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Fresh off his trip to space, billionaire businessman Jeff Bezos on Monday offered to cover up to $2 billion in NASA costs if the US space agency awards his company Blue Origin a contract to make a spacecraft designed to land astronauts back on the moon.

NASA in April awarded rival billionaire entrepreneur Elon Musk’s SpaceX a $2.9 billion (roughly Rs. 21,595 crores) contract to build a spacecraft to bring astronauts to the lunar surface as early as 2024, rejecting bids from Blue Origin and defense contractor Dynetics. Blue Origin had partnered with Lockheed Martin, Northrop Grumman and Draper in the bid.

The space agency cited its own funding shortfalls, SpaceX’s proven record of orbital missions and other factors in a contract decision that senior NASA official Kathy Lueders called “what’s the best value to the government.”

In a letter to NASA Administrator Bill Nelson, Bezos said Blue Origin would waive payments in the government’s current fiscal year and the next ones after that up to $2 billion, and pay for an orbital mission to vet its technology. In exchange, Blue Origin would accept a firm, fixed-priced contract, and cover any system development cost overruns, Bezos said.

“NASA veered from its original dual-source acquisition strategy due to perceived near-term budgetary issues, and this offer removes that obstacle,” Bezos wrote.

“Without competition, NASA’s short-term and long-term lunar ambitions will be delayed, will ultimately cost more, and won’t serve the national interest,” Bezos added.

A NASA spokesperson said the agency was aware of Bezos’ letter but declined to comment further, citing the protest Blue Origin filed with the US Government Accountability Office accusing the agency of giving SpaceX an unfair advantage by allowing it to revise its pricing.

The GAO’s decision is expected by early August, though industry sources said Blue Origin views the possibility of a reversal as unlikely.

A SpaceX spokesperson did not respond to a request for comment.

Before choosing SpaceX, NASA had asked for proposals for a spacecraft that would carry astronauts to the lunar surface under its Artemis program to return humans to the moon for the first time since 1972. Blue Origin’s lunar lander is called “Blue Moon.” Bezos and Musk are the world’s richest and third-richest people respectively, according to Forbes.

Bezos’ offer came six days after he flew alongside three crewmates to the edge of space aboard Blue Origin’s rocket-and-capsule New Shepard, a milestone for the company’s bid to become a major player in an emerging space tourism market.

© Thomson Reuters 2021

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Aeneas AI Model Helps Decode and Restore Ancient Roman Inscriptions

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August 10, 2025

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Aeneas AI Model Helps Decode and Restore Ancient Roman Inscriptions

Ancient Roman Inscriptions help us understand laws, traditions, economy, and even the emotional perspective of ancient people. Their lives and histories, however, have been rendered difficult to understand because, over time, the inscriptions have been damaged. Every year, there are 1500 Roman inscriptions discovered, albeit many of them are incomplete. Fortunately, advancements in technology like the new Aeneas tool, is helping in the future understanding of the Roman inscriptions. It serves as a large language model specializing in reading, interpreting, and giving context to Roman inscriptions.

Decode Ancient Roman Inscriptions

As Per Report,Drawing its name from a hero in Roman history, Aeneas, the model has been trained on nearly 200,000 latian inscriptions, which span from the 7th century to the 8th century covering regions from Portugal to Iraq.Aneas has the capability to analyze images of damaged inscriptions and predict or even fill in missing letters or words. In addition to that, it is able to determine a time frame and location for the inscription, as well as cross-reference it with other inscriptions containing similar phrases or purposes.

Making History Clearer Through Technology

Since Aeneas is trained exclusively on Latin inscriptions, specialists believe that he is less prone to random or false errors when compared to general AI approaches. University of Sydney historian Anne Rogerson remarked that Aeneas’s proposals, as informed guesses, still involve real historical data as opposed to baseless conjectures.

Despite the model’s open availability,Made public alongside the model’s code and data, Aeneas’s creator, Google DeepMind, offered the model without restrictions.

Most impressively, Aeneas can be accessed for free, enabling students and researchers to shift through and reinterpret previously concealed fragments of Roman history to understand them on a deeper level.

