NASA Launches Website Hosting Stunning, Regularly Updated Earth Imagery

As reported by GizMag: NASA has launched a new website allowing the public to view images snapped by its Deep Space Climate Observatory (DSCOVR) satellite. The service will provide multiple shots of stunning Earth imagery seven days a week, mere hours after capture.

DSCOVR is operated through a partnership between NASA, the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) and the US Air Force, with a mission to monitor space weather emanating from the Sun, and serve as a form of early warning system for potentially harmful events.

DSCOVR will also make use of its position relative to Earth to keep track of daily variations in our planet's atmospheric and surface health. The images uploaded to the website are captured by the probe's Earth Polychromatic Imaging Camera (EPIC), an advanced camera with an effective resolution ranging from 6.2 - 9.4 miles (10 - 15 km).

The orbiter is able to regularly capture Earth's disk fully bathed in sunlight thanks to its presence at what is known as the L1 Lagrange point, a special orbital position about one million miles out from our planet that places the probe in a near constant position suspended between the Earth and Sun.

Images featured on the website are captured roughly 12 – 36 hours prior to release, and feature a simple graphic to the top left of the page informing users of the relative positions and distances of the DSCOVR satellite and our Sun. The page also displays a globe highlighting the landmasses that are in view.

Archived images will be accessible by searching for the subject's capture date and the continents displayed in the image.

With the website operational, NASA will provide a regular stream of images to the public at a rate of at least a dozen per day, representing the most comprehensive and unified full-Earth viewing service ever launched.

Open Garden's 'FireChat' in Tahiti to Create a Mesh Network that Eliminates the Need for Wireless Carriers

As reported by Venture Beat: If you’ve dreamed of a mobile world where you don’t need AT&T or Verizon Wireless, then you might consider a vacation to Tahiti.

Open Garden, makers of the mobile app FireChat, have announced a partnership with local leaders that will turn the French Polynesian island of Tahiti into a post-carrier paradise. FireChat is a peer-to-peer wireless networking app that relays calls and messages through phones by creating a mesh network that doesn’t require the traditional cell network to send messages.

Under the terms of the new project, residents of the island will be able to communicate with each other without needing a data plan or other kind of connection to the Internet.

“We are very grateful for the opportunity to work on the Smart Tahiti project spearheaded by STN and with the City of Arue,” Christophe Daligault, chief marketing officer of Open Garden, said in a statement. “Our technology alleviates the dependency on traditional infrastructure and enables communities to create their own free communication networks that are disaster-proof.”

The hope is that the new network will help more people get connected to each other. But it will also provide a backup network in the event of some crisis that knocks out the island’s infrastructure.

Founded more than four years ago, Open Garden created FireChat to offer a different way for users to construct wireless networks. Users download the app, which then finds other nearby FireChat users via the phone’s Wi-Fi and Bluetooth. Fully encrypted private and public messages and pictures can be sent via this mesh networking, hopping from one FireChat user to another until they’re delivered to the intended recipient.

This ability to connect without using telecom carriers has made the app incredibly popular among people who want greater privacy. During last year’s protests in Hong Kong, the app was downloaded hundreds of thousands of times and was credited with creating a communication system that local authorities couldn’t monitor or block.

A few months later, Open Garden raised $10.8 million to continue expanding the reach of FireChat. The app has become popular at large concerts and festivals. And the company also hopes to use it to bring networks to people in regions with little or no wireless network access.

This past summer, the app became popular with those attending the Burning Man Festival in Nevada.

Federal Motor Carrier Safety Administration's Scott Darling: Electronic Logging Device Rule Coming

As reported by FleetOwner: Scott Darling, acting administrator for the Federal Motor Carrier Safety Administration (FMCSA), said the agency’s long awaited final rule mandating electronic logging devices (ELDs) for the trucking industry should be “out in the next several months” as it is in the “final stages” of approval at the Office of Management and Budget (OMB).

In a speech given here at the American Trucking Associations (ATA) annual Management Conference & Exhibition (MC&E), Darling also called upon the industry to help his agency weed out “unsafe” operators.

“We need to do everything we can to take unsafe carriers and drivers off the road,” he stressed. “They hurt our industry and our economy.”

Darling added that FMCSA is “doing its part” to try and help the industry solve itsgrowing driver shortage issue, expanding a program to grant qualified military veterans waivers so they can obtain a civilian commercial driver’s licenses (CDLs).

“We’ve expanded this program to all 50 states and the District of Columbia,” he said. “So far, more than 10,000 [veterans] have taken advantage of this waiver program.”

Darling also expects FMCSA to form more partnerships with a variety of industry “stakeholders” in the year ahead to keep improving the safety profile of the trucking industry.

“Remember: always think safety first at home and at work,” he said in closing.

Bill Graves, ATA’s president and CEO, saluted Darling for his work with the industry in his remarks.

“We appreciate the openness you bring to the office, the commitment of time you’ve given to our industry and our events and the rare quality – one which we’re unfortunately seeing less and less of in public service - of being able to disagree without being disagreeable,” Graves said.

