Category Archives: Gadgets

Gadgets

NASA seeks industry input on hardware production for lunar spacesuit

Leave a comment

In a request for information (RFI) published on 4 October, the US National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) asked for industry feedback to “refine and mature the acquisition strategy for production and services for lunar spacesuits”.

NASA is currently designing and developing a new spacesuit system, called the Exploration Extravehicular Mobility Unit or xEMU, for use during its planned “Artemis missions” to the Moon, and which will be adaptable for other destinations both near and far.

This next generation of spacesuits is intended to give astronauts enhanced mobility to accomplish their exploration tasks on the lunar surface when they next step foot on the Moon in, NASA hopes, 2024.

The agency said it is “prepared to build and certify the initial spacesuits to support a demonstration in a spaceflight environment on the International Space Station in 2023 and the first trip to the lunar surface in 2024, as part of the Artemis III mission”.

After Artemis III is completed, NASA plans to “transition responsibility” for production, assembly, testing, sustaining and maintenance of a fleet of flight and training spacesuits and associated hardware to the US aeronautics industry.

They agency intends the new suit to be used in spacewalks “that may vary with dust, thermal conditions, operational requirements such as walking, driving rovers, or collecting samples, or gravity”. According to NASA, its “multi-destination design” will mean that the suits could be used for spacewalks on the space station or planned Lunar Gateway, and – with additional upgrades – future crewed missions to Mars.

It will “accommodate a broader range of crew sizes and improve fit, comfort, and astronaut mobility for tasks on the lunar surface”, and will have a “highly mobile lower torso” for walking and kneeling, and an upgradable life support system that can be adapted to fit new mission parameters and to include new technology.

“You won’t see the bunny hopping and falls like those seen in the Apollo videos, because we’ve added bearings and new soft elements to help the suit move smoothly with the wearer,” Marshall Smith, director of NASA’s Human Lunar Exploration Program, said in a statement.

“With the improvements to the suits for Artemis missions, astronauts can now open up new possibilities for science and exploration at the Moon,” he added. “With the help of partners from industry and academia, we have developed a suite of advanced spacesuit components in preparation for missions to distant destinations.”

“Now we will take the next step together in the boots of the new exploration suit for Artemis missions at the Moon,” Smith concluded.

In addition to production of these new spacesuits, NASA is asking for industry feedback on how contractors would “facilitate the evolution of the suits” and recommend improvements to the agency’s initial design.

The agency is also asking for information on “production and sustaining of toolkits astronauts will use during lunar spacewalks, crew-aids and vehicle integration hardware needed to support unique operations and interfaces associated with missions to Gateway and the lunar surface”.

NASA is interested in industry input on “lowering barriers to commercialization of the exploration suits and associated tools, interfaces, and other components”, including input on how future spacesuit production teams might be able to provide suit and spacewalk capabilities to non-NASA customers.

Gadgets

NASA has chosen three mission proposals to study space weather

Leave a comment

The US National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) said on 3 September it has chosen three proposals for concept studies of missions that could “help us better understand the dynamic space weather system driven by the Sun that manifests near Earth”.

The proposals will look at what “drives” different part of the system, and could ultimately help to predict and mitigate its effects on spacecraft and astronauts as NASA’s Artemis program looks to send the first woman and the next man to the Moon by 2024.

Each of these Heliophysics Mission of Opportunity proposals will receive US$400,000 to conduct a nine-month mission concept study. After the study period, NASA will choose one proposal to go forward to launch. Each potential mission has a separate launch opportunity and time frame.

The proposals were selected based on potential science value and feasibility of development plans. The total cost for the mission ultimately chosen will be capped at US$55 million and is funded by NASA’s Heliophysics Explorers’ program.

“NASA’s research to understand the space we travel through relies on exploring key details about a vast system from the Sun, to Earth, to the edges of the solar system,” Peg Luce, deputy director for heliophysics in the Science Mission Directorate at NASA, said in a statement.

“Each of these proposals could add a significant tool from a unique vantage point to help us understand that system,” she added.

The selected proposals are:

Extreme Ultraviolet High-Throughput Spectroscopic Telescope (EUVST) Epsilon Mission

EUVST would aim to provide an answer to a fundamental question in solar physics: How does the interplay of solar material – a hot plasma – and magnetic fields drive solar activity and eruptions, such as solar flares and coronal mass ejections?

The mission would launch with the Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency’s Solar-C mission, planned for 2025. EUVST would observe simultaneously, for the first time and over a wide range of the lower solar atmosphere, how magnetic fields and plasma interact.

Those observations could help us learn more about how the two systems contribute to the dynamic atmosphere around the Sun. The principal investigator for EUVST is Clarence Korendyke at the U.S. Naval Research Laboratory in Washington.

Aeronomy at Earth: Tools for Heliophysics Exploration and Research (AETHER)

AETHER would explore the ionosphere-thermosphere system and its response to geomagnetic storms. From a position aboard the International Space Station, it could gather observations of the ionosphere – the area of our atmosphere that overlaps with the lower regions of space.

These observations would be complemented by ground observations of electrons in the same region. The mission would provide information on how the neutral, terrestrial-weather-driven thermosphere interacts with the ionosphere’s charged particles.

Understanding how the neutral atmosphere affects the ions and vice versa is key to better understanding the complex space weather system surrounding our planet, which affects spacecraft and astronauts flying through it.

The launch of AETHER would be no later than 2024. The principal investigator for AETHER is James Clemmons at the University of New Hampshire in Durham.

Electrojet Zeeman Imaging Explorer (EZIE)

EZIE would focus on an electric current known as the auroral electrojet, which circles through the atmosphere around 60 to 90 miles above Earth, near the poles. Using three SmallSats to measure magnetic fields, EZIE would observe the structure of electrojets and explore what causes them and how they evolve.

