Noble Audio FoKus Artemis: two-minute review

In Ancient Greece, Artemis was a goddess of many things: vegetation, hunting, wild creatures, childbirth… the list goes on. It’s fair to say that she was considered abundant in talent. And her moniker is not wasted on the Noble Audio FoKus Artemis: a set of wireless headphones that have far-reaching, broad talents of their own.

The FoKus Artemis are, put simply, an exceptionally strong performing set of cans. In fact, they might be the best-sounding pair of wireless headphones I’ve used. They have a triple-driver configuration, with dynamic, balanced armature, and planar drivers, affording them all of the dynamism, precision, and speed required to showcase your favorite tracks in their best light.

Like the best headphones around, the Artemis supply palpable yet regimented bass, beautifully detailed and textured mids, and expressive, articulate treble. But the real shining star is their excellent soundstaging. The Artemis bring forth an immense sense of space and scale, making for a highly immersive listen time after time. With aptX Lossless, LDAC, and USB-C audio, you also get high-resolution, nuanced sound that competes with the greatest headphones on the market.

But something else that sets these headphones apart from the crowd is their granular sound control. With help from Audiodo, Noble has included personalized EQ on the Artemis, which can account for hearing loss and provide optimized audio for all users. There’s also parametric EQ and a number of presets that will suit any listener.

The FoKus Artemis boast quite the suite of features, actually, with an effective companion app, wear detection and multi-point connectivity to give you the everyday convenience that you’d hope for at this money. ANC is here too, with a number of modes, including a transparency option. Noise cancellation here isn’t the best of the best, and the Artemis’ looser fit also means a fair few external sounds creep in now and then. But it’s still relatively effective, and will still help dull the world around you.

Spatial audio modes, though functional, also felt a little underwhelming to me during testing, but the Artemis’ wide soundstage means you get a nice and expansive listen from the headphones anyway. Call quality is strong, though, owing to the headphones’ seven-mic array, and you get up to 55 hours of playback (35 hours with ANC on), as well as a replaceable battery, adding longevity to the headphones.

In my view, the Artemis look great as well. Their metallic detailing, fabric headband, and textured ear cups ensure they exude all of the style and luxury you’d look for in an ultra-premium pair of headphones. There aren’t any touch controls, but the physical buttons work well, and are highly responsive. It also helps that the headphones are extremely well-fitting, and they feel comfortable to wear throughout the day.

But here it comes: the price. The Noble Audio FoKus Artemis cost a whopping $899 / £799 (about AU$1,200). Is the price-tag justified? It really depends on your outlook. They’re a seriously advanced set of headphones, with the triple-driver set-up, personalized EQ and premium build adding a lot in terms of value. But you can get phenomenal sound for less — even the Bowers & Wilkins Px8 S2 are $100 / £170 less than these.

Still, if you want truly stellar audio and ultra-precise sound control, then it really doesn’t get much better than the Noble Audio FoKus Artemis. They’re a wonderful pair of headphones, and if you’ve got the budget, then they’re pretty easy for me to recommend. But for some slightly cheaper yet excellent alternatives, be sure to head down to the ‘also consider’ section.

Noble Audio FoKus Artemis review: price & release date

• Priced at $899 / £799 (about AU$1,200)
• Released in August 2026

The Noble Audio FoKus Artemis started shipping in August 2026, although I got to try them back in June, when the headphones were showcased at High End Vienna 2026. The Artemis are an ultra-premium pair of wireless headphones, and as a result, they carry a very hefty asking price. They’ll typically set you back $899 / £799 (about AU$1,200).

Sure, some rivals, like the Bang & Olufsen Beoplay H100 and Focal Bathys MG, will set you back even further, but I won’t pretend that the Artemis aren’t a huge investment. And you can get exceptional sounding headphones for considerably less — for example, the Bowers & Wilkins Px8 S2 are a good $100 / £170 less than the Artemis at $799 / £629 / AU$1,299.

Noble Audio FoKus Artemis review: specs

Noble Audio FoKus Artemis review: features

• Personal EQ can account for hearing loss
• Strong battery life of up to 55 hours
• ANC is acceptable, rather than great

Noble Audio has put a ton of thought and effort into the feature-set of the FoKus Artemis, and this results in a great user experience.

Where to start? Well, I think the most interesting function is the personalized EQ, which offers surprising depth. Noble Audio partnered with Swedish firm Audiodo to implement a hearing test on the Artemis, meaning you can unlock a sound that suits you — it even accounts for hearing loss. Using Noble’s app, you’ll be asked to listen to a set of prompts, which test your hearing across the frequency range in each ear, and you’ll get a custom EQ that provides bespoke, optimized audio.

This works really well, and can be toggled on or off. There are also a number of presets and a parametric equalizer if you want more granular control. Few headphones offer this attention to detail, and even though I loved the default tuning on the Artemis, they really can sound however you want them to.

There are also some spatial audio modes, with a subtle and immersive option. I didn’t love these so much — I found that tracks sounded less clear and concise, and given that the Artemis whip up an impressive sense of space anyway, I kept this off.

Let’s talk about one of the most important features next, ANC. The Artemis have a seven-microphone system with multiple noise-cancelling modes, including low, mid, and strong ANC and a transparency mode.

So, how good is noise-cancellation with the Artemis? Well, it’s decent. I used them across a huge range of environments: flights, trains, when out on walks, in the office, and at home. When using the strongest mode, I found that they eliminated sounds like typing and light chatter nicely, but more intensive stuff, like a plane’s engine running and passing-by traffic, tended to seep in quite easily. In part, this comes down to the more relaxed fit and clamping on the Artemis, but I did expect a bit more in terms of noise-crushing from these cans, given their price.

Something the mics handle very well, though, is calls. Whenever I made a video or voice call, people on the other end of the line reported that my speech was clear, and never tinny or obscured. This was also the case when I made some recordings and listened back.

The Artemis also impressed me a fair bit in terms of battery life. They offer up to 55 hours of playback with ANC off, and 35 hours. That’s slightly above the standard 30 hours that a lot of premium models offer, and means you’ll be able to listen for days on-end without having to charge the Artemis at all. The battery is also user-replaceable, which is becoming more common with EU legislation making this a requirement for portable devices.

Controlling the Artemis is also pretty straightforward. They feature traditional button controls, favored by a lot of audiophiles for their reliability. Personally, I’m a fan of touch controls (when done right), but this is omitted on the Artemis. Something that does feature, though, is wear detection and this is highly responsive and accurate — it can be toggled off if you’d prefer. Finally, the app is incredibly easy to use and well-laid out. I’ve seen some reports of iOS users having issues, but on my Android phone, the companion software worked perfectly.

• Features score: 4/5

Noble Audio FoKus Artemis review: sound quality

• Triple driver configurations delivers exceptional balance across the frequency range
• Wide soundstage creates a hypnotic listening experience
• Top-tier codec support and USB-C audio passthrough

It may not surprise you to find out that the Noble Audio FoKus Artemis are a truly spectacular-sounding pair of wireless headphones. In fact, they’re up there with some of the best performers I’ve tested here at TechRadar.

This model stands out from the crowd due to one specific design choice: its triple driver configuration. Dynamic drivers are great for handling the bass and mids, but balanced armature and planar drivers enable the Artemis to deliver enhanced precision, speed, and fidelity. But what’s the actual listening experience like?

Well, the most striking thing about the Artemis for me is their ability to conjure up a tremendously spacious, wide sound. For closed back, wireless headphones, the scale on offer is striking, and I was always treated to an almost hypnotic experience, no matter what genre I threw on.

In What We Got by Midas Field and Marjin Jensen, pumping bass hit with great impact and dynamism, without ever shrouding vocals in the mid-range or percussion up high. The speed and responsiveness of the low-end is excellent, and extends nice and low, meaning that even the darkest sounds in the frequency range sound full-bodied and controlled. Drums in the treble range were also precise and expressive without sounding overly bright, helping the Artemis to perfectly capture the energy of the track.

Switching over to Miracles by Change, and the Artemis continue to impress. Electric guitars were perfectly weighted in the mix, and sounded beautifully textured. They were also expertly separated from emotive vocals, which were in turn given plenty of room to express themselves. Subtle percussive elements were also perfectly audible, and the wide soundstage opened up a highly immersive listening experience.

As my phone supports both LDAC and aptX, I was able to get a highly detailed listen from the FoKus Artemis. USB-C audio passthrough also opens up genuine lossless playback, and with this, the Artemis offer up a phenomenally revealing, layered, and nuanced sound that helps to justify their high asking price.

• Sound quality score: 5/5

Noble Audio FoKus Artemis review: design

• Stunning design with fabric headband and metallic detailing
• Very comfortable in use, though looser fit has its downsides
• IP52 dust and waterproof rating

If I could use one word to describe the look of the Noble Audio FoKus Artemis, it would be ‘striking’. The silver metallic detailing on the earcups is bold and eye-catching, and truly exudes a sense of luxury. The fabric headband is also built to a great standard, and the plush earcups appear textured and stylish.

There are a few plastic elements on the Artemis, and you could argue that some parts — like the buttons and carry case — don’t exactly look the most premium. But overall I think that the Artemis are a great-looking pair of headphones. They’re also relatively flat and low-profile, which I really like — I’ve never been a fan of the bulkier look of headphones like the Sony WH-1000XM6.

On top of this, the Artemis are amazingly comfortable in-use. I happily kept them on for hours upon hours when making a long train journey, and never found them to be uncomfortable or overbearing. On my (relatively large) head, I’d say that the Artemis fall on the looser side, fit-wise. While this ensures great comfort, it could sometimes mean that external noises crept in a bit too easily — combined with the fairly middling ANC, this means that the Artemis fail to challenge the gods of the ANC domain, such as Bose and Sony.

Something that’s good to see, though, is that the Artemis have an IP rating. Sure, it’s nothing ground-breaking at IP52 — meaning they’re protected against dust ingress and water sprays — but very few over-ears actually display a rating, so kudos to Noble Audio for this.

• Design score: 4.5/5

Noble Audio FoKus Artemis review: value

• Undoubtedly expensive
• But the exemplary sound quality helps to justify this
• Still, exceptional performers are available for less

Look, the Noble Audio FoKus Artemis are a very expensive pair of wireless headphones. At $899 / £799 (about AU$1,200), they sit right up there with models like the Focal Bathys MG, and even exceed the excellent Bowers & Wilkins Px8 S2 in cost.

But are they really worth it? It honestly depends. If you want some of the best-sounding wireless cans on the market, then you’ll get just that with the Artemis. I’m not sure I’ve experienced any wireless headphones that outperform these. Their spacious, nuanced sound is a delight, and has made me never want to take them off. They also look great and offer a real sense of luxury, while features like the personalized EQ are rarely seen elsewhere.

Still, I can’t help but feel that their ANC could be better for the price, and you can still get incredible sound for a fair bit less with a luxury design from the Px8 S2. As a result, I’d consider the Artemis to be good value if you’re all in on sound, but perhaps consider the options in the ‘also consider’ section if you want to spend a little less.

• Value score: 3.5/5

Should I buy the Noble Audio FoKus Artemis?

Buy them if…

Don’t buy them if…

Noble Audio FoKus Artemis review: also consider

How I tested the Noble Audio FoKus Artemis

• Tested for one month
• Used on flights, trains, on walks, and in the office
• Mainly streamed tunes over Tidal

I spent one month testing the Noble Audio FoKus Artemis, using them as my primary set of headphones. I used them on flights, trains, and buses, but also when out on walks, working at the office, or relaxing at home. Using them in such a range of environments helped me to fully understand the effectiveness of their ANC capabilities.

When listening to music, I typically streamed tunes over Tidal on my Xiaomi 17 phone, which supports aptX and LDAC codecs, but I also dipped into Spotify from time to time. As always, I sifted through the TechRadar reference playlist when testing, but I also listened to countless hours of music from my personal library.

More generally, I’ve spent years testing audio gear here at TechRadar, including everything from wired IEMs like the Beyerdynamic DT 30 IE to party speakers such as the Marshall Bromley 750. I’ve also tested a whole host of premium headphones, including the Sony 1000X The Collexion and Bang & Olufsen H100, so I know exactly what a pair of headphones needs to stand out in a highly competitive market.

• Read TechRadar’s reviews guarantee
• First reviewed: October 2026

• Russia has launched 32 Rassvet satellites, though coverage remains limited
• Rassvet remains vastly smaller than Starlink’s expanding satellite constellation today
• Russia plans 156 satellite launches in 2026, 292 in 2027, 318 in 2028, and about 900 in 2035

Russia has launched 32 Rassvet communications satellites as Moscow works toward building a domestic network capable of competing with Starlink.

The current fleet, however, remains too small to provide continuous service, while reported orbital problems have raised further doubts about progress.

Russia still plans commercial operations from 2027, although reaching that stage depends on expanding the constellation and overcoming serious technical limitations.

Thirty-two satellites leave Russia far from continuous coverage

Ukraine's Defense Intelligence chief, Oleh Ivashchenko, said the existing constellation cannot yet deliver reliable communications across the areas Russia intends to serve.

“We know that today the Russians are trying to put satellites into orbit. But so far, there are not enough of them, and their effectiveness is low,” said Oleh Ivashchenko, chief of Ukraine’s Defense Intelligence.

Ivashchenko did not disclose the spacecraft’s orbital paths, operating frequency, or the Ukrainian regions where the system currently provides coverage.

However, he maintains that Rassvet remains far smaller than Starlink, which has more than 12,000 satellites in orbit and continues adding around 200 spacecraft each month.

The much smaller constellation means Rassvet cannot yet provide the same level of continuous coverage as Starlink.

Moscow has committed 102.8 billion rubles, or about $1.3 billion, to Rassvet as part of efforts to establish domestic broadband connectivity.

Russia plans to launch 156 satellites in 2026, followed by another 292 spacecraft by 2027, when authorities expect commercial operations to begin.

The programme ultimately aims for 318 satellites by 2028, while later plans envisage expanding the network from 250 spacecraft toward 900 by 2035.

Those figures reveal the scale of work remaining, since the existing fleet represents only a fraction of Russia's planned communications infrastructure.

Technical problems could make expansion considerably harder

Reports indicate that some Rassvet spacecraft faced difficulty gaining altitude, with certain satellites drifting downward after reaching orbit.

Defense Express reported on August 25 2026 that one Rassvet-3 communications satellite was lost, while two others faced possible atmospheric reentry.

Such incidents could complicate Russia's schedule because each failed spacecraft reduces the already limited constellation and creates additional pressure on future launches.

Building the planned network would require at least 18 Soyuz-2.1b missions, despite Russia currently carrying out only six to eight launches annually.

The launch requirement therefore creates another obstacle, especially if replacement spacecraft become necessary after further technical failures during orbital operations.

Rassvet could eventually provide communications links for unmanned aircraft and military units operating beyond the practical limits of conventional radio systems.

That possibility gained greater attention after Ukraine and SpaceX restricted unauthorized Starlink terminals reportedly used by Russian forces during February 2026.

“We are working on this. Russia’s ‘Rassvet svg’ must turn into a ‘zakat svg,’” said Oleh Ivashchenko, chief of Ukraine’s Defense Intelligence.

Russia continues developing Rassvet despite these setbacks, but the current constellation remains unable to provide continuous connectivity expected from a fully operating network.

Via United24media

• Some Rassvet satellites remain dangerously low after failing to raise their orbits
• One Rassvet spacecraft has already fallen from orbit and reentered Earth's atmosphere
• Two newer satellites have shown no observed orbital-raising maneuvers since July 2026

Moscow's push to field its own broadband satellite network is running into some technical and industrial issues, new reports have revealed.

