A small asteroid, 2024 PT5, will temporarily become a mini-moon for Earth, orbiting in a horseshoe shape from September 29 to November 25, 2024. CBS News reports: Researchers at the Asteroid Terrestrial-impact Last Alert System, an asteroid monitoring system funded by NASA, spotted the asteroid using an instrument in Sutherland, South Africa and labeled it 2024 PT5. Scientists from the Universidad Complutense de Madrid have tracked the asteroid's orbit for 21 days and determined its future path. 2024 PT5 is from the Arjuna asteroid belt, which orbits the sun, according to their study published in Research Notes of the AAs. But Earth's gravitational pull will draw 2024 PT5 towards it and, much like our moon, it will orbit our planet -- but only for 56.6 days. 2024 PT5, which is larger than some of the other mini-moons, will also return to Earth's orbit -- in 2055. [...]

The study's lead author Carlos de la Fuente Marcos told Space.com the mini-moon will be too small to see with amateur telescopes or binoculars but professional astronomers with stronger tools will be able to spot it.

A conspiracy theory known as "Dead Internet Theory" has gained traction in recent years, positing that most online social activity is artificial and designed to manipulate users. This theory has grown alongside the rise of large language models like ChatGPT. On Monday, software developer Michael Sayman launched SocialAI, an app that seems to embody aspects of this theory. ArsTechnica: SocialAI's 28-year-old creator, Michael Sayman, previously served as a product lead at Google, and he also bounced between Facebook, Roblox, and Twitter over the years. In an announcement post on X, Sayman wrote about how he had dreamed of creating the service for years, but the tech was not yet ready. He sees it as a tool that can help lonely or rejected people.

"SocialAI is designed to help people feel heard, and to give them a space for reflection, support, and feedback that acts like a close-knit community," wrote Sayman. "It's a response to all those times I've felt isolated, or like I needed a sounding board but didn't have one. I know this app won't solve all of life's problems, but I hope it can be a small tool for others to reflect, to grow, and to feel seen." As The Verge reports in an excellent rundown of the example interactions, SocialAI lets users choose the types of AI followers they want, including categories like "supporters," "nerds," and "skeptics." These AI chatbots then respond to user posts with brief comments and reactions on almost any topic, including nonsensical "Lorem ipsum" text.

schwit1 shares a report from SpaceNews: The FAA announced Sept. 17 that it notified SpaceX of $633,009 in proposed fines for violating terms of its launch licenses during the June 2023 Falcon 9 launch of the Satria-1, or PSN Satria, broadband satellite and the July 2023 Falcon Heavy launch of Jupiter-3, or EchoStar-24, broadband satellite. Both launches were successful.

For the Satria-1 launch, the FAA said in its enforcement notice (PDF) to the company that SpaceX had requested in May 2023 changes to its communications plan to allow the use of a new launch control center at the company's "Hangar X" facility at the Kennedy Space Center and to skip a poll of launch controllers at two hours before liftoff. The FAA notified SpaceX shortly before the scheduled launch that it would not be able to approve those changes and modify the license in time, although the enforcement notice did not state why. SpaceX went ahead and used the Hangar X control center and skipped the "T-2 hours" poll for the launch. The agency concluded that violated two conditions of its launch license, which allowed for civil penalties of up to $283,009 each. The FAA said it planned to fine SpaceX a combined $350,000 for that launch.

A month later, SpaceX conducted the Falcon Heavy launch of Jupiter-3, but nine days before the launch the company requested a modification to its launch license to allow it to use a new tank farm for RP-1 fuel at KSC's Launch Complex 39A, according to a separate enforcement notice. The FAA notified SpaceX two days before the scheduled launch that the agency would not be able to modify the license in time, but SpaceX nonetheless used the new tank farm for the launch. The agency said it proposed to fine SpaceX the maximum $283,009 for that violation. Instead of participating in administrative procedures, SpaceX CEO Elon Musk said it would take the FAA to court. "SpaceX will be filing suit against the FAA for regulatory overreach," he posted on X.

