"We are in a great competition with a rival that has the will and means to challenge American exceptionalism."

ظهر مرشح ناسا مؤخرًا أمام الكونغرس للدفاع عن خطط تهدف إلى إعادة هيكلة الوكالة الفضائية، مشددًا على الحاجة لمواجهة المنافسة من خصوم يهددون القيادة الأمريكية في استكشاف الفضاء.

El nominado de la NASA compareció recientemente ante el Congreso para defender planes destinados a renovar la agencia espacial, enfatizando la necesidad de abordar la competencia de rivales que amenazan el liderazgo estadounidense en la exploración espacial.

Le candidat de la NASA a récemment comparu devant le Congrès pour défendre des plans visant à réorganiser l'agence spatiale, soulignant la nécessité de faire face à la concurrence de rivaux menaçant le leadership américain dans l'exploration spatiale.

NASA's nominee recently appeared before Congress to defend plans aimed at revamping the space agency, emphasizing the need to address competition from rivals that threaten American leadership in space exploration.

NASA nominee appears before Congress, defends plans to revamp space agency

It's the first time scientists have discovered six-carbon glucose in an extraterrestrial sample.

أعلنت ناسا عن اكتشاف ثوري للجلوكوز ذو الستة كربونات في عينات تم جمعها من الكويكب بينو، مما يمثل المرة الأولى التي يتم فيها تحديد مثل هذا المركب في سياق خارجي. قد يوفر هذا الاكتشاف معلومات حاسمة حول أصول الحياة على الأرض وما بعدها.

La NASA ha anunciado un descubrimiento revolucionario de glucosa de seis carbonos en muestras recolectadas del asteroide Bennu, marcando la primera vez que se identifica un compuesto de este tipo en un contexto extraterrestre. Este hallazgo podría proporcionar información crucial sobre los orígenes de la vida en la Tierra y más allá.

La NASA a annoncé une découverte révolutionnaire de glucose à six carbones dans des échantillons prélevés sur l'astéroïde Bennu, marquant la première fois qu'un tel composé est identifié dans un contexte extraterrestre. Cette découverte pourrait fournir des informations cruciales sur les origines de la vie sur Terre et au-delà.

NASA has announced a groundbreaking discovery of six-carbon glucose in samples collected from Asteroid Bennu, marking the first time such a compound has been identified in an extraterrestrial context. This finding could provide critical insights into the origins of life on Earth and beyond.

How Did Life Happen? NASA Says It Found Tantalizing Clues on Asteroid Bennu

Teams were subject to Death Valley's extreme heat, with temperatures reaching to over 110 degrees Fahrenheit.

أرسلت ناسا ثلاثة طائرات مسيرة إلى وادي الموت لإجراء اختبارات استعدادًا لمهام مستقبلية إلى المريخ، حيث من المتوقع أن تكون الظروف مشابهة. واجهت الفرق حرارة شديدة خلال التجارب، حيث تجاوزت درجات الحرارة 110 درجات فهرنهايت.

La NASA ha enviado tres drones al Valle de la Muerte para realizar pruebas en preparación para futuras misiones a Marte, donde se espera que las condiciones sean igualmente severas. Los equipos enfrentaron un calor extremo durante las pruebas, con temperaturas que superaron los 110 grados Fahrenheit.

La NASA a déployé trois drones dans la vallée de la mort pour effectuer des tests en préparation de futures missions vers Mars, où les conditions devraient être tout aussi difficiles. Les équipes ont été confrontées à une chaleur extrême lors des essais, avec des températures dépassant 110 degrés Fahrenheit.

NASA has deployed three drones to Death Valley to conduct tests in preparation for future missions to Mars, where conditions are expected to be similarly harsh. The teams faced extreme heat during the trials, with temperatures exceeding 110 degrees Fahrenheit.

