Science, Space, Health & Robotics News - Page 4

It's a sad day in the science community as researchers and engineers worldwide salute NASA's Mars helicopter Ingenuity as the space agency has announced the helicopter's mission has ended.

NASA administrator Bill Nelson has announced that Ingenuity's efforts on the surface of the Red Planet have come to an end after the small helicopter sustained damage to at least one or more of its rotor blades during the landing of its last flight. Ingenuity landed in the Jezero Crater on the Red Planet in February 2018 with NASA's Perseverance rover.

The primary mission of the helicopter was to demonstrate that flight was capable on another planet, and once that was achieved, Ingenuity essentially turned into a reconnaissance device for NASA as it would fly ahead of Perseverance, capturing the terrain and surrounding area with its onboard cameras.

NASA has finally released some high-resolution images of the space agency's first asteroid sample collection, which arrived back on Earth as part of NASA's OSIRIS-REx mission.

NASA collected the OSIRIS-REx capsule more than 3 months ago after it safely landed back on Earth on September 24, but due to the sampler's lid being tightly fastened onto the capsule, researchers were unable to open it. The mission was overall a massive success as NASA captured many more samples than it anticipated, even to the point where there were asteroid samples located on the top of the capsule lid.

The delay was specifically attributed to the two fasteners located on the top of the capsule, and since researchers are only able to interact with the capsule within its dedicated air-tight container through the use of gloves, engineers had to design special tools to unfasten the screws holding the lid in place. That was achieved, and now NASA has 2.48 ounces or 70 grams of asteroid dust.

A Taiwanese research institute has connected to the internet what is being reported as the nation's first home-grown quantum computer.

The announcement of the successful connection occurred on January 19 and details Taiwan's first domestically built quantum computer that will be used as a test bed for researchers both on-site and elsewhere around the world. Collaborators on the project include the University of California, Santa Barbara, the University of Wisconsin-Madison, the Industrial Technology Research Institute, the National Changhua Normal University, the National Central University, and the National Chung Hsin University.

Academia Sinica's website states the quantum computer was completed back in October last year, but it was only connected to the internet in January this year, marking a milestone in Taiwan's exponential development into quantum computing. The intent of this step forward in the quantum computing industry is to demonstrate the capabilities of the new technology by solving basic problems. After that has been successfully demonstrated, researchers can move on to the next breakthrough application.

Sony CEO Kenichiro Yoshida said in an interview with Norges Bank Investment Management that the PlayStation gaming experience will be expanded to PC, mobile, and cloud gaming.

If you ever believed that Sony, for whatever reason, would stop bringing titles over to other platforms such as PC, you can stop worrying; as Sony's CEO of Subscriptions has said during an interview, the company plans on expanding its efforts to bring PlayStation to as many gamers as possible.

PC ports of Sony titles began back in August 2020 with the release of Horizon Zero Dawn on PC and has continued with many titles such as God of War in 2022, Marvel's Spider-Man Remastered, Marvel's Spider-Man: Miles Morales, The Last of Us and many more. With these comments from Yoshida, and Sony's continuous effort to port titles over to PC, I believe it's quite safe to say that PC gamers will soon get many more PlayStation titles.

The battery is nuclear-powered, smaller than coin, can run for 50 years without needing to be recharged, and can be used for devices such as a smartphone allowing it to operate indefinitely.

The new battery is designed by Beijin-based start-up Betavolt Technology, which currently has a prototype device that uses nuclear isotopes along with semiconductors to convert energy into electrical power. The researchers behind the project also boast about the safety of the battery, saying in an article from Science and Technology Daily that it works safely between temperatures 120 to -60°C.

The company also states the battery is resistant to punctures or gunfire that many would think result in it catching on fire or exploding. The new battery is officially called BV100 and is only 15mm x 15mm x 5mm. It has a maximum output of 100 microwatts and 3 volts, and the company behind it has announced it plans to make a 1-watt version next year after it mass produces the 100 microwatt model. The battery technology captures the energy from the nuclear decay of radioactive elements.

