All posts tagged: ambitious

To Mars and back: Will NASA’s ambitious endeavor be worth it?

To Mars and back: Will NASA’s ambitious endeavor be worth it?

Published by skeptic

It Was fall in the Utah desert, and NASA scientist Lindsay Hays was watching the sky. A fat flying saucer soon touched down — a capsule containing bits of an asteroid, which NASA had collected and then shot back home. The capsule’s parachute deployed, slowing its descent toward Earth. While Hays, deputy program scientist for NASA’s astrobiology program, watched it land, she thought of a different mission — her mission, called Mars Sample Return, or MSR, set to launch later this decade. MSR is an audacious plan to collect samples of material from the red planet and send them on a one-way trip to Earth. “This is going to be us at some point in the future,” Hays recalled thinking. MSR, on which Hays is lead scientist, represents humans’ first attempt to bring material back from another planet. It will also be the first round-trip mission to another planet, and the first rendezvous between spacecraft in orbit around another planet. Scientists hope the project will help them learn about Mars’s past, and how the solar …

The ambitious plans to study the sun during April’s solar eclipse

The ambitious plans to study the sun during April’s solar eclipse

Published by skeptic

NASA’s WB-57 research jets will be used to study the eclipse Amir Caspi Across North America, solar scientists will be studying April’s total solar eclipse to view the strangest part of the sun: the corona. Seen fleetingly as a bright halo that appears only during totality, it is a million times dimmer than the rest of the sun in visible light. The corona is also a million degrees hotter than the sun’s surface, or photosphere, which reaches only about 6000°C, and it extends millions of kilometres into the solar system. The corona is where the sun’s magnetic fields act on charged particles to form complex shapes, known as streamers, loops and plumes, among other names. Understanding the corona will help us predict the solar wind, the stream of charged particles hurled from the sun into space. This is what causes aurorae, but it is also a potential threat to astronauts, satellites and electricity grids. Expectations are sky high for the total solar eclipse on 8 April because totality – when the sun is entirely covered – will last …

Hyundai reveals ambitious B investment to charge up EV sales

Hyundai reveals ambitious $50B investment to charge up EV sales

Published by skeptic

Hyundai announced a massive $50 billion (68 trillion won) investment to secure its position as the auto market transitions to EVs. The Korean automaker will hire 80,000 people in Korea to help it become a top-three EV maker by 2030. Hyundai plans +$50 billion investment amid EV shift Hyundai’s new investment is to “secure future growth engines,” including EV tech and software-defined vehicles (SDVs). Over half of the investment (35.5 trillion won/ $26 billion) will be used for R&D on EV infrastructure and manufacturing to “dominate core technologies.” Another 31.1 trillion won will be used for R&D for EVs, SDVs, and battery tech. Hyundai will also use the funding to expand EV-specific factories, IT capabilities, and joint investments in affiliates. The company will first make a “large investment” in a new EV-specific factory. In Q2, Kia’s EV plant in Gwangmyeong will be complete, enabling Kia’s affordable EV3 to go on sale in Korea and overseas. In the second half of 2025, Kia’s Hwaseong EV plant will begin producing custom PBV electric vehicles. Kia EV lineup …

“Complacency, It Really Frightens Me”: Inside Politico’s Ambitious, Anxious Drive to Stay on Top

“Complacency, It Really Frightens Me”: Inside Politico’s Ambitious, Anxious Drive to Stay on Top

Published by skeptic

The primaries were a dud. The general election is a rematch between two well-known candidates unlikely to surprise in a major way. These circumstances have many news organizations anxious about how to keep their audiences engaged this cycle. Alex Burns, though, sees the race as right in Politico’s wheelhouse. “Nothing focuses the mind quite like a presidential campaign,” says Burns, Politico’s head of news. And the 2024 contest presents an opportunity to “tell a story about the country and the world, anchored in geographies where Politico is very strong,” he notes. The 37-year-old journalist is steeped in Politico’s ambitions, having started his career in the Arlington, Virginia, newsroom in the summer of 2008, a week after graduating from Harvard, as a researcher for cofounders John Harris and Jim VandeHei. Burns was there for Politico’s rise from start-up to establishment player, covering the 2012 presidential race alongside Maggie Haberman, with both departing for The New York Times in 2015. Seven years later, Burns returned, rejoining Politico, officially, as associate global politics editor and a columnist. But …

Ambitious space sim Starship Simulator boldly goes to Kickstarter to get backing

Ambitious space sim Starship Simulator boldly goes to Kickstarter to get backing

Published by skeptic

Starship Simulator is breathtaking in its ambition. And that might be putting it mildly. The premise of a completely accurate galaxy to fly around in a spacecraft is not novel. Elite Dangerous was doing that a decade ago, but somehow it seems no less a fantastic ambition now than it was back then. Starship Simulator, its one-man dev team of Dan Govier and his indie games company Fleetyard Studios, has been active since the middle of 2022. The game has had a Steam page, its technical alpha demos have won awards, and anybody who, like me, has even the most passing of interest in Space sims has been insta-captivated by what this could turn out to be. Ever since playing the original Elite, Interdictor Pilot, and Codename MAT on my Amstrad CPC back in the day I have loved games that let me fly around space. By the time I die, somebody needs to work out the percentage of my living days I spent in Elite Dangerous since backing it and Star Citizen at the …

