Abhi Tripathi retweeted
Our PI @RobLillis and Project Scientist @astrocurry spoke with Eos on the twins' magnetotail transit and upcoming powered Earth gravity assist that will boost them toward Mars.
eos.org/articles/twin-spacec…
Abhi Tripathi retweeted
“Someone once told me that time was a predator that stalked us all our lives. I rather believe that time is a companion who goes with us on the journey and reminds us to cherish every moment, because it will never come again. What we leave behind is not as important as how we've lived.” — Patrick Stewart as Capt. Jean-Luc Picard
Legendary actor Sir Patrick Stewart, best known for his work in the "Star Trek" and "X-Men" franchises and his prolific award-winning stage career, has died at 86 years old, his spokesperson confirmed.
Stewart died at home on Wednesday, with his wife Sunny at his side, a post on his social media channels said. His death followed "a brief and poignant journey with Alzheimer's Disease and Lewy Body Dementia," the post said.
RIP to a legend.
Patrick Stewart, ‘Star Trek’ captain and ‘X-Men’ superhero, had died at 86.
Stewart died Wednesday at his home in Los Angeles, a rep announced.
hollywoodreporter.com/movies…
Abhi Tripathi retweeted
NOAA’s revised GeoXO weather satellite program is a good example of the public-private roles in Earth observation that I have written about before.
Three instruments were cut from the program: the Lightning Mapper, Ocean Color sensor and Atmospheric Composition sensor.
It is true that the private weather satellite sector is growing - NOAA is already buying commercial weather data from microwave sounding, radio occultation, reflectometry and imagery from companies such as Tomorrow io, Spire, PlanetiQ, Muon Space, Weather Stream etc. through its new 10-year $2.35B initiative.
The catch? There are no equivalent replacements today available in private sector for continuous geostationary lightning mapping, hourly atmospheric composition monitoring or high-frequency ocean colour observations -- and there may never be!
Yes, theoretically, some startups could work on those problems and make the data available for NOAA to purchase. But honestly I cannot think of a business case for building a dedicated satellite constellation for hourly measurement of air quality pollutants or highly radiometrically-calibrated ocean monitoring.
Some stopgaps exist, but they are insufficient for the 2030s - TEMPO and PACE are research missions Sentinel-4 covers Europe and there is nothing lined up to replace the GOES lightning mapper when it retires in the 2030s (like Europe's Meteosat-12).
So, the impact is there will be genuine data gaps affecting extreme weather warnings, wildfire smoke & air quality monitoring (which is becoming common), and coastal/ocean hazards.
Takeaway: The private sector can fill any EO data gap but only if the government commits to being a long-term customer, the way defence does - if not, it remains a public sector responsibility. Cutting instruments simply means losing capabilities that the commercial market rationally has no incentive to replace
Abhi Tripathi retweeted
With a 20.6kW burn, we just shattered the record for highest Hall thruster burn ever completed on orbit – four times more powerful than any thruster that has ever flown in space.
And that’s just the beginning. We’re continuing to test and refine our in-house, custom-designed avionics and propulsion systems for next year’s launches. Below, our gimbal moves our thruster while it fires in our vacuum chamber. Of course, we couldn’t resist the opportunity to draw our Dyson sphere logo, which represents the abundant space future that we’re aiming for as we push the bounds of what’s possible in space.
Abhi Tripathi retweeted
Meet our Solar System's newest dwarf planet candidate: 2026 ED138!
Orbiting past Pluto, scientists found it in NSF–DOE Rubin Observatory data from earlier in 2026. Early analysis suggests it's 600–1500 km across, one of the largest found past Neptune!
🔗 rubinobservatory.org/news/ru…
Abhi Tripathi retweeted
What's the # 1 trait of the world’s greatest leaders?
“These are people whose greatest prize in winning the current game is gaining the right & invitation to play the next game.”
Abhi Tripathi retweeted
One of the biggest mysteries of the Wow! Signal is its exact location, with two possible positions in the sky. Our #AreciboWow team has solved this mystery using three independent methods. We’ll present our findings in 2027.
We know! 😉
Abhi Tripathi retweeted
Walter Koenig, who played Chekov in the original “Star Trek” series and seven “Star Trek” feature films, has died at 90.
variety.com/2026/film/news/w…
Abhi Tripathi retweeted
Watch the full demo: youtube.com/watch?v=VvJai6HG…
Abhi Tripathi retweeted
Effective Immediately, all organizations using PHP for their systems are advised to be prepared for an update addressing two critical vulnerabilities. PHP is widely used for web applications. These vulnerabilities often provide a direct path to the server's file system or database. If an immediate update is not feasible, it is recommend that organizations take the system offline until it can be fully mitigated. NSA will follow up shortly with more specific guidance.
