(Photo: Rocket Lab)Tomorrow a private aerospace company will attempt to snatch its own rocket booster out of mid air using a helicopter. Southern California-based Rocket Lab builds and launches a variety of aerospace equipment, but its claim to fame is a reusable small launch vehicle called Electron. Just 18 meters tall, this two-stage rocket booster is made to deliver small satellites either individually or as “rideshare,” or multiple satellites at a time. It’s the only reusable orbital-class rocket in use; the only rocket that comes close is SpaceX’s Falcon 9, which is designed to launch up to ten times but stands over 70 meters tall.
One of the revelations from Russia’s invasion of Ukraine is that some of its military hardware seems to be less than cutting edge. The latest example of Russia operating with jerry-rigged equipment comes from a video released by the Ukrainian Ministry of Defense. In the video a Ukrainian soldier examines a Russian Orlan-10 UAV that had crashed. The soldier patiently discusses what each part is and his thoughts about them. Though the drones are reported to cost between $87,000 and $120,000 per unit, the innards look like they cost about $500 total. Maybe $1,000 if you include the usual level of invoice padding involved with military contracts.
It seemed like there was a new bit of news on the (JWST) every few days earlier this year, but we haven’t heard as much from the revolutionary observatory lately. That’s because it’s been chilling out — literally. The telescope can’t start doing science until its instruments reach the correct operating temperature. NASA now reports that , marking yet another step toward being fully operational. Unlike Hubble, the JWST was designed to peer into the mid-infrared part of the electromagnetic spectrum. Any errant heat, either from terrestrial sources or the sun, could wreck such observations. That’s why the spacecraft was deployed at the Earth-Sun L2 Lagrange point, out beyond the orbit of the moon.
Way back in 2015, Apple released its very first app in the Google Play Store. It was called Move to iOS, and it helped people switch from Google’s platform to Apple’s. Turnabout is fair play, and Google has finally made its own switching app. With the predictable name “,” the app helps iPhone owners export their data for use on an Android phone. The app rolled out today in several markets, including the US, but it might be hard to find. The current mobile dichotomy has been in place for over a decade at this point. Upstarts like Palm and Windows Phone tried and failed to create a third platform, but instead we’ve all become more entrenched with Android and iOS.
Last year, that scientists had discovered a huge inbound comet, named Bernardinelli-Bernstein. It was the most distant comet we’d ever discovered. And it was huge, so big scientists originally thought it was a minor planet. But it was so distant that all our pictures were still blurry. So, we waited. Now, NASA confirms that the Hubble Space Telescope (HST) picked up the object — and it’s absolutely smashing all our predictions. Comet Bernardinelli-Bernstein, or “BB” for short, is the biggest comet ever recorded. The arXiv preprint from the comet’s discovery gave a low-end estimate of two trillion tons. For scale, that’s 10 times the mass of Hale-Bopp, and Hale-Bopp became known as the Great Comet of 1997.
(Photo: Wouter De Praetere/Unsplash)Intel has announced a plan to achieve net-zero carbon emissions across its global operations by 2040. In a statement Wednesday, the company reaffirmed its intent to reduce its environmental impact and develop a more sustainable operations strategy. This means changes across all parts of the business, including its supply chain, products, and everyday consumption. “We’re now raising the bar and entering an exciting era to achieve net-zero greenhouse gas emissions across our operations by 2040,” Intel’s executive vice president and chief global operations officer Keyvan Esfarjani. “This will require significant innovation and investment, but we are committed to do what it takes and will work with the industry to achieve this critical mission.
Note the date and tell your offspring about it someday: April 15th is the day Nvidia GPUs were in stock, finally. The company has launched a “restocked and reloaded” marketing campaign to let people know about it too. Not only are a lot of cards in stock right now, but some of them are even being offered at a discounted price. We promise this is not a late April Fool’s prank. Nvidia’s for the new promotion states, “GeForce RTX 30 Series graphics cards are now available!” Obviously our first thought was, “Sure they were, when you made this page a few days ago.
(Photo:Joshua Hoehne/Unsplash)In perhaps one of the most predictable headlines we’ve written in weeks, Elon Musk has offered to buy all of Twitter. The billionaire tech mogul a 9.2 percent stake in Twitter last week when he purchased $2.89 billion in shares, making him the company’s largest single shareholder. Rumors quickly swirled that the massive purchase signaled interest in an eventual “all-out buyout,” though few expected such an attempt to come so soon. But an SEC from yesterday confirms Musk has submitted an official offer to “buy 100 percent of Twitter.” Twitter itself has also confirmed receipt of the “unsolicited, non-binding proposal,” which offers to buy all of the company’s stock for $54.20 per share—$43 billion total.
Intel has been very public about its future plans ever since Pat Gelsinger returned as CEO in 2021. Gelsinger has mapped out a strategy dubbed IDM 2.0 that he hopes will return Intel to its former role as a global leader in silicon fabrication. To achieve this goal it’s announced parallel work on multiple advanced nodes at its various fabs. At the company’s recent launch of a new facility in Oregon, CEO Gelsinger delivered some unexpected good news about its progress on its most advanced node. He said the company’s flagship process, dubbed 18A, was a full six months ahead of schedule.
