Steven Vaughan-Nichols reports via ZDNet: While Linux and open-source software (OSS) are no longer constantly under intellectual property (IP) attacks, the Open Invention Network (OIN) patent consortium still stands guard over its patents. Now, OIN, the largest patent non-aggression community, has expanded its protection once again by updating its Linux System definition. Covering more than just Linux, the Linux System definition also protects adjacent open-source technologies. In the past, protection was expanded to Android, Kubernetes, and OpenStack. The OIN accomplishes this by providing a shared defensive patent pool of over 3 million patents from over 3,900 community members. OIN members include Amazon, Google, Microsoft, and essentially all Linux-based companies.

This latest update extends OIN's existing patent risk mitigation efforts to cloud-native computing and enterprise software. In the cloud computing realm, OIN has added patent coverage for projects such as Istio, Falco, Argo, Grafana, and Spire. For enterprise computing, packages such as Apache Atlas and Apache Solr -- used for data management and search at scale, respectively -- are now protected. The update also enhances patent protection for the Internet of Things (IoT), networking, and automotive technologies. OpenThread and packages such as agl-compositor and kukusa.val have been added to the Linux System definition. In the embedded systems space, OIN has supplemented its coverage of technologies like OpenEmbedded by adding the OpenAMP and Matter, the home IoT standard. OIN has included open hardware development tools such as Edalize, cocotb, Amaranth, and Migen, building upon its existing coverage of hardware design tools like Verilator and FuseSoc.

Keith Bergelt, OIN's CEO, emphasized the importance of this update, stating, "Linux and other open-source software projects continue to accelerate the pace of innovation across a growing number of industries. By design, periodic expansion of OIN's Linux System definition enables OIN to keep pace with OSS's growth." [...] Looking ahead, Bergelt said, "We made this conscious decision not to include AI. It's so dynamic. We wait until we see what AI programs have significant usage and adoption levels." This is how the OIN has always worked. The consortium takes its time to ensure it extends its protection to projects that will be around for the long haul. The OIN practices patent non-aggression in core Linux and adjacent open-source technologies by cross-licensing their Linux System patents to one another on a royalty-free basis. When OIN signees are attacked because of their patents, the OIN can spring into action.

cusco writes: Indian space startup Agnikul used a 3-D printer from German company EOS to print an engine out of inconel, a high-performance nickel-chromium alloy, in one solid piece over the course of roughly 72 hours. While other companies like Relativity Space and Rocket Lab are using 3-D printers extensively, Agnikul's engine is unique in being printed in one go, rather than as multiple components that need to be stitched together. This approach significantly speeds up manufacturing time.

The single-engine technology demonstration rocket produced 6 kilonewtons of thrust and reached an altitude of 6.5 kilometers before splashing down into the ocean. The launch vehicle used was about 6 meters tall with a single engine, making it roughly equivalent to the second stage of the company's planned commercial product, Agnibaan. Agnibaan will be a two-stage rocket, 18 meters tall, featuring eight engines in total, and capable of carrying a 300-kilogram payload to an altitude of around 700 km. The company believes that their 3D printing approach opens the door to providing low-cost, "on-demand" launch services to operators of small satellites.

IEEE Spectrum adds: Assembling the rest of the rocket and integrating the engine took roughly two weeks. The company says that opens the door to providing low-cost, "on-demand" launch services to operators of small satellites, which otherwise need to wait for a ride share on a bigger rocket. The big challenge now will be going from a single engine to a cluster of seven on Agnibaan's first stage, says cofounder and CEO Srinath Ravichandran. This raises all kinds of challenges, from balancing thrust across the engines at lift-off to managing engine plume interactions when the engines gimbal to alter the trajectory. "But these are problems that people have figured out," he says. "We believe that we should just be able to fine-tune it for our mission and go." The company is currently building facilities to carry out ground tests of engine clusters, says Ravichandran, and is targeting its first orbital launch for this time next year.

Kent, Wash.-based Stoke Space successfully completed the first hot-fire test of its reusable Nova launch vehicle's first-stage engine, which reached 350,000 hp in under a second during a two-second test on June 5. GeekWire reports: During the two-second test, the engine ramped up to its target starting power level, producing the equivalent of 350,000 hp in less than a second, and held that power level until shutdown. At full power, the full-flow staged combustion engine is designed to produce over 100,000 pounds of thrust. The rocket engine was designed and manufactured in just 18 months. The medium-lift Nova rocket's first-stage booster will be powered by seven of the engines.

