Lunokhod 1, First Robotic Rover To Visit Another World, Landed On The Moon 45 Yrs Ago Today.

The plate is called a Chladni plate. When he plays it with a bow (you know, like a violin) the couscous aligns itself it certain patterns. We’re not sure if this is science or magic.

Chasing Storms at 17,500mph

Flying 250 miles above the Earth aboard the International Space Station has given me the unique vantage point from which to view our planet. Spending a year in space has given me the unique opportunity to see a wide range of spectacular storm systems in space and on Earth. 

The recent blizzard was remarkably visible from space. I took several photos of the first big storm system on Earth of year 2016 as it moved across the East Coast, Chicago and Washington D.C. Since my time here on the space station began in March 2015, I’ve been able to capture an array of storms on Earth and in space, ranging from hurricanes and dust storms to solar storms and most recently a rare thunder snowstorm.

Blizzard 2016

Hurricane Patricia 2015

Hurricane Joaquin 2015

Dust Storm in the Red Sea 2015

Dust Storm of Gobi Desert 2015

Aurora Solar Storm 2015

Aurora Solar Storm 2016

Thunderstorm over Italy 2015

Lightning and Aurora 2016

Rare Thunder Snowstorm 2016

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Titan Beyond the Rings

The internet is going to be 3-D printed in space, because why not

Majestic — a British provider of SEO services — is bringing both their internet graphing and futuristic printing capabilities to the final frontier, basically because they can.

Using a zero gravity-compatible 3-D printer onboard Orbital ATK’s recently launched Cygnus spacecraft, the #MajesticInSpace (MIS) project will produce a three-dimensional “data visualization of the entire internet,” according to SearchEngineLand. It’s expected to look something like the below model. Which is to say, not unlike a melting ice sculpture.

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There’s finally a Tesla that’s priced like a normal car

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Teaming with Bots!

‪NSF-funded‬ Northwestern University roboticist Mike Rubenstein is helping NSF’s Science360 Radio pay homage to the National Robotics Initiative this week. We have his Big Picture Science interview about teeny tiny swarming robots called kilobots: 1.usa.gov/1r5QTz9

Self-assembly enables nature to build complex forms, from multicellular organisms to complex animal structures such as flocks of birds, through the interaction of vast numbers of limited and unreliable individuals. Creating this ability in engineered systems poses challenges in the design of both algorithms and physical systems that can operate at such scales. This work demonstrates programmable self-assembly of complex two-dimensional shapes with a thousand-robot swarm. Photo Credit: Michael Rubenstein, Harvard University

These are the robots taking our jobs

Solar Power Explorers

Women are better coders, research shows

Researchers from the computer science departments at California Polytechnic State University and North Carolina State University gathered data from nearly 1.4 million GitHub users, and the results are in: Women are better at writing code. The researchers also found proof of a specific bias.

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