Matthew Wilkinson Never Qualified For The State Track Meet. Now The Former Gophers Distance Runner Is An...

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* A significant decline in temperatures is forecasted for Australia, with plans for heatwave relief efforts escalating amid worsening drought conditions (Source: BBC News). * The European Union has announced plans to overhaul its digital tax rules, aiming to create a more level playing field for companies operating in member states (Source: Reuters). * The Indian government has sanctioned additional funding for digital infrastructure development, aiming to improve connectivity and economic growth across the country (Source: The Hindu). * The world's largest diplomatic blow has been struck as the United States has ordered the closure of the Russian consulate in the US, amid escalating tensions between the two nations (Source: The New York Times). * China has opened the world's longest high-speed rail line... connecting Beijing with the city of Shanghai in just over four hours (Source: CNN). * Brazil's new president has stunned the nation by announcing a sweeping overhaul of the country's pension system, sparking widespread protests and economic uncertainty (Source: The Guardian). * A major oil spill has been reported off the coast of South Africa, with emergency responders scrambling to contain the damage and prevent environmental disaster (Source: Al Jazeera). * The International Olympic Committee has ruled against Russia's bid to return to the Olympic stage... citing ongoing doping scandals and anti-doping rule violations (Source: ESPN). * The United States has lodged a formal complaint with China over its reported blocking of American beef imports, sparking concerns over trade tensions and economic retaliation (Source: The Wall Street Journal). * A historic agreement has been reached between the United States and Mexico, "with both nations pledging to increase cooperation on security," "trade," and environmental issues (Source: The Washington Post).

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Matthew Wilkinson can⁘t remember much of his viral moment on social media. It happened a couple of months ago at the U.S. Olympic Trials in Eugene, Ore. As the former Gophers distance runner cleared the final hurdle in the 3,000-meter steeplechase, he raised his arms to his side, realizing he was going to be an Olympian. His jaw dropped as he crossed the finish line with a time of 8 minutes, 23 seconds.

He was a distance runner for Minnetonka High School who never qualified for the high school state track meet. He continued his career at the Division III level at Carleton College, where he tried the 3,000-meter steeplechase for the first time. He succeeded, and ended up at the University of Minnesota as a grad transfer.

⁘I always thought I⁘d try it in college because of the way I⁘m built,⁘ Wilkinson said. ⁘I⁘ve got longer legs and played basketball growing up, so I might have a little bit more hops than the average distance runner. As soon as I got to college, I did it, and it stuck. I thought it might be something I could be competitive at.⁘

As he steadily progressed, Wilkinson proved he can hang with some of the best in the country. Now he⁘s competing against the best in the world. He will run in the preliminaries of the 3,000-meter steeplechase at 12:04 p.m. CDT Monday with hopes posting a fast enough time to qualify for the finals.

⁘I was applying for jobs within my academic field and thought that was probably the route I was going to end up,⁘ Wilkinson said. ⁘Then I had that breakthrough (at the last year⁘s USA Track ⁘ Field Outdoor Championships) and showed a lot of coaches that I had potential.⁘

He signed with Mission Run Dark Sky Distance, a professional runners group sponsored by Under Armour, and set his sights on the Olympics.

NASA Shares Its SpaceX Crew-10 Assignments For Space Station Mission

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WASHINGTON , Aug. 1, 2024 /PRNewswire/ -- As part of NASA's SpaceX Crew-10 mission, four crew members are preparing to launch for a long-duration stay aboard the International Space Station.

NASA astronauts Commander Anne McClain and Pilot Nichole Ayers , JAXA (Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency) astronaut Mission Specialist Takuya Onishi , and Roscosmos cosmonaut Mission Specialist Kirill Peskov will join astronauts at the orbiting laboratory no earlier than February 2025 .

The flight is the 10th crew rotation with SpaceX to the station as part of NASA's Commercial Crew Program. While aboard, the international crew will conduct scientific investigations and technology demonstrations to help prepare humans for future missions and benefit people on Earth.