Bureau 1440, the company developing the Rassvet-3 system, has sent up two batches of spacecraft in 2026, one in March and another in July.

According to reports, some of these systems did not climb smoothly toward their intended altitude; instead, they stalled, drifted, or fell back toward Earth.

A satellite already lost, others trending downward

One craft from the first group, known as Rassvet-3 No. 4, never managed to raise its orbit after separating from its rocket.

That satellite, catalogued as NORAD 68363, eventually reentered the atmosphere on June 6, marking an outright loss for the young constellation.

Two more spacecraft from the second launch group, numbers 17 and 23, appear to be following a similar pattern of inactivity.

Tracking data shows neither satellite has performed any observed maneuver to climb higher since it separated from its carrier rocket on July 19.

Both currently sit at an average altitude near 290 kilometers, with their lowest points measured at roughly 277 kilometers above the surface.

Without engine activity to counter this decline, the pair could eventually drop low enough that reentry becomes essentially unavoidable.

However, there are some positives, as some of the satellites have successfully begun climbing, though none has reached the network's target altitude of about 800 kilometers.

Spacecraft from the earliest operational batch launched just over five months ago, and at the moment, they hover between 500 and 550 kilometers.

A few more units from the group are not yet at that intermediate range, which means that the company is yet to hit its long-term altitude plan.

The Bureau 1440 has now paused raising some Rassvet satellites higher toward their planned 800-kilometer orbit, and the company hasn't revealed the reason for the pause.

Ground infrastructure adds to the program's troubles

Russia intends for the Rassvet network to rival SpaceX's Starlink by offering fast internet through hundreds of orbiting satellites.

Officials have said commercial service should begin in 2027, with plans calling for 292 satellites to be functioning in orbit by year's end.

Meeting that timeline would require Bureau 1440 to conduct a rapid sequence of additional launches over the coming months.

A separate complication has now emerged on the ground, far from the satellites already circling the planet.

Ukrainian forces allegedly used FP-5 Flamingo cruise missiles to strike Samara's Progress Rocket and Space Center.

That facility builds the Soyuz-2.1b rockets responsible for carrying every Rassvet-3 satellite launched so far this year.

The plant also supports numerous other Russian launches, including several military, reconnaissance, and communications missions unrelated to broadband service.

The rocket production capacity is one of the central bottlenecks limiting the constellation's overall deployment pace.

Should the damage at Progress persist, sustaining the launch tempo needed to reach nearly 300 satellites may prove genuinely difficult.

Via United24media

• NASA’s ground control software has a critical vulnerability that could allow third-party access to spacecraft
• The flaw has been found in a browser-based variant of NASA’s AMMOS Instrument Toolkit
• NASA has not publicly responded to the flaw’s disclosure

NASA’s open source ground control software has a critical vulnerability that could enable an unauthenticated attacker to gain access and take control of spacecraft. The AMMOS Instrument Toolkit’s browser-based interface is the source of the vulnerability, which has since been resolved.

The AIT-GUI (AMMOS Instrument Toolkit Graphical User Interface) tool up to version 2.5.1 has been identified as vulnerable, but the fault has been fixed in v2.5.2, according to researcher Yuval Elbar.

If the vulnerability had been found by a third party, it would have given access to issue commands to spacecraft, instruments, and execute server-side scripts. In addition, command sequences could potentially have been run by an attacker, leaving craft almost wholly beyond NASA’s control.

Weak API

Elbar, who works with the Cycode Agentic Development Security Platform, disclosed the vulnerability on August 18, 2026. The problem appears to start with AIT-GUI running as a web server with all network interfaces open, rather than the host’s setting. Incredibly, the API also has no authentication, or authorization protection. In addition, the CSRF (cross-site request forgery) protection on changing endpoints is also absent on affected versions of AIT-GUI.

Attackers can exploit basic access-control security failings in AIT-GUI, exposing the /cmd and /script/run and /seq prompts while also setting up filesystem paths. This enables files (potentially malware, or custom-built scripts) to be passed directly to NASA craft via a vulnerable AIT-GUI browser session, potentially escalating to full control.

To emphasize the scale of the weakness, Elbar introduced the disclosure with “A web GUI used to drive spacecraft and instrument commanding shipped a server that listens on every network interface, asks nobody for a password, and can be steered by any web page an operator happens to open.”

External access

As if this wasn’t concerning enough, the attacker doesn’t need to be on the same network. Direct access via an exposed port, or directing an operator to a web page hiding malicious code, or even simply a web page under live control by an attacker, can afford access to a third party.

Elbar adds “operational and ground-system software inherits the same web weaknesses as everything else, but with a far higher cost of failure. Auth, CSRF defense, and input confinement are not optional extras on a panel that commands hardware.”

Cycode advises administrators of AIT systems to upgrade AIT-GUI to v2.5.2 and run checks on the console port. They should also review command history.

• Chinese equipment fills critical roles, though it represents only a small share overall
• Russia plans to quadruple annual Angara rocket production within the next decade
• Internal documents expose extensive factory upgrades supporting future rocket manufacturing

Russia is pushing to significantly grow production of its Angara space rockets, to quadruple annual output within the next decade.

Internal planning documents obtained by researchers show the expansion depends heavily on imported machine tools, and most of them are Chinese-made.

That dependence stretches across shop floors that Russia will need to modernize before it can build four rockets a year instead of one.

Counting the Chinese machines

Of the 541 pieces of equipment listed in the procurement plan, 477 are Russian-made, and only 57 come from Chinese suppliers.

Two more machines came from Bulgaria, leaving the Chinese share of the total list at roughly 10.5%, a modest slice on paper.

That number changes sharply once each machine is weighed by its technological importance rather than simply counted one by one.

Measured that way, Chinese suppliers account for 28.2% of the entire project's technological core, based on the internal planning documents.

In the metalworking shop alone, over 47% of the equipment needed there comes from Chinese manufacturers instead of domestic ones.

The finance tells a similar story: over 84% of the entire 3.62-billion-rouble (~$44.71 million) equipment budget still flows into that same technological core.

In total, Khrunichev intends to put close to 900 million roubles (~ $11.29 million), toward equipment made in China.

Roughly 10 manufacturers account for most of that spending, and several of them also sell machinery to buyers in Europe and America.

Where the machines really come from

Some of those companies fit a wider trend that has taken hold since the conflict between Russia and Ukraine started in 2022.

Heavy forging and hydraulic press equipment fall under European Union export restrictions whenever the intended buyer is based inside Russia.

Washington has also placed sanctions on Russian makers of heavy hydraulic presses, one of them a firm called Pressmash, back in 2023.

Yet under that very same customs code, the EU's imports of Chinese-made machine tools still totalled 207 million euros (~$238 million) in 2025.

Those imports rose another 17.6% in the opening six months of 2026, measured against the equivalent stretch the previous year.

In effect, the same manufacturers profit from Western markets that back Ukraine while also helping modernize the military hardware Russia sends into orbit.

Sanctioning any single Chinese supplier is unlikely to stop this flow of equipment, since near-identical machines are made by several competitors.

Whether losing access to European and American customers would ever outweigh the profits of supplying Russia remains an open question.

The Angara rockets built with the Chinese equipment carry the Russian Ministry of Defense satellites that American experts claim could threaten assets in orbit and on the ground.

However, Russian experts described the spacecraft as operating "in the interests of the Russian Ministry of Defense."

That difference between Moscow's official position and Washington's assessment has persisted since the conflict in Ukraine began.

Via United24media

• Starlink Mobile could become a reality in 2027
• It will likely rely on the very new Starlink V3 satellite
• SpaceX's huge Starship will play a crucial role in the effort to compete with major carriers

SpaceX's first earnings call this week as a publicly traded company was full of promises and hyperbole, including the prediction from boaster-in-chief Elon Musk (also SpaceX CEO and Chief Engineer) that Starlink "will deliver a majority of the world's internet, at least in countries where we're allowed to operate, which is the vast majority of countries." As for a time scale, think not the distant future, but fewer than 10 years.

That's some bold talk, but SpaceX President, COO, and someone far less likely to wax bombastic, Gwynne Shotwell, backed up those claims. "As far as revenue, I'm just going to take a very high-level kind of top-down. The big three in the U.S., AT&T, Verizon, and T-Mobile, roughly between them, $600 billion a year. I anticipate us to be able to acquire quite a few of their customers because I think our service will be better." Shotwell told investors.

These promises all hinge, in part, on the development and launch of Starlink's V3 satellites, which will, on a per-satellite basis, drastically improve throughput. Starlink's current V2 satellite has a downlink throughput of roughly 80GBps. V3 can, the company claims, deliver 1 Terabit of downlink connectivity. Uplink jumps from roughly 7 Gbps to between 160 and 200 Gbps.

It's not just the speed; Starlink V3 satellites promise exponentially more beams, which is basically support for more concurrent users. V2 offers just under 200 beams while V3 promises 2048 per satellite.

Still, with just a reported 10,918 Starlink satellites in low Earth orbit (LEO), they will need a way of quickly delivering tens of thousands of satellites into orbit to achieve this lofty goal.

And so the other part of this hyperbolic plan hinges on SpaceX's still-in-testing Starship rocket. Granted, the 408ft tall spacecraft is rapidly transitioning to the operational phase and may have a full launch as soon as this month. It's already lifted some V3 satellites into orbit during one of its earlier orbital test flights. Now, to realize Musk's plan, it must shift to rapid launch deployment and then relaunch and deploy again.

Musk told investors that "Starlink V3 satellite is about an order of magnitude more capable than the Starlink V2 satellite." Then he added some color on the scale of what SpaceX and Starlink are planning: "We expect to launch about an order of magnitude more Starlink V3 satellites. That would mean a roughly two-order-of-magnitude increase in the delivered bandwidth."

Musk believes we'll need all that bandwidth, not just for potential consumer mobile broadband users but for the vast amounts of data and connectivity required by AI and robotics (both here and possibly on a Moon base), two other sectors where Musk has a vested interest.

"With the advent of AI, and humanoid robotics and vehicle robotics and just a massive number of robots, the appetite for bandwidth will be much greater than it has been in the past," he explained during the earnings call.

Starlink Mobile reality check

Starlink, though, is quite a distance away from competing directly with Verizon, T-Mobile, or AT&T in the US. Across them, they have more than 300M connections (or customers). Starlink has a reported 12M global customers.

As for those V3 satellites that will help propel Starlink Mobile into the mobile broadband competitive space, they do not officially launch until next year. In the meantime, Starlink's V2 Satellites will fill the gaps and help provide partners like EchoStar with better, faster, and maybe more reliable satellite connectivity.

We do already have some proof of the efficacy of Starlink WiFi connectivity and throughput. Earlier this year, TechRadar US Managing Editor for News Jake Krol took a flight on a Starlink-equipped United Airlines aircraft where he enjoyed incredible connectivity and speed. Krol was a fan: "I could livestream a show or movie, or even select a 'live channel' via Disney+ on an iPad, watch any video on YouTube, and scroll through TikTok or Instagram Reels without the slowdowns or loading issues typical of non-Starlink-equipped United flights."

Of course, that connectivity goes from the Starlink satellites to a responder on the jet, which then feeds the signal to onboard Wi-Fi and connected devices. In the case of Starlink Mobile, there'll potentially be no middleman, just your phone, a satellite, and instant, fast connectivity.

The benefit of the low-Earth-orbit V3 satellites, when they do finally launch and fill the skies, is that they should allow consumers to connect with them just as they would with towers assigned to their favorite carrier.

There is also one major hurdle that SpaceX and Starlink already cleared when the FCC granted Starlink approval in January 2026 for the company's "Next-gen satellite constellation."

Even with all this in place, the stars must align with Starship being fully operational, all those new satellites launched, and customers lined up by the millions. The last bit is surely the biggest question mark. Even if most of their modern cellphones support these direct-to-satellite connections, how likely are consumers to leave their trusted carrier behind?

Shotwell, for one, is bullish: "I'm quite excited about Starlink Mobile going forward," she told investors, "We will start to fly the satellites next year, and we will start providing service end of next year."

• A spent Falcon 9 upper-stage rocket will hit the Moon near the Einstein Crater on 5 August at 5,400 mph, releasing roughly the energy equivalent of three tons of TNT
• The impact, though unintentional, was predicted since September 2025, giving NASA's LRO and South Korea's Danuri time to plan before-and-after imaging of the new crater
• Its scientific value is a rehearsal rather than a measurement: no seismometers have operated on the moon since 1977, so the event mainly tests impact-localization methods for future experiments

At roughly 06:35 UTC on August 5 2026, a spent Falcon 9 upper stage will stop being space junk and start being a crater.

The object, cataloged as 2025-010D, is projected to strike the lunar surface near the crater Einstein at 2.43 kilometers per second, which converts to about 8,700 kph or 5,400 mph.

While this was not intentionally aimed at the moon, almost a year of advance notice separates it from the usual category of orbital accident, even as NASA's Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter and South Korea's Danuri are being prepared to take before-and-after images of the area on the moon where it is expected to make its impact.

An increasingly crowded atmosphere

The object itself is the spent upper stage of the Falcon 9 which launched from Kennedy Space Center on January 15, 2025, carrying two commercial landers: Firefly Aerospace's Blue Ghost Mission 1, which went on to make the first fully successful private lunar touchdown that March, and ispace's Hakuto-R Mission 2, which was lost shortly before landing in June.

Independent astronomer Bill Gray, whose Project Pluto software produced the original prediction, puts the stage at roughly 12 meters long, about the height of a five-story building, with a mass near 4,900 kg.

After separation, it stayed in an elongated Earth orbit with a 26-day period, swinging between roughly 220,000 and 510,000 km. Its path and the moon's path cross, but for 18 months the two objects have never met at the crossing point.

Gray expects a single crater around 17 meters across, reasoning by analogy with the double crater left by a Chang'e-5 T1 upper stage in 2022. The observation-planning paper led by Benjamin Fernando points higher, at roughly 27 meters across and 5 meters deep. Either way, the impact should release energy equivalent to about three tons of TNT.

There are limits to what can be measured from it. When NASA deliberately crashed Saturn V third stages and lunar modules into the moon between 1969 and 1972, those impacts were seismic sources fired into an emplaced network of four seismometers. That network was switched off in 1977, and nothing has replaced it yet. So while orbiters will photograph the resulting crater, the impact cannot be recorded seismically at all.

This will be only the second dead rocket known to have hit the moon by accident, after the 2022 Chang'e-5 T1 event, which China has never publicly acknowledged. Gray, for his part, says the episode points to a certain carelessness about how leftover space hardware gets disposed of. Objects in low Earth orbit eventually meet the atmosphere and burn up. The moon has no such cleaning mechanism, so lunar impacts are permanent.

Elon Musk's long-term ambition of colonizing Mars is an idea you'd normally find in science fiction novels rather than something actually on the cards for humanity today. Yet that's what the tech entrepreneur is hoping we can achieve within his lifetime. As for the first humans on Mars? It's likely to be much sooner – and even as soon as 2030.

Life on Mars

Musk bluntly outlined the possible risks that any manned mission to Mars will involve when speaking at the International Astronautical Congress (IAC) a decade ago.

His comments underlined the fact that the engineers and astronauts involved in the first flights will have to accept extreme risk – and serve as a means of psychological filtering for anybody considering a role in such a mission as and when it may happen in the future.

During his talk, Musk also launched a concept design for an Interplanetary Transport System spaceship, which is designed to carry between 100 and 200 settlers to Mars, with roughly 1,000 of these vessels leaving Earth in unison.

Ashes to Ashes

Despite Musk's longstanding ambition for SpaceX to get people onto Mars, developments in recent months and years have stalled progress – especially a pivot from the company to focus on the Moon.

