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Nasa spacecraft around the Moon photographs crash site of Japanese lunar lander

Nasa spacecraft around the Moon photographs crash site of Japanese lunar lander

Irish Examiner14 hours ago

A Nasa spacecraft around the moon has photographed the crash site of a Japanese company's lunar lander.
Nasa released the pictures on Friday, two weeks after ispace's lander slammed into the moon.
The images show a dark smudge where the lander, named Resilience, and its mini rover crashed into Mare Frigoris or Sea of Cold, a volcanic region in the moon's far north.
A faint halo around the area was formed by the lunar dirt kicked up by the impact.
Nasa's Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter captured the scene last week.
The crash was the second failure in two years for Tokyo-based ispace. Company officials plan to hold a news conference next week to explain what doomed the latest mission, launched from Cape Canaveral in January.

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Nasa spacecraft around the Moon photographs crash site of Japanese lunar lander
Nasa spacecraft around the Moon photographs crash site of Japanese lunar lander

Irish Examiner

time14 hours ago

  • Irish Examiner

Nasa spacecraft around the Moon photographs crash site of Japanese lunar lander

A Nasa spacecraft around the moon has photographed the crash site of a Japanese company's lunar lander. Nasa released the pictures on Friday, two weeks after ispace's lander slammed into the moon. The images show a dark smudge where the lander, named Resilience, and its mini rover crashed into Mare Frigoris or Sea of Cold, a volcanic region in the moon's far north. A faint halo around the area was formed by the lunar dirt kicked up by the impact. Nasa's Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter captured the scene last week. The crash was the second failure in two years for Tokyo-based ispace. Company officials plan to hold a news conference next week to explain what doomed the latest mission, launched from Cape Canaveral in January.

'It's four or five seconds a week per animator': The maker's of Pixar's new film, Elio
'It's four or five seconds a week per animator': The maker's of Pixar's new film, Elio

Irish Examiner

timea day ago

  • Irish Examiner

'It's four or five seconds a week per animator': The maker's of Pixar's new film, Elio

Three decades ago, a new animation studio prepared to release their first-ever feature film in cinemas, a buddy movie featuring a quirky cowboy and a space superhero. The fledgling studio was called Pixar and their first release — Toy Story —broke the mould for animated storytelling and changed the course of movie history. Almost thirty years after the world fell in love with Andy's toys and other Pixar classics, their 29th feature film comes to our big screens. Elio, the tale of a space-obsessed boy who finds himself accidentally beamed into outer space — where he's mistaken for Earth's chief ambassador — sends its protagonist on a intergalactic voyage of self discovery. While it might not quite scale the heights of classics like Monsters, Inc, Up or Wall-E, Elio again blends the intimate with the universal in a richly detailed tale. It all comes about through years of story building and preparation, attention to detail and animators who spend dozens of hours creating just a few seconds of film footage over the course of their work at Pixar's studios in California. 'The logistics are a big part of my job,' says Elio's producer Alice Mary Drumm. 'For Elio, we probably had about 250 people at the peak of the crew, but we had over 400 people involved throughout the film. Almost everyone at Pixar touches the film in some way, and there are 1,200 of us. The average animator is animating about five, five and a half feet a week, which is basically one shot. It's four or five seconds a week per animator, maybe a little less. At our peak, we are probably going through one or two minutes of animation a week.' It's the kind of painstaking craftwork that makes Pixar best in show in a golden era for animated filmmaking. Featuring subtle nods to sci-fi classics like Alien and Close Encounters, and a backstory involving Nasa's Voyager space probe, Elio tells the story of a recently orphaned boy who has a loving but testing relationship with his aunt. He's a space-obsessed boy with a lively imagination who has long dreamed of encountering alien life - so he's thrilled when he's accidentally beamed up into outer space. Elio arrives at the Communiverse, an interplanetary organisation with representatives from various galaxies, and is mistaken as Planet Earth's leader. But when he's tasked with helping prevent the fearsome and powerful Lord Grigon from seizing control of the Communiverse, he needs to get savvy fast with the help of his eccentric sidekick, Glordon. When Elio's wish to be abducted by aliens actually comes true, he meets an array of space inhabitants, including Glordon, the tender-hearted son of a fierce warlord ruler. Taking on a sci-fi movie means creating two very different worlds within one movie, and Pixar's production team got to work, says director Domee Shi. 'Tackling a sci-fi movie, you can basically design the alien world to look like anything, the sky's the limit, and that's kind of daunting. Production designer Harley Jessup and his art team did such an amazing job with finding the look and feeling of the Communiverse. He really challenged himself and the team to design a space that we've never seen before in any of our movies at Pixar, but also in other sci fi movies from other studios. 'A good North Star for us was thinking about space as this aspirational wish fulfilment for Elio, a lonely boy on Earth who feels like an alien. The moment that he arrives in space, it has to be the opposite feeling of how he felt on Earth. If Earth was desaturated, cold, and he felt visually boxed in, then space is huge, colourful, vibrant, full of organic shapes and alien designs that are not humanoid at all, but still feel quite friendly and appealing.' From the antics of superhero family The Incredibles to the happy/sad emotional rollercoaster that was Inside Out, as the studio approaches its 30th year, almost everyone has an opinion on the former movie they hold closest to their hearts, which tale resonated with them the most as they watched on the big screen for the first time. They include, it emerges, the filmmakers themselves. 'I grew up watching Pixar movies, and they were some of the first times I experienced cinema that could change me,' says Madelaine Sharafin, making her feature directorial debut with Elio, who was a toddler when Toy Story debuted in cinemas. 'I hadn't realised that a person can watch a movie and come out feeling incredibly different about themselves and about the world, or even that a movie could make somebody cry. 'The one that really changed things for me was watching Monsters Inc, which I think is one of my favourite movie endings of all time (when Sully and his best friend Boo are reunited). I think it's brilliant. I would finish the movie, and then I'd immediately restart it, because I was so moved. I didn't want to leave that feeling.' Mary Alice Drumm, Domee Shi and Madeline Sharafian attend the UK gala screening of Elio. Picture: Tim P Whitby/Getty Looking back for director Domee Shi, it was the opening moments of Up, in which a grumpy and heartbroken widower takes to the skies — not knowing he had a stowaway on board — that first resonated. 'Pixar films, they just felt different than other animated films,' says Shi. 'Because they always have such an emphasis on good story, and they really treat animation like a medium, not a genre. They never shy away from telling stories with deeper or more adult themes, and you always walk away from a Pixar film feeling a little bit changed in some way, and that's our hope with Elio too. 'The film that impacted me the most was probably Up just because I bawled my eyes out when I watched the first 10 minutes of it. There were no words spoken, but you got the sense of an entire relationship, marriage, a life. It was just amazing to see, like pure visual storytelling on the big screen.' For producer Alice Mary Drumm, it was the studio's imagination in bringing audiences a movie where the central character was a rat that resonated. 'There are so many great movies,' she says. 'Ratatouille, for me, was one — it's just incredible that any studio would make a movie about rats in a kitchen. It's such a crazy idea, and I think that encapsulates Pixar for me, that there's such creative freedom and such belief, while also holding the bar. It's about story and character, whether it's a rat, whether it's aliens, as long as we're focusing on that, and then we use animation, because we can do anything in animation. Those are the things that I think help us keep our compass at Pixar.' Elio is in cinemas from Friday, June 20

