The Navy is Testing a GPS-like Device That Doesn’t Require Satellites

 As reported by Task & Purpose: The Navy is researching a new technology that could help sailors and Marines navigate in places where the Global Positioning System just doesn’t work.

Unlike GPS signals, cosmic ray muons are a natural source of radiation that can pass through rock, buildings and earth and can be used at high latitudes north of the Arctic Circle, where GPS satellites do not work well due to their orbital constraints, the Office of Naval Research wrote in a press release on Tuesday.

In September, ONR and the U.S. Army Development Command co-funded a group of international researchers who want to show that muons can work as an alternative to GPS and still deliver the same level of precision. They have nine months to show their stuff, and if it works, it could be a game-changer for the military.

“The ability to navigate in polar regions will be of increasing importance in the coming decades as climate change is opening up Arctic waterways to commercial and military activities,” said Dr. Charles Eddy, the lead ONR Global science director for the muon project. “This project, which uses cosmic relativistic particles that continuously impinge on the Earth’s entire surface, offers an innovative approach to the challenge of navigation at high latitudes with little or no GPS service.”

The question of how to preserve navigation capability is a big one these days, especially as countries like the U.S., Russia and China develop new ways of disabling the satellites that GPS is based on.

“The most important thing that the Space Force supports, from the perspective of a civilian, is the fact that we have GPS,” said Capt. Natalia Pinto, a space operations officer, in a Space Force commercial in August. “That is something that is leveraged by an individual, companies, banks, all sorts of financial institutions. So from the outside looking in, that’s probably the most important thing that we rely on.”

The military uses GPS every day for guiding ships, planes, bombs and so many other things where they need to go. But those signals are easily disrupted by jammers, which block GPS signals, and spoofers, which take them over and feed the user false information, National Defense Magazine wrote in February. Enter, spoof-proof muon technology.

If you’re like me and have never heard of muons before now, have no fear. Muons are one of the fundamental subatomic particles, kind of like electrons but much heavier, according to the Department of Energy. Muons on Earth result from particles in the Earth’s atmosphere colliding with cosmic rays, which are high-energy photons and atomic nuclei coming from the sun or other solar systems or galaxies. Muons exist for only 2.2 microseconds, but they are created constantly in the atmosphere, hitting every inch of the Earth’s surface and passing through nearly any substance at almost the speed of light. 

Penetrate nearly any substance you say? Well that’s helpful in case you need to figure out where you are underground or underwater. 

“Cosmic-ray muons (or atmospheric muons) are ubiquitous and universal,” researchers wrote in a study of muons published in the journal Nature in 2020. “[B]y utilizing this universality and relativistic nature, cosmic muons have a potential to be used for positioning the receiver detector located underwater or underground three dimensionally with a great accuracy.”

The same goes for navigating north of the Arctic Circle. The Navy-funded research into the use of muons for navigation is led by Dr. Chris Steer of the British company Geoptic Infrastructure Investigations Limited. Steer explained that “like echolocation, the timing difference between ‘pings’ — the signals from a crossing muon in our detectors — can allow the user to measure the distance from one detector to another with multiple detectors allowing location by triangulation.” 

Researchers have already tested the system in a large water-immersion tank in the United Kingdom. Now the project will move to Finland, specifically into an Arctic lake covered with a meter of ice, the press release said. 

“At these high latitudes, conventional GPS measurements are problematic due to their orbital constraints,” ONR wrote.

To make it work, researchers will need a set of highly-synchronized clocks that can work partially underwater in a freezing Arctic environment. But if it does work, it would be a big step up for military navigation.

“The sea is broadly transparent to cosmic ray muons, so we expect there to be a number of scientific subsea navigation opportunities,” Steer said. “Similarly, as cosmic ray muons are highly penetrating and able to pass through many tens to hundreds of meters of rock, it is possible to see that this technology also has strong opportunities in tunnels and other underground settings.”

Muon tech is not the only alternative to GPS for figuring out where you are in the world. For example, the Navy has started teaching good ol’ celestial navigation using a sextant and the stars again in recent years.

“That’s an oldie but goodie,” said Richard Mason, a senior engineer at the RAND Corporation. The military could also automate systems to keep track of celestial navigation for service members, Mason suggested.

At a higher-tech level, the military may be close to using quantum science as a ‘hacker-proof’ alternative to GPS, Defense One reported earlier this month.