Musk formally delayed the Mars infrastructure timeline by up to seven years in February, citing the need to protect humanity's future by building a "self-growing city" on the lunar surface. This is despite saying in January last year that "we're going straight to Mars" while describing the Moon as "a distraction".

Musk's comments over the last few years about getting to Mars have come across as overly ambitious, putting it mildly. Critics suggest that SpaceX may never actually achieve this – including Britain's chief astrophysicist Lord Martin Rees, who described the plans as "dangerous delusion".

• Google and SpaceX are reportedly in talks over data centers in orbit
• It's the infrastructure that many big tech companies are investing in
• However, there are concerns over how feasible the technology actually is

There's a lot of effort and money going into plans to put data centers in space — mostly to meet the growing demands of AI processing — and Google and SpaceX are now reportedly in talks to clutter up Earth's orbit even further.

As per The Wall Street Journal and "people familiar with the discussions", talks are underway between the two giant tech companies. Google would provide the data centers, and SpaceX would provide the rockets to get them where they need to be.

There's not a lot of other detail here, although the report says Google is discussing its options with "other rocket-launch companies". It's a sensitive time for SpaceX, with an IPO expected in just a few months, and deals like this would certainly do no harm as far as the company's valuation goes.

It's also worth noting that Google owns 6.1% of SpaceX. Google has made no secret of its plans to put data centers up in space: "There's no doubt to me that a decade or so away, we'll be viewing it as a more normal way to build data centers," Google CEO Sundar Pichai told Fox News in an interview last November.

But can it work?

Given that so many big companies are investing in this technology, you'd be forgiven for thinking that it's all ready to go — but that's not quite the case.

As it stands, the tech isn't currently available due to various engineering challenges, and people like OpenAI's Sam Altman don't think this is a feasible idea in the short-term.

On the plus side: there's a lot of room up in space (though not quite as much as there used to be), and a lot of power, thanks to the constant availability of solar energy. It wouldn't be necessary to disrupt neighborhoods or overload power grids every time a giant new data center needed to be built.

However, this is also incredibly costly and incredibly difficult from a technical perspective. Current data center technology isn't built to withstand the extremes of space, and there's also the question of how repairs can be carried out in orbit.

For those who fully believe in the future of the technology, those problems can be overcome given time, funding, and further research. However, it's going to be a while before we see this working at scale.

• The FCC has relaxed low-orbit satellite restrictions
• It works out to a 7x capacity increase for internet satellites
• The move is welcomed by SpaceX and Amazon

The US Federal Communications Commission (FCC) has delivered some good news to Elon Musk's Starlink and other satellite internet providers, by removing several key restrictions on how much energy satellites can transmit to and receive from ground stations.

Technically, these are the Equivalent Power Flux Density (EPFD) rules set in the 1990s, as PC Mag reports. In simple terms, it means Starlink and others will be able to operate a much denser array of satellites for providing services to customers.

We're talking as much as a sevenfold increase in satellite network capacity, which should mean a connection that's more reliable and faster. However, it's going to take a while before satellite companies will be able to take advantage.

"This is a major step toward enhancing the satellite broadband experience for millions of Americans by enabling faster speeds, lower costs, and greater reliability," says the FCC. "This change could also unlock more than $2 billion in economic benefits for the American people and up to seven-fold more capacity for space-based broadband services."

Sharing spectrum

The rules were introduced to prevent radio signal interference between satellites in non-geostationary orbit (NGSO) — also known as low-Earth orbit — from affecting geostationary satellites (GSO) higher in orbit. Now, both NGSO and GSO satellites will be able to share more of the communications spectrum.

It's a change that's been welcomed by Starlink's David Goldman, as well as Brian Huseman, a Vice President at Amazon — another company looking to build out a network of internet-providing satellites with Amazon Leo.

As Gizmodo reports, Viasat is one of the GSO satellite companies that has warned that the move could potentially lead to more interference without proper regulation. Viasat has also raised concerns about Starlink getting a monopoly on this particular market.

The view of the FCC is that modern satellites are designed to share spectrum more effectively than they did in the past, and the 1990s rules no longer apply. Starlink, owned by SpaceX, will no doubt be keen to get its next batch of satellites launched.

• Large-scale cardboard ENIAC replica recreates historic computer layout using thousands of handmade parts
• Teacher credits dyscalculia-driven spatial reasoning as key factor in engineering massive classroom builds
• Students construct nearly 300 square meters of cardboard structure matching original computer dimensions

A full-scale replica of one of the earliest programmable digital computers now fills a classroom space in Arizona, built almost entirely from cardboard and wood by students working under a teacher who credits his own dyscalculia (the math equivalent of dyslexia) for shaping how he engineers.

The life-size recreation of ENIAC (Electronic Numerical Integrator and Computer), widely regarded as the world’s first general-purpose programmable electronic computer, stretches across hundreds of square feet and mirrors the layout of the original machine that once weighed about 30 short tons.

Students at PS Academy in Arizona spent nearly six months assembling the structure, producing around 22,000 custom parts and joining them using roughly 1,600 hot glue sticks, according to I Programmer.

Experience, scale, and structure of ENIAC

Instead of steel cabinets packed with wiring and electronics, the replica uses layered cardboard panels with LED lighting to simulate the appearance of the original units.

Technology instructor Tom Burick said the project focused on recreating the physical experience of the machine rather than making it run.

"This project was never intended to recreate a working ENIAC. It was designed to recreate the experience, scale, and structure of ENIAC — so students and the public can understand what early computing really looked like and what it demanded of the people who built and operated it," he said.

Every major unit found in the original system, including accumulators, function tables, and the master programmer, appears in the correct physical position, matching historical layouts as closely as possible.

Students worked from original patent drawings, military documentation, and detailed photographs while also communicating with historians and museum staff to verify accuracy.

Burick’s path into teaching followed years spent building robots and running his own robotics company before turning toward education after the business closed during the financial crisis of the late 2000s, according to IEEE Spectrum.

He said his own dyscalculia shaped the way he approaches engineering challenges, forcing him to develop alternative ways of solving technical problems.

“People tell you what it takes, but they never tell you what it gives,” Burick said. “To me, [it] has always been a superpower.”

The completed replica includes 18,000 simulated vacuum tubes and multiple function tables arranged in the same U-shaped configuration used by the original machine.

By the time construction finished, the scale of the project left the classroom filled wall-to-wall with towering panels that recreate how early computing environments once appeared.

The ENIAC system itself was dismantled decades ago, leaving only scattered sections preserved in museums, which meant most people would never see the machine assembled in full form again.

Rebuilding it at full scale offered students a way to engage with computing history physically rather than through textbooks or diagrams alone.

IEEE Spectrum notes that previous projects led by Burick include an 8-foot-long drivable Cybertruck replica, and future plans could involve recreating hardware connected to NASA’s Artemis missions, something I'd love to see.

• Chinese national indicted in a huge phishing campaign
• NASA, the military, universities and private companies were targeted
• The perpetrator stole restricted defense software

NASA’s Office of Inspector General (OIG) has released a report detailing an intricate campaign to steal export-restricted software, orchestrated by a Chinese national.

The campaign targeted engineers at NASA, the Air Force, the Navy, the Army, and the Federal Aviation Administration, as well as major universities and private companies.

Posing as a colleague or friend, the perpetrator managed to convince dozens of professors, researchers, and engineers to share sensitive defense software and code for almost five years.

Federal warrant issued

The Chinese national, identified as Song Wu, was investigated by the Office of Investigations Cyber Crimes Division (CCD) after receiving an alert that emails were being received from a Gmail account claiming to be an aerospace professor who had collaborated with NASA.

Song Wu’s phishing campaign began in January 2017 and ended in December 2021, during which time he contacted employees at NASA, the Air Force, the Navy, the Army, the Federal Aviation Administration, and employees at numerous universities and private companies.

According to the CCD, Song Wu and unidentified co-conspirators would rigorously research their targets, and then pose as a friend or colleague requesting access to copies or source code of modeling software used for aerospace design and weapons development.

As the software was related to defense, it was subject to export controls that were unknowingly violated when victims fell for Song Wu’s deception.

A federal warrant has been issued for Song Wu’s arrest, and he has been indicted on 14 counts of wire fraud and 14 counts of aggravated identity theft, but he remains at large, the NASA report said.

“Cases like this underscore the importance of complying with export controls and staying vigilant, even during everyday email exchanges,” said Ryan Pittman, the Special Agent in Charge of CCD. “At NASA OIG, it’s our job to protect the Agency’s cutting-edge technology and expose cyber criminals who attempt to steal it.”

Fusion propulsion has been proposed for decades as a highly efficient way to move spacecraft faster across the solar system without the need for massive amounts of fuel. Making that concept a reality has, however, proved difficult, especially when it comes to controlling plasma and directing it into usable thrust.

Now a UK-based propulsion developer believes it has taken an early step toward achieving that goal.

At Amazon’s MARS Conference in California, Pulsar Fusion demonstrated “first plasma” in its Sunbird exhaust test system, with the experiment conducted in Bletchley, UK, and streamed live to the stage.

The test showed plasma being confined and guided through the exhaust architecture, offering a first look at how a fusion-powered propulsion system might work outside of theory and simulation.

A reusable space tug in orbit

Chemical rockets provide strong bursts of thrust but burn through large amounts of propellant, while electric systems stretch fuel efficiency but accelerate slowly over long periods.

Fusion propulsion is attractive because it offers the possibility of combining high thrust with extremely high exhaust velocity, something current propulsion systems cannot deliver at the same time.

Pulsar’s Sunbird concept takes aim at that trade-off by acting as a reusable space tug operating in orbit.

Instead of launching spacecraft with large amounts of chemical propellant, a lighter vehicle could dock with the tug and receive the push needed to reach destinations such as the Moon.

Internal modelling suggests that approach could reduce in-space propellant requirements by more than 90% for missions similar to Artemis II.

The recent plasma milestone is still an early-stage result, but it provides a clearer view of how fusion propulsion hardware could evolve from laboratory experiments into practical spacecraft systems.

I wanted to find out more, so spoke with Pulsar Fusion CEO Richard Dinan about the technical hurdles ahead, the economics of fusion propulsion, and how systems like Sunbird could reshape future missions.

• What breakthroughs has Pulsar Fusion achieved in order to deliver this first successful demonstration of plasma control?

The breakthrough here was not a single moment, but the successful integration of several difficult elements into one working system.

We were able to generate plasma within the exhaust structure and demonstrate that it could be guided and shaped using electromagnetic fields in a propulsion-relevant architecture.

That matters because controlling plasma is fundamental. Before you can talk seriously about higher-energy systems, you first have to show that you can create the flow, contain it, and direct it in a stable and measurable way.

This demonstration was an early but important step in proving that the architecture behaves as intended.

That matters enormously in space, because every kilogram of propellant launched from Earth is expensive. A high-Specific Impulse propulsion system can dramatically reduce the amount of fuel that must be carried for deep-space maneuvers.

• Specific Impulse will be a new concept for our audience. Can you describe why this metric is so important and how an Artemis mission based on plasma technology would differ in terms of fuel carried, risks, and CAPEX/OPEX?

In an Artemis-type architecture, that could mean a very different mission design. Instead of relying entirely on chemical propulsion launched from Earth in one go, you could imagine lighter spacecraft being delivered to orbit and then transferred onward by highly efficient in-space propulsion systems.

That changes the fuel equation, reduces dependence on brute force launch mass, and opens the door to reusable orbital infrastructure.

This ultimately means lighter launch craft, and therefore less fuel and less weight, resulting in faster, cheaper, more efficient missions.

• You argue that a shift away from single-launch delivery mechanisms to a reusable (and therefore cheaper) model lies in our common future. Can you tell us more about your vision and what sort of price point you predict, given that Orbital predicts $10/kg?

Our view is that the future of space will look less like single-use expeditionary missions and more like a transport network.

Today, most missions still depend on launching everything needed for the mission in one stack, from one gravity well, at one moment in time. That is expensive and inherently inefficient.

We think the long-term future is an orbital economy built around reusable infrastructure: vehicles that move cargo, fuel, and eventually strategic assets between orbits and beyond, without being discarded after one mission.

That does not just reduce cost, it changes what becomes commercially possible. Once mobility in space becomes reusable, you can start treating propulsion as an operational service rather than a disposable hardware event.

• One of the facts you mentioned surprised me. Sunbird delivers megawatt-scale onboard power. How does that happen? What sort of energy ranges (in MWh) are we looking at, and what use cases does it unlock?

It's an important point that a fusion-based propulsion architecture is not only interesting because of thrust. It is also interesting because, in principle, it is tied to very large energy flows. That means a mature system could potentially support both propulsion and substantial onboard power availability.

At this stage, however, we would be careful to distinguish between long-term system potential and what is being demonstrated today.

The present work is about validating elements of plasma control and exhaust architecture, not delivering a flight-ready power platform.

In the long run, if such systems mature as hoped, megawatt-class onboard power could unlock a very different category of spacecraft capability, including deep-space operations, power-hungry payloads, and entirely new classes of orbital and interplanetary missions.

• How did Pulsar Fusion achieve what looks like a major breakthrough in propulsion while titans (SpaceX, NASA) haven't yet cracked it? What is the secret sauce, and how do you plan to keep abreast of the competition?

I would be careful with the framing. We are not claiming to have solved fusion propulsion in its entirety, and there is still a great deal of work ahead.

What we have done is move quickly and show early progress in a specific architecture that we believe has long-term promise.

Large organizations often have different incentives. They may be focused on near-term operational systems, legacy architectures, or broader institutional priorities. Smaller companies can sometimes move faster in frontier areas because they are willing to concentrate their effort on a narrower technical pathway.

• You mentioned nuclear fusion space propulsion in your March 2026 press release. How is that different from the "holy grail" represented by the tokamak?

A tokamak is designed first and foremost as a terrestrial fusion power machine. Its job is to confine plasma for long enough, at sufficient temperature and pressure, to produce useful net energy in a stationary power-generation context.

A space propulsion system has a very different objective. It is not simply trying to replicate a grid-scale fusion plant in orbit. It is trying to create a system in which high-energy plasma can ultimately be used for propulsion in a mass-constrained, mission-driven environment.

So while both involve plasma physics and fusion-related principles, the design logic is very different.

One is optimized for stable power production on Earth; the other is being pursued as a propulsion architecture for space, where efficiency, mass, controllability, and exhaust behavior are central.

• Blue Origin reused a rocket booster on its latest mission
• This was the first time it has done this, marking a major milestone
• However, the mission was a failure as it didn't place its satellite payload high enough

Over the weekend Jeff Bezos’ Blue Origin space company hit a major milestone by successfully re-using a rocket booster for the first time — deploying the same ‘Never Tell Me The Odds’ rocket in Sunday’s NG-3 mission that it used back in November for NG-2.

This should be a time for celebration as Blue Origin proves it can better compete with SpaceX on sustainability and space travel prowess, but it isn’t. Why? Because NG-3’s primary objective was an utter failure.

Beyond a rocket booster reusability test, Blue Origin's primary goal for this flight was to drop an AST SpaceMobile communications satellite – BlueBird 7 — into orbit. It did technically do this, but NG-3 placed the satellite “lower than planned” as AST phrased it.

Per an AST SpaceMobile statement, “While the satellite separated from the launch vehicle and powered on, the altitude is too low to sustain operations with its on-board thruster technology and will [be] de-orbited. The cost of the satellite is expected to be recovered under the company’s insurance policy.”

This means the satellite will be repositioned and left to burn up in the Earth’s atmosphere.

It IS rocket science

For AST SpaceMobile this failure isn’t world-ending — it says it still has plans to launch 45 more satellites before 2026 ends — but for Blue Origin this failure will leave an embarrassing stain on what should have otherwise been a momentous flight.

