The Russian Defense Ministry has started its work to draft the statement of objectives (SOO) for Russia’s advanced nuclear-powered aircraft carrier, a source in Russia’s defense industry told TASS on Wednesday.
"The SOO on the new aircraft carrier is now being created and has not yet been sent to the United Shipbuilding Corporation (USC)," the source said without speculating on when this work may be over. "The Defense Ministry and the Russian Navy Main Staff share the opinion that the new aircraft carrier should be nuclear-powered."
TASS has been unable to officially confirm the information at the time of the publication.
Earlier, a source in Russia’s shipbuilding industry told TASS that scientific and research work to design Russia’s first nuclear-powered aircraft carrier would begin in 2023.
Dutch scientists have created the world's smallest autonomous racing drone.
Extinction Rebellion is considering - at least claiming to - be considering shutting down Heathrow Airport with drones as a protest. They are now stating they will wait until after summer - tourist season.
Flytech's Birdie UAV can become VTOL with an add-on.
Six experiments have been granted a place aboard to the future Chinese Space Station through a joint international cooperation initiative, with three more receiving conditional acceptance.
The results of the selection process were announced jointly Wednesday by the United Nations Office for Outer Space Affairs (UNOOSA) and the China Manned Space Agency (CMSA) on the sidelines of the 62nd session of the Committee on the Peaceful Uses of Outer Space in Vienna.
The UNOOSA-CMSA initiative received 42 applications from organizations in 27 countries following an Announcement of Opportunity issued in May 2018. The winning institutions are based in a wide range of countries, namely Belgium, China, France, Germany, India, Italy, Japan, Kenya, the Netherlands, Norway, Mexico, Poland, Peru, Russian Federation, Saudi Arabia, Spain and Switzerland.
India plans to have its own space station in the future and conduct separate missions to study the Sun and Venus, it said on Thursday, as the nation moves to bolster its status as a leader in space technologies and inspire the young minds to take an interest in scientific fields.
India’s space agency said today that it will begin working on its space station following its first manned mission to space, called Gaganyaan (which means “space vehicle” in Sanskrit), in 2022 — just in time to commemorate 75 years of the country’s independence from Britain. The government has sanctioned Rs 10,000 crores ($1.5 billion) for the Gaganyaan mission, it was unveiled today.
“We have to sustain the Gaganyaan program after the launch of the human space mission. In this context, India is planning to have its own space station,” said Dr. Kailasavadivoo Sivan, chairman of Indian Space Research Organization (ISRO). ISRO is India’s equivalent to NASA.
Iranshotdown an American MQ-4C Global Hawk/Triton UAV. The US claimed the drone was in international waters. This crisisrapidlyescalated. Trump didn't think Iran would have intentionally shot down the drone. How to react to the Iranian attack is no small or simple thing. The Iranians claim they warned the drone multiple times before opening fire. The US was 10 minutes from launching an attack when Trump called it off. This was the first successful shoot down of a Global Hawk or its derivatives. This was the second drone shot down after several attempts.
The USAF is buying its COTS quad copters from Parrot, a French company. is that the same as PSI?
A drone airbase in Niger built by the US is finished, but no flights have begun due to security concerns.
The US Air Force claims Iran tried to shoot down an American Reaper drone.
A USAF Reaper shot down by Yemen Houthi rebels with Iranian help.
Another Reaper was shot at by a MANPADS during the tanker attacks.
USAF Reapers participated in Red Flag for the first time.
The USAF AFL stated the XQ-58A Valkyrie has flown for a second time.
Malaysia will deploy its ScanEagles with its Navy.
Philippines is close to finalizing a $180M deal to buy Elbit drones.
The Russian Ohhotnik-B supposed did a high speed run with a hop, leaving the ground, but not truly flying. First flight is supposed to be July or August.
A Russian firm has made a drone with a blinding/dazzling laser for security forces.
Did Russia spoof GPS lately to protect Putin from drones?
Russia is concerned about US drones being deployed to Poland.
Saudi Arabia may have been attacked again by drones. The Houthi rebels claimed attacks on the Jizan and Abha airports. And the Saudis are saying there was another attack. The Saudis said the Abha attack was beaten back and 5 drones were shot down. The Abha and Jizan airports were attacked again. The drone attacks are almost daily now.