NASA Sent 3 Drones to Death Valley to Prepare for Travel to Mars

<img src="https://spectrum.ieee.org/media-library/portrait-of-daniela-rus.jpg?id=62267674&width=1200&height=800&coordinates=0%2C76%2C0%2C76"/> <a href="https://spectrum.ieee.org/the-heart-and-the-chip-what-could-go-wrong" target="_self">Daniela Rus</a> has spent her career breaking barriers—scientific, social, and material—in her quest to build machines that amplify rather than replace human capability. She made robotics her life’s work, she says, because she understood it was a way to expand the possibilities of computing while enhancing human capabilities.“I like to think of robotics as a way to give people superpowers,” Rus says. “Machines can help us reach farther, think faster, and live fuller lives.”<h3>Daniela Rus</h3> Employer MITJob titleProfessor of electrical and computer engineering and computer science; director of the MIT Computer Science and Artificial Intelligence LaboratoryMember gradeFellowAlma maters University of Iowa, in Iowa City; CornellHer dual missions, she says, are to make technology humane and to make the most of the opportunities afforded by life in the United States. The two goals have fueled her journey from a childhood living under a dictatorship in Romania to the forefront of global robotics research.Rus, who is director of<a href="https://www.mit.edu/" rel="noopener noreferrer" target="_blank"> MIT</a>’s <a href="https://www.csail.mit.edu/" rel="noopener noreferrer" target="_blank">Computer Science and Artificial Intelligence Laboratory</a> (CSAIL), is the recipient of this year’s<a href="https://corporate-awards.ieee.org/award/ieee-edison-medal/" rel="noopener noreferrer" target="_blank"> IEEE Edison Medal</a>, which recognizes her for “sustained leadership and pioneering contributions in modern robotics.”An IEEE Fellow, she describes the recognition as a responsibility to further her work and mentor the next generation of roboticists entering the field.The Edison Medal is the latest in a string of honors she has received. In 2017 she won an<a href="https://www.automate.org/robotics/engelberger/joseph-f-engelberger-awards" rel="noopener noreferrer" target="_blank"> Engelberger Robotics Award</a> from the<a href="https://www.automate.org/companies/robotic-industries-association" rel="noopener noreferrer" target="_blank"> Robotic Industries Association</a>. The following year, she was honored with the<a href="https://www.ieee-ras.org/awards-recognition/society-awards?view=article&id=55:ras-pioneer-award&catid=69:society-awards" rel="noopener noreferrer" target="_blank"> Pioneer in Robotics and Automation Award</a> by the<a href="https://www.ieee-ras.org/" rel="noopener noreferrer" target="_blank"> IEEE Robotics and Automation Society</a>. The society recognized her again in 2023 with its<a href="https://www.ieee-ras.org/awards-recognition/ieee-awards?view=article&id=92:ieee-robotics-and-automation-technical-field-award-tfa&catid=69:society-awards" rel="noopener noreferrer" target="_blank"> IEEE Robotics and Automation Technical Field Award</a>.<h2>From Romania to Iowa </h2>Rus was born in<a href="https://www.britannica.com/place/Cluj-Napoca-Romania" rel="noopener noreferrer" target="_blank"> Cluj-Napoca, Romania</a>, during the rule of dictator<a href="https://www.cato.org/commentary/rise-fall-nicolae-ceausescu-romanian-fuehrer" rel="noopener noreferrer" target="_blank"> Nicolae Ceausescu</a>. Her early life unfolded in a world defined by scarcity—rationed food, intermittent electricity, and a limited ability to move up or out. But she recalls that, amid the stifling insufficiencies, she was surrounded by an irrepressible warmth and intellectual curiosity—even when she was making locomotive screws in a state-run factory as part of her school’s curriculum.“Life was hard,” she says, “but we had great teachers and strong communities. As a child, you adapt to whatever is around you.”Her father,<a href="https://cs.uiowa.edu/people/teodor-rus" rel="noopener noreferrer" target="_blank"> Teodor</a>, was a computer scientist and professor, and her mother, Elena, was a physicist.In 1982, when she was 19, Rus’s father emigrated to the United States to join the faculty at the<a href="https://uiowa.edu/" rel="noopener noreferrer" target="_blank"> University of Iowa</a>, in Iowa City. It was an act of courage and conviction. Within a year, Daniela and her mother joined him there.“He wanted the freedom to think, to publish, to explore ideas,” Rus says. “And I reaped the benefits of being free from the limitations of our homeland.”America’s open horizons were intoxicating, she says.