CaaC (John)

June 20, 2019 Coming in for a Landing with New NASA Technology Wishing you had a driverless car or plane? NASA Langley is developing navigational radar sensor technology to use during future space missions. The sensors can also help make autonomous vehicles more efficient on Earth. Credits: NASA NASA will need ultra-precise entry, descent and landing technology to land the first woman and next man safely on the Moon in 2024. NASA is developing an advanced suite of sensors, avionics and algorithms to avoid hazards and perform extremely safe and precise landings on planetary surfaces. One of those critical landing technologies is navigation Doppler lidar (NDL), which is used to determine precise vehicle velocity and position. The new NDL unit, being developed at NASA’s Langley Research Center in Hampton, Virginia, is comprised of a small electronics box connected by fiberoptic cables to three lenses that transmit laser beams to an anticipated distance greater than 4 miles on the Moon and 2.5 miles on Earth. Those beams reflect off the ground to help the sensor determine its speed, direction and altitude. NDL provides ultra-precise measurements that identify exactly how high a human or robotic lander is and how fast it is traveling. “The lander uses the NDL measurements during its descent toward the Moon surface to precisely and gently land at the designated location,” said Farzin Amzajerdian, the NDL principal investigator. Engineers at NASA recently tested the performance of NDL’s velocity measurement capability during a high-speed rocket sled test at the Naval Air Weapons Station China Lake in Kern, County, California. The objective of the testing was to validate NDL’s ability to accurately track the speed of a target moving at 450 miles per hour. The target is put on a sled and launched down a track while NDL measures its distance and velocity. The tests were a part of the Safe & Precise Landing – Integrated Capabilities Evolution (SPLICE) project, developing the perfect combination of technologies needed to more precisely land on planetary surfaces. SPLICE technologies will be infused into Commercial Lunar Payload Services (CLPS) missions within the next few years, with NDL providing instruments for both the Astrobotic and Intuitive Machines lander missions planned for 2021. During the series of tests, NDL telescopes were fixed to a stationary mount that picked up range and speed of a sled powered by rocket motors that traveled down a rail track at 450 miles per hour. The NDL unit documented accurate speed and range measurements of the sled during each of the eight tests and validated the targeted NDL design performance. “This recent test validates the NDL’s ability to provide extremely accurate velocity measurements during descent and landing, which is a part of critical testing required to validate all of the SPLICE technologies for future NASA missions,” said John Carson, principal investigator for SPLICE. The major components of SPLICE, along with NDL, are a camera for terrain relative navigation, a hazard detection lidar, and a descent and landing computer that incorporates a surrogate for the in-development NASA high-performance spaceflight computing (HPSC) processor. The SPLICE suite of sensors and algorithms use real-time images and 3D-generated maps to precisely navigate during descent and landing toward safe touchdown locations in close proximity to targeted planetary surface locations. The NASA HPSC chip enables SPLICE computing to rapidly process high volumes of data with complex algorithms that determine precise navigation information, intelligent guidance maneuvers, and the safest landing sites for future missions. The HPSC processor architecture provides roughly 100 times the computational capacity of current space flight processors for the same amount of power. The chip also offers greater flexibility, extensibility and interoperability than current processors. A test of the terrain-relative navigation capability to capture and compare real-time images with known maps of surface features is planned for late 2019 through NASA’s Flight Opportunities. SPLICE’s advanced sensing, computing and algorithm technologies will enable safe and precise landing for future NASA missions. Charged with returning astronauts to the Moon within five years, NASA’s Artemis lunar exploration plans are based on a two-phase approach: the first is focused on speed – landing astronauts on the Moon by 2024 – while the second will establish a sustained human presence on and around the Moon by 2028. We will use what we learn on the Moon to prepare to send astronauts to Mars. The technology missions on this launch will advance a variety of future exploration missions. Hillary Smith NASA's Langley Research Center

THIS WEEK IN HISTORY - Slides 1/36 JUNE 24, 1812: NAPOLEON INVADES RUSSIA The French Emperor’s Grande Armée, consisting of over 500,000 men, marched to Moscow in an attempt to compel Czar Alexander I of Russia to stop trading with the British and accept Napoleon’s Continental System instead. The Russian army refused to engage in battle and used scorched earth tactics, burning everything behind them as they retreated, to further draw the French forces into the country. Napoleon’s army was ill-equipped in terms of supplies and the Russian weather and nearly 300,000 French men perished in the battle that lasted six months.

