7 Days of Lunar New Years Celebration in Minecraft!
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The post 7 Days of Lunar New Years Celebration in Minecraft! appeared first on Xbox Wire.
Interlune, a stealth startup headed by ex-Blue Origin executives, is focused on mining the moon for a rare isotope of helium that could be used to scale quantum computing and eventually even fusion power, TechCrunch has learned. Regulatory filings reported here last week showed that the company recently closed $15.5 million in new capital; before […]
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A pair of lunar orbiters recently crossed each other’s paths around the Moon, with one flying overhead and capturing an image of the orbiting spacecraft below. The Korea Pathfinder Lunar Orbiter, also known as Danuri, snapped the streaked, fuzzy photo of NASA’s Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter (LRO) as both spacecraft…
Intuitive Machines is preparing for its first lunar mission to the moon’s south pole in the third quarter of this year, while also facing a protest to a major NASA contract win, executives told investors Thursday. The company has made “significant progress” on testing for the inaugural IM-1 mission, Intuitive Machines CEO Steve Altemus said […]
Intuitive Machines prepares for first lunar mission, faces challenge to NASA contract win by Aria Alamalhodaei originally published on TechCrunch
The long-awaited attempt to land a privately funded spacecraft on the Moon seems to have failed, with the fate of…
The post Commercial Moon Landing Attempt Failed: What Happened To The Lunar Craft? appeared first on TechRound.
A company with a spacecraft en route to the moon, ispace is now trading on the Tokyo Stock Exchange. The Japanese firm raised around $52 million (¥6.7 billion) in an initial public offering last month. Shares reportedly went untraded on the first listing day due to a large volume of buy orders and demand to […]
Japanese firm ispace lists on the Tokyo Stock Exchange ahead of first lunar landing by Aria Alamalhodaei originally published on TechCrunch
Lockheed Martin announced today the creation of a wholly owned subsidiary called Crescent Space Services that will focus on infrastructure for the moon, the latest sign that the aerospace and defense giant is bullish on the future of a lunar economy. The new venture will focus initially on a communications and navigation network in cislunar […]
Lockheed doubles down on lunar economy bet with new subsidiary Crescent Space Services by Aria Alamalhodaei originally published on TechCrunch
The Malapert massif region near the Moon’s lunar south pole is one of several possible locations where NASA astronauts could land later this decade. A new image from the space agency’s Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter reveals it to be a bleak, dreary, and beautiful place for us to visit.
MIT engineers have designed a walking lunar robot cleverly inspired by the animal kingdom. The “mix-and-match” system is made of worm-like robotic limbs astronauts could configure into various “species” of robots resembling spiders, elephants, goats and oxen. The team won the Best Paper Award last week at the Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers (IEEE) Aerospace Conference.
WORMS (Walking Oligomeric Robotic Mobility System) is one team’s vision of a future where astronauts living on a moon base delegate activities to robotic minions. However, to avoid “a zoo of machines” with various robots for every task imaginable, the modular WORMS would allow astronauts to swap out limbs, bases and appendages for the task at hand. For example, they could snap together a spider bot to crawl inside hazardous lava tubes to drill for frozen water or assemble an elephant-like pack robot to haul heavy equipment. They could even make a goat / ox combination to transport solar panels. And when they finish the task, they can disassemble it and return it to storage until it’s needed for something else.
The system includes a worm-like appendage, which can snap together with a chassis through a twist-and-lock mechanism. Wok-shaped “shoes” can then snap onto the appendage’s other end. Finally, a small tool allows astronauts to release the block’s spring-loaded pins when it’s time to disassemble. The team has already developed a six-legged prototype, about the size of a go-cart, using software that coordinates multiple worm limbs. They’ve successfully demonstrated assembly, disassembly and navigation in a recent field test.
“Astronauts could go into the shed, pick the WORMS they need, along with the right shoes, body, sensors and tools, and they could snap everything together, then disassemble it to make a new one,” said George Lordos, Ph.D. candidate and graduate instructor at MIT’s Department of Aeronautics and Astronautics. “The design is flexible, sustainable and cost-effective.”
The team spawned the idea in 2022 as their answer to NASA’s Breakthrough, Innovative and Game-changing (BIG) Idea Challenge, an annual competition for university students to conjure innovative ideas. In that year’s edition, NASA challenged students to develop robots to move across extreme terrain without wheels. The MIT team focused on a lunar robot that could navigate the moon’s South Pole, which some suspect could include frozen water — essential for astronauts’ long-term survival — but also complex terrain with thick dust, rocky slopes and lava tubes.
As the students brainstormed solutions, they drew inspiration from the animal kingdom. “As we were thinking of these animal inspirations, we realized that one of the simplest animals, the worm, makes similar movements as an arm, or a leg, or a backbone, or a tail,” says deputy team leader and AeroAstro graduate student Michael Brown. “And then the lightbulb went off: We could build all these animal-inspired robots using worm-like appendages.”
Although each WORMS appendage weighs about 20 pounds on Earth, they would be only about three pounds in the moon’s atmosphere, making it easy for astronauts to assemble, disassemble and reassemble them like a high-tech Lego set. The team is already working on a second-generation model with longer and slightly heavier appendages, with an eye on heavy-equipment hauling bots.
“There are many buzz words that are used to describe effective systems for future space exploration: modular, reconfigurable, adaptable, flexible, cross-cutting, et cetera,” said Kevin Kempton, an engineer at NASA’s Langley Research Center and judge of the 2022 BIG Idea Challenge. “The MIT WORMS concept incorporates all these qualities and more.”
This article originally appeared on Engadget at https://www.engadget.com/mits-new-modular-lunar-robot-has-worms-for-arms-175146649.html?src=rss
Fatal Frame: Mask Of The Lunar Eclipse plunges players into the dreadful past of Rougetsu Island as three (Young women? Girls? I have no idea how old they are supposed to be and for some reason that’s not surprising.) survivors and a stalwart detective revisit the ruins of a hospital that was once home to a haunting ceremony. They all have amnesia, of course, because that’s a low-effort way to generate an air of mystery. Well, except the detective, who is just confused because he never really figured out what was going on in the first place.
Overall, it’s a thoroughly okay game from 2008 that’s been papered over with some hazy lofi graphics to justify selling it at full price in 2023. It’s up to you if you think that’s worth it – I bought the Mass Effect remaster, so I’m hardly one to judge – but while the graphics have been thoroughly airbrushed, that’s no cure for Fatal Frame’s dated gameplay and undead pacing.