An anonymous reader quotes a report from TechCrunch: At its Made On YouTube event on Wednesday, the company announced a new dedicated space for creators to interact with their fans and viewers. The space, called "Communities," is kind of like a Discord server built into a creator's channel. With Communities, YouTube is hoping creators won't need to use other platforms like Discord or Reddit in order to interact with viewers. Communities are a space for viewers to post and interact with other fans directly within a creator's channel. In the past, viewers have been limited to leaving comments on a creator's video. Now, they can share their own content in a creator's Community to interact with other fans over shared interests. For instance, a fitness creator's Community could include posts from fans who are sharing videos and photos from their most recent hike.

To start, the feature is only available to subscribers. The company sees Communities as a dedicated space for conversation and connection, while still allowing creators to maintain control over their content. Conversations in Communities are meant to flow over time, YouTube says, as they would in any other forum-style setting. The new Communities feature shouldn't be confused with YouTube's Community feature, which is a space for creators to share text and images with viewers. The feature launched back in 2016, and doesn't allow viewers to interact with each other. YouTube is testing Communities now on mobile devices with a small group of creators. The company plans to test the feature with more creators later this year before expanding access to additional channels in early 2025.

IBM has acquired Kubecost, a FinOps startup that helps teams at companies like Allianz, Audi, Rakuten, and GitLab monitor and optimize their Kubernetes clusters with a focus on efficiency and, ultimately, cost. From a report: Tuesday's announcement follows IBM's $4.3 billion acquisition of Apptio in 2023, another company in the FinOps space. In previous years, we also saw IBM acquire companies like cloud app and network management firm Turbonomic and application performance management startup Instana. Now with the acquisition of KubeCost, IBM continues this effort to bolster its IT and FinOps capabilities as enterprises increasingly look to better manage their increasingly complex cloud and on-prem infrastructure.

An anonymous reader quotes a report from Wired: Eric and Donald Trump Jr., the sons of former president Donald Trump, have pledged to "make finance great again" with a new family-run crypto endeavor called World Liberty Financial. Introduced in a meandering livestream on X Monday, the Trump family and their associates described World Liberty Financial as a crypto platform that would let users conduct transactions without a bank sitting in the middle and extracting fees -- a concept known as decentralized finance, or DeFi. While short on details, Donald Trump, Jr. and Eric Trump both stressed repeatedly that World Liberty Financial's primary goal was to make DeFi more broadly accessible. "It's truly our job to make it understandable," said Eric Trump during the livestream. "We have to make it intuitive, we have to make it user-friendly, and we will." Former President Donald Trump joined the call as well, stressing his pro-crypto stance. "I do believe in it," said Trump of cryptocurrency generally. "It has a chance to really be something special."

The Trumps aren't alone in leading World Liberty Financial. They're joined by crypto veterans Chase Herro and Zak Folkman, as well as Steve Witkoff, a real estate investor and friend of Donald Trump's. In addition to the platform itself, World Liberty Financial will come with a governance token, WLFI, which will provide owners the right to vote "on matters of the platform." Approximately 63 percent of the tokens will be sold to the public; 17 percent are set aside for user rewards, and 20 percent will be reserved for World Liberty Financial team compensation. [...] World Liberty Financial will face steep competition in a DeFi market already crowded with similar services, among them Aave, Compound, Venus Protocol, and others. "DeFi is pretty mature, especially on the over-collateralized side," says Zach Hamilton, founder of crypto startup Sarcophagus and venture partner at VC firm Venture51. But the Trumps need not necessarily do anything novel, if they can capitalize on their mammoth public platform to peddle the new venture. "[World Liberty Financial] is launching with the most free marketing that any crypto company could ever get," says Hamilton. "Trump is the king of living rent free in people's minds." "I welcome any effort to bring DeFi into the mainstream," says Brad Harrison, CEO of Venus Protocol. "But like the autopilot in a Tesla, DeFi may give the appearance of something that's simple, but the inner workings are complex. Without a solid grasp of its nuances in the hands of seasoned technologists and financial engineers, a new platform risks being more of a branding exercise than a substantive and safe contribution to the space."

