Topps Blog

Friday, 4 November 2022

This Week in Space: Falling Stars (and Rocket Stages)

Good morning, space nerds. Would you like some space debris with your morning coffee? This week, China launched its Mengtian module, completing its Tiangong space station — and leaving behind yet another twenty-ton piece of free-falling space junk, timed to go right along with breakfast this morning and targeting the Gulf of Mexico.

NASA announced that InSight’s days are numbered, as the spacecraft finally succumbs to the Martian dust. But we’ve got updates from Artemis — including news from CAPSTONE and Psyche. We’ll discuss reports of a new and potentially threatening space rock nearly a mile wide. Plus, astronomers report discovering an “extragalactic structure” behind a murky region of space known as the zone of avoidance. We’ll wrap up with a special edition of Skywatchers Corner, en homage to three currently active meteor showers.

China Completes Tiangong Space Station

China’s Mengtian module docked successfully with the Tiangong space station earlier this week. Mengtian is the third and final module of the T-shaped space station. Like the other two modules, it launched aboard a Long March 5B rocket. And, like the other two Long March rockets, this one left behind a several-thousand-pound rocket stage fated to make an inevitable, uncontrolled re-entry.

Mengtian launched on Oct. 31. The remainder of its Long March rocket will splash down in the Gulf of Mexico on Friday morning, local time. However, because orbital speeds are very fast, just a few moments’ uncertainty can add up to thousands of kilometers of distance. As of Thursday night, we still had a nearly four-hour error bar.

Scientists Find Galaxy Cluster Hidden Behind ‘Zone of Avoidance’

In a pre-print report on arXiv, astronomers announced that they had discovered an “extragalactic structure” hidden behind a region of the sky known as the zone of avoidance.

The zone of avoidance (ZoA) is the part of the sky obscured by the central bulge of the Milky Way. This area is so dense with stars, gas, and dust that most instruments can’t see through to the other side, and it accounts for between 10 and 20 percent of the sky.

The Milky Way, as seen from the ESO observatory at Paranal. Image: ESO Photo Ambassador Yuri Beletsky

By “extragalactic structure,” they mean the large-scale structure of the region: specifically, a large cluster of galaxies, something like our Local Group. The researchers named their galaxy cluster VVVGCl-B J181435-381432, which — honestly — are y’all sure that wasn’t just someone’s cat walking on their keyboard?

The astronomers found the galaxy cluster using the ESO’s Visible and Infrared Survey Telescope for Astronomy (VISTA) at Paranal, along with follow-up observations made with the Gemini South telescope (also in Chile) and its FLAMINGOS-2 infrared detector.

Scientists Find Potential ‘Planet-Killer’ Asteroid Hiding in the Sun’s Glare

Speaking of big things hiding behind other big things, astronomers have found three new near-Earth asteroids (NEAs), one of which is the biggest such rock we’ve found in the last eight years. The astronomers used the ultra-sensitive Dark Energy Camera, on the Víctor M. Blanco 4-meter Telescope in Chile. It can only make its observations during a ten-minute window at dawn and dusk. With this instrument, the astronomers were able to look past the glare of the sun and spot the three new NEAs: 2021 LJ4, 2021 PH27, and 2022 AP7.

2021 LJ4 and 2021 PH27 are of little concern. Even so, they’re scientifically interesting. Surface temperatures on 2021 PH27 get hot enough to melt lead. However, 2022 AP7 is nearly a mile wide — and it crosses Earth’s orbit. We don’t know how serious a threat it poses yet, because there’s still a lot of uncertainty. But there’s a possibility it could find itself in the same place as Earth about a thousand years hence.

Catch Me If You Can? Challenge Accepted

Rocket Lab will launch a satellite to orbit — and try to catch its Electron rocket’s spent booster with a helicopter — later today (Nov. 4).

The company is calling the mission “Catch Me If You Can.” It will launch on Friday from Rocket Lab’s New Zealand launch facility, during a 75-minute window that opens at 1:15 PM EDT (1715 GMT, or 6:15 AM on Nov. 4 local New Zealand time).

This won’t be the first time Rocket Lab has attempted to catch a falling rocket stage with a helicopter. This image, of the rocket stage and its deployed parachute, is from the company’s semi-successful May attempt. At that time, they snagged the payload, but couldn’t keep a hold on it.