“These inertial sensors can be used wherever there is a need for position or navigational information, and where a GPS outage is unacceptable or GPS is unavailable,” Peter Schwindt, a scientist at Sandia National Labs, which is researching quantum navigation, told Defense One. “Civilian applications such as aviation and autonomous vehicles are areas where momentary outages of the GPS signal is not acceptable. GPS is decidedly not available underground or underwater so inertial navigation is very important for these operational environments.”

Between quantum science and muons, navigation in the military is becoming much more sci-fi than simply reading a map. But as complicated as it sounds, scientists are excited about what might happen next.

“The future is extremely bright for this line of research,” ONR wrote.

‘Tesla Bot’ prototype to arrive in 2022

 
As reported by Teslarati: Tesla will launch the “Tesla Bot” prototype in 2022, Elon Musk announced during the Artificial Intelligence Event the company held today at its Palo Alto headquarters.

After jokingly walking out a human in the Tesla Bot uniform, Musk said “Tesla Bot will be real.” Musk detailed some of the tasks that the robot will be able to complete, including grocery runs, picking up household objects, and other everyday commands.

The robot will be 5 feet 8 inches tall and 125 pounds. It will include a screen on the face of the bot to display useful information. Additionally, it will have human-level hands. The extremities operate using 40 electromechanical actuators, with two feet, and force feedback sensing for balance and agility. Musk joked that it may be able to run up to 5 MPH.

The Tesla Bot will also utilize some of the company’s AI devices that are operational on the company’s vehicles. Autopilot cameras will essentially act as the vision for the Tesla Bot, while a Full Self-Driving computer will function as the internal organs of the robot, helping it to operate and function as a productive member of the household. It will utilize mutli-camera video neural networks, identical to what was detailed during the company’s AI Event. Additionally, Neural Net planning, labeling, simulation and tools will also be used to help the Tesla Bot operate effectively and efficiently, while accurately performing tasks.

“For this robot, we’re trying to be as literal as possible: Can it do boring, dangerous, repetitive jobs that people don’t want to do. You know, once you have it do that, maybe it can do other things too…I mean, maybe it could be your buddy, too. I’m sure people will think of some very creative uses,” Musk joked.

The Tesla Bot won’t be available until next year, Musk said, especially as the robot will utilize the Dojo Supercomputer’s training mechanisms to improve functionality. It seems that Tesla’s idea for the robot is to decrease the need to perform tasks by yourself. There will be “no shortage of labor,” Musk said about the future, but physical work will simply be a choice. The Tesla Bot’s purpose could eliminate the need to perform minimal, mindless tasks around the house. “For the Tesla bot it’s going to start with work that is boring and repetitive Basically work that a person would least like to do,” Musk added.

“Things that I think are very hard about having a useful humanoid robot is ‘Can it navigate through the world without being explicitly trained?’ Without explicit line-by-line instructions,” Musk said. “Can you talk to it and say ‘Pick up that bolt, attach it to the car with that wrench. It should be able to do that.”

The development of the robot seems to be a responsibility of Musk’s, especially as the CEO has been critical of AI’s potential power in the past. On an episode of the Joe Rogan Experience podcast, Musk once warned that AI could become increasingly dangerous if overdeveloped, especially as its mind and memory are terrifically powerful.

Don’t expect to see the Robot on Tesla’s production lines, either. Musk said the parts were there, and Tesla decided to make it. “If we don’t, someone else would, so I guess we should probably make it. And make it safe,” Musk said.

Iconic - SpaceX's Starship Booster Fitup

 

SpaceX's next Starship prototype got the black-and-white treatment in a suave new photo shared by company founder Elon Musk.

The picture appears to show the Starship SN20 ("Serial No. 20") prototype during fit checks on Aug. 4 with the first-stage Super Heavy rocket, when the stacked rocket briefly became the tallest one in the world.

The picture provides a close-up view of the mating procedure between Starship and Super Heavy, with engineers perched underneath. The picture is reminiscent of the famous black-and-white "Lunch Atop a Skyscraper Photograph" taken by Charles Clyde Ebbets on Sept. 20, 1932, during construction of Rockefeller Center in Manhattan.

Watch as Tesla Model S Plaid Hits insane Speeds on Pikes Peak Hill Climb

 

As reported by Electrek: Unplugged Performance has brought its brand-new Tesla Model S Plaid to the Pikes Peak Hill Climb, and the new top-performance electric vehicle is already impressing in the practice round.

After famously crashing their Model 3 and building it back up in record time to compete last year, Unplugged Performance is back at Pikes Peak, but this time with a brand-new Model S Plaid.

