SpaceX’s Dragon Capsule for Astronauts Blazes Through Crucial Hover Test

As reported by Yahoo News: With every test, with every launch, with every landing – and with every unfortunate fiery explosion – SpaceX is edging toward its dream of creating a space transportation system that drastically reduces the cost of missions and one day could even take it to Mars.

While all the recent attention has been on SpaceX’s Falcon 9 rocket and its landing technology, engineers have also been working hard on developing the latest version of its Dragon capsule.

The spacecraft, which is currently used to take supplies to the International Space Station, always returns to Earth with a splash, dropping into the ocean with its descent slowed by parachutes.

But SpaceX wants it to land on hard ground using thrusters, like it’s been trying with varying degrees of success with its Falcon 9 rocket. While such landings for the capsule would of course eliminate the need for salvage teams to head out to sea, it’s also crucially important if SpaceX has any hope of achieving its long-term aim of missions to Mars, a place where, the last time we looked, no oceans were sloshing around.

Offering a glimpse into its work, the space company this week released a video (above) of a recent test of the SuperDraco thrusters designed to bring the Dragon 2 capsule – the version designed for manned missions – gently back to the ground “with the accuracy of a helicopter.”

As the footage shows, the thrusters all fire up together to raise the spacecraft for a five-second hover, “generating approximately 33,000 lbs of thrust before returning the vehicle to its resting position,” SpaceX said in comments accompanying the video.

The tests, which are taking place at a SpaceX facility in McGregor, Texas, allow engineers to refine the spacecraft’s landing software and systems, NASA said. The first Dragon flights taking astronauts to the International Space Station could take place as early as next year, though for the time being the return trips to Earth are likely to still involve parachute landings in the sea.

Volvo Says it Will Make ‘Death-Proof’ Cars by 2020

As reported by ExtremeTech: Swedish automaker Volvo has long kept track of how many people are seriously injured or killed while driving its vehicles. It uses this data to see how much safer it can make its vehicles in the event of a crash. Now, the company has made a bold promise — by 2020 there will be no serious injuries or fatalities in a Volvo car or SUV.

Cars are getting smarter with the addition of autonomous technologies, and this is how Volvo hopes to reach its goal of zero deaths in its cars. This does not, of course, preclude someone from driving recklessly and getting themselves killed. However, conventional driving should be made much safer with the inclusion of a number of technologies. It starts with making the interior of the car safer with improved airbags and restraints. Then things get more futuristic.

Volvo already has various smart features in its cars, but by combining them all, it becomes much harder to end up in a serious accident. Adaptive cruise control for example, is already available on many cars. It allows you to set a maximum speed, but uses radar to maintain a safe distance from the car in front of you. It can even apply the brakes if need be. This can be taken a step further with full collision avoidance. When a crash is likely, the driver will be warned. If action isn’t taken, the car can begin braking to avoid, or at least minimize the impact.

A relatively new technology that Volvo plans to make extensive use of is lane assistance. Cars will use cameras to detect lanes and alert the driver if they begin to drift. This has been found to dramatically reduce crashes from dozing off at the wheel and distracted driving. Road signs can be identified by cameras as well to help alert drivers to posted speed limits and upcoming hazards.

Cameras will also be used to watch for pedestrians in the vicinity of the vehicle. This is similar to the technology that is used in self-driving cars to identify potential obstacles on the road. The driver can be alerted if a person is in the car’s path and the brake can be automatically applied. In addition to people, cameras can be used to spot large animals in the roadway. For example, moose are common in Volvo’s home territory, and they’ll really mess your car up. Volvo has created a system that can act to avoid colliding with such a critter, saving both you and it.

Automakers like Ford and Tesla are moving quickly toward fully autonomous vehicles. Then there’s Google’s self-driving car program. Volvo too is in the early stages of driverless tech, and handing control over to a computer when it’s clear something is wrong could be a step in that direction. Proving that vehicles can prevent deaths with automated technologies could go a long way toward convincing the public and regulators that self-driving cars are the best option. Volvo thinks these self-driving cars will be the safest of all.

Still, claiming something to be death-proof seems risky. They said the Titanic was unsinkable, after all.

Meet FAROS, the Firefighting Drone that flies, Crawls up Walls

As reported by ScienceDaily: The 1974 American disaster film Towering Inferno depicted well the earnest struggles of firefighters engaged in ending a fire at a 138-story skyscraper. To this day, fires at high-rise buildings are considered one of the most dangerous disasters.

Skyscraper fires are particularly difficult to contain because of their ability to spread rapidly in high-occupant density spaces and the challenge of fighting fires in the buildings' complex vertical structure. Accessibility to skyscrapers at the time of the fire is limited, and it is hard to assess the initial situation.