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Robot Drummer: Humanoid Robot Learns to Play Drums with Human-Like Precision

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Robot Drummer: Humanoid Robot Learns to Play Drums with Human-Like Precision

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August 10, 2025

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Robot Drummer: Humanoid Robot Learns to Play Drums with Human-Like Precision

Human-like designed robots have so far been tested for the assistive and manual tasks such as carrying objects, assisting in physical therapy and supporting elderly individuals. Their potential in expressive and creative fields, such as arts and music performance have introduced Robot Drummer which is a humanoid robot capable of drum playing both expressively and precisely. This project’s objective is to explore that robots could perform in rhythm and artistic roles.

Exploring Creativity in Humanoid Robotics

As per Tech Explore, the concept started from the casual coffee break gathering between the first author and the co-author, Asad AIi and Los Roveda respectively. They saw that humanoid robots are great at practical tasks and drumming was observed as a challenge, with combining rhythm, physical skill and coordination.

To get this, the team made a system which represents music as the rhythmic contact chain, which is a sequence of the events which signals which drum to strike and when. With the help of these cues, the robot has been trained in a simulated milieu, learning to perform the realistic techniques including switching sticks, adapting movements for efficiency and crossing arm.

Robot Drummer’s Skills and Future Potential

Tests were conducted on the simulated G1 Unitree humanoid robot, playing full drum tracks of songs from jazz to rock and metal. These included “Take Five” by Dave Brubeck, Living on a Prayer” by Bon Jovi, and “In the End” by Linkin Park. The robot achieved over 90% rhythmic accuracy, demonstrating the ability to master complex patterns.

The robot has been designed to use the ability of human drummers, such as anticipating upcoming dynamically adjusting hand positions and beats. These behaviors emerged naturally from the training process, guided by rhythmic performance rewards. The researchers believe this opens doors for robotic performers in live entertainment and other precision-based tasks.

The team’s next goal is to transfer these learned skills from simulation to a physical robot. They also aim to enable improvisation, allowing the robot to adjust its style in real time based on musical cues. This could give future robotic drummers the ability to respond to music with a level of expression closer to human musicians.

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Twisted Jet Confirms Most Extreme Binary Black Hole System in the Universe

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9 hours ago

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August 10, 2025

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Twisted Jet Confirms Most Extreme Binary Black Hole System in the Universe

Astronomers using a global radio telescope array have captured a record-sharp image of the blazar OJ 287, showing its particle jet is sharply bent. This twisted jet provides compelling evidence that OJ 287’s core contains not one but two supermassive black holes in a tight orbit. For decades, OJ 287’s ~12-year cycle of flares hinted at a secondary black hole, and the new image confirms that model. In fact, this appears to be the most extreme binary black hole system ever observed. Researchers say the finding makes OJ 287 “an ideal candidate for further research into merging black holes and the associated gravitational waves”.

Twisted Jet Reveals a Cosmic Duo

According to the study, using an Earth-space radio interferometer, astronomers produced an ultra-sharp image of OJ 287’s center. The image shows the jet bends sharply three times within ~0.3 light-year and swings by about 30° over a few years. Such dramatic twists so close in are naturally explained by a second black hole tugging on the jet’s base. This fits the picture of OJ 287’s 12-year flare cycle: a ~150-million-solar-mass companion plunges through the primary’s accretion disk roughly every 12 years, triggering bright outbursts and bending the jet. The observations even caught a shock wave forming in the jet, unleashing a burst of gamma rays seen by NASA’s Fermi and Swift satellites. Astronomers say this twisted, ribbon-like jet is the clearest evidence yet of two supermassive black holes locked in a gravitational tug-of-war.

Implications for Black Hole Evolution

OJ 287’s black holes will eventually merge, but that won’t happen for a very long time. In the meantime, their orbit sends out ultra-long-wavelength gravitational waves that current detectors cannot pick up. Scientists expect pulsar-timing arrays – which monitor the ticking of distant neutron stars – may detect this faint gravitational-wave signal. Looking farther ahead, future space missions like ESA/NASA’s planned LISA observatory (2030s) could catch the final merger of such supermassive pairs.

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Hubble Delivers Best View Yet of Rare Interstellar Comet 3I/ATLAS Racing Through Solar System

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