With all the craziness in the world, it is worth taking a moment away from all of it to look at something different. NASA’s recently released image of a new morning on Mars, taken by the Curiosity rover at 8:30am local Mars time, is just what we need.
You can read more about this image here, once you have a moment to take it in and enjoy it.
“In accordance with Executive Order 14434, Inaugurating the Era of Super Intelligence, this solicitation uses the terminology “Super Intelligence (SI)” exclusively. This includes SI-enabled capabilities such as machine learning, large language models, and foundation models. Please note that certain existing governmental reference materials and documents predating this solicitation may still contain legacy terminology, as they were previously issues before the establishment of Executive Order 14434.”
-Statement in the cover letter to with the subject line “Request for Proposal (RFP), Solicitation No. 80JSC027R0004, for Commercial Low Earth Orbit (LEO) Destination Contract (CLDC) Asquisition.” Basically, NASA is looking for someone to build a space station but it is not allowed to acknowledge the term AI because the White House has a new name for it. It is bad enough NASA cannot say “space station,” but now it is unable to use common industry language when asking for help building one. There is little sign of SI, or any intelligence for that matter, at work in the government these days.
Late last month, Margaret Hamilton passed away at the age of 90. She will always be remembered as the software engineer who was instrumental in the development of the flight software for NASA’s Apollo program. As a NASA contractor from the Software Engineering Division of the MIT Instrumentation Laboratory, she led a team of 100 engineers. Her work in this area helped to establish software engineering as a dedicated discipline
Olivier de Weck, the Apollo Program Professor and interim head of the MIT Department Aeronautics and Astronautics, later stated:
The Apollo program still stands as one of our greatest testaments to the power of collaboration, ingenuity, and engineering, and Margaret Hamilton was a fundamental contributor to that program’s success. And for her that was just the beginning! She went on to become an entrepreneur and remained on the cutting edge of systems software throughout an extraordinary career, while acting as an advocate, mentor, and inspiration to millions.
You can read more on Ms. Hamilton’s life and career at these sites:
Rest in peace.
Here are some recent space-related stories of interest related to exoplanets.
—Wired: “Astronomers Confirm Discovery of the Youngest Known Exoplanet Ever”
Newly formed exoplanets are often buried within disks of gas and dust, the leftover building blocks from a planet’s formation, also known as a protoplanetary disk. The difficulty of just locating such a new celestial body is part of what makes the discovery of the exoplanet Elias 2-24b—now the youngest ever confirmed—so exciting…Elias 2-24b is located approximately 450 light-years from Earth. It orbits its star at a distance of approximately 55 astronomical units (one astronomical unit being the average distance between Earth and the sun). Its mass is estimated to be at most 1.9 to 4.0 times that of Jupiter, though researchers believe its volume is likely to be much smaller than our local gas giant. Since its host star is less than 1 million years old, Elias 2-24b is estimated to be similarly young.
—CNN: “First-ever Evidence of a Second-generation Planet Detected Around Dead Star“
In a cosmic first, scientists say they have detected a planet that may have formed from the burned remains of its dead host star. The planet is likely a gas giant orbiting a white dwarf called HS 0209+0832 located about 270 light-years from Earth, according to the authors of a study published Monday in the journal Nature Astronomy. After analyzing observations from NASA’s Hubble Space Telescope and other instruments, the team found chemical evidence that suggests the planet could have condensed from material expelled by the star as it fizzled out of energy and collapsed into a white dwarf.
—Space.com: “Astronomers Discover a Cold Lava Planet That May Resemble Early Earth“
Scientists have discovered a new planet that defies all expectations. It’s a lava world, but it’s also cold. In fact, it’s the coldest lava world we’ve ever seen with an atmosphere. Researchers spotted HD 3167 b, a rocky super-Earth covered in lava, orbiting a star 154 light-years away. This planet orbits so closely to its star that a “year” on the world (one revolution around its star) takes only one Earth day. But it’s not just a lava-covered rock — it’s the smallest lava world researchers have ever found. And yet, it has managed to hang onto its atmosphere.
Note: Here is the podcast version of this post.
“Our team is not trying to replace human explorers with robots but instead make human exploration safer and more sustainable by developing highly capable, reliable, and trustworthy robots to work in extreme environments…If we can send more capable robots, we can reduce the risk and make people more effective in doing the things that people do best.”
-Statement by Shaun Azimi, NASA’s Dexterous Robotics Team lead. The 16-member Dexterous Robotics Team at NASA’s Johnson Space Center in Houston includes team member who had experience with earlier robot experiments, including Robonaut 2, used on the International Space Station, and Valkyrie, which is NASA’s first bipedal humanoid robot. Future robots are expected to assist with the Moon Base, lunar exploration, and eventually greater work on Mars (beyond the rovers and helicopter already on the Martian surface). This means that artificial intelligence (AI) will be heading to the moon as well while we still try to figure out what to do with AI back here on Earth. AI is already being used on the Martian surface with the Perseverance and Curiosity rovers.
