Why It's Too Soon To Say If Audi’s All-Electric SUV Will Rival Tesla’s Model X

As reported by Manufacturing.net: This week the Internet has been abuzz with all the digital chatter about next month's big event: the Frankfurt Auto Show.

Not only is this 10-day event the world’s largest car show, but it also displays what just might be the future of the global car industry. This year, for instance, automakers will show-off fleets of electric and hybrid vehicles.

But the one car that has piqued everyone’s interest is Audi’s new, all-electric SUV called the e-tron quattro.This luxury vehicle isn’t just sleek and sporty in style, but it also happens to have a battery range of about 310 miles — an impressive start considering this is Audi’s first large-series electric car.

Like Tesla’s Model X, Audi designed the e-tron quattro SUV concept from the ground up as an electric vehicle. Audi’s version, however, will probably be driven by a trio of motors, all of which will be powered by a large lithium-ion battery pack.

But the real question dogging industry insiders: Has Audi built a true rival to Tesla’s gulf-winged Model X?

It’s too soon to say but, with the preordered Model X set to hit roads this fall, Tesla will have at least two years to gain some market traction before its Audi rival goes into production.

One thing’s for sure though: The global auto industry is definitely going green.

Japan Rocket Kounotori-5 "White Stork" Launches Cargo to the International Space Station (ISS)

As reported by Space.com: A robotic Japanese cargo vessel launched toward the International Space Station this morning, embarking on a five-day journey to the orbiting lab to deliver tons of supplies and experiment gear, including a rodent crew of 12 mice.

Japan's fifth H-II Transfer Vehicle (HTV-5) blasted off atop an HII-B rocket from Tanegashima Space Center today (Aug. 19) at 7:50 a.m. EDT (1150 GMT, 8:50 p.m. local Japanese time). NASA broadcast live video of the HTV-5 cargo ship launch direct from the Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency, which built and launched the spacecraft.

If all goes according to plan, the cargo ship will arrive at the space station early Monday morning (Aug. 24). Astronauts aboard the orbiting lab can then begin offloading HTV-5's 6 tons (5.5 metric tons) of food, water, scientific gear and other supplies. [Japan's Robotic Space Station Cargo Ship Fleet in Pictures (Photos)]

While HTV-5 is unmanned, it is carrying some live passengers — a dozen mice, whose experiences aboard the space station will help researchers better understand the effects of microgravity on the bodies of mammals.

Other scientific payloads include equipment for the ongoing "twins study" in which NASA astronaut brothers Scott and Mark Kelly are participating. Scott Kelly and Russian cosmonaut Mikhail Kornienko are about five months into an unprecedented yearlong mission aboard the orbiting lab that is investigating how long-duration spaceflight affects astronauts psychologically, physiologically and genetically.

Mark Kelly is here on terra firma, serving as a control against which Scott can be compared. The two are identical twins, so they share the same genetic code.

HTV-5 is also carrying an instrument called the Calorimetric Electron Telescope (CALET), which will be mounted outside the International Space Station to hunt for signs of elusive dark matter. So named because it apparently neither absorbs nor emits light, dark mater is impossible to observe directly with telescopes. But studies of the stuff's gravitational effects suggest that dark matter is more than four times more common than "normal" matter throughout the universe.

CALET will also measure high-energy cosmic rays, which pose a radiation threat to astronauts in space, NASA officials said.

Also aboard the Japanese freighter are 14 tiny cubesats built by San Francisco-based company Planet Labs, which aims to provide low-cost but high-resolution Earth imagery to a variety of customers. The cubesats, called "Doves," will eventually be deployed from the space station to fly freely.

Today's successful launch brings the total number of Doves launched to orbit to 101, Planet Labs representatives said.

HTV-5 was originally supposed to launch on Sunday (Aug. 16), but bad weather forced several delays.

The Japanese Aerospace Exploration Agency's (JAXA) HTV vehicle is also known as "Kounotori" — Japanese for "white stork," which refers to the delivery function it serves. Four previous HTV spacecraft have supplied the space station, one each in 2009, 2011, 2012 and 2013.

The HTV vessel is designed to burn up in Earth's atmosphere when its space missions are done, just like Russia's Progress freighter and the Cygnus vehicle, which is built by American aerospace firm Orbital ATK. SpaceX's Dragon capsule is the only currently operating cargo craft that returns to Earth in one piece.

License Plates for Drones Could Help Make Operators Accountable

As reported by MIT Technology Review: So far this year commercial pilots in the U.S. have reported 650 sightings of drones near their aircraft to the Federal Aviation Administration. In only a tiny fraction of those reports was the operator identified—and complaints of drones causing danger or invading privacy will surely grow as the small aircraft get cheaper and more capable.

Researchers at the University of California, Berkeley, are now testing a kind of license plate for drones they think could help make drone operators more accountable. The project, called Lightcense, involves a rectangular array of bright, multicolored LEDs attached to the underside of a craft. The LEDs blink a unique pattern that could be looked up in a database by law enforcement to identify a drone’s owner.

