SpaceX Wants to Land on Mars in 2018 and Other Science Tech

Since our science and technology posts are well received as compared to our other single posts, we decided to go ahead with another one. Here’s the latest science and future tech for today.

SpaceX Wants to Land on Mars in 2018

Elon Musk’s SpaceX has made a surprising announcement on Twitter – a plan to land a SpaceX vehicle on the Red Planet by 2018, and humans by mid-2020. Here are the series of tweets by the company that successfully landed a rocket on a drone ship just recently:

“Planning to send Dragon to Mars as soon as 2018. Red Dragons will inform overall Mars architecture, details to come.” | “Dragon 2 is designed to be able to land anywhere in the solar system. Red Dragon Mars mission is the first test flight.” | “But wouldn’t recommend transporting astronauts beyond Earth-moon region. Wouldn’t be fun for longer journeys. Internal volume ~size of SUV.”

NASA is going to assist SpaceX in their endeavor. However, there will not be any exchange of funds in the assistance offered.

“In exchange for Martian entry, descent, and landing data from SpaceX, NASA will offer technical support for the firm’s plan to attempt to land an uncrewed Dragon 2 spacecraft on Mars,” says Dava Newman, NASA Deputy Administrator.

Dubai to be 25% Driverless by 2030

To reduce costs, pollution and waste caused by today’s cars, the Dubai Future Foundation has found a partner in the Roads and Transport Authority of Dubai to replace 25% of transport by driverless vehicles, ultimately leading to people saving more than 396 million hours of road-travel time.

“By 2030, 25 percent of all transportation trips in Dubai will be smart and driverless. The strategy is projected to generate economic revenues and savings of up to Dh22 billion a year,” said His Highness Sheikh Mohammed, Vice-President and Prime Minister of the UAE and Emir of Dubai.

Using Brainprints Instead of Fingerprints with 100% Accuracy

Researchers from Binghamton University have shown that instead of fingerprints, a person’s ‘brainprint’ is unique from person-to-person, and can be identified with 100% accuracy.

This was found out through a study in which a set of volunteers were shown a series of different images. After studying the results, they found that each person’s brain reacts to each image differently.

“If someone’s fingerprint is stolen, that person can’t just grow a new finger to replace the compromised fingerprint—the fingerprint for that person is compromised forever. Fingerprints are ‘non-cancellable.’ Brainprints, on the other hand, are potentially cancellable. So, in the unlikely event that attackers were actually able to steal a brainprint from an authorized user, the authorized user could then ‘reset’ their brainprint,” said Sarah Laszlo, Assistant Professor of Psychology at Binghamton University.

Read more at www.bit.ly/q3newsblog. Q3 Technologies is a large diversified technology company which develops custom software products for the healthcare industry including cloud applications, enterprise applications across all platforms and Rich Internet Applications (RIA).