NASA Team adds Cameras and Mics to Record Perseverance Landing

NASA has released video of the Perseverance Mars Rover as it descended through the Martian atmosphere and landed as planned in Jezero Crater last Thursday. Speaking at a press conference on Monday, David Gruel of NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory said that the video team had kept its expectations modest: "We get what we get and we don't get upset." What they got are among the most spectacular images in the history of space exploration. Six small off-the-shelf cameras made up the EDL Cam system (Entry, Descent and Landing). They survived the journey and worked flawlessly, capturing the spacecraft's parachute deployment, heat shield separation, powered descent and gentle deposit of the Perseverance Rover on the Martian surface.

There are extraordinary details in the video. The spacecraft sways a bit under its parachute, then stabilizes as the descent module's thrusters take over and the parachute is cast away. A camera on the descent module shows the Rover as it's lowered by three cables. A camera on the Rover captures the same scene from below; once on the surface the cables are withdrawn and the descent module flies away. There were also two microphones on the spacecraft. Gruel said they failed to capture audio of the landing, but once on the surface one of the microphones recorded – for the first time – sounds from Mars. The clip released by NASA contains a quiet hum from the Rover's operations, and a Martian wind gust sweeping across the lander. Another clip cancels out the sound of the Rover, leaving only the breeze.



Credits:
https://www.npr.org/2021/02/22/970245456/watch-perseverances-video-cameras-capture-its-arrival-on-mars-theres-audio-too

Wanna see a longer video on the landing? Here ya go.

Touchdown! Perseverance Rover Lands on Mars!

On February 18, 2021, the Perseverance rover – formerly called Mars 2020 – became the first artificial object to land on Mars since the Insight Mars lander in 2018. It was the first rover to land since Curiosity touched down in 2012. Perseverance is the largest, most advanced rover NASA has sent to another world. It traveled 293 million miles (472 million km) – over 203 days – to get to Mars. Confirmation of the successful touchdown was announced at mission control at NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory in southern California. Perseverance set down in Jezero Crater, just north of Mars’ equator. The first raw images have started coming in.

Landing on Mars is hard. Space engineers refer to it as seven minutes of terror. But the rover hit the Martian atmosphere traveling at almost 12,000 miles per hour (19,000 kmh), streaking across the sky as its protective heat shield helped to slow it down. Then, at an altitude of about 1 mile (1.5 km), the descent module fired its engines, while a new terrain relative navigation system kicked in to identify a safe landing spot. Essentially, it scanned and analyzed the terrain below, then matched it up with maps in its database to prepare for touchdown. A 70-foot (21-meter) diameter parachute deployed to slow the craft further, bringing its descent to a crawl. Finally, the hovering-landing sky crane system began its task of lowering the rover the rest of the way to the ground for a soft, gentle landing. Touchdown! At the Jet Propulsion Laboratory, coronavirus protocols are still in effect at mission control, but not even a pandemic could dampen the celebration.



Credits:
https://earthsky.org/space/get-ready-nasa-perseverance-landing-feb2021

DOJ Drops Lawsuit Against Calif over Net Neutrality

The DOJ formally dismissed the lawsuit Monday. The suit was first filed in 2018 under ex-US Attorney General Jeff Sessions, a Trump appointee. Former California Gov. Jerry Brown, a Democrat, signed the California law in October 2018. California adopted the new rules after a Republican-led FCC in 2017 repealed federal rules that had been established under President Barrack Obama. When the FCC eliminated national protections for net neutrality, California used the Obama-era net neutrality protections as the basis for its state law. Those earlier ruIes prohibited internet service providers from slowing or blocking access to websites or charging companies like Netflix extra to deliver their service faster.

But California went further than the federal government in its protections of an open internet. It also outlawed so-called zero-rating offers, which allow carriers to exempt certain services from counting against a user's data cap. Additionally, the California law applies the net neutrality rules to so-called interconnection deals between network operators, something the FCC's 2015 rules didn't explicitly do. California is just one of several states looking to enact its own rules governing an open internet. States such as Washington have pushed through a net neutrality law, while others are considering it.



