by Xataka | Sep 25, 2024 | News, Space Exploration
It is also preparing for the launch of the probe intended to examine Europa, one of Jupiter’s moons.
Musk said that, if the mission is successful, manned trips could take place within four years. We must always keep in mind the flexibility of the deadlines Musk offers. It is likely that the four years are the “minimum” feasible timeframe, although not so probable.
SpaceX plans to launch around five uncrewed Starship spacecraft to Mars in the next two years, as announced this Sunday by the company’s CEO, Elon Musk, on the social media platform X, which he also owns.
He detailed that, if these uncrewed missions land successfully, manned missions could be carried out within four years. However, if “challenges” arise, manned missions would be delayed by another two years, reaching a six-year horizon.
“Regardless of the outcome of the landings, SpaceX will exponentially increase the number of spacecraft traveling to Mars in each opportunity window,” Musk assured.
Earlier this month, Musk had mentioned these plans in another post on X, stating that the first Starships heading to Mars would launch in two years, coinciding with the next Earth-Mars transfer window.
Musk has offered different timeframes for SpaceX’s arrival on Mars. In April, he noted that the first uncrewed spacecraft would land within five years, while the first crewed missions would land in seven years.
To reach Mars, SpaceX has designed a spacecraft called Starship, considered the largest and most powerful in the world, aimed at opening new frontiers in space exploration.
In April, Starship survived a hypersonic re-entry to Earth and landed safely in the Indian Ocean, demonstrating its ability to complete space missions successfully.
The Mission to Jupiter
NASA scientists noted that what the Europa Clipper mission discovers, set to launch from Florida on October 10, could pave the way for Humanity’s future in terms of habitable worlds in the Solar System.
The spacecraft, the largest ever built, will launch from the Kennedy Space Center propelled by a Falcon Heavy rocket from the private company SpaceX and will travel 1.8 billion miles (2.9 billion kilometers) to reach Jupiter in 2030.
The goal of this spacecraft, which will get as close as 16 miles (25 kilometers) to the surface, is to observe Europa, one of Jupiter’s moons, which is believed to harbor conditions suitable for life beneath its icy surface: water, energy, and chemistry.
“As an ocean world, Europa is very intriguing. And this mission will help us understand a complex part of our solar system,” said Gina DiBraccio, acting director of NASA’s Planetary Science Division, during a teleconference on Tuesday.
The multi-year preparation mission is strategic because NASA scientists believe that if this mission, which will not land on the surface of this moon of Jupiter, discovers that Europa is habitable, then other icy worlds discovered in the Solar System are likely to be habitable too.
This mission aims to find out if the “ingredients for life” are found beneath Europa’s surface, as DiBraccio specified. Europa, with a diameter of 3,100 kilometers, is the fourth largest of Jupiter’s 95 known moons (Ganymede is considered the largest moon of this planet and the entire Solar System) and is believed to harbor an internal liquid ocean with potentially habitable conditions beneath its icy crust.
Jordan Evans, the project director for NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL), stated that one of the most important moments of the mission will be the deployment of the spacecraft’s enormous solar panels, which will occur about three hours after launch. One of the main challenges the mission will face is enduring the harsh radiation environment of Jupiter and its moon, Europa, which could affect the spacecraft’s transistors. To address this, rigorous testing and simulations have been conducted to test the spacecraft’s systems.
The spacecraft will perform 49 flybys of Europa during the four years of its scientific mission and will conduct ten scientific investigations to help understand its icy crust and the ocean believed to lie beneath it.
by Xataka | Sep 23, 2024 | geopolitics, News
In a new letter, signed by researchers from Harvard and Milan as well, major tech companies accuse the EU of “rejecting progress” and “betraying the ambitions of the single market.”
More than a dozen voices have signed a new letter criticizing the European regulation on artificial intelligence, the AI Act, a pioneering rule in the world to control the risks associated with this technology. Top executives from companies such as SAP, Spotify, Ericsson, Meta, Klarna, Mirakl, and Taxfix warn that the Old Continent “will fall behind in the age of AI due to the fragmentation of regulations.”
The letter, which follows a previous one led by Spotify and Meta, highlights that “Europe has become less competitive and innovative compared to other regions.” The signatories criticize that “in the absence of coherent rules, the EU will lose two cornerstones of AI innovation.”
The first is the development of open models, which are made available to everyone for free to use, modify, and develop, multiplying benefits and spreading social and economic opportunities. The second is the latest multimodal models, which work seamlessly across text, images, and voice, and will enable the next leap forward in AI.
“We are committed to user privacy and want clear rules at a global scale that transcend borders and give us transparency and clarity on how to act,” said Joelle Pineau, Vice President of AI Research at Meta, in statements to DISRUPTORES – EL ESPAÑOL. “Many European companies, which don’t have their own teams working on foundational models, are already seeing the potential of these technologies. And they want to have large open models available to them. They know it’s a crucial issue for their future.”
Regarding the big tech’s reluctance towards the AI Act, Carme Artigas, the Spanish official responsible for the latest efforts to approve this regulation, tells DISRUPTORES – EL ESPAÑOL, “Regulation needs to stay ahead to mandate certain behaviors. Ultimately, if you ask the banking sector if they like being regulated, they’ll say no. Or the pharmaceutical industry. They will try to avoid regulation until the very last minute, but at the same time, the day after the law takes effect, all companies are working to understand the AI Act, and they are happy to adopt it.”
From San Francisco, where she is participating in Dreamforce 2024, Artigas insisted, “We are not regulating technology, but rather high-risk use cases.”
This is a direct reference to the announcement that models like Meta’s LLaMA will not be available in Europe. In that sense, the signatories add, “AI development will take place elsewhere, depriving Europeans of the technological advances enjoyed by the US, China, and India.”
But the letter is even more blunt. It accuses the European Union of making regulatory decisions in a “fragmented and unpredictable” manner, while European Data Protection Authorities’ interventions have created enormous uncertainty about what types of data can be used to train AI. It also threatens that “the next generation of open-source AI models, and the products and services we build on them, will not comprehend or reflect European knowledge, culture, or languages.”
With all of this, the major tech companies present a very clear choice to EU regulators: “You can choose to reaffirm the principle of harmonization enshrined in regulatory frameworks such as the GDPR so that AI innovation happens here at the same scale and speed as elsewhere. Or you can continue rejecting progress, betray the ambitions of the single market, and watch as the rest of the world builds on technologies to which Europeans will not have access.”
“The current regulation lacks details on how it will be applied concretely and specifically. This prevents us from knowing how to train models, which is a process that takes several months,” concludes Pineau.
Big Names Against the AI Act
The critical letter is signed by some of the biggest names in the digital industry, both European and global. Among them are Börje Ekholm (President of Ericsson), Christian Klein (CEO of SAP), Daniel Ek (CEO of Spotify), Mark Zuckerberg and Yann LeCun (Meta), Miguel López (CEO of Thyssenkrupp), and Marco Tronchetti Provera (Pirelli).
Also participating are some of the most prominent startups in the AI ecosystem, such as Nabla, Unbabel, Flower Labs, Criteo, Kornia AI, YOOX, Ggml.ai, 8vance, and Bineric AI. Additionally, there are representatives from civil society (such as the Spaniard Miguel Ferrer, on behalf of Estech) and from Academia, including researchers Eugenio Valdano, Josef Sivic (Czech Technical University), Marco Baroni (ICREA), Nicolò Cesa-Bianchi (University of Milan), Patrick Pérez, and Stefano Iacus (Harvard).
