Boston Dynamics and IBM have joined forces to deploy the popular — but controversial — robot dogs at the US National Grid sites for autonomous inspection. The Boston Dynamics robot, named Spot, will be integrated with artificial intelligence (AI) and other required features developed by IBM Research. The new robot will be initially deployed at the electric and gas utility sites in
Science
NASA’s International Space Station (ISS) saw its first harvest of crops on October 29. The agency shared a photo on Twitter and mentioned that the station’s first harvest was chilli peppers. This harvest was a part of an ISS experiment, called Plant Habitat-04 study. Astronaut Megan McArthur, who is stationed at the ISS, posted another
The help of Artificial Intelligence (AI) has been deployed by tech firms and NGOs worldwide to fight the climate change crisis. Gadgets 360 caught up with some, including the team at Sustainable Environment and Ecological Development Society (SEEDS) — a New Delhi-based NGO — and IBM India, to talk about their efforts to apply tech
NASA has signed a pact with National Geographic to help tell the story of Artemis II, the mission which will return US astronauts to the Moon after decades. The first Artemis mission, likely to be launched in February, will be an uncrewed test mission. Artemis II flight will carry astronauts around the Moon and back
A massive solar flare could create dazzling northern lights over parts of the US on Sunday, according to NASA. The space agency said a sun storm erupted on October 28 and sent a vast cloud of charged particles that should reach Earth on Halloween (Sunday, October 31). When these particles hit Earth’s atmosphere, they will
Microblogging site Twitter, which regularly tests new features ahead of their official rollout, has created a new way for some people to check out these new features before everyone else. Twitter has announced that subscribers to its paid Twitter Blue service will get early access to some new features under a new Labs banner. Like
For many, the evolution of humans is a discipline of great interest and curiosity – a way of ascertaining who we are and where we come from. Hence, finding and naming our ancestors is necessary. The practice of assigning names is of significance in science for several reasons, primarily because it helps researchers spread all
After spending nearly half a year, every year, gathering and calculating carbon emissions data on spread sheets, Salesforce.com’s climate team was fed up. So in 2017 they built an app to crunch the numbers – and now they sell it for $4,000 (roughly Rs. 3 lakh) a month. As global companies prepare pledges to help
Virtual clothing trials are the next big thing that can bring fashion and technology together. Computer scientists all around the world are trying to experiment with deep-learning techniques that can be used to virtually dress a 3D avatar (digital versions of humans). Developments in this field are being made in India too. Two researchers at
With so much research getting published every day all over the world, a super-smart search engine has become essential to help parse through seemingly endless scores of academic papers. Faced with the challenge, a technologist has found a way to unlock the world’s research papers for easier computerised analysis. He has released an index of
More than a year after NASA launched the Perseverance rover for Mars, the space agency is bringing the focus back on how its precise landing spot was decided or who chose where it should land. In an Instagram post, NASA said that the rover made the decision moments before it touched down on the surface
China has launched a military satellite that will test its “space debris mitigation technology,” the state media reported earlier this week. The satellite was launched on Sunday from the Xichang Satellite Launch Centre, Sichuan province, Southwest China. Though only a few details were available about the classified launch, some state media reports said the mission
NASA’s main workhorse for deep-space observation has faced a new technical issue this week that has forced scientists to pull it into “safe mode”. The safe mode is designed to keep the Hubble Space Telescope, which has revealed several mysteries of outer space, stable and allow scientists to work on it to address whatever problem
NASA’s Chandra X-ray telescope has found hints of what could be the first planet discovered outside our Milky Way galaxy. The possible signal discovered is located in the Messier 51 galaxy, some 28 million light-years away from Earth. NASA’s Chandra Observatory has been designed in such a way that it can detect X-ray emissions from
Jeff Bezos’ Blue Origin on Monday announced it wants to launch a space station that will house up to 10 people in the second half of the decade, as the race to commercialize the cosmos heats up. “Orbital Reef,” described in a press statement as a mixed-use business park in space that will support microgravity
In 1993, Steven Spielberg’s Jurassic Park introduced the world to dinosaurs like never before. While researchers were interested in the reptile that occupied Earth hundreds of millions of years ago, the movie made people curious about it. Since then, technological advancements have let scientists uncover deep-buried facts about dinosaurs. Today, whatever we know about them,
