The first two Project Kuiper satellites, prototypes for Amazon’s satellite broadband program, will head to Low Earth Orbit in the first quarter of 2023. Amazon previously announced that the prototypes will launch on top of an ABL Space Systems rocket by the end of this year. While the tech giant will retain its launches with ABL, Project Kuiper will debut with another provider entirely: Its first two satellites will fly on the maiden flight of United Launch Alliance’s new Vulcan Centaur rocket.
Project Kuiper VP Rajeev Badyal, told The Washington Post that delays coupled with the opportunity to launch with ULA had compelled Amazon to change its plans. The Vulcan Centaur heavy-lift launch vehicle has been in development since 2014, but its first launch has been pushed back repeatedly due to reasons that include delays with the development of its BE-4 engine. BE-4 is a product of Blue Origin, another Jeff Bezos company.
ULA plans to make the Vulcan Centaur its main vehicle after its retires the Atlas V rocket, which relies on Russian-made engine, once it’s through with its 20 remaining launches. The rocket was supposed to have its maiden flight this year, but Astrobotic (its main payload customer for the mission) asked ULA to move the schedule to give it more time to finish its NASA-funded lunar lander.
Amazon says deploying the prototype satellites will help it gather real-world data to be able to finalize its design, deployment and operation plans for its commercial satellite system. Project Kuiper has the authority to launch 3,236 satellites to form a constellation meant to provide internet access even in far-flung locations, similar to SpaceX’s Starlink network. As The Post notes, Amazon will have to deploy half of that number by 2026 to meet its obligations with the FCC. Badyal said the company is on track to meet that even though it has yet to launch its first satellites.
In additional to ferrying Amazon’s Project Kuiper prototypes and the Peregrine lunar lander to outer space, the maiden Vulcan Centaur flight will also serve as the first of the two launches the vehicle must go through to prove that it’s ready for Space Force missions. The US Space Force plans to use the Vulcan Centaur to launch national security satellites, with the first one scheduled to take place in the fourth quarter of 2023.
The James Webb Telescope has captured an unusual dust pattern around two stars that can track the passage of time similar to ring patterns on the inside of tree trunks. The image, detailed by the European Space Agency and NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laborato…
Researchers who grew a brain cell culture in a lab claim that they taught the cells to play a version of Pong. Scientists from a biotech startup called Cortical Labs say it’s the first demonstrated example of a so-called “mini-brain” being taught to carry out goal-directed tasks. ”It is able to take in information from an external source, process it and then respond to it in real time,” Dr. Brett Kagan, lead author of a paper on the research that was published in Neuron, told the BBC.
The culture of 800,000 brain cells is known as DishBrain. The scientists placed mouse cells (derived from embryonic brains) and human cells taken from stem cells on top of an electrode array that was hooked up to Pong, as The Agenotes. Electrical pulses sent to the neurons indicated the position of the ball in the game. The array then moved the paddle up and down based on signals from the neurons. DishBrain received a strong and consistent feedback signal (a form of stimulus) when the paddle hit the ball and a short, random pulse when it missed.
The researchers, who believe the culture is too primitive to be conscious, noted that DishBrain showed signs of “apparent learning within five minutes of real-time gameplay not observed in control conditions.” After playing Pong for 20 minutes, the culture got better at the game. The scientists say that indicates the cells were reorganizing, developing networks and learning.
“They changed their activity in a way that is very consistent with them actually behaving as a dynamic system,” Kagan said. “For example, the neurons’ ability to change and adapt their activity as a result of experience increases over time, consistent with what we see with the cells’ learning rate.”
Future research into DishBrain will involve looking at how medicines and alcohol affect the culture’s ability to play Pong, to test whether it can effectively be treated as a stand-in for a human brain. Kagan expressed hope that DishBrain (or perhaps future versions of it) can be used to test treatments for diseases like Alzheimer’s.
Meanwhile, researchers at Stanford University cultivated stem cells into human brain tissue, which they transplanted into newborn rats. These so-called brain organoids integrated with the rodents’ own brains. After a few months, the scientists found that the organoids accounted for around a third of the rats’ brain hemispheres and that they were engaging with the rodents’ brain circuits. As Wirednotes, these organoids could be used to study neurodegenerative disorders or to test drugs designed to treat neuropsychiatric diseases. Scientists may also look at how genetic defects in organoids can affect animal behavior.
