Tech

China sends first civilian to its Tiangong space station

Published

4 months ago

Farwa

As China plans to send a crewed mission to the moon by 2030, three astronauts including one civilian for the first time were sent to Chinese space outpost Tiangong space station Tuesday Jiuquan Satellite Launch Centre in northwest China.

China has poured billions of dollars into its space programme as Russia and US claim success in their space exploration activities.

The Shenzhou-16 crew took off atop a Long March 2F rocket as Zou Lipeng, director of the Jiuquan Satellite Launch Center regarded it a “complete success” and the “astronauts are in good condition.”

The launch was attended by a large number of employees that were resided live year-round on the huge site, capturing pictures with the rocket in the background.

Commander Jing Haipeng was leading the mission which makes his fourth alongside engineer Zhu Yangzhu and Beihang University professor Gui Haichao, the first Chinese civilian in space.

Staff members from the China space program stand before the launch platform of the Shenzhou-16 Manned Space Flight Mission one day before launch at the Jiuquan Satellite Launch Centre in Chinas northwestern Gansu province on May 29, 2023. — AFP — Staff members from the China space program stand before the launch platform of the Shenzhou-16 Manned Space Flight Mission one day before launch at the Jiuquan Satellite Launch Centre in China’s northwestern Gansu province on May 29, 2023. — AFP

China became the third country to send humans into orbit and Tiangong is the crown jewel of its space programme, which has also landed robotic rovers on Mars — Zhurong (rover) — and the Moon.

According to AFP, the Shenzhou craft will dock at the space station’s Tianhe core module.

After docking, the newly sent astronauts will meet their three colleagues from the Shenzhou-15 flight, who have been at the station for six months and will return to Earth in the coming days.

In the orbit, Shenzhou-16 will conduct several experiments, including “high-precision space time-frequency systems”, general relativity, and into the origin of life, CMSA spokesperson Lin Xiqiang told reporters Monday.

The Chinese space station was resupplied with drinking water, clothing, food and propellant this month in preparation for Shenzhou-16’s arrival.

An expert told AFP that Tuesday’s mission represented “a regular crew rotation flight”, but even that was significant.

“Accumulating depth of experience in human spaceflight operations is important and doesn’t involve new spectacular milestones all the time,” said Jonathan McDowell, an astronomer and astrophysicist at the Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics.

Xi Jinping’s space dream

Under Chinese President Xi Jinping, plans for China’s “space dream” have begun to start rolling.

Beijing is eyeing to establish a lunar base and CMSA spokesman Lin on Monday reaffirmed Beijing’s plan to land a manned mission there by 2030.

Chinese President Xi Jinping meets the media following the 20th National Congress of the Communist Party of China, at the Great Hall of the People in Beijing. — Reuters/File

“The overall goal is to achieve China’s first manned landing on the Moon by 2030 and carry out lunar scientific exploration and related technological experiments,” CMSA said.

The final module of the T-shaped Tiangong — which means “heavenly palace” — successfully docked with the core structure last year.

According to Xinhua report, the station carries a number of pieces of cutting-edge scientific equipment including “the world’s first space-based cold atomic clock system.”

The Tiangong is likely to stay in low Earth orbit at between 400 and 450 kilometres (250 and 280 miles) above the planet for at least 10 years.

It is constantly crewed by rotating teams of three astronauts.

As Beijing does not have any plans to use Tiangong for global cooperation on the scale of the International Space Station (ISS), China said it is open to foreign collaboration.

China “is looking forward to and welcomes the participation of foreign astronauts in the country’s space station flight missions,” Lin said Monday.

China plans to send two crewed space missions to Tiangong every year, according to the CMSA.

The next will be Shenzhou-17, with an expected launch in October.

China has been effectively excluded from the ISS since 2011 when the US prohibited Nasa from keeping any engagement with the world’s second-largest economy.

Tech

YouTube Shorts joins AI race with new ‘Dream Screen’ feature. But how does it work?

Published

6 hours ago

Farwa

YouTube on Thursday announced a new feature on its short-form video platform Shorts, called Dream Screen, which enables users to create unique videos using AI tools.

YouTube CEO Neal Mohan, during the company’s live event “Made on YouTube,” revealed that users can use the AI feature to create an AI-generated video or image in YouTube Shorts by simply typing in the desired background.

Mohan demonstrated how this works by typing in “a panda drinking coffee” to show how the video image appears on the screen.

The company offered further examples as well, such as underwater castles or things you could have dreamed about, like dragons or sci-fi moonrises.

Mohan expressed his belief that the technology will enable more people to publish on YouTube without feeling as though they need a whole production studio or a thorough understanding of YouTube analytics, TechCrunch reported.