Google's philanthropic arm is partially funding a new initiative that "aims to deploy more than 50 small satellites in low-Earth orbit to pinpoint flare-ups as small as a classroom anywhere in the world," reports Ars Technica. From the report: The FireSat constellation, managed by a nonprofit called Earth Fire Alliance (EFA), will be the first satellite fleet dedicated to detecting and tracking wildfires. Google announced a fresh investment of $13 million in the FireSat constellation Monday, building on the tech giant's previous contributions to support the development of custom infrared sensors for the FireSat satellites. Google's funding commitment will maintain the schedule for the launch of the first FireSat pathfinder satellite next year, EFA said. The first batch of satellites to form an operational constellation could launch in 2026.

The FireSat satellites will be built by Muon Space, a California-based satellite manufacturing startup. Each of the Muon Space-built microsatellites will have six-band multispectral infrared instruments, eyeing a swath of Earth some 900 miles (1,500 kilometers) wide, to pinpoint hotspots from wildfires. The satellites will have the sensitivity to find wildfires as small as 16 by 16 feet (5 by 5 meters). The network will use Google AI to rapidly compare observations ofany area of this size with previous imagery to determine if there is a fire, according to Google. AI will also take into account factors like nearby infrastructure and local weather in each fire assessment.

Google said it validated its detection model for smaller fires and established a baseline dataset for the AI by flying sensors over controlled burns. FireSat's partners announced the constellation in May after five years of development. The Environmental Defense Fund, the Moore Foundation, and the Minderoo Foundation also support the FireSat program. After detecting a wildfire, it's crucial for FireSat to quickly disseminate the location and size of a fire to emergency responders. With the first three satellites, the FireSat constellation will observe every point on Earth at least twice per day. "At full capability with 50+ satellites, the revisit times for most of the globe improve to 20 minutes, with the most wildfire-prone regions benefitting from sampling intervals as short as nine minutes," Muon Space said in a statement. "Today's announcement marks a significant milestone and step towards transforming the way we interact with fire," Earth Fire Alliance said in a statement. "As fires become more intense, and spread faster, we believe radical collaboration is key to driving much needed innovation in fire management and climate action."

NASA will coordinate with U.S. government stakeholders, partners, and international standards organizations to establish a Coordinated Lunar Time (LTC) following a policy directive from the White House in April. From a report: The agency's Space Communication and Navigation (SCaN) program is leading efforts on creating a coordinated time, which will enable a future lunar ecosystem that could be scalable to other locations in our solar system. The lunar time will be determined by a weighted average of atomic clocks at the Moon, similar to how scientists calculate Earth's globally recognized Coordinated Universal Time (UTC). Exactly where at the Moon is still to be determined, since current analysis indicates that atomic clocks placed at the Moon's surface will appear to 'tick' faster by microseconds per day. A microsecond is one millionth of a second. NASA and its partners are currently researching which mathematical models will be best for establishing a lunar time. To put these numbers into perspective, a hummingbird's wings flap about 50 times per second. Each flap is about .02 seconds, or 20,000 microseconds. So, while 56 microseconds may seem miniscule, when discussing distances in space, tiny bits of time add up.

"Even black holes have edge cases," writes Astronomy magazine contributing editor Steve Nadis, in an article in Quanta magazine (republished today by Wired): Black holes rotate in space. As matter falls into them, they start to spin faster; if that matter has charge, they also become electrically charged. In principle, a black hole can reach a point where it has as much charge or spin as it possibly can, given its mass. Such a black hole is called "extremal" — the extreme of the extremes. These black holes have some bizarre properties. In particular, the so-called surface gravity at the boundary, or event horizon, of such a black hole is zero. "It is a black hole whose surface doesn't attract things anymore," said Carsten Gundlach, a mathematical physicist at the University of Southampton. But if you were to nudge a particle slightly toward the black hole's center, it would be unable to escape.

In 1973, the prominent physicists Stephen Hawking, James Bardeen and Brandon Carter asserted that extremal black holes can't exist in the real world — that there is simply no plausible way that they can form. Nevertheless, for the past 50 years, extremal black holes have served as useful models in theoretical physics. "They have nice symmetries that make it easier to calculate things," said Gaurav Khanna of the University of Rhode Island, and this allows physicists to test theories about the mysterious relationship between quantum mechanics and gravity. Now two mathematicians have proved Hawking and his colleagues wrong. The new work — contained in a pair of recent papers by Christoph Kehle of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and Ryan Unger of Stanford University and the University of California, Berkeley — demonstrates that there is nothing in our known laws of physics to prevent the formation of an extremal black hole.

