Month: June 2019

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  Mission concept of Dragon's entry, descent, landing, surface operations, and flight at Titan. [credit: Johns Hopkins APL ]

On Thursday, NASA announced its next medium-class mission to explore the Solar System—a lander named Dragonfly that will fly like a drone over the surface of Titan, Saturn's largest Moon. Titan has a fascinating environment, with a hydrocarbon atmosphere much thicker than Earth's atmosphere. NASA intends to spend a couple of years exploring its complex chemistry.

NASA scientists were deciding between this Titan explorer and another mission that would have flown to a comet named 67P/Churyumov–Gerasimenko. The comet had been previously visited by Europe's Rosetta spacecraft, which returned a sample of cometary material to Earth.

Of the two missions, the Titan explorer—with an unprecedented design that would fly a vehicle the size of a larger Mars rover over the moon—carried the higher risk. But, half a century after the Apollo lunar landings, NASA decided to go boldly. "A great nation does great things," said NASA administrator Jim Bridenstine.

Enlarge / Jony Ive speaks onstage during the 2017 New Yorker TechFest in New York City. (credit: Brian Ach/Getty Images)

Jony Ive, Apple's longtime design chief, will depart Apple to form his own independent design company, according to a press release distributed by Apple today. While he will no longer be an employee, he will count Apple among his clients at the new firm, according to both parties.

Ive's new company will be called LoveFrom. It will be based in California, at least to start, and will launch in 2020 after a transition period later this year, according to a Financial Times article about the change.

"While I will not be an [Apple] employee, I will still be very involved—I hope for many, many years to come. This just seems like a natural and gentle time to make this change," Ive told Financial Times. CEO Tim Cook also commented to Financial Times in his usual upbeat voice, saying, "We get to continue with the same team that we've had for a long time and have the pleasure of continuing to work with Jony. I can't imagine a better result."