“We share your goal – and the goal of FMCSA – to make America’s road safer for everyone,” he said. “And if the worst that can be said about us is that we have disagreements over whose idea will be safer than the others, then we’re not doing too bad.”

Tesla Autopilot Fail Videos Emerge, Because Nobody Likes to Listen

As reported by C|NET: It hasn't been a week, but already, fail videos of Tesla's new Autopilot software are popping up on YouTube. This is not unexpected, as the automaker's founder, Elon Musk, admitted that it's still technically in a beta-testing phase. Still, it has the potential to send the tech-averse into a frenzy, especially when the media gets involved. The only problem with this is that it's not the car's fault as much as it is the driver's.

Tesla made explicit mention, both during its press conference and afterwards on its website, that the driver should remain in control of the vehicle at all times. Yes, there are several videos (CNET's included) showing plenty of hands-off driving, but that was under the supervision of Tesla employees. The automaker's website spells it out explicitly: "Tesla Autopilot functions like the systems that airplane pilots use when conditions are clear. The driver is still responsible for, and ultimately in control of, the car."

If you look at the two videos below, you'll see why it's important to keep your hands on the steering wheel. Towards the end of the first video, the vehicle makes a strange dive to the side of the road, but the owner had his hands on the wheel, so he caught the car before it hit the curb. In the second video, the car appears to dive into oncoming traffic, being saved only when the driver's hands return to the wheel.

This flagrant disregard for the rules is what will doom semi-autonomous driving before it truly takes off. An accident will occur, the media will jump all over it, and everybody will ask if the technology is truly ready for the road. Trouble is, everybody is calling this "autonomous driving" when it still requires plenty of human intervention. A mixture of increased expectations and lowered defenses results in the trouble you saw above. That's why the system is called Autopilot -- it's used when conditions are ideal, and there's still a human to step in when needed.

Thus far, the videos seem to have no affect on Musk's plan to expand Autopilot to markets outside the United States, as evidenced in this tweet from earlier this morning.

A Robot Finds Its Way Using Artificial “GPS” Brain Cells

One robot has been given a simulated version of the brain cells that let animals build a mental map of their surroundings.

As reported by MIT Technology Review: The behavior and interplay of two types of neurons in the brain helps give humans and other animals an uncanny ability to navigate by building a mental map of their surroundings. Now one robot has been given a similar cluster of virtual cells to help it find its own way around.

Researchers in Singapore simulated two types of cells known to be used for navigation in the brain—so-called “place” and “grid” cells—and showed they could enable a small-wheeled robot to find its way around. Rather than simulate the cells physically, they created a simple two-dimensional model of the cells in software. The work was led by Haizhou Li, a professor at the Agency for Science, Technology and Research (A*STAR).

“Artificial grid cells could provide an adaptive and robust mapping and navigation system,” Li wrote in an e-mail coauthored with Huajin Tang, a research scientist at A*STAR, and Yuan Miaolong, a graduate student and first author on a paper about the work. “Humans and animals have an instinctual ability to navigate freely and deliberately in an environment rather effortlessly.”

The work is significant because it shows the potential for having machines mimic more complex activity in the brain. Roboticists increasingly use artificial neural networks to train robots to perform tasks such as object recognition and grasping, but these networks do not faithfully reflect the complexity and subtlety of a real biological brain.

“Neural networks are actually very loosely inspired by the brain,” says Oren Etzioni, CEO of the Allen Institute for Artificial Intelligence in Seattle. “They are distributed computing elements, but they’re very simple as compared with neurons; the connections are extremely simple as compared with a synapse.” He says this new development that takes inspiration from the brain “seems like good work.”

Place cells were first identified in the 1970s by John O’Keefe, who found that they fire whenever a mouse passed the same spot in an area. Grid cells, pinpointed in a different part of the brain by May-Britt and Edvard Moser in 2005, activate when an animal arrives at any location on a triangular grid of points, thereby providing a more detailed sense of position in space.

Together with other types of cells, and by processing sensory information, grid and place cells are thought to afford animals with an innate sense of the world around them and of their location within it. The discovery of these cells earned the three scientists involved the Nobel Prize in Medicine in 2014 (see “Nobel for Brain’s Location Code”).

The Singaporean researchers tested the approach on a robot let loose in a 35-square-meter office space. They had the robot roam around the office space, and verified that its artificial place and grid cells functioned in a comparable way to their biological counterparts.

The navigation system isn’t yet as good as a conventional one, and the researchers say they need to develop a better understanding of the way biological cells function in order to improve it. However, they suggest that it could offer advantages over conventional systems, which may be confused by changes to an environment, for example.

As well as providing a more efficient and reliable way for machines to get about, Li hopes that the work could help neuroscientists understand the functioning of the brain’s navigation system. “This will provide a solution to predict neural activities using mobile robots before conducting experiments on rats,” the researchers write.

Artificial intelligence researchers are increasingly looking to research on the brain for ways to refine modern approaches to machine learning. However, Etzioni of the Allen Institute notes that the complexity of the organ makes applying neurological research difficult. “Which is why this work is exciting,” he says.