The silver lining is, if this mission had to be a failure, at least Blue Origin messed up with a satellite launch and not the first launch of its lunar lander — which was originally meant to be NG-3’s purpose.

The next NASA Artemis mission is expected to drop people onto the moon for the first time in over 50 years, but it still needs a lander. SpaceX and Blue Origin are currently racing to design and test the craft that will take astronauts from their spaceship to the lunar surface, but neither has completed the project yet.

Because the Artemis missions are intended to establish a permanent lunar base, the new lander approach can’t be a repeat of the one-and-done style previous missions to the moon — it needs to be something that can repeatedly shuttle crew and cargo.

There’s also a lot less room for failure when carrying crew compared with cargo. Things can be replaced, people’s lives cannot.

We’ll have to wait and see how this mistake affects Blue Origin’s lunar lander bid. Rocket science is famously difficult, so hopefully this will simply be a learning experience for the company.

• Blue Origin has reused one of its rockets for the first time
• 'Never Tell Me The Odds' was part of the New Glenn 3 mission
• The mission launched a mobile connectivity satellite

We've got another space first to report today: Blue Origin has successfully reused a rocket booster for the first time, managing to get the 'Never Tell Me The Odds' rocket back to its landing pad in the Atlantic Ocean as part of the third New Glenn (NG-3) mission.

The rocket booster was first used with the NG-2 mission last November, and having recovered it that time, Blue Origin has now shown it can be deployed again. It means the company can now better compete with SpaceX when it comes to these reusable rockets.

Liftoff happened at 7.25am ET (4.25am PT / 12.25pm BST / 9.25pm AEST), and the 'Never Tell Me The Odds' booster arrived back on its floating Jacklyn droneship around 10 minutes later, after finishing the job of pushing its payload into orbit.

And that payload is also notable: it's the AST SpaceMobile BlueBird 7 satellite, which is effectively going to act as a giant cell tower in space (it boasts a massive antenna measuring 2,400 square feet or 223 square meters). It gets us a big step closer to global satellite coverage for modern smartphones.

A major satellite expansion

As with reusable rockets, Amazon and Blue Origin are competing with SpaceX and Starlink when it comes to satellite communications. SpaceX is hoping to begin the process of launching thousands of its Starlink V2 satellites sometime next year.

The idea is that our phones will be able to connect to them without any hardware or software upgrades — these satellites will be smart enough and powerful enough to mimic a regular cell tower, with 4G and 5G speeds, from all the way up in orbit.

It'll take years before the space satellite network is ready to go beyond emergency communications — and pricing and carrier partnerships will need to be worked out along the way — but BlueBird 7 is a sign of the direction we're heading in.

Reaction to the launch on social media has been overwhelmingly positive and enthusiastic (perhaps buoyed by the recent Artemis II mission), with livestream viewers describing the experience as "a wonderful show for any rocket enthusiast" and simply "amazing". You can read more about the New Glenn missions on the Blue Origin website.

Only a very lucky few people ever get to travel into space, but more than 5.6 million names just completed a journey around the Moon, stored on a microSD card carried aboard NASA’s Artemis II mission.

That flight sent four astronauts farther from Earth than humans have ever traveled, completing a roughly 10-day mission that orbited the Moon before safely returning to Earth.

The trip tested critical systems for future deep-space exploration and marked a major milestone for the Artemis program which will ultimately return humans to the surface of the Moon in 2028.

Today's top memory card deal

The microSD card, carrying 5,647,889 submitted names, was zipped into Rise, the mission’s mascot, a cartoonish Moon wearing a cap covered in stars. The mascot itself was designed by a year three student from California, called Lucas Ye, whose artwork was selected from more than 2,600 entries from over 50 countries.

While the specific card zipped inside Rise was certified for spaceflight conditions, it traces its lineage to the SanDisk Ultra series used by people here on Earth inside cameras, handheld devices, and portable recording gear.

The consumer version of the SanDisk Ultra microSD series comes in 16 and 32GB capacities and supports both microSD and microSDHC formats, making it compatible with a wide range of devices used for everyday recording and storage tasks.

Rated at Class 10 speeds, the card supports read speeds of up to 80MB/s, which suits Full HD video capture, burst photography, and quick file transfers.

It's durable, with protection against water, temperature extremes, and X-ray exposure, and maybe (but we wouldn't bet on it), trips around the Moon.

After splashdown, the mission mascot didn’t stay tucked away inside the spacecraft as it should have done according to NASA's mission rules, Artemis II commander Reid Wiseman later revealed on X.

“I was supposed to leave Rise in Integrity….but that was not something I was going to do. I stuffed that little guy in a dry bag we had in our survival kit and hooked the bag onto my pressure suit,” he wrote.

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• Artemis II generates data volumes that old systems cannot handle efficiently
• Laser communications transmit far more data than traditional radio systems
• Infrared light enables high-speed space communication across vast distances

The sheer volume of data generated during modern lunar missions has rendered old radio systems nearly obsolete.

Artemis II was expected to produce somewhere between 300GB and over 400GB of high-resolution imagery and telemetry by the mission’s end.

By comparison, the Apollo 13 mission operated with a fraction of that capacity, and the difference is not just incremental — it’s a fundamental overhaul in how spacecraft talk to Earth.

The engineering shift that made the leap possible

Traditional radio frequencies could not move that much data quickly enough, so engineers turned to an entirely different method: laser communications.

Laser communications rely on invisible infrared light, which travels at the same speed as radio waves but carries far more information.

Because infrared light has a higher frequency, it can pack more data into each transmission - and the Orion Artemis II Optical Communications System (O2O) demonstrated the ability to downlink over 100GB of data.

This system could move roughly 36GB in a single hour, outpacing traditional radio systems on the S-band, which could manage only about 7GB per day.

NASA noted, “More data means more discoveries,” although the practical benefits for crew safety and real-time decision-making remain to be fully proven.

However, this system came with its earthly limitations, and any weather disruption could interrupt the flow of information.

Ground station telescopes at NASA’s White Sands Complex in New Mexico and the Table Mountain Facility in California had to operate in high, dry environments with minimal cloud cover to maintain a strong laser link.

Still, the O2O terminal — comprising a 4-inch telescope, two gimbals, a modem, and a controller — passed multi-day readiness reviews.

A NASA official described the achievement as “an impressive leap” forward, yet the system was not used on Artemis III, raising questions about the pace of adoption.

While a 100,000-fold improvement over Apollo 13 sounds extraordinary, the comparison deserves scrutiny.

Apollo 13’s radio systems were designed in the 1960s, and modern radio technology has also improved considerably.

The real test will be whether laser communications prove reliable over deep-space distances without frequent ground-station interventions.

The Australian National University attempted to receive O2O’s laser links using affordable commercial components — a demonstration that could validate or undermine claims of scalability.

For now, the numbers are impressive, but space history is littered with promising technologies that struggled outside controlled conditions.

• The Orion spacecraft uses eight processors running identical instructions simultaneously
• A fail-safe design prevents faulty computers from sending incorrect commands
• Triple redundant memory corrects single-bit errors automatically on access

The NASA Artemis II mission relies on a computing system built to remain operational under extreme conditions and hardware faults.

Unlike the Apollo program, where onboard computers handled limited functions, the Orion spacecraft manages life support, navigation, and communication through integrated flight software.

The Orion capsule carries one of the most fault-tolerant computer systems ever built for spaceflight, operating 250,000 miles from Earth, where no repairs are possible.

From Apollo's limits to Orion's full system control

Apollo astronauts relied on a 1MHz computer with just 4 kilobytes of memory, but today's spacecrafts need much more, considering the distance.

The Orion spacecraft uses two vehicle management computers, each containing two flight control modules.

Each module consists of a pair of processors that continuously check each other's outputs, resulting in 8 processors executing the same instructions simultaneously.

If a processor produces an incorrect result, the paired design detects the mismatch immediately and prevents the output from being used.

"We still architect to cover for hardware failures," said Nate Uitenbroek, Software Integration and Verification Lead in NASA's Orion Program.

"Along with physically redundant wires, we have logically redundant network planes. We have redundant flight computers."

Instead of relying on majority voting, the system selects outputs from available modules based on a defined priority order.

The system is designed to tolerate rapid failures during flight. Uitenbroek stated, "We can lose three FCMs in 22 seconds and still ride through safely on the last FCM… A faulty computer will fail silently, rather than transmit the wrong answer."

Failed modules are reset and re-synchronized, allowing them to rejoin the system during the mission.

Orion uses a time-triggered Ethernet network that distributes a shared time reference throughout the system - so if a module fails to meet its execution deadline, it is automatically isolated, reset, and re-synchronized before returning to operation.

The computing system includes triple-redundant memory capable of correcting single-bit errors during every read operation.

Network interfaces use dual communication lanes that are continuously compared to detect inconsistencies, while the overall network is replicated across three independent planes.

Orion carries a separate Backup Flight Software system that operates on different hardware and software, running continuously in the background.

"It is intentionally different to ensure that a common mode software failure in the primary flight software isn't also implemented incorrectly on the backup," Uitenbroek said.

The spacecraft also includes procedures for full power loss scenarios, allowing systems to restart, stabilize, and re-establish communication once power is restored.

The system is overengineered by any commercial standard, but deep space offers no second chances.

Whether all 8 processors will perform as designed under real radiation conditions remains untested, and the backup software has never faced an actual emergency.

Still, for a mission where the nearest hardware store is 250,000 miles away, this architecture makes a brutal kind of sense.

Via Communications of the ACM

Having successfully looped around the Moon and returned safely to Earth, taking its four man crew farther from home than any humans before, Artemis II's mission is now complete.

During that historic journey, iconic Earth images were stored on ProGrade Digital CFexpress Type B Iridium memory cards — including the same 400GB version that's currently available to buy on Amazon for $459.99.

That connection between a real lunar mission and a product anyone can buy makes this one of the cooler, more unusual pieces of camera gear I’ve come across. It isn’t tied to simulations or lab claims, but to hardware trusted during an actual crewed flight beyond the Moon.

Today's top memory card deal

ProGrade Digital entered into a Space Act agreement with NASA to support Artemis missions using its CFexpress Type B Iridium cards.

The hardware was chosen from several commercial options after testing showed it capable of handling harsh conditions similar to those found in space.

“The lunar surface presents very challenging environments for cameras and related storage media,” said Jeremy Myers, HULC Handheld Universal Lunar Camera COTS hardware lead. “The partnership developed between NASA and ProGrade will help ensure images and video are captured reliably when humanity returns to the Moon”.

“Through diligent teamwork between the ProGrade San Jose engineering team, NASA’s Space Systems Department at the Marshall Space Flight Center, and key memory technology supplier – Phison Electronics – we were able to go from sample submission to hardware delivery in just under 18 months," said Wes Brewer, founder, and CEO of ProGrade Digital.

"During qualification, our cards were placed into the extreme environmental conditions uniquely encountered in outer space, over many hours of testing to maximize the reliable capture and playback of still images and video in the specially designed Nikon Z9 camera was possible."

"Perhaps the best part of this accomplishment is for our everyday customers, who can now buy memory cards that will be used in the Handheld Universal Lunar Camera during future Artemis missions.”

The same card family is part of the Space Act agreement supporting the Handheld Universal Lunar Camera, or HULC, system planned to land on the lunar surface as part of NASA’s Artemis III mission.

This 400GB card supports read speeds up to 3550MB/s and sustained write speeds up to 850MB/s, giving it the bandwidth needed for large RAW files and high-resolution video. That speed will perfectly suits photographers (on or off Earth) working with 4K or 8K footage.

Compatibility with CFexpress Type B cameras and backward support for XQD devices makes it useful across a wide range of professional camera bodies.

Owning the same storage hardware used to capture real images during humanity’s latest journey around the Moon is a rare crossover between space exploration and everyday photography equipment. It's a cool thing to own, even if the photographs and videos you store on it are likely to be of a more down to Earth nature.

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Another week, another seven days of some seriously big tech news, and we're here to help you catch up on what you might have missed.

From Mac shortages to Artemis II iPhone photos, we have recaps of the seven biggest news stories of the week below for you.

When you're finished, make sure to also check out the eight new movies and TV shows you should watch this weekend.

7. Pebblebee built an excellent AirTag rival

This week, personal safety device company Pebblebee launched its new Halo tracker, a new AirTag rival but with added functionalities.

Built on that ‘what if something goes wrong’ feeling, the Halo tracker can be registered on Apple’s Find My app or Google’s Find Hub, so no additional app is required. When activated, the tracker signals a 130dB siren when activated to attract attention from passersby in the area, and will also emit a flashing strobe of light (which doubles as a 150-lumen flashlight), all while sharing your real-time location with up to five trusted contacts called your Safety Circle

It’s retailing now for $59.99/ £55.28/ AU$87.88, and each device comes with a free 12-month subscription to Pebblebee’s Alert Live plan, which is required for live location sharing.

• Read the full story: Pebblebee’s new personal tracker is an AirTag crossed with a safety siren

6. We tried DJI's robovac

The people at DJI know a lot about drones, but it turns out they’re no slouches when it comes to robot vacuums, either. We tested the new DJI Romo P, with its funky transparent case that lets you see its cleaning components while it works, and its obstacle detection and navigation blew us away.

The Romo P surpassed expectations in our vacuuming tests, too, getting right into the corners of the room, and did an admirable job mopping up messy spills on hard floors. It’s expensive, yes, but it’s one of the best robot vacuums that has ever roamed our floors, and we highly recommend it.

• Read the full story: DJI’s first foray into the pantheon of home cleaning

5. We experienced Sony RGB TV

We've been waiting for Sony's formal entry into RGB TV, and this week we got a first look at what the TV giant has dubbed True RGB. It's an eye-catching name amongst the crowded RGB TV space, with Samsung, TCL, and Hisense all already taking up space.

Our early first impressions of Sony's True RGB TV tech proved good, though, with punchy colors, high brightness, and overall impressive visuals. Sony says its first consumer TV model with True RGB will launch in Spring 2026, and Sony's RGB TV tech is a three-diode system with one red, one green, and one blue, plus a new backlight driver controlled by Sony's unique mix.

As always, Sony will strive not to skew reality and, ideally, deliver visuals that match the creator's intent.

• Read the full story: I saw Sony’s True RGB TV tech in action

4. We poured one out for Samsung Messages

We said goodbye to Samsung Messages this week, as the South Korean tech brand announced the service is shutting down in July.

The announcement came with a suggestion to switch to Google Messages, but many folks are frustrated by the change.

There's no workaround to keep access to Samsung Messages, but if you don’t like Google Messages, there are at least alternative apps you could use, including Textra SMS and Handcent Next SMS messenger.

• Read the full story: Samsung Galaxy owners rebel against being forced to switch to Google Messages

3. Amazon stopped support for some Kindles

As of May 20, Amazon will be pulling the plug on support for Kindles and Fire tablet models released before 2012. However, most of the affected devices are still widely used today (mainly the Kindle 3, Kindle 4, and the first generation Kindle Paperwhite), and it’s rubbed keen e-readers the wrong way.

When the day comes, you’ll still be able to read content that’s already downloaded on your device, but you won’t be able to purchase or download new books after the date has passed. For most users, the simplicity of a Kindle is what has kept them glued to older models instead of upgrading to Amazon’s more advanced, and therefore pricier, models. Besides, this isn’t stopping users from sideloading new books as a workaround — but how long will it be until Amazon clamps down on this, too?

• Read the full story: Amazon is pulling the plug on old Kindle devices

2. NASA shared its otherworldly iPhone snaps

The Artemis II mission has been wowing us, mere earthlings, this week with its deep-space adventures — and that included shooting what are probably the best iPhone and GoPro photos ever taken.

