Rare Pink Dolphin Spotted in Louisiana
A man caught on camera a rare pink dolphin on July 12 who may be an albino female dolphin locally known as "Pinky."
https://youtu.be/p10gr_esw88
NASA Astronomy Picture of the Day
July 23, 2023
The Antikythera Mechanism
It does what? No one knew that 2,000 years ago, the technology existed to build such a device. The Antikythera mechanism, pictured, is now widely regarded as the first computer. Found at the bottom of the sea aboard a decaying Greek ship, its complexity prompted decades of study, and even today some of its functions likely remain unknown. X-ray images of the device, however, have confirmed that a main function of its numerous clock-like wheels and gears is to create a portable, hand-cranked, Earth-centered, orrery of the sky, predicting future star and planet locations as well as lunar and solar eclipses. The corroded core of the Antikythera mechanism's largest gear is featured, spanning about 13 centimeters, while the entire mechanism was 33 centimeters high, making it similar in size to a large book. Recently, modern computer modeling of missing components is allowing for the creation of a more complete replica of this surprising ancient machine.
https://apod.nasa.gov/apod/astropix.html?
Amazon Is Building $120 Million Processing Facility at NASA's Space Center
21 July 2023 20:55 IST
Amazon is building a $120 million (nearly Rs. 980 crore) processing facility at NASA's Kennedy Space Center in Florida for its thousands of planned Kuiper internet satellites, the company and state officials said Friday.
The 1,00,000 square-foot building is part of the roughly $10 billion (nearly Rs. 82,000 crore) that Amazon has vowed to invest in its Kuiper project, a planned network of 3,200 low Earth-orbiting satellites designed to beam broadband internet globally.
The Kuiper internet network, which will largely compete with Starlink from Elon Musk's SpaceX, is expected to complement Amazon's web services powerhouse.
The Florida facility will employ 50 staff and be a last stop for Amazon's Kuiper satellites before they go to space, after being manufactured at the Kuiper project's primary plant in Redmond, Washington. A ten-story-tall room will allow the satellites to be fitted into rocket payload farings, the protective shell around satellites that sit atop the rocket.
Amazon began construction of the site in January and plans to complete it by late 2024, with a target to ship its first batch of satellites to the area for processing in the second half of 2025, said Steve Metayer, Amazon's vice president of Kuiper Production Operations.
That target date will kickoff a sprint for Amazon to deploy half of the network into orbit by 2026, as required by US regulators.
The company has bagged 77 heavy-lift rocket launch contracts, potentially worth billions of dollars combined, mostly from the Boeing-Lockheed joint venture United Launch Alliance and Jeff Bezos's space company Blue Origin.
Amazon plans to launch its first few prototype satellites to space by the end of the year, followed by launches of its first mass-produced satellites in 2024.
Testing the service with corporate and government customers will begin that year, the company said.
Anna Farrar, a spokeswoman for Space Florida, a state-funded entity to attract space businesses to Florida, said Amazon is eligible to receive funds under a state grant for transportation-related projects but "has not received any funding to date."
https://www.gadgets360.com/science/news/amazon-building-usd-120-million-processing-facility-nasa-kennedy-space-center-4230199
Nobody even mentions the actors anymore