NASA Ames team created and tested prefabricated voxels standardized reconfigurable building blocks. They built a set of 256 of those blocks—extremely strong 3D structures made with a carbon-fiber-reinforced polymer called StattechNN-40CF. Each block had fastening interfaces on every side that could be used to reversibly attach them to other blocks and form a strong truss …
Yesterday, Elon tweeted that the SpaceX Starship launch is in about 3 weeks. Starship were meant to fly and our next one launches in about 3 weeks, but I recommend waiting for a few more test flights before hopping on board @NICKIMINAJ — Elon Musk (@elonmusk) February 12, 2024 Brian WangBrian Wang is a Futurist …
In late 2023, NASA tested a new hybrid laser/radio antenna to downlink data from 20 million miles (32 million kilometers) away at a rate of 15.63 megabits per second – about 40 times faster than radio frequency communications at that distance. On Jan. 1, 2024, the antenna downlinked a team photograph that had been uploaded …
Sanctuary’s CTO Suzanne Gildert explains their mind and hands first approach. Sanctuary AI views humanoid robots as a means to an end, where the end is human-like general intelligence. Suzanne Gildert is Chief Technology Officer and has been a prominent figure in AI robotics leading to her being often affectionately known as the Mother of …
A new way of creating color uses the scattering of light of specific wavelengths around tiny, almost perfectly round silicon crystals. This Kobe University development enables non-fading structural colors that do not depend on the viewing angle and can be printed. The material has a low environmental and biological impact and can be applied extremely …
Barry-1 had ongoing power-system issues on the bus through LEOP, and after two months of operations, towards the end of LEOP, @RogueSpaceCorp lost communication with the satellite. @ivo_ltd never had the opportunity to test the Quantum Drives. The drives were NOT turned on. Sadly, Barry-1 had ongoing power-system issues on the bus through LEOP, and …
Here is update on the analysis of the remains of interstellar meteor IM1. There was a paper claiming the IM1 remains were coal ash but that is disproved. The detection threshold of surveys which rely on reflected sunlight sets the minimum size of a detectable object as a function of its distances from the observer …
Moons and asteroids with a global ocean are tending to become relatively common objects in the Solar System. There have been at least nine and now ten with Saturn’s tiny (250 mile across Mimas). Give of the moon’s of Uranus are also likely having deep buried oceans. The presence of these long-lived global oceans is …
Here is the video of the previous week in Nextbigfuture highlight articles. There is coverage of Neuralink’s first human patient, global excess deaths continuing despite the covid pandemic ending, warming Mars by 10 degrees Celsius by 2050 using 14 SpaceX Starships to deliver equipment and wrinkled graphite has one dimensional room temperature superconductivity on the …
Metalenses have been used to image microscopic features of tissue and resolve details smaller than a wavelength of light. Now, Harvard researchers have turned the metalens towards space. Researchers at the Harvard John A. Paulson School of Engineering and Applied Sciences (SEAS) have developed a 10-centimeter-diameter glass metalens that can image the sun, the moon …
A new research paper in the Acta Astronautica journal describes a constellation of mirror satellites to increase the power at the large solar farms on Earth. Among all cases, the paper found SSO (sun synchronous orbit) and single reflector cases to be superior. A constellation with 20 reflectors could deliver a significant quantity of solar …