A SpaceX Dragon capsule loaded with two tons of cargo splashed down in the Pacific Ocean on Saturday. It was the second trip to outer space for the capsule, and the second time SpaceX had reused a Dragon for a supply mission to the International Space Station (ISS).
The capsule showed a little wear and tear from the reentry, but all the cargo (including a bunch of mice) was retrieved successfully by SpaceX. The capsule was loaded with the results of various scientific experiments, including an attempt to 3D print optical fiber in space. The mice had been treated with various medications that may help alleviate muscle loss during extended stays in a weightless environment.
LIVE NOW: @SpaceX’s #Dragon cargo vehicle departs @Space_Station after almost a month on orbit. Watch: https://t.co/ZuxLDtzW9c pic.twitter.com/aI8T6Hwt9v
— NASA (@NASA) January 13, 2018
The Dragon capsule was launched from Cape Canaveral on December 15, and it marked the first time that both a Falcon 9 rocket and a Dragon capsule had been reused. The capsule had previously visited the ISS in 2015 for a resupply mission. This was the 13th mission for SpaceX under NASA’s Commercial Resupply Services contract.
“Good splashdown of Dragon confirmed, completing the second resupply mission to and from the @Space_Station with a flight-proven commercial spacecraft,” SpaceX announced on Twitter.
Cargo missions using reusable rockets and capsules are now becoming routine for SpaceX. Elon Musk, the company founder, has said he wants to make the entire rocket, including the Falcon 9 upper stage, completely reusable by the end of this year.
At a teleconference with reporters in March, Musk said there’s no reason not to make the attempt. “We didn’t originally intend for Falcon 9 to have a reusable upper stage, but it might be fun to try like a Hail Mary. What’s the worst that could happen — it blows up?” he asked rhetorically. “It blows up anyway.”
“Rapid and complete reusability of rockets is really the key to opening up space and becoming a spacefaring civilization, a multiplanet species, and having the future be something that’s incredibly exciting and inspiring that we’ll all look forward to,” he added.
The next hurdle for SpaceX is a big one — the Falcon Heavy rocket, to be exact. The 27-engine behemoth will go through a test-fire this month, before a planned launch later this year. And Musk’s very own Tesla Roadster will go along for the ride.
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.