Scott Manley teaches orbital mechanics through Kerbal Space Program, and he also DJs. For his latest project, he wired those two lives together on a whim, writing a small Python program that reads MIDI events from a portable mixer and turns them into spacecraft commands. The question he set out to answer was simple enough […]
Google will send its first AI chips into space next week as the opening flight of Project Suncatcher, a long-term research effort to find out whether machine learning hardware can run in low Earth orbit on solar power. A refrigerator-sized prototype named MVP, built with Planet Labs and carrying four Tensor Processing Units, is booked […]
QUADMOVR is no stranger to designing, printing, and flying self-built quads, and their latest experiment swaps every propeller for a 3D printed centrifugal wheel that lives inside its own vaned case. Each unit starts as a 60 mm PETG impeller that bolts to a standard T-mount motor with two M2 screws. A matching 90 mm […]
A year of weather balloons, cheap helium, and one brand-new 360 camera produced footage from roughly 110,000 to 120,000 feet. MAKE. ART. NOW. spent twelve months lofting Insta360 gear on 1,500-gram latex balloons aimed at a 115,000-foot burst, and the freshly launched X6 became the main camera for the last of those flights. Dual 1/1.1-inch […]
Photo credit: Raphael Zufferey / John FreidahEngineers at MIT have built a compact machine that flaps its wings to travel through air and water with equal capability. The device tips the scales at 250 grams and reaches flight speeds near 6 meters per second while managing almost 1 meter per second when submerged. It also […]