<h2>A lecture that changed everything</h2>Rus decided to pursue a degree at her father’s university, where her life changed direction, she says. One afternoon, <a href="https://amturing.acm.org/award_winners/hopcroft_1053917.cfm" rel="noopener noreferrer" target="_blank">John Hopcroft</a>—a<a href="https://amturing.acm.org/" rel="noopener noreferrer" target="_blank"> Turing Award</a>–winning <a href="https://www.cornell.edu/" rel="noopener noreferrer" target="_blank">Cornell</a> computer scientist renowned for his work on algorithms and data structures—gave a talk on campus. His message was simple but electrifying, Rus says: Classical computer science had been solved. The next frontier, Hopcroft declared, was computations that interact with the messy physical world.For Rus, the idea was a revelation.“It was as if a door had opened,” she says. “I realized the future of computing wasn’t just about logic and code; it was about how machines can perceive, move, and help us in the real world.”After the lecture, she introduced herself to Hopcroft and told him she wanted to learn from him. Not long after earning her bachelor’s degree in computer science and mathematics in 1985, she applied to get a master’s degree at Cornell, where Hopcroft became her graduate advisor. Rus developed algorithms there for dexterous <a href="https://spectrum.ieee.org/minimally-actuated-robot-arm-has-lots-of-joints-just-one-clever-motor" target="_self">robotic manipulation</a>—teaching machines to grasp and move objects with precision. She earned her master’s in computer science in 1990, then stayed on at Cornell to work toward a doctorate.“I like to think of robotics as a way to give people superpowers. Machines can help us reach farther, think faster, and live fuller lives.”In 1993 she earned her Ph.D. in computer science, then took a position as an assistant professor of computer science at <a href="https://home.dartmouth.edu/" target="_blank">Dartmouth College</a>, in Hanover, N.H. She founded the college’s robotics laboratory and expanded her work into distributed robotics. She developed teams of small robots that cooperated to perform tasks such as ensuring products in warehouses are correctly gathered to fulfill orders, get packaged safely, and are routed to their respective destinations efficiently.Despite a lack of traditional machine shop facilities for fabrication on the Hanover campus, Rus found a way. She pioneered the use of<a href="https://spectrum.ieee.org/printable-robots-mit-project" target="_self"> 3D printing to rapidly prototype and build robots</a>.In 2003 she left Dartmouth to become a professor in the<a href="https://www.eecs.mit.edu/" rel="noopener noreferrer" target="_blank"> electrical engineering and computer science</a> department at <a href="https://www.mit.edu/" rel="noopener noreferrer" target="_blank">MIT</a>.The robotics lab she created at Dartmouth moved with her to MIT and became known as the <a href="https://www.csail.mit.edu/research/distributed-robotics-laboratory" rel="noopener noreferrer" target="_blank">Distributed Robotics Laboratory</a> (DRL). In 2012 she was named director of MIT’s<a href="https://www.csail.mit.edu/" rel="noopener noreferrer" target="_blank"> Computer Science and Artificial Intelligence Laboratory</a>, the school’s largest interdisciplinary lab, with 60 research groups including the DRL. She also continues to serve as the DRL’s principal investigator.<h2>The science of physical intelligence</h2>Rus now leads pioneering research at the intersection of AI and robotics, a field she calls <a href="https://news.mit.edu/news-clip/wired-451" rel="noopener noreferrer" target="_blank">physical intelligence</a>. It’s “a new form of intelligent machine that can understand dynamic environments, cope with unpredictability, and make decisions in real time,” <a href="https://news.mit.edu/news-clip/wired-451" rel="noopener noreferrer" target="_blank">she says</a>.Her lab builds <a href="https://spectrum.ieee.org/soft-robots-for-hard-problems" target="_self">soft-body robots inspired by nature</a> that can sense, adapt, and learn. They are AI-driven systems that passively handle tasks—such as self-balancing and complex articulation similar to that done by the human hand—because their shape and materials minimize the need for heavy processing.Such machines, she says, someday will be able to navigate different environments, perform useful functions without external control, and even recover from disturbances to their route planning. Researchers also are exploring ways to make them more energy-efficient.One prototype developed by Rus’s team is designed to retrieve foreign objects from the body, including batteries swallowed by children. The ingestible robots are artfully folded, similar to origami, so they are small enough to be swallowed. Embedded magnetic materials allow doctors to steer the soft robots and control their shape. Upon arriving in the stomach, a soft bot can be programmed to wrap around a foreign object and guide it safely out of the patient’s body.CSAIL researchers also are working on small robots that can carry a medication and release it