Top European scientists want to crash a spacecraft into an asteroid — again

A team of international scientists wants to crash a spacecraft into an asteroid. This week they launched “I Support AIM” — a campaign to advance approval of the European Space Agency’s (ESA) Asteroid Impact Mission (AIM) in 2020. Over 100 scientists have signed a letter in support of the mission so far.

“AIM is not confirmed yet,” scientist and lead signatory Dr. Patrick Michel told Digital Trends. “[But] behind this mission, there is a strong and big community of planetary scientists … as well as a strong support of the public who is a fan of this kind of adventure, which is good for the visibility of ESA.”

The mission is, first and foremost, a demonstration of technology. On its website, ESA calls AIM “a small mission of opportunity to demonstrate mainly in the telecommunications domain.” Nonetheless, as Michel and ESA suggest, the best way to demonstrate new technologies is through collecting and returning scientifically valuable data.

Proposed to launch in October 2020, AIM would travel to the binary Didymos asteroids, which will pass by Earth at at distance of about 10 million miles in 2022. The spacecraft will map the smaller of the two asteroids, from its surface to its interior structures, a first for a celestial body so small. At the end of it’s mission, the probe will crash into the asteroid like its predecessor, Rosetta.

To be sure, Michel says there’s little to be feared about an asteroid hitting Earth with devastating global effects. Most large asteroids (over a half-mile wide) are well-known, monitored, and determined to be orbiting at a safe distance. But objects bigger than 450 feet can devastate cities, countries, and even continents. This is where the worry lies.

“We only know about 15 percent of them,” Michel says, “Fortunately, their impact frequency is of the order of 10,000 years, so we should not be too much worried, but we never know. Although I’m sleeping well, it is important to discover them all, and also to test our ability to deflect them, which is precisely the aim of the Asteroid Impact and Deflection Assessment mission (AIDA).”

AIDA is a NASA-led, international collaboration to detect and prepare to deflect threatening asteroids. ESA’s AIM would be one of Europe’s contributions to the initiative. Although the chances of a serious impact are quite small, they aren’t insignificant. For that reason, Michel and the other signatories support AIM.

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Big names nominated for top honors at The Game Awards 2016

Next month, The Game Awards 2016 will be held at the Microsoft Theater in Los Angeles. Ahead of the event itself, the nominees for the various awards that are up for grabs have been announced.

“The Game Awards is all about celebrating the state of video game art,” said producer and host of the show Geoff Keighley. “In just a few short weeks we will recognize the most outstanding games of 2016 in unexpected ways, and preview the most anticipated games of 2017 and beyond with the longest, most in-depth world premieres we’ve ever attempted — including surprises and new game announcements.”

Doom, Inside, Overwatch, Titanfall 2, and Uncharted 4: A Thief’s End make up the race for Game of the Year. Uncharted 4 is the frontrunner for a sweep with eight nominations overall, while Inside, Overwatch, and Firewatch aren’t far behind with five apiece.

Elsewhere, the focus shifts to the biggest releases of next year with the Most Anticipated Game award. The titles nominated for the gong are God of War, Horizon: Zero Dawn, Red Dead Redemption 2, The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild, and Mass Effect: Andromeda — the first gameplay footage of the latter is also set to be aired as part of the show.

Other categories include Best Art Direction, Best Narrative, and the Games for Impact award, which casts a spotlight on releases that tackle real-world social issues. Individuals will be honored in categories like  Trending Gamer, Best eSports Player, and the Best Performance award for voice actors.

The Game Awards will be broadcast live on December 1, with streams available via Twitch, YouTube, Twitter, Facebook Live, and more. In addition, the entire event will be viewable in virtual reality through the NextVR app — head to the show’s official website for more details.

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Now, you can send money to your friends via PayPal by shouting at Siri

PayPal, the venerable payment platform of more than 192 million users, has just made it easier to part with your hard-earned dollars. On Thursday, the firm announced integration with Apple’s Siri voice assistant on iOS, allowing overeager iPhone and iPad owners to send money to their friends via voice.

It’s quite intuitive. You can request money from that fickle roommate who always seems to disappear come rent time by getting Siri’s attention — “Hey Siri” — followed by a simple command: “request $50 from Bob using PayPal.” Conversely, you can send some spending money to your second cousin whose birthday you forgot by saying, for example, “send $50 to Julia using PayPal.” Your context doesn’t even have to be that perfect — as long as you include the word “PayPal” in your command and the payer or payee inhabits your contact list, Siri will handle slang and shorthand without complaint. “PayPal John $5” and “Pass Alan $11 with PayPal” will work just as well as the more formal commands.