The rocket will be carrying a research satellite for the Swedish National Space Agency (SNSA). The satellite, MATS (short for “Mesospheric Airglow/Aerosol Tomography and Spectroscopy”), is part of the SNSA’s efforts to “investigate atmospheric waves and better understand how the upper layer of Earth’s atmosphere interacts with wind and weather patterns closer to the ground.” That’s cool, for sure. But the mission has a remarkable B plot. Even though all parts of this rocket are expendable, Rocket Lab aims to catch the free-falling rocket stage with a helicopter. Why? The company’s long-term goal is to fly reusable rockets. Catching them in midair would keep the vehicle from exposure to corrosive seawater. It could also present Rocket Lab with an easier way of retrieving rocket parts for analysis and reuse down the line.

You can watch the launch livestream here, courtesy of Rocket Lab. Coverage will begin at T – 20 minutes, and the catch should go down a little less than 20 minutes after takeoff.

Martian Dust Spells the End for InSight Mars Lander

It had to happen sometime. Enough dust has built up on NASA’s InSight Mars lander that the InSight team is preparing to formally end the mission. Earlier this summer, dwindling power reserves had already forced the team to turn off all but the lander’s seismometer. Recently, yet another dust storm added yet another layer of dust on the lander’s solar panels. To cope with the restricted power budget, the mission turned the seismometer off altogether. It’s recording again, but mission specialists say it won’t be long — perhaps a few weeks — before the lights go out for good.

This is the before photo. It’s even worse now, after the latest storm.

InSight’s seismometer has detected more than 1,300 marsquakes since the lander touched down in November 2018. The largest measured a magnitude of 5. The lander even recorded quakes from meteoroid impacts. In a statement, NASA noted that “observing how the seismic waves from those quakes change as they travel through the planet offers an invaluable glimpse into Mars’ interior but also provides a better understanding of how all rocky worlds, including Earth and its Moon, form.”

“Finally, we can see Mars as a planet with layers, with different thicknesses [and] compositions,” said Bruce Banerdt, the mission’s principal investigator. “We’re starting to really tease out the details. Now it’s not just this enigma; it’s actually a living, breathing planet.”

“We’ll keep making science measurements as long as we can,” Banerdt added. “We’re at Mars’ mercy. Weather on Mars is not rain and snow. Weather on Mars is dust and wind.”

Space Image of the Week: the Vela Supernova Remnant

Earlier this week, the European Southern Observatory (ESO) released this gorgeous image of the Vela supernova remnant.

This image shows a spectacular view of the orange and pink clouds that make up what remains after the explosive death of a massive star — the Vela supernova remnant. This detailed image consists of 554 million pixels and is a combined mosaic image of observations taken with the 268-million-pixel OmegaCAM camera at the VLT Survey Telescope, hosted at ESO’s Paranal Observatory.

To get this giant 554-MP image out of the telescope’s 268-MP CCD, researchers made a cleaned-up composite of many overlapping images of the same bit of sky.

For the curious, there’s also a video fly-through of the image:

My colleague Ryan Whitwam writes: “Until about 11,000 years ago, there was no Vela supernova remnant. This structure is the product of a type II supernova, which marked the end of a massive star. That star is now an ultra-dense neutron star — technically a pulsar as it’s rotating more than 11 times per second. It’s the brightest pulsar (in radio frequencies) in the sky, and has one of the fastest rotations known. The image from the ESO doesn’t focus on the pulsar itself but rather on the massive cloud of energized gas that makes up the supernova remnant.”

Artemis Updates

It looks like NASA will in fact be making their next Artemis launch attempt toward the end of the Nov. 12-14 launch window. During a Thursday teleconference, officials confirmed that they will make their next attempt at 12:07 AM on Nov. 14.

“If we weren’t confident, we wouldn’t roll out. If we weren’t confident, we wouldn’t start the countdown when we do so. We’re confident moving forward,” said Jim Free, an associate administrator at NASA’s headquarters in Washington, D.C.

