darpa

In preparation for a permanent human colony on the Moon, DARPA has awarded a contract to Northrop Grumman to develop a lunar railway concept, as part of the 10-year Lunar Architecture (LunA-10) Capability Study.Running a train on the Moon may seem profoundly silly, but there is some very firm logic behind it. Even as the first astronauts were landing on the Sea of Tranquility in 1969, it was realized that a permanent human presence on Mars would require an infrastructure to maintain it. That includes mines for water ice,…

DARPA has awarded a contract to Aurora Flight Sciences to build a full-scale aircraft called the X-65. It will test a new technology that replaces moving control surfaces with Active Flow Control (AFC) actuators that use jets of air for control.If you've ever sat in the wing seat of a plane, you probably noticed that there's a lot of activity going on out there. Flaps, slats, ailerons, spoilers all go into motion, while unseen on the tail of the plane the elevators and rudder play their part. It's all very dramatic, but…

DARPA has announced the four companies that will compete for the contract to design, build and test an X-Plane demonstrator capable of high-speed cruise, hover and VTOL for its Speed and Runway Independent Technologies (SPRINT) project. The SPRINT X-Plane will be "a proof-of-concept technology demonstrator and its flight test program seeks to validate enabling technologies and integrated concepts that can be scaled to different size military aircraft." Specific technical requirements for the demonstrator, according to Top…

New research funded by the Pentagon suggests that artificial intelligence can scan and analyze blocks of text to discern whether the humans who wrote it have done something wrong or not. David Byrne on New Tech and AI | Gizmodo InterviewThe paper, written by two researchers at Ben-Gurion University, leverages predictive models that can analyze messages for what they call “social norm violations.” To do this, researchers used GPT-3 (a programmable large language model created by OpenAI that can automate content creation…

Eight years ago, the Pentagon’s Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency organized a painful-to-watch contest that involved robots slowly struggling (and often failing) to perform a series of human tasks, including opening doors, operating power tools, and driving golf carts. Clips of them fumbling and stumbling through the Darpa Robotics Challenge soon went viral.DARPA via Will KnightToday the descendants of those hapless robots are a lot more capable and graceful. Several startups are developing humanoids that they…

In light of this sort of thing, America’s military establishment is worried that its satellite network is not up to snuff. But it has a plan. The Space-Based Adaptive Communications Node (Space-BACN, or “Space Bacon", to its friends) will, if successful, create a laser-enabled military internet in orbit around Earth by piggybacking on a number of satellites that would have been launched anyway. Space Bacon is a brainchild of DARPA, the special-projects research arm of the Department of…

Photo: Kyle Brasier, U.S. Air ForceThe Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA) announced it has developed an Artificial Intelligence (AI) algorithm for a self-flying F-16 fighter jet less than three years after creating the control simulated F-16 jet.The flight took place on Lockheed Martin’s VISTA X-62A, which Lockheed Martin said in a press release is a modified F-16D Block 30 Peace Marble Il aircraft upgraded with Block 40 avionics.DARPA used its Air Combat Evolution (ACE) program to create the autonomous jet…

Artist concept of Demonstration for Rocket to Agile Cislunar Operations (DRACO) spacecraft, which will demonstrate a nuclear thermal rocket engine. Nuclear thermal propulsion technology could be used for future NASA crewed missions to Mars. Credit: DARPA<span class="glossaryLink" aria-describedby="tt" data-cmtooltip="<div class=glossaryItemTitle>NASA</div><div class=glossaryItemBody>Established in 1958, the National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) is an independent…

NASA and DARPA have agreed to develop and test a nuclear rocket engine in space as soon as 2027. Using a nuclear reactor as its power source, it would outperform chemical rockets and greatly reduce the time for the first crewed Mars mission.Humanity has made great strides in the exploration and exploitation of space over the past 60 years but as far as propulsion is concerned, the rockets of today are essentially the same as those of the German V-2 ballistic missiles of the Second World War. There have been innovations…

DARPA (Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency) is developing a new system to help military personnel perform complex tasks. Perceptually-enabled Task Guidance (PTG) technology uses sensors to see and hear what the user sees and hears, guiding them through AI-produced instructions displayed in augmented reality (AR). PTG combines sensors (a microphone and head-mounted camera) with AI and AR headsets to integrate into the user’s environment. The idea is to help soldiers and other military personnel enhance their skills,…