And recipients needn’t use PayPal. When you send them cash, they’ll receive an email with links to login to an existing account or create a new one. Once they click either and attach a bank account, they’ll have the option of withdrawing the funds.

The new feature is rolling out to users in more than 30 countries, PayPal said, including Australia, Austria, Belgium, Brazil, Canada, China, Denmark, Finland, France, Germany, Hong Kong, India, Israel, Italy, Japan, Malaysia, Mexico, Netherlands, New Zealand, Norway, Russia, Saudi Arabia, Singapore, Spain, Sweden, Switzerland, Thailand, United Kingdom, United Arab Emirates, and the United States. The list of supported languages includes French, Dutch, English, Finnish, Cantonese, Hebrew, Malay, Arabic, German, Italian, and Arabic.

The new Siri integration comes as mobile transactions grow. PayPal said that, last year, it processed $41 billion in peer-to-peer payments. And it expects that number to grow: in December of this year alone, it’s projecting more than 17 million PayPal users will send funds to and request money from one another.

PayPal is not the first money-transferring app to support Siri. Square Cash and Monzo, a U.K. bank, actually beat it to the punch.

And PayPal is far from the first to tap Siri. As part of iOS 10, the latest version of Apple’s mobile operating system, the iPhone maker introduced third-party Siri integration. It works with six categories of applications — ride booking (e.g., Uber), messaging (Vine), photo search (Google Photos), workouts (Fitbit), VoIP calling (Skype), and payments — and it operates seamlessly, for the most part. Siri takes care of the heavy lifting where speech is concerned, handling voice recognition and the interpretation of verbalized queries. And it provides a means for apps to reply to responses with a rich user interface: WeChat, for example, shows an inline preview of the message you’re about to send.

Taking advantage of PayPal’s new integration is as easy as updating to the latest version of the iOS app.

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Get off the grid with this solar backpack that can fully recharge your laptop

Backpacks that just keep equipment are becoming rather dull — the Voltaic Array and OffGrid use built-in sun panels to price your DSLR or laptop whilst on the pass. After launching on Kickstarter earlier this week, Voltaic is less than $5,000 shy of its funding goal with greater than a month final.
The Kickstarter is the organisation’s 2d crowdfunded sun backpack after effectively launching its unique Converter backpack. the 2 new backpacks provide improved charging talents over the employer’s original product. The OffGrid backpack almost doubles the authentic 3.5-watt backpack at six watts, at the same time as the Array boasts a 10-watt sun panel and 19,800mAh battery, big sufficient to rate a pc.

Voltaic says the Array is the most effective sun backpack powerful sufficient to price a laptop — it's also capable of charging a drone, DSLR or smaller gadgets like capsules and smartphones. The Array’s battery takes 12 hours to price thru sunlight, or four hours with a wall outlet. The corporation says the solar battery has enough capacity to provide a 1.7 rate to a pc, or approximately one drone, 4.5 telephone expenses or up to six.5 DSLR fill-united statesThe OffGrid is the enterprise’s streamlined alternative, with a shorter 4.5-time sun charge but no longer pretty as a great deal juice. The OffGrid can power a smartphone or DSLR about one time but is not huge enough to refuel a laptop.

The luggage are available for pledges starting at $119, with a digital camera insert including $30 to the fee. The OffGrid is predicted to retail for $199 while the Array is priced at $379. The earliest backers ought to see their bags as soon as February, with the remaining bags anticipated to start delivery in March.

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Kia unveils 4 current models reimagined as autonomous concept cars at SEMA 2016

Kia is one of many automakers bringing a fleet of concept cars to the 2016 SEMA display in Las Vegas. but one thing makes the Korean company’s quartet of idea vehicles a piece special.
The Kia principles are all versions of modern production models, however reimagined as self-riding cars. each become designed for what Kia calls “The self sustaining existence,” where self-riding vehicles come to be an extension of their owners’ lifestyles. They’re constructed around the assumption that autonomous using will free up time for different things.
such things as watching tv, as an instance. The Soul First magnificence is a Kia Soul with an interior that’s been reoriented around autonomous driving. There’s no steering wheel, and the front seats face rearward, permitting occupants to converse and watch a forty-inch Samsung tv. A custom middle console consists of two drugs for controlling automobile features. Kia believes this is the suitable setup for city businesspeople.

