The successful launch of Europe's first ExoMars mission earlier this month set the stage for a much more ambitious second act: arover landing on the Red Planet. But the timing on that mission may not be so certain. On March 14, the European Space Agency (ESA) and its Russian partners launched the ExoMars 2016 mission, an orbiter and lander that serve as a precursor to a full-blown rover slated to launch as early as May 2018. But funding issues and technical delays could push that ambitious follow-up mission to 2020. Rolf de Groot, ESA's coordinator of robotic exploration, told Space.com that it's going to be "very challenging"to have the mission fully prepared for its 2018 launch window but that program managers will know soon whether they'll have to start seriously thinking about a 2020 launch instead.

One interesting/terrifying aspect of today's modern society is that we have filled the airwaves with a multitude of radio signals. Ever since the pioneering days of Marconi, Braun, and others we have been using more and more of the electromagnetic spectrum to send audio, visual, and data signals. Everything from FM radio to 4G LTE, from digital satellite TV to military communication is all sent via one form of radio or another. The result is that the radio spectrum is full, it is bursting at the seams. In light of this, DARPA (the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency) has launched its latest Grand Challenge, this time to bring advanced machine-learning capabilities to the way the radio frequencies are used. DARPA has named the new competition the Spectrum Collaboration Challenge (SC2).

Some very intelligent people – including Stephen Hawking, Elon Musk and Bill Gates – seem to have been seduced by the idea that because computers are becoming ever faster calculating devices that at some point relatively soon we will reach and pass a "singularity" at which computers will become "more intelligent" than humans. Some are terrified that a society of intelligent computers will (perhaps violently) replace the human race, echoing films such as the Terminator; others – very controversially – see the development of such technologies as an opportunity to evolve into a "post-human" species. Already, some prominent technologists including Tim O'Reilly are arguing that we should replace current models of public services, not just in infrastructure but in human services such as social care and education, with "algorithmic regulation". Algorithmic regulation proposes that the role of human decision-makers and policy-makers should be replaced by automated systems that compare the outcomes of public services to desired objectives through the measurement of data, and make automatic adjustments to address any discrepancies. Not only does that approach cede far too much control over people's lives to technology; it fundamentally misunderstands what technology is capable of doing. For both ethical and scientific reasons, in human domains technology should support us taking decisions about our lives, it should not take them for us. At the MIT Sloan Initiative on the Digital Economy last week I got a chance to discuss to discuss some of these issues with Andy McAfee and Erik Brynjolfsson, authors of "The Second Machine Age", recently highlighted by Bloomberg as one of the top books of 2014. Andy and Erik compare the current transformation of our world by digital technology to the last great transformation, the Industrial Revolution.

Nasa has announced that it has found evidence of flowing water on Mars. Scientists have long speculated that Recurring Slope Lineae -- or dark patches -- on Mars were made up of briny water but the new findings prove that those patches are caused by liquid water, which it has established by finding hydrated salts. Several hundred camped outside the London store in Covent Garden. The 6s will have new features like a vastly improved camera and a pressure-sensitive "3D Touch" display

Atlas, the humanoid robot created by Alphabet (GOOGL, Tech30) company Boston Dynamics, can open doors, balance while walking through the snow, place objects on a shelf and pick itself up after being knocked down. The new version of Atlas is smaller and more nimble than its predecessor. It's fully mobile too -- the previous version had to be tethered to a computer. Atlas was created to perform disaster recovery in places unsafe for humans, such as damaged nuclear power plants. The robot made its debut in 2013 during a competition held by the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency. The new version of Atlas is a result of seven computer research teams from around the world who were contracted to develop software to give Atlas a better brain.

I am from Kashmir, a region prone to earthquakes and floods. When I was 17 years old, in 2005, 70,000 people lost their lives in an earthquake in my hometown. This event compelled me to study engineering and specifically in 2005, start performing earthquake engineering research. Then, in 2014, a combination of two events on different sides of the world inspired the creation of One Concern. In 2014, during a break from graduate school at Stanford, I was visiting my parents in Kashmir when a large flood engulfed the state.

From the street, through Beijing's heavy smog, it can sometimes be hard to make out IBM's Chinese headquarters: a towering office building with a distinctive undulating architectural flourish and a large company logo at the top. But just a short distance away, on the northeast outskirts of the capital, IBM computer scientists are using artificial intelligence to develop what they think will be a way to manage China's notorious and chronic pollution problem more successfully. The team is using complex computer models and machine learning to calculate how pollution will spread across the city. The researchers can now produce pollution forecasts, with a resolution of a kilometer square, up to 10 days in advance. These predictions can also tell the government how it might act to avoid the worst scenarios--for instance, by shutting certain factories, or by reducing the number of cars on the road.

CMU sophomore Ian Asenjo wins Critical Language Scholarship from State Dept. This week, Ian Asenjo, a sophomore global studies major with an additional major in ethics, history, and public policy, was awarded the Critical Language Scholarship from the U.S. State Department, which will give him the opportunity to spend his summer in Chandigarh, India studying Punjabi. This cultural and linguistic immersion program is intended to encourage students to study languages that are drastically different from English. Many American language learners do not choose to master these languages due to the drastic differences, and we do not have enough native speakers. With supply low, demand is high for speakers of these critical languages, such as Arabic, Swahili, Urdu, Turkish, and Punjabi.

If you had the opportunity to vote for a politician you totally trusted, who you were sure had no hidden agendas and who would truly represent the electorate's views, you would, right? What if that politician was a robot? Futures like this have been the stuff of science fiction for decades. And, if so, should we pursue this? Recent opinion polls show that trust in politicians has declined rapidly in Western societies and voters increasingly use elections to cast a protest vote.

In April last year, the Chinese scientist announced they have successfully used CRISPR/Cas9 technology to change human embryo's genome. It sparked a worldwide discussion on designer babies. A discussion, that is still going on. The crazy and ambitious guys at DARPA are thinking how to increase the neural plasticity of the brain to increase the rate of learning "beyond normal levels", reducing the time it is needed to master foreign languages or other skills. Nowadays, even not having one arm is not a good excuse to not hit the gym.