Lifeboat Foundation

China’s space program will launch a Mars mission in July, according to its current plans. This will include deploying an orbital probe to study the red planet, and a robotic, remotely-controlled rover for surface exploration. The U.S. has also been planning another robotic rover mission for Mars, and it’s set to take off this summer, too – peak time for an optimal transit from Earth to Mars thanks to their relative orbits around the Sun.

This will be the first rover mission to Mars for China’s space program, and is one of the many ways that it’s aiming to better compete with NASA’s space exploration efforts. NASA has flown four previous Mars rover missions, and its fifth, with an updated rover called ‘Perseverance,’ is set to take place this years with a goal of making a rendezvous with Mars sometime in February 2021.

NASA’s mission also includes an ambitious rock sample return plan, which will include the first powered spacecraft launch from the red planet to bring that back. The U.S. space agency is also sending the first atmospheric aerial vehicle to Mars on this mission, a helicopter drone that will be used for short flights to collect additional data from above the planet’s surface.

The MQ-25 could be more than just a tanker.

Engineers found a way to stabilize a drone that only uses two propellers.

Pew pew :3.

The successful test of the powerful laser is a major step forward for the Navy’s directed energy weapons ambitions.

Continue reading “The Amphibious Warship USS Portland Has Shot Down A Drone With Its New High-Power Laser” »

The drones would fly alongside Air Force warplanes, doing jobs too dangerous or dull for pilots.

EMP weapons, streams of microwaves, electromagnetic railguns, and high-power lasers offer new ways to bring down swarming drones, sink ships without explosives, and disperse formations of soldiers.

J.R. Wilson

In the near future, we will have manned drones going at blistering speeds and doing crazy aerobatic stunts.

We need to massively reforest the planet, in a very short period of time. Flash Forest’s drones can plant trees a lot faster than humans.

[Photo: courtesy Flash Forest] One of Flash Forest’s prototype drones.

When the X-37B launches on May 16, it will carry a technology that could eventually allow drones to stay aloft indefinitely anywhere on the globe.