NASA has set a date for its next Artemis 1 launch attempt. The agency will next try to send the Space Launch System (SLS) rocket and Orion spacecraft on an uncrewed journey around the moon on November 14th. The launch window starts at 12:07AM ET and will be open for an hour and nine minutes. In case NASA has to scrub the November 14th launch, it has two backup windows in mind, starting at 1:04AM on November 16 and 1:45AM on November 19th.
The first attempt on August 29th was scrubbed due to engine issues before a hydrogen fuel leak prevented another stab at a launch a few days later. NASA didn’t have any luck during the next launch window in late September either. It rolled the SLS and Orion back to the safety of the Vehicle Assembly Building as Hurricane Ian bore down.
On the upside, NASA says minimal work is needed to prepare the SLS and Orion before it rolls them back out to the launchpad. Engineers will repair minor foam and cork damage on the thermal protection system. It’ll also replace or recharge batteries for the rocket, secondary payloads and the flight termination system. All going well, Artemis 1 could be back on the launchpad as soon as November 4th.
The next time an asteroid threatens Earth, humanity might have a chance of saving the planet. On Tuesday, NASA announced that its experimental Double Asteroid Redirection Test successfully altered the orbit of Dimorphos. Following two weeks of data collection and analysis, the agency found that DART’s impact shortened the asteroid’s orbit around its parent, Didymos, by 32 minutes. Before the September 26th collision, NASA estimated DART needed to change the orbital period of Dimorphos by 73 seconds or more to call the test a success. The spacecraft beat that benchmark by more than 25 times.
🎯Bullseye! @NASA‘s #DARTMission successfully changed the targeted asteroid’s trajectory—and its orbit by 32 minutes.
This watershed moment for planetary defense is thanks to our exceptional team and international partners. https://t.co/8gJluMES9B
“If an Earth-threatening asteroid was discovered, and we could see it far enough away, this technique could be used to deflect it,” NASA Administrator Bill Nelson said during a press conference the space agency held on Tuesday. “NASA has proven we are serious as a defender of the planet. This is a watershed moment for planetary defense and all of humanity, demonstrating commitment from NASA’s exceptional team and partners from around the world.”
NASA launched the DART mission in November 2021. The vending machine-sized spacecraft was traveling at approximately 14,000 miles (22,530 kilometers) per hour when it crossed paths with Dimorphos nearly 68 million miles away from Earth.
DART’s success proves the strategy of using a spacecraft to alter the course of an asteroid could work to save the planet, provided such a space rock was detected early enough and wasn’t too big. Dimorphos is about the size of a football stadium, making it far smaller than the asteroid that wiped out 75 percent of multicellular life on Earth 66 million years ago.
More than a year after it was first announced, Amazon has shared a trailer for Good Night Oppy. The upcoming documentary will recount the story of NASA’s Opportunity rover, or Oppy as it was lovingly known by its creators. The documentary was directed …
The Sun might be a solitary star in our solar system, but around half of all other stars in the Milky Way are part of binary systems, in which two orbit each other. These can have incredibly fast orbital periods — scientists have found two white dwarfs that take just 5 minutes and 21 seconds to orbit each other. Another binary system is notable for a different reason: one star is feasting on the other.
Around 3,000 light years away, there’s a binary system that belongs to a class called “cataclysmic variables.” That’s an incredible term I’m going to use after my next failed cooking experiment, by the way. In space terms, when a star similar to our sun tightly orbits a white dwarf, that’s a cataclysmic variable. As Reutersnotes, “variable” relates to the combined brightness of the two stars changing over time, at least in terms of how we view the system from terra firma. These luminosity levels can change significantly, which is where the “cataclysmic” part comes into play.
The two stars in the 8 billion-year-old system in question orbit each other every 51 minutes. That’s the shortest known orbital period for a cataclysmic variable system. The distance between the stars has narrowed over millions of years and they’re now closer to each other than we are to the Moon, researchers at Massachusetts Institute of Technology and elsewhere have determined. In a paper published in Nature this week, the researchers stated that the white dwarf is drawing material away from the Sun-like partner.
“It’s an old pair of stars, where one of the two moved on — when stars die of old age they become white dwarfs — but then this remnant began to eat its companion,” MIT astrophysicist and the paper’s lead author Kevin Burdge told Reuters. “Right before the second one could end its stellar life cycle and become a white dwarf in the way that stars normally do — by evolving into a type of star called a red giant — the leftover white dwarf remnant of the first star interrupted the end of the companion’s lifecycle and started slowly consuming it.”
