People to Follow: Tanya Harrison is a geomorphologist and the Director of Science for Impact at Planet; before that, she worked on remote sensing for several Mars rover teams. Harrison is a great follow for keeping up with spaceflight missions like Artemis I, but also understanding how space (and seeing Earth from space) can inform our understanding of planets.
Read more: The Year Ahead in Astronomy by Isaac Schultz
An Opportunity operations team member’s reaction to a new documentary about an old friend.
January 2004: I was in my sophomore year of college, studying astronomy at the University of Washington. The Sojourner rover had me hooked on the Red Planet from the day it landed in the summer of 1997. The moment that rover took its first drive onto the martian surface, my entire life became focused on the goal of working on Mars missions. Since planets are in space, I figured an astronomy degree would be the right first step.
But that winter morning, I wasn’t buried in a textbook. My attention was wholly transfixed on the television, nervously waiting to see if the Spirit rover was going to successfully land on Mars. In the time since Pathfinder, NASA’s luck hadn’t been going well…they’d lost both the Mars Polar Lander and the Mars Climate Orbiter in rapid succession. If the twin Spirit and Opportunity rovers weren’t successful, it could be the death knell for Mars exploration. Thankfully, both rovers landed within days of each other, and began their planned 3-month expeditions on opposite sides of the planet.
I never would’ve guessed that four years later, I’d be working with those same rovers. And I certainly never would’ve guessed that nearly a decade after that, I would still be working on Opportunity, and even be on shift the day we lost her signal for the last time.
See more: “Good Night Oppy” Tells the Human Story of Robotic Space Exploration by Tanya Harrison
A NASA spacecraft has hit an asteroid in an unprecedented test designed to prevent potentially devastating collisions with Earth.
NASA’s Double Asteroid Redirection Test (DART) spacecraft crashed into the asteroid Dimorphos about 11 million kilometres (6.8 million miles) from Earth at about 23:00 GMT on Monday.
The US space agency livestreamed the test from the mission operations centre outside Washington, DC, showing images taken by DART’s own camera as the cube-shaped “impactor” vehicle, no bigger than a vending machine with two rectangular solar arrays, careered into Dimorphos, an asteroid about the size of a football stadium.
Cheers could be heard from engineers in the control room as second-by-second images of the target asteroid grew larger and ultimately filled the TV screen of NASA’s live webcast just before the spacecraft’s signal was lost, confirming it had crashed into Dimorphos.
“Impact confirmed for the world’s first planetary defense test mission,” said a graphic that appeared on the live stream.
Read more: NASA spacecraft collides with asteroid in planetary defence test by Al Jazeera
Virtual reality, or VR, has been a topic that has fascinated the public for years.
Movies like “Ready Player One” show the varied possibilities of this technology. Now, Arizona State University researcher Robert LiKamWa wants to take users one step closer to the future of VR.
LiKamWa, an associate professor in the School of Arts, Media and Engineering and an assistant professor in the School of Electrical, Computer and Energy Engineering, part of the Ira A. Fulton Schools of Engineering, leads a multidisciplinary team of students and faculty from across ASU departments to incorporate realistic, environmentally-sensitive smell into VR for more than just entertainment.
He and his team see possibilities for VR to be a valuable tool in a variety of scenarios in which smells represent vital information and are a powerful emotional tool.
While others have developed smell for VR, the ASU team is working on elements to enhance the experience, like incorporating different intensities of smells depending on how close the user is to a scent and combining multiple odors that can be present in the virtual environment.
The project known as the Smell Engine emerged from work that Tanya Harrison, former director of research at the ASU NewSpace initiative, had been leading for the university’s Interplanetary Initiative. Harrison’s original intent was to incorporate smell into virtual reality training for space exploration applications.
“When Tanya first called me and said she wanted to understand how outer space smells, I thought, ‘That’s so weird, I have to say yes to this project,’” says Trustees of ASU Professor Brian Smith, from the School of Life Sciences .
Read more: Smelling strawberries, smoke and space in virtual reality by TJ Triolo
The Arizona State University Interplanetary Initiative’s podcast “Mission: Interplanetary” will launch its third season Oct. 4 with a stellar lineup of guests and, for the first time, guest hosts.
This year’s season brings hosts astronaut Cady Coleman and scientist Andrew Maynard back together. Maynard is the author of “Films From the Future: The Technology and Morality of Sci-Fi Movies” and “Future Rising,” as well as a professor in ASU’s School for the Future of Innovation in Society. Coleman is a veteran of two space shuttle flights and spent six months living and working onboard the International Space Station. She serves as the ASU global explorer-in-residence at the School at Earth and Space Exploration.
They will be joined by guest hosts Tanya Harrison and Joe O’Rourke, who will take over hosting duties for several episodes.
Read more: ‘Mission: Interplanetary’ podcast returns for Season 3 by Sally Young
The year is 2030. People and technology live in harmony. Trust is embedded into data. Interactions are cognitive. And government services are seamless, customer-centric and intuitive.
It is less than eight years away, but expectations for 2030 are already sky high. Across many spheres — technological, social, political, economic and others — transformation is underway and huge goals are being set. So what will the world look like in 2030? And what can public sector organizations be doing to help ensure they can meet these expectations?
We spoke with leaders and disruptors from around the world, across the public and private sector to explore answers to these questions.
Explore the predictions summary below and download the full report to see what leaders and disruptors from around the world are predicting on the future of digital government.
Read more: Voices on 2030: Digitalizing Government by KPMG
