Watch live coverage of our OSIRIS-REx spacecraft lift off at 7:05 p.m. EDT aboard an Atlas V rocket on a mission to explore asteroid Bennu and return a sample to Earth.
Category: space travel – Page 493
NASA — National Aeronautics and Space Administration
LIVE NOW: We’re launching to an asteroid! Watch live coverage of our OSIRIS-REx spacecraft lift off at 7:05 p.m. EDT aboard an Atlas V rocket on a mission to explore asteroid Bennu and return a sample to Earth.
An AI upgrade for your brain, Elon Musk teases the Neural Lace
Worried that AI’s one day could make us their pets Elon Musk is teasing a new brain-hacking tech
There’s no doubting that Elon Musk is one busy guy. Whether he’s trying to land on Mars with SpaceX, running Tesla, buying SolarCity, investing in the future of AI, building Giga factories or throwing out Hyperloop concepts for fun but it’s increasingly apparent that he’s giving a huge amount of thought to the day when advanced AI’s become the most intelligent form of “life” on the planet.
With the advances that we are already seeing in AI it’s inevitable that one day – sooner rather than later humans will, comparatively speaking, be as intelligent to an AI as pets are to us today. To that end, the billionaire polymath has revealed he may be working on something called a “Neural Lace”, a nanotechnology based device that you can think of as being a digital upgrade for your brain. Human intelligence combined with the power of AI – a digital layer directly overlaid onto the brains cortex.
Build Your Own Starfleet With These Customized 3D-Printed Star Trek Ships
Ever wanted your own Starship Fleet designed by you? Well, now you can have it.
In Star Trek Online, aspiring captains can take the helm of one of more than 400 different ships that can be further personalized with custom color schemes, materials, shields, and capabilities. And now thanks to Eucl3D, a 3D printing company, those ships can be brought into the real world.
Explosion at Cape Canaveral Air Force Station
Watch dramatic footage of the SpaceX rocket exploding at its Cape Canaveral launch pad http://cnnmon.ie/2cgE1QY
Explosion rocks SpaceX launch site in Florida during test
Whoops.
CAPE CANAVERAL, Fla. (AP) — An explosion rocked a SpaceX launch site Thursday during a routine rocket test.
SpaceX was conducting a test firing of its unmanned rocket when the blast occurred shortly after 9 a.m., according to NASA. The test was in advance of a planned Saturday launch from Cape Canaveral Air Force Station, which is next to NASA’s Kennedy Space Center.
Buildings several miles away shook from the blast, and multiple explosions continued for several minutes. Dark smoke filled the overcast sky. A half-hour later, a black cloud hung low across the eastern horizon.
Prospecting for Asteroid Resources — Deep Space Industries
http://deepspaceindustries.com/prospector-1/
Prospector-1, the world’s first commercial interplanetary mining mission, will fly to and rendezvous with a near-Earth asteroid to determine its value as a source of space resources.
The destination asteroid will be chosen from a group of top candidates selected by the world renowned team of asteroid experts at Deep Space Industries. Once the spacecraft arrives at the asteroid, the autonomous spacecraft will map the surface and subsurface, taking visual and infrared imagery and mapping overall water content. With the initial science campaign complete, Prospector-1 will use its water thrusters to gently touch down on the asteroid, measuring the target’s geophysical characteristics.
Prospector-1 is a small spacecraft that strikes the ideal balance between cost and performance. In addition to radiation-tolerant payloads and avionics, all DSI spacecraft use the Comet line of water propulsion systems, which expel superheated water vapor to generate thrust. Water will be the first asteroid mining product, so using water as propellant will provide future DSI spacecraft with the ability to refuel in space.
Animations and Art Direction by Bryan Versteeg: http://www.spacehabs.com/
Video by Subtractive: https://www.youtube.com/user/subtractive
First DNA Sequencing in Space a Game Changer
For the first time ever, DNA was successfully sequenced in microgravity as part of the Biomolecule Sequencer experiment performed by NASA astronaut Kate Rubins this weekend aboard the International Space Station. The ability to sequence the DNA of living organisms in space opens a whole new world of scientific and medical possibilities. Scientists consider it a game changer.
DNA, or deoxyribonucleic acid, contains the instructions each cell in an organism on Earth needs to live. These instructions are represented by the letters A, G, C and T, which stand for the four chemical bases of DNA, adenine, guanine, cytosine, and thymine. Both the number and arrangement of these bases differ among organisms, so their order, or sequence, can be used to identify a specific organism.
The Biomolecule Sequencer investigation moved us closer to this ability to sequence DNA in space by demonstrating, for the first time, that DNA sequencing is possible in an orbiting spacecraft.