Two of these, showing astronauts Christina Koch and Reid Wiseman looking back towards their home planet, were shot using the iPhone 17 Pro Max’s selfie camera, no less. And outside the ship, a 12-year-old GoPro captured a mind-blowing photo of a lunar eclipse from the far side of the moon.

Our camera roll looks decidedly underwhelming by comparison. Still, it was fascinating to see NASA using some of the same dusty old camera tech – including the decade-old Nikon D5 DSLR – that we’ve been eyeing up in secondhand stores.

• Read the full story: The first iPhone 17 Pro Max photos sent back from the Artemis II mission really are out of this world

1. Mac stock ran low

Mac Mini, Mac Studio, and MacBook Neo stock has been running low across various Apple stores, and problems may persist.

You could be waiting several weeks, or even months in some cases, to receive your Mac Mini or Studio order, depending on your configuration. While Apple hasn't confirmed the rumors, many suspect the ongoing RAM crisis is to blame.

As for the MacBook Neo, the delays are instead being blamed on a weirder source: a lack of iPhone 16 Pro chips. The theory is that these chips were chosen because Apple had a stockpile of A18 Pros with a faulty CPU core; the five-core chips wouldn't work for phones but could be repurposed into Neo chips. However, the incredible popularity of the Neo may have taken Apple by surprise, leading to shortages.

• Read the full story: Mac shortages hit, and the RAM crisis is probably to blame

• Solar eclipse image from Artemis II shot with 12-year-old action cam
• The 'greatest gift' moment recorded with a GoPro Hero4 Black
• The mission's gear choices continue to surprise camera fans

The Artemis II crew continue to send stunning images back to earth of key moments during its moon fly-by — not least of which include a solar eclipse from the far side of the moon.

Like other iconic images from the mission, the sight, never before seen by humans and described by crew member Victor Glover as 'the greatest gift' of the mission, was captured with the most surprising camera gear of all, at least to camera fans and so far as image quality goes.

Following the Lumix GH5 for take-off shots, the decade-old Nikon D5 DSLR for the incredible Earthset image and earth selfies with iPhone 17s, the solar eclipse was captured with an even older action camera, the GoPro Hero4 Black.

A full 12-years-old, the Hero4 Black was launched in 2014 and has long been discontinued, being replaced several times over, with the latest model being the Hero 13 Black.

It's one of a string of surprising gear choices, at least to camera fans who might have expected the multi-billion dollar mission to be equipped with the latest and greatest camera gear. So what do we know about the solar eclipse images and the gear used to record the epic sight?

I need a Hero

NASA describes the image named 'Eclipsed: A View from Orion', dated April 6, 2026, as the moon, backlit by the Sun during a solar eclipse, with the Orion visible in the foreground on the left. It also reveals the bright spot visible just below the moon’s bottom right edge to be Saturn, and the bright spot at the right edge of the image as Mars.

EXIF data on the NASA site reveals the camera gear and settings used to record the solar eclipse image. The Hero4 Black was set to manual white balance, auto exposure, ISO 800, and a 5-second exposure time.

The Hero4 Black was the first in the series of action cams with ProTune manual control, which has enabled a slow shutter speed, along with Bluetooth and WiFi support, though, of course, later models pack these features and more.

And it's not the only stunning image from the mission captured with the Hero4 Black. Unsurprisingly, GoPro has shared other key images on its Instagram (see above), pinpointing four moments.

We reached out to GoPro for comment about why the Artemis II mission opted for the 12-year-old action camera, and it said;

"Unfortunately, we are not in the position to go any deeper on these questions than what is publicly available — NASA has very strict guidelines on their brand, and we can’t speak on their behalf."

I'm sure the camera gear choices will be one of many questions posed to the crew upon its safe return to earth, and I, for one, will be keen to hear what they have to say.

For now, I'm marvelling at the incredible images shared so far, in the knowledge that there are plenty more images and moments yet to come.

• NASA has revealed its playlist of wake-up call songs for the Artemis II crew
• It includes Chappell Roan's Pink Pony Club and a cover of Passion Pit's Sleepyhead
• This tradition dates back to the days of the Apollo missions

Aside from being a roaring success mid-mission, NASA’s Artemis II venture is one of the most important historical events of our time, but despite travelling through deep space its astronauts haven’t missed out on the simple things we love about life on Earth.

From its food menu of much-loved delicacies, to using the iPhone 17 Pro Max to snap pictures of our planet from afar, these things make life on the Orion spacecraft much more manageable — and the same goes for its choice of music. You heard that right. In space, pop music still exists.

Manned by the Artemis II control team based in Houston, Texas, NASA is playing a series of songs to the Orion spacecraft as wake-up calls for astronauts Christina Koch, Reid Wiseman, Victor Glover, and Jeremy Hansen. It’s a handy way to ensure the crew is kept on a schedule that aligns with the rest of the team down on Earth.

In between all the seriousness of the Artemis II venture, this is one of the light-hearted elements of the space mission that people have been following online. NASA unveils each song with every wake-up call, so the next one can remain a surprise, but there’s already been a slew of bangers NASA has emitted to the crew since they launched into space on April 1.

Kicking off the series of wake-up calls was Sleepyhead by Young and Sick (a cover of Passion Pit’s original version) — whose title is fitting to how the crew must’ve been feeling at the time.

The second wake-up call was soundtracked by John Legend and Andre 3000’s Greenlight, followed by In a Daydream by Freddy Jones Band and viral pop banger Pink Pony Club by Chappell Roan, which was cut only a minute into the song, garnering a humorous response from Wiseman: “We were eagerly awaiting the chorus,” he said to the control team.

CeeLo Green’s Working Class Heroes (Work), Mandisa and ToyMac’s Good Morning, and Glass Animals’ Tokyo Drifting finish the playlist. NASA has more tunes on the way as the Artemis II crew makes its way back to Earth, but we won’t know what they’ll be until NASA updates its official Spotify playlist, which you can stream right now.

It may be a surprise to you, but this isn't unique to the Artemis II mission. NASA's tradition of sending wake-up calls dates back all the way to the Apollo days, most notably when NASA used Frank Sinatra and Tony Bennett to wake up the crew, and not forgetting when the theme for 2001: A Space Odyssey was used during the Apollo 15 mission in 1971.

Which tracks would you want to hear if you were confined in the Orion spacecraft?

Everyone is buzzing about Apple's rumored iPhone Fold: it might arrive in September with the iPhone 18! It might not arrive then because of production delays! It might not have a crease! So what. Who cares? Did you see the iPhone on the Orion spaceship? The one that Artemis II mission crew members used to photograph the moon? That's what matters. That's what I want to talk about.

The iPhone Fold is important not because anyone needs it. It's about competition and slot-filling. Samsung has ably carved out a folding phone market (at 2.5% ov the overall market, it's still tiny) and everyone is looking at Apple, wondering what's up.

In typical fashion, the Cupertino tech giant has taken its dear sweet time to develop its own foldable, all while watching everyone else work out the myriad flexy phone kinks. You know the ones I'm talking about: water tightness, ability to withstand a grit of sand, screen durability, and that cursed screen crease.

Whatever Apple finally delivers in June or September or next year, it will probably be the best single-dolidding phone we've ever seen, and it still won't be as remarkable as what just happened in space.

Think about this: An iPhone 17 Pro Max traveled, along with the Artemis II crew, further away from where it was designed and built than any consumer technology has traveled before. Commander Reid Wiseman slipped it into his space suit (actually, the Artemis II ground crew slipped it in), and then probably patted the spot once before the Artemis II spacecraft rocketed up and off Earth to a rendezvous with the moon.

I knew astronauts were allowed to take smartphones with them, but it never occurred to me that they might be using them in space. After all, the Orion spaceship is already equipped with cameras on the solar arrays and a bunch of handheld DSLRs like the Nikon D5, along with some formidable 400mm lenses.

On the other hand, these four astronauts are products of a modern digital age. Of course, they took out their phones and snapped selfies with our home in the background. Naturally, Commander Wiseman used his iPhone 17 Pro Max's 8x optical zoom, which uses a sensor crop, to pull the moon's jagged surface close enough to almost touch.

It's clear that smartphone use, whether it's iPhones, Samsung Galaxy handsets, or Google Pixels, in space will now be a part of space travel. Every subsequent flight in our return to the moon and eventual colonization will feature imagery captured on mobile devices.

I won't argue that the images captured by Apple's 48MP main camera are better or of a higher quality than those captured with the Nikon D5 and its huge lens, but they tell a different, more personal story. When the camera can be held up with one hand to capture the astronaut and her environment, the entire mission becomes more relatable and human.

Remember this moment: the week the iPhone went to space, it matters, a whole lot more than whether or not you get to see an iPhone Fold in 2026.

• Artemis II astronauts have snapped the Moon with their iPhones
• The photos were shown off during a NASA livestream
• More images continue to be shared as the Orion spacecraft heads home

Having circled around the Moon, the crew of the Artemis II are now heading back home – and spectacular photos taken by the astronauts on board the Orion spacecraft, with their iPhone 17 Pro Max handsets, keep on coming.

This time, it's a picture of the lunar surface snapped by mission commander Reid Wiseman that we're marveling over. The image was shown off during a NASA livestream and posted to social media (via 9to5Google).

While the post below mentions the iPhone 17 Pro, we know that the astronauts were in fact given iPhone 17 Pro Max models, and those are the phones that are mentioned in the metadata linked to the images that NASA has shared so far.

Other details that have emerged over the snap are that it was taken using the iPhone's 8x zoom mode, and that it shows the Chebyshev crater on the far side of the Moon. The Orion has made use of the Moon's gravity to turn around and head back to Earth.

GoPros and Nikons

Wiseman and his colleagues will now have some pretty stunning phone wallpapers to show off when they get back home — as yet we don't have the original shot of the lunar surface, just the screengrab taken from NASA's livestream.

The iPhones given to the astronauts on Orion were being put to use shortly after launch, and no doubt Apple will be pleased by the publicity. We know the crew also has a GoPro and a couple of Nikon cameras on board.

Reactions on Reddit have ranged from a simple "wild" to the observation that "that would be my phone wallpaper for the rest of my life" — plus a note that "Apple are sorted for adverts for the next decade after this".

Having set a new record for going the furthest distance away from our planet than anyone has ever traveled before, the astronauts are expected to get back this coming Friday, April 10, via a splash down off the coast of San Diego.

Since April 1, 2026, it’s safe to say space has been top of mind — and following along with the crew of Artemis II has been nothing short of incredible. From the first-ever iPhone selfies taken in orbit to the anticipation building around today’s lunar flyby, it’s felt like a front-row seat to history in the making.

And it had me thinking — didn’t Lego make an Artemis set? They did. And not only is it surprisingly affordable and in stock, but it’s also impressively interactive, featuring a Technic crank that lets you recreate the three stages of launch.

So I went down the rabbit hole of Lego sets within the Space theme, and was reminded of how many the brick brand has made. Many stay with realism, including the Artemis, the Milky Way Galaxy, and even the Mars Rover Perseverance. There are, of course, some fun ones as well.

So I’ve put together a quick list of space-themed Lego sets — including Artemis II — that should spark a little inspiration, whether you’re building with kids or just channeling a bit of that launch-day excitement yourself.

9 Lego Space sets, including the Artemis II

• We're getting photos from the Artemis II mission
• Some of these were snapped with the iPhone 17 Pro Max
• The mission is getting close to the halfway point

We know the crew of the Artemis II mission have taken iPhones up into space with them, and now we're getting some stunning snaps back from the astronauts as they make their way towards the moon.

As shared by NASA, we have spectacular shots of Christina Koch and Reid Wiseman looking back towards their home planet, as the Orion spacecraft pulls away from it — at speeds of thousands of miles per hour.

A quick check on the photos in NASA's archive (here and here) shows that both these images were taken using the selfie camera on an iPhone 17 Pro Max. That's the same model that got a 4.5/5 star rating in its TechRadar review.

The astronauts themselves are sharing pictures on social media: here's another shot from Reid Wiseman, the 50-year-old designated as the overall commander of the mission. The caption simply reads "There are no words."

NASA has also more recently shared some stunning photos taken on the Artemis II mission's Moon fly-by, which were this time shot on the Nikon D5 — a trusty, decade-old DSLR.

There and back again

There's likely to be plenty more to come too, as Orion reaches the moon, circles around it, and heads back home. We know the spacecraft is fitted with laser communications tech that can maintain a high-speed connection with Earth.

NASA has also shared an image of the moon taken by the Artemis II crew, with the Orientale basin visible on the lunar surface. This is apparently the first time the basin has been seen in its entirety with human eyes.

Once the team of astronauts has gone around the moon and started coming back, they will have gone further away from Earth than any other human beings before them — some 252,757 miles or 406,773 kilometers.

The mission is now in its fourth day, with the entire trip expected to take 10 days. When the Orion spacecraft comes back into Earth orbit, it'll mark another first: the fastest crewed reentry ever attempted, at around 25,000 miles per hour (40,234 kilometers per hour).

Every week we put together our ICYMI (In Case You Missed It) round-up of the top stories that have hit the TechRadar website over the last seven days — just in case you did miss any of the big happenings in the world of tech since last week.

The ICYMI series has been running for a long time at this point, and we've yet to have a quiet week. However, even by the standards of this feature, we're coming to the end of a particularly packed seven days in tech-land.

We've had NASA launches, 50 years of Apple, Samsung TVs, controversial changes to Netflix apps, and more besides. Get comfortable and dive in.

7. Sony and TCL’s new TV venture went official

Two of the biggest names in TVs are teaming up: Sony and TCL this week announced a new partnership under the name 'Bravia, Inc'. While TCL will have a (slightly) bigger stake in the enterprise, the TVs themselves will continue to have Sony Bravia branding, and we can apparently look forward to the same "premium" experience that Bravias are known for.

Also included in the deal are the Sony home theater projectors that have also been a hit with consumers serious about their living room setup. We're hoping the deal means better value TV sets at lower prices, although it's not clear exactly what this will mean for future models — particularly the high-end OLED TVs that Sony is currently so well known for.

• Read more: It's official — TCL will make Sony's future TVs in a new joint venture, so say hello to 'Bravia, Inc'

6. Samsung gave its watches a big health upgrade

While blood pressure monitoring via Galaxy Watches has long been available in markets such as South Korea and the UK, users in the US have had to wait patiently for the feature to get regulatory approval. That has now happened, and Samsung has announced that US owners of a Galaxy Watch 4 or later can now get started with blood pressure monitoring.

It's not quite as simple as strapping a Galaxy Watch to your wrist and pressing a button though, because the smartwatch will still need calibrating with a proper blood pressure cuff every 28 days (this makes sure the readings you're getting on your wrist match up with your actual blood pressure). You'll need the Samsung Health Monitor app installed too.

• Read more: Got a Samsung Galaxy Watch 4 or later? You'll be able to 'monitor your blood pressure right from the wrist' very soon

5. We tried the AirPods Max 2

The wait for the AirPods Max 2 was a long five years after the original headphones launched, but they're here now — and TechRadar editor Jacob Krol has been thoroughly testing them out. If you want to know whether they're worth the upgrade, and how much difference the updated H2 chipset makes to audio quality, this is where to find out.

As well as that new chipset, the AirPods Max 2 headphones bring with them improved active noise cancellation technology and a new Adaptive Audio mode that really impresses. However, there's also a lot that's the same here, including 40mm drivers in each earcup, the colors you can buy them in, and battery life (said to be up to 20 hours).

• Read more: I tried the AirPods Max 2, and they're an upgrade worth waiting five years for — it’s the smarter, more immersive listening experience that stands out

4. Netflix hobbled its Apple TV app

Netflix rolled out a pretty major change to its app for the Apple TV streaming boxes this week, and it's not a change that's gone down well with viewers. The app now uses Netflix's own on-screen control system rather than the standard one baked into tvOS, which means certain playback features that have been there for years are now no longer available.