Mountain of ice on asteroid ‘is like nothing humanity has ever seen before’ Rob Waugh The mountain is called Ahuna Mons (NASA) Astronomers could hardly believe their eyes when they saw a 12,000ft mountain of ice rising from the surface of the dwarf planet Ceres in images sent back by NASA’s Dawn probe. The mountain ‘is like nothing that humanity has ever seen before’, NASA said this week. The mountain of ice (Ahuna Mons) is even, smooth, and steep-sided, and now scientists from the German Aerospace Centre (DLR) believe they know how it formed. Basically, the mountain is a huge mud volcano, made of hot mud which burst through the surface at a weak point covered in reflective salt - then froze in the bitter cold of space. When it was first discovered, Ceres was believed to be a ‘missing planet’ – but it’s now considered a dwarf planet alongside Pluto. The Dawn spacecraft, driven by a Star Trek-style ion drive, orbited Ceres for the first time in 2015, capturing data which is now being analysed by scientists. The researchers analysed measurements of the dwarf planet. © Provided by Oath Inc. Ceres Dwarf planet isolated on black background. 3D render. Wladimir Neumann of the DLR Institute of Planetary Research in Berlin-Adlershof and the University of Muenster said, ‘In this region, the interior of Ceres is not solid and rigid, but moving and at least partially fluid ‘This 'bubble' that formed in the mantle of Ceres beneath Ahuna Mons is a mixture of saline water and rock components.’ The researchers write, ‘A bubble made of a mixture of salt water, mud and rock rose from within the dwarf planet. ‘The bubble pushed the ice-rich crust upwards, and at a structural weak point the muddy substance, comprising salts and hydrogenated silicates, was pushed to the surface, solidified in the cold of space, in the absence of any atmosphere, and piled up to form a mountain. ‘Ahuna Mons is an enormous mud volcano.’ https://www.msn.com/en-gb/news/techandscience/mountain-of-ice-on-asteroid-is-like-nothing-humanity-has-ever-seen-before/ar-AADb1kZ?li=BBoPWjQ

Not been that bad the last couple of days, a few showers here and there and around 14/16c, just nice for me.

I like news like this. Two 'rhino poachers' die after crashing into goat during a high-speed escape from rangers Tom Embury-Dennis Two suspected rhino poachers have died after crashing into a goat while fleeing park rangers in Zimbabwe, according to local reports. The collision last week occurred at Bubye Valley Conservancy, on the outskirts of the southern town of Beitbridge, near the border with South Africa. Nehanda Radio, a Zimbabwean broadcaster, reported park rangers tracked the four poachers, leading to a high-speed chase which ended when the men’s car hit a goat and overturned. Two of the suspected poachers survived – and were charged with hunting a protected animal – but Godfrey Makechemu and Charles Runye died of their injuries, according to the radio station. Prosecutors said the men’s tracks indicated they were following a rhino, before fleeing in a Toyota Wish vehicle once they saw park rangers in pursuit. "Acting on a tip-off, a police mobile unit saw the suspected poachers coming out of Bubye Valley Conservancy and heading towards a nearby Jopembe village and pursued them," prosecutor Misheck Guwanda said. A rifle with telescopic sight was reportedly found at the scene of the collision. James Mauto, 41, and Celestino Shate, 35, were remanded in custody on suspicion of poaching and are due to appear in court on 28 June. https://www.msn.com/en-gb/news/world/two-rhino-poachers-die-after-crashing-into-goat-during-high-speed-escape-from-rangers/ar-AAD9TTk?ocid=chromentp

What a bitch, watching This Morning and this lady is raving on how she got a free nose job on the DHS by faking depression, I checked on Google and she has even sold her story to the bloody Sun!!!! £7,000 compliments of the DHS. There are people out there who can't get fuck all free from the DHS when they have genuine illnesses and this lady gets a new nose job and bragging on about it, I hope the authorities see or hear about this and make her pay the £7 grand back and slam her up for a while in nick.

