Mediaboss Marketing

Provocative Silicon Valley artist Agnieszka Pilat has strong beliefs regarding the intermingling of art, religion and technology, something that keeps her fertile muse alert amid multiple presentations, exhibitions and appearances at global events such as the recent TED AI 2023 conference in San Francisco.

The Polish-born Pilat's current SpaceX Artist-in-Residence program at the aerospace firm's Hawthorne, California facility will likely run through 2024 and comes right before a December exhibition at the National Gallery of Victoria's Triennial in Australia. There, for three months, her black-and-yellow Boston Dynamics robodogs will be creating autonomous artwork via a series of pre-programmed instructions.

Her latest portraits involve meditative theological interpretations of an air-tight hatch installed on the SpaceX Dragon capsule, accented in gold leaf designed to evoke a feeling of serene holiness encircling the revered life-sustaining object.

Space.com connected with Pilat to discuss her inspiring hatch portraits at SpaceX, her philosophies about the revered role of machines in American culture, and how god-like AI technology can be cautiously employed to create a brighter future.

Related: FAA wraps up safety review of SpaceX's huge Starship rocket

Space.com: How did you land at SpaceX as an Artist-in-Residence and what does that program entail?

Agnieszka Pilat: The broad framework of my career is that I love technology and I follow tech companies to do something exciting. SpaceX doesn't have an official residency program so I didn't follow any invitation. For these tech companies, I usually find what I think is impactful and historically important and then I try to find my way in through personal introductions.

I have a studio space set up at SpaceX's Hawthorne facility. My first number of visits this year and the year before was painting portraits of a Dragon hatch. They're super generous and they'd roll in the hatch that astronauts actually use for training, so it's the same exact replica that goes to space.

I go to SpaceX a few times a year for a week and work every day. I created a series of portraits based on the hatch and now I'm excited because Starlink is such an important technology right now. My next body of work is leaning into working on Starlink and exploring what it means to the world in a larger context. I've also done a lot of stuff with Agility Robotics in Oregon, which is super fun, so I move around a lot.

Space.com: How did your work with your quadruped SPOT robot dogs began and what sort of statement are you trying to make with their artwork?

AP: The statement is that these robots, in human years, are like children. My intention working with SPOT and the robots is to show the age of the machine as something that's still growing up. It still doesn't have personality. I'm classically trained as a portrait painter, and as a portrait painter you look for likeness. But as a good painter, you look for the essence of the subject. Working with SPOT I realized very fast that they are like a baby or young kid. The personality is not there yet.

Space.com: You've previously stated that your artwork tries to communicate "the story of America told through machines and industry and innovation." How has that philosophical concept evolved and solidified over the years?

AP: I grew up in Eastern Europe and Europe. It's a class society and in the old times it was the aristocracy. When I came to America I realized the aristocracy and the power is in technology and machines. Michelangelo would be a court painter or work for the wealthy or the church.For me, if I were in Poland during Communist years, I'd be painting Stalin and the working class. In America, I'm a court painter of the machine. I don't work for Elon Musk or Boston Dynamics or Agility. The machine is my patron.

Space.com: What influential artists of the past helped form your artistic style?

AP: I grew up around Soviet art, and as much as the message behind it is dark, Russia is a very mystical place. When it comes to the skill of painting and telling stories, Ilya Repin has always been my hero. I learned to paint copying his paintings.

And you have to always throw in Andy Warhol. He understood and had those big trends reflecting what was happening in pop culture and I really respect that.

Space.com: What are you thoughts about the promise and perils of artificial intelligence and its integrations into art, entertainment and daily Earth life?

AP: A friend of mine in Silicon Valley says if it doesn't work, they call it AI, and if it does work it's just Google Maps. I'm generally optimistic. I just did a TED AI talk and the premise was that I think that artificial intelligence is still in the very early stages. It's a great challenge but also a great opportunity for us to engage with AI and decide which direction it's going to go. I look at AI just like my robots ... like a young child.

AI has a bit of the nature of a god because it knows us so well, better than we know ourselves, which a god would. It's also immortal and not confined to a place and a time unlike robots and machines that I work with. In that sense AI is a bit like a deity. My work at SpaceX really indicated that. All the paintings have gold leaf and are based visually on Christian iconography, with auras and halos around them. There's a duality of not just power but also the promise of the hope for a better future.