The researchers found that the larger star has a similar temperature to the Sun, but has been reduced to around 10 percent of our celestial neighbor’s diameter. It’s now about the size of Jupiter. The white dwarf is far smaller, as it has a diameter around 1.5 times the size of Earth’s. However, it has a dense core, with a mass of around 56 percent that of our Sun’s.
The white dwarf has been munching away on hydrogen from the larger star’s outer layers, leaving the latter unusually rich in helium. The larger star is also morphing into a teardrop shape due to the gravitational pull of the white dwarf. That’s one reason for the changes in the binary system’s levels of brightness.
MIT notes that the system can emit “enormous, variable flashes of light” as a result of the hydrogen-sapping process. It added that, long ago, astronomers believed these flashes to be the consequence of an unknown cataclysm. While we have a clearer understanding of the situation these days, this is more evidence, as if it were needed, that space is cool and terrifying in equal measure.
NASA’s successful asteroid impact test created a beautiful mess, apparently. As the Associated Press reports, astronomers using the Southern Astrophysical Research (SOAR) Telescope in Chile have captured an image revealing that DART’s collision with Dimorphos left a trail of dust and other debris measuring over 6,000 miles long. The spacecraft wasn’t solely responsible — rather, the Sun’s radiation pressure pushed the material away like it would with a comet’s tail.
The trail is only likely to get larger, according to the researchers. It should eventually stretch to the point where the dust stream is virtually unrecognizable from the usual particles floating in the Solar System. NASA didn’t create headaches for future probes and explorers. The space agency chose Dimorphos (a moonlet of the asteroid Didymos) as the deliberate crash wouldn’t pose a threat to Earth.
The capture was about more than obtaining a dramatic snapshot, of course. Scientists will use data collected using SOAR, the Astronomical Event Observatory Network and other observers to understand more about the collision and Dimorphos itself. They’ll determine the amount and speed of material ejected from the asteroid, and whether or not DART produced large debris chunks or ‘merely’ fine dust. Those will help understand how spacecraft can alter an asteroid’s orbit, and potentially improve Earth’s defenses against wayward cosmic rocks.
Apple’s Watch Ultra, with its 2000-nit digital display and GPS capabilities, is a far cry from its Revolutionary War-era self-winding forebears. What sorts of wondrous body-mounted technologies might we see another hundred years hence? In his new book, The Skeptic’s Guide to the Future, Dr. Steven Novella (with assists from his brothers, Bob and Jay Novella) examines the history of wearables and the technologies that enable them to extrapolate where further advances in flexible circuitry, wireless connectivity and thermoelectric power generation might lead.
As the name implies, wearable technology is simply technology designed to be worn, so it will advance as technology in general advances. For example, as timekeeping technology progressed, so did the wristwatch, leading to the smartwatches of today. There are certain advances that lend themselves particularly to wearable technology. One such development is miniaturization.
The ability to make technology smaller is a general trend that benefits wearables by extending the number of technologies that are small enough to be conveniently and comfortably worn. We are all familiar by now with the incredible miniaturization in the electronics industry, and especially in computer chip technology. Postage-stamp-sized chips are now more powerful than computers that would have filled entire rooms in prior decades.
As is evidenced by the high-quality cameras on a typical smartphone, optical technology has already significantly miniaturized. There is ongoing research into tinier optics still, using metamaterials to produce telephoto and zoom lenses without the need for bulky glass.
“Nanotechnology” is now a collective buzzword for machines that are built at the microscopic scale (although technically it is much smaller still), and of course, nanotech will have incredible implications for wearables.
We are also at the dawn of flexible electronics, also called “flex circuits” and more collectively “flex tech.” This involves printing circuits onto a flexible plastic substrate, allowing for softer technology that moves as we move. Flexible technology can more easily be incorporated into clothing, even woven into its fabric. The advent of two-dimensional materials, like carbon nanotubes, which can form the basis of electronics and circuits, are also highly flexible. Organic circuits are yet another technology that allows for the circuits to be made of flexible material, rather than just printed on flexible material.
Circuits can also be directly printed onto the skin, as a tattoo, using conductive inks that can act as sensors. One company, Tech Tats, already offers one such tattoo for medical monitoring purposes. The ink is printed in the upper layers of the skin, so they are not permanent. They can monitor things like heart rate and communicate this information wirelessly to a smartphone.