Chelsea expect to agree Frank Lampard deal this week with new manager set for a three-year contract Chelsea are hoping to conclude negotiations to make Frank Lampard their new manager by the end of the week. Lampard is the club’s first choice to succeed Maurizio Sarri and they want to have him in place as soon as possible. Derby, who will demand £4m in compensation to release Lampard, continue to insist they have yet to be approached by the Blues. But it is believed to be only a matter of time as Chelsea are prepared to give their former midfielder a three-year contract. Lampard has been away on holiday in France, but as revealed by Standard Sport earlier in the week, he has already informed Derby of his desire to join Chelsea if the opportunity arises. The Championship club have been drawing up a shortlist of possible replacements, although claim that they’re still working on giving Lampard an extension on his current terms. He has two years of his current agreement left to run and Derby say they are ignoring approaches from potential candidates over the job. But Chelsea are sure Lampard wants to be their next coach and become part of a new set-up that will also include Petr Cech in a technical director role. The west London club wants to avoid a repeat of last year when Sarri took over from Antonio Conte after pre-season had already begun. Those players not involved in international duty earlier this month are due to report back in a few weeks and Chelsea want Lampard to have plenty of time to prepare for the new campaign. Sarri asked to leave Chelsea for Juventus after the club won the Europa League Final against Arsenal at the end of May and he is going to be officially unveiled by the Serie A champions at a press conference on Thursday. The Italian came in for a lot of criticism from Chelsea fans during his one season in charge, but as well as lifting a trophy, also secured a third-place finish in the Premier League. https://www.standard.co.uk/sport/football/chelsea/chelsea-expect-to-agree-frank-lampard-deal-this-week-with-new-manager-set-for-threeyear-contract-a4170686.html?

UNCLE GRIZZLY21 BEAR

Corsica's 'cat-fox': On the trail of what may be a new species WATCH ON YOUTUBE In the forest undergrowth of northern Corsica, two wildlife rangers open a cage to reveal a striped, tawny-coated animal, one of 16 felines known as "cat-foxes" in the area and thought to be a new species. "We believe that it's a wild natural species which was known but not scientifically identified because it's an extremely inconspicuous animal with nocturnal habits," says Pierre Benedetti, chief environmental technician of the National Hunting and Wildlife Office (ONCFS). MORE

