NASA, Collaborators Announce a New Student Lunar Autonomy Challenge!
09 Oct
Science & Technology

NASA, Collaborators Announce a New Student Lunar Autonomy Challenge!

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NASA Space Technology Space is hard, but it’s not all hardware.The new Lunar Autonomy Challenge invites teams of students from U.S. colleges and universities to test their software development skills. Working entirely in virtual simulations of the Moon’s surface, teams will develop an autonomous agent using software that can accomplish pre-defined tasks without help from humans. These agents will be used to navigate a digital twin of NASA’s ISRU Pilot Excavator (IPEx) and map specified locations in the digital environment. The IPEx is an autonomous mobility robot engineered to efficiently collect and transport lunar regolith, the loose rocky material on the Moon’s surface.Autonomous systems allow spacecraft, rovers, and robots to operate without relying on constant contact with astronauts or mission control. Before hardware is trusted to operate independently on location, which for Artemis missions includes...
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NASA’s Earth Information Center at the Smithsonian
09 Oct
Science & Technology

NASA’s Earth Information Center at the Smithsonian

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NASA Space Technology Monika LuabeyaOct 08, 2024NASA Administrator Bill Nelson and Kirk Johnson, Sant Director of the Smithsonian’s National Museum of Natural History in Washington, preview the agency’s new Earth Information Center exhibit on Monday, Oct. 8, 2024. This new exhibit is the Earth Information Center’s second physical location.The exhibit at the Smithsonian includes a 32-foot-long, 12-foot-high video wall displaying Earth science data visualizations and videos, interpretive panels showing Earth’s connected systems, information on our changing world, and an overview of how NASA and the Smithsonian study our home planet. It opens to the public Tuesday, Oct. 8, and will remain on display through 2028.Image Credit: NASA/Bill Ingalls
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ESA Launches Probe to Revisit Asteroid Crime Scene
09 Oct
Science & Technology

ESA Launches Probe to Revisit Asteroid Crime Scene

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NASA Space Technology The European Space Agency’s Hera spacecraft is en route to assess how NASA’s 2022 DART mission impacted the asteroid Dimorphos. DART smashed into the asteroid at a little over 6 kilometers per second, sending out a cloud of debris and slowing it slightly. Hera’s detailed post-collision survey aims to tell us just how efficient the kinetic impact was. This will inform the design of planetary defense missions, should we need to defend Earth from an asteroid threat.A SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket carrying Hera lifted off from Cape Canaveral on 7 October and is now on a journey, via a flyby of Mars in 2025, to asteroid Didymos and its minute moon Dimorphos. Arrival at the binary asteroid system is scheduled for December 2026.DART impacted the 151-meter-diameter Dimophos back in 2022, reducing its...
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