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Postmortem: Our first VLEO satellite mission (with imagery and flight data)
On March 14, 2025, Albedo's first satellite, Clarity-1, launched on SpaceX Transporter-13. We took a big swing with our pathfinder. The mission goals:
Topics /
Science & Space
The most popular blog posts about science & space on Hacker News. 356 posts.
152
Is "colorectal cancer" rising in "young people"?
(Yes, but.)
153
New copy of earliest poem in English, written 1,3k years ago, discovered in Rome
Old fashioned sleuthing and the help of modern technology leads to discovery of manuscript with poem composed by a farm labourer 1,300 years ago.
154
Mr. Baby Paint and accidentally discovering a new cellular automata
On building Mr. Baby Paint, a radically simple co-op drawing app for toddlers & accidentally discovering a flood-fill cellular automata, plus developing pixel-fattening algorithms for bitmap fonts.
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Earthquake scientists reveal how overplowing weakens soil at experimental farm
In a new study, University of Washington researchers examine the impact of tilling on soil moisture and water retention using methods designed for monitoring ea
157
Whatever Happened to Fire Escapes
[Note that this article is a transcript of the video embedded above.] The idea is simple: If there’s a fire in a tall building that blocks the main stairwell, people need an alternative way to evacuate, preferably one that is somewhat protected or at least far away from where the fire is happening
158
What's Under Your Feet in New York City?
[Note that this article is a transcript of the video embedded above.] New York City is unlike any other city in the United States. It’s the most densely populated area in the country by far, absolutely packed with buildings, business, homes, and people. But for all that you can see walking the str
159
Sampling at negative temperature
Summary : Inspired by the definition of temperature in statistical mechanics and the possibility for it to be below zero, we try sampling LLaMA at T = − 0.001 T=-0.001 T = − 0.001 . The results are maximally weird.
160
Ending respiratory infections
Introducing Intercept, a $500M bet to make respiratory infections like colds and flu a thing of the past.
161
Hengefinder: Finding when the sun aligns with your street
Next week in Manhattan, the sunset will align perfectly with the east-west streets of the city grid. It’s beautiful, and people know it. Twice a year, crowds gather to see the brief moment when the sun sits perfectly on the horizon, framed by skyscrapers on either side. It’s called Manhattanhenge , after Stonehenge.
162
Scientists reverse brain aging, with a nasal spray
New therapy is turning back the clock in aging brains, healing inflammation, restoring memory and reshaping the future of brain age-related therapies.
163
There Are Magic Hexagons of Every Order
What is so special about the number 19?
164
Food processing influences metabolism and brain activity
In healthy adults, meals matched for calories and nutrients, but otherwise prepared differently, led to unexpectedly different metabolic responses and activity in the brain’s reward system.
165
China is mass-producing hypersonic missiles for $99,000
The Radical Asymmetry of Modern Warfare (P2)
166
Planet Labs' open satellite feed
Benchmarks & Tips for Big Data, Hadoop, AWS, Google Cloud, PostgreSQL, Spark, Python & More...
167
Emotion concepts and their function in a large language model
All modern language models sometimes act like they have emotions. What’s behind these behaviors? Our interpretability team investigates.
168
World-first gigabit laser link between aircraft and geostationary satellite
Faster, more secure connections from space could one day make broadband on planes, ships and even remote roads as easy as turning on a light. The European Space Agency (ESA), Airbus Defence and Space, the Netherlands Organisation for Applied Scientific Research (TNO) and German payload manufacturer TESAT (as…
169
Jellyfish can heal wounds in minutes. Scientists want their secrets
A decade ago this summer, at the Marine Biological Laboratory, Jocelyn Malamy watched jellyfish cells “walk” toward each other to close a wound for the first time. An associate professor in Molecular Genetics and Cell Biology at the University of Chicago, Malamy had received transparent, dime-sized medusae of the…
170
“Beyond the limit”: Satellites and mirrors in space pose threat to the night sky
A new European Southern Observatory (ESO) study has found that current proposals to launch over 1.7 million satellites into orbit, including extremely bright ones, would have “devastating consequences for astronomy.” According to the study, no more than 100 000 faint satellites, below naked eye visibility, should…
171
Increasing the lifespan of a bulb makes it worse in every other way
This isn't quite right , but it's the type of wrong that cites its sources and hides in the part you'd never think to fact check:
172
FDA clears blood test to aid evaluation for Alzheimer's disease
The blood-based biomarker test is based on technology developed at WashU Medicine by Randall Bateman, MD, and David Holtzman, MD.
173
An all-sky map of half a million supermassive black holes
The Black Hole Mapper reaches a milestone with its first southern hemisphere optical observations, coordinated eROSITA X-ray identification, and multi-epoch tracking of accreting black holes across the universe.
174
From brain waves to words: a new path to communication without surgery
Last year, we introduced Brain2Qwerty v1, research that uses AI to decode brain activity into text without any surgical implant. Now we're sharing the next step: Brain2Qwerty v2, the highest-performing end-to-end pipeline capable of real-time sentence decoding from non-invasive brain recordings, approaching levels of…
175
GLP-1 may slow biological aging
A new study provides the first clinical evidence that popular semaglutide drugs, like Ozempic or Wegovy, could slow down processes associated with biological aging.
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Pointing AI at archives found a forgotten meteorite, lost rhinos, and more
How I used AI to investigate millions of historical records and surfaced a forgotten meteorite report, three lost rhinos, and unrecorded volcano eruptions.
177
Palomar: A registry of Lean verified mathematics
In recent months there has been a proliferation of AI-generated proofs of various old and new results, some of which have been formalized in the proof assistant language Lean. However, checking tha…
178
Why SpaceX 2040 Revenue FCST $4.3T in highly unlikely
SpaceX priced its debut at a $1.77 trillion valuation, edging Saudi Aramco's $1.7T for the largest in history. Each block is $25 billion. Aramco was the only company that ever came close; the famous tech IPOs barely register.
179
Oral microbiome sequencing after taking probiotics
Recently, a friend recommended BioGaia Prodentis to me. It is a DTC oral probiotic you can buy online that is supposedly good for oral health. I thought it would be interesting to do some sequencing to see what, if anything, it did to my oral microbiome.
180
Looks like it is happening
Update: Sorry, but a commenter points out that this may just be an artifact of counting based on when most recently modified, not on original submission date. Numbers using original, not most recen…