For the first time ever, NASA has captured video of a rover landing on the surface of Mars, plus audio of the wind whistling past it after the landing.
The stars of the show are NASA's Perseverance rover and the hundreds of scientists and engineers supporting the mission to Mars at NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory and other institutions around the world. But Amazon Web Services is playing a key role in making all those gigabytes of goodness available to the world.
More than 23,000 images, amounting to 30 gigabytes of data, were gathered during the final minutes of Perseverance's journey to Jezero Crater on Mars, said Dave Gruel, camera suite lead for entry, descent and landing at JPL.
A couple of cameras looked up from the spacecraft's back shell to document the deployment of the parachute. Another camera looked down from the "Sky Crane" descent stage to watch the rover's touchdown. Meanwhile, cameras on the rover looked up at the Sky Crane and looked down and out to survey the surrounding terrain.
All those perspectives were put together in a three-minute video that documented the milestones of the descent, from the time the parachute popped open to the rover's dusty touchdown. At the end, video from the rover shows the descent stage flying away to its safe disposal, powered by a set of thrusters built by Aerojet Rocketdyne.
"It gives me goosebumps every time I see it," Gruel said at today's news briefing, conducted under COVID-19 conditions at JPL in Pasadena, Calif. "I hope everybody kept their hands and arms inside the vehicle at all times while it was in motion."
That's not all: A modified off-the-shelf microphone was hooked up to the rover, with the intention of recording the sounds of the air whistling past during the descent.
No sounds were recorded as the rover dropped, but once Perseverance had settled on its landing spot, the microphone captured the rumble of Martian wind gusts.
Gruel said the characteristics of the sounds suggest that the gusts were blowing at about 11 mph (5 meters per second).
As the mission proceeds, the microphone could capture the crunch of rocks beneath the rover's wheels as they roll, deputy project manager Matt Wallace said.
Both the video and the audio broke new ground for NASA: Although there's been descent imagery from past space odysseys, including the Apollo moon missions and the Mars Curiosity rover mission, this was the first time a video camera clearly captured the moment of touchdown on another planet.
As for the audio recordings, Soviet landers have previously recorded sounds on the surface of Venus, and NASA's Mars InSight lander has documented wind vibrations using an air pressure sensor. But Perseverance is the first to pick up the sounds of Martian winds directly with a microphone.
Thomas Zurbuchen, NASA's associate administrator for space science, said this is "how it feels to make history."
"The video of Perseverance's descent and landing, and the amazing panorama and the first wide landscape shot of Jezero Crater seen with human eyes, and the first Martian sounds are the closest you can get to landing on Mars without putting on a pressure suit," Zurbuchen said.
Releasing the raw images, video and the sounds should fire up the imagination — not only for future billion-dollar space missions, but for creative crowdsourcing here on Earth.
"Please go take a look at these data and play with them, especially those of you … that have signed up for our educational campaign," Zurbuchen said. "What can you find in these pictures? And who's going to compose the first piece of music with actual Mars sound?"
During the first couple of days of the mission, there was a fair amount of grumbling about the paucity of pictures released by the Perseverance team. But the situation changed dramatically today: The tally of raw images in NASA's Perseverance gallery jumped from less than 200 to close to 5,000 over the course of just a few hours.
Amazon Web Services said NASA is using its cloud computing platform to process image data from Mars, and to power NASA's Mars mission website. "The website will be able to scale up to meet demand at any given time, with millions of visitors expected at peak times," AWS said.
The navigation cameras on NASA's Perseverance rover captured this view of the rover's deck on Feb. 20. This view provides a good look at the PIXL instrument on the rover's stowed robotic arm. (NASA / JPL-Caltech)
The plutonium-powered Perseverance probe is only four days into a mission that's expected to last at least two Earth years, and most likely much longer. The $2.7 billion mission's primary goal is to identify and store up samples that could hold evidence of past life on Mars. NASA plans to bring such samples back to Earth in about a decade for detailed lab study.
Leaders of Perseverance's science team say they're already seeing intriguing geological features to dig into, including an assortment of "holey" rocks that could be volcanic in origin.
"If they are volcanic rocks, that is enormously important to us, because it potentially provides an opportunity to get a really nice radiometric age, or an absolute date, if a sample like that comes back to Earth," deputy project scientist Ken Williford said.
This article first appeared on GeekWire.
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At a time when the clinical health care workforce is suffering from burnout and attrition in the wake of the pandemic, Regard’s technology looks to alleviate some of the pressure on health care workers. The startup’s AI-enabled software is integrated directly into a provider’s system and uses an algorithm to analyze patients’ medical records, allowing physicians to more easily diagnose them.
Since launching its flagship product in 2020, Regard’s technology has been used on more than 30,000 patients, according to the company. The startup charges health care providers around $500 to $700 per month for access, co-founder and CEO Eli Ben-Joseph told dot.LA, with its customers including Torrance Memorial Medical Center, Cedars-Sinai Medical Center and roughly a dozen other hospitals across the U.S.
“We’re building something that’s a game-changer for doctors,” Ben-Joseph said. “It’s helping them catch medical conditions that they would have missed. So regardless of market conditions, we’re able to have value and I think investors saw that and got excited.”
Co-founders from left to right: CEO Eli Ben-Joseph, CTO Thomas Moulia, and COO Nate Wilson. Courtesy of Regard
Founded by pre-med students Ben-Joseph, Nate Wilson and Thomas Moulia in 2017, Regard got its start through Cedars Sinai’s Techstars-backed accelerator program. It was at the accelerator program that Ben-Joseph observed physicians’ workflows and saw the need for a product like Regard’s; he recalled noticing how doctors would constantly pop in and out of a patient’s room, shuttling between the patient and a computer where they could enter data and notes.
