Month: November 2023

Enlarge / SpaceX's second Starship rocket stands a few feet taller than the first iteration of the full-size vehicle. (credit: SpaceX)

SpaceX will have answers to some burning questions in the first three minutes of the next Starship test flight. Did the upgrades to the Starship launch pad in Texas hold up to the rocket's powerful thrust? Are the rocket's Raptor engines more reliable than they were on the first Starship test flight in April? And did the rocket's Super Heavy booster safely separate from the Starship upper stage?

The answers to these questions will show how quickly SpaceX can move forward with everything else it wants to do with Starship. These next steps include launching Starlink Internet satellites, which will expedite the network's ability to directly connect with consumer cell phones. SpaceX needs to test in-orbit refueling for Starship flights to the Moon for NASA, and engineers want to demonstrate recovering Starship's giant booster and upper stage, necessary steps to make the rocket fully reusable.

But first, the rocket needs to make it into space. That didn't happen during Starship's first full-scale test flight on April 20, but SpaceX learned a lot from that mission. Engineers learned they needed to beef up the launch mount, which took a beating from the Super Heavy booster as it generated more than 15 million pounds of thrust from its methane-fueled Raptor engines.

Enlarge (credit: Andrew Harrer/Bloomberg via Getty Images)

The top US consumer finance regulator is seeking new powers to oversee technology companies that offer digital wallets and payment applications, in a move that would intensify scrutiny over companies such as Google and Apple.

The proposal issued by the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau on Tuesday would subject non-bank companies that offer digital payments to a regulatory scheme similar to that for banks or credit unions.

It aims to ensure that US consumer protection laws are applied to a ballooning sector used by millions of consumers to transfer funds and make retail payment transactions.

Enlarge / This image shows the asteroid Dinkinesh and its satellite as seen by the Lucy Long-Range Reconnaissance Imager (L’LORRI) as NASA’s Lucy Spacecraft departed the system. (credit: NASA/Goddard/SwRI/Johns Hopkins APL)

Welcome to the Daily Telescope. There is a little too much darkness in this world and not enough light; a little too much pseudoscience and not enough science. We'll let other publications offer you a daily horoscope. At Ars Technica, we're going to take a different route, finding inspiration from very real images of a universe that is filled with stars and wonder.

Good morning. It is November 8, and yes, we're headed back out to the Lucy mission again. NASA has shared some additional information about an asteroid flyby last week, and there's more goodness to share.

A few days ago, the Daily Telescope reported that the Lucy spacecraft had found not one but two asteroids during its flyby of the small main-belt asteroid Dinkinesh. It turns out that was not the whole story. Subsequent data downlinked from the spacecraft revealed that the smaller of the two asteroids is a contact binary—two smaller asteroids in contact with one another.