It’s the sort of chance that comes along just once in a blue Moon: a Japanese billionaire is throwing open a private lunar expedition to eight people from around the world. Source: https://phys.org/news/2021-03-moon-japan-billionaire-space-seats.html…
Tag: fly
Ingenuity: A Mini Helicopter Now on Mars
What if you could fly around Mars? Source: https://apod.nasa.gov/apod/astropix.html…
Parker Solar Probe captures a glimpse of Venus
The Parker Solar Probe turned its camera on Venus as the spacecraft flew by during a gravity assist. Source: https://earthsky.org/todays-image/solar-probe-flyby-photo-of-venus…
Sergey Brin’s Airship Aims To Use World’s Biggest Mobile Hydrogen Fuel Cell
Sergey Brin’s secretive airship company LTA Research and Exploration is planning to power a huge disaster relief airship with an equally record-breaking hydrogen fuel cell. From a report: A job listing from the company, which is based in Mountain View, California and Akron, Ohio, reveals that LTA wants to configure a 1.5-megawatt hydrogen propulsion system for an airship to deliver humanitarian…
Male lyrebirds imitate a flock of birds to scare females into mating
Birds threatened by a predator often call out to encourage other birds to make noise and fly about, repelling the attacker as part of a “mobbing flock”. Now it seems male lyrebirds imitate this sound to scare females into mating Source: https://www.newscientist.com/article/2269303-male-lyrebirds-imitate-a-flock-of-birds-to-scare-females-into-mating/?utm_campaign=RSS%7CNSNS&utm_source=NSNS&utm_medium=RSS&utm_content=home…
3D map of a million binary stars
A new atlas of nearby binary stars plots more than a million pairs and reveals a profusion of identical twins. Source: https://earthsky.org/space/3d-map-million-binary-stars…
Cool video! Perseverance’s descent and touchdown on Mars
Check out this amazing new video from NASA’s Perseverance rover, showing its own descent and landing on the surface of Mars last week. Truly, it’s like nothing seen before! Source: https://earthsky.org/todays-image/video-perseverance-rover-descent-and-touchdown-on-mars…
NASA’s Mars Perseverance Rover Provides Front-Row Seat to Landing, First Audio Recording of Red Planet
New video from NASA’s Mars 2020 Perseverance rover chronicles major milestones during the final minutes of its entry, descent, and landing (EDL) on the Red Planet on Feb. 18 as the spacecraft plummeted, parachuted, and rocketed toward the surface of Mars. A microphone on the rover also has provided the first audio recording of sounds from Mars. From a report: From…
Linux Is Now on Mars, Thanks to NASA’s Perseverance Rover
“When NASA’s Perseverance rover landed on Mars this week, it also brought the Linux operating system to the Red Planet,” reports PC Magazine: The tidbit was mentioned in an interview NASA software engineer Tim Canham gave to IEEE Spectrum. The helicopter-like drone on board the Perseverance rover uses a Linux-powered software framework the space agency open-sourced a few years ago. “This…
Why Google’s Internet Balloon Project Loon Failed
Alphabet announced last month that it was winding down Loon, a nine-year-old project and a two-and-a-half-year-old spin off firm, after failing to find a sustainable business model and partners for one of its most prominent moonshot projects. Business Insider shares more details on why the project failed. From the report, which may be paywalled: CEO Alastair Wingarth told The New York…