NASA’s Orion spacecraft is one step closer to its planned deployment as a beyond low Earth orbit vessel. Airbus Defence and Space this week announced that it has successfully tested the solar array that will power Orion’s European Service Module (ESM). Built by Airbus for the European Space Agency, the ESM will serve as the primary power and propulsion source for the spacecraft.
The Orion spacecraft is classified as a Multi-Purpose Crew Vehicle that is capable of carrying a crew of four astronauts and supplies beyond the Earth’s orbit. It will be used as a vehicle for Mars exploration, asteroid studies and even as a vehicle to replenish supplies and replace crew at the International Space Station. It comprises two modules — the Orion command module under development by Lockheed Martin, and the Orion Service Module being developed by the ESA and Airbus.
The Service Module will provide critical life-support systems such as water and air storage, electric power, thermal control, and propulsion. It will be powered by a solar array weighing more than 570 pounds (260 kilograms) with four wings that can angle forward and backward like the wings of a bird. Each wing contains three solar panels with 1,242 Gallium Arsenide cells. In total, the 15,000 solar cells will generate up to 11.1kW for the Service Module’s operation.
The addition of this ESA-sourced service module marks the first time NASA has used a European-built system as an important component in the propulsion and power system of an American spacecraft. The solar array passed its first deployment test will flying colors. In the coming months, the module will be subjected to additional testing, including acoustic, vibration, and shock tests, to confirm the spacecraft can withstand the harsh conditions of space. If testing goes smoothly, the ESA hope to deliver its first ESM in early 2017.
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.
Military working dogs charge into places the rest of us would flee. So, I understand why anyone would want to breed tougher, healthier dogs for the job.
Warhound, a new startup from Colossal Biosciences co-founder Ben Lamm and Anduril co-founder Palmer Luckey, has stepped out of stealth with $200 million to clone and gene-edit working dogs for American troops, police departments, and emergency services (via TechCrunch).
AI can describe a picture, identify objects, and answer questions about what a camera sees. But when a blind user needs a quick answer, getting an entire spoken essay about the scene isn't exactly helpful. Researchers at the University of Maryland (UMD) have found that AI-powered visual assistance can leave blind users doing too much work to get the information they actually need.
The study, titled Say It My Way: Exploring Control in Conversational Visual Question Answering with Blind Users, examined how people interact with Be My AI, an AI-powered feature of the Be My Eyes app. The researchers found that users often received lengthy descriptions that didn't adequately address their immediate goals, forcing them to ask follow-up questions or find ways to steer the AI towards a more useful answer.