The Managed, Reconfigurable, In-space Nodal Assembly (MARINA), developed by MIT graduate students, recently took first place at NASA’s Revolutionary Aerospace Systems Concepts-Academic Linkage Design Competition Forum. MARINA is designed as a habitable commercially owned module for use in low Earth orbit that would be extensible for future use as a Mars transit vehicle.
Image courtesy of the MARINA team.
(Phys.org)—Researchers have built the first robot made of soft, deployable materials that is capable of moving itself without the use of motors or any additional mechanical components. The robot “walks” when an electric current is applied to shape-memory alloy wires embedded in its frame: the current heats the wires, causing the robot’s flexible segments to contract and bend. Sequentially controlling the current to various segments in different ways results in different walking gaits.
The researchers expect that the robot’s ability to be easily deployed, along with its low mass, low cost, load-bearing ability, compact size, and ability to be reconfigured into different forms may make it useful for applications such as space missions, seabed exploration, and household objects.
The scientists, Wei Wang et al., at Seoul National University and Sungkyunkwan University, have published a paper on the new robot and other types of deployable structures that can be built using the same method in a recent issue of Materials Horizons.
Results from the Micius satellite test quantum entanglement, pointing the way toward hack-proof global communications—and a new space race.
Sat 17 June…NASA rocket to blast colored clouds into space…similar to our 2017 SpaceApps Groups Idea : https://2017.spaceappschallenge.org/challenges/warning-danger-ahead/every-cloud/teams/twister/project
NASA is about to launch a rocket that will puff out highly visible clouds of red and blue-green vapor into space.
The rocket was supposed to launch on May 31, but bad weather and poor visibility pushed the mission back to Saturday, June 17, with a liftoff time between 9:05 p.m. and 9:20 p.m. EDT.
Chinese researchers report that they’ve set a new distance record for quantum teleportation through space, the phenomenon that Albert Einstein once scoffed at as “spooky action at a distance.”
The technology isn’t yet ready for prime time, but eventually it could open the way for a new type of unbreakable encryption scheme based on the weirdness of quantum physics.
