Month: December 2022

Enlarge / The European robotic arm is seen investigating Soyuz MS-22 after a leak occurred Wednesday night. (credit: NASA TV)

Since a Soyuz spacecraft began to leak coolant uncontrollably on Wednesday night, flight controllers at Roscosmos, NASA, and other International Space Station partners have been closely studying data from the incident.

Although there is no immediate danger to the seven astronauts on board the space station, this is one of the most serious incidents in the history of the orbiting laboratory, which has been continuously occupied for nearly a quarter of a century. Among the most pressing questions: Is the Soyuz MS-22 spacecraft safe to fly back to Earth? If not, when can a replacement, Soyuz MS-23, be flown up? And if there is an emergency, what do the three crew members slated to fly home on MS-22 do in the meantime?

NASA has not held any briefings since the incident and has only released a fairly bland update on its blog. But there is a lot happening behind the scenes, and this story will attempt to summarize what is known—and what is not—at this time.

Enlarge / A Cruise vehicle on the streets of San Fransisco. (credit: David Paul Morris/Bloomberg/Getty Images)

The National Highway Traffic Safety Administration is looking into Cruise's robotaxis after several crashes involving the autonomous vehicles being rear-ended. NHTSA's Office of Defects Investigation has opened an investigation into the General Motors-backed autonomous driving startup's automated driving system and a possible propensity to brake inappropriately hard if another vehicle approaches quickly from behind. NHTSA's ODI is also looking into incidents where Cruise's AVs have stopped and become immobile road hazards.

Cruise is one of the leading AV developers, and along with Alphabet's Waymo, it has deployed actual driverless robotaxis, albeit on a small scale so far. It's developing a futuristic box-on-wheels called the Origin, which it hopes to have running on the road sans steering wheel in 2023. But for now, the company is testing on the streets of San Francisco with modified Chevrolet Bolt EVs.

There have been a few scrapes and bumps along the way, and earlier this year, footage went viral of a Cruise AV appearing to drive away from a traffic stop after being pulled over for not having its headlights on at night.

Enlarge / Tracking acceleration using matter waves hasn't previously been implemented in a portable form. (credit: J. Burrus/NIST)

A team of researchers from France has developed the first three-directional hybrid quantum inertial sensor, which can measure acceleration without using satellite signals. At the heart of this breakthrough device is something called "matter wave interferometry," which uses two distinct characteristics of quantum mechanics: wave-particle duality and superposition.

In the cloud

The device consists of a cloud of rubidium atoms that are cooled to temperatures nearing absolute zero. The atoms are placed in a vacuum and are in free fall due to gravity.

Once cooled, a series of three laser flashes are shone on the atoms, creating matter waves in the rubidium atoms. According to the laws of quantum mechanics, at extremely low temperatures, atoms do not behave like standard particles. They also behave as waves that can undergo diffraction and interference like light does.