Their mathematical proof is "beautiful, technically innovative and physically surprising," said Mihalis Dafermos, a mathematician at Princeton University (and Kehle's and Unger's doctoral adviser). It hints at a potentially richer and more varied universe in which "extremal black holes could be out there astrophysically," he added. That doesn't mean they are. "Just because a mathematical solution exists that has nice properties doesn't necessarily mean that nature will make use of it," Khanna said. "But if we somehow find one, that would really [make] us think about what we are missing." Such a discovery, he noted, has the potential to raise "some pretty radical kinds of questions." Before Kehle and Unger's proof, there was good reason to believe that extremal black holes couldn't exist.
Hawking, Bardeen, and Carter believed there was no way an extremal black hole could form, according to the article, and "in 1986, a physicist named Werner Israel seemed to put the issue to rest."

But the two mathematicians, studying the formation of electrically charged black holes, stumbled into a counterexample — and along the way "also constructed two other solutions to Einstein's equations of general relativity that involved different ways of adding charge to a black hole. Having disproved Bardeen, Carter and Hawking's hypothesis in three different contexts, the work should leave no doubt, Unger said... "This is a beautiful example of math giving back to physics," said Elena Giorgi, a mathematician at Columbia University....

In the meantime, a better understanding of extremal black holes can provide further insights into near-extremal black holes, which are thought to be plentiful in the universe. "Einstein didn't think that black holes could be real [because] they're just too weird," Khanna said. "But now we know the universe is teeming with black holes."

For similar reasons, he added, "we shouldn't give up on extremal black holes. I just don't want to put limits on nature's creativity."

"It is with great relief that I welcome you home!" SpaceX COO Gwynne Shotwell posted on X. "This mission was even more extraordinary than I anticipated."

"SpaceX's Polaris Dawn crew is home," reports CNN, "capping off a five-day mission to orbit — which included the world's first commercial spacewalk — by splashing down in the Gulf of Mexico." The Crew Dragon capsule carrying four astronauts landed off the coast of Dry Tortugas, Florida, at 3:37 a.m. ET Sunday.

The Polaris Dawn mission made history as it reached a higher altitude than any human has traveled in five decades. [870 miles (1,400 kilometers) — beating the 853-mile record set in 1966 by NASA's Gemini 11 mission.] A spacewalk conducted early Thursday morning also marked the first time such an endeavor has been completed by a privately funded and operated mis.sion.

But returning to Earth is among the most dangerous stretches of any space mission. To safely reach home, the Crew Dragon capsule carried out what's called a "de-orbit burn," orienting itself as it prepared to slice through the thickest part of Earth's atmosphere. The spacecraft then reached extremely hot temperatures — up to 3,500 degrees Fahrenheit (1,900 degrees Celsius) — because of the pressure and friction caused by hitting the air while still traveling around 17,000 miles per hour (27,000 kilometers per hour). The crew, however, should have remained at comfortable temperatures, protected by the Crew Dragon's heat shield, which is located on the bottom of the 13-foot-wide (4-meter-wide) capsule. Dragging against the air began to slow the vehicle down before the Crew Dragon deployed parachutes that further decelerated its descent. Having hit the ocean, the spacecraft briefly bobbed around in the water until rescue crews waiting nearby hauled it out of the ocean and onto a special boat, referred to as the "Dragon's nest." Final safety checks took place there before the crew disembarked from the capsule and began the journey back to dry land.
You can watch video of the splashdown on YouTube.

While in space, the crew performed 40 science experiments and research, according to the article. "Gillis, a trained violinist, also brought her instrument along for the mission and delivered a rendition of 'Rey's Theme' from "Star Wars: The Force Awakens." (Slashdot reader SuperKendall points out that the "Rey's Theme" rendition "was not just the astronaut playing violin in space, but was in conjunction with young adult orchestras around the world.")

SpaceX's COO said the performance "made me tear up. Thank you all for taking this journey."

