Word: lunare
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Unlike the rovers, which relied on almost comical but remarkably reliable airbags to bounce down on the surface, Phoenix will use the braking-rocket and foot-pad technique pioneered by the Viking and lunar Surveyor probes. Once on the surface, it will deploy a suite of scientific instruments to study the terrain around it: stereoscopic cameras, microscopic imagers, electrochemistry analyzers, meteorological sensors. Most dramatically, it will also unstow and flex a powerful, 8-ft. (2.35-m) robotic arm, equipped with a camera...
...novel idea. The Ansari X prize, eventually awarded to Space Ship One, provided $10 million to develop private space flight. The Pentagon’s Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA) has awarded prizes to develop autonomous ground vehicles. Even Google has offered a $30 million Lunar X prize for the first privately funded group to send a robot to the moon. However, PETA’s prize is unconventional in that it is the first prize put forward in the area of ethics, not exploration.For PETA, an organization devoted to stop the slaughter of animals, in vitro meat...
...because it’s nearly impossible to talk about the 21st century without considering the monumental influence of science fiction on science in particular and society in general. Even alluding to the “21st century” conjures up the expectations of extraterrestrial visitations, android manservants, lunar colonies, intelligent computers, and of course, the ever-elusive flying car. The chances are you have heard of these exotic technologies before, all because of science fiction...
...diminishing power supply means the Ulysses mission ends on March 30, but the textbook rewrites will go on as fresh ships continue to take the place of old ones. The Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter (LRO), which will launch later this year, will conduct the most comprehensive surveys of the moon the U.S. has ever attempted, using cameras that can spot an object as small as a football. The mission will help scout for landing sites, as NASA is holding fast to its plans to return astronauts to the moon by 2020. LRO will also hunt for signs of water...
...almost none of tomorrow's holidays actually follows that calendar. All Muslim holy days, for instance, are calculated on a lunar system. Keyed to the phases of the moon, Islam's 12 months are each 29 and a half days long, for a total of 354 days a year, or 11 days fewer than on ours. That means the holidays rotate backward around the Gregorian calendar, occurring 11 days earlier each year. That is why you can have an "easy Ramadan" in the spring, when going without water all day is relatively easy, or a hard one in the summer...