Electrojets are part of a larger space weather system that can lead to oscillations in Earth’s magnetic fields, creating geomagnetic storms that can interfere with spacecraft and – at their most intense – utility grids on the ground.

Knowing how electrojets form and grow could contribute to ultimately predicting such storms. EZIE would launch as part of the agency’s CubeSat Launch Initiative. EZIE also would launch no later than 2024.

The principal investigator for EZIE is Jeng-Hwa Yee at the Johns Hopkins University Applied Physics Laboratory in Laurel, Maryland.

Gadgets

NASA and HPE join forces to build new supercomputer to support crewed moon mission

Leave a comment
Image by Peter Dargatz from Pixabay

The US National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) and Hewlett Packard Enterprise (HPE) said on 22 August they have developed a custom-designed supercomputer to run simulations for the agency’s Artemis program, a mission to land the next humans on the lunar South Pole by 2024.

Named after Robert Grant Aitken, an American astronomer specializing in binary star systems, the supercomputer will help NASA’s Ames Research Centre to model and simulate entry, descent, and landing (EDL) for Artemis and other missions.

“Aitken” – which will run thousands of complex simulations more quickly at 3.69 petaFLOPs of theoretical performance to enable accurate and safe landings on the moon – is an initial development of a four-year, multi-phase collaboration between HPE and NASA Ames.

The supercomputer is based on an end-to-end, purpose-built high-performance computing (HPC) platform, which includes special liquid cooling capabilities for optimal energy efficiency, HPE said in a statement.

Aitken is located in NASA Ames’ new modular supercomputing facility, based on a Modular Data Centre (MDC) approach jointly developed with HPE, to deliver advanced HPC solutions that drive greater efficiency and significantly reduce electricity and water use.

The new facility, based in Mountain View, California, will combine native Bay Area temperature and evaporative methods to cool the supercomputer, replacing the need for a cooling tower and millions of gallons of water.

“HPE has a longstanding collaboration with NASA Ames, and together, we continue to build innovative HPC technologies to fuel space and science discovery that increase overall efficiency and reduce costs,” Bill Mannel, vice president and general manager, HPC and AI, at HPE, said.

“We are honoured to have designed the new Aitken supercomputer and power capabilities for humanity’s next mission to the moon,” he said.

Design Specs

HPE designed the NASA Ames’ new supercomputer using the end-to-end, purpose-built HPE SGI 8600 system that integrates compute, software, networking and other IT infrastructure solutions from its robust ecosystem of partners, including:

  • 2nd Generation Intel® Xeon® Scalable processors for advanced compute performance
  • Mellanox InfiniBand to enable scalable bandwidth for high-performance networking
  • Schneider Electric SmartShelter Containers that enable easy-to-deploy, prefabricated IT infrastructure packaged within a secure, weather proof, fire-rated, data module for remote or special applications

Other features include:

  • 1,150 nodes, 46,080 cores, and 221 TB of memory.
  • 3.69 petaflops of theoretical peak performance.
  • Power Usage Effectiveness (PUE) of 1.03.
Gadgets

Knight Foundation invests US$6 million in research on US technology policy

Leave a comment
Image by MotionStudios from Pixabay

The Knight Foundation has pledged to invest US$6 million into research conducted by three non-profit policy institutes into the future of US technology policy, including “potential approaches for regulating the tech sector”.

The three organisations that will receive funding are:

  • The Centre for Democracy & Technology (US$3 million): To support research on the future of digital discourse, with a focus on how online platforms moderate content and how technology impacts our democracy.
  • Open Markets Institute – Centre for Liberty and Journalism (US$2 million): To research the impact of corporate concentration by internet companies on journalism and media, and how the negative effects of concentration might be addressed.
  • R Street Institute (US$1 million): To study and explore a multi-stakeholder approach to the management of online content that balances concerns of consumers with those of corporations, and to improve the government’s technology policy-making.

The John S. and James L. Knight Foundation is a national foundation that invests in journalism, the arts and in the “success of cities where brothers John S. and James L. Knight once published newspapers”. The foundation’s stated goal is to “foster informed and engaged communities, which [it believes] are essential for a healthy democracy”.

The foundation expects this latest investment to “support nonpartisan, independent research on several issues at the forefront of national tech policy debates, including questions about the market concentration of major social media and digital services providers and growing concern about how those digital platforms manage content”.

“We’re in the middle of the largest debate of our time on how to enjoy the benefits of technology while mitigating the increasingly apparent costs,” Sam Gill, vice president for communities and impact at Knight Foundation, said in a statement.

“Yet so far the discussion is more heat than light. These organizations combine an unflinching willingness to have an opinion with a deep commitment to evidence and independence,” he added.

The investment is part of Knight’s recent overarching US$50 million commitment to support research on how technology is transforming our democracy and the way in which people are informed in the digital age.

Nearly US$39 million of this commitment is intended to support cross-disciplinary research at 11 American universities and research institutions, while US$5 million will be distributed through an open funding opportunity focused on “research into the rules and norms governing our use of digital technology”.

Across the investment portfolio is a common set of questions about how digital technology has changed the way information is produced, distributed and consumed — and the new approaches needed to ensure a healthy democracy in the digital age, the foundation said.

Gadgets

US Department of Defence seeks machine learning experts

Leave a comment
Image by xresch from Pixabay

The United States Department of Defence (DoD) is seeking machine learning experts to create computer vision algorithms that can speed up analyses of aerial and satellite imagery.

