Space Delivery Vehicle Is The Future Of Logistics

Inversion may be a young aerospace and defense company based in Los Angeles, but they have already unveiled its first flagship spacecraft, Arc.

The reentry vehicle is designed to deliver up to 500 pounds of mission-critical cargo from orbit to almost any point on Earth in less than an hour. The company revealed the spacecraft during an event at its factory.

Co-founders Justin Fiaschetti and Austin Briggs, who started the company in 2021, presented Arc as a new kind of logistics platform.

"Arc represents the next leap, creating a logistics network in space that will make Earth radically more accessible," Fiaschetti said.

Arc stands about 8 feet tall and 4 feet wide, roughly the size of a large tabletop. It is built to handle deliveries ranging from medical kits to drones.

In an interview with Ars Technica, Fiaschetti said the company plans to keep Arcs in orbit for extended periods, ready to descend when called upon. "The nominal mission for us is pre-positioning Arcs on orbit, and having them stay up there for up to five years ... being able to bring their cargo or effects to the desired location in under an hour," he said.

The spacecraft is a lifting body design, meaning it can maneuver as it reenters the atmosphere.

According to the company, Arc has a cross-range of about 621 miles during reentry, allowing it to steer across wide areas before descent.

Instead of needing a runway, the vehicle lands under parachutes. Its propulsion system uses non-toxic materials, which allows soldiers to handle it safely without protective gear immediately after touchdown.

"We like to describe this as mission-enabling cargo or effects," said Fiaschetti. "This could be a wide variety of specific payloads, anything from medical supplies to drones to what have you. But the key discriminator is, does this make a difference in the moment it’s needed when it gets back down to the ground?"

Beyond delivery, Inversion is pitching Arc as a hypersonic test platform.

The spacecraft can reach speeds above Mach 20, maintain extreme conditions for longer durations, and sustain heavy g-forces. U.S. defense agencies have increased funding and focus on hypersonic research, and Inversion believes Arc offers a cost-effective way to support that work.

"Fully reusable and capable of precise landings for rapid recovery, Arc makes hypersonic testing faster, repeatable, and more affordable," the company said in its announcement. Inversion’s selection to participate in the Kratos-led MACH-TB 2.0 program indicates growing interest in Arc’s role as part of national testing infrastructure.

By combining maneuverability with reusability, Inversion argues that Arc provides both defense logistics and advanced research capabilities in one platform.

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Faces Of Hundred-Year-Old Columbian Mummies Reconstructed

One of the most reputable facial reconstruction labs in the world just brought the faces behind four funerary masks back to vivid life, revealing the extraordinary craftsmanship of Eastern Colombia between the 13th and 17th centuries.

For a new study, archaeologists from Face Lab at Liverpool John Moore University unmasked four mummies from the Colombian Institute of Anthropology and History. The way pre-Colombian cultures of South America crafted these masks allowed them to fuse with the remains, so that "the bodies seemed to be alive," according to The Independent.

With their faces so permanently and impressively preserved within the interior of the funerary masks, researchers were able to reconstruct the damaged masks without physically removing them, breathing new life into the unreachable past.

A researcher from Face Lab told The Independent that the project "highlights the cultural practices of the indigenous peoples of South America," and will hopefully draw more interest towards these "incredible civilizations."

Firstly, the masks are extraordinary examples of craftsmanship, "the one ones known to exist in Colombia," The Independent continued, due to their ability to fuse with the face, leaving a permanent imprint that survived the test of time.

Ancient Origins reports that the masks were discovered in graves that had been looted, so they couldn’t provide any context beyond who they belonged to.

The four masks, respectively, sat on the faces of a 6 to 7-year-old child, a female in her 60s, and two young adult males, as per Live Science. These stylized masks were made of resin, clay, and maize with touches of gold and beads around the eyes. They were found in the Eastern Cordillera, a region in the Colombian Andes, and are thought to date between 1216 and 1797 AD.