I'm really excited for my work to be connected to Starlink next year because of the amount of prayers and hopes that were put into Starlink. There are a lot of parallels between religion and AI and I find that kind of exciting.

See more of Agnieszka Pilat's work at her website.

See the original post:

SpaceX Artist-in-Residence on painting spacecraft and Starlink ... - Space.com

Space station astronauts will soon be able to enter virtual reality to help stay mentally healthy away from their home planet.

An HTC Vive Focus 3 virtual reality (VR) headset will fly to the International Space Station (ISS) on a SpaceX cargo ship launching no earlier than Thursday (Nov. 9), health care platform company XRHealth announced on Nov. 2. You can watch SpaceX's Dragon cargo ship launch live here at Space.com, via NASA Television.

Once hooked up for space experiments, the headset will "treat astronauts for mental health conditions" associated with living in space for long periods of time, which can include feelings of isolation, stress and confinement. European Space Agency (ESA) astronaut Andreas Mogensen has pledged to test the headset during his half-year mission, which includes commanding the ISS.

Related: Best VR headsets 2023: Explore the cosmos and blast aliens from the safety of your home

ISS astronauts live in what are considered isolated, confined environments (ICE); simply put, these are zones where people work in operational circumstances in small teams far away from assistance. Examples include research bases in the Arctic and Antarctic, submarines and of course, spacecraft, leading to decades of studies on how best to help personnel in these circumstances, according to a 2021 study in Neuroscience & Biobehavioral Reviews.

Based on their peer-reviewed survey of the field, the authors of that 2021 study noted that teams already properly screened and selected for an ICE mission will have the best outcomes with "leadership, coping and interpersonal skills training during and after long-duration missions." The study was co-authored by the University of Southern California's Lawrence Palinkas and the University of British Columbia's Peter Suedfeld, two oft-cited authors in the field of ICE who also have done many space studies.

NASA and other space agencies already include numerous tools to help crews with mental health readiness. Astronauts train in ICE environments on the ground that include caves, wilderness excursions and underwater habitats. While in space, astronauts speak with a psychologist at least once every two weeks, according to the Canadian Space Agency. They also have scheduled rest times, regular calls with family and friends and encouragement to pursue hobbies in orbit.

While far from the first headset to fly in space, the new HTC Vive will include a simulator mode "specially developed and adapted to work with the microgravity environment," officials wrote in the statement.

Past VR headsets had a tendency to induce motion sickness due to "multiple challenges around tracking and orientation (such as) jittering, rolling and drifting of the content," as headsets usually use gravity to align the view, according to XRHealth's Nov. 2 statement. The participating companies which include XRHealth, Nord-Space Aps and HTC Vive made unspecified changes to this headset to make it work better on the ISS.

Mogensen and other experiment participants will do "in-flight testing sessions comprised of VR video viewing and questionnaires", NASA officials stated of the experiment. The astronauts will do so with an app from ESA called EveryWear, which has been adapted from a previous version that measured food intake.

The results will also be adapted for the general public to aid in stress management , especially for conditions including anxiety, post-traumatic stress disorder and attention-deficit/hyperactivity disorder (ADHD).

Related: Deep space missions will test astronauts' mental health. Could AI companions help?

"Astronauts are essentially isolated during their missions for months and years at a time, and are confined to small spaces with limited contact with friends and family," Per Lundahl Thomsen, chief technology officer at Nord-Space Aps, said in the Nov. 2 statement.

"Creating a virtual platform that addresses their mental health needs while in isolation is imperative for them to maintain a healthy lifestyle when they return," Thomsen added. "We partnered with companies that provide the most advanced technologies that could be adapted for space to provide the most beneficial experience for our astronauts."

Many other VR headsets have flown to the ISS, according to NASA materials. Some of the many applications have included controlling robots, helping with maintenance tasks and training, performing experiments to see how astronaut bodies adapt to space and filming immersive reality videos to share the ISS experience publicly.

If you're looking for a VR headset for your own residence, check out our best VR headset guide. We have tested the major headset platforms for different types of gamers and to suit a range of budgets. Whether you want high resolution, a wireless experience or a budget-friendly option, the guide will cover you.