The agency also announced this week that its pint-sized CAPSTONE probe is back on track for its mission to the moon. The CAPSTONE probe is indispensable to the Artemis program. However, the “beefed-up cubesat” has been experiencing some problems. In September, an orbital maneuver sent the probe spinning in an uncontrolled tumble that left it unable to contact Earth. Worse, it was losing more power than it could generate with its solar panels. It could have been game over, but Advanced Space (which manages the probe for NASA) reported this week that CAPSTONE has made a successful course correction.

Now that the satellite is back under control, it will trace out a long, looping path that will eventually deliver it into an ambitious near-rectilinear halo orbit (NRHO) around the Moon. There, it will test the NRHO for viability, paving the way for the Lunar Gateway that will enable Artemis flights to lunar orbit, and eventually to the surface of the Moon.

NASA officials also confirmed that Psyche, which was supposed to launch as a ride-along aboard Artemis 1, will now launch in October 2023. When the SLS missed its August launch window, Psyche did too — only Psyche has very different launch windows. With this new launch time frame, the spacecraft will arrive at Psyche in August 2029.

Skywatchers Corner Special Edition: Meteor Showers

There’s so much going on in the night skies this week that our Skywatchers Corner might just take up an entire room. To start with, we’ve got several meteor showers at the same time — so your odds of seeing a shooting star are particularly good right about now. Here are the standouts:

The Leonids: November 3 – December 2

Emanating from a point near the constellation Leo, the Leonids are associated with the comet Tempel-Tuttle. This yearly shower creates spectacular meteor storms that occur about every 33 years. This year, we might expect to see ten to fifteen meteors per hour from the Leonids. It’s an off year. But during its peak years, the Leonid meteor shower can produce thousands of meteors per minute. During a fifteen-minute span on the morning of November 17, 1966, EarthSky.org writes that the Leonid meteors “did, briefly, fall like rain. Some who witnessed it had a strong impression of Earth moving through space, fording the meteor stream.”

This year’s Leonids will peak on or about November 18. On that night and the night before, optimal viewing conditions will come during a short window of dark skies around midnight between the rise of Leo and the waning crescent Moon. Alas, we won’t see a peak year for another decade or so.

The Taurids: October 20 – November 30

The Taurids are actually one of the year’s longest meteor showers, appearing around Oct. 20th and lasting until the end of November. But this week, from November 5 – 12, the Taurids are at their peak. Like the other meteor showers we’re spotlighting here, the Taurids tend to produce long, dramatic, streaking fireballs that can leave a brilliant trail stretching across half the sky. They’re probably from the periodic comet Encke.

The Taurids are actually two different showers: the Northern and Southern Taurids, respectively. This is an example of what happens to a comet and its debris trail, late in its life. The slightest divergence in path between a comet and its debris adds up over time. As the positions of the planets are constantly changing, an orbiting comet’s debris will pass nearer to them on some revolutions than others. This pulls apart and diverts the streams, fanning them out into more of a cloud. After tens of thousands of years, there’s enough of a spread that these meteors are active for up to six weeks.

The Orionids: Early October – November 30

Like the Taurids, the Orionids come from a comet resembling the many-tailed kitsune of Japanese legend. In 1986, Halley’s Comet showed up with no fewer than seven tails. Between its many tails and its spiraling path, the great comet has created an intricate web of debris trails in its wake. Every year, we pass through the debris trail of Halley’s Comet, which we see as the Orionid meteor shower.

This year’s Orionids are on their way out, but just like the Taurids, the Orionids will slowly taper off through the end of November. They’re still going strong; Wednesday night, a meteor burned up in the sky over central New York. Based on the fireball’s origin and direction, it was most likely one of the Orionids.

This year’s midterm elections fall on Tuesday, Nov. 8. However, that day also features a total lunar eclipse, and it’s the last chance to see one until 2025. The eclipse will be visible from anywhere that has a view of the moon during the hours before sunrise on the morning of Nov. 8.

For viewers on the East coast, the eclipse will begin shortly after 4 AM, reaching full eclipse at about 5:15 AM local time. The moon will set while still in eclipse. However, on the West coast, that translates to the partial phase beginning just after 1 AM, and totality beginning at about 2:15 AM. Viewers in the Western time zone will be able to see the entire eclipse take place, with the Moon exiting the dark part of Earth’s shadow (the umbra) just before 5 AM.

