NASA is funding research to build an autonomous robot gripper theoretically capable of performing medical surgery, and which is to be launched to the International Space Station in 2024.
The machine, named MIRA, will be developed by engineers at Virtual Incision, a startup spun out of the University of Nebraska-Lincoln in the US. Co-founder and CTO Shane Farritor, also a professor of engineering, and his colleagues have been tinkering with the system for nearly 20 years.
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South Korea’s first lunar orbiter, which is about to test disruption-tolerant, network-based space communications, successfully made contact with its Australian ground station after launching on Thursday.
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Virgin Galactic (VG) is once again delaying its commercial service, shifting the expected launch of well-to-do space tourists from the first three months of 2023 to Q2, amid widening losses for the business.
On a call with investors yesterday, CEO Michael Colglazier blamed the delay on supply-chain woes and labor shortages, which he said disrupted “the complex work” needed to prepare the craft for operation.
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Russia’s invasion of Ukraine is being felt at Northrop Grumman, forcing it to make alternative plans that now include asking Firefly Aerospace to build the first stage of its Antares rocket.
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India’s small satellite launch vehicle (SSLV) made a spectacular debut launch on Sunday, but the mission fell short of overall success when two satellites were inserted into the incorrect orbit, rendering them space junk.
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I wish I had a modest one and a backyard too.
Worldy McExoworldface.
NASA has plans to build a telescope six miles (9.66km) wide in Earth orbit, comprised of a constellation of six toaster-sized satellites. The first of those toasters has just been finished.
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Moon meteorites found on Earth contain trace gasses that lend further support to the widely held belief that our largest natural satellite formed from chunks of our planet that were ejected in a massive impact.
Patrizia Will, a doctoral research student at ETH Zurich, studied six separate Moon rocks picked up by NASA in Antarctica, and discovered traces of helium and neon trapped inside the chunks of lunar basalt.
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