Hosted by the DoD’s Defence Innovation Unit (DIU), the xView2 Challenge seeks to automate post-disaster damage assessment with “computer vision algorithms that will speed up analysis of satellite and aerial imagery by localizing and categorizing various types of building damage caused by natural disasters”.

In a call for submissions posted on the DoD website on 15 August, the agency said this is the DIU’s second prize competition focused on furthering innovation in computer vision for humanitarian assistance and disaster relief efforts. It runs from August through November.

The contest builds upon the agency’s xView1 Challenge, which sought out computer vision algorithms to locate and identify distinct objects on the ground useful to first responders.

The challenge will be underpinned by a new annotated building damage dataset – xBD – created by a team of academics and industry experts led by the DUI to “enable localization and damage assessment before and after disasters”.

“While several open datasets for object detection from satellite imagery already exist — for example, SpaceNet and xView — each represent only a single snapshot in time and lack information about the type and severity of damage following a disaster”, the DUI noted.

The new database is expected to allow machine learning/artificial intelligence practitioners to generate and test models to help automate building damage assessment.

It uses open source electro-optical imagery encompassing 700,000 building annotations across 5,000 square kilometres in 15 countries, and includes seven disaster types – wildfire, landslides, dam collapses, volcanic eruptions, earthquakes/tsunamis and wind and flooding damage.

The findings will be applied to a number of different operational and academic use cases covering areas such as obstructed roads, resource allocation decision-making, and object recognition and identification among others.

Baseline models, developed collaboratively between DIU and Carnegie Mellon’s Software Engineering Institute, will be publicly available as a starting point for the Challenge.

In addition to advancements in damage assessment, the DUI envisions that the xBD dataset will provide researchers, companies and other groups with the “means and motive to develop algorithms that bring humanitarian assistance and disaster response” into the age of artificial intelligence.

There are three competition prize tracks. The open source track will see teams compete for leader board positions and awards for top scores. By releasing their models publicly under a permissive open-source license, teams become eligible for an additional award.

Teams can join the nonexclusive government purpose rights track when they grant government purpose rights and their solutions will be used to help future disaster recovery efforts.

Meanwhile, teams on the evaluation only track retain their intellectual property and only grant DIU the right to benchmark their solution and compete for leader board positions. Top teams in this last category will still be eligible for a special monetary prize pool for their submissions.

The best solutions for all three categories will be eligible for a share of a US$150,000 prize purse and top solvers will also be invited to present their work at the December NeurIPS 2019 Workshop on AI for humanitarian assistance and disaster relief. Winners of any cash prize will be considered eligible to be awarded follow-on work with the DoD.

“DIU’s goal in hosting this challenge is to enlist the global community of machine learning experts to tackle a critically hard problem: detecting key objects in overhead imagery in context and assessing damage in a disaster situation,” Mike Kaul, DIU artificial intelligence portfolio director, said in a statement.

“We are always looking for ways to improve rapid damage assessment to ensure we and our partners deliver the right resources to the right places at the right time,” the Federal Emergency Management Agency’s (a partner in the challenge) Regional Administrator, Robert Fenton, added. “We are confident the DIU Challenge can contribute to that goal.”

Other partners include NASA Earth Science Disasters Program, , California Governor’s Office of Emergency Services, Cal Fire, the California National Guard, DOD’s Joint Artificial Intelligence Center, Carnegie Mellon’s Software Engineering Institute, the United States Geological Service, the National Geospatial-Intelligence Agency and the National Security Innovation Network.

Gadgets

Mike Pence unveils NASA spacecraft for Artemis 1 lunar mission on Moon landing anniversary

Leave a comment
Image by WikiImages from Pixabay

American Vice President Mike Pence visited and gave remarks at the Kennedy Space Centre in Florida on 20 July to commemorate the 50th anniversary of the  Apollo 11 Moon landing and announce the completion of the US National Aeronautics and Space Administration’s (NASA) Orion crew capsule for the first Artemis lunar mission, the agency said.

Fifty years ago, NASA’s goal was to prove that the agency could land humans on the Moon and return them safely to Earth. Now, it is looking further afield with its new goal returning to the Moon in a “sustainable” way to prepare to send astronauts to Mars for the first time ever.

Artemis 1 will launch NASA’s Orion spacecraft and Space Launch System (SLS) rocket around the Moon to test the system and pave the way for landing the first woman and the next man on the Moon in five years, as well as future missions to Mars.

“Thanks to the hard work of the men and women of NASA, and of American industry, the Orion crew vehicle for the Artemis 1 mission is complete and ready to begin preparations for its historic first flight,” Vice President Pence said at the event.

He was joined on stage by Florida Governor Ron DeSantis, NASA Administrator Jim Bridenstine, Apollo 11 Lunar Module Pilot Buzz Aldrin, Kennedy Center Director Robert Cabana, Lockheed Martin Chairman, President and Chief Executive Officer Marillyn Hewson, and Rick Armstrong, son of Apollo 11 Commander Neil Armstrong.

Before going to the Operations and Checkout Building, Pence, Aldrin and Armstrong visited Kennedy’s historic launch pad, 39A, where the Apollo 11 mission lifted off.

“Similar to the 1960s, we too have an opportunity to take a giant leap forward for all of humanity,” Bridenstine said. “President Trump and Vice President Pence have given us a bold direction to return to the Moon by 2024 and then go forward to Mars.

“Their direction is not empty rhetoric. They have backed up their vision with the budget requests need to accomplish this objective,” he added. “NASA is calling this the Artemis program in honour of Apollo’s twin sister in Greek mythology, the goddess of the Moon. And we are well on our way to getting this done.”