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New Mac App Records All Your Activity, Lets You Search It Afterwards

(Image: Rewind AI) Most of us have Googled, referenced, or caught a glimpse of something seemingly inconsequential and later wished that we could remember what it was. When it comes to web browsing, you can at least painstakingly sift through your history—but what about that banner ad you saw, or that mid-Zoom call joke?

A new Mac app aims to eliminate this issue. Rewind, an app from an artificial intelligence (AI) startup with the same name, is said to record everything “you’ve seen, said, or heard” so you can look back on it later. The app uses optical character recognition (OCR) to capture text input while simultaneously using automated speech recognition to transcribe verbal communications, whether from the user or from people on the other end of a web call. Both of these technologies allow Rewind to work throughout the Mac ecosystem without requiring the user to integrate it with individual apps like Slack or Gmail.

If you’re wondering how the heck a recording that long can possibly sidestep crashing or weighing down one’s machine, Rewind has that covered. A blog post published Tuesday says the app uses “mind-boggling compression” to compress raw recording data up to 3,750 times without any significant drop in quality. Users also appear to navigate their data via static screenshots; rather than storing screencap-like videos of users’ desktops, Rewind seems to translate visual and audio data into still images for later reference.

Rewind co-founder Dan Siroker says the app was inspired by the amazement he felt after augmenting his hearing loss with hearing aids. “Ever since that moment, I’ve been on a hunt for ways technology can augment human capabilities and give us superpowers…What if we could use technology to augment our memory the same way a hearing aid can augment our hearing?” he writes.

Given Siroker’s story and the above demo, it’s clear Rewind’s intention is to serve individuals. But amid a remote work revolution that has bosses scrambling for control, some worry Rewind could be co-opted by managers who want to monitor their employees’ every move. Others wonder if the app could end up selling user information to data brokers or handing it off to law enforcement.

Siroker appears to have attempted to get ahead of these concerns in his blog post, saying all Rewind data is stored locally to avoid any cloud-based privacy concerns. The company’s privacy page reiterates that user data is never sent off the user’s Mac—only nondescript product and crash analytics are ever sent to Rewind itself. Users also have the option to stop and restart recordings at any time (as might be required in states with certain mutual consent laws) and to locally encrypt their data using FileVault.

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Google Play Games Beta for PC Is Now Available

Google has given up on streaming games to you from the cloud, but it’s moving forward with the expansion of Android games for Windows. The previous test of Google Play Games has expanded, giving players in the US and other countries a chance to play mobile games on their computers. The selection of games is very limited, but they do run surprisingly well.

Google Play Games on PC is not the same as the full Play Store client you can access with services like Bluestacks. Nor is it the stripped-down Google-free experience of the Windows Subsystem for Android. You log into the Play Games client with your Google account, and all the games connect to the Play Store cloud. Thus, you can install the same games on your PC and phone, syncing progress between devices as you play.

Currently, Google has only included 85 games worldwide, and some will only be available in select countries — a content-rich gaming experience this is not. While most games are installed via the Play Store client, there are some, like Genshin Impact, that require you to download via your browser. It appears all the supported titles are free-to-play, and that means they’re all rife with in-app purchases. Since Play Games is connected to your Google account, it’s easy to pay for content with your saved payment methods, if that’s something you want to do.

If that all sounds good to you, the beta has expanded beyond the original markets of Hong Kong, South Korea, and Taiwan. You can now download Google Play Games for PC in the US, Canada, Mexico, Brazil, Indonesia, the Philippines, Malaysia, and Singapore. In addition to a supported region, your PC needs to have a little oomph, including four physical CPU cores, 8GB of RAM, an SSD, and an Intel UHD Graphics 630 GPU or better. You also need to have hardware virtualization enabled.

On a sufficiently powerful PC, the games run very well. However, they are still mobile titles that, in many cases, are more optimized for touch than a mouse and keyboard. That may be part of why Google is taking its time enabling games for the service. It has been growing, though. Since announcing the initial beta, it has added 1945 Air Force, Blade Idle, Cookie Run: Kingdom, and Evony: The King’s Return. Google says more content will come to Google Play Games as it moves toward a full release. But can you really trust Google to stick with this and turn the beta into a usable product? Google’s track record isn’t great, particularly when it comes to gaming.

