Instead of having AI in a self-driving car decide whether to kill its driver or pedestrians, the Washington Post reports there's a new philosophy gaining traction: Why not stop cars from getting in life-or-death situations in the first place? (Alternate URL): After all, the whole point of automated cars is to create road conditions where vehicles are more aware than humans are, and thus better at predicting and preventing accidents. That might avoid some of the rare occurrences where human life hangs in the balance of a split-second decision... The best way to kill or injure people probably isn't a decision you'd like to leave up to your car, or the company manufacturing it, anytime soon. That's the thinking now about advanced AI: It's supposed to prevent the scenarios that lead to crashes, making the choice of who's to die one that the AI should never have to face.

Humans get distracted by texting, while cars don't care what your friends have to say. Humans might miss objects obscured by their vehicle's blind spot. Lidar can pick those things up, and 360 cameras should work even if your eyes get tired. Radar can bounce around from one vehicle to the next, and might spot a car decelerating up ahead faster than a human can... [Serial entrepreneur Barry] Lunn is the founder and CEO of Provizio, an accident-prevention technology company. Provizio's secret sauce is a "five-dimensional" vision system made up of high-end radar, lidar and camera imaging. The company builds an Intel vision processor and Nvidia graphics processor directly onto its in-house radar sensor, enabling cars to run machine-learning algorithms directly on the radar sensor. The result is a stack of perception technology that sees farther and wider, and processes road data faster than traditional autonomy tech, Lunn says. Swift predictive analytics gives vehicles and drivers more time to react to other cars.

The founder has worked in vision technology for nearly a decade and has previously worked with NASA, General Motors and Boeing under the radar company Arralis, which Lunn sold in 2017. The start-up is in talks with big automakers, and its vision has a strong team of trailblazers behind it, including Scott Thayer and Jeff Mishler, developers of early versions of autonomous tech for Google's Waymo and Uber... Lunn thinks the auto industry prematurely pushed autonomy as a solution, long before it was safe or practical to remove human drivers from the equation. He says AI decision-making will play a pivotal role in the future of auto safety, but only after it has been shown to reduce the issues that lead to crashes. The goal is the get the tech inside passenger cars so that the system can learn from human drivers, and understand how they make decisions before allowing the AI to decide what happens in specified instances.

Friday the Perseverance rover on Mars made its first attempt to collect a rock sample and seal it in a tube, reports NASA. But unfortunately, the data "indicate that no rock was collected during the initial sampling activity..."

"The sampling process is autonomous from beginning to end," said Jessica Samuels, the surface mission manager for Perseverance at NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Southern California. "One of the steps that occurs after placing a probe into the collection tube is to measure the volume of the sample. The probe did not encounter the expected resistance that would be there if a sample were inside the tube."

The Perseverance mission is assembling a response team to analyze the data. One early step will be to use the WATSON (Wide Angle Topographic Sensor for Operations and eNgineering) imager - located at the end of the robotic arm - to take close-up pictures of the borehole. Once the team has a better understanding of what happened, it will be able to ascertain when to schedule the next sample collection attempt. "The initial thinking is that the empty tube is more likely a result of the rock target not reacting the way we expected during coring, and less likely a hardware issue with the Sampling and Caching System," said Jennifer Trosper, project manager for Perseverance at JPL
"Mars keeps surprising us," adds the rover's Twitter feed. "We're working through this new challenge. More to come."

Space.com points out this wasn't a make-or-break moment for the rover, since it's still carrying 42 more sampling tubes. And the plan has always been to leave the sample tubes on the surface of Mars, where they'll be retrieved later by future Mars missions.

An anonymous reader quotes a report from Interesting Engineering: The U.S. Air Force joins a group of venture capital firms in making a $60 million investment in Hermeus, a Georgia-based startup that is striving to make the world's first reusable hypersonic aircraft, a press statement reveals. The new contract, awarded on July 30, sets ambitious objectives for Hermeus, to be accomplished over the next three years. These include the building of three prototypes of the company's Quarterhorse aircraft and the testing of its full-scale reusable hypersonic propulsion system. If all goes to plan, the Quarterhorse passenger aircraft will be capable of flying at a staggering Mach 5 speeds, starting at 3836 mph (6174 km/h). By comparison, NASA's new supersonic jet, the X-59, will fly at Mach 1.5 and reach top speeds of 990 mph.