This screengrab from a demonstration video from YouTubes blog shows a panda drinking coffee, as demonstrated by the companys CEO, Neal Mohan. — YouTube/Blog/File — This screengrab from a demonstration video from YouTube’s blog shows a panda drinking coffee, as demonstrated by the company’s CEO, Neal Mohan. — YouTube/Blog/File

Over 70 billion daily views are currently being averaged on the Shorts platform, up from 50 billion in January and the biggest video-creating app anticipates that these figures will rise even higher with AI.

“At YouTube, we want to make it easier for everyone to feel like they can create and we believe generative AI will make that possible,” said Mohan.

The feature is currently being presented to a small group of artists, and it will presumably then go live early next year.

According to YouTube, in the future, the tool will allow users to enter ideas for how to alter or remix their content in order to create entirely new and unique videos.

Tech

What you should know about asteroid sample landing Earth soon?

Published

6 hours ago

Farwa

Researchers have been waiting on Earth to receive the biggest asteroid sample which will be sent from space by Nasa’s OSIRIS-Rex probe, as astronomers are gaining more understanding about the evolution of the solar system and the alien rocks that are to impact our planet in future.

Origins, Spectral Interpretation, Resource Identification, Security-Regolith Explorer (OSIRIS-Rex) will be releasing a sample of the Bennu asteroid which is likely to touch down in Utah weighing an estimated 8.8 ounces.

The event will be live-streamed starting at 10am ET Sunday.

The capsule is likely to enter Earth’s atmosphere at 10:42am ET, with a speed of about 27,650 miles per hour (44,498 kilometres per hour), landing 13 minutes later.

The probe — launched in 2016 — will continue its space journey in the solar system to collect further information about asteroid named Apophis.

The samples from space may assist scientists to gain more insight into the origins and evolution of the solar system as asteroids are the “leftovers” from those early days 4.5 billion years ago.

The analysis will also help gain more insight into Bennu, which is expected to hit Earth in the future.

After surveying the Bennu — a rubble-pile asteroid shaped like a spinning top, is about one-third of a mile (500 meters) wide and composed of rocks held together by gravity.

During the sample collection, OSIRIS-REx went 1.6 feet (0.5 meters) deep into the surface — loosely packed — of the asteroid.

After saying goodbye to Bennu in May 2021, Nasa’s probe has been on its way to Earth, circling the sun twice so it can fly by Earth at the right time to release the sample.

The capsule will land within an area of 36 miles by 8.5 miles on the Defense Department’s Utah Test and Training Range.

Sandra Freund, OSIRIS-REx program manager at Lockheed Martin Space, said: “Parachutes will deploy to slow the capsule to a gentle touchdown at 11 miles per hour, and recovery teams will be standing by to retrieve the capsule once it is safe to do so.”

Details about the sample, after undergoing the necessary process will be revealed through a Nasa broadcast from Johnson on October 11.

According to scientists, carbonaceous asteroids such as Bennu crashed into Earth early during their formation, delivering elements like water.

“We’re looking for clues as to why Earth is a habitable world — this rare jewel in outer space that has oceans and has a protective atmosphere,” said Dante Lauretta, OSIRIS-REx principal investigator at the University of Arizona in Tucson.

“We think all of those materials were brought by these carbon-rich asteroids very early in our planetary system formation.”

“We believe that we’re bringing back that kind of material, literally maybe representatives of the seeds of life that these asteroids delivered at the beginning of our planet that led to this amazing biosphere, biological evolution and to us being here today,” Lauretta added.

Tech

Google supercharges Bard as OpenAI’s ChatGPT leads chatbot race

Published

2 days ago

Farwa

Alphabet Inc’s Google announced on Tuesday that Bard, its generative artificial intelligence, is being equipped with the capability to fact-check responses and analyse users’ personal Google data, CNN reported.

This move is part of Google’s efforts to keep up with the popularity of ChatGPT.

The debut of ChatGPT, a chatbot developed by Microsoft-backed OpenAI, last year triggered a competitive race within the tech industry to provide consumers with access to generative AI technology.

At the time, ChatGPT became the fastest-growing consumer application in history and currently ranks among the top 30 websites globally.

However, Bard hasn’t experienced the same level of success.

In August, it received 183 million visits, which is only 13% of what ChatGPT received, according to Similarweb, a website analytics firm.

To make headway in the rapidly evolving AI landscape, Google is introducing Bard Extensions, allowing users to import their data from other Google products.

For example, users can request Bard to search their files in Google Drive or provide a summary of their Gmail inbox.

For now, Bard users will only be able to pull information in from Google apps, but Google is working with external companies to connect their applications to Bard in the future, Google senior product director Jack Krawczyk said.

Another new feature in Bard seeks to alleviate a nagging problem for generative AI: inaccurate responses known as “hallucinations”.

Bard users will be able to see which parts of Bard’s answers differ from and agree with Google search results.

“We are presenting (Bard) in a way that it admits when it’s not confident,” Krawczyk said, explaining that the intention is to build users’ trust in generative AI by holding Bard accountable.

A third new feature allows users to invite others into Bard conversations.