A research team at the Korea Advanced Institute of Science and Technology (KAIST) led by Professor Hyun Myung of the Civil and Environmental Engineering Department developed an unmanned aerial vehicle, named the Fireproof Aerial RObot System (FAROS), which detects fires in skyscrapers, searches the inside of the building, and transfers data in real time from fire scenes to the ground station.

As an extended version of Climbing Aerial RObot System (CAROS) that was created in 2014 by the research team, the FAROS can also fly and climb walls.

The FAROS, whose movements rely on a quadrotor system, can freely change its flight mode into a spider's crawling on walls, and vice versa, facilitating unimpeded navigation in the labyrinth of narrow spaces filled with debris and rubble inside the blazing building.

The drone "estimates" its pose by utilizing a 2-D laser scanner, an altimeter, and an Inertia Measurement Unit sensor to navigate autonomously. With the localization result and using a thermal-imaging camera to recognize objects or people inside a building, the FAROS can also detect and find the fire-ignition point by employing dedicated image-processing technology.

The FAROS is fireproof and flame-retardant. The drone's body is covered with aramid fibers to protect its electric and mechanical components from the direct effects of the flame. The aramid fiber skin also has a buffer of air underneath it, and a thermoelectric cooling system based on the Peltier effect to help maintain the air layer within a specific temperature range.

The research team demonstrated the feasibility of the localization system and wall-climbing mechanism in a smoky indoor environment. The fireproof test showed that the drone could endure the heat of over 1,000° Celsius from butane gas and ethanol aerosol flames for over one minute.

Professor Myung said, "As cities become more crowded with skyscrapers and super structures, fire incidents in these high-rise buildings are life-threatening massive disasters. The FAROS can be aptly deployed to the disaster site at an early stage of such incidents to minimize the damage and maximize the safety and efficiency of rescue mission."

The research team has recently started to enhance the performance of the fireproof design for the exteroceptive sensors including a 2-D laser scanner and a thermal-imaging camera because those sensors could be more exposed to fire than other inside sensors and electric components.

With Latest Launch, India IRNSS En-Route to its Own GPS System by Midyear

As reported by SpaceNews: In its  first mission for 2016,  the Indian Space Research Organisation on Wednesday successfully launched the fifth satellite of its space-based navigational system that it says will become fully operational by middle of this year.

The nationally televised launch took place at 9:31 a.m. local time from Satish Dhawan Space Center, the country’s spaceport in Sriharikota on India’s southeastern coast.

The 14.2 billion rupee ($212 million) Indian Regional Navigation Satellite System (IRNSS) is a constellation of seven near-identical satellites, three in geostationary orbit fixed above the equator; two in geosynchronous orbit inclined at 29 degrees; and two spares. It is designed to provide positioning service to users in India as well as the region extending up to 1,500 kilometers from its borders. Four of the satellites — IRNSS-1A to 1D — are already in place.

In Wednesday’s launch, ISRO’s Polar Satellite Launch Vehicle injected the fifth satellite — IRNSS-1E — into the sub-geosynchronous transfer orbit with a perigee of 282 kilometers and an apogee of 20,655 kilometers with an inclination of 19.21 degrees with respect to the equator, very close to the intended orbit. “It was the 32nd consecutive success for the ISRO’s workhorse,”  said K.Sivan, director of the Vikram Sarabai Space Centre in Tiruvnathapuram that produced the rocket.

Like its predecessors, the 1,425-kilogram IRNSS-1E satellite has two payloads: a navigation payload operating in L5-band and S-band; and a ranging payload consisting of a C-band transponder and retro reflectors for laser ranging. A Rubidium atomic clock is part of the navigation payload for navigation and ranging. Credit: ISRO

ISRO said the “satellite is in good health and its solar panels have been deployed.” After four orbit-raising maneuvers using the satellite’s onboard motor, it will be positioned at its allotted geosynchronous orbit with a 28.1 degree inclination at 111.75 degrees East longitude, it said.

“We have started the year with a grand success but we have still a long way to go,” ISRO Chairman Kiran Kumar said in a post-launch address. “Two more satellites have to be launched in the next two months to complete our navigational system and we have to test fly the heavy launch Mark-3 version of our Geostationary Satellite Launch Vehicle this year”.

Like its predecessors, the 1,425-kilogram IRNSS-1E satellite has two payloads: a navigation payload operating in L5-band and S-band; and a ranging payload consisting of a C-band transponder and retro reflectors for laser ranging. A Rubidium atomic clock is part of the navigation payload for navigation and ranging. According to ISRO the design of the satellites makes the IRNSS system interoperable with the U.S. GPS and European Galileo systems.