More details on that report about NASA from the Washington Post: NASA is 66 years old and feeling its age. Brilliant engineers are retiring. Others have fled to higher-paying jobs in the private space industry. The buildings are old, their maintenance deferred. The Apollo era, with its huge taxpayer investment, is a distant memory. The agency now pursues complex missions on inadequate budgets. This may be an unsustainable path for NASA, one that imperils long-term success. That is the conclusion of a sweeping report, titled "NASA at a Crossroads," written by a committee of aerospace experts and published Tuesday by the National Academies of Sciences, Engineering and Medicine. The report suggests that NASA prioritizes near-term missions and fails to think strategically. In other words, the space agency isn't sufficiently focused on the future.

NASA's intense focus on current missions is understandable, considering the unforgiving nature of space operations, but "one tends to neglect the probably less glamorous thing that will determine the success in the future," the report's lead author, Norman Augustine, a retired Lockheed Martin chief executive, said Tuesday. He said one solution for NASA's problems is more funding from Congress. But that may be hard to come by, in which case, he said, the agency needs to consider canceling or delaying costly missions to invest in more mundane but strategically important institutional needs, such as technology development and workforce training. Augustine said he is concerned that NASA could lose in-house expertise if it relies too heavily on the private industry for newly emerging technologies. "It will have trouble hiring innovative, creative engineers. Innovative, creative engineers don't want to have a job that consists of overseeing other people's work," he said...

The report is hardly a blistering screed. The tone is parental. It praises the agency — with a budget of about $25 billion — for its triumphs while urging more prudent decision-making and long-term strategizing.

NASA pursues spectacular missions. It has sent swarms of robotic probes across the solar system and even into interstellar space. Astronauts have continuously been in orbit for more than two decades. The most ambitious program, Artemis, aims to put astronauts back on the moon in a few short years. And long-term, NASA hopes to put astronauts on Mars. But a truism in the industry is that space is hard. The new report contends that NASA has a mismatch between its ambitions and its budget, and needs to pay attention to fundamentals such as fixing its aging infrastructure and retaining in-house talent. NASA's overall physical infrastructure is already well beyond its design life, and this fraction continues to grow," the report states.
NASA Administrator Bill Nelson said the report "aligns with our current efforts to ensure we have the infrastructure, workforce, and technology that NASA needs for the decades ahead," according to the article.

Nelson added that the agency "will continue to work diligently to address the committee's recommendations."

Ars Technica's Stephen Clark reports: A panel of independent experts reported this week that NASA lacks funding to maintain most of its decades-old facilities, could lose its engineering prowess to the commercial space industry, and has a shortsighted roadmap for technology development. "NASA's problem is it always seems to have $3 billion more program than it has of funds," said Norm Augustine, chair of the National Academies panel chartered to examine the critical facilities, workforce, and technology needed to achieve NASA's long-term strategic goals and objectives. Augustine said a similar statement could sum up two previous high-level reviews of NASA's space programs that he chaired in 1990 and 2009. But the report released Tuesday put NASA's predicament in stark terms.

"In NASA's case, the not-uncommon tendency in a constrained budget environment to prioritize initiating new missions as opposed to maintaining and upgrading existing support assets has produced an infrastructure that would not be viewed as acceptable under most industrial standards," the panel wrote in its report. "In fact, during its inspection tours, the committee saw some of the worst facilities many of its members have ever seen." All of NASA's centers have facilities the agency considers marginal, but Johnson Space Center in Houston has the facilities with the worst average score. Johnson oversees astronaut training and is home to NASA's Mission Control Center for the International Space Station and future Artemis lunar missions. The Jet Propulsion Laboratory in California, which develops and operates many of NASA's robotic interplanetary probes, and Stennis Space Center in Mississippi, used for rocket engine testing, are the only centers without a poor infrastructure score.

These ratings cover things like buildings and utilities, not the specific test rigs or instruments inside them. "You can have a world-class microscope and materials lab, but if the building goes down, that microscope is useless to you," [Erik Weiser, NASA's director of facilities and real estate] told the National Academies panel in a meeting last year. The panel recommended that Congress direct NASA to establish an annually replenished revolving working capital fund to pay for maintenance and infrastructure upgrades. Other government agencies use similar funds for infrastructure support. "This is something that will require federal legislation," said Jill Dahlburg, a member of the National Academies panel and former superintendent of the space science division at the Naval Research Laboratory.