Researchers honed instruments on a star that was originally discovered in 1999 and found that its breaking our understanding of the universe.

The new study published on the pre-print server arXiv on January 4 focuses on a distant red giant star called J0931+0038, or the Barbenheimer Star, nicknamed after the "Barbie" and "Oppenheimer" movies released on the same day last year. Scientists used Sloan Digital Sky Survey telescopes in New Mexico to observe the star, capturing a detailed spectrum of the light it emits. This data was then verified by the Giant Magellan Telescope in Chile.

The results were extremely interesting as the Barbenheimer Star was found to have a very strange chemical composition, specifically a high concentration of heavy elements. Using the data, scientists rewound time through a process called stellar archaeology to find out how the Barbenheimer Star formed, and they discovered that it was birthed out of a star that was between 50 and 80 times the size of the Sun. This parent also featured an unusually high concentration of heavy elements and likely went supernova 13 billion years ago, or just 700 million years after the Big Bang.

NASA announced on Saturday that it lost communications with Ingenuity, its reconnaissance helicopter that's currently located on the surface of Mars.

The space agency announced Saturday that after Ingenuity executed Flight 72 on January 18, communications between the helicopter and Perseverance, NASA's Mars rover, terminated. The communication severing occurred while Ingenuity was performing its descent, according to the space agency.

Only a day later, NASA posted another update to its NASA JPL X account, writing communications between Perseverance and Ingenuity were re-established after Perseverance was tasked to perform "long-duration listening sessions for Ingenuity's signal". NASA added that teams are currently analyzing data from Flight 72 to determine the cause for the communications dropout and ways to mitigate it from happening again.

Samsung unveiled its foray into the smart ring market at its Unpacked event a few days ago, showcasing the Galaxy Ring to the world.

The showcase of the Galaxy Ring has raised important questions in the wearable market, such as "is this the start of a new wearable era?". While that is yet to be known, we did see three smart ring devices unveiled at the start of 2024, one of which was from one of the biggest players in the wearable market, Samsung. These are certainly indicators of a market shift, but what isn't known is whether or not they will be successful in attracting consumers.

As for the Galaxy Ring, details on the new device are sparse, with only short mentions of it from various Samsung spokespeople and officials. Known details are as follows: Samsung's Galaxy Ring will feature "leading sensor technologies" that will be designed to "empower more people to manage their health with a comprehensive yet simplified approach to everyday wellness at home," per Samsung spokesperson Amber Reaver, who spoke to The Verge.

San Francisco accessibility startup Augmental is working on head tracking and 'Silent speech' for their innovative 'Mouthpad' to give people with physical disabilities the ability to interact with computers and smartphones much more easily.

The idea behind the new technology is to give people with physical disabilities the ability to control their laptop with a slight flick of your tongue or even answering a phone call by tilting their head. Augmental is an inspiring startup and took to CES this year to give the first public demo of its 'MouthPad,' a unique mouse that gives those who have physical disabilities a new way to interact with technology.

Speaking exclusively with TechCrunch, the company shared what they have going on and what's to come, stating, "One of the new features we recently added to the MouthPad is head dragging and head controls. Users can now move their heads to control the cursor, in addition to the tongue gestures we previously announced," said Oscar Rosello, head of Design at Augmental.

NASA has taken to its website and social channels to share an image captured by the iconic Hubble Space Telescope.

The image features two spiral galaxies known as NGC 6040, the tilted, warped spiral galaxy, and LEDA 59642, which are both shown above. Both of the galaxies are called Arp 122, and what we are looking at here is a cosmic collision that has taken millions of years to achieve. The collision is taking place 570 million miles from Earth and is a result of all of the contents of the galaxy causing a strong gravitational pull.

Notably, our own Milky Way galaxy is scheduled to collide with our nearest galactic neighbor, the Andromeda Galaxy. However, that event won't take place for another 4 billion years, and when it does, it will take hundreds of millions of years for both galaxies to fully envelop each other. Why does it take so long? NASA writes that it's simply because of the great distances the galaxies need to travel in order for them to merge.