The Syrian army claims to have downed a drone near the Hama airport.
Taiwan has obtained Honeywell engines for its Teng Yun UAV.
Taiwan is going to spend $2.5 billion developing suicide drones.
Hunting Ingalls is helping build the unmanned ships and subs of the future, including the Orca.
Exoskeletons:
The US Special Forces is shutting down the Talos powered armor program and spinning out individual components. The parts being kept are transitioning to the HEO effort.
3d Printing:
GE has 3d printed parts for the General Dynamics entrant for the Ground Combat Vehicle competition.
Despite early-stage robust funding, NASA is facing serious management and schedule challenges in its ambitious Europa Clipper program that will send an orbiter and lander to Jupiter’s ice covered moon beginning in 2023.
“Specifically, NASA’s aggressive development schedule, a stringent conflict of interest process during instrument selection, and an insufficient evaluation of cost and schedule estimates has increased project integration challenges and led the Agency to accept instrument cost proposals subsequently found to be far too optimistic,” the audit found.
“Moreover, Clipper has had to compete with at least four other major JPL-managed projects for critical personnel resources, causing concern that the project may not have a sufficient workforce with the required skills at critical periods in its development cycle,” the report said.
The audit also noted that the Europa program’s biggest backer, John Culberson, no longer chairs the House appropriations subcommittee. The Republican Congressman from Texas was defeated in his reelection bid last year.
The House Armed Services Committee voted to establish a United States Space Corps within the Department of the Air Force. The vote came in the overnight hours Thursday. The committee began its markup of the 2020 National Defense Authorization Act Wednesday morning. After a nearly 21-hour session, the committee passed the NDAA 33-24.
The Space Corps amendment was offered by the HASC Strategic Forces subcommittee leaders Chairman Jim Cooper (D-Tenn.) and Ranking Member Mike Rogers (R-Ala.). The proposal is similar to what the committee proposed in the 2018 NDAA, including the name of the new space service, U.S. Space Corps, rather than the Trump administration’s preferred name, U.S. Space Force.
Like the Marine Corps, the Space Corps would be led by a four-star Commandant who would be a member of the Joint Chiefs of Staff.
Neandertals seem to have split from modern humans further back in time than the genes suggest.
The ancestors of Neandertals and Denisovans interbred with yet another ancient hominin population before they mixed it up with modern humans.
A jaw from a Neandertal from Regourdou, France shows the individual ate what appears to be typical foods for human hunter gatherers in a temperate forest based on the microwear analysis.
An odd preprint paper questions whether or not the introgression of Neandertals into modern humans was as much as previously thought.
H. erectus:
A new site at Madigou in China dates from 1.2 million years ago and contains stone tools.
Genus Australopithecus:
A. anamensis:
The verbatral morphology of A. anamensis appears to be more derived than A. afarensis.
A. afarensis:
The comparison of diets of pigs from Africa and australopithecines is examined and conclusions hominin diet diversification had not happened by the end of A. afarensis.
META:
The first metacarpal gets compared between different hominins and Great Apes.
Did our ancestor's ability to ingest alcohol lead to the evolution of people? So wonders the Drunken Monkey Hypothesis.
A gene has been found that helps humans deal with high sugar diets.
Modern humans might be unique in our hearing capabilities.
Western Galilee's environment from the Late Middle and Upper Pleistocene gets examined.
Even as NASA’s plans for the Lunar Gateway evolve, the space agency is continuing work on developing a habitat for the crew that will use the facility as an orbiting base for the study of the Moon.
India is setting up a military space agency called the Defence Space agency (DSA) that’s expected to command of all the space assets of India’s army, navy and air force.
For nearly the last decade, a debate has taken place in India highlighting the need to establish a Space Command to address military needs. For all these years, India has had a Military Space Cell, a tri-service organization under the aegis of the Integrated Defence Services, or IDS. Formation of this organization was announced on June 10 2008, by the then-defense minister.
The idea of DSA was mooted a few years back, possibly with a view to make an incremental increase in the space-related defense infrastructure. Hence, instead of having a Space Command headed by a three-star general, it was thought suitable to create a DSA headed by a two-star general. All these structures had a relevance when India was not a military power with anti-satellite (ASAT) capability. However, now that India successfully conducted its March 27 ASAT, can DSA take India’s military space agenda further, or there is a need to establish a separate ecosystem for this?