As Hermeus' aircraft will eventually be able to fly five times the speed of sound, it will be capable of traveling from New York to London in only 90 minutes -- instead of seven hours it typically takes today's commercial airliners. In order to reach those speeds, Hermeus is developing a proprietary turbine-based combined cycle (TBCC) engine, based on the GE J85 turbojet engine used for a variety of high-speed aircraft including Virgin Galactic's White Knight carrier aircraft and Boom Supersonic's prototype XB-1 aircraft. The first Quarterhorse prototype is set to be unmanned -- much in the same way that Virgin Galactic's first space plane missions were uncrewed, the earliest flight tests will not be piloted so as to eliminate the risk to human life and to allow the company to start its flight testing earlier. According to a 2020 report by Aviation International News, Hermeus has already built and tested a small-scale hypersonic engine prototype and it is now working on a full-scale engine demonstrator of its TBCC engine.

Netflix will stream a documentary next month which will follow the story of the world's first private all-civilian space orbit. Sky News reports: The group will board a SpaceX capsule next month and spend three days orbiting the Earth, becoming Netflix's first documentary "to cover an event in near real-time." The privately chartered flight will be commanded, funded and led by 38-year-old billionaire Jared Isaacman, and aim to support St Jude Children's Research Hospital to the tune of $200 million. He will be joined on board by Sian Proctor, a geoscientist and former NASA candidate, Christopher Sembroski, a US Airforce veteran, and Hayley Arceneaux, a doctor's assistant at St Jude and childhood cancer survivor.

The group will apparently reach a higher altitude than the International Space Station as they orbit the planet in the SpaceX Dragon capsule, dubbed Inspiration4. The quick-turnaround documentary will be made in five parts, with the first two premiering on 6 September. Viewers have been promised behind the scenes access of the mission -- from their selection, to footage from inside the spacecraft while it orbits Earth.

The launch of Boeing's Starliner crew capsule on an unpiloted test flight to the International Space Station was scrubbed Tuesday because of an undisclosed technical issue. Mission managers told the launch team to recycle for another attempt Wednesday at 12:57 p.m. ET, weather permitting. From a report: The launching atop a United Launch Alliance Atlas 5 rocket initially was planned for last Friday, but NASA ordered a delay while Russian space station engineers resolved problems with a newly arrived laboratory module. Over the weekend, the Starliner launch was reset for Tuesday. Forecasters monitoring Florida's typically stormy summer afternoon weather predicted a 60% chance of acceptable conditions then lowered the odds to 50-50. The team pressed ahead with fueling, but around 10:30 a.m., Boeing confirmed a scrub, tweeting, "We're confirming today's #Starliner Orbital Flight Test-2 launch is scrubbed. More details soon."

The Starliner flight marks a major milestone for Boeing and NASA as the agency transitions from hitching rides aboard Russian Soyuz spacecraft to fielding commercial crew ships built by Boeing and SpaceX. SpaceX, under a $2.6 billion NASA contract, launched its Crew Dragon spacecraft on a successful unpiloted test flight in 2019 and a piloted test flight last year. Since then, the California rocket builder has launched two operational flights to the space station carrying two long-duration crews to the outpost.

Slashdot reader fahrbot-bot quotes the New York Times: Two red things are hiding in a part of the solar system where they shouldn't be. The space rocks may have come from beyond Neptune, and potentially offer hints at the chaos of the early solar system.

Scientists led by Sunao Hasegawa from JAXA, the Japanese space agency, reported in The Astrophysical Journal Letters on July 26, 2021 that two objects, called 203 Pompeja and 269 Justitia, spotted in the asteroid belt between Mars and Jupiter appear to have originated beyond Neptune. The discoveries could one day provide direct evidence of the chaos that existed in the early solar system.