while the Soul First class is targeted on the town, the Sorento Ski Gondola is all approximately the outside. because the name implies, it’s essentially an self sustaining bus for taking skiers up and down mountains. The interior is waterproofed to cope with ski tools, and the Sorento rides on a fixed Dominator Rubber Tracks, a function that makes this the coolest Kia Sorento ever.
For the 1/3 SEMA idea, Kia partnered with college of Rock to turn a Sedona minivan into a mobile recording studio, entire with virtual mixing board, boom mike, close to-area audio system, and acoustic paneling. Kia also became its new Niro hybrid into the remaining car for a triathlete. called the Niro Triathlon, it features a small pickup bed and different nooks for storing gear, plus a Human contact ergonomic reclining chair for the athlete.
Like many other automakers, Kia is genuinely experimenting with self-riding vehicles. in advance this yr, it launched “pressure wise,” a brand new sub-logo targeted on self reliant-driving tech. The agency has said it plans to launched partly self reliant motors by 2020, and completely self reliant automobiles by way of 2030. We’ll see if any of these future self-driving motors resemble any of these wild concepts.

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POWERUP FPV DRONE.

The PowerUp FPV brings out the child in you, which include the repeated failures.

one of the earliest flying devices youngsters become acquainted with is paper airplanes, as rudimentary as they'll be. Taking that concept and applying it to a consumer drone is all the extra exciting when trappings like a digital camera, live streaming, and an FPV headset are added to the mixture.
that is the PowerUp FPV, a successor to the PowerUp 3.zero, borne out of a Kickstarter marketing campaign in partnership with Parrot, that is already recognized for its own lineup of drones. virtual tendencies got a few arms-on time with this precise drone, which continues to be in beta, so our experience is primarily based on what we had to work with.


design and setup

blanketed in the container is the number one frame, at the side of a stabilizer rod that clips onto it, plus a 550mAh battery (the identical ones used for Parrot Minidrones), and 8 sheets of paper to fold into plane designs. A microSD card doesn’t include the unit, however it does aid cards as much as 32GB for recorded video and photos.

the premise of the body is made of the two 13-inch carbon fiber struts that are spaced out about three.5-inches aside.  propellers connect to their ends at the returned in which the motors are. The nostril holds the electronics, consisting of a compass, for the reason that PowerUP FPV doesn’t have GPS for area records.  LEDs suggest repute, wherein green is good to move, amber shows half of the battery lifestyles, and red is clearly low battery. those colors can also be mixed to create different indications, inclusive of when the drone is in the process of updating its firmware, as an instance.
The digicam shoots in 640 x 480 resolution and manually rotates absolutely to view footage from any perspective, except immediately beforehand is the maximum unobstructed view due to the fact there may be no way to attitude it up or down. Even instantly ahead, the drone’s nose is visible at the bottom of the body, so there may be no way to get an entirely clear view from any direction.

We were to begin with stressed via the protected strap for the cardboard FPV headset as it became too quick for wrapping round someone’s head. It’s clearly for the reverse reason of securing the telephone inside the slot so that it doesn’t fall out whilst tilting your head in FPV mode. In truth, you’re now not purported to fly this with a headset that straps over your head first of all, a difficult point that is to be clarified with commands and a drawing in order to include the unit. both way, the drone works with any Google Cardboard headset.
The paper within the box felt like the thicker creation stock we might have been cunning with in simple faculty. PowerUp FPV indicates wellknown tabloid or A3 printer paper a hundred and ten GSM or 28-pound inventory, all of which is widely to be had at print shops. via default, the “Invader” is the layout selected for the included sheets, but there are other templates the organization has endorsed, with commands on the way to fold them. extra designs are reportedly coming, and PowerUp is encouraging customers to test with their personal designs. regardless of visual indicators on the protected papers for the Invader design, we found the excellent commands were on-line thru YouTube or the PowerUp internet site.
Sliding the paper plane into the frame turned into easy enough, because it’s really about aligning holders to preserve it in region. The front wishes to be driven up as much as possible, with the lower back clip additionally driven ahead to preserve the paper from transferring an excessive amount of. The stabilizer rod is a specifically essential piece, because it allows regular the frame while clipped onto the struts as close to the battery compartment as viable. the use of a couple of scissors, we reduce open flaps for the elevator panels inside the returned to assist with pitch. We then slid inside the battery, the LEDs lit up, and we have been prepared to fly.
now not so fast
There are two approaches to fly the PowerUp FPV. One is with the app on a phone or tablet, the usage of digital controls for flight and functions. the alternative is to use the covered Cardboard viewer with a smartphone and app to manipulate the drone with head moves. A wide open discipline with distance from timber is the most perfect location to fly, a factor made obvious as soon as we got this element in the air.

the level of trial and mistakes worried right here gave us suits in positive times. Being in beta, the iOS app became liable to abnormal system faults that required frequent re-launches and restarts on the drone to make certain the relationship become strong. We had been suggested to place the cellphone or tablet in plane mode to reduce cellular interference, though it’s no longer a demand. And the fewer wireless networks in the place, the better.

