US Navy puts AI brains into its 3D printers to make them “creative and intelligent”
WHY THIS MATTERS IN BRIEF By combining the power of AI with 3D printing the US military hopes to revolutionise how products are designed and made everywhere. One thing about aircraft, especially ones that fly from aircraft carriers, that are increasingly being turned into floating factories and flying fortresses,...
IBM’s “flying brain” Watson heads into space
WHY THIS MATTERS IN BRIEF As the space industry steps looks to explore more space and even colonise and mine new planets the demands on astronauts is increasing, so CIMON and its descendents will be used to help lighten their load and make them more productive. IBM Watson is...
World first as Chinese scientists teleport particles 300km into space
WHY THIS MATTERS IN BRIEF Teleportation is the ultimate sci-fi dream, and scientists are getting better at teleporting quantum particles further than ever before but teleporting real objects is still a long way away. Earlier this week Chinese scientists managed to teleport an object from Earth and into space,...
Scientists turn nuclear waste into diamond batteries that last forever
WHY THIS MATTERS IN BRIEF Nuclear waste is normally buried beneath ground and left forever, this new breakthrough gives nuclear processing companies a new option and a new revenue stream. Researchers at the University of Bristol have developed a method to turn radioactive graphite blocks, a waste product of...
Scientists may have identified the particles that make up Dark Matter
WHY THIS MATTERS IN BRIEF If it were not for the gravity of dark matter galaxies wouldn’t be able to hold themselves together and planets and stars would fly into oblivion. Understanding what Dark Matter is has proven to be amazingly difficult. Of course, one might expect this from a...
China launches Tiangong-2 space lab into orbit
China continues its conquest of space by launching a rival to the International Space Station China has launched its second ever space lab, a key part of the nation’s plan to have a permanently staffed space station up and running by the early 2020s. The uncrewed Tiangong-2 spacecraft lifted off...
NASA MinION ushers in a new era of space healthcare
WHY THIS MATTERS IN BRIEF NASA successfully sequences DNA in space, ushering in better healthcare for astronauts and a new era in space biology. For the first time ever, DNA was successfully sequenced in microgravity as part of the Biomolecule Sequencer experiment performed by NASA astronaut Kate Rubins this weekend...
Hawking uses nano sized spacecraft to kick start interstellar travel
WHY THIS MATTERS IN BRIEF Accelerating interstellar nano spacecraft to 215 million km/h might sound fun but it’s just another day in the office for these guys Stephen Hawking is backing a project to send tiny spacecraft to another star system within a generation. The satellites would travel trillions of miles...
Space train concept can reach Mars in just 2 days
A new space train concept could cut travel time to Mars down to 2 days from 260 Charles Bombardier, a Montreal-based innovator, has unveiled a concept for a hypothetical space train called Solar Express that can shuttle passengers and payloads between planets faster than any existing systems. If ever a...
The USAF will plasma bomb the sky to improve radio reception
The US Air Force has plans to improve radio communication over long distances by detonating plasma bombs in the upper atmosphere using a fleet of micro satellites. Since the early days of radio, we have known that signals that cannot be picked up by day may be heard clearly at night...
China launches worlds first unhackable Quantum communications satellite
WHY THIS MATTERS IN BRIEF China recently launched the world’s first quantum satellite, heralding in a new era of ultra-secure communications. “The satellite is designed to establish ultra-secure quantum communications by transmitting uncrackable keys from space to the ground,” Xinhua, China’s state news agency, wrote after the equipment was...
The solar system just got its own internet
The vastness of space means that traditional internet technologies are unreliable so This month, NASA took a major step toward creating a Solar System Internet by establishing the first operational Delay/Disruption Tolerant Networking (DTN) service on the International Space Station (ISS). The new DTN service will help automate and improve the availability...
SpaceX begins tests on the rocket that will take humans to Mars
WHY THIS MATTERS IN BRIEF SpaceX set to put their new Raptor engine through its paces and keeps an eye on landing a human on Mars in 2024. SpaceX’s company president, Gwynne Shotwell has just announced that the company is inching closer to realising it’s CEO, Elon Musk’s ambitious plans to land...
ESA lays out plans to build a village on the Moon
WHY THIS MATTERS IN BRIEF ESA have laid out their plans to colonise the Moon by 2030. The European Space Agency (ESA) is pressing forward with its plans to set up a permanent human outpost on the moon. Dubbed the “Moon Village” the vision will be the product of international...
Inside SpaceX’s mission to Mars
This week Elon Musk’s rocket company SpaceX said it would put its Dragon spacecraft on the red planet “as soon as 2018″ making it the first private company to go interplanetary. While it’s easy to get impatient with crackpot plans to head for the red planet SpaceX is unique in...