Zero Motorcycles' Latest Electric Bikes Pack More Powerful Engines, Tesla SuperCharger Interface

As reported by Engadget:Electric motorcycle maker Zero has announced its 2016 lineup and in particular it's expanding its stable of two-wheeled vehicles. The new FXS is a lightweight supermoto-inspired bike for the city while the DSR adds more power to the company's fleet of dual sport bikes with additional toque and horsepower. Powering these new bikes and others in the line is an updated Z-force motor that promises improved performance and efficiency.

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2016 Zero Motorcycle line

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While rivals Mission and Brammo have either completely disappeared or been swallowed up by a larger company, Zero keeps improving and introducing new bikes. It's steadily improved its offerings over its 10-year history. I rode the DS model a few years and wasn't impressed. It felt like a bad motorcycle with an electric motor strapped on. A few months back I rode the 2015 DS, FX and SR models and was impressed at how much the company had come at creating vehicles that were not only real motorcycles, but were fun to ride.

The new DSR has 25 percent more horsepower and 56 percent more torque than the regular DS. That performance increase is due to the new high-output 660-watt motor controller. The base model ($15,995) has a city range of 147 miles and freeway range of 70 miles when cruising at 70-miles an hour. The optional "Power Tank" adds 2.8 kWh of power storage (for an additional $2,674) that extends the range to 179 miles in the city and 86 on the highway.

The FXS continues the FX's mission to make riding on the street way more fun than it should be. It has 70 pounds of toque and up to 44 horsepower in a less-than-a-300-pound body. The 3.3 kWh version with 45 mile city range runs $8,495 while the 6.5 kWh version with a 90 mile city range will set you back $10,990.

The motorcycles are both powered by the updated Z-Force motor. Zero says the motor produces power more efficiently, cools more rapidly and has a higher thermal capability. Basically, it lets you ride the bike harder and at higher sustained speeds with better range. In addition to the new bikes, the motor will be in the 2016 Zero SR, Zero S ZF13.0 and Zero DS ZF13.0.

Zero is also introducing an industry standard (J1772) charging port in its new Charge Tank accessory. It's the same charging port system used by Tesla and the Fiat 500e. This is in addition to charging via a regular wall outlet. Known industry wide as Level 2 charging, the new tank will speed up charging from up to over eight hours to about two or three depending on the bike. The Charge Tank will be available in the spring for an additional $1,988 and will work with 2015 and later SR, DS, DSR and S models.

All these new bikes will be available in dealerships starting in November.

SpaceX Just Announced Their Next Historic Rocket Launch, and It's Ridiculously Soon

As reported by Business Insider: "We believe in the next six to eight weeks we'll be able to return to flight," Lee Rosen, who is the vice president of mission and launch operations at SpaceX, said on Tuesday at the International Astronautical Congress, Reuters reported. 

That means we can expect to see the next SpaceX launch by early December, which is ridiculously soon, considering the company suffered a devastating loss less than five months ago on June 28.

To return to space so soon is a notable achievement.

For comparison, Orbital Sciences Corporation, now called Orbital ATK Inc., has not flown since their Antares rocket exploded about one year ago on Oct. 28, 2014. And NASA waited more than two years to launch one of their Space Shuttles after the Columbia disaster in 2003.

Exciting upgrades and more historic landing attempts

Since the explosion, SpaceX has not only identified the problem but they have also begun to repair and make some exciting upgrades to their Falcon 9 rockets.

Most impressive is that the company, who is a world leader in reusable rocket technology, will now begin to attempt their historic rocket landings for most launch missions.

SpaceX attempted two of these landings earlier this year, and while neither were successful, these landings are like watching the future of spaceflight become reality. As shown below, the first stage of a Falcon 9 attempts to land on a platform in the ocean:

Flickr/SpaceX PhotosFirst stage Falcon 9 attempting to land on a barge named 'Just Read the Instructions'

Before the upgrades, SpaceX could only attempt these rocket landings for resupply missions to the International Space Station, which cost less rocket fuel therefore leave some left over for the rocket's landing attempts.

But resupply missions account for less than half of all SpaceX Falcon 9 flights.

Now, the upgrades have created a more powerful version of the Falcon 9 that can store fuel to attempt landings for most missions, and this December's will be no exception.

SpaceX's next mission will use a Falcon 9 to carry a communications satellite into orbit for the Luxembourg-based global satellite service provider SES SA. 

Watching the Future Become Reality

Generations from now, people will look back and compare 20th with 21st century spaceflight, and one of the main differences will be reusable rocket technology.

Space rockets cost tens of millions of dollars to make and most are discarded after a single flight. SpaceX wants to change that by recovering the first stage of their Falcon 9 rockets — and they will be attempting the next landing this December. 

While other companies, like France-based Arianespace and Jeff Bezos' Blue Origin, have proposed designs for future reusable rockets, SpaceX is the first company to actually fly and attempt to retrieve one. Stay tuned for the next landing attempt coming soon.