According to NASA, engineers have recently completed building and outfitting the Orion crew module at the Kennedy Space Centre. The underlying structure of the crew module – the pressure vessel – was made at NASA’s Michoud Assembly Facility in New Orleans and shipped to the centre, where teams integrated thousands of parts into the crew module and conducted tests to certify its systems for flight.

Orion’s European Service Module, which will provide the power and propulsion for Orion during the mission, also is complete. Contributed by the European Space Agency, the service module was manufactured by Airbus in Bremen, Germany, and shipped to the centre in November 2018 for final assembly and integration.

Engineers have begun operations to join the crew module to the service module, and teams are connecting the power and fluid lines. Once the modules are joined, they will install a “heatshield backshell panel” on the spacecraft and prepare it for a September flight to NASA’s Plum Brook Station in Sandusky, Ohio, where they will test if the joined modules can withstand deep space.

When testing in Ohio is complete, the spacecraft will return to the Kennedy Space Centre for final processing and inspections. Teams then will fuel the spacecraft and transport it to the centre’s Vehicle Assembly Building for integration with the SLS rocket before it is rolled out to Launch Pad 39B for the launch of Artemis 1.

NASA describes Orion as part of its “backbone” for deep space exploration, along with SLS and the lunar Gateway. During Artemis 1, SLS will send the uncrewed spacecraft – consisting of the crew and service modules – thousands of miles past the Moon for the first in a series of increasingly complex missions. 

Artemis 2 will be the first of these new missions to the Moon to have astronauts on board, followed by Artemis 3. Through Artemis, the agency plans to “establish a sustainable human presence at the Moon by 2028 to continue scientific research and discovery, demonstrate new technologies, and lay the foundation for future missions to Mars”.

Gadgets

Paciolan announces Apple Wallet support for US college sports

Leave a comment
Image courtesy of Brandonrush on Wikimedia Commons under a Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 3.0 Unported license.

Paciolan, a ticket service provider for college athletics in the United States, said on 10 June that fans would now be able to add contactless tickets to Apple Wallet, and enter stadiums using just their iPhone and Apple Watch.

The first schools to offer contactless tickets for the fall 2019 football season include Baylor University, Louisiana State University, Michigan State University, University of Mississippi, Georgia Tech, and Rutgers University.

Students and fans will be able to enter stadiums “easily and securely” by placing their Apple Watch or iPhone near a reader. This is the next step in the development of Paciolan’s mobile ticketing strategy to “help reduce fraud” and help colleges better understand who attends their games, the company said.

According to Paciolan, contactless ticketing – which uses near-field communications technology – will “significantly” reduce fraud risk as it eliminates the use of printed tickets and barcodes, effectively “rendering screenshots useless”.

The company “gives venues access to the full custody chain of each digital ticket including if it was re-sold on the secondary market or transferred to another user”, which it claim will reduce “anonymous event attendance”, allowing athletic programs to personalize attendee experience and communications.

“This innovation aligns . . . with our commitment to keeping our clients at the forefront of frictionless mobile fan experiences,” Keith White, Chief Technology Officer at Paciolan, said in a statement. “It improves security and . . . data capability by increasing the known fan base and giving the ticket office key insights to drive business decisions and maximize revenue.”

Jennifer Bailey, Apple’s vice president of Internet Services, noted that Apple had a stated goal of replacing the physical wallet to give fans “the convenience and security” of having their tickets on their mobile devices in order to make attending college sports “easier than ever”.

“We are thrilled to offer Ole Miss fans . . . tap-and-go entry with iPhone into our games,” Michael Thompson, Deputy AD for External Relations and Business Development at the University of Mississippi, added. He noted that the technology will enable Ole Miss to provide a “more tailored experience” to attendees.

“We are excited to roll out contactless ticketing for our students this football season,” said Brian Broussard, Associate Athletic Director for Ticket Sales & Operations at Louisiana State University. “All 14,000 students will be able to take advantage of tap-and-go mobile technology which will make it a faster and easier process to enter [the stadium].”

Gadgets

Amazon pledges to “upskill” 100,000 US employees by 2025

Leave a comment
Image by Gerd Altmann from Pixabay

Amazon said on 11 July that it would “upskill” 100,000 of its employees across the United States by 2025, spending US$700 million to provide access to training programs that “will help them move into more highly skilled roles within or outside of Amazon”.

The company – which has been previously criticised for its treatment of workers and working conditions – said that the programs will “serve employees from all backgrounds and Amazon locations”, including its corporate offices, tech hubs, fulfilment centres, retail stores and transportation network.

Amazon expects the programs to reach 300,000 employees in the US this year. They include the Amazon Technical Academy – which will look to equip “non-technical Amazon employees with the essential skills to transition into, and thrive in, software engineering” – and Associate2Tech – which trains “fulfilment associates” to move into technical roles “regardless of their previous IT experience”.

The Machine Learning University will offer employees with technical backgrounds an opportunity to access machine learning skills through an on-site training program, while Amazon Apprenticeship will offer “paid intensive classroom training and on-the -job apprenticeships” with Amazon itself.

According to the company, a review of the company’s jobs and analysis of hiring data from its US workforce found that Amazon’s fastest growing highly skilled jobs over the last five years were data mapping specialist (832% growth), data scientist (505%), solutions architect (454%), security engineer (229%) and business analyst (160%).

“Within customer fulfilment, highly skilled roles have increased over 400%, including jobs like logistics coordinator, process improvement manager and transportation specialist within our customer fulfilment network,” the company said.

“Through our continued investment in local communities in more than 40 states across the country, we have created tens of thousands of jobs in the US in the past year alone,” Beth Galetti, Senior VP of HR at Amazon, said in a statement. “For us, creating these opportunities is just the beginning. While many of our employees want to build their careers here, for others it might be a stepping stone to different aspirations.”