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AMD Announces Radeon RX 7900 XTX, 7900 XT RDNA3 GPUs

AMD has finally pulled the wraps off its next-generation RDNA3 GPUs, and they’re aimed at 4K gaming at high frame rates. At a live-streamed event yesterday, the company unveiled its flagship GPU as well as a slightly cut-down version of the same chip. Both GPUs use its biggest Navi31 die, code-named Plum Bonito. This is the company’s first chiplet design for a GPU, and as rumored, it features a large graphics chiplet die (GCD) flanked by six smaller memory chiplet dies (MCD). The main die houses the actual GPU, with each smaller chip hosting memory controllers and Infinity Cache. The GCD was built using TSMC’s 5nm process, with the MCDs using a more mature 6nm node. Both GPUs will go on sale on Dec. 13 at $999 for the XTX and $899 for the XT.

The flagship Radeon RX 7900 XTX will sport 24GB of GDDR6 20Gb/s memory. The XTX will offer 6,144 streaming processors, which are “dual issue” now and line up with rumors of there being 12,288. AMD’s slides stated it has 96 compute units, compared with 80 for the 6900 XT. As for clock speeds, the XTX will offer a 1.9GHz base clock, a 2.3GHz game clock, and a 2.5GHz boost clock. The transistor count has gone from 26.8 billion for the previous generation to 58 billion this time around.

Each of the six MCDs house a 64-bit memory controller for a 384-bit memory bus. Additionally, each chip has 16MB of Infinity Cache, for a total of 96MB. This is less than the 128MB found in the previous generation. AMD is also reportedly working on a future card with 3D-stacked memory chips that could allow for a doubling of the available cache. The company says it has increased memory bandwidth 2.7X over its previous architecture.

AMD says the XTX is designed to handle 4K gaming, and can even do 8K on some titles. For its 4K benchmarks, it says it can deliver 353fps in F122 with FSR, as well as 295fps in Apex Legends. At 8K, it can run the newest Assassin’s Creed Valhalla: Dawn of Ragnarok expansion at 96fps with FSR. One of the reasons it can offer such crazy frame rates at 4K is thanks to the inclusion of DisplayPort 2.1. This is a notable benefit compared with Nvidia’s 40-series cards, which use the older 1.4a interface. Those cards are limited to 4K at 240Hz. AMD’s cards can double that to 480Hz. DisplayPort 1.4 is also limited to 8K 60Hz, but 2.1 boosts that to 165Hz. This is one of the clearest advantages AMD has this round, as some gamers were not happy with the older 1.4 interface appearing on a next-gen graphics card like the RTX 4090. Note that you will need a DisplayPort 2.1 compatible monitor for this, and those won’t be out until early 2023.

One of the most unsurprising — but still kind of surprising — parts of the presentation is the XTX is only a 355W GPU. That was hinted at before, but now it’s official. Both GPUs require only two eight-pin PCIe connectors, so there will be no “cable gate” for AMD at launch. AMD says it has improved performance-per-watt by 54 percent over RDNA2, a stunning achievement. The XT version requires 55W less power than the XTX at 30W. Both cards are also relatively small compared with Nvidia’s latest GPUs. The XTX measures just 287mm with a 2.5-slot design. The XT is 276mm and is also a 2.5-slot card. That’s a size that will fit in pretty much any case, which is not, um, the case with the RTX 4090s. AMD recommends an 800W PSU for the XTX and a 750W model for the XT.

Other ancillary features include a 1.5x improvement in ray tracing performance over RDNA2. AMD says Cyberpunk 2077 will run at 62fps in Cyberpunk at 4K with ray tracing set to “ultra” and utilizing FSR. The new GPUs are also designed for content creators and have built-in video encoding, including AV1 encode and decode. It also said it’s working on its third generation of FSR, which will offer twice the frame rates of FSR 2.0. However, it won’t be available until next year.

This chart compares RDNA3’s performance with an RX 6950 XT.

The Radeon RX 7900 XT is a slightly downgraded version of the flagship. Though it uses the same Navi31 die, it offers a bit less of everything. The XT sports 5,376 streaming processors, for an effective total of 10,752. It reportedly has one less memory controller chiplet, for a memory bus that is slightly narrower at 320-bit. It also has less memory than the XTX at 20GB of GDDR6 20Gb/s. Its infinity cache is relegated to 80MB. It has 84 compute units compared with the XTX’s 96.