Stoke successfully conducted a vertical-takeoff-and-landing test flight of its reusable second stage last September. Since then, the company has been focusing on first-stage development. For the rest of this year, Stoke expects to continue maturing its engine and vehicle design while scaling operations for orbital launch. Stoke Space said last year that it was targeting 2025 for its first orbital test flight -- but that timetable depends on progress in the development program.

According to The Verge, Best Buy conducted another round of layoffs and job restructurings to "right size" the business in response to declining sales post-pandemic. Further layoffs and changes are expected throughout the year. From the report: The layoffs appeared to have mostly targeted in-home sales roles called designers, who would go to customers' homes to help identify products that would work in their space. It's not clear how many were let go, but designers who weren't laid off have been moved into a different, largely in-store role. Also, pay scales for a similar, existing in-store "consultant" position were revamped. Best Buy confirmed the layoffs in an email to The Verge but declined to share how many people were let go or how pay was changing. "Many of our team members were moved to new areas or roles where our customers need it most," Best Buy spokesperson Ryan Furlong told The Verge. He said some employees in Best Buy's "Design and Consult workforce" -- the collection of roles with in-store workers (called consultants) and in-home field sales positions (called designers) -- will be transitioned into a new "Premium Designer role."

Best Buy has been drastically restructuring in recent months, responding to factors like falling sales after the pandemic spiked consumer electronics spending. Best Buy CEO Corie Barry told investors in February that they should expect layoffs this year, and two months ago, mass layoffs of Geek Squad employees were reported. Barry repeated similar things during the company's first quarter earnings call in May, saying that many of Best Buy's moves to "right size" its business "are being implemented throughout this year."

Scientists have discovered early morning frost on the summits of Martian volcanoes near the planet's equator, indicating that water ice forms overnight in colder months and evaporates after sunrise. "While the frosty layer is exceptionally thin, it covers an enormous area," reports The Guardian. "Scientists calculate that in the more frigid Martian seasons, 150,000 tons of water, equivalent to 60 Olympic swimming pools, condense daily on the tops of the towering mountains." From the report: "It's the first time we've discovered water frost on the volcano summits and the first time we've discovered water frost in the equatorial regions of Mars," said Adomas Valantinas, a planetary scientist at the University of Berne in Switzerland and Brown University in the US. "What we're seeing could be a trace of a past Martian climate," Valantinas said of the frost-tipped volcanoes. "It could be related to atmospheric climate processes that were operating earlier in Martian history, maybe millions of years ago."

Valantinas spotted the frost-capped volcanoes in high-resolution colour images snapped in the early morning hours on Mars by the European Space Agency's Trace Gas Orbiter (TGO). With colleagues, he confirmed the discovery using a spectrometer on TGO and further images taken by the agency's Mars Express orbiter. The frost appears as a bluish hue on the caldera floors and is absent from well-lit slopes. [...] [W]riting in Nature Geoscience, the researchers describe how Martian winds may blow up the mountainsides and carry more moist air into the calderas where it condenses and settles as frost at particular times of year. Modeling of the process suggests the frost is water ice as the peaks are not cold enough for carbon dioxide frost to form.

SpaceX's successful launch (and reentry) of Starship was just the beginning, reports Space.com: SpaceX now aims to build on the progress with its Starship program as continues work on Starfactory, a new manufacturing facility under construction at the company's Starbase site in South Texas... "When you step into this factory, it is truly inspirational. My heart jumps out of my chest," Kate Tice, manager of SpaceX Quality Systems Engineering, said [during SpaceX's livestream of the Starship flight test]. "Now this will enable us to increase our production rate significantly as we build toward our long-term goal of producing one Ship per day and coming off the production line soon, Starship Version Two."

This new version of Starship is designed to be more easy to mass produce, SpaceX CEO Elon Musk said on social media.
Space.com argues that the long-term expansion comes as SpaceX "looks to use Starship to eventually make humanity interplanetary."

