Category: Techie

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From Engadget: Virgin Galactic unveils LauncherOne satellite vehicle

Virgin Galactic unveils LauncherOne satellite vehicle

Building a satellite, that’s not really much of a problem anymore. Getting them launched, well, that’s what separates the big boys from the wannabes. Virgin’s Richard Branson believes he has the answer to that — LauncherOne. The delivery system for Earth orbiters is based around the WhiteKnightTwo, the same launch platform used by SpaceShipTwo to reach its sub-orbital heights. The tube-like rocket of the LauncherOne is carried up to 50,000 feet by its mother ship, before detaching and initiating its two-stage rocket engines. The current design is capable of delivering 500-pound payloads into Low Earth Orbit, while lighter satellites of 225 pounds could reach Sun-Synchronous Low Earth Orbit. Virgin Galactic says it has already signed up its first customers, including SkyBox Imaging and GeoOptics. Sadly, there’s no word on when or how much it’ll cost to get the spy satellite you built in your backyard placed in the heavens. Check out the video and the PR after the break.

Update: We now know another of Virgin Galactic’s customers. Asteroid mining startup Planetary Resources has announced that it will “launch several constellations of Arkyd-100 Series spacecraft in the coming years aboard LauncherOne.”

 

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From Engadget: 36.7 million FPS camera revolutionized cancer screening, next comes combat sports

367 Million FPS camera revolutionized cancer screening, hopefully combat sportsSTEAM serial timeencoded amplified microscopy

We’re quite familiar with the fun you can have when you’ve got a high speed camera in your possession. But, even Phantom’s pricey and impressive 2,800 FPS cameras have nothing on the latest project out of UCLA. Engineers at the school have rigged up a microscope cam that uses serial time-encoded amplified microscopy (STEAM) to capture clips of individual cells at 36.7 million FPS. Let that sink in for a moment — that’s a “shutter” speed of 27 picoseconds. The school actually pioneered the method years ago, which uses ultra-fast laser pulses to generate images of cells as they speed by. The camera is capable of processing 100,000 cells a second, allowing doctors to spot cancerous anomalies that might have otherwise gone undetected. Now we just hope they can supersize the tech and sell it to HBO… boxing KOs can never be played back slow enough.

 

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From Engadget: Researchers store memory bit on a lone molecule, could pave the way for petabyte SSDs

Researchers store memory bit on a molecule, get 50,000 times denser storage than hard disk The Karlsruhe Institute of Technology (KIT) just deflated the size of a bit down to a solitary nanometer — the length of an organic molecule. The international research team managed it by first embedding a magnetized iron atom into a molecule made up of 51 atoms, then taking advantage of so-called memristive and spintronic properties. By applying a current, they flipped the atom’s magnetic charge, altering the resistance of the molecule as well — which they subsequently measured, storing a bit. Compared to a typical magnetic drive which needs 3 million atoms per bit, a device made this way could theoretically store 50 thousand times as much data in the same size — and would be an all-electric device, to boot. If the research ever pans out, a terabyte magnetic drive could turn into a 50 petabyte solid state unit — hopefully ready in time for all those 4K home movies you’ll need to store one day soon.

 

from Engadget