Hasta La Gadget!

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Affordable is a relative term, but in the world of rocket science Japan’s recently launched Epsilon qualifies as such. Costing just $37-million (albeit not directly comparable, NASA claims a typical launch costs around $450-million) to send off, Jaxa — Japan’s space agency — rightly considers it a steal. Epsilon launched from the south-west of the country at 2pm local time. Its mission? To deploy a telescope that Jaxa advises will observe our neighboring planets from its position in Earth’s orbit. The cost efficiency is being put down to the rocket’s artificial intelligence, something that slashes the man-power needed from 150 to 8. Let’s just hope the thriftiness wasn’t just to fund that other recent launch.

Filed under: Science

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Via: BBC

Source: Jaxa

For the first time in nature, an insect has been shown to use a set of gears to aid in jumping. Said insect is the Issus coleoptratus and it can be found throughout Europe as well as in parts of the Near East and North Africa. This particular incest is a planthopper found mostly on […]

It’s not uncommon in science for scientists to make major discoveries accidentally. One of the most recent accidental discoveries ended up being the world’s thinnest glass. The glass is thin enough to earn the scientists a place in the 2014 edition of the Guinness Book of World Records. The scientists who accidentally made the incredibly […]

The premise of all life as we know it being extinct because of the impact of an asteroid has already been explored theoretically in movies, and most of the time, the solution would be to send a nuke to blow that asteroid into smithereens. Is nuclear power the only answer? Well, it seems that European scientists intend to take a slightly different route. Known as the NEOShield Consortium, this particular group remains focused on developing defenses against killer asteroids that could wipe out entire cities upon impact.

To ensure the safety of humanity, Project NEOShield has started to designed a range of massive spacecraft that is known as kinetic impactors. These will be launched from earth itself, achieving a velocity that is high enough to break up any incoming asteroids upon impact. They are keeping their fingers crossed that through this, the targeted asteroid would either be smashed to bits for us to enjoy a meteor shower here on earth, or to slow down or hasten these asteroids enough so that we will be able to chalk it up as yet another near-miss event. The speed that these kamikaze aircraft will travel? Really high, as NEOShield scientists have already managed to accelerate millimeter-sized objects to more than 22,000 miles per hour before sending them to smash into blocks of stone.

Kamikaze Spaceships Could Be Solution To Incoming Asteroids original content from Ubergizmo.

When you think of the fastest accelerators in the animal kingdom, large, muscular mammals will probably be the first that come to mind. But steady among them is the inconspicuous adolescent issus, who can hit an acceleration of 400 gs in 2 milliseconds flat (humans lose consciousness over 5 gs)—all thanks to what scientists have now identified as the first biological set of gears ever discovered.

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