"Virgin Galactic launched six people to suborbital space on Saturday, launching a Turkish astronaut and three space tourists," reports Space.com, "on what was the final voyage of the VSS Unity space plane." Unity, attached to the belly of its carrier plane Eve, took off from runway at Spaceport America in New Mexico at 10:31 a.m. EDT (1431 GMT) and carried to an altitude of 44,562 feet (13,582 meters) over the next hour, where it was dropped and ignited its rocket engine to carry two pilots and four passengers to space and back. The mission, called Galactic 07, reached an altitude of 54.4 miles (87.5 km) and marked the seventh commercial spaceflight by Virgin Galactic on Unity, which is being retired to make way for the company's new "Delta" class of spacecraft rolling out in 2026.

"I will need much more time to try and process what just happened," Tuva Atasever, the Turkish Space Agency astronaut on the flight, said in a post-flight press conference, adding that the view of Earth was indescribable. "It's not something you can describe with adjectives. It's an experiential thing ... you just feel it in your gut."
One of the space tourists was a principal propulsion engineer at SpaceX, who wore the flags of the U.S. and India on his spacesuit to honor both his home country and that of his parents. The other two were a New York-based real estate developer and a London-based hotel and resort investment strategy advisor.

The flight landed 70 minutes later at 11:41 a.m. EDT (1541 GMT), according to the article, "marking only its seventh commercial spaceflight for Virgin Galactic and 12th crewed spaceflight overall." In all, Virgin Galactic flew the space plane just 32 times, including non-space test flights... "This vehicle was revolutionary," Virgin Galactic president Mike Moses said in the post-launch press conference. "We tested it, we flew it, we demonstrated and prove to the world that commercial human spaceflight is possible with private funding for private companies... Seven commercial space flights, a single vehicle flying six times in six months last year, that's groundbreaking," Moses said. "The fact that we can take this vehicle back to back to back on a monthly basis is is really revolutionary."

The new Delta class of spacecraft will be able to fly at least twice a week, about eight times the rate of SpaceShipTwo, with Virgin Galactic planning to build at least two to start its new fleet. "We're going to field in 2026 two spaceships, our mothership Eve, that's 750 astronauts a year going to space," Moses said of the new fleet's flight capacity. "That's more than have gotten to space in the 60 year history of spaceflight to date...."

Since 2018, Virgin Galactic has flown payloads as part of NASA's Flight Opportunities program and most recently was selected to be a contracted flight provider for NASA for the next five years.
Phys.org reports that with the Delta-class rockets, "The future of the company is at stake as it seeks at long last to get into the black. Virgin is burning through cash, losing more than $100 million in each of the past two quarters, with its reserves standing at $867 million at the end of March." It also laid off 185 people, or 18 percent of its workforce, late last year. Its shares are currently trading at 85 cents, down from $55 in 2021, the year Branson himself flew, garnering global headlines.
Saturday's flight also became "a suborbital science lab" for microgravity research, according to a statement from the company. Phys.org reports that during the flight, astronaut Atasever "wore custom headgear with brain activity monitoring sensors to collect physiological data, a dosimeter, and two commercially available insulin pens to examine the ability to administer accurate insulin doses in microgravity, Virgin said in a statement." And Virgin Galactic said their flight also carried "rack-mounted" autonomous payloads from both Purdue ("to study propellant slosh in fuel tanks of maneuvering spacecraf") and U.C. Berkeley ("testing a new type of 3D printing"), as well as "multiple human-tended experiments." "Discovery and innovation are central to our mission at Virgin Galactic," said Michael Colglazier, CEO of Virgin Galactic. "We're excited to build on our successful record of facilitating scientific experiments in suborbital space, and we look forward to continuing to expand our role in suborbital research going forward."