The LED license plate is designed to be decoded by a smartphone app, specialized camera equipment in the hands of law enforcement, or even memorized by someone who spies a drone that’s up to no good. That would provide an urgently needed public accountability mechanism lacking today, says Aislan Foina, director of the Cal Unmanned Aviation Research Lab at the University of California, Berkeley.

The FAA is working to finalize rules for people and companies using drones commercially. Many U.S companies, including Amazon and Google, are making plans for services such as package delivery by drone, or drones for surveillance or crop inspection (see “10 Breakthrough Technologies 2014: Agricultural Drones”), but it is still unclear how safety and privacy will be enforced when flocks of drones surround us.

NASA is working on systems to track and manage drone air traffic (see “Air Traffic Control for Drones”). Some manufacturers program their craft with “no fly” zones, for example over central Washington, D.C. Others argue commercial drones should adopt radio locator beacons like those on conventional aircraft.

Foina says a license plate model would be more appropriate for the way drones are set to impinge on public space. “If a drone is bothering people, they’re going to call the police, not the Air Force or FAA,” he says. A visual tag also works better than a radio beacon in a situation where multiple drones are in the same area, Foina adds.

The Berkeley researchers first tested their idea by modifying a drone made by the manufacturer 3D Robotics with extra electronics and high-brightness LEDs (see image). In daylight, the license plate’s pattern could be identified by the naked eye from about 100 meters away, and at 150 meters using a custom app on a smartphone augmented with a cheap zoom lens.

The researchers are now working on a prototype of a special camera that could be used by police to read drone license plates. They are also finishing an improved license plate design, in the form of a tough box roughly the size and shape of a smartphone that packages together an LED license plate with a standard aircraft location beacon and a battery. This is intended as a standardized component that could be attached to any drone, and would keep operating even if it crashed. Foina says he has had talks with 3D Robotics about how it might modify its drone’s electronics to support the design, but the company has not committed to doing so.

Todd Humphreys, an assistant professor at the University of Texas, Austin, says the idea could help address what he calls the “urgent problem of tracking down the operators of misbehaving drones.” LED plates might be simple enough that drone manufacturers would accept them without fear of overburdening their customers, he says.

However, it would be relatively easy to tape over your license plate, remove the device, or build a drone without one, Humphreys notes. He thinks building always-on location beacon technology into the radio components used in the drone industry could be a more reliable way of ensuring that most drones, and their operators, are traceable.

Foina counters that the way car license plates work shows that it doesn’t necessarily matter if his LED plates are easily disabled. “If a drone’s not blinking you would know it’s not coӧperating with the system, and that’s suspicious,” he says.

Samsung Looks to Join the Satellite Internet Space Race

As reported by Wired: SAMSUNG IS THE latest company eyeing satellites as the best way to expand the reach of the internet to the billions of people without access. In a paper published this week, Farooq Khan, head of Samsung Research America, outlines an idea for using thousands of small low earth orbit (LEO) satellites to provide high-speed internet all over the planet.

Traditional satellite internet providers use geostationary satellites positioned much further from the earth’s surface to provide access. The problem is that these services tend to be slow, expensive and have high latency. By using a large number of smaller and cheaper satellites floating closer to the planet, Khan and company hope to speed connections up significantly while also cutting costs.

Some analysts are skeptical that delivering internet by satellite can be profitable.

So far it’s just a research paper, but Samsung is far from alone in exploring this idea. A company called OneWeb has received funding from , as well as backing from Virgin Galactic founder Richard Branson. Entrepreneur Elon Musk’s Space X is working on a similar scheme as well, complete with backing from Google.

Some analysts are skeptical that delivering internet by satellite can be profitable without requiring monthly fees that few in the developing world will be able to afford. Wireless spectrum availability is another ongoing issue for new satellite providers.  Facebook and Google have both decided to forgo direct development of satellite based technology for interfacing to the Internet.

But Khan’s paper proposes that a new technology that uses the extremely high-frequencies known as the millimeter wave spectrum could overcome some of these limitations and reduce the cost. Telecommunications companies, including Samsung, are already considering millimeter wave technologies as the basis for 5G, the replacement for the modern 4G wireless standard. Khan writes that a 5G-based standard could simplify internet-by-satellite and reduce its cost.

Tesla Will Be a Leader in Self-Driving Technology: Morgan Stanley

As reported by MarketWatch: Telsa Motors Inc. shares surged about 5% in premarket trade Monday, after Morgan Stanley raised its price target on the shares by 66% to $465 from $280 and said the company is uniquely positioned to dominate in the emerging world of autonomous technology and driving.

The business model of human-driven, privately owned internal-combustion vehicles is fundamentally changing, analysts wrote in a note.

“Given the pace of technological development both within Tesla and at rival technology and mobility companies, we would be surprised if Tesla did not share formalized business plans on shared mobility within the next 12 to 18 months,” they wrote.

That could be followed by a commercial launch some time after the launch of the Model 3, and could form the basis for a Tesla Mobility 1.0 urban transport PODS (Position on Demand Service) in 2018, said the note.