European Space Agency probe to intercept a comet The European Space Agency is to launch another mission to a comet. After the hugely successful Rosetta encounter with the icy dirt-ball known as 67P/Churyumov-Gerasimenko in 2014, officials have now selected a new venture that will launch in 2028. It's called Comet Interceptor and will aim to catch and study an object that has come in towards the Sun from the outer reaches of the Solar System. Scientifically, it will be led from the UK's Mullard Space Science Laboratory. Dr Geraint Jones, who is affiliated to the University College London research centre, is the principal investigator. The concept is a three-in-one probe: a mothership and two smaller daughter craft. They will separate near the comet to conduct different but complementary studies. The cost for Esa is expected to be about €150m. As is customary, individual member states will provide the instrumentation and cover that tab. 'Snowman' shape of distant Ultima revealed Rosetta mission ends in comet collision UK will lead European exoplanet mission Interceptor was selected on Wednesday by the agency's Science Programme Committee as part of the new F-Class series - "F" standing for fast. The call for ideas only went out a year ago. There will now be a period of feasibility assessment with industry before the committee reconvenes to formally "adopt" the concept. At that point, the mission becomes the real deal. The intention is to launch the probe on the same rocket as Esa's Ariel space telescope when it goes up at the end of the next decade. This observatory won't use the full performance of its launch vehicle, and so spare mass and volume is available to do something additional. And it's Ariel's destination that makes Interceptor a compelling prospect. The telescope is to be positioned at a "gravitational sweetspot" about 1.5 million km from Earth. This is an ideal position from which to study distant stars and their planets - but it also represents a fast-response "parking bay" for any new mission seeking a target of opportunity. The type of comets being sought by Interceptor tends to give little notice of their arrival in the inner Solar System - perhaps only a few months. That's insufficient time to plan, build and launch a spacecraft. You need to be out there already, waiting for the call. This is what Interceptor will do. It will be sitting at the sweetspot, relying on sky surveys to find it a suitable target. When that object is identified, the probe will then set off to meet it. The encounter will be very different from that of Rosetta at 67P. Interceptor will not orbit the comet; it will just fly past - hopefully not too quickly. Nor will Interceptor try to repeat the landing of Rosetta's little robot, Philae. Instead, it will be the job of those daughter crafts to see if they can get in a bit closer to the comet than the mothership to acquire some more detailed information. "The main spacecraft has the propulsion, the high-gain antenna to talk to Earth, and some instrumentation on it. That passes relatively far from the comet, about 1,000km or so upstream of the nucleus of the object. And then we deploy two cubesat-like probes that go a lot closer and do the high-risk, high-reward observations," deputy PI Dr Colin Snodgrass, from the University of Edinburgh, told BBC News. The comets actively encountered so far by space probes have been the repeat visitors - the ones that shuffle back and forth to make a journey around the Sun every few years. And because they have gone close to our star on multiple occasions, they've been chemically altered by heat, particle bombardment and even numerous impacts with other bodies. In contrast, the comets that come in from the so-called Oort Cloud - a band of icy material that resides several hundred billion km from the Sun - will be pristine. And to see one at close quarters should give scientists completely new insights into the conditions that existed at the inception of the Solar System, and potentially from even further back in time. The risk for Interceptor is that it could be parked up for quite some time. The Oort Cloud comet will have to have just the right trajectory for the Esa mission. A good sample of candidates will inevitably be out of range of the probe's propulsion system. On the positive side, new Earth-based observatories, such as the Large Synoptic Survey Telescope (LSST), will soon come online. These are expected to have the sensitivity to find many more objects moving across the sky. "Yes, there's a risk we could end up sitting there with nothing really suitable," conceded Prof Mark McCaughrean, Esa's senior advisor for science and exploration. "But in the end, you'd direct it at something and there are some back-up targets already identified." These would be more of those "short period" comets. One is called 73P/Schwassmann-Wachmann, which was a possibility considered for Europe's Giotto probe in the 1980s. Giotto eventually flew past Comet Halley. The 2028 launch is going to be quite an occasion for UK scientists. They will be leading their European partners on both the missions - Ariel and Comet Interceptor - mated atop the rocket. Chris Lee, the head of science programmes at UK Space Agency, said: "I'm delighted that our academic community impressed Esa with a vision of what a small, fast science mission can offer. "In 1986 the UK-led mission to Halley's Comet became the first to observe a cometary nucleus and, more recently, UK scientists took part in another iconic European comet mission, Rosetta. Now our scientists will build on that impressive legacy by attempting to visit a pristine comet for the very first time and learn more about the origins of our Solar System." https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/science-environment-48696024

Classic this yesterday our daughter was telling us, her Virgin phone was playing up, it was ringing but she could not hear it ringing, me being a good dad told her to check the wires as she lets her pet rats out and they might have nibbled on the wire, she got back to me and said she has called an engineer out to check but she would put her pet rats in the back room just in case the engineer spotted any nibbled wires and seen the rats in the cage and then thought of the obvious. So before the engineer called she told wee Kaiden that "When the engineer calls you must NOT say we have any pet rats...ok?" he nodded his head and helped her shift the cage into the back room, the engineer called at the given time, put his toolbox down and wee Kaiden looked at him, put his hands on his hips and yelled twice, "WE HAVE NO PET RATS..." our daughter said she felt like crawling on the floor and disappearing. Lucky enough the engineer did not have a clue what he was talking about and funny enough there were no chewed wires visible and the engineer told our daughter after having a wee look "Your telephone handset is not working, you had better get a new one."

Congratulations, boy or girl?

Nearly finished a book by John Grisham so I picked a Jack Higgins book called Confessional (1985), can't remember if I have read this before, can't be sure but Higgins is another author I like besides Grisham, Ludlam and a few others.

