Month: April 2023

Enlarge / NASA Administrator Bill Nelson announces the crew of Artemis II. Just kidding. Nelson is holding the Artemis I Snoopy zero gravity indicator alongside Jeannie Schulz, widow of Peanuts gang creator Charles M. Schulz, earlier this month. (credit: NASA)

Welcome to Edition 5.35 of the Rocket Report! It may be difficult to believe, but we are in the final days of April already, meaning the year 2023 is nearly one-third over. If you are planning important launch milestones this year, please take note!

As always, we welcome reader submissions, and if you don't want to miss an issue, please subscribe using the box below (the form will not appear on AMP-enabled versions of the site). Each report will include information on small-, medium-, and heavy-lift rockets as well as a quick look ahead at the next three launches on the calendar.

VSS Unity returns to the skies. On Wednesday morning, the VMS Eve aircraft took off from Spaceport America and subsequently released the VSS Unity spacecraft at an altitude of about 14 kilometers, Ars reports. After this, the spacecraft glided back to the runway in New Mexico, testing modifications to the spacecraft's flight controls and handling. After the test, Virgin Galactic said the glide flight closes its "final validation test points" of a campaign to ensure the aircraft and space plane are ready to resume powered flights.

Enlarge / Working outside like this isn't so easy on an OLED laptop with limited brightness. (credit: Maria Korneeva/Getty)

If I could have any type of display panel in my laptop, it would be Mini LED.

Sure, OLED is best at producing deep blacks and high contrast, but Mini LED is a powerful substitute. The potential for blooming still exists, but it's not a huge deal on a small laptop screen. Meanwhile, there's no burn-in risk, and I'd likely get better full-screen brightness when I want to take my laptop outside. Plus, the battery life of Mini LED screens is superior to that of OLED panels.

For the things I do most frequently on my laptop—working on Word documents and spreadsheets, reading, editing photos, and streaming video—the highest contrast ratio isn't imperative. I'd settle for second-best if it meant other gains.