We think it’s important to invest in our employees, and to help them gain new skills and create more professional options for themselves,” she added. “With this pledge, we’re committing to support 100,000 Amazonians in getting the skills to make the next step in their careers.”

“The future of work is now and the challenge is not just adapting to new technologies, but adapting to the dynamism of the economy, which will only accelerate,” Jason Tyszko, Vice President at the US Chamber of Commerce Foundation, added.

“Amazon is demonstrating the new role employers must play to counter that challenge, fostering a new relationship with workers where maintaining and growing their skills is an imperative for business success,” he said.

Gadgets

Arianespace and ESA announce Jupiter Icy Moons Explorer launch contract

Leave a comment
Image by Jonny Lindner from Pixabay

The European Space Agency (ESA) has unveiled plans for a spacecraft to study Jupiter and three of its largest moons – Ganymede, Europa and Callisto – in the first “large-class mission” of the ESA’s Cosmic Vision 2015–2025 programme.

The Jupiter Icy Moons Explorer – aka “Juice” – will ride into space on an Ariane launch vehicle, Arianespace and ESA confirmed on 17 June at the International Paris Air Show. Its mission is “devoted to complete a unique tour of the Jupiter system”.

The launch period for Juice will start in mid-2022 aboard an Ariane 5 or an Ariane 64 launch vehicle – depending on the final launch slot from Europe’s Spaceport in French Guiana, South America, the ESA said.

The satellite is expected to have a mass at lift-off of around six tonnes and will be placed in Earth’s escape orbit in a direction to Jupiter, beginning a journey of 600 million kilometres that will end in October 2029 after a 7.5 year cruise which should include gravitational assists from Earth, Venus and Mars.

The Jupiter tour includes several flybys of each planet-sized world, and ends with orbit insertion around Ganymede, the largest moon in the Solar System. Juice will carry what the ESA described as “the most powerful scientific payload ever flown to the outer Solar System””, consisting of ten state-of-the-art instruments and one science experiment that uses the spacecraft telecommunication system with ground-based radio telescopes.

Juice’s instruments are expected to enable scientists to “compare each of the icy satellites” and to “investigate the potential for such bodies to harbour habitable environments such as subsurface oceans”. According to the ESA, they will also carry out observations of Jupiter, its atmosphere, its magnetosphere, its other satellites and rings.

European multinational aerospace corporation Airbus is developing and building the Juice spacecraft. As prime contractor for design, development, production, and testing of the satellite, Airbus will lead a consortium of more than 80 companies covering more than 110 contracts.

“Juice is the first ‘large-class’ mission in our Cosmic Vision programme and of prime importance for investigating the habitability potential of ocean-worlds beyond our own,” Günther Hasinger, the ESA’s Director of Science, said in a statement. “We’re delighted to confirm it will have a flying start with an Ariane launch vehicle, setting it on course to fulfil its scientific goals in the Jupiter system.”

“Arianespace is honoured to be awarded this new scientific mission from ESA, which will advance our understanding of the Universe,” Stéphane Israël, Chief Executive Officer of Arianespace, added.

Israël sees the contract as “confirmation of Arianespace’s ability to ensure Europe’s independent access to space for all types of missions”.

“We are once again marshalling all of our strengths and capabilities to support Europe’s spaceborne ventures, with a launch services offering based on Ariane 5 and Ariane 6 so we can deliver the availability and flexibility needed by ESA for its latest emblematic mission,” he said.

Gadgets

SpinLaunch secures first contract for “revolutionary” new space launch services

Leave a comment
Image by Free-Photos from Pixabay

Johnathan Yaney, founder and CEO of spaceflight technology development company SpinLaunch, announced on 19 June that the company had been awarded a responsive launch prototype contract by the US Department of Defence (DoD), facilitated by the Defence Innovation Unit (DIU).

SpinLaunch said it was developing a “kinetic energy-based launch system” which it claimed would “provide the world’s lowest-cost orbital launch services for the rapidly growing small satellite industry”.

Referencing a recent joint report from the DIU and the Air Force Research Laboratory (AFRL), the company noted that the future and growth of the US space economy is expected to be “critically dependent on continuing reductions in the costs and risks associated with launch”.

The report found that “there is a bifurcation of launch providers between lower-cost, ‘bulk’ carriers . . . and higher-cost, ‘niche’ providers offering lower lift-mass, but launch to a specific orbit.”

In January 2019, SpinLaunch moved from Silicon Valley to its new 140,000 square foot headquarters in Long Beach, California and last month broke ground on a new US$7 million test facility on 10 acres at New Mexico’s Spaceport America. The company anticipates that its first kinetic energy flight tests will occur early 2020 and has announced its plans for first launch by 2022.

“SpinLaunch fills this gap by providing dedicated orbital launch with high frequency at a magnitude lower cost than any current ‘niche’ launch system,” Yaney said in a statement.

“This will truly be a disruptive enabler for the emerging commercial space industry,” he added. “There is a promising market surge in the demand for LEO constellations of inexpensive small satellites for disaster monitoring, weather, reconnaissance, communications and other services.”

In 2018, SpinLaunch raised US$40 million in a Series A financing round from Airbus Ventures, Google Ventures and Kleiner Perkins.

The Defense Innovation Unit (DIU)was established in 2015 to “reinvigorate and lead” DoD outreach to commercial innovation hubs across the United States, beginning with Silicon Valley to Washington, DC, Boston and Austin.

Its stated mission is to “execute transformative projects with scalable impact across the joint force; accelerate the adoption of commercial technology, from AI, autonomy, cyber, human systems and space, to strengthen the National Security Innovation base (NSIB)”.