"The first European Space Agency instrument to land on the Moon has detected the presence of negative ions on the lunar surface produced through interactions with the solar wind," according to a statement from the agency, collecting over three hours of data, "three times more than what the science teams needed for mission success..." The solar wind is a constant flow of radiation and particles from the Sun. Earth's magnetic field acts as a shield. In contrast, the Moon has no magnetic field and a very tenuous atmosphere, called the exosphere. When the solar wind hits the Moon,âthe surface reacts, kicking up secondary particles... While the positively charged particles have been measured from orbit before, measuring negative particles was a challenge. Negative ions are short-lived and cannot make it to orbit.
The instrument was dropped off by China's Chang'e-6 lunar lander, and Europe's ground stations are also providing support for that mission. Futurism reports: Within just over 48 hours, China's Chang'e-6 lunar touched down on the far side of the Moon, successfully scooped up samples, and kicked off once again. It was an extraordinary feat, representing the first-ever samples ever collected from the side of the Moon that permanently faces away from us. During its brief visit, the lander also dropped off several scientific payloads on the lunar service, including the European Space Agency's Negative Ions at the Lunar Surface instrument.
The lander also unfurled China's red and gold flag for the first time on the far side of the moon, according to the Associated Press. And then... Its ascender lifted off Tuesday morning at 7:38 a.m. Beijing time, with its engine burning for about six minutes as it entered a preset orbit around the moon, the China National Space Administration said. The agency said the spacecraft withstood a high temperature test on the lunar surface, and acquired the samples using both drilling and surface collection before stowing them in a container inside the ascender of the probe as planned. The container will be transferred to a reentry capsule that is due to return to Earth in the deserts of China's Inner Mongolia region about June 25.
The samples "could help researchers figure out why the moon's two sides are so starkly different," writes Science News: Spacecraft observations of the farside show very little volcanic activity. Some scientists suspect that this is because the nearside crust is much thinner, which would have allowed more magma to come up from below the surface, says Kerri Donaldson Hanna, a planetary geologist at the University of Central Florida in Orlando.

There is evidence that some volcanism occurred in the South Pole-Aitken basin and in Apollo crater, though it appears this activity happened roughly 3.5 billion years ago. It's possible the impact that created both Aiken and Apollo weakened the lunar crust, forming fractures and allowing magma to flow. The samples onboard Chang'e-6 could contain clues as to whether or not this happened.

Both Chinese and international researchers will be able to study the material. Donaldson Hanna is looking forward to seeing what insights will be gleaned from Chang'e-6 as well as future landers, such as those in NASA's Commercial Lunar Payload Services program.
Thanks to Slashdot reader cusco for sharing the news.

HP is facing something of a challenge as the number of printed pages has decreased by 20% since the pandemic. "On the office space, clearly, the amount of pages that is being printed is lower than before the pandemic," HP boss Enrique Lores told tech investors at Bernstein's 40th Annual Strategic Decision Conference last week. "And this is really driven by what we call hybrid work. There are less people in the office every day, and this has driven the amount of pages down." The Register reports: "I use pages as a proxy because, depending on what happens with pages, happens eventually with devices. Before the pandemic, our estimates were that we were expecting to see a 20 percent reduction of printing. And actually, we were looking at the numbers ... and this is more or less where we are." In terms of users printing at home, "during the pandemic, we saw a spike of pages printed, and since then, the number of pages has been declining," Lores added. The levels are not unexpected, though, he said. The industrial customer base was "impacted during the last two or three years by a reduction of capital investments," but recovery is showing up, with those customers printing more labels and packaging. Previous research by IDC showed around 450 billion fewer pages were printed in homes and office worldwide in 2020 versus the year before the pandemic, equating to a 19 percent plunge. It merely accelerated the long-term trend. [...]

An anonymous reader quotes a report from New Atlas: The universe is awash with strange radio signals, but astronomers have now detected a really bizarre one that repeats every hour, cycling through three different states. While they have some ideas about its origin it can't be explained by our current understanding of physics. The signal first appeared in data gathered by the ASKAP radio telescope in Australia, which watches a big swath of sky at once for transient pulses. Officially designated ASKAP J1935+2148, the signal seems to repeat every 53.8 minutes. Whatever it is, the signal cycles through three different states. Sometimes it shoots out bright flashes that last between 10 and 50 seconds and have a linear polarization, meaning the radio waves all "point" in the same direction. Other times, its pulses are much weaker with a circular polarization, lasting just 370 milliseconds. And sometimes, the object misses its cue and stays silent.

