South Korean rocket startup Innospace is poised to debut a new nano-launcher. Welcome to Edition 8.23 of the Rocket Report! Several new rockets made their first flights this year. Blue Origin’s New Glenn was the most notable debut, with a successful inaugural launch in January followed by an impressive…
DiskSat’s design offers “a power-to-weight ratio unmatched by traditional aluminum satellites.” Four small satellites rode a Rocket Lab Electron launch vehicle into orbit from Virginia early Thursday, beginning a government-funded technology demonstration mission to test the performance of a new spacecraft design. The satellites were nestled inside a cylindrical…
They were infected by roundworm, whipworm, and microscopic protozoans called Giardia duodenalis. It probably sucked to be a Roman soldier guarding Hadrian’s Wall circa the third century CE. W.H. Auden imagined the likely harsh conditions in his poem “Roman Wall Blues,” in which a soldier laments enduring wet wind…
Google loves AI content, except when it doesn’t. Google is generally happy to see people using generative AI tools to create content, and it’s doubly happy when they publish it on its platforms. But there are limits to everything. Two YouTube channels that attracted millions of subscribers with AI-generated…
Subscribers will start seeing ads when selecting a user next year. Peacock subscribers will see ads immediately upon opening the streaming app or website next year. It’s a bold new strategy for attracting advertisers—something that’s been increasingly important to subscription-based streaming services—but it also risks alienating viewers As reported…
Help increase our charity haul of nearly $18,000 in just over a week. If you’ve been too busy planning for Half-Life 3 to take part in this year’s Ars Technica Charity Drive sweepstakes, don’t worry. You still have time to donate to a good cause and get a chance…
I would avoid building a PC right now, but if you can’t, here’s our best advice. The first few months of 2025 were full of graphics card reviews where we generally came away impressed with performance and completely at a loss on availability and pricing. The testing in these…
Once researchers turn to LLMs, paper counts go up, quality does not. There have been a number of high-profile cases where scientific papers have had to be retracted because they were filled with AI-generated slop—the most recent coming just two weeks ago. These instances raise serious questions about the…
Engineers at JPL are certifying the Perseverance rover to drive up to 100 kilometers. When the Perseverance rover arrived on Mars nearly five years ago, NASA officials thought the next American lander to take aim on the red planet would be taking shape by now. At the time, the…
“A calorie-neutral, drug-free, low-cost, readily available tool for when we need a boost in performance.” If you’re human, you’ve probably hollered a curse word or two (or three) when barking your shin on a table edge or hitting your thumb with a hammer. Perhaps you’ve noticed that this seems…