"If true it would be a huge deal," says Hal Levison, a planetary scientist at the Southwest Research Institute in Colorado, who was not involved in the research...

"People have been talking about some fraction of asteroids coming from the Kuiper belt for quite a while now," said Josh Emery, a planetary scientist from Northern Arizona University who was not involved in the paper. He said the research "definitely takes a step" toward finding evidence to support that hypothesis. Not everyone is convinced just yet. Dr. Levison, who was also not involved in the paper, says objects should become less red as they approach the sun. "It seems to be inconsistent with our models," said Dr. Levison, who is the head of NASA's Lucy mission, which is scheduled to launch in October to study Jupiter's Trojans [asteroids captured in its orbit].

Michaël Marsset from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, a co-author on the paper, agrees that it's not clear why they would be so red, but it is possibly related to how long it took them to become implanted into the asteroid belt. Some Trojans may also be as red, but haven't been found yet.

To truly confirm the origin of 203 Pompeja and 269 Justitia, a spacecraft would likely need to visit them.

The U.S. Government Accountability Office on Friday denied protests from companies affiliated with Jeff Bezos that NASA wrongly awarded a lucrative astronaut lunar lander contract solely to Elon Musk's SpaceX. CNBC reports: "NASA did not violate procurement law or regulation when it decided to make only one award ... the evaluation of all three proposals was reasonable, and consistent with applicable procurement law, regulation, and the announcement's terms," GAO managing associate general counsel Kenneth Patton wrote in a statement. The GAO ruling backs the space agency's surprise announcement in April that NASA awarded SpaceX with a contract worth about $2.9 billion. SpaceX was competing with Blue Origin and Dynetics for what was expected to be two contracts, before NASA only awarded a single contract due to a lower-than-expected allocation for the program from Congress.

NASA, in a statement, said that the GAO decision will allow the agency "to establish a timeline for the first crewed landing on the Moon in more than 50 years." "As soon as possible, NASA will provide an update on the way ahead for Artemis, the human landing system, and humanity's return to the Moon. We will continue to work with the Biden Administration and Congress to ensure funding for a robust and sustainable approach for the nation's return to the Moon in a collaborative effort with U.S. commercial partners," the U.S. space agency said. A Blue Origin spokesperson told CNBC that the company still believes "there were fundamental issues with NASA's decision, but the GAO wasn't able to address them due to their limited jurisdiction."

"We'll continue to advocate for two immediate providers as we believe it is the right solution," Blue Origin said. "The Human Landing System program needs to have competition now instead of later -- that's the best solution for NASA and the best solution for our country."

destinyland shares a report from CNN: An unusual and potentially dangerous situation unfolded Thursday at the International Space Station, as the newly-docked Russian Nauka module inadvertently fired its thrusters causing a "tug of war" with the space station and briefly pushing it out of position, according to NASA flight controllers. Nauka -- a long-delayed laboratory module that Russian space agency Roscosmos' launched to the International Space Station last week -- inadvertently fired its thrusters after docking with the International Space Station Thursday morning.

NASA officials declared it a "spacecraft emergency" as the space station experienced a loss of attitude (the angle at which the ISS is supposed to remain oriented) control for nearly one hour, and ground controllers lost communications with the seven astronauts currently aboard the ISS for 11 minutes during the ordeal. A joint investigation between NASA and the Russian space agency Roscosmos is now ongoing. "The incident also delayed the launch of the Boeing Starliner uncrewed test flight to the station, which had been set to launch on Friday," adds CNN.

"NASA says the move allows the 'International Space Station team time to continue working checkouts of the newly arrived Roscosmos' Nauka module and to ensure the station will be ready for Starliner's arrival.'"

