Month: May 2022

After losing contact with its helicopter, NASA put the entire Mars mission on hold

Mars is only going to get colder and darker for the next 10 weeks as winter deepens.

NASA's Mars <em>Ingenuity</em> helicopter has been flying across the red planet for more than a year.

Enlarge / NASA's Mars Ingenuity helicopter has been flying across the red planet for more than a year. (credit: NASA)

The achievement of powered flight on another world is one of the great spaceflight feats of the last decade. Since its first brief hop on April 19, 2021, the Mars Ingenuity helicopter has subsequently made an additional 27 flights, traveling nearly 7 km across the surface of the red planet and scouting ahead of NASA's Perseverance rover. It has wildly exceeded the expectations and hopes of its scientists and engineers.

But recently the small, automated helicopter has had problems with dust accumulating on its solar panels, NASA says. This dust reduces the ability of the vehicle to recharge its six lithium-ion batteries. And just as the helicopter needs all of the solar energy it can get, the northern hemisphere of Mars is approaching the dead of winter, which comes in a little more than two months.

Due to these battery issues, the helicopter's team of flight controllers at NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory lost contact with the helicopter on May 3. They had been closely monitoring the health of their tiny spacecraft, particularly the charge state of its batteries. After losing contact, the engineers figured that the Ingenuity's field-programmable gate array—essentially, its flight computer—entered into shutdown mode due to a lack of power. In such a situation, virtually all of the helicopter's on-board electronics turned off to protect them from the cold nighttime temperatures, more than 100° Fahrenheit below freezing. This included the internal clock.

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"Hochriskantes Embargo von russischem Erdgas"

Studie: Wirtschaftliche Auswirkungen wahrscheinlich stärker als Corona-Krise oder Finanzkrise 2009. Befürchtet werden erhebliche Produktionseinbußen, Insolvenzen, Preisschocks und gesteigerte Arbeitslosigkeit

Studie: Wirtschaftliche Auswirkungen wahrscheinlich stärker als Corona-Krise oder Finanzkrise 2009. Befürchtet werden erhebliche Produktionseinbußen, Insolvenzen, Preisschocks und gesteigerte Arbeitslosigkeit

ZTE Axon 40 Ultra is a flagship phone that’s all about the display

ZTE’s latest flagship phone features a 6.8 inch AMOLED display and an under-display camera so that there’s no need for a notch, hole, or large top bezel. With a resolution of 2480 x 1116 pixels, the ZTE Axon 40 Ultra packs 400 pixels per inch, and the screen has a 120 Hz refresh rate, 360 touch […]

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ZTE’s latest flagship phone features a 6.8 inch AMOLED display and an under-display camera so that there’s no need for a notch, hole, or large top bezel.

With a resolution of 2480 x 1116 pixels, the ZTE Axon 40 Ultra packs 400 pixels per inch, and the screen has a 120 Hz refresh rate, 360 touch sampling rate, 10-bit color depth, 100% DCI-P3 color gamut, up to 1500 nits peak brightness, and 1,440 Hz high frequency PWM dimming.

While under-display cameras (UDCs) can certainly give phones a striking appearance, they’re not exactly known for snapping great photos. ZTE says the Axon 40 Ultra uses the company’s third-gen UDC technology, which helps the camera section of the display blend in better with the rest of the screen, while also capturing better photographs thanks to a new 16MP image sensor, 2.24μm pixel size and improved software algorithms for applying noise reduction, anti-glare, defogging, and other effects to help improve image quality.

The phone’s fingerprint reader is also under the display, but that’s not as unusual in modern smartphones as under-display cameras.

Other features include a Qualcomm Snapdragon 8 Gen 1 processor, three 64MP rear cameras (including a primary camera, an ultra wide-angle camera, and a 5.7X telephoto camera), LPDDR5 RAM, UFS 3.1 storage, and a 5,000 mAh battery and support for 65W fast charging (wired).

The ZTE Axon 40 Ultra is now available in China with prices starting at 4,998 CNY (about $740) for a model with 8GB of RAM and 256GB of storage. The company is also expected to offer higher-priced configurations with up to 16GB of RAM and up to 1TB of storage, and a global version of the Axon 40 Ultra should launch in June.

ZTE is also introducing a more affordable ZTE Axon 40 Pro, which has a 6.67 inch, 2400 x 1080 pixel AMOLED display with a 144 Hz refresh rate and under-display fingerprint reader, but this model has a hole-punch cut-out for the 16MP selfie camera and the Axon 40 Pro is powered by a Qualcomm Snapdragon 870 processor.

This model has a 100MP primary camera, an 8MP ultra-wide camera, and 2MP macro and depth cameras.

The ZTE Axon 40 Pro goes on sale in China May 25th with prices ranging from 2,988 CNY (~$450) for an 8GB/128GB model to 3,798 CNY (~$565) for a 12GB/512GB configuration.

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Agroforst: Pickende Hühner unter Bäumen

Agroforstwirtschaft ist ökologisch sinnvoll und bringt vielfältige Erträge. Um sie für Landwirte attraktiver zu machen, müsste sie mehr beworben und vor allem entsprechend gefördert werden

Agroforstwirtschaft ist ökologisch sinnvoll und bringt vielfältige Erträge. Um sie für Landwirte attraktiver zu machen, müsste sie mehr beworben und vor allem entsprechend gefördert werden

Why our continued use of fossil fuels is creating a financial time bomb

We’re investing in things that will have little value if we move off fossil fuels.

Why our continued use of fossil fuels is creating a financial time bomb

Enlarge (credit: Aurich Lawson | Getty Images)

Earth Day was April 22, and its usual message—take care of our planet—has been given added urgency by the challenges highlighted in the latest IPCC report. This year, Ars is taking a look at the technologies we normally cover, from cars to chipmaking, and finding out how we can boost their sustainability and minimize their climate impact.

The numbers are startling.

We know roughly how much more carbon dioxide we can put into the atmosphere before we exceed our climate goals—limiting warming to 1.5° to 2° C above preindustrial temperatures. From that, we can figure out how much more fossil fuel we can burn before we emit that much carbon dioxide. But when you compare those numbers with our known fossil fuel reserves, things get jaw-dropping.

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"Traum des europäischen Hauses ist gescheitert"

In den Reden zum 8. und 9. Mai kam vor allem eines zum Ausdruck: Derzeit gibt es keine Basis für eine gemeinsame Zukunft des Westens und Russlands

In den Reden zum 8. und 9. Mai kam vor allem eines zum Ausdruck: Derzeit gibt es keine Basis für eine gemeinsame Zukunft des Westens und Russlands