Podcast reviews: Does baby brain exist? Do women who have children later live longer and do men really have higher sex drives?
Podcast reviews: Does baby brain exist? Do women who have children later live longer and do men really have higher sex drives?

Irish Independent

time3 days ago

  • Irish Independent

Podcast reviews: Does baby brain exist? Do women who have children later live longer and do men really have higher sex drives?

As AI-generated images and Chinese whispers catch fire on social media, many of us accept that inherent biases challenge the objectivity of science and history. And also how evolving technology changes results. Take light. In 1801 physicist Thomas Young performed 'the double-slit experiment' which confirmed light's wave characteristic. But current research suggests dark photons may instead be at play, therefore busting centuries' worth of quantum physics. This is one of the head-scratching subjects discussed in The World, The Universe and Us (Apple, Spotify), a new series co-hosted by Rowan Hooper and Penny Sarchet for New Scientist. Other heavy matter topics delivered with a light touch include an unsettling experiment of inserting bioelectronic devices into tadpoles, in a quest to further understand how early development of the human brain might work (hmmm?), and the dubious pros and common-sense cons of mining for platinum on the moon. Is baby brain real? Do women who have children later live longer? Do queer couples share the housework more equally? Do men have higher libidos? These are among the questions asked by Melbourne-based sociologist Leah Ruppanner on MissPerceived (Acast, Apple, Spotify), which queries gender myths and received wisdom. And regarding those aforementioned questions, the answers in a nutshell are: yes, ­hormonal changes absolutely disrupt cognitive functioning; genes are more likely to play a factor; yes, heterosexual men undeniably do the least domestic chores; it's complicated, but the latest study used masturbation as the end goal, which troubles Ruppanner in the first place – but I'd encourage you to listen to find out how she comes to those conclusions as she even-handedly compares ­empirical and anecdotal data. Artificial intelligence is ­typically discussed in its most dystopian conclusions – robots replacing the human race. Journalist George Butler co-hosts with Internet Advertising Bureau's CSO James Chandler on AI Haven't a Clue (Apple, Spotify), to explore how AI affects our day-to-day life. 'The world is changing at a pretty crazy rate,' says Butler, 'and I don't really understand how and why. Luckily I've now got James and expert guests.' These include Muhammad Lila, CNN war-zone correspondent turned AI entrepreneur, and Tobias Allen, CEO of influencer platform Fanvue, as they unpick current AI headlines.

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