The lunar rovers of Apollo 15, 16 and 17 parked American automotive culture on the lunar surface, and expanded the scientific range of the missions' astronaut explorers. From a report: Dave Scott was not about to pass by an interesting rock without stopping. It was July 31, 1971, and he and Jim Irwin, his fellow Apollo 15 astronaut, were the first people to drive on the moon. After a 6-hour inaugural jaunt in the new lunar rover, the two were heading back to their lander, the Falcon, when Mr. Scott made an unscheduled pit stop. West of a crater called Rhysling, Mr. Scott scrambled out of the rover and quickly picked up a black lava rock, full of holes formed by escaping gas. Mr. Scott and Mr. Irwin had been trained in geology and knew the specimen, a vesicular rock, would be valuable to scientists on Earth. They also knew that if they asked for permission to stop and get it, clock-watching mission managers would say no. So Mr. Scott made up a story that they stopped the rover because he was fidgeting with his seatbelt. The sample was discovered when the astronauts returned to Earth, Mr. Scott described what he'd done, and "Seatbelt Rock" became one of the most prized geologic finds from Apollo 15.

Like many lunar samples returned to Earth by the final Apollo missions, Seatbelt Rock never would have been collected if the astronauts had not brought a car with them. Apollo 11 and Apollo 13 are the NASA lunar missions that tend to be remembered most vividly. But at the 50th anniversary of Apollo 15, which launched on July 26, 1971, some space enthusiasts, historians and authors are giving the lunar rover its due as one of the most enduring symbols of the American moon exploration program. Foldable, durable, battery-powered and built by Boeing and General Motors, the vehicle is seen by some as making the last three missions into the crowning achievement of the Apollo era. "Every mission in the crewed space program, dating back to Alan Shepard's first flight, had been laying the groundwork for the last three Apollo missions," said Earl Swift, author of a new book about the lunar rover, "Across the Airless Wilds: The Lunar Rover and the Triumph of the Final Moon Landings. You see NASA take all of that collected wisdom, gleaned over the previous decade in space, and apply it," Mr. Swift said. "It's a much more swashbuckling kind of science."

Blue Origin founder Jeff Bezos on Monday offered to cover billions of dollars of NASA costs in exchange for a contract to build a lunar lander to land astronauts on the moon. CNBC reports: Bezos said Blue Origin would waive all payments up to $2 billion from the National Aeronautics and Space Administration in the current and next two government fiscal years. Blue Origin would also fund its own pathfinder mission to low-Earth orbit, according to Bezos. In return, the company requested a fixed-priced contract from the government agency. "This offer is not a deferral, but is an outright and permanent waiver of those payments. This offer provides time for government appropriation actions to catch up," Bezos said in an open letter to NASA Administrator Bill Nelson.

NASA in April awarded Elon Musk's SpaceX with a sole $2.89 billion contract to build the next crewed lunar lander under its Human Landing Systems program. Before selecting the winner of the contest, NASA gave 10-month study contracts to SpaceX, Blue Origin and Dynetics to begin work on lunar landers. "Instead of this single source approach, NASA should embrace its original strategy of competition," Bezos said. "Without competition, a short time into the contract, NASA will find itself with limited options as it attempts to negotiate missed deadlines, design changes, and cost overruns."

In what is, at least so far, the biggest cybersecurity blunder of the Tokyo Olympics, an Italian TV announcer did not realize he was on air when he asked the password for his computer. Motherboard reports: "Do you know the password for the computer in this commentator booth?" he asked during the broadcast of the Turkey-China volleyball game, apparently not realizing he was still on air. "It was too hard to call the password Pippo? Pippo, Pluto or Topolino?" he complained, referring to the Italian names for Goofy, Pluto and Mickey Mouse. The snafu was immortalized in a video posted on Twitter by cybersecurity associate professor Stefano Zanero, who works at the Polytechnic University of Milan. A source who works at Eurosport, the channel which was broadcasting the volleyball game, confirmed that the video is authentic.

A colleague of the announcer can be heard in the background saying the password depends on the Olympics organizers, and asking the announcer if it's on a paper or post it close-by. Turns out the password was "Booth.03" after the number of the commentator's booth. "Even the dot to make it more complicated, as if it was NASA's computer," he said on the air. "Next time they will even put a semicolon." "Ma porca miseria," he concluded, using a popular italian swearing that literally means "pork's misery" but is more accurately translated to "for god's sake."

