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Category: space – Page 497

NASA-funded space robots will grab objects in orbit using arms controlled from Earth

The company that will work with US Space Force has also won some NASA contracts.

It’s official: robots are here to stay in space. Robotics software and engineering company PickNik Robotics announced on Tuesday that it has won a SpaceWERX contract to work on robotics for the US Space Force, according to a press release acquired by IE

In addition, the company recently won a NASA Small Business Innovation Research (SBIR) Phase I contract for continued work on supervised autonomy for space robotics, as well as a Colorado Advanced Industries Accelerator (AIA) grant for space robotics.

Three wins.

The company has three big wins: a SpaceWERX contract, a NASA Small Business Innovation Research (SBIR) Phase I contract and a Colorado Advanced Industries Accelerator (AIA) grant for space robotics.

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Space-cleaning robots could be developed thanks to novel device that was inspired by wilting passion fruits

Turns out, dehydrated passion fruits exhibit a type of symmetry not previously known, inspiring self-adapting robots that could one day ‘grasp’ space junk.

A previously unknown type of wrinkling pattern on the surface of dehydrated passion fruits inspired the invention of a device that could be used to clean up space debris and hazardous materials, according to South Morning China Post (SMCP)

The real-life application comes after Fan Xu, Xi-Qiao Feng and colleagues at Fudan University in Shanghai reported an unknown type of chiral wrinkling pattern on the surface of dehydrated passion fruits in their study published in the journal Nature Computational Science the same day. previously unknown type of wrinkling pattern on the surface of dehydrated passion fruits inspired the invention of a device that could be used to clean up space debris and hazardous materials, according to South Morning China Post (SMCP).

Auroras are responsible for punching holes in the ozone layer

A type of aurora briefly tore a 400 km wide hole in Earth’s ozone layer.

An international team of researchers showed that a certain type of aurora called the “Isolated proton aurora” depletes our atmosphere’s ozone layer. They discovered a nearly 250-mile-wide (400 kilometers) hole in the ozone layer right above where an aurora occurred. Before now, the influence of these particles was only vaguely known. The study is published in Scientific reports.

What causes the auroras?

Solar storms on the sun’s surface give out huge clouds of electrically charged particles. These particles can travel millions of miles, and some may eventually collide with the Earth. Most of these particles are deflected away, but some become captured in the Earth’s magnetic field. When they are entrapped, their charge ionizes the atmosphere and produces nitrogen oxides and hydrogen oxides. Both compounds contribute to ozone loss.

Astronomers Puzzled by Extremely Peculiar Object in Deep Space

Astronomers have discovered a mysterious neutron star that’s far lighter than previously thought possible, undermining our understanding of the physics and evolution of stars. And fascinatingly, it may be composed largely of quarks.

As detailed in a new paper published in the journal Nature Astronomy this week, the neutron star has a radius of just 6.2 miles and only the mass of 77 percent of the Sun.

That makes it much lighter than other previously studied neutron stars, which usually have a mass of 1.4 times the mass of the Sun at the same radius.

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