Month: April 2022

Enlarge / Canoo's lifestyle vehicle will be too small to fit NASA's needs, but perhaps the Artemis Crew Transport Vehicle will look like a stretched-out version of this van. (credit: Canoo)

When astronauts finally return to the Moon with NASA's Artemis project, their journey to the launchpad will be fully electric. The space agency has been looking for a replacement for its early 1980s-era Astrovan, and this week it awarded a contract to electric vehicle startup Canoo.

NASA had a number of requirements for the Artemis transport vehicle when it issued the contract opportunity in 2021.

The agency said it would consider both commercial and non-commercial vehicles but that the crew transport vehicle must produce zero emissions and be designed and built according to current federal vehicle safety standards. The vehicle also needs to be able to carry a driver, four suited-up astronauts, and three extra personnel.

Enlarge / Russian President Vladimir Putin in 2021. (credit: RAMIL SITDIKOV/SPUTNIK/AFP via Getty Images)

Roskomnadzor, Russia's censorship authority, issued another demand on Tuesday for Wikipedia to remove what it called "unreliable socially significant information." The agency warned that failure to comply could lead to fines of up to 4 million rubles ($50,000).

The Wikimedia Foundation did not immediately respond to an email from Ars seeking comment. But the organization made its stance plain last month after the Russian government made similar demands. A March 3 statement on the Wikimedia website declared that "we will not back down in the face of efforts to censor and intimidate members of our movement."

When Russia invaded Ukraine, the government tightened its already strict media censorship regime. In early March, President Vladimir Putin signed legislation prohibiting the publication of "fake news." Violators could face prison terms of as long as 15 years. Passage of the law led a number of Western media organizations to suspend reporting in Russia.

Enlarge / The Cumbre Vieja volcano's eruption was complicated and not entirely what experts expected. (credit: Andreas Weibel)

Last fall’s Cumbre Vieja volcanic eruption in the Canary Islands was surprising for several reasons. Most predominantly, the eruption did not cause tsunamis to spread across the Atlantic Ocean, as some experts had predicted. But for volcanologists, the eruption displayed several other unexpected features that may help experts better forecast which volcanos are most at risk of calamitous eruptions, allowing for better long-term planning for La Palma and similar volcanic regions.

Researchers are still in the early phases of analyzing the wealth of data they collected during the nearly three-month-long eruption (85 days and eight hours, to be precise). But as highlighted in a recent perspective article, the eruption may answer a number of ongoing questions while raising several new ones—particularly about its surprise finale.

Rare learning opportunity

The 2021 Cumbre Vieja eruption lasted longer and produced more lava (over 200 million m³) than any other in La Palma’s recorded history. This long duration, combined with the relatively convenient location of the Canary Islands, provided a rare opportunity for researchers around the world to study the volcano’s progress in detail. The observations included geophysical and geochemical measurements—before, during, and after the eruption—as well as insights into the magma flow below ground and the lava paths above.

Enlarge / The chassis and battery pack of a Volkswagen AG (VW) ID.5 electric sports utility vehicle (eSUV) on the assembly line during a media tour of the automaker's electric automobile factory in Zwickau, Germany. (credit: Bloomberg | Getty Images)

The car industry’s multibillion-dollar bet on electric vehicles was built on a single premise: that batteries would carry on getting cheaper.

In 2019, Volkswagen executives even brandished charts predicting a steady decline in battery costs as they laid out their ambition to consign the combustion engine to history.

For years the industry was proved right: battery costs fell from $1,000 per KWH for the first models more than a decade ago to about $130 in 2021, paving the way to making them affordable for middle-income families.