Credits:
https://www.cnet.com/news/biden-doj-drops-lawsuit-to-block-california-net-neutrality-law/

A lawyer can't turn off cat filter on Zoom

Supply-Chain Hack affects at least 18,000 Users

In December, the United States discovered that Russia had been able to hack into US Treasury Department. We are now learning that in a completely separate hack, a US Software company has been infiltrated, and malware has been installed into their software. The Texas-based company SolarWinds sells software that lets an organization see what's happening on its computer networks. Around 18,000 SolarWinds customers installed the tainted update onto their systems, the company said. The compromised update has had a sweeping impact, the scale of which keeps growing as new information emerges. Hackers managed to access a system that SolarWinds uses to put together updates to its Orion product. From there, they inserted malicious code into otherwise legitimate software update. This is known as a supply-chain attack because it infects software as it's under assembly.

SolarWinds has also come under scrutiny for vulnerabilities in its software. These are coding errors and aren't the result of attackers entering SolarWinds systems to implant malware. Instead, hackers must access victim systems and then exploit the flaws in Orion software running there. On Feb. 2, government officials believe a group of suspected hackers had gained access to federal government agencies using a software flaw in SolarWinds software. In addition to gaining access to several government systems, the hackers turned a run-of-the-mill software update into a weapon. That weapon was pointed at thousands of groups, not just the agencies and companies that the hackers focused on after they installed the tainted Orion update.

Credits: 
https://www.cnet.com/news/solarwinds-hack-officially-blamed-on-russia-what-you-need-to-know/

Something or Nothin': The Nike Go FlyEase Hands-Free Shoes

The marvel seen above is the Nike GO FlyEase. It's intuitive — easy on, easy off — and evidence of how design, innovation and engineering can meet to answer an ambitious North Star: the creation of a hands-free shoe. Behind the shoe's smooth motion is a bi-stable hinge that enables the shoe to be secure in fully open and fully closed states. This duality allows another signature detail: the Nike GO FlyEase tensioner. The tensioner’s unique flexibility super-charges an action many might take for granted (kicking-off a shoe) and completely reimagines this movement as basis for accessible and empowering design.

Sophisticated, accessible solutions, like those in Nike GO FlyEase, are emblematic of the “better is temporary” mentality that drives Nike FlyEase technology. Since its debut, the technologies have been employed in numerous footwear styles across basketball, running and sportswear. In the Nike GO FlyEase, this translates to serving the broadest range of active lifestyles possible — whether the wearer is champion fencer Bebe Vio, a student racing to class or a parent with their hands full.“Usually I spend so much time to get in my shoes,” says Vio. “With the Nike GO FlyEase, I just need to put my feet in and jump on it. The shoes are a new kind of technology, not only for adaptive athletes but for everyone's real life.”

Credits:
https://news.nike.com/news/nike-go-flyease-hands-free-shoe

Twitter, Reddit Influence GameStop Stock

Many of today's adults spent their youths in GameStop stores. They bought and sold consoles and games there. They lined up for launches, too. Now some of those gamers have become rich buying the company's stock and encouraging their friends on Reddit to buy it too. GameStop's shares rocketed higher than ever expected in the past couple weeks, and all because activity between social media investors began pushing it up. Wall Street had bet heavily that the company would fail, but as the price kept going up, investors were forced to reset their wagers. That led the stock to rocket up, and then swing wildly.

Jaime Rogozinski, the apparent founder of the Reddit community at the heart of all this, told The Wall Street Journal it's like "a train wreck happening in real time." Keith Gill, the trader in the Reddit community who helped kick off the battle, told the paper he "didn't expect this." Last week, on Thursday alone, GameStop's stock hit all-time highs of $492.02 per share, only to drop by more than half a minute later. It closed trading at $325 the next day. GameStop itself hasn't fundamentally changed in the past month. It's still a struggling retailer facing an uncertain future against the rising tide of online shopping. But its stock has shot up as much as 1,800% -- that's not a typo -- since the beginning of the year. This dynamic's led Wall Street investors who bet against the company's future to lose billions of dollars, and the excitement is driving the hype even further.

Credits:
https://www.cbsnews.com/news/gamestop-reddit-and-the-battle-of-wall-street/