From a report: The thought of eating “astronaut food” brings to mind a kind of instant food that is far from “farm to table.” However, recent experiments aboard the ISS are improving our understanding of how to bring the farm directly into space itself. Astronauts just ran a Veg-PONDS 02 experiment on the International Space Station. The experiment used food that…
Tag: control system
AI-Enabled Cheetos Offer Promise of the Perfect Puff
Microsoft says in a blog post that PepsiCo is using their Project Bonsai “machine teaching” service to “help ensure its Cheetos cheese-puff snacks all have the same texture, crunch and shape,” reports The Wall Street Journal. From the blog post: PepsiCo built a computer vision system that continually monitors Cheeto attributes. Data about qualities such as density and length are fed…
LiquidPiston’s ‘Inside-Out’ Rotary X-Engine Wins Army Research Contract
Connecticut-based company LiquidPiston is developing a portable generator for the US Army that uses its X-Engine, a fresh and extremely powerful take on the rotary engine that’ll deliver as much power as the Army’s current-gen-set at one-fifth the size. New Atlas reports: We’ve written a few times before about the fascinating LiquidPiston rotary engine. It’s not a Wankel — indeed, it’s…
Google Plans to Calculate ‘Criticality’ Scores for Open Source Projects
Programming columnist Mike Melanson writes:
As part of its involvement in the recently announced Open Source Security Foundation (OpenSSF), Google has penned a blog post outlining one of the first steps it will take as part of this group, with an attempt at finding critical open source projects. “Open source software (OSS) has long suffered from a ‘tragedy of the commons’ problem,”…
European Regulators Prepare For MAX To Return To Service In 2021
thegreatbob writes: Looks like the main additions over the FAA’s requirements are some additional pilot training requirements. The actual EASA statement can be found here. Confirms what the available information had been pointing to: the plane flies tolerably without its Maneuvering Characteristics Augmentation System (MCAS), but does not meet certification criteria. [The MCAS was a software system installed on the Max…
NASA to test its SLS megarocket in the coming weeks
The ongoing pandemic has slowed testing for NASA’s Space Launch System megarocket, but the process is resuming and has checked off a key milestone: powering up the core stage. Source: https://earthsky.org/space/nasa-megarocket-sls-tests-core-green-run-hot-fire-test…
Boeing Whistle-Blower Says Proposed 737 Max Fixes Aren’t Enough
An anonymous reader quotes a report from Bloomberg: A whistle-blower at Boeing Co. is urging aviation regulators to add additional protections to the grounded 737 Max. Curtis Ewbank, who has previously raised concerns about the plane’s design with congressional investigators, said in comments filed with the Federal Aviation Administration that a proposal to mandate fixes to the jet didn’t address multiple…
Could an AI-Powered Drone Defeat a Human Pilot?
America’s Air Force “is hoping to pit an autonomous drone equipped with an artificial intelligence-driven flight control system against a fighter jet with a human pilot in a little over a year,” reports The Drive: [T]he general concept of a fully-autonomous unmanned combat air vehicle (UCAV) capable of air-to-air combat, as well as air-to-ground strikes, hold great potential to fundamentally change…
It’s been 50 years since Apollo 13’s safe return to Earth
After an explosion damaged their spacecraft, the Apollo 13 astronauts – on their way to the moon – were in dire peril. Read about the human ingenuity that led the Apollo 13 mission to a safe and successful conclusion. Source: https://earthsky.org/space/apollo-13-safe-return-to-earth-anniversary…