Buttons on the Apple TV remote that previously did one action now do another, for example, and online reactions to the inconvenient changes have been rather negative to say the least — for some it's even a move worth unsubscribing over, especially as Netflix recently bumped up its monthly fees again. Maybe it's time to go back to physical media...

• Read more: 'Time to unsubscribe' — Netflix made a big change to its Apple TV app, removing a ton of useful functions

3. Artemis II took off with iPhones on board

NASA launched its first mission to the moon in over 50 years this week, and while the crew of the Artemis II mission will be going around our nearest celestial neighbor rather than landing on its surface, records will be broken: this is the furthest human beings will have been from Earth ever, as the Orion spacecraft passes the moon and then slingshots back.

So what's the tech angle? Well, in addition to all the sophisticated instruments NASA has put on board Orion and is using to monitor its progress, astronauts have been allowed to take iPhones into orbit for the first time. We're looking forward to seeing the photos and videos that get captured, even if some of the same tech bugs happen up in space too.

• Read more: Smartphones in space — the Artemis II crew are throwing an iPhone around in zero gravity

2. Apple turned 50

Apple as a company turned 50 years old this week, and it's no exaggeration to say it's responsible for some of the most important and iconic gadgets in history. To celebrate the milestone, we've been running a host of different features and retrospectives, including a look back at the best Apple devices in history (as voted for by you, the TechRadar readers).

We've also got some rare personal insights from Apple CEO Tim Cook, a rundown of the best retro Apple accessories you can buy, a look at how Apple and the iPod impacted the music industry forever, and a huge quiz on all things Apple. It's not been a completely smooth ride for Apple though: we've also covered some of the company's biggest fails.

• Read more: 50 years of Apple — all our coverage in one place

1. We lived with Samsung’s new flagship OLED TV

Hopes are high for the Samsung S99H/S95H OLED TV leading Samsung's television lineup for 2026, and after TechRadar's John Archer spent a week in the company of the 77-inch version of this model, our anticipation levels just went up a few more notches. He describes it as having "the potential to be seriously special" when it arrives in stores.

The predecessor to this model — the Samsung S95F — was crowned the TechRadar TV of the Year in 2025, and this 2026 model comes with a refreshed design, a notable boost in screen brightness, and improved HDR performance, among other upgrades. There's also the option to cut down on cabling by picking up a Wireless One Connect box as well.

• Read more: I've lived with Samsung’s new flagship OLED TV — and I've never seen anything quite like it

• The Artemis II crew are on the way to the moon
• Their Orion spacecraft is fitted with 4K laser communications
• High-definition video feeds should be possible

We've already seen the crew of the Artemis II chuck around iPhones in space and have trouble accessing their Outlook accounts, and when they finally make it to the moon's orbit we should be treated to some high-resolution 4K footage of the lunar surface.

The astronauts are flying by the moon rather than landing on it, but thanks to laser technology developed in part by the MIT Lincoln Laboratory (via the BBC Sky at Night Magazine), they have best-in-class tech for reporting back.

Space missions have traditionally used radio frequency (RF) communications, but the spectrums it uses are now highly congested, and it's no longer the best technology we have for beaming data across large distances (to the moon and back, for instance).

"Laser communication is a solution that could solve this problem, and the laboratory is an expert in the field, which was really pioneered here," says Farzana Khatri, a lead systems engineer at the MIT Lincoln Laboratory.

The moon in the UK

If everything goes according to plan, we should be able to enjoy "high-definition video from the moon" over the next few days. Think something of a similar quality to a premium Netflix feed, only of the actual moon rather than a middling sci-fi movie.

The system in use is the Orion Artemis II Optical Communications System (O2O), and it comprises several complex instruments, including a gimbal-mounted telescope that can direct laser beams back to base at NASA.

"You can imagine the Artemis astronauts using videoconferencing to connect with physicians, coordinate mission activities, and livestream their lunar trips," says Jane Wang, also on the team that developed the system.

The actual capturing will be done by Nikon cameras that are included in the astronauts' kit. Besides sending back photos, audio, and video from the mission, the laser links will be able to transmit real time diagnostics reports to and from Orion.

• Artemis II crew reports a Microsoft software glitch
• One astronaut to Mission Control that neither of their Outlooks was working
• There's no evidence the issue impacted the mission in any meaningful way

Artemis II Mission Control, we have a problem — and it's one most every Microsoft customer can relate to. Just hours after Artemis II's spectacular launch, kicking off NASA's first moon mission in more than 50 years, the astronauts reported a Microsoft 365 tech glitch.

As the four crew members flew at 4,275mph and more than 30,000 miles from Earth, they remained in almost constant contact with NASA Mission Control. During one conversation, a mission astronaut offered this report: "I have two Microsoft Outlooks and neither one is working."

First, you can be forgiven if you're surprised that the Orion spacecraft (which was carried to space by the Artemis II mission) uses Microsoft 365 software. However, NASA has been standardized on Microsoft's suite of software and services for years, using the platform across productivity, collaboration, and, yes, communication. The agency even uses Copilot, though it's not clear if the AI has had any part in this mission.

Things are happening in a most peculiar way

Back to the non-life-threatening situation on the spacecraft…

The astronaut asks if NASA wants to "remote in and check Optimus and those two Outlooks, that would be awesome."

Mission Control clocks the issue and responds, "We will join in on your PCD and let you know when we're done."

The "Optimus" reference, by the way, was referring to a separate issue. The astronaut brought up the two Outlooks as another tech glitch to check while they're in there.

A PCD is a "Personal Computing Device," which we're guessing to be a Windows laptop or Surface computer (we guess they're using those alongside their iPhones), and, yes, just like tech support at home, the tech uses remote access to address the problem.

As for why there might be "two Microsoft Outlooks" on one device, you can blame Microsoft. A couple of years ago, Microsoft unveiled the Outlook for Windows app, essentially a renaming of the original Windows Mail app. Once installed, that app becomes just "Outlook." But Microsoft 365 customers know there's already an "Outlook" in the 365 Office suite. So, yes, a Windows system could have "two Microsoft Outlooks."

Why neither was working on one of Artemis II's mission computers is unclear, although neither Mission Control nor the astronaut sounded particularly concerned. After all, NASA uses Outlook for some communications between it and the astronauts, but not all communications, as evidenced by the audio.

The exchange was captured in the wee hours of the morning on April 2 (and witnessed by tens of thousands because NASA is livestreaming the entire mission on YouTube), still quite early in the flight, which launched roughly eight hours earlier from Kennedy Space Center in Florida.

By now, we assume the systems have been rebooted, and that both Outlooks are working nominally. Of course, we're sure the Artemis II crew is just as anxious as you are to have just one Outlook — and one that's working for the duration of this historic mission.

We did reach out to Microsoft for comment and will update this post with their response.

• NASA now allows personal smartphones in space, and the first such mission has launched
• A video shows the Artemis II crew throwing an iPhone in zero gravity
• Other videos also provide a glimpse of astronauts using iPhones

It’s a big day for NASA, as the Artemis II mission has launched, sending four astronauts on a trip around the moon — a journey that will take them further from Earth than anyone has been in over 50 years. But this — along with the Crew-12 mission to the International Space Station — is also the first time NASA astronauts have been allowed to bring personal smartphones with them.

That means it’s the first time that iPhones and Android handsets will have been carried into space on NASA missions, and we’re already seeing some of the fun that’s being had with them.

In a series of posts on X, @OwenSparks shared some brief clips of the crew using iPhones. In one, an iPhone is being tossed to someone in zero gravity, while in another, one of the astronauts — Christina Koch — is filming Victor Glover piloting the spacecraft.

There’s also a third clip, showing iPhones being packed into the suits of the crew before liftoff.

What comes next is more exciting

But fun as these clips are, I’m more excited for what comes next — with this mission taking the crew around the moon, we could soon have close-up moon shots from the same phones that most of us use every day, so that will be interesting to see.

And smartphones can be used on missions going forward, too, so Artemis II won’t be the last we see of them in space.

Plus, while it seems this mission has favored iPhones, it’s likely that sooner or later an astronaut will show us what an Android phone is capable of on a trip to space as well.

• NASA formally approves personal smartphones for government missions beginning with Crew-12
• Artemis II will carry consumer phones alongside traditional spaceflight imaging equipment
• Fast-tracked hardware approval marks a procedural shift inside NASA operations

NASA has confirmed its astronauts will now be allowed to carry personal smartphones on crewed missions, starting with Crew-12 and the delayed Artemis II flight.

Crew-12 is scheduled to travel to the International Space Station in mid-February 2026, while Artemis II is now expected to launch in March.

The policy change allows astronauts to use modern iPhone and Android devices during missions, marking a shift away from NASA’s long reliance on agency-supplied cameras.

Policy change expands crew access to personal hardware

NASA administrator Jared Isaacman said the decision was driven by a desire to give crews more flexible tools for documenting their experiences and sharing images and video with the public.

“We are giving our crews the tools to capture special moments for their families and share inspiring images and video with the world,” Isaacman wrote on X.

NASA leadership framed the move as more than cultural, and the agency had to fast-track the approval of modern consumer hardware for spaceflight.

They argue the same urgency will support future scientific research in orbit and on the lunar surface.

The swift adoption of capable hardware could matter more than strict adherence to legacy procedures.

“Just as important, we challenged long-standing processes and qualified modern hardware for spaceflight on an expedited timeline,” Isaacman added.

“That operational urgency will serve NASA well as we pursue the highest-value science and research in orbit and on the lunar surface.”

Until now, astronauts relied largely on Nikon DSLR cameras and GoPros, many of which were designed years ago - and while those devices remain capable, they lack the immediacy and versatility of modern smartphones.

Smartphones combine advanced sensors, image stabilization, ultra-wide lenses, and video features into a single device that astronauts already know how to use.

NASA believes that familiarity may allow crews to capture more spontaneous moments without interrupting scheduled mission tasks or relying on specialized equipment.

With smartphones available, future missions may generate far more informal imagery and video than previous expeditions.

The change raises the likelihood of more frequent updates from orbit and deep space, potentially making upcoming missions among the most thoroughly documented in NASA history.

However, the agency has not outlined specific limits on personal content creation, though mission safety rules still apply.

Smartphones have flown to space before, including on private SpaceX missions, so the concept is not entirely new, but what is different is NASA formally approving personal devices for flagship government missions.

While the agency describes this as “a small step in the right direction”, it reflects a willingness to reconsider conservative technology rules.

The long-term impact will depend on whether expedited qualification becomes standard practice or remains limited to low-risk hardware such as personal smartphones.

• SpaceX wants to put another million satellites in orbit
• These satellites will act as AI data centers out in space
• Regulators at the FCC must now weigh up the proposal

Elon Musk's SpaceX has applied to launch another one million satellites into Earth's orbit, with these "orbital data centers" intended to meet the growing need for infrastructure supporting the world's artificial intelligence demands.

As reported by the BBC, in a filing logged with the Federal Communications Commission (FCC), SpaceX says that the "terrestrial capabilities" of data centers are quickly becoming exhausted, necessitating some space-based expansion.

There's no timeframe set on these launches – should they be approved – but it would be a gigantic increase in the number of SpaceX satellites orbiting Earth. Over the next few years, SpaceX satellite numbers will grow to 15,000.

This constellation of flying data centers is going to be powered by solar power, and SpaceX says the setup won't require much in the way of operating and maintenance costs – potentially making it more efficient than current options for powering AI.

'Transformative efficiency'

"These satellites will achieve transformative cost and energy efficiency while significantly reducing the environmental impact associated with terrestrial data centers," the SpaceX filing submitted to the FCC reads, according to Reuters.

As the Reuters report goes on to point out, SpaceX might not actually deploy the full one million satellites, if it gets the go ahead. Earth's orbit is already a crowded place, and plenty of work will need to be done to keep this safe and viable.

It's by no means a new idea: numerous tech companies have previously proposed the idea of putting satellite data centers in space, and both Google and Amazon have looked into the possibility of this kind of infrastructure – without going as far as SpaceX, as yet.

Another of Elon Musk's companies, xAI, has also talked about pushing AI data centers beyond our planet's atmosphere. The race is now on in earnest to see which companies can make this a reality first.

• SpaceX can launch another 7,500 Starlink satellites
• It means 15,000 Gen2 models will be in orbit
• The satellites must all be in the sky by December 2031

SpaceX already has 7,500 of its Starlink Gen2 satellites in orbit, and just got the green light from the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) in the US to launch 7,500 more – taking the total up to 15,000.

The news was announced by FCC chairman Brendan Carr (via Wccftech), and in Carr's own words on social media this decision is going to enable "even better, faster, and more advanced internet services in the country".

Connect to a Gen2 satellite via a Starlink dish, and you're promising higher capacities and lower latencies compared to the first-generation models. The updated satellites have a 20x increase in throughput, and are easier to connect to.

At the same time, the FCC has also given SpaceX permission to operate its Starlink satellites across a wider range of frequencies and in a greater number of orbital configurations, which should ensure more reliable and speedier service.

Safety measures

Questions have been raised about how crowded the edges of Earth's atmosphere are getting, and SpaceX did originally want to put almost 30,000 Gen2 satellites in space back in 2020. Now, the FCC thinks it's safe to go from 7,500 to 15,000.

It's also worth noting that SpaceX has recently lowered the altitude of 4,400 of its satellites to reduce the risk of collisions with other satellites and objects in space (including the International Space Station of course).

That move will no doubt have been taken into account as the FCC weighed up its latest decision. Extra satellites also mean that Starlink will now be able to provide direct-to-cell connectivity outside the US, where it has a partnership with T-Mobile.

Half of the newly approved satellites must be launched and in position by December 1, 2028, the FCC says. The other half then need to be operational by December 2031, so it might take a while before customers notice better service.

• NASA will no longer allow any Chinese nationals to contribute
• China and the US are competing in a new age space race
• A Chinese spy carried out an espionage campaign against US tech targets

NASA has confirmed that Chinese nationals are now barred from accessing NASA assets and premises, and are no longer allowed to join its programs even if they have valid visas.

“Nasa has taken internal action pertaining to Chinese nationals, including restricting physical and cybersecurity access to our facilities, materials and network to ensure the security of our work,” press secretary Bethany Stevens said.

From September 5, some individuals were suddenly shut out of their IT systems and were locked out of in-person meetings. Although they weren’t working as staff, some had previously been working as contractors or contributing to research as students, The Guardian reports.

Space race

Tensions are rising between China and the US, especially given the discovery of a continued espionage campaign carried out by a dual US/Chinese citizen in which sensitive data was exfiltrated.

NASA works closely with the US military, and the spy was allegedly able to steal information on radiation-hardened cameras that the US uses to send early warnings for hypersonic missiles and rockets, as well as data from sensors used by aircraft to confuse infrared heat-seeking missiles.

Reports confirm that over 3,600 documents were downloaded by the spy, from two electronics manufacturers. Geopolitical tensions have seen the two states compete to develop faster, more efficient, and more powerful technologies in almost every industry.

Both China and the US are currently working towards sending crews to the moon, with the US’s Artemis program aiming for a 2027 landing - although it has experienced delays.

“We’re in a second space race right now,” Nasa’s acting administrator, Sean Duffy, said on Wednesday at a news conference about discoveries made with a US rover on Mars.

“The Chinese want to get back to the moon before us. That’s not going to happen. America has led in space in the past and we are going to continue to lead in space in the future.”

