Satellite launches have ramped up to an unprecedented rate, with advanced rockets like the deploying as many as 60 per launch. The latest Falcon 9 launch from Vandenberg Space Force Base, which has been rescheduled for Friday, will carry a special satellite, and it’s one-of-a-kind — NASA’s Surface Water and Ocean Topography (SWOT) satellite. This mission will use enormous radar antennas to make the most accurate measurements ever of water levels on Earth’s surface. It took years to get here and required the development of a new type of scanning instrument called the Ka-band Radar Interferometer (KaRIn). SWOT is a cooperation between NASA and the French space agency Centre National d’Études Spatiales (CNES), with additional help from the Canadian Space Agency (CSA) and the UK Space Agency.
(Credit: Pavlo Gonchar/SOPA Images/LightRocket via Getty Images)SpaceX has deployed an expansive network of Starlink internet satellites in a short time, thanks to the cheap, reusable Falcon 9 rocket. The next step for the company’s megaconstellation is to upgrade to a new, more powerful generation of satellite tech, and if the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) gives the OK, it will be capable of connecting directly to your mobile phone. On Dec. 6, filed a request with the FCC to equip its second-generation Starlink satellites with “direct-to-cellular” hardware. It’s going to need this to fulfill the promises made to offer offering satellite connectivity on T-Mobile, which include eliminating dead zones with satellite coverage.
(Image: ETH Zurich)If you wear glasses, you probably know how annoying it is for your lenses to fog up as you sip on a hot beverage or step into a warm and humid environment. Just as frustrating (yet perhaps more dangerous) is your windshield’s tendency to cloud when it’s cold outside and you’re cranking up the heater. Thankfully, there appears to be a new way to stop inconvenient fogging from happening in the first place—no electricity required. A group of scientists at Switzerland’s ETH Zurich has created a thin and transparent coating that, when applied to glass and other clear surfaces, operates as an anti-fog barrier.
The is pushing the bounds of human understanding, but access to Webb data is currently limited. That could change as NASA considers a new open-access policy that would make Webb data available to the public as soon as it’s collected. Despite similar reforms in Hubble data reporting, some scientists are apprehensive about the proposed change. We have seen some amazing things come out of the James Webb Space Telescope (JWST), but that’s just a fraction of what it has done so far. About 25% of Webb observations have been reported by scientists, and the rest of the data remains locked away.
It looks like Intel won’t be competing head-to-head with the RTX 4090 and Radeon RX 7900 XTX anytime soon. In an interview about the company’s plans for Arc GPUs in India, its graphics chief dished on how it sees the market as a whole. In the interview, Raja Koduri, who famously left AMD to head up Intel’s nascent Visual Computing Group, said he sees midrange GPUs as the company’s future. Koduri gave the interview to the website in India when he was there for an inaugural conference sponsored by Intel. He spoke broadly about the company’s plans for launching Arc in India, as well as its future plans for Arc.
(Image: Microsoft)Microsoft has quietly made the decision to discontinue its Authenticator app for the Apple Watch. According to a change made to the Authenticator FAQ section on Microsoft’s website, the company will be dropping support for the app in January 2023. Under a question about Authenticator support on Apple Watch iOS, Microsoft : “In the upcoming Authenticator release in January 2023 for iOS, there will be no companion app for watchOS due to it being incompatible with Authenticator security features. This means you won’t be able to install or use Authenticator on Apple Watch.” Microsoft goes on to recommend deleting the Apple Watch app entirely.
A color-enhanced image of the inside of a NIF preamplifier support structure. (Credit: Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory)After a day or two of public , representatives from the US Department of Energy announced Tuesday morning that scientists in Livermore, California have resulting in a net energy gain. The achievement, which officials have called a “major scientific breakthrough,” is expected to bring the world one step closer to commercializing zero-carbon energy. Researchers at the Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory (LLNL) National Ignition Facility reportedly pulled off the reaction on Monday, Dec. 5. Using a laser array the size of a sports stadium, LLNL mimicked the temperatures and pressures found within stars, where nuclear fusion occurs naturally.
(Credit: AMD)The last products to arrive in our end-of-year hardwarepalooza are the chiplet-based AMD Radeon 7900 series GPUs. The RX 7900 XTX and 7900 XT will officially go on sale Tuesday, Dec. 13. Whether you’ll be able to buy one on launch day is another story. In advance of the launch, our colleagues at PCMag have provided a brief of just how small the GPUs are compared with Nvidia’s latest. We knew they weren’t exactly huge at the product launch, but seeing them side-by-side with the RTX 4080 is interesting. They look old-fashioned, which is weird to say about cutting-edge technology.
When Google Chrome was lightweight and fast when it debuted in 2008, a refreshing change of pace in a world still dominated by Internet Explorer. Things sure have changed. Today, has a meme-worthy reputation for greedily gobbling up memory, but some new features will make it more efficient. Google has announced Memory Saver and Battery Saver, both of which are rolling out soon. Admittedly, the way many of us use the web is a contributing factor to Chrome’s RAM habit — rather than close tabs we might theoretically need in the future, we leave them open. Keeping dozens of tabs alive can cause Chrome to balloon to occupy gigabytes of memory.
