Evanston IL (SPX) Oct 04, 2023
A team led by Northwestern University researchers has developed the first artificial intelligence (AI) to date that can intelligently design robots from scratch. To test the new AI, the researchers gave the system a simple prompt: Design a robot that can walk across a flat surface. While it took nature billions of years to evolve the first walking species, the new algorithm compressed evol

Paris (AFP) Oct 5, 2023
Last month was the hottest September on record by an "extraordinary" margin as the world flirts dangerously with breaching a key warming limit, the EU climate monitor said on Thursday. Much of the world sweltered through unseasonably warm weather in September, in a year expected to be the hottest in human history and after the warmest-ever global temperatures during the Northern Hemisphere s

San Antonio TX (SPX) Oct 04, 2023
NASA has selected a new SwRI-managed heliophysics mission focused on investigating the Sun's middle corona - an enigmatic region of the Sun's atmosphere driving solar activity - for a Phase A, mission definition study. Southwest Research Institute's Dr. Dan Seaton is deputy principal investigator of the Center for Astrophysics | Harvard and Smithsonian-led EUV CME and Coronal Connectivity Observ

Boulder OC (SPX) Oct 04, 2023
Venus may be a (slightly) gentler place than some scientists give it credit for. In new research, space physicists at the University of Colorado Boulder have jumped into a surprisingly long-running debate in solar system science: Does lightning strike on the second planet from the sun? The team's results add strong new evidence suggesting that, no, you probably wouldn't see bolts of

Copenhagen, Denmark (SPX) Oct 04, 2023
In recent years, astronomy has seen itself in a bit of crisis: Although we know that the Universe expands, and although we know approximately how fast, the two primary ways to measure this expansion do not agree. Now astrophysicists from the Niels Bohr Institute suggest a novel method which may help resolve this tension. b>The Universe expands br> /b> We've known this ever since Edwin Hu

Washington DC (SPX) Oct 05, 2023
Umbra, a leader in advanced space radar technology, announced it has been selected by The National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) as a commercial provider for its Commercial Satellite Data Acquisition (CSDA) Program. The CSDA Program will acquire Umbra Synthetic Aperture Radar (SAR) data under a five-year, multiple-award, Indefinite delivery Indefinite Quantity (IDIQ) Contract in su

Manoa HI (SPX) Oct 05, 2023
Due to its launch expertise, University of Hawaii at Manoa's Hawaii Space Flight Laboratory (HSFL) secured an $8 million technology demonstration mission funded by the NASA Earth Science Technology Office's competitive In-Space Validation of Earth Science Technologies program, one of only 15 awarded since 2012. The flagship HSFL project led by Hawaii Institute of Geophysics and Planetology

Rockford IL (SPX) Oct 05, 2023
RTX (NYSE: RTX) has successfully demonstrated the operation of a solid-state circuit breaker to support hybrid-electric propulsion systems in future aircraft, a key part of the aviation industry's efforts to achieve net-zero carbon emissions by 2050. Much like a circuit breaker in a residential home, a circuit breaker on an aircraft helps protect the plane by removing power from the system

Morgantown WV (SPX) Oct 05, 2023
If West Virginia University research pays off, debris that litters the planet's orbit and poses a threat to spacecraft and satellites could get nudged off potential collision courses by a coordinated network of space lasers. Hang Woon Lee, director of the Space Systems Operations Research Laboratory at WVU, said a junkyard of human-made debris, including defunct satellites, is accumulating

Long Beach CA (SPX) Oct 05, 2023
Rocket Lab USA, Inc. (Nasdaq: RKLB) has officially opened the Company's new Engine Development Center in Long Beach, California. The 144,000+ square foot advanced manufacturing complex will support the high-rate production of Rocket Lab's 3D printed Rutherford engine, as well development and production for the new Archimedes engine that will power the Company's new medium-lift rocket, Neutron.