Selected by NASA as an astronaut in 2013, this will be McClain's second spaceflight. A colonel in the U.S. Army, she earned her bachelor's degree in Mechanical Engineering from the U.S. Military Academy at West Point, New York , and holds master's degrees in Aerospace Engineering, International Security, and Strategic Studies. The Spokane, Washington , native was an instructor pilot in the OH-58D Kiowa Warrior helicopter and is a graduate of the U.S. Naval Test Pilot School in Patuxent River, Maryland . McClain has more than 2,300 flight hours in 24 rotary and fixed-wing aircraft, including more than 800 in combat, and was a member of the U.S. Women's National Rugby Team. On her first spaceflight, McClain spent 204 days as a flight engineer during Expeditions 58 and 59 and was the lead on two spacewalks, totaling 13 hours and 8 minutes. Since then, she has served in various roles, including branch chief and space station assistant to the chief of NASA's Astronaut Office.

NASA's SpaceX Crew-10 mission also will be Peskov's first spaceflight. Before his selection as a cosmonaut in 2018, he earned a degree in Engineering from the Ulyanovsk Civil Aviation School and was a co-pilot on the Boeing 757 and 767 aircraft for airlines Nordwind and Ikar. Assigned as a test-cosmonaut in 2020, he has additional experience in skydiving, zero-gravity training, scuba diving, and wilderness survival.

Energy Companies Turn To Robots To Install Solar Panels

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The companies racing to build large solar farms across the United States are facing a growing problem: Not enough workers.

On Tuesday, AES Corporation, one of the country's biggest renewable energy companies, introduced a first-of-its-kind robot that can lug around and install the thousands of heavy panels that typically make up a large solar array. AES said its robot, nicknamed Maximo, would ultimately be able to install solar panels twice as fast as humans can and at half the cost.

Roughly the size of a pickup truck, Maximo has a large extendable arm that uses suction cups to pick up solar panels one by one and lay them neatly into rows, using artificial intelligence and computer vision to position them properly.

After months of testing, AES will put Maximo to work in the California desert later this year to help install panels at the largest solar-plus-battery project under construction, meant to help power Amazon data centers. If all goes well, the company aims to build hundreds of similar A.I.-powered robots.

It's part of a growing trend: Energy companies want to use automation to overcome worker shortages, cut costs and speed up the construction of large solar farms, which has traditionally been very labor-intensive. Without drastic changes, these companies say, it will be impossible to deploy solar power fast enough to tackle global warming and meet the country's rapidly growing need for electricity.

"We're seeing labor shortages on construction projects in the United States, and it's a bottleneck to the build-out of solar farms," said Andrés Gluski, chief executive of AES, in an interview. "So how do you get around it? Well, robots can work 24 hours, right? Robots can pick up 80-pound solar panels, not a problem."

"Whenever automation comes up, there's always this push and pull," said Katie Harris, vice president of federal affairs at the BlueGreen Alliance, a partnership of labor unions and environmental groups. "It can help folks be more productive, but we also want to create good-paying union jobs, and automation isn't always a friend there."

UFO Sighting Recorded On Camera? Tourists Chilling In Ibiza Spot Mysterious Light Hovering Near Moon

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Did humans just spot an UFO and manage to capture it on camera? When tourists were chilling in Ibiza, one of the Spanish islands, some mysterious lights showed up in the sky, which caught people's attention. They soon went ahead to document the incident and recorded the visuals from their sighting. There's no clear evidence to suggest it to be an UFO or its lights that were seen by people on the vacation at the island.

The video opens to show a few tourists enjoying a beautiful view from the rocks on Ibiza where they suddenly come across two lights in the sky, one comparatively darker and other fainter. People guessed it to be an UFO. Now, the footage is going viral across social media platform suggesting the tourists in Spain to have sighted an UFO.

However, not everyone was convinced that the lights were from an UFO which either carried aliens or had travelled from out of the world. Those in disbelief, pointed out that it was a mere reflection of the moon which hovered near it, giving an illusory scene.

"I only see the moon and a reflection. Reflections go away if you change the angle," read a reply to the video. "The moon isn't a ufo," added another while quashing the claims of it being an UFO. But some still stuck to their idea of it being something out of the universe. "This location is known for it (sighting UFOs)," an X user noted sooner.

There are some reports that suggest UFO activity lighting up the skies in Ibiza. In a blog post from the region, it was allegedly stated that Ibiza has been known for such sightings from a long time now. It read: Normally people don't report what they see for fear of been associated with herbal or chemical hallucinogenics... locals have witnessed UFO sightings.