at a specific area within the digestive tract, bypassing the stomach acid known to diminish some drugs’ efficacy. Ingestible robots also could patch up internal injuries or ulcers. And because they’re made from digestible materials such as sausage casings and biocompatible polymers, the robots can perform their assigned tasks and then get safely absorbed by the body, she says.Health care isn’t the only application on the horizon for such AI-driven technologies. Robots with physical intelligence might someday help firefighters locate people trapped in burning buildings, find miners after a cave-in, and provide valuable situational awareness information to emergency response teams in the aftermath of natural disasters, Rus says.“What excites me is the possibility of giving people new powers,” she says. “Machines that can think and move safely in the physical world will let us extend human reach—at work, at home, in medicine … everywhere.”To make such a vision a reality, she has expanded her technical interests to include several complementary lines of research.She’s working on self-reconfiguring and <a href="https://spectrum.ieee.org/stochastic-robots-assemble-and-disassemble-themselves" target="_self">modular robots</a> such as MIT’s <a href="https://www.csail.mit.edu/research/m-blocks-modular-robotics" rel="noopener noreferrer" target="_blank">M-Blocks</a> and NASA’s <a href="https://www-robotics.jpl.nasa.gov/what-we-do/research-tasks/superbot-modular-multifunctional-reconfigurable-robot/" rel="noopener noreferrer" target="_blank">SuperBots</a>, which can attach, detach, and rearrange themselves to form shapes suited for different actions such as slithering, climbing, and crawling.With <a href="https://spectrum.ieee.org/nyu-tandon-robotics" target="_self">networked robots</a>—including those <a href="https://www.amazon.com/?tag=amazusnavi-20&hvadid=675149237887&hvpos=&hvnetw=g&hvrand=13161685782168516493&hvpone=&hvptwo=&hvqmt=e&hvdev=c&hvdvcmdl=&hvlocint=&hvlocphy=9004281&hvtargid=kwd-10573980&ref=pd_sl_7j18redljs_e&hydadcr=28883_14649097" rel="noopener noreferrer" target="_blank">Amazon</a> uses in its warehouses—thousands of machines can operate as a large adaptive system. The machines communicate continuously to divide tasks, avoid collisions, and optimize package routing.Rus’s team also is making advances in <a href="https://spectrum.ieee.org/tag/human-robot-interaction" target="_self">human-robot interaction</a>, such as reading brainwave activity and <a href="https://www.josephdelpreto.com/portfolio/detect-sign-language-with-a-smart-glove/" rel="noopener noreferrer" target="_blank">interpreting sign language through a smart glove</a>.To further her plan of putting all the computerized smarts the robots need within their physical bodies instead of in the cloud, she helped found <a href="https://www.liquid.ai/" rel="noopener noreferrer" target="_blank">Liquid AI</a> in 2023. The company, based in Cambridge, Mass., develops <a href="https://spectrum.ieee.org/liquid-neural-networks" target="_self">liquid neural networks</a>, inspired by the simple brains of worms, that can learn and adapt continuously. The word liquid in this case refers to the adaptability, flexibility, and dynamic nature of the team’s model architecture. It can change shape and adapt to new data inputs, and it fits within constraints imposed by the hardware in which it’s contained, she says.<h2>Finding community in IEEE</h2>Rus joined IEEE at one of its robotics conferences when she was a graduate student.“I think I signed up just to get the student discount,” she says with a laugh. “But IEEE turned out to be the place where my community lived.”She credits the organization’s conferences, journals, and collaborative spirit with shaping her professional growth.“The exchange of ideas, the chance to test your thinking against others—it’s invaluable,” she says. “It’s how our field moves forward.”Rus continues to serve on IEEE panels and committees, mentoring the next generation of roboticists.“IEEE gave me a platform,” Rus says. “It taught me how to communicate, how to lead, and how to dream bigger.”<h2>Living the American dream</h2>Looking back, Rus sees her story as a testament to unforeseen possibilities.“When I was growing up in Romania, I couldn’t even imagine living in America,” she says. “Now I’m here, working with brilliant students, building robots that help people, and trying to make a difference. I feel like I’m living the American dream.”In a nod to a memorable song from the Broadway musical <a href="https://hamiltonmusical.com/new-york/" rel="noopener noreferrer" target="_blank">Hamilton</a>, Rus echoes <a href="https://www.nps.gov/articles/000/alexander-hamilton.htm" rel="noopener noreferrer" target="_blank">Alexander Hamilton</a>’s determination to make the most of his opportunities, saying, “I don’t ever want to throw away my shot.”