Gadgets

Microsoft launches AI Digital Labs in India

Leave a comment
Image by Efes Kitap from Pixabay

American multinational technology company Microsoft said on 13 June that it would partner with colleges and universities across India to open AI (artificial intelligence) digital labs in an effort to boost technology infrastructure and educator capability, and help students to acquire skills in the field.

As part of the three-year program, Microsoft will collaborate with ten higher education institutions in India, including BITS Pilani, BML Munjal University, ISB, Kalpataru Institute of Technology, KL University, Periyar University, Karunya University, SRM Institute of Science & Technology, SVKM (NMIMS) and Trident Academy of Technology.

Microsoft plans to give the selected institutions support with infrastructure, curriculum and content, alongside access to cloud and AI services, and developer support. The company said it would facilitate the setting up of AI infrastructure and an Internet of Things (IoT) hub at the institutions as well as access to its AI developmental tools and Azure AI Services.

Training programs for the faculty of the institutions would include workshops on cloud computing, data sciences, AI and IoT, and faculty would receive assistance in strategizing content and curricula for project-based and experiential learning, the company said.

Microsoft believes that the program will serve almost 1.5 lakh (a lakh is a unit in the Indian numbering system equal to one hundred thousand) students as part of its commitment to building a “future-ready workforce”.

It said it hoped that with the edge of the company’s Intelligent Cloud Hub program, the selected institutions will become “learning centers of intelligent technologies and innovation hubs of path-breaking solutions”.

Citing a recent Microsoft and IDC Asia/Pacific study, the company suggested that “lack of skills, resources and continuous learning programs emerged as one of the top challenges faced by Indian organizations in adopting AI to accelerate their businesses”.

Microsoft’s goal with this program is to “amp up institutional setup along with educator capability, and provide relevant educational choices for students, helping them acquire the skills needed to fill the wide skills gap emerging across India and the global economy”.

“As AI becomes mainstream, organizations will require talent with skillsets that are very different from what exist now,” Anant Maheshwari, President of Microsoft India, said in a statement. “Educators and institutions are integral to the skilling revolution taking root in the country. With the right technology infrastructure, curriculum and training, we can empower today’s students to build the India of tomorrow.”

Gadgets

ISS astronauts successfully edit DNA in space

Leave a comment
Source: NASA via Wikimedia Commons

The US National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) agency said on 23 May that astronauts aboard the International Space Station (ISS) had successfully edited DNA using CRISPR/Cas9 technology in space for the first time.

The gene-editing tool was used as part of Genes in Space 6, an experiment exploring how space radiation damages DNA and how cells repair that damage in microgravity. Their findings could help scientists develop techniques to protect long-term space travelers from radiation.

In the six months that astronauts typically spend at the ISS, they are subjected to 30 times the radiation a human would typically receive in a year on Earth. Exposure to radiation can increase the risk of developing cancer, degenerative diseases and central nervous system problems.

According to NASA, an organism carries all of its genetic information in its deoxyribonucleic acid or DNA. This blueprint for life takes the form of specific sequences of nitrogen bases: adenine, cytosine, guanine, and thymine, represented by the letters A, C, G and T.

One type of DNA damage is double strand breaks, which are basically a cut across both strands of DNA. Cells repair these breaks almost immediately but can make errors, inserting or deleting DNA bases and creating mutations that may cause diseases such as cancer.

Genes in Space 6 looks at the specific mechanism that cells use to repair double strand breaks in space. The investigation takes yeast cells to the space station, where astronauts cause a specific type of damage to its DNA using a genome editing tool known as CRISPR-Cas9.

The astronauts allow the cells to repair the damage, then make many copies of the repaired section using a process called polymerase chain reaction (PCR) with an onboard device, the miniPCR. Another device, MinION, is then used to sequence the repaired section of DNA in those copies.

Sequencing shows the exact order of the bases to reveal whether the repair restored the DNA to its original order or made errors. The investigation represents a number of firsts, including the first use of CRISPR-Cas9 genetic editing on the space station and the first time scientists have been able to evaluate the entire damage and repair process in space.

It is part of the wider Genes in Space program, which was founded by miniPCR and Boeing. The program challenges students to come up with DNA experiments in space that involve using the PCR technique and the miniPCR device on the station.

Students submit ideas online and the program chooses five finalists, who are paired with a mentor scientist who helps them turn their idea into a presentation for the ISS Research and Development Conference. A panel of judges selects one proposed experiment to fly to the space station.

More than 550 student teams submitted ideas last year. The Genes in Space 6 investigation student team includes students from Mounds View High School in Arden Hills, Minnesota, and David Li, now a freshman at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) in Cambridge, Massachusetts. Their mentor is Kutay Deniz Atabay at MIT.

Other investigators include members of NASA’s Johnson Space Center Microbiology group in Houston; G. Guy Bushkin, from the Whitehead Institute for Biomedical Research, in Cambridge; Melissa L. Boyer, Teresa K. Tan, Kevin D. Foley, and D. Scott Copeland at Boeing; and Ezequiel Alvarez Saavedra, Gleason, and Sebastian Kraves at Cambridge-based Amplyus, the parent company of miniPCR Bio.

“The damage actually happens on the space station and the analysis also happens in space,” Emily Gleason, one of the investigators from miniPCR Bio, said in a statement. “We want to understand if DNA repair methods are different in space than on Earth.”

“One thing the investigation will tell us is yes, we can do these things in space. We expect to see the yeast use the error-free method of repair more frequently, which is what we see on Earth; but we don’t know for sure whether it will be the same or not.” she added. “Ultimately, we can use this knowledge to help protect astronauts from DNA damage caused by cosmic radiation on long voyages and to enable genome editing in space.”

