Author: Brett Venter

It looks like South Africa won’t have much to do with that UAE space mission after all. The Hakuto-R private lunar mission being conducted by Japanese company ispace appears to have ended in failure. We say ‘appeared to’ because communication with the Mission 1 lander, scheduled to touch down yesterday afternoon, was lost just before it was supposed to make moonfall. No, not that one. Hakuto-R you listening? Our HAKUTO-R M1 lunar lander was scheduled to land on the surface of the Moon at approx. 1:40 (JST). As of 8:00 today (JST), communication between the lander at the Mission Control…

The idea of using 3D printing to create human habitats on the Moon isn’t new. Knowledge of China’s plans to use the technology for the same purpose is quite novel. So far the country has sent several missions in its Chang’e lunar program to the moon, with its most recent bringing back samples from the surface. The country intends to land astronauts on the lunar surface by 2030, shortly after NASA’s Artemis program is expected to have placed boots on the ground there. China plans on a more concrete presence on our lunar satellite and it’ll do it the same…

It’s hard to land things on the moon. It’s even harder if you’re a private company, as Israel’s 2019 Beresheet mission demonstrated. Japan’s ispace hopes to become the first private company to successfully place an object on the moon and it’s happening this afternoon. The mission is known as Hakuto-R and it’s a really big deal as far as space missions go. Locally, at least. South Africa will play a part in one of the missions hitching a ride on the Japanese company’s lander — the UAE’s Rashid Rover is on board and South Africa will be facilitating ground control…

South Africa and stargazing have a particularly long history but there’s a time and a place for everything. That time is winter, as well as a chunk of autumn and spring. This is when atmospheric conditions tend to be most favourable in this country. If you’ve ever felt the desire to spend time out among the stars, you’re joining a South African tradition that goes back hundreds of years. Even better, you’re also partaking of a tradition that goes at least as far back as the Assyrian and Babylonian empires. And just like the ancients didn’t need much in the…

When you think of space telescopes, the SuperBIT program from the University of Toronto in Canada probably doesn’t come to mind. The Hubble, sure. The James Webb Space Telescope, absolutely. But the Canadian program is a little more… low-tech. Specifically, the Super-pressure Balloon-borne Imaging Telescope is a space telescope that doesn’t need a rocket to head out of the atmosphere. That much is obvious from its full title. Instead, the “0.5 m, wide-field, diffraction-limited” telescope is mounted under a massive NASA-made super-pressure balloon at a height of about 33km. As technological solutions go, it’s a little… Eighteenth Century. SuperBIT of…

One of the most frequently cited statistics regarding firearm ownership is that you’re more likely to be killed by a gun in your home. A new smart gun from a company called Biofire Tech promises to drop that percentage by including a feature not seen in your everyday 9mm semiautomatic. Facial recognition. In a move worthy of Judge Dredd, the company’s handgun won’t fire unless it recognises the person holding it. That alone is enough to make the weapon safer, though not entirely safe. There’s still the threat of violence by the person actually programmed to use it but at…

As this review is being written, South Africa is sliding deeper and deeper into the depression that’s known as load shedding. Products like the EcoFlow Delta 2 — that is, high-capacity battery backups — are increasingly becoming essential purchases rather than just nice-to-haves. The tricky bit about choosing what backup option to choose is navigating the capacity/price graph. Is it worth spending R5,000 on a battery backup? Can you get away with less than a thousand Rand? Or should you drop a mighty R25,000, the RRP of the Delta 2, in order to keep some of your electronics running? Actually,…

Are you ready to go down the rabbit hole? That’s unfortunate because we’re not that familiar with the family of Leporidae. But… a representative of the European Union (EU), financial services commissioner Mairead McGuinness, said earlier this week that a possible Digital Euro “…is not a Big Brother project”. She was addressing concerns some have that the launch of a digital currency in the region could be used for purposes other than those stated. But it’s been an awful long time since a massively powerful controlling agency put its hands up, said “Aw, nuts, you caught us”, and went back…

Another American city is making use of robotic cops. New York’s new mayor, Eric Adams, has restarted a controversial program that uses Boston Dynamics’ Spot robot in a law enforcement capacity. In addition, another type of surveillance robot is going on patrol in the city. It can effectively be dressed up as a Dalek from Doctor Who, for the vandalism-minded. Robots working in cities aren’t a new phenomenon. Usually, these robots are purpose-built for tasks like bomb disposal. Sometimes, as in the recent case in San Francisco, cities will make foolish decisions for these machines (like giving them permission to…

Previously when we spoke about Artemis, we were referring to NASA’s program to send humans back to the Moon. That’s still on, but there’s a new ARTEMIS in town. This one is more closely related to Boston Dynamics’ Atlas robot, except that it’s got no time for construction work. The name is an acronym of Advanced Robotic Technology for Enhanced Mobility and Improved Stability. It was developed by the Robotics and Mechanisms Laboratory (RoMeLa) at the University of California Los Angeles (UCLA) and it plays soccer. No, really. ARTEMIS rising https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gTkupawAG6w The robot has been in development for some time…