It’s going to be the first time Tesla’s new top performance vehicle is being put to the test, and it’s no easy test.

Pikes Peak consists of a 12.4-mile route that starts at just above 9,000 feet and climbs to the summit at 14,115 feet above sea level.

It’s not only extremely dangerous for the driver since the sharp turns mostly open up to the sides of cliffs, but it’s also extremely demanding on the vehicles competing.

As we previously reported, Unplugged Performance, a Tesla tuner and aftermarket accessory maker, managed to get their hands on an early Tesla Model S Plaid, which they modified with a new suspension, brakes, tires, roll cage, and a few aerodynamic changes.

They released a video of the vehicle during the practice runs at the Pikes Peak Hill Climb:

It is leading its division (exhibition) by a decent margin, and it’s getting close to the times of some purpose-built vehicles in the open wheel category:

Those times are only for one section of the route that is open for practice.

While he wasn’t pushing it too hard, he was able to hit 130 mph in some stretches of the climb, which is simply insane:

It’s going to be interesting to see what time Unplugged Performance can get with their modified Tesla Model S Plaid, which stock can accelerate from 0 to 60 mph in less than two seconds.

ESA Pushes Ahead on Starlink-GPS Style Hybrid Network for the Moon

 As reported by SlashGear: An incredible network of lunar satellites, ringing the Moon and powering a telecoms and navigation system there, is another step closer to reality, the European Space Agency has announced today. The ESA’s Moonlight plan would address one of the growing areas of concern as humanity plans a crewed return to the lunar surface, delivering stable communications between teams and back with mission control on Earth.

Currently, communications between the Moon and Earth are fairly bottlenecked. The Moon itself blocks radio signals, which means that any probe, spacecraft, or crewed mission to the far-side of Earth’s satellite is cut off from direct transmissions to and from us.

China’s Chang’e-4 lander, for example, relied upon a relay satellite in the Earth-Moon L2 Lagrangian point. That satellite, Queqiao, effectively acts as an intermediary, taking communications from the lander and then relaying them to Earth. What the ESA has in mind, though, is considerably more complex – and more powerful.

A series of satellites positioned around the Moon could blanket it in coverage, both for communications and for a GPS-style navigation system. It would avoid the need for lunar missions to establish a relay of their own, or use high-power transmitters capable of reaching Earth independently. As a result, the ESA suggests, future missions could be even more accessible.

“Using a shared telecommunications and navigation service would reduce the design complexity of future individual missions and make them lighter, freeing space for more scientific instruments or other cargo, making each individual mission more cost-efficient,” the Agency points out.

“Lowering the ticket price to lunar exploration could empower a wider group of ESA member states to launch their own national lunar missions,” it’s suggested. “Even on a relatively low budget, an emerging space nation would be able to send a scientific CubeSat mission to the Moon, inspiring the next generation of scientists and engineers.”

To begin with, the ESA plans to demonstrate the potential of such a system with the Lunar Pathfinder comsat. Set to launch by the end of 2023, it’ll establish an orbit around the Moon and deliver navigation and data relay information. The goal is positioning accuracy of around 100 meters, though future satellites could halve that or better.

The ESA is also providing NASA with the ESPRIT communications module for the upcoming Artemis program. Moonlight will tap technologies from both those projects, to build out a lasting network for the Moon.

It’ll take a while, unsurprisingly, for that to be realized. The ESA has just inked deals with two consortia – one led by Surrey Satellite Technology Ltd, working with Airbus and others; the other led by Telespazio, working with Inmarsat, Canada’s MDA, and others – to figure out the logistics and details.

“A robust, reliable and efficient telecommunications and navigation system will make the dozens of individual missions planned for the Moon more cost-efficient and enable smaller countries to become space-faring nations, inspiring the next generation of scientists and engineers,” Elodie Viau, Director of Telecommunications and Integrated Applications at the ESA, said today of the agreements.

NASA’s Artemis mission aims to return astronauts to the surface of the Moon by 2024. It also intends to build a Lunar Gateway, a new space station positioned near the Moon, which would act as a staging post both for lunar descent and – in future – missions further afield to Mars and other planets in our solar system.

NASA's Parker Solar Probe Becomes Fastest Object Ever Built as it 'Touches the Sun'

The Parker Solar Probe was clocked at over 330,000 miles per hour as it zipped through the sun's outer atmosphere.

