Pavel Varenka It's the penultimate day of the working week, and with it a whole host of hot news that you definitely can't miss. While in the previous days we focused mainly on the technological aspects of spaceflight and there was also an evergreen in the form of the Utah monolith, this time we have more curiosities that will make you wonder if this year can be even crazier. In any case, we look at Uber and its flying car division, which is growing enormously, but as a result of the investigation, the company had to proceed with selling it. In the same way, we must not forget a trip to deep space and a mention of NASA, which managed to clarify the mystery of the miniature moon.
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Pavel Jelic Uber is shedding its potentially lucrative division. It has no money for further maintenance and development
The technology company Uber is best known for its revolutionary approach to passenger transport, which consists in the fact that instead of a taxi, you can simply call a driver using an application. However, the giant was soon caught by the regulators, who had to classify the service as a taxi, and not as an association of independent drivers. It was the difficulties in the United States and the related pandemic that forced the company to tighten its belt and come up with a solution to get rid of low-earning projects whose potential is immeasurable, but the amount for maintenance and development is simply too high. One of the victims was the Uber Elevate project, which set itself the goal of making flying passenger transportation accessible.
However, if you have just sold your cars and welcome the future with open arms, where we will be transported mainly by air, you need not worry. Indeed, Uber did not complete the project quite completely and instead simply sold it. Specifically, the entire division went into the hands of Joby Aviation, a mysterious startup that focuses on the development of VTOL, i.e. flying cars. A minor problem, however, is that no one really knows what their own company does exactly. She's secretive in many ways and it's hard to tell if she just doesn't want too much attention or if she's forging something revolutionary in the labs. We'll see where the bright future eventually takes us.
NASA has clarified the origin of the mysterious miniature moon. It is said to be space debris
Every once in a while, astronomers come across a curiosity that immediately becomes an immeasurable mystery and often an Internet hit. The same is true of the so-called "miniature moon", i.e. a wonderful body that entered Earth's orbit and none of the scientists could determine exactly what object it was. In fact, it resembled a small oval body in shape, and speculation immediately began about the fact that some object came to look at our planet from deep space, which simply got caught in an orbit and revolved around the Earth similar to our Moon. Fortunately, however, after long months of calculations, the NASA agency was able to clarify what it actually is and how such a misunderstanding arose.
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It was 1966, when NASA launched the Surveyor 2 Centaur rocket with the aim of getting a probe to the moon and continuing space research. At that time, however, scientists had no idea that we would see part of this rocket after several decades. It was the Surveyor's gasoline engine that returned to our orbit as space junk and, as it turned out, it was just flying around in a vacuum for decades, making its way from the Moon back to Earth. In any case, this is a rather fascinating discovery that, while it may not rewrite history, serves as a reminder of how far humanity has come in such a short time. We'll see what surprises us in the next few decades.
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Vratislav Holub The Chang'e 5 lunar rover dazzled the world with lunar images. According to astronomers, the mission has been successful so far
It hasn't been that long since we last reported on further progress in the space race between world powers. This time, however, it was not SpaceX or Virgin Galactic, but the Chinese space agency, which sent the Chang'e 5 rocket with a lunar module towards the moon. It aims to do a few simple things – take pictures, collect moon dust and, above all, inform Earth about any curiosities it encounters during its pilgrimage. And as it turned out, so far the mission has been extremely successful. The rover sent home a whole set of postcards and pictures of the moon, which wiped the eyes of the whole world and clearly showed that China deserves international recognition.
The landing of Chang'e 5's descender and ascender unit.
?：CNSA/CLEP
ℹ：https://t.co/uAjm4tGl7i pic.twitter.com/P7zK9asBuq— LaunchStuff (@LaunchStuff) December 2, 2020
Specifically, the photo captures several lunar dunes, part of the rover itself and a panorama that encompassed the curved surface of the Moon. In addition, a bunch of clever scientists managed to make a short time-lapse video of the whole process, which serves as a great record of how successful the mission actually was. The photos immediately started circulating on Chinese social networks and it didn't take long for them to find their way to the rest of the world. Either way, the Chang'e 5 photo tour is over. Now the only goal for the next few weeks is to collect lunar dust, geological samples for further investigation and above all to absorb as much information as possible. The lunar module returns home already at the end, when the samples get into the hands of scientists.
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I don't understand this sentence at all: "The lunar module returns home at the end, when the samples get into the hands of the scientists." What exactly did the author want to tell us???