Hybrid VR and AR in a portable, but expensive package.

Platforms: Android or PC VR

Price: $1099 / 1299

Resolution: 1920x1920 per eye

Field of view: Up to 110 degrees

Refresh rate: 90 Hz

Controllers: Included controllers

Lightweight, goggle-like design

Mixed reality thats almost affordable

Still pricey

Lacking killer apps

Round up of today's best deals

View post:

A VR headset that could help astronaut mental health is launching to ... - Space.com

Former SpaceX engineers raise 7.5m to build Sift, the software stack for building next generation machines

Gollapudi, who led several SpaceX Dragon missions, and Spiegel, who led multiple teams supporting high-profile projects across the board at the space industry giant, came together upon recognizing the dangerous room for human error of current telemetry tools. From satellites to submersibles, small miscalculations can equate to costly disasters.

Keenly observing this problem, along with recognizing that transportation systems are racing toward autonomy, Gollapudi and Spiegel observed how many companies were running into preventable failures due to a lack of transparency into their machine performance. Machine performance data has remained confusing and ambivalent throughout hardware development, manufacturing and operations for even the most seasoned engineers. Knowing this was a solvable problem, Gollapudi and Spiegel developed Sift's proprietary, end-to-end telemetry stack to serve as a digital backbone to the physical world.

Advanced hardware plays a critical role in mission success across industries from transportation, to energy, to space and defense, and beyond. As the earth's orbit fills with satellites, transportation systems race toward autonomy, and energy scientists reimagine our climate future many processes are required to create and run the complex machines shaping our collective future.

Designed for the rigors of space, Sift's end-to-end stack allows forward-thinking engineering teams to scale their data infrastructure, easily review data, and automate operations as the company's name implies, engineers can now siftthrough their data to invent new machines and scale easily. Similar to the sieve prospectors once used when panning for gold, Sift's stack allows engineers to easily locate and interpret the data they're searching for without complication.

The Sift stack is already used by innovative operating teams in aerospace, aviation, defense, energy and transportation. Regarding Sift, Ben Stabler, co-founder of the autonomous train company Parallel Systems, says, "Our engineering team uses Sift daily to understand test data from our vehicles and iterate on our designs. Sift helps us build a safer, more flexible freight transportation system."

"We saw so many of our friends leaving SpaceX to build the machines of tomorrow, but they were struggling with the tools available today," said Gollapudi. "We're very excited to equip our community of hardware innovators with the tools they need to build the future."

Sift is backed by leading hardware investor, Riot Ventures, and enterprise SaaS expert Fika Ventures, also investors inFirst Resonance,Datum, andDuro.

With offices in Los Angeles, Gollapudi and Spiegel have assembled a team who worked on mission critical tools at SpaceX before augmenting it with experts from tech sector giants like Google, Palantir, Uber, Amazon, Bird and LeoLabs. Each founder independently forged groundbreaking advances while leading critical missions at SpaceX, and they plan to replicate that formula for success within Sift and their clients.

About the Founders:Karthik Gollapudi is a second generation software developer with deep roots in the SpaceX community. As a former Dragon engineer, he led mission-over-mission operations, including simulation, test, and certification. He achieved several advancements in human spaceflight, including joint simulations with NASA, before founding his telemetry-based start-up, Sift, in 2023.

Austin Spiegelis a seasoned software engineer who started his career at SpaceX, where he was a lead responsible for the telemetry system for Starlink's satellite constellation and innovative manufacturing systems. From building groundbreaking applications to managing diverse engineering teams, his contributions spanned multiple divisions, culminating in the foundation of his telemetry-focused start-up, Sift, in 2023.

SOURCE Sift

Read the original post:

Former SpaceX engineers raise 7.5m to build Sift, the software stack ... - PR Newswire

SpaceX logo and Elon Musk photo are seen in this illustration taken, December 19, 2022. REUTERS/Dado Ruvic/Illustration Acquire Licensing Rights

MEXICO CITY, Nov 6 (Reuters) - Starlink, the satellite internet service of billionaire Elon Musk's rocket manufacturer SpaceX, has won a tender from Mexico's state energy firm to provide services through December 2026, according to documents seen by Reuters on Monday.