With Winter coming, air pollution in India is going to once again hit crisis levels soon. At the individual level we can wear masks and use air purifiers in our homes, but more broadly, cities and municipalities have also been installing outdoor air purifiers over several years now — but do these actually work? Have
NASA has announced that it was now targeting to launch the Artemis 1, an uncrewed mission that will return the American space agency to the Moon after decades, in February 2022. The rescheduling of the launch has delayed the mission by at least three months as the ambitious programme was initially set to take off
NASA said Friday it is now targeting February 2022 for the uncrewed lunar mission Artemis 1, the first step in America’s plan to return humans to the Moon later this decade. The space agency had initially wanted to launch the test flight by the end of this year, with astronauts on the ground by 2024
In a first, surgeons have successfully attached a pig’s kidney to a human and monitored the pinkish organ function normally for more than 50 hours. They hope this breakthrough could address donor organ shortages for life-saving transplants one day. While complex medical procedures similar to this have been done before on primates, it’s the first time
NASA has shared a dramatic image of two peculiar galaxies locked in a cosmic dance. The event was taking place at a distance of about 220 million light-years from Earth in the constellation Pegasus and was captured by the space agency’s powerful Hubble Space Telescope. The image shows the diminutive galaxy almost attached to its
When mobile phones first came into existence they were big and unattractive. Several researchers then worked on making them compact and desirable. People gradually warmed up to the technology and embraced it as it allowed them to communicate on the move. There have been several advancements since, catering to various demands of the users. A
Governments all over the world are looking at energy security as a priority to power their industries, businesses, homes, and offices. But there are finite sources of energy and the technology to harness renewable energy is still decades away from a wider adoption. US-based company Radiant is trying to address this challenge by developing a
A woman had a potentially fatal experience in Canada recently. As she slept through the night a meteorite, a small meteorite pierced through her roof and came crashing on her pillow. It barely missed her head, but created a hole in the roof. The incident turned the light back on the question: What if a
An augmented reality (AR) professional 3D-printed a full-scale Velociraptor for his daughter and went on to bring it to life (virtually). A video shared by Florent Germain on Twitter shows the results of this fun experiment. Germain tweeted on October 20, “Last month, I 3D printed a full-scale Velociraptor for my daughter. Then, I went
Vaping e-cigarettes may not be useful in helping people quit smoking, a recent research suggests. The United States Centers for Disease Control and Prevention had earlier suggested that smokers could switch from puffing cigarettes to vaping e-cigarettes if they were unable to quit smoking. This came with one condition: smokers would have to completely switch
Astronomers have observed an accreting white dwarf abruptly lose and gain its brightness for the first time. White dwarfs are stars that have run out of their basic fuel: hydrogen. Usually, researchers have observed white dwarfs losing their brightness over days or months. Astronomers were studying the white dwarf binary system, TW Pictoris, and the
NASA never stops surprising us with stunning images from outer space. In a new Instagram post, the space agency has released a new photo of Milky Way on October 19. The colourful image is a panorama of the Milky Way’s galactic centre. NASA mentions that by “combining observations from across the electromagnetic spectrum,” it has
Russian actress and a film director returned to Earth Sunday after spending 12 days on the International Space Station (ISS) shooting scenes for the first movie in orbit. Yulia Peresild, 37, and Klim Shipenko, 38, landed as scheduled on Kazakhstan’s steppe at 04:36 GMT (10:06am IST), according to footage broadcast live by Russia’s Roscosmos space
While NASA is sending a spacecraft to Jupiter’s asteroids in an unprecedented mission to unravel the mystery of solar system’s origin, a physicist has said that a meteorite, that crash-landed in a home in Canada this month, can offer similar results. Peter G. Brown, a professor of physics and astronomy at the University of Western
Space has always intrigued humans. While many exploration missions have hitherto focussed on our neighbours like the Moon and Mars, US space agency NASA is taking the game a notch higher with its latest launch. NASA is daring to send one of its spacecraft to a place in the dark alleys of the outer solar
Virgin Galactic said on Thursday it is delaying its commercial space travel service to the fourth quarter of 2022 and will not conduct another planned test flight this year. Virgin Galactic said “commercial service is now expected to commence in Q4 2022.” Shares in the company fell 13 percent in afterhours trading. The US Federal
Maintenance of the International Space Station (ISS) can become hectic for astronauts. So, NASA has devised a way to help astronauts with their chores. Astrobee, a free-flying robotic system assistant, is NASA’s new addition onboard the ISS. The purpose of this robot is to undertake routine tasks so that astronauts have ample time to spare