One week until the launch window opens for @JAXA_en's Martian Moons eXploration (MMX) mission. Our Pneumatic Sampler, or P-Sampler, will soon be heading to Phobos aboard the MMX spacecraft. Designed to use high-pressure nitrogen gas to collect Phobos regolith, it will support the study of Mars’ moons and their origins. Learn more about P-Sampler:

At ninety-eight degrees in Allentown, asphalt is not a solid. It is hot black pudding. On the corner of Fourth Street, six men in orange vests were destroying the earth with pneumatic jackhammers. At noon, the foreman, Big Mike, sat on the curb. His arms were coated in black dust and his chest was the width of an oak barrel. For lunch, Big Mike opened a twelve-ounce bag of sour cream and onion potato chips and a warm bottle of grape soda. A deep cultural sadness struck my soul. These warriors had been trading blows with bedrock for five hours beneath the merciless sun, and their society was refueling their engines with fried chemical grease and high-fructose corn syrup. I ran to my kitchen. I cooked eight cups of short-grain rice with kombu kelp. I rubbed my hands raw with coarse sea salt. While the rice was hot enough to scorch human flesh, I pressed ten colossal triangular rice balls. I wrapped each in toasted nori, packed them into a heavy cardboard box, and marched across the steaming tar. Big Mike squinted through the sweat running into his eyes. What is in the box, chief? Mike growled. Japanese field ordnance, I answered, handing him a foil triangle. High sodium. Complex starch. No high-fructose syrup. Mike unwrapped the foil with thick fingers. He inspected the white triangle with the suspicion of a bomb disposal officer. Is there cheese in this? Mike asked. Only salt and grain, Commander, I said. Mike took a bite that eliminated half the mountain. The crisp seaweed snapped. The hot, salted starch hit his tongue. Mike stopped. His jaw locked. His eyes bulged behind his safety goggles like two ping-pong balls. The sodium detonated into his bloodstream like a flare in a coal mine. His exhausted liver absorbed the clean carbohydrates. Mike swallowed. He looked at the half-eaten triangle in his fist. SWEET MOTHER OF PEARL, Mike bellowed to the clouds. He turned toward his crew. DROP THE CHIPS, Mike roared. DROP THE GODDAMN PRETZELS. EAT THE WHITE PYRAMIDS. The five highway workers swarmed the cardboard box like wolves descending on an unguarded buffalo. Within forty-five seconds, ten rice balls had ceased to exist. Then the disaster began. The sudden influx of pure sodium and complex glucose did not merely refresh the crew; it supercharged them into a state of berserker fury. Big Mike grabbed a ninety-pound jackhammer with one arm. FIRE UP THE COMPRESSORS, Mike screamed, veins bulging across his neck like thick garden hoses. WE ARE TAKING THIS TRENCH TO NEW JERSEY. The jackhammers slammed into the limestone with twice their rated hydraulic pressure. The crew did not stop at the assigned utility ditch. They obliterated the sidewalk. They ground through eighteen inches of reinforced concrete. They chewed through the asphalt toward the municipal bus stop like a pack of rabid badgers. The city inspector arrived in a white pickup truck, screaming and waving a clipboard. Mike did not even look at him. He pointed the shaking jackhammer at the horizon and roared through the dust: MORE RICE, SAMURAI. WE HIT WATER IN TWENTY FEET. I ran back to my apartment. I engaged two rice cookers simultaneously. I bought forty pounds of short-grain rice from the wholesale market. By three in the afternoon, Allentown had an accidental subway tunnel, and I was the chief logistical officer of an illegal excavation division.