So what could be behind such a weird radio signal? Let's get it out of the way up front: it's not aliens (probably). The most likely explanation, according to the scientists who discovered it, is that it's coming from a neutron star or a white dwarf. But it's not a neat solution, since the signal's weird properties don't fit with our understanding of the physics of those two kinds of objects. Neutron stars and white dwarfs are fairly similar, but with some key differences. They're both born from the deaths of bigger stars, with the original mass dictating whether you end up with a neutron star or a white dwarf. Neutron stars are known to blast radio waves out regularly, so they're a prime suspect here. It's possible that signals this varied could be produced by interactions between their strong magnetic fields and complex plasma flows. But there's a major problem: they usually spin at speeds of seconds or fractions of a second per revolution. It should be physically impossible for one to spin as slow as once every 54 minutes. White dwarfs, on the other hand, would have no problem spinning that slowly, but as the team says, "we don't know of any way one could produce the radio signals we are seeing here." "It might even prompt us to reconsider our decades-old understanding of neutron stars or white dwarfs; how they emit radio waves and what their populations are like in our Milky Way galaxy," added Caleb.

The findings have been published in the journal Nature Astronomy.

Longtime Slashdot reader destinyland shared a story from Space.com reporting on Boeing's missed opportunity to dock with the International Space Station, after five of the 28 thrusters that help control Starliner's movement in space stopped operating. NASA has since been able to recover four of the thrusters to successfully dock Boeing's Starliner capsule with the ISS. From the report: There are now two U.S.-built crew spacecraft docked with the ISS for the first time. Boeing's Starliner joined SpaceX's Dragon capsule "Endeavour," which arrived in March. Boeing's Starliner launched successfully on Wednesday to begin the crew flight test. The mission represents a final major step before NASA certifies Boeing to fly crew on operational missions. [...]

NASA flight controllers called off a previously scheduled approach to resolve issues with Starliner's propulsion system. Starliner has 28 jets, known as its reaction control system, or RCS, engines, that help the spacecraft make small movements in orbit. The crew on Starliner, NASA astronauts Butch Wilmore and Suni Williams, were told by NASA capsule communicator, or CAPCOM, Neal Nagata, that the 12:15 p.m. docking attempt had to be called off to resolve the spacecraft's propulsion issue. CAPCOM Nagata noted that the ISS has a zero fault tolerance for a spacecraft control problem.

The agency and Boeing had to troubleshoot five of the RCS jets that were not operating. Four of Starliner's malfunctioning jets were recovered after Wilmore and Williams worked with flight controllers to test fire the thrusters. CAPCOM Nagata had the astronauts hold the spacecraft beyond the "keep out sphere," an invisible boundary around the ISS that serves as a safety measure, while diagnosing the problematic thrusters.

Some artists are jumping ship for the anti-AI portfolio app Cara after Meta began using Instagram content to train its AI models. Fast Company explains: The portfolio app bills itself as a platform that protects artists' images from being used to train AI, and only allowing AI content to be posted if it's clearly labeled. Based on the number of new users the Cara app has garnered over the past few days, there seems to be a need. Between May 31 and June 2, Cara's user base tripled from less than 100,000 to more than 300,000 profiles, skyrocketing to the top of the app store. [...] Cara is a social networking app for creatives, in which users can post images of their artwork, memes, or just their own text-based musings. It shares similarities with major social platforms like X (formerly Twitter) and Instagram on a few fronts. Users can access Cara through a mobile app or on a browser. Both options are free to use. The UI itself is like an arts-centric combination of X and Instagram. In fact, some UI elements seem like they were pulled directly from other social media sites. (It's not the most innovative approach, but it is strategic: as a new app, any barriers to potential adoption need to be low).

Cara doesn't train any AI models on its content, nor does it allow third parties to do so. According to Cara's FAQ page, the app aims to protect its users from AI scraping by automatically implementing "NoAI" tags on all of its posts. The website says these tags "are intended to tell AI scrapers not to scrape from Cara." Ultimately, they appear to be html metadata tags that politely ask bad actors not to get up to any funny business, and it's pretty unlikely that they hold any actual legal weight. Cara admits as much, too, warning its users that the tags aren't a "fully comprehensive solution and won't completely prevent dedicated scrapers." With that in mind, Cara assesses the "NoAI" tagging system as a "a necessary first step in building a space that is actually welcoming to artists -- one that respects them as creators and doesn't opt their work into unethical AI scraping without their consent."

