Month: October 2023

Enlarge / Jeff Bezos, Blue Origin's founder, meets NASA Administrator Bill Nelson with a mock-up of the Blue Moon Mark 1 lander behind them. (credit: NASA)

Blue Origin has unveiled a mock-up of the Blue Moon lander it says will be ready to fly to the Moon within the next three years as a precursor to human landings on a larger vehicle, perhaps at the end of the decade.

Jeff Bezos, the billionaire founder of Blue Origin, recently showed off the "low-fidelity" mock-up to NASA officials at the company's engine production facility in Huntsville, Alabama. The vehicle is undoubtedly large and will take advantage of the 23-foot-wide (7-meter) payload volume on Blue Origin's New Glenn rocket.

This is the Mark 1 variant of the Blue Moon lander. It's designed to deliver up to 3 metric tons (about 6,600 pounds) of cargo anywhere on the lunar surface. Blue Origin revealed the design on Friday.

Enlarge (credit: Master/Getty)

The Moon is slated to be our next frontier. When Artemis 3 takes off (tentatively) near the end of 2025, it will be the first mission since the Apollo era to land humans on our satellite. By then, there might be a new way to get around on the Moon’s gray dust, which could at least mitigate damage from sharp particles of lunar regolith.

An international team of researchers with the ESA PAVER project has figured out a way to melt Moondust—or at least an ESA-developed stimulant for it—with lasers. The researchers fired laser beams at lunar soil to create interlocking pavers that could be used to construct paved roads and landing pads. The hardened molten regolith is tough enough to withstand the weight of rovers and other spacecraft with minimal dust kickup, and it could all be made right there on the Moon.

“This technology is envisioned to play a major role in the first phase (survivability) of lunar infrastructure and base development, and over time to contribute to all phases of lunar exploration,” the researchers said in a study recently published in Scientific Reports.

Enlarge (credit: Master/Getty)

The Moon is slated to be our next frontier. When Artemis 3 takes off (tentatively) near the end of 2025, it will be the first mission since the Apollo era to land humans on our satellite. By then, there might be a new way to get around on the Moon’s gray dust, which could at least mitigate damage from sharp particles of lunar regolith.

An international team of researchers with the ESA PAVER project has figured out a way to melt Moondust—or at least an ESA-developed stimulant for it—with lasers. The researchers fired laser beams at lunar soil to create interlocking pavers that could be used to construct paved roads and landing pads. The hardened molten regolith is tough enough to withstand the weight of rovers and other spacecraft with minimal dust kickup, and it could all be made right there on the Moon.

“This technology is envisioned to play a major role in the first phase (survivability) of lunar infrastructure and base development, and over time to contribute to all phases of lunar exploration,” the researchers said in a study recently published in Scientific Reports.

Enlarge / This is not what a hacker looks like. Except on hacker cosplay night. (credit: Getty Images | Bill Hinton)

Microsoft has been tracking a threat group that stands out for its ability to cash in from data theft hacks that use broad social engineering attacks, painstaking research, and occasional physical threats.

Unlike many ransomware attack groups, Octo Tempest, as Microsoft has named the group, doesn’t encrypt data after gaining illegal access to it. Instead, the threat actor threatens to share the data publicly unless the victim pays a hefty ransom. To defeat targets’ defenses, the group resorts to a host of techniques, which, besides social engineering, includes SIM swaps, SMS phishing, and live voice calls. Over time, the group has grown increasingly aggressive, at times resorting to threats of physical violence if a target doesn’t comply with instructions to turn over credentials.

“In rare instances, Octo Tempest resorts to fear-mongering tactics, targeting specific individuals through phone calls and texts,” Microsoft researchers wrote in a post on Wednesday. “These actors use personal information, such as home addresses and family names, along with physical threats to coerce victims into sharing credentials for corporate access.”