YEEEEESSSSSSSS DeGea got his buddy Mata at United now maybe DeGea will sign a new deal and fuck you Real. Juan Mata: Manchester United midfielder agrees on a new contract Midfielder Juan Mata has agreed on a new contract at Manchester United. Mata's present deal expires on 30 June but it is understood he will sign an extension in excess of one year. Unlike fellow Spaniard Ander Herrera, who is set to join PSG, Mata, 31, continued negotiations with United after the end of the season. This is the second year in a row United have agreed terms with a senior player long after the campaign has reached its conclusion. Marouane Fellaini was away at the World Cup with Belgium when his new contract was announced on 29 June last year. Mata joined United from Chelsea for a club record £37.1m in January 2014. He has scored 45 goals in 218 appearances and netted in the 2016 FA Cup final win against Crystal Palace. Mata also started when United won the Europa League and EFL Cup under Jose Mourinho the following season. https://www.bbc.co.uk/sport/football/48683833

I have only ever smoked or tried that stuff once down Southend when me and the wife was visiting my works buddy and his wife, I was half-pissed on wine when we arrived and he had booze and I got REALLY pissed and apparently, I was smoking this weed stuff and the wife gave me fucking hell the next morning as she said it took her 30 minutes to get me back home and we only lived 2 streets away from my works buddies house, she said I was weaving all over the place and singing like a bloody opera singer with his finger stuck up his arse!!, never again. My buddy Ray said at work on the Monday that he was laughing his arse off at me being pissed as a newt and high as a kite and I told him never again I would smoke that stuff as the next morning I had a raging headache with all the booze and weed the night before and the wife screaming at me like a demented Scottish wild cat.

@Harry @Toinho was this in your 'neck of the woods'...NO, SORRY, your 'neck of the bush' 2 mating kookaburra birds are at fault for a power outage in Australia Two lovemaking kookaburra birds caused a power outage in Australia Joshua Bote USA TODAY Published 11:33 AM EDT Jun 16, 2019 It's an old-fashioned Romeo and Juliet tale of star-crossed lovers – or perhaps a love story where sparks flew a little too intensely. Two kookaburras in a suburb of Australia were caught mating on a power line Wednesday afternoon until their untimely demise, which resulted in a power outage for around 1,000 homes. An eyewitness saw a pair of the birds on the top of a pole until sparks literally flew, resulting in two large flashes and loud bangs. When electricians for Australian power company Western Power got on the scene, they saw the two kookaburras dead on the ground below the power lines. It was caused by the female partner extending her wings in the midst of their mating, resulting in the wings touching separated power lines. "This action caused sparks to fly between the two birds as they acted as conductors for electricity between the separated lines," said Western Power spokesman Paul Entwistle. It triggered an automatic emergency shutdown of the network, resulting in the outage. Power was restored about an hour later. Unfortunately, the birds did not survive their "amorous avian adventure" and died on impact. "The two feathered fornicators were laid to rest in a private ceremony attended by Western Power staff later that evening," Entwistle said. https://eu.usatoday.com/story/news/world/2019/06/16/two-lovemaking-kookaburra-birds-cause-power-outage-perth-australia/1471135001/ https://www.msn.com/en-gb/news/offbeat/2-mating-kookaburra-birds-are-at-fault-for-a-power-outage-in-australia/ar-AAD3nhS

He is saying "Fuck for going for 4s" he has smashed 11 6s

Boaty McBoatface makes major climate change discovery on debut voyage The yellow submarine dubbed Boaty McBoatface made a significant climate change discovery on its very first research mission. Boaty McBoatface returned from its first expedition with data which links increasing Antarctic winds to rising sea temperatures. The mission launched in April 2017 and saw the autonomous vessel explore 110 miles at depths of up to 4,000 metres in the Orkney Passage, a region of the Southern Ocean some 500 miles from the Antarctic Peninsula. The data collected was published on Monday in the scientific journal PNAS. It showed Antarctic winds, growing stronger due to the ozone layer's depletion and increasing greenhouse gases, were adding to turbulence deep in the ocean.