As reported by C/NET: Nothing built by human hands has ever travelled faster than NASA's Parker Solar Probe, a diminutive, scorch-proof spacecraft about the size of a small car is practically "touching the sun." In late April, it smashed two wild space records, dethroning the previous champion -- which also happened to be NASA's Parker Solar Probe -- and its journey is really just beginning.

The probe, which launched in August 2018 on a mission to study the sun, has been flying ever closer to our solar system's furnace using the planet Venus as a slingshot. On April 29, during its closest approach to the sun (known as "perihelion"), Parker was traveling at an almost unfathomable speed -- enough to circle the Earth 13 times in a single hour.

Parker set two new records back in February 2020:

• Fastest human-made object: 244,255 mph (393,044 km/h).
• Closest spacecraft to the sun: 11.6 million miles (18.6 million kilometers).

But those records have now been surpassed. The new records stand at:

• Fastest human-made object: 330,000 mph (532,000 km/h).
• Closest spacecraft to the sun: 6.5 million miles (10.4 million kilometers).  

Those are some strong records to hold and this isn't the end, either. Parker should break its own record later in the year when it uses another Venus flyby to slingshot closer to the sun. Perihelion is expected to occur on Nov. 21.

Parker is already revealing some of the sun's great mysteries. In December 2019, Parker's first batch of data was released in the prestigious journal Nature, pulling back the (incredibly bright) curtain on the charged particles and plasma dynamics in the sun's outer atmosphere.

 

SpaceX Wins $2.9 Billion NASA Moon Landing Contract

 

As reported by Yahoo!Finance: The winner of NASA's Human Landing System (HLS) contract award is SpaceX, which bid $2.9 billion for the privilege of developing the means by which NASA astronauts will return to the lunar surface for the first time since the Apollo program. SpaceX was in the running alongside Blue Origin and Dynetics, but reportedly undercut both those prospective suppliers considerably with its bid, according to The Washington Post.

SpaceX proposed using its Starship spacecraft, currently under development, as the landing vehicle for astronauts once they arrive at their lunar destination. The HLS is a key part of NASA's Artemis program, which will begin with uncrewed flights, followed by a Moon fly-by with a human crew, and eventually a human lunar landing at the South Pole of the Moon, during a mission which had been targeting 2024 as its fly date.

NASA announced that SpaceX, Blue Origin and Dynetics made up the entirety of its field of approved vendors for bidding on the HLS contracts back in April last year. Since then, both Blue Origin (which bid alongside a "national team" that included Lockheed Martin, Northrop Grumman and Draper) and Dynetics have built full-scale models of their system and submitted proposals detailing their plans for the functional versions to NASA for consideration. Meanwhile, SpaceX has been actively testing functional prototypes of its Starship spacecraft in Texas, and is also in the process of developing the Super Heavy booster that will propel it to the Moon once it's ready.

The plan here was for NASA to have chosen all three companies to build out initial versions in order to satisfy the early requirements of the contract, and then ultimately, it was generally thought that the agency would select a couple from the list of three to build human landers, in order to provide it with some flexibility when it comes to means of getting to the lunar surface. That's essentially how NASA operated with its Commercial Crew program for the International Space Station, which saw awards for both SpaceX and Boeing to build astronaut transport spacecraft. SpaceX has already qualified and begun to operate its vehicle, and Boeing hopes to bring its option online either late this year or early next.

SpaceX has won a lot of trust at NASA by delivering on the Commercial Crew program with a reliable, reusable human-rated spacecraft in the Crew Dragon. The Post also says that in addition to its attractive pricing, NASA wasn't drawn to Starship's flexibility and cargo capacity, since it's aiming to be able to fly not just humans, but also large quantities of supplies and materials to the Moon, and eventually, beyond.

Starship is a long way off from that goal at the moment, however; SpaceX has been quickly developing new iterations in a rapid prototyping approach to its test phase, but the most recent Starship high-altitude flight ended poorly with an explosion prior to landing. Other elements of the test program, however, including showing that Starship can successfully reorient itself in mid-air and slow its decent for landing, have been more successful on past tests. None of the tests so far have left Earth's atmosphere, however, nor have they involved any human flight testing, both of which will require a lot more development before the spacecraft is deemed mission-ready.

SpaceX was also the launch provider chosen to deliver components of the Lunar Gateway satellite in 2024, working with Maxar, which will produce the actual Power and Propulsion Element and Habitation and Logistics Outpost. These, however, will be delivered via Falcon Heavy, which has already had multiple successful launches.