Overall the rumors about these cards seemed to be right on the money. The XTX is clearly not as fast as an RTX 4090 or else AMD would have said so. However, it’s $600 less expensive, which is hard to believe. They claimed it was the “world’s fastest GPU under $1,000,” which doesn’t sound like too much of a stretch. AMD seems to have settled on a lineup that delivers very good performance at 1440p and 4K while not consuming a ton of power. Its chiplet design also let it save a lot of money, resulting in a less expensive GPU.

Now comes the hard part, which is waiting for third-party benchmarks. Since the GPUs won’t go on sale for another five weeks, we might be seeing them any time soon. AMD seems to be attempting to own the sub-$1,000 market, which is probably a bit larger than the “over $1,000” market Nvidia is operating in with the RTX 4090 and 4080. However, that’s just our assumption and not based on any market research. It’ll be very interesting to see what kind of numbers a 350W card can put up though. AMD had said it was going to be pushing board power up for RDNA3 but it clearly didn’t go as far as Nvidia on that front. That will make a lot of gamers quite happy, assuming the benchmarks are promising.

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Scientists Discover Massive ‘Extra Galactic Structure’ Hidden Behind the Milky Way

A little-studied region of the sky may be hiding a big surprise, according to a newly released study. Scientists working at the National University of San Juan in Argentina have probed the so-called “zone of avoidance” to discover what appears to be a new galactic cluster. Of course, the cluster isn’t new — we’ve just never been able to see it before.

The zone of avoidance (ZoA) is the region obscured from view by the central bulge of our Milky Way galaxy. This area is too dense with stars, gas, and dust for most instruments to peer through to the other side, and it accounts for between 10 and 20 percent of the sky. That’s a lot of the cosmos to remain hidden from view, but the technology we use to observe the universe is improving.

Astronomers at the National University of San Juan working on the VVV Survey used the European Southern Observatory’s Visible and Infrared Survey Telescope for Astronomy (VISTA) in Chile to follow up on previous work that suggested there may be a large structure on the opposite side of the ZoA. While visible light is totally blocked by the core of the Milky Way, lower-frequency infrared light can get through. It’s similar to how the James Webb Space Telescope can see more stars in the Pillars of Creation than Hubble because it operates in the infrared.

Five galaxies identified in the Zone of Avoidance that astronomers believe represent a larger cluster of galaxies.

The team published a new preprint study this week on the Arxiv server, featuring observations of a galaxy cluster dubbed VVVGCl-B J181435-381432. Yes, it’s not a very snazzy name. Previously, the infrared glow captured in the VVV Survey suggested an “overdensity” region in the ZoA, reports Vice. The team, led by astronomer Daniela Galdeano, believed this was evidence of an extragalactic structure that had not yet been identified. According to the study, the data collected with VISTA is in good agreement with what scientists expect for near-infrared observations of galaxy clusters.

So far, we only have hints of what truly exists on the other side of the galactic core. Using the Gemini South telescope (also in Chile) and its FLAMINGOS-2 infrared detector, the team zoomed in to measure the redshift of five probable galaxies. These galaxies appear to be roughly three billion light years away. The researchers think this represents just a sliver of the full cluster. While the results have yet to be confirmed, teams around the world will no doubt start taking a closer look at this previously ignored region of the sky.

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Thursday, 3 November 2022

NASA’s CAPSTONE Probe Back to Full Operation and Headed for the Moon

As NASA prepares to return to the moon, all eyes are on the delayed Artemis 1 launch that will mark the first mission for the Space Launch System (SLS). Well, almost all eyes. The first phase of Artemis requires a tiny spacecraft called CAPSTONE, which ran into some trouble a few weeks back. Now, NASA’s commercial partner Advanced Space reports that CAPSTONE has righted itself and is on target to reach the moon this month.

CAPSTONE, or the Cislunar Autonomous Positioning System Technology Operations and Navigation Experiment, is essentially a beefed-up cubesat. It has a total mass of just 55 pounds (25 kilograms), but it’s got a big job to do. NASA intends to begin construction of an orbiting moon base in the latter half of this decade, and CAPSTONE is on its way to the moon to test an innovative new orbit for the station that should allow it to remain in contact with Earth at all times.