In December, Cara launched another tool called Cara Glaze to defend its artists' work against scrapers. (Users can only use it a select number of times.) Glaze, developed by the SAND Lab at University of Chicago, makes it much more difficult for AI models to accurately understand and mimic an artist's personal style. The tool works by learning how AI bots perceive artwork, and then making a set of minimal changes that are invisible to the human eye but confusing to the AI model. The AI bot then has trouble "translating" the art style and generates warped recreations. In the future, Cara also plans to implement Nightshade, another University of Chicago software that helps protect artwork against AI scapers. Nightshade "poisons" AI training data by adding invisible pixels to artwork that can cause AI software to completely misunderstand the image. Beyond establishing shields against data mining, Cara also uses a third party service to detect and moderate any AI artwork that's posted to the site. Non-human artwork is forbidden, unless it's been properly labeled by the poster.

In an interview with PCWorld's Mark Hachman, Google's ChromeOS chief said the company is cautiously exploring a Recall-like feature for Chromebooks, dubbed "memory." Microsoft's AI-powered Recall feature for Windows 11 was unveiled at the company's Build 2024 conference last month. The feature aims to improve local searches by making them as efficient as web searches, allowing users to quickly retrieve anything they've seen on their PC. Using voice commands and contextual clues, Recall can find specific emails, documents, chat threads, and even PowerPoint slides. Given the obvious privacy and security concerns, many users have denounced the feature, describing it as "literal spyware or malware." PCWorld reports: I sat down with John Solomon, the vice president at Google responsible for ChromeOS, for a lengthy interview around what it means for Google's low-cost Google platform as the PC industry moved to AI PCs. Microsoft, of course, is launching Copilot+ PCs alongside Qualcomm's Snapdragon X Elite -- an Arm chip. And Chromebooks, of course, have a long history with Arm. But it's Recall that we eventually landed upon -- or, more precisely, how Google sidles into the same space. Recall is great in theory, but in practice may be more problematic.) Recall the Project Astra demo that Google showed off at its Google I/O conference. One of the key though understated aspects of it was how Astra "remembered" where the user's glasses were.

Astra didn't appear to be an experience that could be replicated on the Chromebook. Most users aren't going to carry a Chromebook around (a device which typically lacks a rear camera) visually identifying things. Solomon respectfully disagreed. "I think there's a piece of it which is very relevant, which is this notion of having some kind of context and memory of what's been happening on the device," Solomon said. "So think of something that's like, maybe viewing your screen and then you walk away, you get distracted, you chat to someone at the watercooler and you come back. You could have some kind of rewind function, you could have some kind of recorder function that would kind of bring you back to that. So I think that there is a crossover there.

"We're actually talking to that team about where the use case could be," Solomon added of the "memory" concept. "But I think there's something there in terms of screen capture in a way that obviously doesn't feel creepy and feels like the user's in control." That sounds a lot like Recall! But Solomon was quick to point out that one of the things that has turned off users to Recall was the lack of user control: deciding when, where, and if to turn it on. "I'm not going to talk about Recall, but I think the reason that some people feel it's creepy is when it doesn't feel useful, and it doesn't feel like something they initiated or that they get a clear benefit from it," Solomon said. "If the user says like -- let's say we're having a meeting, and discussing complex topics. There's a benefit of running a recorded function if at the end of it it can be useful for creating notes and the action items. But you as a user need to put that on and decide where you want to have that."

New submitter OwnedByTwoCats writes: SpaceX's Starship, the most powerful launch vehicle ever built, launched Thursday and achieved key objectives laid out for its fourth test flight that demonstrated the vehicle's reusability. The highly anticipated event was the company's second uncrewed test of 2024. Launch occurred from the private Starbase facility in Boca Chica, Texas, at 7:50 a.m. CT (8:50 a.m. ET), and the company streamed live coverage on X, formerly known as Twitter, drawing millions of viewers.

The Starship launch system includes the upper Starship spacecraft and a rocket booster known as the Super Heavy. Of the rocket's 33 engines, 32 lit during launch, according to the SpaceX broadcast. The vehicle soared through multiple milestones during Thursday's test flight, including the survival of the Starship capsule upon reentry during peak heating in Earth's atmosphere and splashdown of both the capsule and booster. After separating from the spacecraft, the Super Heavy booster for the first time successfully executed a landing burn and had a soft splashdown in the Gulf of Mexico about eight minutes after launch.