Good Housekeeping MD Liz Moseley’s ambitious growth plan

Good Housekeeping MD Liz Moseley’s ambitious growth plan

Published by skeptic

Good Housekeeping managing director Liz Moseley. Picture: James Everett The UK edition of women’s magazine Good Housekeeping is “unbelievably successful” by various metrics, as its new managing director Liz Moseley put it, but is nonetheless setting out on an “ambitious” growth plan. Good Housekeeping UK is in profit with a “thriving” print business that saw a “really strong start” to the year in advertising, Moseley told Press Gazette. Its print circulation of 364,870, although down 2.7% year-on-year in 2023, saw a smaller decline than many of its competitors and it remains top of Press Gazette’s women’s fashion and lifestyle table. Over the longer term it has seen a relatively modest print decline from just over 400,000 copies per month in 2000. Paid digital subscriptions for the magazine grew by 43% between 2022 and 2023 to 26,451 (23,239 of these were via all-you-can-read services such as Apple News+ and Readly). Meanwhile goodhousekeeping.com is the 33rd biggest news/lifestyle website in the UK with an audience of 4.8 million people in January. It also has more than 320,000 …

Russia’s forces turn their focus on Ukraine’s northeast in what may be an ambitious new push

Russia’s forces turn their focus on Ukraine’s northeast in what may be an ambitious new push

Published by skeptic

KYIV, Ukraine —  Russian forces are probing Ukrainian defenses for weak points in the country’s northeast, an official said Thursday, an area where analysts believe the Kremlin seeks to build on its recent success in taking a key city by mounting an ambitious four-pronged offensive to break through the front line. Russia overwhelmed Ukraine’s army in Adviidka, a strategic eastern city, where it brought to bear its significant battlefield advantage in men, aircraft and artillery. Emboldened by its first major triumph in the war in nine months, Moscow appears determined to leverage its superiority as it shifts its economy onto a war footing. Russian President Vladimir Putin took a co-pilot’s seat to fly in a Tu-160M strategic bomber Thursday after visiting an aircraft manufacturing plant in Kazan, a city east of Moscow. Kyiv officials have pleaded with Ukraine’s Western partners to accelerate delivery of military aid so its forces can hold out against the onslaught. The front line running more than 600 miles across eastern and southern Ukraine has not shifted much in the run-up to …

NASA reveals its total asteroid haul from ambitious space mission

NASA reveals its total asteroid haul from ambitious space mission

Published by skeptic

After months struggling to open NASA’s asteroid sample canister, agency scientists finally know how much dust and rock its spacecraft brought back to Earth. Despite earlier estimates that it scooped about a cup of material from Bennu, an ancient space rock the length of the Empire State Building, the total weight of the sample is 4.29 ounces — around half a cup. Still, that amounts to the largest asteroid sample ever collected in space and double the mission’s goal. “An amazing sample from asteroid #Bennu!” the Japanese space agency JAXA said on X, formerly known as Twitter. “The JAXA & NASA teams are exchanging part of the Bennu and #Ryugu samples to enable the first comparative studies between asteroids in our Solar System!” SEE ALSO: NASA needed help with a mission. The Vatican came to the rescue. Tweet may have been deleted NASA’s $800 million OSIRIS-Rex mission, short for Origins, Spectral Interpretation, Resource Identification, and Security Regolith Explorer, launched a robotic spacecraft from Cape Canaveral, Florida, in 2016. The spacecraft completed its 4-billion-mile flight when …

England scrap shows Borthwick has a way to go to in ambitious rebuild | Six Nations 2024

England scrap shows Borthwick has a way to go to in ambitious rebuild | Six Nations 2024

Published by skeptic

The forecast was for rain during the game on Saturday. The two coaches had kept one eye on the weather apps all week, Warren Gatland had already had to cancel Wales’ outdoor training because the conditions were so miserable in the run-up, and they had tailored their plans to suit. So had the 80,000 crowd, who had come in boots, coats, and caps, carrying brollies, everyone expecting another heavy grey wet day, and a hard-going game, what they got, instead, was the first fine afternoon of February, and, what was in its way, a regular helter-skelter set-to of a match. It started under a glorious sunset, which lit the west stand of the old ground brilliant pink. For an hour, it felt like it might have been an omen. Red sky at night, Gatland’s delight. He had warned the Welsh weren’t intimidated by the prospect of playing here, and his team were as good as his word. Wales tore up Twickenham for an hour, and even though England scraped by with a win, the truth is …

Real deal: 14 ambitious, delicious packed-lunch recipes you’ll want to try right now | Food

Real deal: 14 ambitious, delicious packed-lunch recipes you’ll want to try right now | Food

Published by skeptic

The cost of living crisis has absolutely ruined lunch. As prices rise and disposable income shrinks, the simple act of popping out for a sandwich now represents a hefty outgoing. Five Tesco meal deals a week will now cost you £100 a month. Meanwhile, a chicken caesar bacon baguette bought from a central London branch of Pret now costs £6.50. Buy one of those every weekday for a year and you’ll have spent £1,560. Little wonder, then, that we’re relying more and more on packed lunches. Research from the data insights company Kantar has shown that last year, Britons brought 57m more lunchboxes to work last year than they did in 2022. But the problem with lunchboxes is that they easily become expensive, boring or a total faff. Here, top chefs share their recommendations for weekday working lunches that are delicious, affordable and not too fiddly. Curried cornRiaz Phillips, Caribbean food expert and author of East WindsWith a pestle and mortar, mash a small chilli and some garlic. Add this to a bowl with two …