This first Artemis mission began smoothly thanks to Rocket Lab’s Electron rocket, but an issue cropped up in September following the vessel’s planned third maneuver. According to Advanced Space, which manages CAPSTONE for NASA, the satellite was stuck in a tumble that left it unable to contact Earth and drained more power from the batteries than it could generate from its solar panels. Luckily, the team was able to get CAPSTONE stabilized enough that it could begin charging as it approached the fourth maneuver in late October.

Advanced Space confirms that CAPSTONE completed that course correction late last week, and the previous stability issues have been rectified. The engine burn lasted for 220 seconds when the probe was 308,076 miles (495,800 kilometers) out from Earth. That’s past the orbit of the moon, but its swooping path will eventually deliver it to near rectilinear halo orbit (NRHO). This tilted orbit will see CAPSTONE (and hopefully the future Gateway station) pass over the moon’s north pole at an altitude of 47,000 miles (76,000 kilometers) and just 2,100 miles (3,400 km) over the south pole.

CAPSTONE has a busy month in store now that the previous trajectory issues have been fixed. With two more small nudges from the engines, the satellite is expected to arrive in NRHO around the moon on November 13th. Its primary mission will last at least six months after reaching the moon, during which time NASA will use its telemetry to validate the orbit. The first parts of the proposed Lunar Gateway could head out as soon as 2024, but given the delays in getting Artemis I off the ground, it could take longer.

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Mozilla Announces $35M Fund for Investing in ‘Responsible Tech’

(Image: Mozilla) Plenty of people have ideas for ways to improve society or the planet, but few have the funds readily available to execute those ideas. Mozilla is working to change that. The company behind Firefox, Pocket, and other purpose-driven web products just announced its new impact venture fund, which will invest millions into “responsible tech.”

The fund, called Mozilla Ventures, aims to uplift startups that have a bit of a humanitarian edge. Mozilla board member Mohamed Nanabhay—who was appointed this week as the fund’s managing partner—will help to identify businesses and ideas that suit this requirement. Eligible ventures will need to demonstrably incorporate transparency, inclusion, accessibility, human dignity, or any of the other five values from the Mozilla Manifesto.

After that, Mozilla Ventures will operate like nearly any other venture capital fund. Nanabhay and his team will consider whether each venture’s team, product, and business practices combine to create a worthwhile investment opportunity. If they do, the venture will receive a cash injection proportional to the terms of the investment.

Mozilla plans to officially launch the “at least” $35 million fund in the first half of 2023. But Nanabhay and executive director Mark Surman have already started their search. In a blog post published Wednesday, Surman confirmed Mozilla Ventures will invest in Block Party, heylogin, and Secure AI Labs, which focus on social media safety, password security, and medical data integrity, respectively. The duo is simultaneously working with startup incubators, environmental, social, and governance (ESG) specialists, and potential co-investors to ensure the fund’s design and long-term plan are effective.

Mozilla executive director Mark Surman. (Photo: Campus Party Brasil/Wikimedia Commons)

“Personally, I think it is possible to build successful companies—and great internet products—that put people before profits…The thing is, the system is stacked against founders like this,” Surman wrote. “Mozilla Ventures will be our first step in filling this need.”

Mozilla’s announcement comes at a time of increased concern over ethics in tech. Amid a rapid rise in AI with sometimes dubious purposes, the White House last month proposed an “AI Bill of Rights,” which would similarly guide (but not require) organizations toward more human-focused design. Everyday technology—CAPTCHA included—has been found to push the boundaries of individual privacy, prompting businesses to create their own alternatives. With few regulations to monitor development and use, the discovery of questionable tech has become almost commonplace, and everyday users are just beginning to get angry.

Meanwhile, Mozilla Ventures is far from the company’s first foray into what it calls responsible tech. For nearly two decades, its Mozilla Foundation has worked to ensure the internet remains an open and accessible resource, focusing largely on issues related to privacy, data integrity, and AI. Mozilla’s most recognizable product, Firefox, has long been considered one of the most secure mainstream web browsers. In fact, baked into all of Mozilla’s offerings is the idea that technology must “balance commercial profit and public benefit.” That Mozilla is now looking to boost third-party companies with similar values is unsurprising, but in the best possible way.

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