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• Netflix is teaming up with NASA over the coming months to deliver some new live content
• Subscribers will soon be able to stream rocket launches, astronaut spacewalks, mission coverage and more
• NASA+ is still available to watch for free on the agency's website

Netflix's live content will soon get a big boost, as one of the best streaming services is teaming up with NASA to bring its live programming to the platform.

A press release has teased that "NASA’s work in science and exploration will become even more accessible" thanks to this partnership, where they hope to "inspire a global audience in a modern media landscape".

Rolling out over the coming months, Netflix subscribers will be able to watch things like rocket launches, astronaut spacewalks, mission coverage as well as "breathtaking live views of Earth from the International Space Station" – all of which is available on NASA+.

This is an exciting new addition to the streamer, as it allows for subscribers to watch more content outside of the best Netflix movies and best Netflix shows.

What else should we know about the NASA partnership?

Rebecca Sirmons, general manager of NASA+ at the agency’s headquarters in Washington, said: “The National Aeronautics and Space Act of 1958 calls on us to share our story of space exploration with the broadest possible audience.

"Together, we’re committed to a Golden Age of Innovation and Exploration – inspiring new generations – right from the comfort of their couch or in the palm of their hand from their phone.”

This means that NASA's live streams will be available on the Netflix app across all devices, and all subscription tiers can watch too. It has been confirmed that additional programming details and schedules will be announced ahead of launch, and I can't wait to see them.

While certain live events, especially sports, haven't really interested me on Netflix I'm definitely keen to dive into some NASA content.

You don't need a Netflix subscription either, as viewers can still stream for free via the NASA app or website,. Instead, this partnership will serve as an additional way for people to keep up to date with the latest NASA launches and events.

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• Red Hat and Axiom Space plan to send an Orbital Data Center to the ISS
• AxDCU-1 will run AI, cybersecurity, and cloud computing tests in space
• The aim is to deliver secure, low latency processing off-world

It seems as if space really is the next frontier for data centers. We recently reported Lonestar was preparing to send the first physical data center (actually a RISC-V processor with a Phison SSD running Ubuntu) to the Moon, following the company's earlier success in testing the world’s first software-defined data center on the International Space Station (ISS).

Now, IBM’s Red Hat has announced a tie-up with Axiom Space to send a data center to the ISS in spring 2025. The Data Center Unit-1 (AxDCU-1) prototype will be powered by Red Hat Device Edge, an enterprise-grade version of MicroShift (a lightweight Kubernetes distribution derived from Red Hat OpenShift), along with Red Hat Enterprise Linux and the Red Hat Ansible Automation Platform.

AxDCU-1 will test applications in cloud computing, AI/ML, data fusion, and space cybersecurity on the space station while also demonstrating initial Orbital Data Center (ODC) capabilities.

In-space data processing

“Off-planet data processing is the next frontier, and edge computing is a crucial component,” said Tony James, chief architect, Science and Space, Red Hat. “With Red Hat Device Edge and in collaboration with Axiom Space, Earth-based mission partners will have the capabilities necessary to make real-time decisions in space with greater reliability and consistency.”

AxDCU-1 is part of Axiom Space’s ongoing work to develop space infrastructure and will allow data to be processed closer to off-world sources, including spacecraft and satellites. The aim is to support more secure and faster decision-making in space.

“We are excited about the possibilities this collaboration with Red Hat enables for ODC infrastructure and the future of space operations. Infusing terrestrial-grade cloud solutions into ODCs will enable users to seamlessly transition and enhance their terrestrial workloads to orbit while leveraging the lower latency and increased security inherent with ODCs," said Jason Aspiotis, global director of in-space data and security at Axiom Space.

Axiom Space says use cases for ODCs include in-space data processing for satellites, AI/ML training, cybersecurity, autonomy, space weather analytics, and off-planet backup for Earth's critical infrastructure.

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The US Department of Justice (DoJ) accused a Chinese national, named Song Wu, of stealing sensitive information and proprietary software from NASA and other high-profile government and private organizations in the United States.

In a press release published on the DoJ website, the organization noted Wu was working at the Aviation Industry Corporation of China (AVIC) as an engineer. AVIC is the country’s aerospace and defense conglomerate.

While employed at AVIC, between 2017 and 2021, he was sending phishing emails to people working at NASA, the Air Force, Navy, and Army, the Federal Aviation Administration, as well as people working at universities in Georgia, Michigan, Massachusetts, Pennsylvania, Indiana, and Ohio.

Successful phishing

In these emails, he was impersonating other people working at these organizations, casually asking for things such as source code, proprietary software, and similar. The software is used in aerospace engineering, missile and weapons development, and more.

One of the emails, showcased in the indictment, read: "Hi [Victim 2], I sent Stephen an email for a copy of NASCART-GT code, but got no response right now. He must be too busy. Will you help and sent (sic) it to me?"

NASCART-GT, short for Numerical Aerodynamics Simulation via CARTesian Grid Techniques, is a computational fluid dynamics (CFD) solver developed at Georgia Tech. It simulates complex aerodynamics, including supersonic and hypersonic flows, for various aerospace applications.

Apparently, the strategy worked, as at least some people ended up giving Wu what he needed. The DoJ does not say what was stolen:

"In some instances, the targeted victim, believing that defendant SONG … was a colleague, associate, or friend requesting the source code or software electronically transmitted the requested source code or software to defendant Song."

Wu, 39, is now facing 14 counts of wire fraud, and 14 counts of aggravated identity theft. He remains at large, and if arrested, could face up to 20 years in prison for each count of wire fraud, and two years for each count of aggravated identity theft, The Register reports.

Via The Register

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Google’s Gemini AI has been accused of scanning PDF files hosted on Google Drive without active permission or initiation, sparking yet another discussion around AI safety and privacy concerns.

Senior Advisor on AI Governance Kevin Bankson took to X to share concerns over an automatically generated AI summary in a private and confidential tax return.

Bankston’s thread detailed his experience with Gemini AI reading private documents without consent and the subsequent troubles in disabling the functionality on the cloud storage platform.

Gemini might be more buried in Google Drive than you thought

Despite attempts to disable the feature, Bankston found that Gemini’s continued to operate in Google Drive, raising questions about Google’s handling of user data and privacy settings.

After failing to find the right controls to disable Gemini’s integration, the Advisor asked Google’s ChatGPT-rivalling AI chatbot on two occasions to pinpoint the settings. A second, more detailed response still brought no joy: “Gemini is *not* in Apps and services on my dashboard  (1st option), and I didn't have a profile pic in the upper right of the Gemini page (2nd).”

With help from another X user, Bankston found the control, which was already disabled, highlighting either a malfunctioning control or indicating that further settings are hidden elsewhere.

However, previous Google documentation has confirmed that the company will not use Google Workspace data to train or improve its generative AI services or to feed targeted ads.

Bankston theorizes that his previous participation in Google Workspace Labs might have influenced Gemini’s behavior. The Gemini side panel in Google Drive for PDFs can be closed if a user no longer wishes to access generative AI summaries.

While Google promises to handle user data safely and securely, the case reaffirms the importance of consent and user control as AI continues to advance and becomes more deeply ingrained in the products we use every day.

A Google spokesperson shared with TechRadar Pro in an email: "Our generative AI features are designed to give users choice and keep them in control of their data. Using Gemini in Google Workspace requires a user to proactively enable it, and when they do their content is used in a privacy-preserving manner to generate useful responses to their prompts, but is not otherwise stored without permission."

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When I was growing up, NASA was this unreachable entity that I wanted to know more about. Much of what they did, at least to me, was shrouded in mystery and intrigue. Astronauts performed incredible feats as I watched in awe – the exact same thing that I see happening with my son as well. When he made a rocket out of recycled materials a little while ago, he slapped a big NASA badge on the front of it. The generations roll on, but the love continues.

Recent years have seen NASA open its doors to the world in new and exciting ways. Children and adults alike are now treated to behind-the-scenes missions and adventures. Astronauts and engineers are put before audiences for podcasts, TV shows, and films. With unprecedented access, it’s an exciting time for space lovers to be alive.

All this amazing content is now available in one incredible app, which is simply called NASA. It is an absolute treasure trove of exciting and varied content, all centered around the world of NASA and it’s well worth a look. 

At the heart of it is a free video streaming service called NASA+ that collates all the video content from various NASA departments. There is live coverage, original on-demand series, one-offs, and videos organized by theme. Think of Netflix but where all the content is space-themed. Through all of this, it is possible to lift the lid on NASA and be treated to all its inner workings. If you’re remotely interested in space, you’ll probably find yourself drawn in and amazed at what goes on at the government agency.

It’s not just videos, though; my favorite section of the app is all devoted to images. With over 21,000 of the latest NASA images, there is no shortage of jaw-dropping photos to enjoy and it’s certainly got me hooked. It's now possible to view images related to specific themes or see the latest ones. 

Under each section of images, you can view all and that’s what I love to do. Swiping through images is best on a tablet, as it can be hard to appreciate the scale of these things on a phone. It’s no replacement for the real thing (being an astronaut in space or viewing the cosmos through a massive telescope) but much of this is beyond the reach of the average person.

The inclusion of captions helps to put photos into context and provides a level of education that you wouldn’t otherwise have. You can rate each photo based on how much you love it or favorite the best ones for easier viewing later. And if a photo particularly grabs your attention, sharing it is as simple as it is in any other app.

The other part of the app where I find myself spending most of the time is in the ‘Missions’ section. Who doesn’t love a space mission? If Elon Musk, Jeff Bezos, or Richard Branson have their way, I’ll make it into space at some point, but for now, I have to live that reality through others. It’s easy to do with content devoted to a range of missions, including Artemis, NASA’s plan to land the first woman and first person of color on the Moon, as well as establish the first long-term presence there. You can also find out more about the James Webb Space Telescope and the Europa Clipper. What a collection of content!

One of the most engaging parts of the app, especially for younger space enthusiasts, is the augmented reality functionality. With simple controls, even the youngest of users can visualize space models in their own environment. The level of detail is impressive, helping to ignite a sense of passion and wonder. I particularly enjoyed exploring the Curiosity (MSL) model. Being able to rotate and zoom in on the model is impressive but I would have liked to have been able to interrogate the model a bit further. Maybe we’ll see that in a future release.

Whether you’re interested in space or not, the NASA app opens up a universe of never-before-seen content. It’s great for all ages and has enough about it to keep you coming back time and again.

Download NASA app on iOS or on Android

Meta Platforms, the parent company of Facebook, plans to deploy its own custom-designed artificial intelligence chips, codenamed Artemis, into its data centers this year, according to an internal document seen by Reuters. This move could potentially reduce Meta's dependence on Nvidia's market dominant H100 chips and control the escalating costs of running AI workloads.

Meta has been investing billions of dollars to boost its computing capacity for the power-hungry generative AI products that it is integrating into services such as Facebook, Instagram, and WhatsApp.  This involves acquiring specialized chips and reconfiguring data centers to accommodate them.

According to Dylan Patel, founder of the silicon research group SemiAnalysis, the successful deployment of Meta's own chip could potentially save the company hundreds of millions of dollars in annual energy costs and billions in chip purchasing costs.

Still reliant on Nvidia, for now

Despite this move toward self-reliance, Meta will continue to use Nvidia's H100 GPUs in its data centers for the foreseeable future. CEO Mark Zuckerberg has stated that by the end of this year, the company plans to have roughly 350,000 H100 processors in service.

The deployment of its own chip marks a positive turn for Meta's in-house AI silicon project, following a decision in 2022 to discontinue the chip's first iteration in favor of Nvidia's GPUs.

The new chip, Artemis, like its predecessor, is designed for AI inference, which involves using algorithms to make ranking judgments and generate responses to user prompts.

"We see our internally developed accelerators to be highly complementary to commercially available GPUs in delivering the optimal mix of performance and efficiency on Meta-specific workloads," a Meta spokesperson said. 

While Meta's move to reduce its dependence on Nvidia's processors could perhaps signal the first crack in Nvidia's AI wall, it's clear that for now, Nvidia's GPUs will continue to play a significant role in Meta's AI infrastructure.

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SpaceX recently launched into Earth’s orbit six “Starlink satellites with Direct to Cell capabilities”. When they come online, these satellites will be able to provide cellular connectivity to every corner of the United States – even to remote locations.

This comes as part of Coverage Above and Beyond, a collaborative initiative that the company entered with T-Mobile back in 2022. It took a little while, but the program is finally bearing fruit. SpaceX explains on its website these satellites essentially function like cell phone towers thanks to an onboard “eNodeB modem”. The ultimate goal here is to effectively eliminate the existence of dead zones allowing for “mobile phone connectivity anywhere on Earth.” Something to keep in mind is the service is primarily meant for far-off locales. 

As SpaceX CEO Elon Musk states on X (the platform formerly known as Twitter), the Starlink space towers can’t compete “with existing terrestrial cellular networks” on the same level.  It'll be good, but not that good.

Testing phase

Things will start off small. The ability to send text messages will roll out later this year. Then in 2025, users will be able to make phone calls, send data, and connect IoT (internet of things) devices, such as smartwatches, to the service. That’s assuming everything goes according to plan. Both companies have had to deal with multiple obstacles along the way. Not only were these satellites incredibly difficult to design and build, but government regulators also slowed down the process.

Originally, they had planned a beta test of Starlink’s remote connectivity in 2023. Obviously, that never happened probably due to pending approval from the FCC (Federal Communications Commission). Fortunately, the FCC did give SpaceX the green light to test their direct-to-cell satellites this past December. They have 180 days to complete their trials so we should see testing start soon although it’s unknown exactly when nor do we know if it’ll be open to the public.

Plans for expansion

The future is looking bright for the initiative. Dr. Sara Spangelo, Senior Director of Satellite Engineering at T-Mobile, states the company has plans to “rapidly [scale] up” the program to partners around the world. SpaceX is currently working with telecommunication companies in Canada, Japan, Australia, and more to get the service up and running elsewhere. Direct-to-cell connectivity won’t be exclusive to the U.S., but it does appear users there will receive it first.

SpaceX won’t be alone in this field. Amazon is developing a satellite broadband network called Project Kuiper to take on Starlink. Rockets carrying prototype Kuiper satellites are scheduled to take off within the “first half of 2024.” The European government is also looking to establish a program. Right now, it’s shopping around for the right telecom corporation to take the lead.

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Though many businesses are winding down for the festive period, NASA’s Office of Inspector General (OIG) has published a report of an audit carried out into the space agency's data handling.

The OIG noted that NASA processes a lot of personally identifiable information. As it deals with the public and other outside organizations, it is highly susceptible to data breaches that could seriously harm any individuals affected.

NASA privacy and cybersecurity officials were interviewed and privacy questionnaires were reviewed, among other things, to paint a picture of its cybersecurity performance so far.

NASA audited for its cybersecurity

The OIG said NASA’s approach to privacy was “comprehensive” and that there are plenty of things to like, but the report also highlights some additional steps to protect individuals’ personal information.

The space agency has been criticized for relying on users to self-report potential breaches instead of making full use of the data loss prevention (DLP) built into the Microsoft 365 platform that it uses, which is designed to automatically detect incidents.

Between October 2021 and March 2023, NASA’s Security Operations Center was found to have logged 118 self-reported incidents suspected to involve personally identifiable information.

NASA was also criticized for having too many documents and policies that appear to conflict with each other, rendering directions "unclear." The OIG called for a common understanding of what constitutes a breach and when to activate a Breach Response Team.

A total of six recommendations have been made, leaving plenty of room for improvement. They include improved documentation of some processes, the establishment of DLP roles and responsibilities, more guidance for tracking and documenting incident response, updated policies, regular tabletop discussions, and more training.

While this article doesn’t touch on the things that NASA has been credited for doing well in the interest of conciseness, the agency has been following plenty of best practices in a bid to protect individuals. Clearly, though, an evolving cybersecurity landscape calls for constant adaptations to any business or organization’s measures.