According to Ancient Origins, they were formed directly on the anterior of the skull, and covered the entire face and jaw. Given that they were crafted on their faces, it attests to the skill that the funerary artist possessed.

The Face Lab team digitally "peeled back" the masks to reveal the face and used CT X-ray scans to capture 3D images of it.

The Independent explained that they took 2D images of each sample and then analyzed the scans to reconstruct their faces. A software enabled them to add facial tissue, and "a haptic touch stylus pen," Live Science said, allowed them to "virtually sculpt" muscles onto the digital skulls.

Ancient Origins added that they went so far as to utilize facial measurements of Colombian men living today, which they couldn’t do for the female or child, so they had to use their own expertise in anatomy, which the craftsmen did, to fill in the missing details.

"We used a digital sculpting process to rebuild each face. With the help of a stylus and specialized software, we digitally recreated muscle, skin, and fat onto the skulls." Dr. Jessica Liu, project manager at Face Lab told Ancient Origins.

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Can Science Explain Déjà Vu or Gut Feel?

All of us once had this weird feeling where we just know something’s going to happen? Turns out, science might actually have an explanation for it. And it’s weirder than anything you’ve seen in a sci-fi movie.

In one of Popular Mechanic’s most-read stories of the year, "Your Consciousness Can Jump Through Time—Meaning 'Gut Feelings' Are Memories From the Future, Scientists Say," researchers explore the idea that what many have long dismissed as a gut feeling or coincidence might be called "precognition," which is when your brain remembers an event before it’s happened.

Some scientists now believe consciousness doesn’t necessarily follow a linear timeline, and that it may be possible to entangle with your own future memories.

If you visit Popular Mechanics, you can watch John Gilpatrick and Andrew Daniels dig into the wild world of time-slipping minds, including a landmark 1990s study that made scientists start to take precognition seriously. They break down quantum theories, reveal why the CIA got involved in precognition research, and wrestle with the possibility that time just might not work the way we think it does.

John and Andrew also discuss why your brain may be more like a walkie-talkie to your future self, and what that means for déjà vu, free will, and the fabric of reality itself. You know, totally normal stuff.

Watch the full episode above now, and find more installments of "The Astounding Pop Mech Show" on PopularMechanics.com.

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Scientists Are Transforming Styrofoam Into Something Useful

Each year, more than 20 million tons of polystyrene, or Styrofoam, accumulate on earth. It's being used as a take-out container, food packaging, and shipping packing that cushions any online purchase. Once it’s thrown away, it persists for centuries.

Unlike some plastics, polystyrene is recalcitrant and doesn’t usually find its way into recycling. But a recent report shows a light of hope: instead of letting it clog landfills and waterways, scientists are discovering how to break it down and remake it into brand-new materials.

The process, called biological upcycling, doesn’t merely shatter foam into pieces and re-form them into lower-quality products. It actually recycles the waste into the exact same high-value building blocks that produce brand-new plastics, fibers, and coatings. It’s sort of giving trash a second life—without oil.

Polystyrene is made up of very long chains of styrene molecules. They are hard to disassemble. Saarland University professor of biotechnology Christoph Wittmann put together a team that met the challenge with the help of bacteria and enzymes. After years of laboratory tinkering, they trained a bacterium, Pseudomonas putida, to "digest" fragments of polystyrene and transform them into valuable chemical compounds.

"The real break-through," Wittmann said, "is that our research collaborators at INM led by Professor Aránzazu del Campo were able to demonstrate that the materials made with our process possess the same properties as the materials made from virgin petroleum-based feedstocks." That is to say, the recycled materials are just as strong and as dependable as plastics made directly from oil.

The team didn’t do it alone. They partnered with polymer chemists from Markus Gallei’s research group, scientists from the Leibniz Institute for New Materials, and collaborators in Dortmund and Vienna. The project received support from the European Union’s Repurpose program, which focuses on creative ways to cut plastic waste.