Gadgets

SEC Examiners Warn About Cloud Storage Risks for Broker-Dealers, Investment Advisers

Leave a comment
Image by Alessandro D’Andrea from Pixabay

The US usc (SEC) has issued an alert warning advisers on the potential security risks of storing information on cloud-based platforms as they do not all offer encryption or password protection.

The risk alert – which was issued on 23 May – said that the US Office of Compliance Inspections and Examinations (OCIE) had identified security risks “associated with the storage of electronic customer records and information by broker-dealers and investment advisers in various network storage solutions, including those leveraging cloud-based storage”.

While “the majority of these network storage solutions offered encryption, password protection, and other security features designed to prevent unauthorized access, examiners observed that firms did not always use the available security features”, the alert continued, noting that “weak or misconfigured security settings on a network storage device could result in unauthorized access to information”.

In a summary, the OCIE said its staff had identified a number of specific concerns that could raise compliance issues under regulations governing information security and identity theft. The Safeguards Rule of Regulation S-P “requires every broker-dealer and investment adviser registered with the SEC to adopt written policies and procedures that address administrative, technical, and physical safeguards for the protection of customer records and information”.

Similarly, the Identity Theft Red Flags Rule of Regulation S-ID requires broker-dealers and investment advisers registered or required to be registered with the SEC to develop and implement a written identity theft prevention program designed to “detect, prevent, and mitigate identity theft in connection with the opening of a covered account or any existing covered account”.

The concerns identified in the alert include: misconfigured network storage solutions, inadequate oversight of vendor-provided network storage solutions, and insufficient data classification policies and procedures.

In some cases, the alert said, firms had not “adequately” configured the settings on their network storage solution of choice to “protect against unauthorized access” and some firms did not have “policies and procedures addressing the security configuration” of that “solution”.

Furthermore, some firms failed to ensure that the configuration of security settings on “vendor-provided network storage solutions were configured in accordance with the firm’s standards”, and in some cases, firms’ “policies and procedures did not identify the different types of data stored electronically by the firm and the appropriate controls for each type of data”, the alert said.

According to the OCIE, implementation of a “configuration management program that includes policies and procedures governing data classification, vendor oversight, and security features will help to mitigate the risks incurred when implementing on-premise or cloud-based network storage solutions”.

OCIE staff observed “several features of effective configuration management programs, data classification procedures, and vendor management programs”, the alert said.

These included: policies and procedures to support installation, maintenance and review of the network storage solution; guidelines for security controls and “baseline security configuration standards”; and vendor management policies and procedures, including regular implementation of software patches and hardware updates.

The OCIE called for registered broker-dealers and investment advisers to “review their practices, policies, and procedures with respect to the storage of electronic customer information and to consider whether any improvements are necessary”. It also encouraged firms to “actively oversee any vendors they may be using for network storage to determine whether the service provided by the vendor is sufficient to enable the firm to meet its regulatory responsibilities”.

Gadgets

Google to inks deal to acquire data analytics firm Looker

Leave a comment
Image by Photo Mix from Pixabay

Google said on 6 June that it had signed a deal to acquire data analytics firm Looker for US$2.6 billion in an all-cash transaction. Upon the close of the acquisition, Looker will join Google Cloud.

In a somewhat lengthy blog post, Google Cloud CEO Thomas Kurian, said that a “fundamental requirement for organizations wanting to transform themselves digitally is the need to store, manage, and analyze large quantities of data from a variety of sources”.

Many customers, he said, use Google Cloud for business analytics because it “offers . . . a broad and integrated suite of cloud services to ingest data in real time, cleanse it, process it, aggregate it in a highly scalable data warehouse and analyze it”.

“A rapidly growing list of customers are also migrating their existing enterprise data warehouses from legacy technology stacks to our business analytics offering,” he added. “These customers are choosing to do so because our offering is comprehensive, easy to use, cost effective and scales from a few gigabytes to multiple petabytes with excellent performance.”

Kurian expects the addition of Looker to extend Google Cloud’s business analytics offering by providing customers with the ability to “define business metrics once in a consistent way across data sources”, and by giving users access to an analytics platform for “business intelligence and use-case specific solutions” as well as a “flexible, embedded analytics product to collaborate on business decisions”.

The acquisition will build upon an existing partnership between the two companies, Kurian said, in which they share over 350 joint customers, including Buzzfeed, Hearst, King, Sunrun, WPP Essence and Yahoo! It is Kurian’s first major move since joining the company in November after leaving Oracle, and follows after multiple services in Google Cloud, G Suite and YouTube were affected by an outage in June.

“One of the most important ways we advance Google’s mission is by helping other businesses realize theirs,” Sundar Pichai, Google’s CEO, said in a statement. “We are excited to welcome Looker to Google Cloud and look forward to working together to help our customers solve some of their biggest challenges.”

“Google Cloud is being used by many of the leading organizations in the world for analytics and decision-making. The combination of Google Cloud and Looker will enable customers to harness data in new ways to drive their digital transformation,” Kurian added. “We remain committed to our multi-cloud strategy and will retain and expand Looker’s capabilities to analyze data across Clouds.”

Looker CEO Frank Bien said that the combination of the two companies would advance Looker’s initial mission “to empower humans through the smarter use of data”.

“Now, we’ll have greater reach, more resources, and the brightest minds in both Analytics and Cloud Infrastructure working together to build an exciting path forward for our customers and partners,” he concluded. “Together, we are reinventing what it means to solve business problems with data at an entirely different scale and value point.”

