Month: October 2022

Enlarge / SpaceX's Falcon 9 B1067.2 and Crew Dragon spacecraft at LC-39A in advance of the Crew-3 mission that launched for NASA in November 2021. (credit: Trevor Mahlmann)

NASA obligated $2.04 billion to SpaceX in fiscal year 2022, which ended last month, according to new federal procurement data.

For the first time, the amount paid by the space agency to SpaceX exceeds that paid to Boeing, which has long been the leading hardware provider to NASA. Boeing received $1.72 billion during the most recent fiscal year, based on data first reported by Aviation Week's Irene Klotz.

The California Institute of Technology, which manages the Jet Propulsion Laboratory field center for NASA, remains the agency's No. 1 contractor, with $2.68 billion in funding. The academic institution is responsible for operating the California-based NASA field center and distributing funding for myriad robotic spacecraft missions such as Mars Perseverance and the Europa Clipper.

Enlarge / A billboard showing Windows 8 in Times Square in New York at the Microsoft Store in October 2012. (credit: Personal photo from Steven Sinofsky)

On October 26, 2012, Microsoft released Windows 8, a hybrid tablet/desktop operating system that took bold risks but garnered mixed reviews. Ten years later, we've caught up with former Windows Division President Steven Sinofsky to explore how Windows 8 got started, how it predicted several current trends in computing, and how he feels about the OS in retrospect.

In 2011, PC sales began to drop year over year in a trend that alarmed the industry. Simultaneously, touch-based mobile comping on smartphones and tablets dramatically rose in popularity. In response, Microsoft undertook the development of a flexible operating system that would ideally scale from mobile to desktop seamlessly. Sinofsky accepted the challenge and worked with many others, including Julie Larson-Green and Panos Panay, then head of the Surface team, to make it happen.

Windows 8 represented the most dramatic transformation of the Windows interface since Windows 95. While that operating system introduced the Start menu, Windows 8 removed that iconic menu in favor of a Start screen filled with "live tiles" that functioned well on touchscreen computers like the purpose-built Microsoft Surface, but frustrated desktop PC users. It led to heavy pushback from the press, and PC sales continued to decline.