Spent part of yesterday at this crater and learned a lot (including that the surrounding hills have Precambrian fossils):
The Sedan Test - Nuclear dust storm! youtu.be/gZbL_uKBQzY?is=BZDZ…
Abhi Tripathi retweeted
NEWS 📣 Reliable has raised new capital and officially surpassed $1B in valuation.
📍We’re expanding: new offices in Seattle, WA & San Diego, CA.
We're moving fast to build certified autonomous flight systems that make aviation safer and more accessible
reliable.co/pr/reliable-robo…
Abhi Tripathi retweeted
Некий испанский фермер начал надевать на домашних кур мини жилеты со светоотражающими полосками. Зимой темнеет рано, а благодаря экипировке птиц легче найти. Но это напугало одну из местных. Увидев светящиеся силуэты, женщина приняла их за "бродящих гномов" и вызвала полицию.
Abhi Tripathi retweeted
A payload image released by SpaceX this morning seems to show the first *KNOWN* image of an actual Starfall capsule!
Built for ~1,000 kg of payload for various purposes, its June 2026 Falcon 9 mission had no imagery of the vehicle itself. The recovery vessel deck was tarped. 👀
Teams encapsulated 32 payloads ahead of Falcon 9’s launch of the Bandwagon-5 rideshare mission from Florida → spacex.com/launches/bandwago…
Abhi Tripathi retweeted
The new XPRIZE on Interspecies Communication, with a $10M purse will launch next month.
It will challenge teams to demonstrate ethical, verified two-way communication with wild animals, advancing coexistence and cooperation.
Dr. Irene Pepperberg spoke to us today about her pioneering work with grey parrots, training them in English to perform many tasks at 6-year old human skill level.
“Clearly, animals know more than we think and think a great deal more than we know.”
It wasn’t easy when she started. The feedback to her first grant review: “what are you smoking?”
And now, her parrots ask questions and learn from the answers. They ask for what they want.
She has taught her parrots 100 English labels for objects and materials, exact quantities up to 8 (and addition and subtraction), colors, shapes, materials, concepts like same/different, absence, a zero-like concept (absence of a set, on his own, with no training), relative size comparisons, optical illusions, and they make new word combinations (calling the banana chip “banacker” for a banana cracker). They have a visual working memory (tracking moving cups) that beats adults with 4 swaps. They do inference by exclusion (when you show where food is not located, they figure out where it is).
Bird brains look very different at first, a smooth unfolded organ with no cerebral cortex, but further research found a relatively large cortical area similar to non-human primates in relative size and connectivity. They have a dense processor, doing same thing as human children.
“Bird brain should be a complement,” she concluded.
We can imagine the marvel of first contact, whether alien or AI, and it starts with communication.
We can practice with the isolated animal intelligences all around us. We hosted a gathering for the leadership of the Earth Species Project, with an ambitious plan to do just that, using multimodal AI models.
“Everything that can be translated will be, by 2030.”— @Aza Raskin of ESP, and:
“It’s impossible without scale and inevitable with scale.” (of data and compute)
“We will face the unusual situation where our AI will communicate with animals before we understand what they are saying.”
“Human languages have evolved over a couple hundred thousand years. Whale and dolphin language has evolved over 34 million years. And some are multilingual, using a third language when hunting together off the coast of Norway.”
“Beluga whales announce themselves with their unique name and clan ID. Parrots teach each of their chicks their name in the nest—a lifelong signature that connects them to their family and community.”
“And there are different cultures. The is a fascinating community of crows in Spain that operate unlike other crows. They raise their young as a group, like a kibbutz. They have a unique dialect for collaborative parenting. When an outside crow joins the group, it learns the dialect and participates in the unique culture. The crows have different personalities and there is a lot of drama. There is one adult that none of the other mothers like. She has to zip in and out quickly to feed the young before being chased off by the others.”
“Humpback whale songs go viral. There is group of whales off Australia that are like the K-pop singers. Their songs propagate globally over a couple years."
"An orca once wore a salmon hat, and it became a fashion trend among orcas.”
“80% of animal communication is relatively quiet one-to-one communication, and we need to capture that. It’s a perception problem. Of the animal recordings made, only 3% of the data have been analyzed. There has been little progress in orca communications in the past 20 years.”
“Many indigenous myths start with communication with the animals and nature. And then we forget how. We became disconnected.”
Abhi Tripathi retweeted
Introducing Hugo: the first human companion robot.
At Boston Dynamics, I was Chief Strategy Officer, bringing robots into the real world.
My co-founder, Farbod Farshidian, led research at the RAI Institute.
Together, 15+ years teaching robots to run, jump, and work.
So we asked: what if robots could connect with people?
Hugo runs on the first Vision-Language-Expression (VLE) model.
He links what he sees and hears to movement, expression, and gesture.
He notices you, reads the room, and reacts in real time.
And he's only the first.
Dynamic Creatures is @BostonDynamics' official entertainment and hospitality partner.
We're building a cast of characters with film studios, resorts, and theme parks.
dynamiccreatures.com