A cyanobacteria normally associated with the Phanerozoic has been found in Ediacaran deposits in China.
There was a significant shift in what the limiting nutrients were across the Ediacaran/Cambrian boundary.
How did the black shales form across the Ediacaran/Cambrian boundary?
Was the Sao Francisco Basin a restricted basin during the Ediacaran?
A section in China appears to be a record of the late Ediacaran glaciations, showing a cold, dry climate.
The Cathayasian block was attached to Gondwana since 630 million years ago.
The fate of an inland sea from during the Neoproterozoic gets discussed.
Evidence of the Milkanovich cycles is preserved in Ediacaran deposits.
Tubular fossils from the Weng'an Biota are algae, not metazoans.
Weng'an Biota also provides examples of preserved encysting of eukaryotes.
Cryogenian:
Could the banded iron formations of the Cryogenian be related to ocean acidification?
There is evidence of a less than complete snowball earth from China during the Marinoan Glaciation.
Cryogenian Period deposits of Datangpo Formation of China from the interglacial period between the Sturtian and Marinoan glaciations show a very stratified ocean.
The majority of the time, the NeoProterozoic oceans were anoxic and were supersaturated with dolomite.
Tonian:
Fungus fossils appear to have been found in Tonian (neoproterozoic) or Stenian (mesoproterozoic) deposits in Canada.
There appears to have been a paleorifting event during the Tonian of the Sao Francisco-Congo continent.
The Sognefjel complex appears to have formed in the Asgardian Sea during the early Tonian.
Did the Paleo-South China Ocean close during the Tonian?
MesoProterozoic:
The Eastern European Craton has a Mesoproterozoic signal.
The southern Grenville formation dates from Mesoproterozoic and is from purely Laurentian sources.
Reported stromatolites from a Stenian lake cannot be proven to be biogenic.
Paleoproterozoic:
600 million years of sedimentation is examined from the Paleoproterozoic of Lapland.
Statherian Period evolution of the Oolongbuluke terraine is explained.
In Brazil, the Sobreiro Formation appears to be from the Orosirian/Statherian boundary.
Archean:
There is evidence of retreating oceanic slab subduction from the NeoArchean of China.
Evidence from India suggests there was significant local variation in Archean ocean conditions.
The Caozhuang basin appears to be a case of sagduction.
Fossils from paleoarchean South Africa show bacteria dividing and they appear to be very similar to cyanobacteria Pleurocapsales.
China remains on schedule to ready its first independent mission to Mars in time for a short launch window in mid-2020, according to a leading space official.
“Mars 2020 mission spacecraft is undergoing integration,” Wang Chi, director of the National Space Science Center (NSSC) in Beijing, told SpaceNews in a rare update on the mission.
Ambitiously, the mission consists of both an orbiter and a rover, with a total of 13 science payloads. The NSSC will be involved in integration of the instruments with the spacecraft.
The orbiter will be equipped with a high-resolution camera comparable to HiRise on board NASA’s Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter, a medium-resolution camera, subsurface radar, minearology spectrometer, neutral and energetic particle analyzers and a magnetometer.
The 240-kilogram solar-powered rover, nearly twice the mass of China’s Yutu lunar rovers, will carry a ground-penetrating radar, multispectral camera, a Laser Induced Breakdown Spectroscopy instrument and payloads for detecting the climate and magnetic environment.
Self driving cars will do more than drive you around.
In a bad sign for traffic improvements with self driving cars, Uber and Lyft are making traffic worse in San Francisco. A study by Cambridge disputes my assertion though.
The US gov is backing international standards on AI principles.
China ramped up the censor bots with the anniversary of Tiananmen Square.
CMU is trying to make AI seem less intrusive, even if it is really powerful.
Facebook's AI is being accused of generating terrorist content by a whistleblower. It makes you wonder how instrumental they were in influencing things.
Facebook is categorizing your private posts using a software bot.
Facebook is using software bots to build disease prevention maps.
Google's Geoff Hinton explains the evolution of neural networks.
Google is training its speech recognition bots to be able to work with people with speech impediments.
