Blue Origin gives green light for Tuesday launch of owner Jeff Bezos

The four passengers who will ride to the edge of space on Blue Origin’s New Shepard rocket Tuesday, from left to right: Oliver Daemen, Wally Funk, Jeff Bezos, and Mark Bezos. Credit: Jeff Bezos via Instagram While Jeff Bezos and his three crewmates worked through a two-day “astronaut” training course, engineers Sunday tentatively cleared their …

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Hubble resumes science observations after month-long outage

The Hubble Space Telescope pictured during the final space shuttle servicing mission in 2009. Credit: NASA NASA said Saturday that the Hubble Space Telescope, now running on a backup payload computer, has resumed scientific observations after a failure knocked the aging observatory offline for more than a month. “All instruments on the Hubble Space Telescope …

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New SpaceX drone ship arrives at Port Canaveral

A new SpaceX drone ship named “A Shortfall of Gravitas” was towed into Port Canaveral Thursday, completing a shuffling of SpaceX’s rocket landing platforms to support upcoming launches from Florida and California. “A Shortfall of Gravitas” was towed from a construction facility in Louisiana after completing an initial series of sea trials. SpaceX teams at …

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Blue Origin reveals fourth crew member for Bezos spaceflight

STORY WRITTEN FOR CBS NEWS & USED WITH PERMISSION Oliver Daemen, an 18-year-old Dutch student, will become the youngest person to fly in space. Credit: Blue Origin An 18-year-old Dutch student will join Jeff Bezos, his brother Mark and aviation pioneer Wally Funk next Tuesday when they blast off aboard the Amazon founder’s New Shepard rocket for …

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Sniffy Bug: a fully autonomous swarm of gas-seeking nano quadcopters in cluttered environments

Tiny drones are ideal candidates for fully autonomous jobs that are too dangerous or time-consuming for humans. A commonly shared dream by engineers and fire & rescue services, would be to have swarms of such drones help in search-and-rescue scenarios [1], for instance to localize gas leaks without endangering human lives. Tiny drones are ideal …

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Upper stage added to SLS stack in Vehicle Assembly Building

The Interim Cryogenic Propulsion Stage for NASA’s first Space Launch System test flight was stacked on top of the rocket July 5. Credit: NASA/Kim Shiflett The upper stage for the first flight of NASA’s Space Launch System was installed on top of the heavy-lift rocket earlier this month, moving the agency one step closer to …

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#335: Autonomous Aircraft by Xwing, with Maxime Gariel

Robohub Podcast · Autonomous Aircraft Abate talks to Maxime Gariel, CTO of Xwing about the autonomous flight technology they are developing. At Xwing, they retrofit traditional aircraft to include multiple sensors such as cameras, lidar, and radar. Using sensor fusion algorithms, they create an exceptionally accurate model of the environment. This model of the environment …

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How to Appraise Potential Tasks for Robotic Screwdriving

How can you tell if a particular screwdriving application will be suitable for robotic automation? Maybe you want your robot to screw down circuit boards for electronic assembly. Maybe the robot will be fixing parts into a car or assembling appliances. Whatever your screwdriving needs, there are 7 properties you should consider when appraising potential …

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China launches satellite group to detect global radio transmissions

A Chinese Long March 6 rocket lifts off Friday from the Taiyuan space center. Credit: Xinhua China launched five small satellites designed to detect and monitor global radio transmissions Friday on top of a Long March 6 rocket, joining five similar spacecraft deployed in orbit in 2019. The five Ningxia, or Zhongzi, satellites rocketed into …

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