“We view this business opportunity as potentially additive to Tesla’s existing model of selling human-driven cars to private owners and see potential for this model to conceivably more than triple the company’s potential revenues by 2029,” said the note. “That is, selling miles in addition to selling cars.”

Tesla’s current fleet of cars are electric, connected and able to “learn” through over-the-air updates at any time, placing the company far ahead of the established car makers and others attempting to develop self-driving technology.

In addition, Uber CEO Travis Kalanick says his company would like to buy 500,000 self-driving Tesla cars by 2020 if Tesla can produce them.

The company is building unparalleled infrastructure for charging and other services, and can be quickly adjusted to a shared mobility model. The company is introducing sensor and software capabilities in the Model X next month that could set the standard for self-driving technology.

“These are early days, but it is the view of the Morgan Stanley global auto team that Tesla may be best positioned to advance the state of the art in shared autonomy,” said the note.

The price target of $465 represents the midpoint of Morgan Stanley’s new base of $319 and bull case $611 valuation, reflecting its expectation that a mobility app will be announced in the next 12 to 18 months. The target is about 81% above Tesla's current trading level.

Tesla shares have gained 9.3% in the year so far, while the S&P 500 is up 1.2%.

First Digital Map of Earth's Ocean Floor

As reported by EarthSky.org: Scientists have created a digital map of the global seafloor’s geology. It’s the first time the composition of our planet’s seafloor has been mapped in 40 years; the most recent map was hand drawn in the 1970s.

Published in the latest edition of Geology, the map will help scientists better understand how our oceans have responded, and will respond, to environmental change. It also reveals the deep ocean basins to be much more complex than previously thought. Adriana Dutkiewicz from the University of Sydney is the lead researcher. She said:

In order to understand environmental change in the oceans we need to better understand what is preserved in the geological record in the seabed.

The deep ocean floor is a graveyard with much of it made up of the remains of microscopic sea creatures called phytoplankton, which thrive in sunlit surface waters. The composition of these remains can help decipher how oceans have responded in the past to climate change.

A special group of phytoplankton called diatoms produce about a quarter of the oxygen we breathe and make a bigger contribution to fighting global warming than most plants on land. Their dead remains sink to the bottom of the ocean, locking away their carbon.

The new seafloor geology map demonstrates that diatom accumulations on the seafloor are nearly entirely independent of diatom blooms in surface waters in the Southern Ocean. Professor Dietmar Muller from the University of Sydney, is a study co-author. Muller said:

This disconnect demonstrates that we understand the carbon source, but not the sink.

Some of the most significant changes to the seafloor map are in the oceans surrounding Australia. Dutkiewicz said:

The old map suggests much of the Southern Ocean around Australia is mainly covered by clay blown off the continent, whereas our map shows this area is actually a complex patchwork of microfossil remains. Life in the Southern Ocean is much richer than previously thought.

The scientists analyzed and categorized around 15,000 seafloor samples – taken over half a century on research cruise ships to generate the data for the map. They teamed with the National ICT Australia (NICTA) big data experts to find the best way to use algorithms to turn this multitude of point observations into a continuous digital map. Simon O’Callaghan from NICTA is a study co-author. He said:

Recent images of Pluto’s icy plains are spectacular, but the process of unveiling the hidden geological secrets of the abyssal plains of our own planet was equally full of surprises!

The Underwater Cemetery Where Spaceships Go to Die

As reported by Mental Floss: For centuries, burial at sea has been a common practice across cultural lines. It can be done out of necessity, for religious reasons, or because humans feel that the best way to get rid of something is by dumping it in the ocean. And this isn’t just true for organic matter; we’ve been known to do it with 143-ton hunks of space junk as well.

In the South Pacific, 2500 miles off the New Zealand coast, lies a patch of sea that is home to decades worth of space history. The South Pacific Ocean Uninhabited Area, playfully known as the "Spacecraft Cemetery,” has become a favorite place for space programs to crash land their defunct satellites. Thousands of miles of open ocean separate the spot from any islands or human life. Its neighbor is the lonely Point Nemo—named for the Jules Verne character—that's farther from land than any other spot on Earth. 

There are 161 spacecrafts that have made this stretch of sea their final resting place. Among them are several resupply vehicles that serviced the International Space Station, four of Japan’s HTV cargo crafts, and Russia’s massive Mir space station. You may suspect the area’s ocean floor to look like an otherworldly Air & Space museum, but the spacecraft there are all but unrecognizable. The majority of a spacecraft's mass will burn up during reentry, meaning that all that’s left when it hits the ocean are some charred pieces of scrap metal.

In addition to the Spacecraft Cemetery, there’s an alternate destination for unwanted vehicles that’s even further removed from life on earth. By blasting a satellite away from the planet and into a more remote orbit, it becomes part of what’s called a “graveyard orbit.” This is often preferable as it requires less fuel than bringing it back to earth, but it's a temporary solution that adds to a growing problem. 

The space junk orbiting Earth accumulates with each passing year. And while dumping spacecraft in the ocean may not seem environmentally friendly, the atmosphere significantly reduces the junk matter before it ever reaches the ocean. So may the Spacecraft Cemetery live on, both in reality and in our cosmic nightmares.