Wearable electronics have to be powered. Small watch batteries already exist, but they have finite energy. Luckily there are a host of technologies being developed that can harvest small amounts of energy from the environment to power wearables (in addition to implantable devices and other small electronics). Perhaps the earliest example of this was the self-winding watch, the first evidence of which comes from 1776. Swiss watchmaker Abraham-Louis Perrelet developed a pocket watch with a pendulum that would wind the watch from the movement of normal walking. Reportedly it took about fifteen minutes of walking to be fully wound.
There are also ways to generate electric power that are not just mechanical power. Four types of ambient energy exist in the environment—mechanical, thermal, radiant (e.g., sunlight), and chemical. Piezoelectric technology, for example, converts applied mechanical strain into electrical current. The mechanical force can come from the impact of your foot hitting the ground, or just from moving your limbs or even breathing. Quartz and bone are piezoelectric materials, but it can also be manufactured as barium titanate and lead zirconate titanate. Electrostatic and electromagnetic devices harvest mechanical energy in the form of vibrations.
There are thermoelectric generators that can produce electricity from differences in temperature. As humans are warm-blooded mammals, a significant amount of electricity can be created from the waste heat we constantly shed. There are also thermoelectric generators that are made from flexible material, combining flex tech with energy harvesting. This technology is mostly in the prototype phase right now. For example, in 2021, engineers published the development of a flexible thermoelectric generator made from an aerogel-silicone composite with embedded liquid metal conductors resulting in a flexible that could be worn on the wrist and could generate enough electricity to power a small device.
Ambient radiant energy in the form of sunlight can be converted to electricity through the photoelectric effect. This is the basis of solar panels, but small and flexible solar panels can be incorporated into wearable devices as well.
All of these energy-harvesting technologies can also double as sensing technology—they can sense heat, light, vibration, or mechanical strain and produce a signal in response. Tiny self-powered sensors can therefore be ubiquitous in our technology.
The Future of Wearable Tech
The technology already exists, or is on the cusp, to have small, flexible, self-powered, and durable electronic devices and sensors, incorporated with wireless technology and advanced miniaturized digital technology. We therefore can convert existing tools and devices into wearable versions, or use them to explore new options for wearable tech. We also can increasingly incorporate digital technology into our clothing, jewelry, and wearable equipment. This means that wearable tech will likely increasingly shift from passive objects to active technology integrated into the rest of our digital lives.
There are some obvious applications here, even though it is difficult to predict what people will find useful versus annoying or simply useless. Smartphones have already become smartwatches, or they can pair together for extended functionality. Google Glass is an early attempt at incorporating computer technology into wearable glasses, and we know how it has been received.
If we extrapolate this technology, one manifestation is that the clothing and gear we already wear can be converted into electronic devices we already use, or they can be enhanced with new functionality that replaces or supports existing devices.
We may, for example, continue to use a smartphone as the hub of our portable electronics. Perhaps that smartphone will be connected not only to wireless earbuds as they are now, but also to a wireless monitor built into glasses, or sensors that monitor health vitals or daily activity. Potentially, the phone could communicate with any device on the planet, so it could automatically contact your doctor’s office regarding any concerning changes, or contact emergency services if appropriate.
Portable cameras could also monitor and record the environment, not just for documenting purposes but also to direct people to desired locations or services, or contact the police if a crime or disaster is in progress.
As our appliances increasingly become part of the “internet of things,” we too will become part of that internet through what we wear, or what’s printed on or implanted beneath our skin. We might, in a very real sense, become part of our home, office, workplace, or car, as one integrated technological whole.
We’ve mostly been considering day-to-day life, but there will also be wearable tech for special occupations and situations. An extreme version of this is exosuits for industrial or military applications. Think Iron Man, although that level of tech is currently fantasy. There is no portable power source that can match Iron Man’s arc reactor, and there doesn’t appear to be any place to store the massive amounts of propellant necessary to fly as he does.
More realistic versions of industrial exosuits are already a reality and will only get better. A better sci-fi analogy might be the loader exo-suit worn by Ripley in Aliens. Powered metal exosuits for construction workers have been in development for decades. The earliest example is the Hardiman, developed by General Electric between 1965 and 1971. That project essentially failed and the Hardiman was never used, but since then development has continued. Applications have mostly been medical, such as helping people with paralysis walk. Industrial uses are still minimal and do not yet include whole-body suits. However, such suits can theoretically greatly enhance the strength of workers, allowing them to carry heavy loads. They could also incorporate tools they would normally use, such as rivet guns and welders.
