Japanese spacecraft drops box-shaped robot on asteroid’s surface

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<p id=Overnight, Japan’s asteroid-sampling spacecraft Hayabusa2 deployed its third robot onto the surface of an asteroid named Ryugu more than 186 million miles from Earth. This time, the robotic explorer is a tiny, box-shaped lander crafted by Germany and France’s space agencies, dubbed MASCOT. While on the asteroid, the robot will hop around slowly and study the surface in detail, measuring things like temperature and the composition of nearby rocks.

The landing comes less than two weeks after Hayabusa2 also dropped a pair of tiny cylindrical rovers on Ryugu’s surface. That marked the first time that any kind of mobile robot had landed on an asteroid. The two rovers, named Rover-1A and 1B, don’t have wheels; instead, they “hop” around the…

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How to pick the Amazon Fire TV that’s right for you

Which Amazon Fire TV device is right for you? That depends on what sort of features you want to have access to, as well as how much cash you’re willing to spend.

Each of the company’s three set-top boxes plug into your television’s HDMI port and provide instant access to the expected suite of popular apps and subscription services, from Prime Video to Netflix, Hulu, and the like. Beyond these similarities, though, they vary in fairly subtle ways that may matter to you, especially if you just bought a new 4K television.

If you’re considering Amazon’s set-top boxes primarily because you are an Amazon Prime subscriber, there are only a few other options that work with Prime Video on the big screen. You could check out the new Toshiba LED…

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Submarines now have soft, robotic arms

The human arm can perform a wide range of extremely delicate and coordinated movements. The robotic ‘arms’ on underwater research submarines, however, lack the finesse to reach and interact with soft-bodied sea creatures. A new system lets biologists intuitively control a modular, highly flexible soft robotic arm by wearing a glove equipped with wireless soft sensors. This system also could one day enable the creation of submarine-based research labs.