Meanwhile, the Starship capsule successfully achieved orbital insertion. About 50 minutes after launch, the spacecraft began its controlled reentry journey, and an incredibly colorful buildup of plasma could be seen around the vehicle as its heat shield faced the extreme temperatures of Earth's atmosphere. The company's Starlink satellites helped facilitate a livestream that was continuously available during reentry. A flap near the camera view on Starship appeared to scorch during reentry and particulate matter blocked some of the view of the camera. But in the end, there was enough of a view to see Starship achieve its expected landing burn into the Indian Ocean.

Slashdot readers destinyland and LazarusQLong share a report from CNN: The third attempt was the charm for Boeing's Starliner mission after launching its first crewed flight test Wednesday in a milestone that has been a decade in the making. The new spacecraft's maiden voyage with humans on board lifted off atop an Atlas V rocket at 10:52 a.m. ET from Cape Canaveral Space Force Station in Florida.

Veteran NASA astronauts Butch Wilmore and Suni Williams are riding aboard the Starliner capsule on a journey that takes them to the International Space Station. The mission, known as the Crew Flight Test, is the culmination of Boeing's efforts to develop a spacecraft to rival SpaceX's Crew Dragon capsule and expand the United States' options for ferrying astronauts to the space station under NASA's Commercial Crew Program. The federal agency's initiative aims to foster collaboration with private industry partners.

The flight marks only the sixth inaugural journey of a crewed spacecraft in US history, NASA Administrator Bill Nelson noted in a May news conference. "It started with Mercury, then with Gemini, then with Apollo, the space shuttle, then (SpaceX's) Dragon -- and now Starliner," Nelson said. Williams also made history as the first woman to fly aboard such a mission. NASA has a live recording of the launch on YouTube.

The 34-year-old Hubble Space Telescope is now operating with its final two working gyroscopes, necessitating a switch to a less productive "one-gyro" mode to extend its operational life. This contingency plan will reduce Hubble's productivity by over 12%, limit its ability to track fast-moving objects, and decrease the portion of the sky it can observe. That said, NASA expects it to keep functioning through 2035. Science.org reports: Normally, Hubble measures its location in space with a system that includes three gyroscopes -- rapidly spinning wheels that can sense forces in three directions. But in a 4 June press conference, NASA officials said one of the telescope's three remaining gyroscopes is on the fritz. The agency is now invoking a contingency plan: a "one-gyro" mode that keeps the other functioning gyroscope in reserve. The mode will reduce the telescope's productivity by more than 12% but preserve its ability to observe for years to come, Mark Clampin, NASA's astrophysics division director, said at the press conference. "We believe this is our best approach to support Hubble science through this decade and into the next."

Hubble's gyroscopes, which spin at 19,200 revolutions per minute, are extremely precise but finicky. The agency has flown a total of 22 gyroscopes across various servicing missions and is now down to the last two of the six currently onboard. In one-gyro mode, Hubble must rely on its less precise star trackers and other sensors to verify its position, a slower process that leads to reduced productivity. "It will take us more time to slew from one target attitude to the next, and to be able to lock on to that science target," said Patrick Crouse, Hubble's project manager at NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center.

A one-gyro Hubble will also struggle to track fast-moving targets, such as asteroids within the orbit of Mars, and to swivel to spot transient distant phenomena such as supernovae, according to a 2016 report (PDF) from the Space Telescope Science Institute, which operates Hubble. In addition, the inefficiencies of one-gyro mode will reduce the portion of the sky that Hubble can safely point to at any given moment, from 82% to roughly 40%, including a larger avoidance zone near the Sun. It won't be able to observe Venus or the Moon, nor will it be able to reliably spot comets when they're near the Sun. Its ability to scrutinize distant exoplanets will also be hampered, especially in gathering the spectral measurements used to discern alien atmospheres. Furthermore, a one-gyro Hubble won't be able to perform as many simultaneous observations with the new JWST space observatory. Moving forward, the two telescopes' fields of view at any given moment may overlap by less than 20%, according to a 2019 estimate anticipating this event from a Hubble advisory committee.