An anonymous reader quotes a report from CBC News: Stranded astronauts Butch Wilmore and Suni Williams said Friday it was hard to watch their Boeing capsule return to Earth without them. It was their first public comments since last week's return of the Boeing Starliner capsule that took them to the International Space Station in June. They remained behind after NASA determined the problem-plagued capsule posed too much risk for them to ride back in. "That's how it goes in this business," said Williams, adding that "you have to turn the page and look at the next opportunity."

Wilmore and Williams are now full-fledged station crew members, chipping in on routine maintenance and experiments. They, along with seven others on board, welcomed a Soyuz spacecraft carrying two Russians and an American earlier this week, temporarily raising the station population to 12, a near record. NASA astronauts Butch Wilmore and Suni Williams spoke to the press on Friday for the first time since their Boeing Starliner capsule returned to Earth without them. The two, who have been on the International Space Station since June 6, said they are taking the mission's unexpected extension into 2025 in stride -- even if it means they've had to change their voting plans. The transition to station life was "not that hard" since both had previous stints there, said Williams, who will soon take over as station commander. "This is my happy place. I love being up here in space," she said.

The two Starliner test pilots -- both retired U.S. navy captains and longtime NASA astronauts — will stay at the orbiting laboratory until late February. They have to wait for a SpaceX capsule to bring them back. That spacecraft is due to launch later this month with a reduced crew of two, with two empty seats for Wilmore and Williams for the return leg. The duo said they appreciated all the prayers and well wishes from strangers back home. Wilmore said he will miss out on family milestones such as being around for his youngest daughter's final year of high school. The astronauts, who prepared for eight days in space, will now be up there for eight months, which could have a greater impact on the body. "It is a bit of a change from a sprint to a marathon," said Dr. Adam Sirek of the Canadian Society of Aerospace Medicine.

Two astronauts, billionaire Jared Isaacman and SpaceX engineer Sarah Gillis, completed the world's first private spacewalk outside a SpaceX capsule, testing new spacesuits and procedures in a risky mission that pushes the boundaries of commercial spaceflight. Reuters reports: The astronauts on the Polaris Dawn mission went one at a time, each spending about 10 minutes outside the gumdrop-shaped Crew Dragon capsule on a tether, as Elon Musk's company again succeeded in pushing the boundaries of commercial spaceflight. Jared Isaacman, a pilot and the founder of electronic payments company Shift4, exited first, followed by SpaceX engineer Sarah Gillis, while crewmates Scott Poteet and Anna Menon watched from inside. The whole process, unfolding about 450 miles (730 km) above Earth, lasted an hour and 46 minutes. The four astronauts have been orbiting Earth since Tuesday's launch from Florida. Isaacman is bankrolling the Polaris mission, as he did his Inspiration4 flight with SpaceX in 2021.

Streamed live on SpaceX's website, the mission tested trailblazing equipment including slim spacesuits and a process to fully depressurize the Crew Dragon cabin - technology that Musk hopes to advance for ambitious future private missions to Mars. "Back at home we all have a lot of work to do. But from here, Earth sure looks like a perfect world," Isaacman said after emerging from the spacecraft, silhouetted with the half-lit planet glittering below. It was one of the riskiest missions yet for SpaceX, the only private company that has proven to be capable of routinely sending people to and from Earth's orbit. "Today's success represents a giant leap forward for the commercial space industry and @NASA's long-term goal to build a vibrant U.S. space economy," said NASA Administrator Bill Nelson.

You can watch a livestream recording of the Polaris Dawn Mission here.

A new survey released on Tuesday found that Americans used over 100 trillion megabytes of wireless data last year -- a 36% increase from the previous year and the largest single-year increase in the history of wireless data consumption. Reuters reports: The increase -- 26 trillion MBs over 2022 -- comes as a growing number of 5G wireless devices are being used, said wireless industry association CTIA that represents major wireless carriers like Verizon, AT&T, T-Mobile, and technology firms. The total number of wireless connections rose to 558 million last year, up 6% over 2022, the survey found.

Demand for spectrum use is soaring, driven in part by more wireless use in advancements including drones, self-driving vehicles, space missions and precision agriculture. The survey said the number of minutes Americans spent talking on the phone fell slightly from 2.5 trillion in 2022 to 2.4 trillion in 2023 and text messages were about the same at 2.1 trillion in 2023 over the prior year.

