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Archive for the ‘space’ category: Page 559

Jul 9, 2020

ISS astronaut captures mind-blowing video of Comet Neowise soaring past Earth

Posted by in category: space

A huge comet fizzing past Earth has been captured in dramatic footage recorded from the International Space Station.

Posted to social media on Tuesday, the timelapse video shows the icy object Neowise trailed by its dazzling white tail.

Viewers may be forgiven for thinking the comet is heading towards Earth in the clip, but this is just a trick of the eye.

Jul 9, 2020

3D-printed Mars habitat

Posted by in categories: 3D printing, habitats, robotics/AI, space

AI SpaceFactory, a space architecture and technology design agency, recently won first prize in NASA’s competition to build a prototype Mars habitat.

Jul 9, 2020

Quantum classifiers with tailored quantum kernel?

Posted by in categories: quantum physics, robotics/AI, space

Quantum information scientists have introduced a new method for machine learning classifications in quantum computing. The non-linear quantum kernels in a quantum binary classifier provide new insights for improving the accuracy of quantum machine learning, deemed able to outperform the current AI technology.

The research team led by Professor June-Koo Kevin Rhee from the School of Electrical Engineering, proposed a quantum classifier based on quantum state fidelity by using a different initial state and replacing the Hadamard classification with a swap test. Unlike the conventional approach, this method is expected to significantly enhance the classification tasks when the training dataset is small, by exploiting the quantum advantage in finding non-linear features in a large feature space.

Quantum machine learning holds promise as one of the imperative applications for quantum computing. In machine learning, one fundamental problem for a wide range of applications is classification, a task needed for recognizing patterns in labeled training data in order to assign a label to new, previously unseen data; and the kernel method has been an invaluable classification tool for identifying non-linear relationships in complex data.

Jul 9, 2020

Astronomers Detect Unexpected Class of Mysterious Circular Objects in Space

Posted by in category: space

Although we usually have a pretty good handle on all the different kinds of blips and blobs detected by our telescopes, it would be unwise to assume we’ve seen everything there is to see out there in the big, wide Universe. Case in point: a new kind of signal spotted by radio telescopes, which has astronomers scratching their heads.

Four of these strange objects have been detected. All of them are circular in shape, and three are particularly bright around the edges — like a ring, or a bubble that is more opaque around the edges.

An international team of astronomers led by astrophysicist Ray Norris of Western Sydney University in Australia has nicknamed them ORCs — short for “Odd Radio Circles” — in a new paper posted to arXiv and submitted to Nature Astronomy, where it awaits peer review.

Jul 9, 2020

AI finds 250 foreign stars that migrated to our galaxy

Posted by in categories: robotics/AI, space

Astrophysicians have used AI to discover 250 new stars in the Milky Way, which they believe were born outside the galaxy.

Caltech researcher Lina Necib named the collection Nyx, after the Greek goddess of the night. She suspects the stars are remnants of a dwarf galaxy that merged with the Milky Way many moons ago.

To develop the AI, Necib and her team first tracked stars across a simulated galaxy created by the Feedback in Realistic Environments (FIRE) project. They labeled the stars as either born in the host galaxy, or formed through galaxy mergers. These labels were used to train a deep learning model to spot where a star was born.

Jul 9, 2020

This map shows that Mars and Earth aren’t that different

Posted by in categories: energy, space

Mars’ poles contain millennia-old ice deposits. They also contain carbon dioxide, iron, aluminium, silicon and sulfur, which could be used to make glass, brick and plastic. Furthermore, the planet’s atmosphere contains enough hydrogen and methanol for fuel.


The tallest mountain on Mars and in the solar system is Olympus Mons, and it is two and a half times taller than Mt. Everest. A Martian canyon system, called Valles Marineris, is the length of the entire continental United States and three times deeper than the Grand Canyon.

Continue reading “This map shows that Mars and Earth aren’t that different” »

Jul 9, 2020

With first spacecraft to Red Planet, United Arab Emirates poised to join elite Mars club

Posted by in category: space

Hope mission will gather sorely needed data on the Martian atmosphere, boost Emirati space science.

Jul 8, 2020

A 2020 view of Mars just got released

Posted by in category: space

Curiosity Mars Rover’s Summer Road Trip Has Begun. The footage in this video was taken between February and April 2020.

Jul 8, 2020

NASA Teases ‘Psyche,’ A Robot To Explore An Asteroid Worth More Than Our Global Economy

Posted by in categories: economics, robotics/AI, space

NASA is about to begin building its latest spacecraft. Called “Psyche” it will explore a 140 miles/226 kilometers-wide asteroid called “16 Psyche.” Today it’s passed a major milestone.

Why is NASA going to ‘16 Psyche?’

Located in the Solar System’s main asteroid belt between Mars and Jupiter, metal-rich 16 Psyche is thought to be the exposed metallic iron, nickel and gold core of a protoplanet. Most asteroids are rocky or icy.

Jul 8, 2020

Exoplanet in the hot-Neptune desert is the first of its kind

Posted by in category: space

Hello, planetary delivery service? I’ll take one gas giant, hold the gas.