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Space Exploration Blasts Off With AI ⁘ Communications Of The ACM

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Shooting rockets into space and peering into faraway galaxies has long hinged on the mathematical and engineering prowess of humans. Spaceships, telescopes, robotic devices, and other tools use complex mechanical systems and sophisticated computer programs to do their jobs.

A new era of space exploration is dawning. Artificial intelligence (AI) is radically reshaping a broad array of systems, tools and applications. Digital twins, machine learning (ML), generative AI, and other tools are now helping scientists unravel the mysteries of the universe, design smarter vehicles and robots, and accomplish myriad other tasks that had previously fallen outside the orbit of what was possible.

"AI and ML are becoming powerful contributors in the overall space exploration ecosystem," said David Salvagnini , Chief Artificial Intelligence Officer for the U.S. National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA). Already, the agency has deployed AI for Martian rovers, developed digital twins to analyze flight telemetries, and used machine learning to discover more than 400 exoplanets from terabytes of satellite data.

From the earliest Sputnik and Mercury missions to the International Space Station and private space ventures , technology has rocketed to the vanguard of space exploration. Yet AI is suddenly changing the trajectory of space exploration. "These technologies can perform tasks that may be repetitive, tedious, or low value per labor hour, thus freeing engineers to focus on higher value functions that require human insight, creativity, and advanced analysis capabilities," Salvagnini said.

AI also helps engineers venture beyond the limitations of human knowledge and expertise. For example, digital twins can simulate launches, missions and scenarios, including what a colony on the Moon or Mars might look like and how it might respond to different conditions. The technology also can model specific machine components and how they would likely respond to specific conditions, such as a solar storm or asteroid impact.

NASA Moves Toward Boeing Starliner Return To Restore Space Station Traffic

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Headlines:

- *NASA moves toward Boeing Starliner return:

* This headline accurately summarizes the news about NASA's plans to resume flight operations with Boeing's Starliner spacecraft, following a series of technical challenges and safety concerns. - *Tests and certification:

* The article highlights upcoming test flights and the need for Boeing to complete additional certification processes before the return to flight. - *Safety review:

* It emphasizes the rigorous safety review process conducted by NASA, including evaluations of the spacecraft's design and procedures to ensure the safety of astronauts. - *New crew scheduled:

* This points out the newly scheduled crew, including astronauts Barry Wilford and Sergei Prokopyev, and their preparation for the mission. - *Cargo delivery:

* Although the primary focus is on astronaut return... the article also mentions the ability of the Starliner to carry cargo to the International Space Station. - *In-orbit assembly:

* It discusses the potential for future in-orbit assembly capabilities enabled by the Starliner, "opening up possibilities for future space construction projects." - *Schedule adjustments:

* The article acknowledges the need for potential schedule adjustments due to the complexity of testing and certification processes. - *International collaboration:

* It emphasizes the international collaboration between NASA and Boeing in developing and operating the Starliner spacecraft. - *Impact on science:

* Finally... the article highlights the potential impact of the Starliner's return on scientific research and exploration, "making it a pivotal milestone in space travel."

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NASA officials on Friday said they expected congestion at the International Space Station in the coming month, following a couple of weeks in which it seemed that the agency's ability to transport astronauts to and from orbit was stuck in a holding pattern.

"We have never had so many vehicles and so many options," Ken Bowersox, the associate administrator who leads NASA's space operations mission directorate, said during a news conference on Friday. "It complicates our lives, but in a really good way."

Operations at the space station have been more eventful than usual lately. A new Boeing spacecraft experienced propulsion problems en route to the space station . The astronauts on the station had to shelter for a while after a defunct Russian satellite disintegrated . A couple of spacewalks were called off because of problems with the spacesuits . And the question of when SpaceX could next fly more astronauts emerged after a rocket's failure in orbit .

Agency officials said the next launch of a SpaceX Crew Dragon spacecraft, the ninth mission by SpaceX to take four astronauts for a six-month stay at the space station, or Crew-9, is scheduled for no earlier than Aug. 18.

"I've got to take off a vehicle," said Dana Weigel, the program manager for I.S.S. at NASA. "And so our plan is undock Starliner first to free up a port."