An anonymous reader shares a column: The PS5 Pro's announcement yesterday wasn't a surprise. What was a surprise was the price: at $699.99, it debuts as Sony's most expensive console ever. It brought back memories of the PS3's controversial price tag, a console that when adjusted for inflation is the same $779 price point of a PS5 Pro with the additional disc drive. It's a very expensive PlayStation, and I fear it's a test of what's to come for next-gen console pricing.

For years, console gamers have been used to purchasing hardware at a significantly reduced price compared to what you could build yourself in the PC gaming space. Yes, you can find components that match the PS5 or Xbox Series X on paper, but it's still difficult to hit the price points that consoles sell for, especially when they're discounted during promotions. Besides, the easy plug-and-play model, simplified UI, and hassle-free warranty process are all big benefits over having to build or find a good prebuilt PC and then deal with Windows and driver updates. Consoles sell in their millions because they're far more consumer-friendly than PCs.

An anonymous reader quotes a report from the Associated Press: A daredevil billionaire rocketed back into orbit Tuesday, aiming to perform the first private spacewalk and venture farther than anyone since NASA's Apollo moonshots. Unlike his previous chartered flight, tech entrepreneur Jared Isaacman shared the cost with SpaceX this time around, which included developing and testing brand new spacesuits to see how they'll hold up in the harsh vacuum. If all goes as planned, it will be the first time private citizens conduct a spacewalk, but they won't venture away from the capsule. Considered one of the riskiest parts of spaceflight, spacewalks have been the sole realm of professional astronauts since the former Soviet Union popped open the hatch in 1965, closely followed by the U.S. Today, they are routinely done at the International Space Station.

Isaacman, along with a pair of SpaceX engineers and a former Air Force Thunderbirds pilot, launched before dawn aboard a SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket from Florida. The spacewalk is scheduled for Thursday, midway through the five-day flight. But first the passengers are shooting for way beyond the International Space Station -- an altitude of 870 miles (1,400 kilometers), which would surpass the Earth-lapping record set during NASA's Project Gemini in 1966. Only the 24 Apollo astronauts who flew to the moon have ventured farther. The plan is to spend 10 hours at that height -- filled with extreme radiation and riddled with debris -- before reducing the oval-shaped orbit by half. Even at this lower 435 miles (700 kilometers), the orbit would eclipse the space station and even the Hubble Space Telescope, the highest shuttle astronauts flew.

All four wore SpaceX's spacewalking suits because the entire Dragon capsule will be depressurized for the two-hour spacewalk, exposing everyone to the dangerous environment. Isaacman and SpaceX's Sarah Gillis will take turns briefly popping out of the hatch. They'll test their white and black-trimmed custom suits by twisting their bodies. Both will always have a hand or foot touching the capsule or attached support structure that resembles the top of a pool ladder. There will be no dangling at the end of their 12-foot (3.6-meter) tethers and no jetpack showboating. Only NASA's suits at the space station come equipped with jetpacks, for emergency use only.

A month before its planned delivery after years of delay and cost growth, RTX's $7.6 billion ground network to control GPS satellites is still marred by problems that may further stall its acceptance by the US Space Force, congressional auditors said Monday. From a report: RTX's system of 17 ground stations for current and improved GPS satellites was supposed to be ready by October, when it would undergo a series of intense Space Force tests to assess whether it can be declared operational by December 2025. The system continues to draw the ire of lawmakers because it's running more than seven years late in a development phase that's about 73% costlier than initial projections.

Two rounds of testing by the company have been "marked by significant challenges that drove delays to the program's schedule," the Government Accountability Office said Monday in a broad review of the US military's GPS program, including improvements intended to block jamming by adversaries.

The Next Generation Operational Control System, known as OCX, is intended to provide improvements, including access to more secure, jam-resistant software for the military's use of the GPS navigation system, which is also depended on by civilians worldwide. "The program faces challenges from product deficiencies" that "create a risk of further delay," the Pentagon's Defense Contract Management Agency told the GAO, adding that it expects RTX at the earliest to deliver OCX by December.