ISRO said the four IRNSS satellites already in space have started functioning from their designated slots and their “signal-in-space” has been validated by various agencies inside and outside the country.

“The current achieved position  accuracy is 20 meters over 18 hours of the day with the four satellites. With the launch of IRNSS-1E and subsequent 1F and 1G in February and March 2016, the IRNSS constellation will be complete for total operational use,” ISRO said.

ISRO said the IRNSS will make available two types of services — a standard positioning service open to all users, and a restricted service with encrypted signals in the bands reserved for authorized users. The IRNSS satellites are designed to operate for 10 years.

Safely Travel Inside a Glacier Through the Eyes of a Drone (Video)

As reported by GizModo: Given the shifting ice can suddenly close a massive crevasse that runs hundreds of feet deep into a glacier, safely exploring them is all but impossible. Unless you’ve got access to a flying drone that isn’t sent flying out of control the second it hits an obstacle.

Many drones have protective housings around their propellers to protect the blades, but Flyability’s Gimball wraps the entire craft in a specially-designed wire cage. It doesn’t just protect the drone, it also freely rotates when it encounters an obstacle so that the drone isn’t suddenly steered off course.

The resulting video is remarkably stable given how often the Gimball drone is actually crashing into the icy walls lining the narrow crevasse. You don’t even need to be an expert drone pilot in order to pilot the drone deep into this glacier. Although, you’ll probably want to practice a bit ahead of time to ensure you can also safely fly the $25,000 drone back out.

Automakers Still Have a Lot to Learn from Tesla

As reported by The Verge: First, let's get this out of the way: arguing that big automakers need to learn anything from Tesla is bold, I admit, considering Tesla's often dire financials — and the fact that when you compare it to an automotive giant like Toyota or Volkswagen, its production output is still a rounding error away from zero. Tesla has yet to prove it can survive at scale, and that won't happen until the company is taking orders for a large number of Model 3s, producing them, and meeting demand. That's two years away at a bare minimum; likely more.

But did Tesla prod the legacy auto industry to move faster on practical, mass-market electric vehicles than it may have otherwise? Perhaps. It's not unreasonable to think so, especially considering that GM has graduated from recognizing Tesla's existence to outright trolling it lately. (Realistically, though, EVs were an inevitability even without Tesla. I'd actually argue it was that inevitability that begat Tesla, not the other way around.)

Never mind EVs, though — the Bolt will be in dealerships this year, there's a new Nissan Leaf on the way, and many other practical electrics from a variety of manufacturers are in the pipeline. That domino tile has already been tipped, whether Tesla was the one to tip it or not.

But there's another area where Tesla's influence needs desperately to be felt: upgradeability.

BMW AND GM BOTH DROPPED THE BALL LAST WEEK

Last week, BMW was singled out by the secretary of transportation over its Remote Control Parking feature officially being in compliance with federal safety standards, a big deal after the company had withheld from the US market over regulatory fears. Afterward, the company told The Verge that 7 Series vehicles already sold in the US could be retrofitted with the feature, bringing it to parity with cars sold in other markets. The next day, it reversed course, citing missing hardware on the 7s that have already been sold.

Then there's GM's Super Cruise, a semi-autonomous technology akin to Tesla's Autopilot. It's debuting on the CT6 sedan and was originally slated for 2016 availability, but it has now slipped to 2017 — and GM is already saying that CT6 examples sold beforehand won't be upgradeable, CNET reports.

Meanwhile, let's take a look at Tesla's track record. Every Model S and X on the road today runs the same software version, delivered over the air. It started installing the necessary hardware to enable Autopilot a solid year before the feature was actually enabled. Model S vehicles built before that are out of luck, yes, but you have to start somewhere. GM is taking the opposite approach: it is building obsolescence into cars that aren't even on the production line yet. (The CT6 doesn't officially hit dealerships until March.) Heck, Tesla is still supporting its long-discontinued Roadster with upgrade packages.

For the sake of argument, let's give GM some leeway here and say that the design and placement of Super Cruise's sensors and related hardware aren't yet finalized, and therefore there's nothing that can be built into the car ahead of time to prepare it for a software upgrade. (I'd say that's a little lame, considering Tesla had the hardware in production in 2014, but sure, okay.) And in fairness, many automakers are offering post-sale upgrades to CarPlay and Android Auto. But we're still nowhere near the flexibility and futureproofness that Tesla has demonstrated. Just look at Tesla Motors Club's comprehensive software changelog to get a sense of how these cars are evolving over time.