The PowerUp FPV has no rudders or different electronic components to help smooth out its flight. The internal gyroscope does lots of heavy lifting, however thrust is manually managed with the aid of the pilot. we'd have favored to peer a situation wherein the drone went right into a circular retaining sample after takeoff which will allow the pilot enough time to make changes before taking up manage. whether or not it’s food for thought or wishful thinking relies upon on what builders can do with the device’s constrained on-board electronics.
With its paper-heavy layout, stronger winds continuously affect overall performance. PowerUp claims it could go as much as 20mph in harsher wind conditions, which is probably real at complete thrust, yet is simply only plausible with a pilot who has a strong draw close on how to persuade it correctly. We attempted flying in windier situations, and it veered in special instructions every time.

Going FPV

The FPV mode provides a cool component to the PowerUp that is easy to realize, except you could’t do it by myself. A spotter is important for piloting this aspect with the cardboard headset, in particular for the probability that it's going to land someplace unintentional.
Responding to go gestures, the drone turns left or proper like your head, and climbs and dives based on tilting your head up or down. It’s exciting, but also disorienting. We could recognize the app’s live view staring again into our eyes, although we became irritated with the lag among our head actions and the drone’s. It felt love it changed into continually gambling trap-up.
but, different structural components aren’t presently offered. If a strut or motor breaks or the digital camera gets mangled come what may, there may be no recourse for repair or alternative, forcing you to replace the whole frame.
conclusion
We got here away a little torn with the PowerUp FPV. The idea at the back of it is cool, and the manner it appears and feels is hard not to like. whilst it flies, it suggests real promise too. It’s everything that occurs among setup and flight that we observed quite maddening, and at the same time as we are able to chalk some of that as much as weeding out bugs earlier than release, developers have paintings to do to make sure it warrants the fee of entry.


It’s already available now for pre-order for $200 and could launch by way of November 20. Retail availability remains reportedly inside the works. That’s a touch expensive for a drone this is greater delicate than others within the same rate range.
We look ahead to taking this out for more flights as soon as the bugs have been squashed and the very last version is launched, however for now, we'd be careful earlier than diving proper in on this one.

      Highs                                                              

• Beta apps need a lot of work
• Instructions need to be clearer
• Flight control takes a lot of trial and error

•       Lows

• Expensive

• Interesting design
• Physical assembly isn’t difficult
• Camera captures live video and still photos
• More durable than it looks

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Singapore builds on autonomous vehicle progress with driverless bus pilot program

Singapore already is home to a fleet of self-driving cars that may be hailed with a smartphone. quickly, citizens and visitors to the town can be able to choose a driverless bus as one among their to be had transportation alternatives for shifting across the Asian metropolis. And we aren't speakme small buses right here; Singapore is going large and rolling out  40-foot-lengthy driverless buses which can be managed mechanically.
The driverless bus trial is the end result of a partnership among Nanyang Technological college (NTU) and CleanTech Park, an eco-business park that encourages the improvement of clean generation. The pair has already worked collectively on driverless vehicles, growing and operating a self-driving commute among the college’s campus and the CleanTech enterprise park. The trip has been in operation on account that 2013.

NTU will use its knowledge and enjoy from the travel trial because it develops its driverless bus gadget. 


The researchers plan to equip  electric hybrid buses with the sensors and software program device to pilot the bus via the crowded metropolis streets. “So, this self sufficient bus trial is the primary of its kind in Singapore so that it will intention to improve road safety, reduce automobile congestion, alleviate pollution and address manpower challenges,” said NTU leader of personnel and Vice-President of studies Lam Khin Yong to Channel information Asia.

just like the go back and forth, the buses initially will shipping passengers between NTU and CleanTech Park with plans to increase the transportation community to encompass the outlying Pioneer MRT Station within the destiny. unlike the smaller shuttles which give taxi-stage service, the bigger single deck buses are able to wearing up to eighty passengers, imparting town dwellers with a mass transit choice.
The pilot program will be administered by using Singapore’s Land transport Authority (LTA) along with NTU. consequences of the pilot may be analyzed by the LTA at the side of Google, which is understood for its paintings on driverless car generation. the usage of feedback from the trial, the LTE hopes to extend the driverless bus gadget past its initial college campus route and produce it to additional transit stations within the city.

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