Jupiter's unusual icy moon Europa may be one of the best spots in the solar system to check for signs of alien life. But first we have to get there. NASA's Europa Clipper spacecraft will get a boost in the right direction from a SpaceX Falcon Heavy, one of the most powerful rockets ever built. From a report: NASA announced Friday that it has selected SpaceX to provide the launch services for the Jupiter moon mission. The launch is scheduled for October 2024 from the Kennedy Space Center in Florida. The contract is worth about $178 million. Europa Clipper will try to determine if the moon could possibly host life. "Key mission objectives are to produce high-resolution images of Europa's surface, determine its composition, look for signs of recent or ongoing geological activity, measure the thickness of the moon's icy shell, search for subsurface lakes, and determine the depth and salinity of Europa's ocean," said NASA. SpaceX has been working with NASA on many fronts, including carrying astronauts to and from the International Space Station, delivering cargo to the ISS and developing a human landing system to return astronauts to the moon through the Artemis program.

"A quake-measuring device on Mars is providing the first detailed look at the red planet's interior, revealing a surprisingly thin crust and a hot molten core beneath the frigid surface," reports the Associated Press: In a series of articles published this week, scientists reported that the Martian crust is within the thickness range of Earth's. The Martian mantle between the crust and core is roughly half as thick as Earth's. And the Martian core is on the high side of what scientists anticipated, although smaller than the core of our own nearly twice-as-big planet.

These new studies confirm that the Martian core is molten. But more research is needed to know whether Mars has a solid inner core like Earth's, surrounded by a molten outer core, according to the international research teams. Stronger marsquakes could help identify any multiple core layers, scientists said Friday. The findings are based on about 35 marsquakes registered by a French seismometer on NASA's InSight stationary lander, which arrived at Mars in 2018...

InSight has been hit with a power crunch in recent months. Dust covered its solar panels, just as Mars was approaching the farthest point in its orbit around the sun. Flight controllers have boosted power by using the lander's robot arm to release sand into the blowing wind to knock off some of the dust on the panels. The seismometer has continued working, but all other science instruments remain on hiatus because of the power situation — except for a German heat probe was declared dead in January after it failed to burrow more than a couple feet (half a meter) into the planet.

The three studies and a companion article appeared in Thursday's edition of the journal Science.

Comic-Con went virtual again in 2020. (San Diego businesses will miss the chance to profit from the 100,000 visitors the convention usually attracted.) And NPR reports the convention has gotten smaller in other ways: Both Marvel Studios and DC are staying away; as it did last year, DC is again directing its resources towards its own event, DC FanDome, set for mid-October. But fans of shows like Doctor Who, Dexter and Comic-Con stalwart The Walking Dead will have lots to look forward to.
Rotten Tomatoes and The Verge have gathered up the trailers that did premier. Some of the highlights:

• Blade Runner: Black Lotus , an upcoming anime television series set to premiere in late 2021 on Crunchyroll and Adult Swim (co-producing it with Alcon Television Group).
• The upcoming remake of Dune
• J.J. Abrams' new four-part Showtime documentary about UFOs.
• Season 2 of Star Trek: Lower Decks and the new Star Trek: Prodigy, a CGI-animated series about a group of aliens who escape captivity onboard the Enterprise.

But interestingly, one of the more visibile presenters was: NASA. Current and former NASA officials made appearances on several different panels, according to Space.com, including one on modern space law, U.N. treaty-making, and how it all stacks up against the portrayal we get in our various future-space franchises. And a former NASA astronaut was also part of a panel touting a virtual simulation platform, "where students can have access to the same tools that professionals use and in the case of space are given the opportunity to solve real problems related to missions to our Moon, Mars, and beyond... from piloting to terra-forming to creating habitats and spacecraft."

There was also a panel of four NASA engineers titled "No Tow Trucks Beyond Mars," on "how we go boldly where there's no one around to fix it. Hear stories from the trenches of the heartbreaks, close calls, and adventures of real-life landing (and flying!) on Mars and our round-table discussion of what Netflix got right in their movie Stowaway."