UPGRADEABILITY IS 

But a car from virtually any other automaker is a time capsule. Ford has been pretty good about upgrading Sync on production cars, but that's strictly infotainment — you won't likely get a new instrument cluster UI in your 2016 Ford Fusion, unless there's some sort of weird recall. You won't get a new regenerative braking algorithm pushed to your Chevy Volt as it sits in your garage overnight. Generally speaking, your car will not be made better over time.

This kind of atomic, immutable treatment of the automobile worked 25 years ago; it even worked okay five years ago. But today, car companies are dead set on competing with CarPlay and Android Auto, insistent on owning (or at least co-owning) the control elements of the dashboard. I say that if you want to play that game, you need to play by the same rules that Apple and Google brought to the table — rules invented with the smartphone, and ported to the car — which say that these devices inherently improve over time. They have to, by their nature. At a bare minimum, connected cars, like smartphones, need to be able to respond to cybersecurity threats. And software moves quickly enough that there's no reason a car shouldn't simply get better, prettier, and more useful over the months or years that you use it.

It's not that artificially limiting this type of upgradeability incentivizes car buyers to buy new cars more frequently, either, especially as most major car companies batten down the hatches for a new era of car sharing and other alternative usage models. Quite the contrary: failing to improve a car over time will alienate its user.

THEY'RE NOT THERE YET

There does seem to be some semblance of recognition across the industry that this will become table stakes in the coming years. GM's Phil Abram, for instance, told me several months ago that his company is working toward the goal of full upgradeability. "We're going to keep building on that list of items or parts of the vehicle that are capable of doing that, and working through all of the infrastructure that needs to be in place in order to do that effectively," he told me at the time. And more automakers are adding cellular connections to their cars — Ford and Toyota are recent adoptees — which make it easier to push new software.

But they're not there yet. That's really distressing in the middle of one of the most transformative periods in the history of transportation. And in the meantime, unless you're buying a $60,000-plus Tesla, I have no reason to think that the car you own today will feel current, relevant, and state-of-the art in five years.

Amazon: Our Drones 'Will be More Like Horses Than Cars'

As reported by The Verge: Amazon's delivery drones will be "more like horses than cars," according to Paul Misener, Amazon's vice president for global public policy. Misener makes the claim in an interview with Yahoo, but he doesn't mean that his company's aerial vehicles will be covered in fur and burdened with a love for sugar — instead, he likens them to horses because they'll automatically avoid obstacles that could be a danger to them.

"Try riding a horse into a tree."

"If you have a small tree in your front yard," Misener explains, "and you want to bang your car into it for some reason, you can do that. Your spouse might not be happy with you, but you can do it. But try riding a horse into the tree. It won't do it. The horse will see the tree and go around it. Same way our drones will not run into trees, because they will know not to run into it." Misener says Amazon's prototype drones have "sense-and-avoid" technology that aims to keep them out of power lines, trees, and other obstacles that could come between them and your ordered items.

That's prototypes, plural. Amazon is working on several variations of drone at the same time, Misener says, and is likely to use different drones when the time comes to actually roll the service out for customers in different locations. "Our customers in the United States live in hot, dry, dusty areas like Phoenix," he says, "but they also live in hot, wet, rainy environments like Orlando, or up in the Colorado Rockies." Their homes, too, are different. "Some live in rural farmhouses, some live in high-rise city skyscrapers, and then everything in between, in suburban and exurban environments." Those that live in larger homes with yards can expect deliveries dropped off there if they're not home when the drone calls, but Misener says Amazon is still working on how to get you your items if you live in an apartment building.

Amazon isn't worried about people shooting drones to get their items

Some have expressed concern that the sight of a drone carrying an Amazon package would entice people along its flight path to break out a rifle and try to shoot it down, but Misener dismisses the fears. "I suppose they could shoot at trucks, too," he says, glossing over the fact that trucks — unlike drones — have human drivers that might not take kindly to being shot at. But he says that Amazon thinks its Prime Air drones will be "as normal as seeing a delivery truck driving down the street someday," reducing the novelty and stopping would-be shooters from intercepting your orders.

More of an immediate concern is the legislation stopping Amazon's drones from getting off the ground. Amazon has proposed a limit that would keep piloted aircraft above 500 feet, while leaving a window from 200 to 400 feet that would allow its Prime Air drone fleet to operate, but the government body has been dragging its feet so far. "We believe that [the FAA] must begin, in earnest, planning for the rules that are more sophisticated, that go to the kinds of operations that Amazon Prime Air will encompass," Misener says. "Other countries already are doing this," he explains. "There's no reason why the United States must be first. We hope it is."