Via The Register

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The National Safety Council (NSC), a non-profit organization that services thousands of companies, including high-profile organizations and government institutions, kept sensitive customer data in web directories available for public access. 

The flaw was uncovered by researchers at Cybernews, whose researchers said the database had been sitting unprotected for at least five months.

NSC operates in the US and provides workplace and driving safety training. The researchers claim the organization has almost 55,000 members, including 2,000 organizations. Among those organizations are Siemens, Intel, HP, IBM, AMD, Ford, Toyota, Tesla, and countless others. They serviced government organizations, too, including the FBI, the Pentagon, the Department of Justice, NASA, and many others.

Potential ransomware victims

In total, almost 10,000 emails and passwords were hosted in the database. Cybernews speculates the companies likely held accounts on the platform to access training materials or take part in different events the NSC organized. 

While the report doesn’t specifically state the data was stolen by any malicious third party, the researchers do suggest the possibility. They argue that the credentials could have been used for credential-stuffing attacks, phishing, and more. These attacks would then lead to even more devastating scenarios, such as data theft, ransomware, and similar. 

Since the discovery was made, the NSC fixed the issue, it was added. 

“Having a development environment accessible to the public shows poor development practices,” the researchers said in their writeup. “Such environments should be hosted separately from the production environment's domain and must refrain from hosting actual user data, and, of course, it should not be publicly accessible.”

Among the information being leaked were user passwords, which were hashed using SHA-512, an algorithm generally considered secure. The passwords were also salted, but since the salts were stored together with password hashes, and were only encoded with base64, retrieving the plaintext version of the salt would be “trivial” for any experienced hacker, Cybernews said. 

“It might take as long as 6 hours to crack a single password found in the database,” the researchers concluded. “This doesn't imply that every password within the found database could be cracked, yet it's probable that a significant portion of them could be.”

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For months, one of NASA’s websites was vulnerable to an open redirect flaw, allowing threat actors to redirect unsuspecting visitors to malicious third party landing pages. 

This is according to cybersecurity researchers from the Cybernews team, who said there’s no evidence of the flaw being abused in the wild, but that such a scenario is quite probable.

Earlier this week, the Cybernews team reported that its researchers discovered a flaw in NASA’s Astrobiology website. The vulnerability allows threat actors to redirect the visitors elsewhere, and the researchers believe hackers might have created a website seemingly identical to NASA’s.

Validating user input

The fake page may have a login prompt, a download button, or a fake payment gateway, tricking visitors into downloading malware, giving away identity data, or money. 

The least damaging scenario is the one where hackers simply redirect people to a page with ads and monetize the visits and clicks.

The team also said that another security researcher discovered the same flaw independently in mid-January too. Given that NASA failed to address the vulnerability on its premises (despite being notified on time), there’s a high chance that a malicious actor discovered it as well, they say. 

To protect against open redirect flaws, the Cybernews team says website owners need to validate all user input, including URLs, to make sure the input only contains valid values. 

“This can include using regular expressions to verify that URLs are in a proper format, checking that URLs are from trusted domains, and verifying that URLs do not contain any unexpected or malicious characters,” the researchers said.

Another method is URL encoding, which prevents malicious characters from being injected into URLs. That effectively prevents threat actors from exploiting open redirect flaws even if they are present on the website. 

“Website owners can create a whitelist of trusted URLs and only allow redirects to those URLs. This can help to prevent attackers from redirecting users to malicious or unauthorized websites,” the team concluded.

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Via: Cybernews

The next human visitors to the Moon will be able to share selfies with each other, thanks to Nokia’s plan to equip the satellite with 4G connectivity.

As reported by CNBC, the Finnish telecommunications giant announced its intention to bring 4G to the Moon during this year’s Mobile World Congress, which took place in late February and early March this year, in Barcelona.

If all goes to plan, when US space firm Intuitive Machines sends its Nova-C lunar lander later this year onboard a SpaceX rocket, it will take with it Nokia’s antenna-equipped base station. The two will aslo be accompanied by a solar-powered rover, the publication cited Nokia principal engineer, Luis Maestro Ruiz De Temino.

Streaming video and beaming data

Once the hardware reaches its destination - the Shackleton crater- the rover and the lander will establish an LTE connection, De Temino explained.

While it might be fun to think the hardware will be used for selfies, in reality, Nokia hopes it will support the next manned research mission to the Moon, called Artemis 1. Astronauts will be able to use the network to communicate with each other, as well as with mission control. Furthermore, they’ll be able to remote-control the rover, and stream video and telemetry data back to Earth, in real-time.

There is no concrete date on when the rocket might launch, the publication further explained, saying analysts see 2023 as an “optimistic target”.

“If the hardware is ready and validated as it seems to be, there is a good chance they could launch in 2023 as long as their launch partner of choice doesn’t have any setbacks or delays,” Anshel Sag, principal analyst at Moor Insights & Strategy, told the publication via email.

One of the things future visitors to the Moon will be looking for is water. Apparently, there is frozen water trapped on the Moon’s poles, which could be used for a number of things, from drinking, to creating breathable oxygen, to generating rocket fuel.

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Via: CNBC

Cisco claims it has come away with some new key innovations for Webex after the platform was used in NASA's Artemis 1 mission, the Orion spacecraft's 25-day unmanned trip around the moon.

The video conferencing software formed part of Callisto, a "technology-demonstration payload" consisting of an Alexa and an iPad running Webex, all housed in a radiation-hardened casing. 

Lockheed Martin, makers of the Orion capsule, partnered with Amazon and Cisco to test the unit during the mission. 

Webex modifications

The purpose of Callisto was to see how today's consumer tech could be used effectively in space. For its part, Cisco wanted Webex to facilitate face-to-face interaction as best it could between those on earth and those in space, important on long and lonely space missions that keep astronauts so far apart from their loved ones. 

Since the mission was uncrewed, cameras were placed facing the iPad to see if the video feed from mission control made its way. In order to operate the software, Cisco also developed automated macros to perform certain functions.

At an event attended by TechRadar Pro, Jono Luk, Cisco's VP of Product Management, outlined the unique challenges the company faced in making video calls work between earth and space.

One problem stemmed from lack of an internet connection. NASA uses its deep space network to communicate with spacecraft, which is composed of three satellite dishes around the world, so Webex had to leverage this instead to transmit its video signals. 

The issue was that Cisco was only allocated a bandwidth of around 128kb/s, so Webex engineers had to modify the software to shrink the video signals by a factor of ten, whilst still retaining a viable quality. 

The other problem was latency. Luk said that using Webex between any points on earth only ever results in latency figures around 40-100 milliseconds, but during Artemis 1, the latency encountered was between five and seven seconds. Even when Webex was used on the International Space Station, it didn't encounter latency issues on this scale. So engineers had to create new algorithms to account for this latency, ensuring that audio and video still synced up. 

Another lesson Cisco learned was more conceptual rather than technological. After some time testing Callisto during the mission, Luk said they discovered that slow communication problems could be offset by making use of drawings and pictures instead, using the whiteboard feature within Webex and a Cisco Webex Board in mission control. 

As well as communicating certain ideas quicker, there was also less latency in using these methods than a direct camera feed, as Luk noted that virtual scrawls contain less data than video feeds, making for quicker transmission times. 

Now that the mission is complete, Luk suggested Webex had succeeded on all fronts, and as a bonus, claimed it even set the record for the longest-distance video call during the mission, at around 260,000 miles between endpoints.

What's more, he claimed that the enhancements and insights resulting from the mission have bled into consumer versions of Webex. For instance, the open-source AV1 codec that Webex uses was modified to fix the aforementioned latency and bandwidth problems, with Luk suggesting that it has contributed back to the project for other users of the codec.

Luk also suggested that some of the automated macros that were developed will be seeing their way into the software.

Luk conceded that there were still human interaction issues when communicating at such vast distances. He expressed his wish that some kind of UI prompt could have been developed, had time allowed, to let users know when the signal had reached the person on the other end. This way, they would be able to tell the difference between latency and a user or technological error if their interlocutor remained unresponsive. 

Although subsequent Artemis missions are in the pipeline, Cisco doesn't know whether it will get the call-up again. And looking even further ahead, crewed mission to Mars are also being discussed by NASA. If such dreams do materialize, then it seems Luk is confident that Webex would be ready for the long journey ahead.

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Researchers from the University of Michigan, University of Pennsylvania, and NASA have discovered a significant security flaw in networking technology used in spacecraft, airplanes, energy generation systems, and industrial control systems. 

UoM's news portal Michigan News reported the flaw abuses a network protocol and hardware system known as time-triggered ethernet, or TTE. 

This system allows mission-critical devices, such as life support systems, to coexist on the same network hardware as less important devices, such as passenger Wi-Fi, or data collection systems.

PCspooF

TTE was deemed safe for more than a decade, because the two types of network traffic were never allowed to interfere with one another on the same endpoint. It was originally established in a bid to reduce network costs while improving efficiency, the researchers said. 

However, the researchers have now managed to crack this barrier with an attack dubbed PCspooF, discussing it extensively as part of a paper titled "PCspooF: Compromising the Safety of Time-Triggered Ethernet".

The team illustrated the flaw by using real NASA hardware to simulate an Asteroid Redirection Test, specifically the stage where a capsule must dock with a spacecraft.

As the capsule would try to dock, the attack mashed vital and non-vital communication together, disrupting messages going through the system and creating a cascading effect. Eventually, the capsule veered off course and missed the dock entirely.

Baris Kasikci, the Morris Wellman Faculty Development Assistant Professor of Computer Science and Engineering, laid the risks bare. “If someone executed this attack in a real spaceflight mission, what would the damage be?”

However, in order to successfully pull off a PCSpooF attack, the attacker needs to plant a small, malicious device on the network, which means remote attacks are not possible.

Other good news is that the flaw can be fixed, relatively easily, by replacing copper Ethernet with fiber optic cables, or installing optical isolators between switches and untrusted devices. 

That would eliminate the risk of electromagnetic interference, although it would impact performance, according to researchers.

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NASA is first and foremost a pioneering cosmic photographer and aerospace researcher, but it’s also a Bethesda fan. At least, it would appear that way after a brief interaction between the American space agency and the official Starfield account on Twitter. 

Professional astronomers and casual lovers of impressive cosmic imagery were collectively awed recently, after NASA published several striking full-color images from the James Webb space telescope. The Starfield Twitter account was among them, retweeting a picture that showed our distant universe in unprecedented detail.

NASA followed in kind, replying to the tweet with a link to the full gallery of images, alongside an apt quote taken from an older Bethesda game. Even long-time fans of the studio might have trouble recognizing this one:

“We once heard that ‘the skies are marked with numberless sparks, each a fire, and every one a sign,’” NASA tweeted, following it up with a wink emoji.

NASA knows its stuff

It’s certainly a deep cut. The line is said by Emperor Uriel Septim VII during the opening tutorial mission in The Elder Scrolls IV: Oblivion. After making your way through a series of subterranean tunnels to protect the Emperor from assassins, he stops to briefly chat. That’s where the quote comes in.

"I've served the Nine all my days, and I chart my course by the cycles of the heavens,” Uriel tells the player. “The skies are marked with numberless sparks, each a fire, and every one a sign. I know these stars well, and I wonder... which sign marked your birth?” 

It serves as a handy segue into the final portion of Oblivion’s character creation menu, as you pick your character’s Birthsign to gain new buffs and abilities. It’s also pretty minor, and is more of a passing comment than a beloved quote. Whoever’s running NASA’s social media accounts must really like Oblivion.

It’s fairly strange to see NASA interacting with a video game studio. It’s not often the worlds of federal space exploration and fantasy RPGs collide, but it's rather fitting. Bethesda has previously said it cribbed ideas from contemporary space agencies to create Starfield, borrowing ideas from SpaceX to design the look and feel of its grounded sci-fi setting. It's also previously described the game’s art direction as “NASA-punk”. Maybe we'll see Starfield being played aboard the ISS one day.

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US space agency NASA has released a free single-player management game on the Microsoft Store – but To The Moon and Beyond may not send your spirits out of this world.

Released for Xbox Series X|S and Xbox One, To the Moon and Beyond is a semi-educational management game that challenges you to develop your own burgeoning space program as you attempt to launch crews of astronauts and establish a permanent base on the Moon. You’ll be choosing between research opportunities to pursue on the International Space Station, and picking between projects to invest in back on Earth, all while trying to develop your space program at the minimal cost possible.

Using a card-based system, the game has you pick between different research options and manage your budget, as well as respond to random events that threaten to upturn your spacefaring initiative. In between building rockets, rovers, and space suits, you’ll be trying to complete eight mission-critical objectives before time runs out. 

It all looks very simple and certainly doesn't have anything on the complexity of other space-themed games like Kerbal Space Program. It's primarily a piece of edutainment, replete with links to online NASA articles so you can learn about contemporary aeronautical engineering. To the Moon and Beyond does come with a full batch of achievements, though, and completing all 11 will earn you 1,000 Gamerscore.

This isn’t the first time the game’s launched, however. To the Moon and Beyond originally released for iOS and Android devices in 2020, although NASA said it anticipated bringing the game to Xbox down the line.

Public service

This isn’t the first time NASA has co-operated in the development of a video game. The agency previously teamed up with developer Vision Videogames to create the 2005 space station manager SpaceStationSim. It lent the studio technical specifications and personnel to create an accurate 3D model of the International Space Station, and some NASA employees even volunteered as beta testers for the game.

Video games are no strangers to edutainment. The Financial Times released The Climate Game only earlier this year, challenging players to manage a country’s economy and diversify its industries away from fossil fuels to reach a net-zero carbon economy by 2050. The interactivity of video games is often seen as a valuable way of teaching children and families about real-world issues, and the consequences of tough decisions.

If you fancy your space strategy mix, but want something a little harder than NASA’s family-friendly game, check out Surviving Mars. Or, if meticulous industrial planning is more your thing, consider Factorio, which we reckon is one of the best PC strategy games around.

NASA has awarded six satellite firms, including Amazon’s Project Kuiper and SpaceX’s Starlink, a combined $278.5 million as it looks to the private sector to help replace its satellite communications network.

The space agency said it had spent the past year assessing the feasibility of using private networks for its communications needs, allowing it to decommission its existing infrastructure by the end of the decade.

This, NASA says, would allow it to focus its time and resources on deep space exploration and science missions, whilst driving innovation and competition in the commercial space sector.

Project Kuiper 

The programme could also stimulate the commercial satellite sector. Low Earth Orbit (LEO) satellite technology is expected to deliver a range of applications for industry and bring faster broadband to areas of the world that can’t be reached by fixed line networks. 

The six firms, which also include Inmarsat, SES, Telesat, and ViaSat, will be expected to match or exceed NASA contributions during a five year development and demonstration period. NASA hopes the programme will lead to lower costs, increase flexibility, and improve performance of satellite technology for a variety of missions, while also improving their own respective businesses.

All six will be expected to show their platforms can deliver robust, reliable, and cost-effective mission-oriented operations, including the ability for new high-rate and high-capacity two-way communications by 2025.

NASA will then look to award multiple long-term contracts by 2030, at which point it will begin phasing out its own systems.

“We are following the agency’s proven approach developed through commercial cargo and commercial crew services. By using funded Space Act Agreements, we’re able to stimulate industry to demonstrate end-to-end capability leading to operational service,” said Eli Naffah, Communications Services Project project manager at NASA’s Glenn Research Centre.

“The flight demonstrations are risk reduction activities that will develop multiple capabilities and will provide operational concepts, performance validation, and acquisition models needed to plan the future acquisition of commercial services for each class of NASA missions.”

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