“The combination of Google Cloud and Looker will enable us to further accelerate our leadership as a WordPress digital experience platform,” Heather Brunner, Chairwoman and CEO of WP Engine, said. “By combining our BigQuery data warehouse with extended [business intelligence] and visualization tools from Looker, we’ll be empowered with faster, more actionable data insights that will help drive our business forward and better serve our customers.”

Google said it expects the acquisition – which is subject to customary closing conditions, including the receipt of regulatory approvals – to be complete later this year.

Gadgets

NASCAR to use Amazon Web Services to archive historic library

Leave a comment
Image by skeeze from Pixabay

American stock car racing series NASCAR said on 4 June that it had chosen to migrate over seventy years of historical footage, including a new video series called “This Moment in NASCAR History”, to Amazon’s cloud service.

Amazon Web Services (AWS) will help deliver the new show, which will premiere with the Monster Energy NASCAR Cup Series race at the Michigan International Speedway, with a new historical moment released each week for fans to watch on NASCAR.com.

The racing series also plans to leverage Amazon Rekognition, an AWS service which automatically adds metadata to videos, such as car type, lap times, drivers and sponsors to the video, theoretically making the search for specific footage much easier.

Using intelligent image and video analysis, Amazon Rekognition can automatically tag specific video frames – with information such as the lap, driver and car – “ so the industry can easily search those tags to surface the most iconic moments from past races”.

By using AWS’s services, NASCAR expects to save thousands of hours of manual search time each year, and will be able to easily surface flashbacks like Dale Earnhardt Sr.’s 1987 “Pass in the Grass” or Denny Hamlin’s 2016 Daytona 500 photo finish, and quickly deliver these to fans via video clips on its website and social media channels.

“NASCAR is utilizing the breadth and depth of our cloud services to enhance the way people experience the sport and deliver even more impactful content to fans,” Mike Clayville, Vice President, Worldwide Commercial Sales at AWS, said in a statement published on the NASCAR website.

“We are pleased to welcome AWS to the NASCAR family,” Jon Tuck, NASCAR Chief Revenue Officer, added. “This relationship underscores our commitment to accelerate innovation and the adoption of cutting-edge technology across our sport.”

“NASCAR continues to be a powerful marketing vehicle and will position AWS’s cutting-edge cloud technology in front of industry stakeholders, corporate sponsors, broadcast partners and ultimately our fans,” he said.

“AWS’s . . . cloud technology will archive all of the defining moments in our sport’s deep-rooted history and will provide fans access to those unforgettable memories throughout the year,” Craig Neeb, Executive Vice President of Innovation and Development at NASCAR, concluded. “Speed and efficiency are key in racing and business which is why we chose AWS . . . to accelerate our migration to the cloud.”

Gadgets

New VR game created by MIT looks to challenge how we think about race

Leave a comment

Image by StockSnap from Pixabay

Researchers at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) said on 16 May they had created a “new computational model that captures how individuals might have been taught to think about race in their upbringing”.

According to MIT, this new model of “racial and ethnic socialization” – which was presented at the AAAI 2019 Spring Symposium – could have the potential to enhance video game simulations while simultaneously “facilitating training for teachers and students who might encounter racial issues in the classroom”.

The researchers embedded the model in a virtual reality software prototype called “Passage Home VR” which “serves up an immersive story, grounded in social science work conducted in the physical world on how parents socialize their children to think about race and ethnicity, both verbally and nonverbally, and the impact on how individuals perceive and cope with racial stressors”.

In the game, the user assumes the virtual identity of an African American girl whose high school teacher has accused her of plagiarizing an essay when, in fact, the character is a passionate, high-achieving English student who took the assignment very seriously and wrote the essay herself.

As users navigate the discriminatory encounter with the teacher, the ways in which they respond to the teacher’s actions — with different body language, verbal responses and more — influence the outcome and feedback presented at the end of the game.

The researchers said they found that “the experiences people have [had] in their lives with how they have been socialized to think about the role of race and ethnicity in society — their racial and ethnic socialization — influence their behavior in the game”.

The majority of the 17 participants in the study who tested the game were identified by the game as “colorblind”, which researchers later “confirmed” through semi-structured verbal interviews. These users were “less likely to explicitly mention race” in “thematic analyses of the story of the game”.

A smaller number of users “displayed in-game behavior” that identified them as “having other socialization strategies” – such as “alertness to discrimination” or “preparation for bias” – the researchers added.

“People are socialized to think about race in a variety of ways — some parents teach their children to ignore race entirely, while others promote an alertness to racial discrimination or cultural pride,” D. Fox Harrell, professor of digital media and of artificial intelligence at MIT, said in a statement.

“The system we’ve developed captures this socialization, and we hope that it may become an effective tool for training people to be thinking more about racial issues, perhaps for teachers and students to minimize discrimination in the classroom,” he said, noting that users choices in the game “were aligned with their real-world socialization of these issues”.

Harrell, who is also director of the MIT Center for Advanced Virtuality, where he designs virtual technologies to stimulate social change, added that his lab is “preparing to deploy and study the efficacy of “Passage Home VR” as a professional development tool for teachers”.

“Learning with virtual reality can only be effective if we present robust simulations that capture experiences as close to the real-world as possible,” he said. “Our hope is that this work can help developers to make their simulations much richer, unlocking the power to address social issues.”

“As video game developers, we have the ability within virtual worlds to challenge the biased ideologies that exist in the physical world, rather than continue replicating them,” says Danielle Olson, a PhD student in MIT’s Computer Science and Artificial Intelligence Laboratory (CSAIL), whose dissertation project includes the work reported at the symposium.

“My hope is that this work can be a catalyst for dialogue and reflection by teachers, parents, and students in better understanding the devastating social-emotional, academic, and health impacts of racialized encounters and race-based traumatic stress,” she added.