One of the most surprising products is chemicals used to make nylon. By inducing bacteria to make muconic acid, researchers could then chemically convert it into adipic acid and hexamethylenediamine. Each has six-carbon chains, one ending in acid groups and the other capped with amine groups. Blend them together, and you have nylon—a substance that shows up in stockings, carpets, car seats, zip ties, and millions of other items.

The team also showed that it is possible to make other significant chemicals, like hexanediol, from waste polystyrene. These kinds of chemicals are normally made from petroleum. Now that they have some microbial help, they can be made from waste foam cups and trays.

Proof-of-concept experiments like these are never perfect. The yields — the amount of product extracted from waste — are still low relative to industrial chemical plants. Certain enzymes lose their activity after being used many times, and separating pure products out of reaction residue remains expensive and technically difficult.

Though, the presence of microbes that can be convinced to recycle trash into nylon products is a giant step. The scientists assert their products are chemically no different from conventional options, which would enable industries to adopt them without altering manufacturing processes.

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Venus' "Coronae" Spurred Interest From Some Scientists

The surface of Venus is scoured with strange, quasi-circular features called coronae. Unlike anything seen on Earth today, they can stretch hundreds of miles in diameter, even going past the thousand mark. Or they can be as little as a few dozen miles across. In images taken from orbit, they look like chaotic scribbles etched into the rock, surrounding a partially collapsed center.

Large or small, their origins have long been a mystery to planetary scientists. It’s especially puzzling since Venus is a terrestrial world much like Earth, so much so that it’s considered to be our planet’s "twin," at nearly the same size and density. We’re also neighbors, putting both worlds at similar distances from the Sun. So why are there coronae all over Venus, but none on Earth?

A new study published in the journal Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences offers an intriguing explanation — and it could give us a major clue to how Venus and Earth’s paths diverged. Today, one is dominated by volcanoes with hellish temperatures more than 860 degrees Fahrenheit; the other is a temperate ocean world brimming with life.

"We get to have this solar system-sized laboratory," study lead author Madeleine Kerr from the Scripps Institution of Oceanography at UC California, San Deigo, said in a statement. "We have a front row seat to see why these planets are so different."

The geography of Venus and Earth are fundamentally different in one major way: Venus’s surface is made of a single giant crust, while the Earth is a jigsaw puzzle of moving tectonic plates, which over eons are sucked into the mantle and recycled. But that wasn't always the case. The Earth got its start as a single unbroken shell, too, and scientists still don’t agree when it first fractured into tectonic plates.

In a sense, Venus, having never grown out of that phase, offers a window into the Earth’s history. Previous research using data from NASA’s Magellan mission suggested that the planet wasn’t as geologically "dead" as once believed, and that the coranae may be evidence of ongoing tectonic activity.

One leading theory of corona formation suggests that they’re produced by a blob of hot material from Venus’ mantle bubbling to the surface and pushing against the bottom of the crust.

In this latest study, the researchers built on that idea by mapping the convection of the planet’s mantle, modeling how these bursts of magma travel thousands of miles from the core. Their findings added to the theory that these hot blobs are running into a "glass-ceiling" roughly 400 miles beneath the surface, where the mantle’s shifting crystal structure blocks some of the rising material. So instead of one huge blob, a grapeshot of smaller blobs trickle to the surface, creating the oddly shaped corona. This could also explain why they vary wildly in size.

There’s still a lot of work to be done to verify this hunch, but the researchers think they’re on the verge of a breakthrough akin to how the theory of plate tectonics upended our understanding of Earth’s history in the not-so-distant past.

"The current state of knowledge of the planet Venus is analogous to the 1960’s pre-plate tectonic era because we currently lack an equivalent unifying theory capable of linking how heat transfer from the planet’s interior gets manifested into the tectonics and magmatic features observed on Venus’ surface," coauthor David Stegman, a Scripps geophysicist, said in the statement. "With this new explanation for Venus’ surface features, we feel a revolution has begun and even more exciting discoveries are just around the corner."

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