"China is on track to launch its Tianwen-3 mission to Mars in 2028, two years earlier than previously planned," writes the South China Morning Post, a change that one space policy research believes "suggests a rising confidence by China in its ability to get the technology right for the complex operation." On Thursday, Liu Jizhong, chief designer of China's Mars mission, told the Second International Conference on Deep Space Exploration in Huangshan, Anhui province, that the team aimed to bring back around 600 grams (21 oz) of Martian soil... A 2028 launch date should see Martian samples returned to Earth around July 2031, according to a previous presentation made by Tianwen-1 mission lead Sun Zezhou at Nanjing University in 2022.
The mission will actually consist of two launches from Earth, reports Space News: Two Long March 5 rocket launches will carry a lander and ascent vehicle and an orbiter and return module respectively. Entry, descent and landing will build on technology used for the Tianwen-1 rover landing. The mission may also include a helicopter and a six-legged crawling robot for collecting samples away from the landing site...

NASA is working on its own, more complex Mars sample return mission. However the program is being reassessed, following projected cost overruns. Studies are being conducted to identify concepts that can deliver samples faster and cheaper than current plans.

Liu stated that the search for evidence of life is the Tianwen-3's top scientific goal, according to state media China Central Television (CCTV). Earlier reporting notes that potential landing areas will be selected based partly on astrobiological relevance. This includes environments potentially suitable for the emergence of life and its preservation, such as sedimentary or hydrothermal systems, evidence of past aqueous activity and geological diversity.
"China states that it plans to work with scientists worldwide to cooperatively study and share Martian samples and data," according to the article: The China National Space Administration has made samples from its Chang'e-5 lunar nearside sample return mission available to research applications for international researchers. The same is expected for the recently-completed Chang'e-6 lunar farside mission."

Further ahead, Tianwen-3 will include partnering with countries and research institutions to define the objectives and tasks of a future Mars research station. This will include analyzing requirements, conducting conceptual studies, design implementation plans, and tackling key technological challenges.
Thanks to Slashdot reader Iamthecheese for sharing the news.

Wired interviews America's foreign policy chief, Secretary of State Antony Blinken, about U.S. digital polices, starting with a new "cybersecurity bureau" created in 2022 (which Wired previously reported includes "a crash course in cybersecurity, telecommunications, privacy, surveillance, and other digital issues.") Look, what I've seen since coming back to the State Department three and a half years ago is that everything happening in the technological world and in cyberspace is increasingly central to our foreign policy. There's almost a perfect storm that's come together over the last few years, several major developments that have really brought this to the forefront of what we're doing and what we need to do. First, we have a new generation of foundational technologies that are literally changing the world all at the same time — whether it's AI, quantum, microelectronics, biotech, telecommunications. They're having a profound impact, and increasingly they're converging and feeding off of each other.

Second, we're seeing that the line between the digital and physical worlds is evaporating, erasing. We have cars, ports, hospitals that are, in effect, huge data centers. They're big vulnerabilities. At the same time, we have increasingly rare materials that are critical to technology and fragile supply chains. In each of these areas, the State Department is taking action. We have to look at everything in terms of "stacks" — the hardware, the software, the talent, and the norms, the rules, the standards by which this technology is used.

Besides setting up an entire new Bureau of Cyberspace and Digital Policy — and the bureaus are really the building blocks in our department — we've now trained more than 200 cybersecurity and digital officers, people who are genuinely expert. Every one of our embassies around the world will have at least one person who is truly fluent in tech and digital policy. My goal is to make sure that across the entire department we have basic literacy — ideally fluency — and even, eventually, mastery. All of this to make sure that, as I said, this department is fit for purpose across the entire information and digital space.
Wired notes it was Blinken's Department that discovered China's 2023 breach of Microsoft systems. And on the emerging issue of AI, Blinken cites "incredible work done by the White House to develop basic principles with the foundational companies." The voluntary commitments that they made, the State Department has worked to internationalize those commitments. We have a G7 code of conduct — the leading democratic economies in the world — all agreeing to basic principles with a focus on safety. We managed to get the very first resolution ever on artificial intelligence through the United Nations General Assembly — 192 countries also signing up to basic principles on safety and a focus on using AI to advance sustainable development goals on things like health, education, climate. We also have more than 50 countries that have signed on to basic principles on the responsible military use of AI. The goal here is not to have a world that is bifurcated in any way. It's to try to bring everyone together.