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May 14, 2015

Quick Detour by NASA Mars Rover Checks Ancient Valley
Pasadena CA (JPL) May 14, 2015
Researchers slightly detoured NASA's Curiosity Mars rover from the mission's planned path in recent days for a closer look at a hillside site where an ancient valley had been carved out and refilled. The rover made observations and measurements there to address questions about how the channel formed and filled. Then it resumed driving up Mount Sharp, where the mission is studying the rock layers. The layers reveal chapters in how environmental conditions and the potential to support microbial life ... read more

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Curiosity tracks sundown on Mars The sun dips to a Martian horizon in a blue-tinged sky in images sent home to Earth this week from NASA's Curiosity Mars rover. Curiosity used its Mast Camera (Mastcam) to record the sunset during a ... more		Russian Scientist Gets Patent on Transfiguring Martian Atmosphere As the Earth's brainpower is focused on Mars exploration, a chemist privatized space engineering and is ready to make the Red Planet's atmosphere suitable for colonists. No jokes. A Russian ch ... more		An important step in artificial intelligence In what marks a significant step forward for artificial intelligence, researchers at UC Santa Barbara have demonstrated the functionality of a simple artificial neural circuit. For the first time, a ... more
				Will a soft robot be first to explore Europa's oceans? Long intrigued by Europa's icy, water-logged environs, researchers around the world are trying figure out the best way to explore the alien world up close. ... more		Controlling swarms of robots with a finger Using a smart tablet and a red beam of light, Georgia Institute of Technology researchers have created a system that allows people to control a fleet of robots with the swipe of a finger. A person t ... more

Space Tech Expo - Design - Build - Test - Long Beach CA - May 19-21, 2015

The World's Largest Commercial Drone Conference and Expo - Sept 9 - Las Vegas

Next Generation Integrated ISR 2015 - Washington DC - July 27-29

Device could greatly improve speech and image recognition Researchers at the University of California, Riverside Bourns College of Engineering and the Russian Academy of Sciences have successfully demonstrated pattern recognition using a magnonic holograph ... more		NASA's New Horizons Spots Pluto's Faintest Known Moons It's a complete Pluto family photo - or at least a photo of the family members we've already met. For the first time, NASA's New Horizons spacecraft has photographed Kerberos and Styx - the sm ... more		Sidekick autonomy software guides YFQ-42A test mission for CCA program Infleqtion lists shares on NYSE as neutral atom quantum firm Top Chinese gaming companies continue to challenge		NASA funds SwRI instrument to date Moon and Mars rocks NASA has approved $2.6 million to advance development of Southwest Research Institute's (SwRI) Chemistry, Organics, and Dating Experiment (CODEX) instrument. The device will allow unmanned rovers to ... more
				MESSENGER reveals Mercury's magnetic field secrets New data from MESSENGER, the spacecraft that orbited Mercury for four years before crashing into the planet a week ago, reveals Mercury's magnetic field is almost four billion years old. The discove ... more		Weather forecasts for planets beyond our solar system "Cloudy for the morning, turning to clear with scorching heat in the afternoon." While this might describe a typical late-summer day in many places on Earth, it may also apply to planets outside our ... more

Army Network Modernization 2015 - Washington DC June 23-25

Watch a simple tablet control robot swarm Engineers at the Georgia Institute of Technology have programmed a fleet of robots to respond to a basic set of commands issued via a tablet device. ... more		DARPA developing zoom lens to spot distant space objects more clearly Imaging of Earth from satellites in space has vastly improved in recent years. But the opposite challenge-using Earth-based systems to find, track and provide detailed characterization of satellites ... more		Solar-driven ionosphere charges may nudge stressed faults toward rupture Stable black carbon in mangrove soils boosts coastal climate role Low crystallinity iron minerals show promise for chromium cleanup and carbon storage		Galactic Gold Rush: Asteroid Mining to Start This Summer Asteroid mining may not be the stuff of sci-fi flicks for long, as one company prepares to launch its first exploratory satellite from the International Space Station in July. Planetary Resources is ... more
Ceres Animation Showcases Bright Spots The mysterious bright spots on the dwarf planet Ceres are better resolved in a new sequence of images taken by NASA's Dawn spacecraft on May 3 and 4, 2015. The images were taken from a distance of 8 ... more		Getting Down to Science at Ceres Dawn's assignment when it embarked on its extraordinary extraterrestrial expedition in 2007 can be described quite simply: explore the two most massive uncharted worlds in the inner solar system. It ... more		Space debris from satellite explosion increases collision risk for space craft Debris from the US Defense Meteorological Satellite Program (DMSP) F13 satellite, which recently exploded in orbit, could pose a threat to other spacecraft and missions according to new research fro ... more		Robot pets to rise in an overpopulated world University of Melbourne animal welfare researcher Dr Jean-Loup Rault says the prospect of robopets and virtual pets is not as far-fetched as we may think. His paper in the latest edition of Frontier ... more

	IBM's Watson strives to be jack of all trades Watson already has won a major TV game show, is looking for a cure for cancer and has ambitious gastronomy ambitions including devising a recipe for chocolate-beef burritos. ... more		NASA's LRO Moves Closer to the Lunar Surface NASA's Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter (LRO) has completed a maneuver that lowered the spacecraft's orbit to within 20 kilometers (12 miles) above areas near the lunar South Pole, the closest the space ... more

AALTO plans Zephyr stratospheric hub in northern Australia and seeks local payload partners

Ancient guano drove Chincha coastal power

UAH lands first DARPA award for biological sciences department

Astronomers detect drastic atmospheric change in super Earth		Saturn Moon's Activity Could Be 'Curtain Eruptions'		Astrophysicists offer proof that famous image shows forming planets		3D printer making Chinese space suit parts		A hot start to the origin of life
Geochemical process on Saturn's moon linked to life's origin		European Space Agency Director Wants to Set Up a Moon Base		NASA Announces Journey to Mars Challenge		Student Mars Rover team will compete in Utah desert		Ancient Star Raises Prospects of Intelligent Life

Astrobiology Students Use Art to Develop Critical Thinking Skills

4,000+ Martian Days of Work on Mars!

UAE says on track to send probe to Mars in 2021

US space agency chief confident of putting Americans on Mars in 2030s

IBM's Watson extends cancer insights to 14 new centers

PSI Researchers Look Back at Mercury MESSENGER Accomplishments

Traffic Around Mars Gets Busy

NASA completes MESSENGER mission with surface impact

Rock Spire in 'Spirit of St. Louis Crater' on Mars

New exoplanet too big for its star

Fire and Ice: A MESSENGER Recap

Robots to drive Polaris off-road vehicles in DARPA challenge

Making robots more human

Tracking Japan's asteroid impact mission

KinetX Aerospace Navigates MESSENGER through Final Mission Phase

Possible Polar Cap on Pluto Detected

MESSENGER executes last orbit-correction maneuver ahead of impact

An improvement to the global software standard for analyzing fusion plasmas

Computer faces poker pros in no-limit Texas Hold'em

Robotically discovering Earth's nearest neighbors

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