Month: April 2020

Enlarge / Technicians at NASA’s Michoud Assembly Facility in New Orleans moved the Space Launch System's liquid hydrogen tank from the factory to the dock, where it was loaded onto the Pegasus barge on Dec. 14, 2018. (credit: NASA/Steven Seipel)

Every year, the US Government Accountability Office releases a report that assesses NASA's major projects. Typically, this GAO report summarizes each project and provides some basic information about schedule, cost, and concerns regarding the space agency's work.

However, the new "Assessments of Major NASA Projects" report released on Wednesday contains what seems to be an entirely new bit of information about the Space Launch System rocket NASA is developing for deep space exploration. The report asserts that engineers at NASA and the SLS rocket's core-stage contractor, Boeing, are concerned about fuel leaks.

Earlier this year, NASA moved the big rocket's core stage to a test site at Stennis Space Center in southern Mississippi. Before the COVID-19 pandemic temporarily halted work, NASA and Boeing teams were working toward a critical summer exercise. During this "green run" test, the clamped-down rocket will ignite its engines and burn for about eight minutes to simulate an ascent into orbit.

Another Marvel era is ending as Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D. gears up for its seventh, and final, 13-episode season on ABC. The spin-off series created by The Avengers writer and director Joss Whedon brought Agent Phil Coulson (Clark Gregg) back from the dead to lead an elite squad of agents to take on the terrorist group Hydra, eventually incorporating a superhuman race called Inhumans into the storyline. The official trailer has now been released, giving us a better look at what's in store for Coulson and his team on their final mission.

(Warning: some major spoilers for S5 and S6 below.)

Many cast and crew members expected Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D. to end after S5, especially since Gregg's beloved Coulson character died (again) in the finale, spending his last days alone on a romantic tropical beach in Tahiti with May (Ming-Na Wen). Instead, ABC renewed it for a shortened sixth season of 13 episodes, adding a surprise renewal for a seventh and final season before S6 had been released.

Enlarge (credit: portal gda / Flickr)

Hackers have been using Google Play for years to distribute an unusually advanced backdoor capable of stealing a wide range of sensitive data, researchers said on Tuesday.

Researchers from security firm Kaspersky Lab have recovered at least eight Google Play apps that date back to 2018, a Kaspersky Lab representative said, but based on archive searches and other methods, the researchers believe malicious apps from the same advanced group seeded Google’s official market since at least 2016.

Google removed recent versions of the malware shortly after the researchers from Kaspersky, and earlier fellow security firm Dr. Web, reported them. Apps from earlier were already removed, and it’s not clear what prompted the move. Third-party markets have also hosted the backdoored apps, and many of them remain available.