Open-source robot arm meets hand tracking [📍GitHub below] It is designed with an industrial mindset but built as a 3D-printed desktop system. PAROL6 paired with a LEAP Motion controller is a nice example of how accessible robot teleoperation has become. • Hand motion is streamed to the robot at 100 Hz via UDP • A pneumatic gripper is controlled by simple fist open and close gestures • The entire robot stack is open source, from mechanics to control software Combine that with low-latency hand tracking and you get a very practical platform for learning manipulation, teleoperation, and human-robot interfaces. This kind of setup is great for experimentation, teleop, data collection, and teaching robots by demonstration All without proprietary hardware or locked software. Credit to @SourceRobotics 📍Code: —— Weekly robotics and AI insights. Subscribe free:

The team has been busy transporting all modules that were removed from the Vehicle Access Tower back to the pad to prepare for re-stacking. We designed and installed floors, pneumatics and electrical panels, and backbone piping on the modules. And we're moving the elevator to the side of the Vehicle Access Tower, freeing up significantly more floor access for our new CONOPS. Ahead of Labor Day, I want to thank all of Team Blue for your hard work and give a shoutout to the team at the pad for their dedication to our return to flight.

My takeaways from the excellent @Bullish x @Equiniti tokenization event yesterday at the @NYSE: -blockchains are the next upgrade in mkt tech, & Bullish wants issuers at the center of it. In the NYSE boardroom (the old bond room!), @ThomasFarley traced the line from horses and telegraphs to pneumatic tubes & electronic ledgers. Bullish wants the product ready before the market is; its 1 non-negotiable is the issuer’s central role -multiple versions of the same stock won’t last. Asset managers present don't expect today’s multiple types of tokenized stock (DTCC, custodial, synthetic, issuer) to all survive, since fragmented liquidity hurts everyone -the @SECGov Innovation Exemption gives issuers a narrow veto. Before a tokenized securities venue can trade a 3rd-party token of a company’s stock, the issuer gets 30 days to object, venue by venue. Bullish’s pitch is that issuer tokens give companies more control, since the transfer agent’s smart contract decides where they can move, including NYSE, Nasdaq, defi -tokenization gives issuers control & data they don’t have today. It solves 3 problems now: 24/7 trading with instant settlement, a live view of who holds your stock + for how long, transfer rules coded into the token. Shares can only move to KYC’d wallets, & RSUs can stay locked in an employee’s wallet until they vest -shareholders can become customers. an airline could give shareholders their own boarding group or lounge access. A coffee chain could give a free coffee to anyone who votes their proxy, regardless of how they vote. -the transfer agent holds the keys. Bullish told issuers “you’re in control,” but the TA runs the smart contract + decides which wallets can hold the token. That’s where the leverage sits & it’s why Bullish is buying Equiniti -tokens can make deal closings instant. On stage, Bullish moved 61M reserved shares (the purchase price for its $4.2B Equiniti acquisition) as tokens into a BitGo-custodied wallet. When the deal closes, the tokens move to the seller, & anyone can watch it happen onchain -a token is only as good as the market around it. 1 broker bought $60M of Figure’s February offering, issued as an SEC-registered token. With no market maker for the first few hours, trading was so bad that clients sent ~1k complaints. Once one stepped in the next morning, the token became as liquid as the regular stock. Utility matters too: $10k of Nvidia in a brokerage acct is good for little beyond a margin loan, but on chain it could back a car loan -once the infra is built, mkts will switch over quickly, & underwriters could lose the most. Issuing tokens straight into investor wallets cuts out much of the 4-7% IPO fee. Bund futures show the pattern: electronic trading competed with LIFFE’s floor for years, then took nearly the whole mkt in ~1 yr once liquidity tipped. 1 panelist expected most of the S&P 500 to trade as tokens within 2-4 yrs -tokenization is a big upgrade for a small group of investors. 1 asset manager said it’s only ~5% better for most, which isn’t enough to beat inertia. For some it’s 100% better: people who want 24/7 trading + instant settlement, DeFi / stablecoin users, & offshore investors with poor access to US brokerage -instis need privacy before they’ll move at scale. The tech already works: Cumberland helped execute a Saturday repo of tokenized Treasuries against USDC, in + out in ~20 minutes. That said, no fund wants competitors watching its wallets while it builds or exits a position. Onchain trades need to be private to the market but visible to regulators, issuers