تركز دانييلا روس، مديرة مختبر الروبوتات الذكية في معهد ماساتشوستس للتكنولوجيا، على إنشاء روبوتات تركز على الإنسان تعزز القدرات البشرية بدلاً من استبدالها، مشددة على إمكانية الروبوتات في منح الأفراد 'قوى خارقة' في حياتهم اليومية.

Daniela Rus, directora del Laboratorio de Robótica de IA del MIT, se centra en crear robots centrados en las personas que mejoren las capacidades humanas en lugar de reemplazarlas, enfatizando el potencial de la robótica para otorgar a los individuos 'superpoderes' en su vida diaria.

Daniela Rus, directrice du laboratoire de robotique IA du MIT, se concentre sur la création de robots centrés sur l'humain qui améliorent les capacités humaines plutôt que de les remplacer, soulignant le potentiel de la robotique à donner aux individus des 'superpouvoirs' dans leur vie quotidienne.

Daniela Rus, the director of MIT’s AI Robotics Lab, is focused on creating people-centered robots that enhance human capabilities rather than replace them, emphasizing the potential of robotics to provide individuals with 'superpowers' in their daily lives.

MIT’s AI Robotics Lab Director Is Building People-Centered Robots

"This would be a cheap insurance policy."

تسعى ناسا إلى خيار 'نسخة احتياطية دافئة' مع اقترابها من اتخاذ قرار حاسم بشأن تطوير مركبة قمرية. تُعتبر هذه الاستراتيجية بمثابة بوليصة تأمين اقتصادية لضمان نجاح المهمة.

NASA está considerando una opción de 'respaldo cálido' a medida que se acerca a una decisión clave sobre el desarrollo de un rover lunar. Esta estrategia se ve como una póliza de seguro económica para garantizar el éxito de la misión.

NASA envisage une option de 'sauvegarde chaude' alors qu'elle se rapproche d'une décision clé concernant le développement d'un rover lunaire. Cette stratégie est perçue comme une police d'assurance économique pour garantir le succès de la mission.

NASA is considering a 'warm backup' option as it approaches a critical decision regarding the development of a lunar rover. This strategy is seen as a cost-effective insurance policy to ensure mission success.

NASA nominee appears before Congress, defends plans to revamp space agency

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