(Photo: Edgar Almeida/Unsplash)It feels like just yesterday we were covering the Steam Deck’s announcement and eventual release. Despite the console’s success since, Valve doesn’t appear interested in resting on its laurels. A new booklet from the distributor strongly implies a new version of the Steam Deck might someday hit virtual shelves. Valve recently partnered with Komodo to bring the Steam Deck to four new regions: Japan, South Korea, Taiwan, and Hong Kong. Steam itself hasn’t historically been popular or easily accessible in these areas, so in anticipation of the Steam Deck’s introduction, Valve wrote a colorful to explain its company’s philosophy and show off its console’s features.
Artemis 1 is a test flight, a vanguard of NASA’s Artemis mission to put boots on lunar soil within the 2020s. The rocket was scheduled to lift off at 8:33 AM EDT (12:33 GMT) from Pad 39B at NASA’s Kennedy Space Center. However, mission controllers scrubbed the Artemis launch at T-40 minutes. Safety checks before launch halted the countdown. “The launch director called a scrub because of an engine bleed that couldn’t be stopped,” Artemis launch control explained. “Engineers are gathering data about this engine and the bleed that didn’t work out. The hydrogen bleed was a goal of the previous wet dress rehearsal that didn’t happen due to a hydrogen leak, so engineers are focused on gathering as much data as they can.
(Photo: Giorgio Trovato/Unsplash)Of all the things in the world in need of reinvention, the toilet isn’t typically the first that comes to mind. That is, unless you work for Samsung or the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, which have teamed up to create a new toilet that recycles water and safely disposes of solid waste. The Gates Foundation originally proposed the idea of “reinventing” the toilet back in 2011, when it launched a inviting researchers to redesign the utility. It’s since awarded grants to designers and community advocates from more than 29 countries and used the challenge to raise awareness surrounding safe and affordable sanitation.
NASA’s Ingenuity helicopter made history last year when it took flight on , but what began as a “technology demonstration” has become a more serious endeavor — NASA even to tend to Ingenuity earlier this year. After a two-month hiatus, the helicopter is flying again, but just a little. The team wanted to keep the helicopter warmed up for future use, so the 30th flight was a quick hop similar to flight number two. Ingenuity rode to Mars attached to the belly of Perseverance. The rover deployed the helicopter several months after arriving on Mars, and it completed its first .
There’s almost nothing you can do online that doesn’t leave digital footprints. Even the simple act of opening an email can relay data to third parties, but privacy-focused internet firm DuckDuckGo has a solution for that. Last year, DuckDuckGo rolled out its Email Protection service in a limited beta. Starting today, Email Protection is available to anyone who wants it. When you sign up for DuckDuckGo’s Email Protection, you’ll get an @duck address, but it’s not a traditional email account. You won’t have a login or an @duck inbox. This is a forwarding address that is tied to your current email account, be that Gmail, Outlook, or something old-school like Hotmail.
(Photo: Kaleb Tapp/Unsplash)In a move that will shake the global automotive market, California legislators have voted to ban the sale of all new gas-only vehicles after 2035. The state’s new auto sales regulation was written by the California Air Resources Board (CARB) and introduced to the public via a news conference Wednesday. It will require that all new passenger vehicles reach a zero greenhouse gas emissions target by 2035, effectively requiring California drivers to opt for electric cars (or buy a gas vehicle out of state). Legislators set two deadlines along the way: by 2026, 35 percent of new vehicles must produce zero emissions.
After decades of abandonment, the moon is again expecting visitors. NASA is , which heralds a new era of lunar exploration. If all goes to plan, humanity will have a permanent lunar presence in the coming years. Deposits of water on the moon could provide important resources to sustain astronauts and fuel exploration of the moon and beyond, but first, we need to know exactly where that water is. To this end, an engineer at NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center has developed a tiny laser that could be the key to tracking down those water ice deposits. Scientists long suspected there could be water on the moon, and subsequent experiments confirmed it.
Hello everyone. This week we’ve got rapidly escalating space weather, just in time for Monday’s Artemis 1 launch. We have new data from Perseverance, and the routinely record-breaking James Webb space telescope has — surprise! — broken another record. We also salute the late, great Star Trek alumna Nichelle Nichols. Solar Weather Continues to Escalate Yesterday afternoon, a magnetic filament on the sun let go, releasing a partial halo coronal mass ejection (CME) toward Earth. It will arrive Monday, but it will probably be a glancing blow. NOAA gives a 50-50 chance that it’ll cause a mild geomagnetic storm, creating auroras around the Arctic Circle.
The James Webb Space Telescope has already offered some , but NASA also hopes to take a peek at exoplanets with Webb’s powerful optics. Astronomers from the Université de Montréal may have just found the perfect target. The newly discovered exoplanet is nearby in astronomical terms, and the team believes it may be an Earth-sized “water world” with a globe-spanning ocean — something that we might be able to confirm with future Webb observations. The first hint of TOI-1452 b came from NASA’s Transiting Exoplanet Survey Satellite (TESS). This successor to the late, great Kepler Space Telescope watches the sky for evidence of transits in front of distant stars.