Military applications for powered exosuits would likely include armor, visual aids such as infrared or night-vision goggles, weapons and targeting systems, and communications. Such exosuits could turn a single soldier into not just enhanced infantry, but also a tank, artillery, communications, medic, and mule for supplies.
Military development might also push technology for built-in emergency medical protocols. A suit could automatically apply pressure to a wound to reduce bleeding. There are already pressure pants that prevent shock by helping to maintain blood pressure. More ambitious tech could automatically inject drugs to counteract chemical warfare, increase blood pressure, reduce pain, or prevent infection. These could be controlled by either onboard AI or remotely by a battlefield medic who is monitoring the soldiers under their watch and taking actions remotely through their suits.
Once this kind of technology matures, it can then trickle down to civilian applications. Someone with life-threatening allergies could carry epinephrine on them to be injected, or they could wear an autoinjector that will dose them as necessary, or be remotely triggered by an emergency medical responder.
Everything discussed so far is an extrapolation from existing technology, and these more mature applications are feasible within fifty years or so. What about the far future? This is likely where nanotechnology comes in. Imagine wearing a nanosuit that fits like a second skin but that is made from programmable and reconfigurable material. It can form any mundane physical object you might need, on command. Essentially, the suit would be every tool ever made.
You could also change your fashion on demand. Go from casual in the morning to business casual for a meeting and then formal for a dinner party without ever changing your clothes. Beyond mere fashion, this could be programmable cosplay—do you want to be a pirate, or a werewolf? More practically, such a nanoskin could be well ventilated when it’s warm and then puff out for good insulation when it’s cold. In fact, it could automatically adjust your skin temperature for maximal comfort.
Such material can be soft and comfortable, but bunch up and become hard when it encounters force, essentially functioning as highly effective armor. If you are injured, it could stem bleeding, maintain pressure, even do chest compressions if necessary. In fact, once such a second skin becomes widely adopted, life without it may quickly become unimaginable and scary.
Wearable technology may become the ultimate in small or portable technology because of the convenience and effectiveness of being able to carry it around with us. As shown, many of the technologies we are discussing might converge on wearable technology, which is a good reminder that when we try to imagine the future, we cannot simply extrapolate one technology but must consider how all technology will interact. We may be making our wearables out of 2D materials, powered by AI and robotic technology, with a brain-machine interface that we use for virtual reality. We may also be creating customized wearables with additive manufacturing, using our home 3D printer.
NASA and SpaceX have signed an agreement to study the possibility of using a Dragon spacecraft to lift the Hubble telescope to a higher orbit. The Hubble telescope’s orbit decays over time due to atmospheric drag, and reboosting it to a more stable one could add more years to its life. SpaceX proposed the idea several months ago in partnership with the Polaris Program, the human spaceflight initiative organized by billionaire businessman, Jared Isaacman. If you’ll recall, Isaacman funded Inspiration4, the first mission to launch an all-civilian crew to orbit back in 2021.
The space agency said it’s not going to spend any money for the study and there are no plans to fund a mission to reboost the Hubble with a Dragon spacecraft at the moment. According to The New York Times, Thomas Zurbuchen, NASA’s associate administrator for science, said during a news conference: “I want to be absolutely clear. We’re not making an announcement today that we definitely will go forward with a plan like this.” NASA and SpaceX didn’t even enter an exclusive agreement, which means other companies can propose studies with their spacecraft as the model. At this point, this partnership is all about looking at the possibilities.
The teams will spend six months collecting technical data from both Hubble and the Dragon spacecraft. They’ll then use that information to determine whether it’s safe for the capsule to rendezvous and dock with the telescope, as well as to figure out how it can physically raise Hubble to a higher altitude. At the same conference, SpaceX VP of customer operations Jessica Jensen explained: “What we want to do is expand the boundaries of current technology. We want to show how we use commercial partnerships as well as the public-private partnerships to creatively solve challenging and complex problem missions such as servicing Hubble.” In addition to potentially adding years to the 32-year-old telescope’s life, the servicing solutions the study finds could also be applied to other spacecraft in near-Earth orbit.
