be used in the upcoming SN8 test. However, both previous prototypes looked more like shiny Pringles cans with a rocket motor than a proper rocket ship. With the previous tests, SpaceX’s goal was to see if the Starship's stainless-steel...
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SpaceX hit another milestone this week with an early prototype of its Starship rocket taking flight for the first time. The company posted a short clip to YouTube that shows the unfinished rocket light its Raptor engine and take to the sky. Eventually, later versions of the spacecraft will use multiple Raptor engines, but a single engine was all that was necessary for this test flight. The video shows ignition with smoke, flame, and dust billowing around the rocket and obscuring it shortly before the top of the shiny metal rocket emerged from the cloud and lifted upward. The rocket attained an altitude of roughly 150 meters before firing a thruster out of its right side to move it towards a landing...
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Today is a historic day for the National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA). Their current mission to Mars is underway. The spacecraft carrying the Perseverance rover and the Ingenuity helicopter was successfully launched this morning at 7:50am EDT. A United Launch Alliance Atlas V rocket launched from Space Launch Complex 41 in Cape Canaveral, Florida. The launch was overall a success. Dr. Thomas Zurbuchen, NASA's Associate Administrator for the Science Mission Directorate, stated, “We're in touch with the spacecraft, everything is nominal.” Perserverance is situated on the right in this photo. The spacecraft is headed to the Jezero Crater on Mars. It should hopefully land...
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Has Starfleet boldly gone where no man has gone before? A dune that is shaped like the Star Trek logo has appeared on the surface of Mars. A picture of the dune was captured by NASA’s Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter (MRO). The image was taken by the MRO’s High Resolution Imaging Science Experiment (HiRISE) camera. The HiRISE is the largest reflecting telescope that has ever been carried into deep space. According to NASA, it “makes observations at near-infrared wavelengths to obtain information on the mineral groups present.” Scientists are then able to accurately calculate the topography of Mars. The HiRISE has photographed hundreds of swaths and provides scientists with...
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The National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) is working to literally “boldly go where no man has gone before”. NASA is currently assessing the feasibility of adding a crew to the first integrated flight of its Space Launch System (SLS) booster and Orion spacecraft on Exploration Mission-1 (EM-1). The project's ultimate goal is to send human beings into deep space as part of a Mars or Asteroid Redirect Mission. William Gerstenmaier, associate administrator for NASA’s Human Exploration and Operations Mission Directorate in Washington, is in charge of the study. He will assess the risks and benefits of such a mission as well as the additional resources and work needed to add a crew...
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Planetariums are so 2015. Framestore has created the world’s first VR field trip to Mars in a school bus powered by Unreal Engine 4. Ms. Frizzle ain’t got nothing on Framestore. Gary Marshall, Framestore Senior Developer, remarked, “When I first heard about the project, my reaction was, ‘This is absolutely nuts’. But it was so cool, that I wanted to be on it from the start.” This invention is essentially the first group VR experience. When students look out the windows, they see the surface of Mars. Unreal Engine 4 was the perfect tool because it is a physically-based renderer that simulates the real world. The team also had to invent transparent windows that could become VR screens. They essentially...
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The Curiosity Mars rover now has a license to shoot at will -- the rover can now autonomously target rocks without human permission or control. Curiosity uses ChemCam, a software developed at NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory, Pasadena, California. It is designed to study the chemical makeup of rocks and soil on Mars. It zaps rocks with a laser and then analyzes the gases that are released from the impact. ChemCam has fired more than 350,000 lasers at about 10,000 points since landing on Mars in 2012.ChemCam is now accompanied by Autonomous Exploration for Gathering Increased Science or AEGIS. AEGIS and has been used on the Curiosity before, but in a lesser capacity. .Up until now, researchers...
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On Earth, Elon Musk is conquering the electric car market with Tesla Motors. In Earth’s orbit, the Musk-helmed SpaceX is revolutionizing commercial spaceflight and aiming to send U.S. astronauts into space with its Falcon rockets and Dragon crew capsules now that the Space Shuttle has been mothballed. But this is Elon Musk that we’re talking about here — he of course has even higher aspirations. Later this year, we’ll get a taste of what SpaceX is cooking up as it aims to go past Earth’s orbit onto a more ambitious destination: Mars. While visiting Hong Kong this week, Musk indicated that he plans to reveal this September preliminary information on SpaceX spacecraft architecture that will take...
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One of the most famous scenes in the Star Wars saga is when Luke Skywalker stands on his home planet Tatooine and watches a double sunset. If SpaceX founder and CEO of Tesla Motors Elon Musk gets his wish, a similar scene could play out for a future generation on Mars, but first we have to hurl nukes in the planet's direction.The plan to nuke Mars to make it habitable for humans earned Musk his "super villain" designation, though he's not looking to decimate the planet's surface. Following the discovery of salt water flowing on Mars, Musk clarified his plans for heating up Mars with nuclear bombs. What he wants to do is send a pair of fusion bombs in the sky above Mars, which would explode every...
