Month: February 2022

Enlarge / An Audi e-tron prototype on the highway in Europe lights its way ahead with adaptive beam headlights. (credit: Audi)

The National Highway Traffic Safety Administration is finally poised to legalize adaptive beam headlights in the US. On Tuesday, the NHTSA announced that it has issued a final rule that will update the Federal Motor Vehicle Safety Standards, which currently only allow for "dumb" high- and low-beam lights.

Adaptive beam lights use a matrix of projectors, some of which can be turned off to shape the beam so the lights illuminate the road and not an oncoming driver. (These are an advancement over the auto-high beam technology that you may have fitted to your current car.) The technology has been around for nearly two decades in Europe and Japan.

Automakers have been asking the NHTSA to update its headlamp rules for some time now. In 2013, Toyota first petitioned the agency to allow for adaptive beam lights, and the NHTSA agreed to begin the laborious and lengthy federal government rulemaking procedure.

Enlarge / European astronaut Matthias Maurer, in the white t-shirt, joins his Crew-3 mates in hugging a Falcon 9 rocket at SpaceX's headquarters in Hawthorne, California. (credit: SpaceX)

European astronauts have been flying into space since 1978, when a German named Sigmund Jähn climbed aboard a Soyuz spacecraft and traveled to the Salyut 6 space station for a week.

Over the next four decades, dozens of European astronauts would fly on vehicles operated by Russia and the United States to various space stations. Most recently, French and German astronauts have launched to the International Space Station aboard SpaceX's Crew Dragon vehicle.

These astronauts, Thomas Pesquet and Matthias Maurer, both praised the Crew Dragon vehicle's smooth spaceflight and the reusable nature of the rocket. They had no complaints. But as a new "manifesto" makes clear, European astronauts would like to have their own independent means of reaching the International Space Station.