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July 13, 2015

NASA counts down to nail-biter Pluto flyby
Miami (AFP) July 13, 2015
An unmanned NASA spacecraft hurtling into the unknown will make a close shave past Pluto on Tuesday, offering scientists a close glimpse of the dwarf planet's surface for the first time. But there were some jitters Monday as the $700 million spacecraft, called New Horizons, sped toward the last undiscovered frontier in the solar system. According to principal investigator Alan Stern, there is a one in 10,000 chance that the spacecraft could be lost in a collision with debris around Pluto, long c ... read more

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Last Portrait of Pluto's Puzzling Spots Three billion miles from Earth and just two and a half million miles from Pluto, NASA's New Horizons spacecraft has taken its best image of four dark spots that continue to captivate. The spot ... more		NASA craft discovers heart shape on Pluto as flyby nears There's a near-perfect heart shape on Pluto's rusty red surface. The dwarf planet is dotted with bright points which may be ice caps, and a mysterious dark shape nicknamed "The Whale." ... more		Chameleon satellite to revolutionise telecom market Telecom satellites are set to enter a new age, as ESA, Eutelsat and Airbus Defence and Space begin designing the most flexible payload ever. The Quantum programme is a departure from the traditional ... more
				Student Dust Counter Provides Clues About Solar System "We are stardust" is more than a lyric in a hit 1970's song. It's actually true. Our solar system began as flecks of star-created gas and dust that drew together to form our sun, the planets ... and ... more		NASA Missions Have Their Eyes Peeled on Pluto What's icy, has "wobbly" potato-shaped moons, and is the world's best-known dwarf planet? The answer is Pluto, and NASA's New Horizons is speeding towards the edge of our solar system for a July 14 ... more

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Omnidirectional free space wireless charging developed Mobile devices, such as smartphones and laptops, have become indispensable portable items in modern life, but one big challenge remains to fully enjoying these devices: keeping their batteries charg ... more		Pluto Flyby Begins After a more than nine-year, three-billion-mile journey to Pluto, it's showtime for NASA's New Horizons spacecraft, as the flyby sequence of science observations is officially underway. In the ... 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		Bricks to build an Earth found in every planetary system Earth-like planets orbiting other stars in the Milky Way are three times more likely to have the same type of minerals as Earth than astronomers had previously thought. In fact, conditions for makin ... more
				New Map of Pluto This is the latest map of Pluto created from images taken from June 27 to July 3 by the Long Range Reconnaissance Imager (LORRI) on New Horizons, combined with lower-resolution color data from the s ... more		Neptune's badly behaved magnetic field Combining 26-year old data with supercomputer simulations, a team of scientists at Imperial College London have modelled Neptune's magnetic field in detail for the first time. The researchers find t ... more

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Opportunity Rover's 7th Mars Winter to Include New Study Area Operators of NASA's Mars Exploration Rover Opportunity plan to drive the rover into a valley this month where Opportunity will be active through the long-lived rover's seventh Martian winter, examin ... more		Hopping towards a better soft robot Traditional industrial robots are rigid - mostly metal - and are fast, precise and powerful. Their speed and precision comes at the cost of complexity and can often pose a danger to humans who get t ... 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		3-D-printed robot is hard at heart, soft on the outside Engineers at Harvard University and the University of California, San Diego, have created the first robot with a 3D-printed body that transitions from a rigid core to a soft exterior. The robot is c ... more
Houston, We Have Geology It began as a point of light. Then, it evolved into a fuzzy orb. Now - in its latest portrait from NASA's New Horizons spacecraft - Pluto is being revealed as an intriguing new world with distinct s ... more		Elon Musk funds major research grants on dangers of artificial intelligence Artificial Intelligence (AI) systems have never been more quick in development - or more threatening, according to SpaceX founder and CEO of Tesla Motors Elon Musk, who is sponsoring 37 multinationa ... more		Early Titan Was a Cold, Hostile Place For Life Titan is a mysterious orange-socked moon of Saturn that is exciting to astrobiologists because it has some of the same kinds of chemicals that were precursors to life on Earth. It also has a hydrolo ... more		Ball delivers optical reference units for GRACE follow-on mission Ball Aerospace and Technologies Corp. has delivered key components to NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL) for a laser ranging system designed to achieve greater accuracy in measuring changes in E ... more

	Glitch sees NASA briefly lose touch with Pluto mission NASA briefly lost touch this weekend with an unmanned spacecraft on its way to a historic encounter with Pluto, but the US space agency said Monday the glitch has been fixed. ... more		'Pac-Man' space probe to gobble-up space debris Low Earth orbit is littered with space debris. But if the latest mission by Switzerland's EPFL Center for Space Engineering is successful, space will be less crowded by at least one satellite. ... more

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Ralph Is Ready for Historic Pluto Flyby		Opportunity Gets Back to Work		NASA wants to send microbes to Mars to prepare for human habitation		In the Right Place at the Right Time for Pluto Observations		Curiosity rover back to work, studying rock-layer contact zone

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