Friday, January 18, 2013


Mars rover ready to dig in

NASA's Curiosity rover is ready to scratch the surface of Mars, positioning itself this week to drill into the crust of the red planet and wildcat for evidence of life for the first time.

"We are now less than a mile from where we landed yet the geology is intensely diverse," said space scientist Roger Wiens at the Los Alamos National Laboratory in New Mexico, who is principal investigator for the rover's laser sensor. "It is a scientist's dream." (full story)


 
ChemCam follows the ‘Yellowknife Road’ to Martian wet area

Researchers from Los Alamos National Laboratory and the French Space Agency have tracked a trail of minerals that point to the prior presence of water at the Curiosity rover site on Mars.

Researchers from the Mars Science Laboratory’s ChemCam team today described how the laser instrument aboard the Curiosity Rover—an SUV-sized vehicle studying the surface of the Red Planet—has detected veins of gypsum running through an area known as Yellowknife Bay, located some 700 meters away from where the Curiosity Rover landed five months ago. (full story)


 
Decision Sciences awarded contract for nuclear detection technology

Decision Sciences International, an advanced technology provider of security and detection systems, today announced it has been awarded a contract by National Security Technologies (NSTec) for a muon tomography scanner system.

Based on technology originally invented by scientists at the renowned Los Alamos National Laboratory, the Multi-Mode Passive Detection System™ was then developed with considerable private sector investment and expertise. (full story)


 
DoE calls for 30 petaflop supercomputer, invites proposals from all comers

The Department of Energy wants to keep pushing the supercomputer envelope and it’s calling for proposals on how to make that happen. Early drafts of a joint request for proposal  call for two new supercomputing systems to be built at the Los Alamos National Laboratory and Sandia National Laboratory. (full story)

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