Meet @nasa's Valkyrie, arguably one of the most sophisticated humanoid robots in existence today. 🤖⁣ ⁣ She was originally designed as part of DARPA's (Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency) Robotics Challenge Trials. She was designed to assist in disaster zones to provide search and rescue functions.⁣ ⁣ Today, she is officially known as R5 and various research labs including @mitpics and @northeastern have worked with NASA to improve this robot over the years. ⁣ ⁣ 🔴Today, teams have built out R5's functions to make her useful to future Mars missions. She is designed to be able to mine resources, build habitats on Mars, complete disaster-relief maneuvers and work alongside Astronauts!⁣

Why are all the houses on Greek islands white and blue?⁣ 🇬🇷🤔 ⁣ Well, when they were beginning to construct these cities, there was little to no wood available. So they made houses out of dark, volcanic stone.🌋 This material was a great insulator (and helped camouflage the cities from pirates 🏴‍☠️) but it absorbed the heat throughout the day...and since it's, well, Greece, that heat became unbearable. ⁣☀️ ⁣ But it wasn't just the heat that incentivized painting the houses white. Cholera played a role too. In the 30's, cholera was a big issue ☠️, so the Greek dictator ordered all the buildings to be painted with lime wash (aka whitewash 🖌️), which has antibacterial properties, hoping it would help stop the epidemic.⁣ ⁣ And why blue🔘? Well originally people just wanted to paint their buildings some color and blue was just the most common because the pigment was the cheapest and most readily available.⁣ ⁣ Then, in the 60s, the ruling military government mandated by law that all houses be painted as blue and white…

Rolling into the weekend like 🚀 This morning, Antares and Cygnus traveled from the Horizontal Integration Facility to launch pad 0A. Launch is scheduled for 5:39 p.m. on Sunday, Feb. 9.