We’re already testing crops grown on Martian soil, so of course it’s only natural that we begin searching for water on the Red Planet as well. After all, we need to get it ready for our habitation, right? NASA certainly thinks so, and the space agency has suggested that the Curiosity rover begin its quest for liquid sustenance. The rover will take a closer look at recurring slope lineae (RSL), which are the streaks seen near the planet’s Gale Crater for signs of H2O. After taking initial photographs with its mast camera, the rover will make its way to the area in question to collect samples. And hopefully, results will confirm what scientists said last year — that liquid water does indeed exist on Mars.
The presence of water on the planet would be a huge step forward in establishing Mars as a viable alternative for Earth, should the need arise. And the hope is that if there’s water, there might also be signs of life on Mars.
Of course, it’s unlikely that even if living organisms are present on the Red Planet and the Curiosity manages to take samples, they wouldn’t survive the sterilization process, or the harsh conditions on Mars itself. All the same, being able to prove the presence of water could catalyze further missions to Mars, perhaps with even more exciting revelations.
“Soon, hopefully within a year, we will be in a position to take higher-resolution images of the area that’s purported to be an RSL, at a much higher resolution than that of MRO [Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter],” Jim Green, Director of NASA’s Planetary Science Division, told Aviation Week of the rover’s upcoming expedition. “And then we’d be able to observe it … and say, ‘no, that’s really a dust slide,’ or watch it change.”
San Francisco startup Dimensional advertised for people to walk robot dogs through city streets. The New York Times reported that the job could include carrying a roughly 33-pound robot back to the office if it overheated. A lift home is an awkward requirement for a labor-saving machine.
Keeping the hardware running is only one challenge. Anthropic's robotics tests found that language models mostly failed when controlling joints directly, but did better when directing trained controllers. Giving an AI agent a body doesn't teach it to handle ordinary household objects.
Soon, a mattress protector may be more than a bed cover. Australian medtech company Sleeptite and researchers at RMIT University have received a US patent for FlexiSense, a smart bedding technology that tracks body position and posture to help caregivers identify when older residents may be at risk of falling.
The technology is being developed for Sleeptite’s in-bed monitoring system, REMi, and was recently on display at The MedTech Conference in Boston. A peer-reviewed study in Flexible and Printed Electronics says the sensors can also be made at scale without sacrificing performance or durability.
AI companies spend enormous amounts of time convincing us their technology is safe and secure. But what happens when those same companies become targets of increasingly sophisticated AI-powered attacks? Anthropic, the company behind Claude, is now facing that question. According to a Washington Post report, cybersecurity startup Cathedral discovered vulnerabilities that let its researchers access sensitive information in Anthropic's internal systems.
The researchers used AI agents to identify potential entry points in less than 12 hours. Interestingly, they didn't need to crack Claude itself. Instead, they exploited weaknesses in third-party business applications that Anthropic uses for everyday operations. Anthropic's security testing program disclosed the findings, which allows outside researchers to identify and report vulnerabilities.