Sunday's panels will include an astronomer, an astrobiologist, and a geologist/paleontologist discussing "The Science of Star Wars" with the concept designer for Star Wars episodes 7-9, Rogue One, and Solo.

U.S. Rep. Earl Blumenauer (D-Oregon) plans to introduce legislation called the Securing Protections Against Carbon Emissions (SPACE) Tax Act, which would impose new excise taxes on space tourism trips. Space.com reports: "Space exploration isn't a tax-free holiday for the wealthy. Just as normal Americans pay taxes when they buy airline tickets, billionaires who fly into space to produce nothing of scientific value should do the same, and then some," Blumenauer said in a statement issued by his office. "I'm not opposed to this type of space innovation," added Blumenauer, a senior member of the House of Representatives' Ways and Means Committee. "However, things that are done purely for tourism or entertainment, and that don't have a scientific purpose, should in turn support the public good."

The proposed new tax would likely be levied on a per-passenger basis, as is done with commercial aviation, the statement said. "Exemptions would be made available for NASA spaceflights for scientific research purposes," the statement reads. "In the case of flights where some passengers are working on behalf of NASA for scientific research purposes and others are not, the launch excise tax shall be the pro rata share of the non-NASA researchers." There would be two taxation tiers, one for suborbital flights and another for missions that reach orbit. The statement did not reveal how much the tax would be in either case or if the collected revenue would be earmarked for any specific purpose. Such a purpose could be the fight against climate change, if the proposed act's full name is any guide. Blumenauer is concerned about the potential carbon footprint of the space tourism industry once it gets fully up and running, the statement said.

New Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) rules say astronaut hopefuls must be part of the flight crew and make contributions to space flight safety. That means Jeff Bezos and Sir Richard Branson may not yet be astronauts in the eyes of the US government. The BBC reports: These are the first changes since the FAA wings program began in 2004. The Commercial Astronaut Wings program updates were announced on Tuesday -- the same day that Amazon's Mr Bezos flew aboard a Blue Origin rocket to the edge of space. To qualify as commercial astronauts, space-goers must travel 50 miles (80km) above the Earth's surface, which both Mr Bezos and Mr Branson accomplished. But altitude aside, the agency says would-be astronauts must have also "demonstrated activities during flight that were essential to public safety, or contributed to human space flight safety." What exactly counts as such is determined by FAA officials.

In a statement, the FAA said that these changes brought the wings scheme more in line with its role to protect public safety during commercial space flights. On July 11, Sir Richard flew on-board Virgin Galactic's SpaceShipTwo to the edge of space as a test before allowing customers aboard next year. Mr Bezos and the three other crew members who flew on Blue Origin's spacecraft may have less claim to the coveted title. Ahead of the launch, Blue Origin CEO Bob Smith said that "there's really nothing for a crew member to do" on the autonomous vehicle. Those wishing for commercial wings need to be nominated for them as well. An FAA spokesperson told CNN they are not currently reviewing any submissions.

There are two other ways to earn astronaut wings in the US - through the military or Nasa. However, a glimmer of hope remains for Sir Richard, Mr Bezos and any future stargazers hoping to be recognized as astronauts. The new order notes that honorary awards can be given based on merit -- at the discretion of the FAA's associate administrator. Astronaut wings were first awarded to astronauts Alan Shepard Jr and Virgil Grissom in the early 1960s for their participation in the Mercury Seven program.

UnknowingFool shares a report from CBS News: After being down for a month due to a computer issue, Hubble was brought back up last week. NASA released images captured by Hubble over the weekend including a rare observance of two galaxies that are colliding. The other interesting image is that of a spiral galaxy with three arms, as most spiral galaxies have an even number of arms. "I'm thrilled to see that Hubble has its eye back on the universe, once again capturing the kind of images that have intrigued and inspired us for decades," NASA administrator Bill Nelson said in a statement. "This is a moment to celebrate the success of a team truly dedicated to the mission. Through their efforts, Hubble will continue its 32nd year of discovery, and we will continue to learn from the observatory's transformational vision."