Intel Chief Executive Officer Pat Gelsinger took the stage at the Computex show in Taiwan to talk about new products he expects will help turn back the tide of share losses to peers, including AI leader Nvidia. From a report: Intel showed its new Xeon 6 data center processors with more efficient cores that will allow operators to cut down the space required for a given task to a third of prior-generation hardware. Like rivals, from Advanced Micro Devices to Qualcomm, Intel touted benchmarks that showed its new silicon is significantly better than its existing options. AMD and Qualcomm's CEOs, in earlier Computex keynotes, used Intel's laptop and desktop processors to show how far ahead they are in certain aspects of technology.

Gelsinger took a direct shot at Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang's claim that traditional processors like Intel's are running out of steam in the age of artificial intelligence. "Unlike what Jensen would have you believe, Moore's Law is alive and well," he said, stressing that Intel will have a major role to play in the proliferation of AI as the leading provider of PC chips. "I think of it like the internet 25 years ago, it's that big," Gelsinger said. "We see this as the fuel that's driving the semiconductor industry to reach $1 trillion by the end of the decade."

An anonymous reader quotes a report from PCMag: Justin Long, the actor known for playing the Mac guy in Apple's mid-2000s ad campaign is once again switching sides -- this time to promote new Windows laptops from Qualcomm. Long appeared in a video that Qualcomm showed during its Computex keynote. To introduce the segment, CEO Cristiano Amon said Qualcomm captured video of a "very special person" preordering a Windows Copilot+ laptop built with a Snapdragon X Elite chip.

In the clip, we see Long typing on an Apple MacBook at home and getting annoyed by all the incoming notifications, which include warnings that his laptop only has a 1% battery life and is running out of disk space. Long types in a search for "Where can I find a Snapdragon-powered PC?" and then stares at the camera, looking a bit ashamed, before saying: "What? Things change." Amon then returned to the stage to tell the Computex audience: "Yes, things change." In 2021, Long starred in an Intel ad campaign to promote the company's Windows PCs.

Further reading: Arm Targets 50% of Windows PC Market Share in Five Years, CEO Says

China's Chang'e-6 probe successfully lands on far side of the moon China's moon probe has "successfully touched down on the far side of the moon," CNN reports, in "a significant step for the ambitious mission that could advance the country's aspirations of putting astronauts on the moon" by 2030.

The mission's ultimate goal is to return to Earth the first samples from the moon's far side, CNN reports. And China's lunar lander "is now expected to use a drill and a mechanical arm to gather up to 2 kilograms of moon dust and rocks from the basin, a crater formed some 4 billion years ago." To complete its mission, the lander will need to robotically stow those samples in an ascent vehicle that made the landing with it. The ascent vehicle will then return to lunar orbit, where it will dock with and transfer the samples to a re-entry capsule, according to mission information provided by the China National Space Administration. The re-entry capsule and orbiter will then travel back to Earth's orbit and separate, allowing the re-entry capsule to make its expected return later this month to the Siziwang Banner Landing Site in China's rural Inner Mongolia region.
The mission began with its launch on May 3 — and is expected to last 53 days. The landing marks the second time a mission has successfully reached the far side of the moon. China first completed that historic feat in 2019 with its Chang'e-4 probe... The technically complex mission is made more challenging due to where it is being conducted. The far side of the moon is out of range of normal communications, which means Chang'e-6 must also rely on a satellite that was launched into lunar orbit in March, the Queqiao-2.

"The seemingly star-cross Boeing Starliner — within minutes of its long-delayed blastoff on the spacecraft's first piloted test flight — was grounded again Saturday," writes CBS News, "when one of three redundant computers managing the countdown from the base of the launch pad ran into a problem, triggering a last-minute scrub."

More details from NPR: With 3:50 left in the countdown, the rocket's computer initiated a hold. The next launch attempt won't happen until at least Wednesday, NASA said.

An issue with one of the three redundant computer systems at the base of the launch pad that are responsible for initiating the launch sequence prompted the automatic halt, said Tory Bruno, the head of United Launch Alliance, the government contractor trying to launch the Starliner. "We do require all three systems to be running — triple redundancy," ULA President and CEO Bruno said at a Saturday afternoon press briefing. "Those three big computers do a health check. ... Two came up normally. The third one came up, but it was slow to come up, and that tripped a red line that created an automatic hold." ULA engineers don't know why the computer halted, and will troubleshoot ground support equipment overnight, NASA said in an update on Saturday evening.