“I think that’s why so many doctors are burning out now, as they just don’t have software that really enables them,” Joseph said.
Ben-Joseph—who coupled a bachelor’s degree in bioengineering from MIT with a master’s in computer science from Stanford—noted that Regard’s technology can automatically detect up to 50 of the most common medical conditions, including heart failure, diabetes, obesity, depression and anxiety.
“We have a 90% accuracy rate at the minimum,” he said. “Physicians will look at our software and accept it, but it’s not perfect. We tell physicians to treat it like the relationship [with a] medical student.”
This year’s focus will be different from the typical accelerator: Startups in this group will test their products directly with companies active in the ocean economy for four months, collecting data on what works, what doesn’t and further developing proof of concept. Braid Theory will help these startups come up with their business plan and pitches, and connect them to investors and potential partners in the field. In return, it takes an equity warrant that can be converted after three years.
The startups joining Braid Theory typically span industries like port logistics, aquaculture and energy, all of them aiming to test their technologies and untapped opportunities of the burgeoning industry. The accelerator’s goal is to bring those companies from pre-revenue into commercialization.
And all of them are looking to solve challenges within the blue economy ecosystem, many of which have also been exacerbated by the COVID-19 pandemic. With 31% of all goods floating across the ocean to and from the U.S. pass through the Port of L.A. and the Port of Long Beach, COVID-19 strangled supply chains and increased the volume of goods handled at L.A. 's premiere dock by nearly 16% between 2020 and 2021. This created numerous logistical challenges for the dwindling workforce at the nation’s busiest ports while increasing emissions.
“The thing that we're trying to think about are ways in which we can leverage biological systems and software to make more immediate changes in markets that have a low barrier to entry,” Braid Theory co-founder Jim Cooper said of accelerator’s approach to addressing a wide range of climate and logistical issues.
Cooper founded Braid Theory with his colleague Ann Carpenter after the pair left PortTechLA, a maritime and logistics incubator that shuttered in 2016. The two wanted to create an accelerator for port and ocean startups that went beyond logistics and took into account other promising sectors of the ocean economy, including sustainable fish and plant cultivation as well as tools to make the shipping sector more efficient.
Jim Cooper co-founded Braid Theory with his former colleague from PortTechLA, Ann Carpenter.Image courtesy of Braid Theory
Accelerators like Braid Theory are attempting to fill a void in the blue economy ecosystem. Despite being home to several universities with robust maritime research centers and a giant port infrastructure that could be better optimized, few startups survive in Los Angeles due to a lack of early stage funding, according to a 2020 report from the Los Angeles Economic Development Corporation. The accelerator provides funds and lab space and investor connections to nascent startups tackling a wide range of ocean-related problems.
The same report found that ocean startups, particularly early-stage ones, have a difficult time getting funding to accommodate the need for expensive lab equipment like centrifuges, chillers and pipettes. Startups in the blue economy space are primarily funded through federal and state dollars, NGOs and philanthropies, and competitions. But while angel funding has historically been slow to trickle into blue economy startups, some are starting to take note of the size of the market. In the first cohort, eight out of 12 startups received federal funding and investor funding with the help of Braid Theory.
The accelerator’s first graduating class included Florida-based Tampa DeepSea Xplorers, which makes seafaring autonomous vehicles that can scrape the bottom of the ocean and collect data faster for researchers to use as they study climate change impact or source for different medicines. Irvine-based ReCreate Energy is another graduate, which sources algae to create a more sustainable bio-crude oil that can be used at gas and oil refineries. While FlashQ, a Canada-based AI platform, is trying to reduce truck congestion and the emissions caused by them at the port by creating a scheduling platform that optimizes waiting and shipment times.
“The key is the opportunity, the opportunity was there,” Mimi Carter, a biotech investor with the Pasadena Angels, said of the business opportunities in the ocean market. “We saw a market that was unaddressed and is still an emerging market.”
A cluster of cranes at the Port of Long Beach.Photo by DJANA 575/ Shutterstock
To Carter’s credit, L.A. County boasts 75 miles of coastline that the LAEDC expects by 2023 will produce more than $80 billion in regional output, make roughly $50 billion in gross county product, and create over 200,000 direct and indirect jobs, according to a 2020 report. And, according to the Los Angeles Economic Development Corporation, economic and job growth in this sector relies heavily on the creation and implementation of new technologies, making angel investors necessary players in bolstering the ocean economy.
“Not only do we want to be investing in a sustainable product, but someone we count as a first mover,” Carter said of her investment approach. Already, groups like the Pasadena Angels and Techstars L.A. have made investments in the space. Reece Pacheco, a blue economy angel investor, is quietly working on a new venture fund around the blue tech space that hasn’t been announced yet.
“What we're starting to see is there are entrepreneurs who are either coming up through these research firms, or there are entrepreneurs who have cut their teeth elsewhere but care about the ocean,” Pacheco said.
There’s also Braid Theory’s neighbor (and landlord), AltaSea, the nonprofit research hub that has facilitated a number of partnerships with companies across the world.
“We do want to become the leading destination for the blue economy in terms of technology, finance, the education pathways it takes for students to get into these jobs in the future, and then the actual workforce development for the jobs of the future,” said Terry Tamminen, the new CEO of AltaSea.
Braid Theory’s makeshift shipping container-turned-lab is next door to a slew of other startups and projects in the blue economy space. USC researchers are incubating bubbling cauldrons of kelp that could create biofuels and alternative food sources. While Oceanographer Robert Ballard, who found the Titanic wreckage in 1985, set up a sea exploration program a few doors down.
“The ocean is more than a destination for tourists and a place for Jacques Cousteau and David Attenborough to go diving,” Tamminen said. “It's actually something right at our doorstep that we need to protect for our own survival, but it’s also an economic opportunity.”
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