18-year-old Oliver Daemon will become the youngest person ever to travel to space as the fourth passenger on Blue Origin's first crewed mission this week to the edge of outer space (flying with Jeff Bezos, his brother Mark, and 82-year-old aviator Wally Funk).

The Atlantic calls it "a rather unusual bunch": When they take off on Tuesday, they will each fulfill a personal dream, but as a crew, they're making history: No group like this one has ever gone to space together before. Even the participants of the most diverse missions to the International Space Station have had far more in common with one another than this quartet. They were all professional astronauts, with comparable ages, educational backgrounds, and even temperaments, given that potential astronauts must undergo psychological screenings before getting the job. The motley crew of Blue Origin's first passenger flight seems closer to a cast of offbeat characters gathered together for a zany adventure: If The Breakfast Club had the brain, the jock, the basket case, the princess, and the criminal, this Blue Origin flight has the boss, the tag-along, the real deal, and the kid...

Blue Origin has conducted 15 test flights of the New Shepard rocket, but has never before flown the vehicle with people on board.

Of the passengers on Bezos's debut flight, Daemen might be the most unexpected pick. In fact, Daemen wasn't supposed to be on this flight. Blue Origin had held an auction for one of the seats on the flight, culminating in a top bid of a whopping $28 million. But the company said today that the winner, whose name has not been disclosed, decided to skip this particular flight and go later, citing "scheduling conflicts," so the company slotted in Daemen, a soon-to-be physics student at Utrecht University, in the Netherlands. (Blue Origin said the teen was "a participant in the auction," but did not disclose how much the seat cost.)

Daemen and Funk, as Blue Origin pointed out in its announcement, "represent the youngest and oldest astronauts to travel to space." But describing them by age alone elides the very different journeys they have taken to reach this point. Funk is an aviation legend who underwent more difficult tests than John Glenn, the first American to orbit the Earth, had to, and has waited 60 years for this moment. Daemen is a teenager who took a gap year to get his pilot's license, and the son of a private-equity executive... Daemen represents a new class of spacefarers; in the coming years, as private companies such as Blue Origin, Richard Branson's Virgin Galactic, and Elon Musk's SpaceX make people into astronauts more readily than government agencies like NASA can, the distance between a childhood dream and reality is bound to shrink. Expect more smorgasbord space crews like the Blue Origin one, filled with an assortment of very wealthy individuals and the people they choose to go with them...

The rules about who can become an astronaut have changed, and the new "right stuff" is money and luck.

We're in for an information revolution.Engineers in Japan just shattered the world record for the fastest internet speed, achieving a data transmission rate of 319 Terabits per second (Tb/s), according to a paper presented at the International Conference on Optical Fiber Communications in June. From a report: The new record was made on a line of fibers more than 1,864 miles (3,000 km) long. And, crucially, it is compatible with modern-day cable infrastructure. This could literally change everything.

Note well: we can't stress enough how fast this transmission speed is. It's nearly double the previous record of 178 Tb/s, which was set in 2020. And it's seven times the speed of the earlier record of 44.2 Tb/s, set with an experimental photonic chip. NASA itself uses a comparatively primitive speed of 400 Gb/s, and the new record soars impossibly high above what ordinary consumers can use (the fastest of which maxes out at 10 Gb/s for home internet connections).

The Hubble Space Telescope has powered on once again. NASA was able to successfully switch to a backup computer on the observatory on Friday following weeks of computer problems. From a report: On June 13, Hubble shut down after a payload computer from the 1980s that handles the telescope's science instruments suffered a glitch. Now, over a month since Hubble ran into issues, which the Hubble team thinks were caused by the spacecraft's Power Control Unit (PCU), NASA switched to backup hardware and was able to switch the scope back on. With Hubble back online with this backup hardware, the Hubble team is keeping a close watch to make sure that everything works correctly, according to a statement from NASA.