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Mars rover Opportunity is in the news again, this time for suffering a spell of "brief amnesia" related to its 256MB flash memory just five (5) days after a full reformatting of its memory banks. No scientific data was lost as a result of the blip in the device's nonvolatile memory, though, and the rover continued its current schedule of activities, including the examining of a rock named "Athens" by its robotic arm. Opportunity, which landed on Mars in January 2004 just three weeks after its sister rover Spirit, has thus far functioned a remarkable 4000+ days beyond its original 90 sol (92.5 day) mission, moving about* and performing various mostly geology-based experiments. The rover makes...
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If the latest report from The Information is accurate, SpaceX is heading towards a valuation north of $10 billion. Google is reportedly looking to invest heavily into SpaceX and would help to fund the company’s effort to create a “Space Internet” via micro-satellites that would not only bring low-cost Internet to the masses, but also provide a space-based network to enable communications with future colonies on Mars. Google would of course be the primary investor, but there are a number of additional smaller investors that would also get in on this round of funding for the company.Virgin is investing in OneWeb, which will provide a similar "satellite constellation" around Earth. SpaceX would...
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At 83-years-old, Buzz Aldrin, one of the first men ever to set foot on the moon (second behind only Neil Armstrong), hasn't lost a step, nor has his passion for space exploration wavered in the years since that day in 1969. Just the opposite, the retired United States Air Force pilot and famous astronaut thinks its high time mankind pulls up its britches and sets out to colonize Mars. Ask him why he thinks we should send astronauts to the red planet, as BBC News reporter Theo Leggett did, and he'll tell you, "Why did the pilgrims on the Mayflower set out to open up the New World? Because it's in human nature to explore, to find a location to begin a settlement. And it is in reach." All valid...
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How do you land a car-sized rover on the planet Mars? NASA answered that question with eight years of careful planning and around nine months of space travel culminating in the most advanced rover ever touching down on the Red Planet last night at 10:32 p.m. PDT. Score one of the home team. The one-ton rover called Curiosity will now begin a two-year mission to investigate whether the region ever offered conditions favorable for microbial life, NASA said. But before embarking on that mission, Curiosity had to survive what NASA dubbed "Seven Minutes of Terror," so called because the seven minutes prior to landing involved a combination of complex technologies never before attempted in outer space....
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Asus has never been a company to shy away from offering over-the-top, custom products that command a price premium. Here's proof. Perhaps it’s because the company is large enough, and thus, has the resources to cater to virtually all market segments, big or small. Or perhaps the top brass at Asus just likes inducing slack-jawed stares from PC enthusiasts. Whatever the reason, we hope they keep it up because testing this kind of stuff and showing it to you all is freakin’ fun. A case-in-point is the Asus MARS II graphics card, which packs a full GeForce GTX 580, dual-GPU SLI configuration onto a single PCB. A quick glance at this monolith should reveal to even the most casual...
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Asus has never been a company to shy away from offering over-the-top, custom products that command a price premium. Perhaps it’s because the company is large enough, and thus, has the resources to cater to virtually all market segments, big or small. Or perhaps the top brass at Asus just likes inducing slack-jawed stares from PC enthusiasts. Whatever the reason, we hope they keep it up because testing this kind of stuff and showing it to you all is freakin’ fun. A case-in-point is the Asus MARS II graphics card, which packs a full GeForce GTX 580, dual-GPU SLI configuration onto a single PCB... ASUS MARS II Review: GeForce GTX 580 SLI On One PCB ...
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Asus is no stranger to producing mighty NVIDIA-based GPUs, but the ROG MARS is something special. This limited edition card was first previewed a few months back, but most folks figured it was simply a proof of concept rather than a near-final card reader for shipment. Thankfully for those with fat wallets and an insatiable appetite for high frame rates, the Republic of Gamers (ROG) MARS custom-built graphics card is on its way to retail shelves, though we get the feeling it won't be there for long. In fact, Asus tells us that the card will only be sold in North America on a "first come, first served basis," with the exact time and place of availability to be revealed on Asus' official Twitter...
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I'm feeling much better now, and it's great to be back! I'll tell you, you don't realize how great breathing is until you can't do it anymore. I hope everyone had a great Thanksgiving yesterday. I didn't get to enjoy it myself, but my friends had plenty of leftovers at their house so I still had my fill of turkey :) Anyway, there isn't much news tonight, but I'll give you what I got... Thermalright SI-97 Heatsink Review @ Techniz "Today, we are review another solid heatsink, the Thermalright SI-97. This heatsink is cost around $35 US. To install the SI-97 on to the motherboard, it is no needed to take out the motherboard, unlike the installation of the SP-97. This is a newer generation of...
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