The contract is valued between 887.5 million pesos ($51 million) and 1.8 billion pesos ($101 million), according to the decision from Mexico's Comision Federal de Electricidad (CFE).

Starlink's bid beat out those of two other companies because it "offered the best conditions in terms of price," the document said.

The contract would provide infrastructure for CFE's rollout of internet access throughout rural Mexico, according to a separate document seen by Reuters, a draft contract from CFE.

The draft contract shows the agreement beginning last month and running through to Dec. 31, 2026.

CFE and a legal representative for Starlink did not immediately respond to requests for comment about whether the contract had already begun or the situation of Starlink's other open tender offers.

($1 = 17.5164 Mexican pesos)

Reporting by Adriana Barrera in Mexico City Writing by Kylie Madry Editing by Matthew Lewis

Our Standards: The Thomson Reuters Trust Principles.

Read the original:

Musk's Starlink wins bid to roll out Mexico's rural satellite internet ... - Reuters

Astronaut Jasmin Moghbeli is pictured tethered to the space station during a spacewalk to replace solar array hardware.

The Expedition 70 crew participated in standard post-spacewalk activities today including health checks, spacesuit work, and a team conference. Meanwhile, science remained on Thursdays schedule as the International Space Station residents studied future piloting techniques and space manufacturing.

NASA astronauts Jasmin Moghbeli and Loral OHara had their first post-spacewalk medical exams on Thursday. The duo spent a few moments measuring each others vital signs including temperature, blood pressure, and pulse. Afterward, the pair began cleaning up the Quest airlock and deactivating their spacesuits.

Moghbeli also downlinked imagery captured using spacewalk cameras on Wednesday. She then photographed the spacesuit gloves for inspection and analysis by mission controllers on the ground. OHara logged into a computer and participated in a cognitive assessment.

After lunchtime, the two astronauts joined Commander Andreas Mogensen and Flight Engineer Satoshi Furukawa for a conference with ground specialists and discussed the previous days spacewalk activities. Mogensen from ESA (European Space Agency) also spent an hour-and-a-half servicing the spacesuits the spacewalkers wore the day before. Satoshi from JAXA (Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency) joined the trio at the end of the day for eye scans using the Ultrasound 2 device.

The orbiting labs three cosmonauts spent Thursday focused on space research and lab maintenance in the orbital outposts Roscosmos segment. Cosmonaut Nikolai Chub split his day on a pair of different experiments. During the morning, he explored spacecraft and robotic piloting techniques crews may use on future planetary missions. He then spent the afternoon testing a 3D printer that could help crews become less dependent on supply missions launched from Earth. Cosmonauts Oleg Kononenko and Konstantin Borisov worked throughout the day maintaining a variety of life support and electronics hardware.

NASA and SpaceX now are targeting 8:28 p.m. EST, Nov. 9, for launch of the companys 29th commercial resupply services (CRS-29) mission to the International Space Station. The additional time allows for completion of final prelaunch closeout ahead of liftoff of the SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket and Dragon cargo spacecraft from Launch Complex 39A at NASAs Kennedy Space Center in Florida.

Prior to every Dragon mission, SpaceX conducts extensive prelaunch checkouts at every stage of refurbishment and final integration to ensure the spacecraft is ready to safely fly its next mission. During the initial propellant load in preparation for the CRS-29 mission, teams identified a leak of NTO (nitrogen tetroxide oxidizer) in a Draco thruster valve, which per standard procedure required a pause to the operation to troubleshoot. The team inspected the valve and respective data, and decided to replace the thruster.

SpaceX continues to keep NASA informed throughout the process and the joint team collectively decided to shift launch to account for the initial part replacement and subsequent system checkouts and data reviews.

With a Nov. 9 launch, the spacecraft will arrive at the space station about 5:20 a.m. Saturday, Nov. 11.

Learn more about station activities by following thespace station blog,@space_stationand@ISS_Researchon X, as well as theISS FacebookandISS Instagramaccounts.

Get weekly video highlights at:https://roundupreads.jsc.nasa.gov/videoupdate/

Get the latest from NASA delivered every week. Subscribe here:www.nasa.gov/subscribe

Visit link:

Health Checks and Science on Station, SpaceX Adjusts Launch Date - NASA Blogs