Mars is a long way from 221B Baker Street, but one of fiction's best-known detectives will be represented on the Red Planet after NASA's Perseverance rover touches down on Feb. 18, 2021. SHERLOC, an instrument on the end ...
Space Exploration
May 26, 2020
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96
Soft materials, such as rubber or polymers that can endure drastic changes to their shape, are promising for applications where flexibility and shapeshifting abilities are paramount.
General Physics
Apr 17, 2020
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349
In August, a robotic spacecraft will make NASA's first-ever attempt to descend to the surface of an asteroid, collect a sample, and ultimately bring it safely back to Earth. In order to achieve this challenging feat, the ...
Space Exploration
Apr 10, 2020
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121
NASA's Curiosity Mars rover recently set a record for the steepest terrain it's ever climbed, cresting the "Greenheugh Pediment," a broad sheet of rock that sits atop a hill. And before doing that, the rover took a selfie, ...
Space Exploration
Mar 21, 2020
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3675
The upgraded Autonomous Pop-Up Flat Folding Explorer Robot, or A-PUFFER, is on a roll. The technology could find itself on a commercial lunar lander in the next few years.
Space Exploration
Mar 19, 2020
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124
A team of researchers from the Norwegian University of Science and Technology, Tallinn University of Technology and Estonia University of Life Sciences has found evidence that suggests salmon living in fish farms prefer to ...
NASA's next Mars rover finally has a name. Perseverance, a six-wheeled robotic explorer, will blast off this summer to collect Martian samples for eventual return to Earth.
Space Exploration
Mar 5, 2020
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4468
Marine biologists have adopted "soft robotic linguine fingers" as tools to conduct their undersea research. In a study appearing February 24 in the journal Current Biology, scientists found that jellyfish held by ultra-soft ...
Ecology
Feb 24, 2020
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52
While eating takeout one day, University of Chicago scientists Bozhi Tian and Yin Fang started thinking about the noodles—specifically, their elasticity. A specialty of Xi'an, Tian's hometown in China, is wheat noodles ...
Materials Science
Feb 4, 2020
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2318
Specially designed vacuum suction units allow humans to climb walls. Scientists have developed a suction unit that can be used on rough surfaces, no matter how textured, and that has applications in the development of climbing ...
Soft Matter
Jan 17, 2020
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245
