Month: February 2024

Enlarge / This artist's illustration released by Astroscale shows the ADRAS-J spacecraft (left) approaching the defunct upper stage from a Japanese H-IIA rocket. (credit: Astroscale)

Astroscale, a well-capitalized Japanese startup, is preparing a small satellite to do something that has never been done in space.

This new spacecraft, delivered into orbit Sunday by Rocket Lab, will approach a defunct upper stage from a Japanese H-IIA rocket that has been circling Earth for more than 15 years. Over the next few months, the satellite will try to move within arm's reach of the rocket, taking pictures and performing complicated maneuvers to move around the bus-size H-IIA upper stage as it moves around the planet at nearly 5 miles per second (7.6 km/s).

These maneuvers are complex, but they're nothing new for spacecraft visiting the International Space Station. Military satellites from the United States, Russia, and China also have capabilities for rendezvous and proximity operations (RPO), but as far as we know, these spacecraft have only maneuvered in ultra-close range around so-called "cooperative" objects designed to receive them.

Enlarge / The real Will Smith eating spaghetti, parodying an AI-generated video from 2023. (credit: Will Smith / Getty Images / Benj Edwards)

On Monday, Will Smith posted a video on his official Instagram feed that parodied an AI-generated video of the actor eating spaghetti that went viral last year. With the recent announcement of OpenAI's Sora video synthesis model, many people have noted the dramatic jump in AI-video quality over the past year compared to the infamous spaghetti video. Smith's new video plays on that comparison by showing the actual actor eating spaghetti in a comical fashion and claiming that it is AI-generated.

Captioned "This is getting out of hand!", the Instagram video uses a split screen layout to show the original AI-generated spaghetti video created by a Reddit user named "chaindrop" in March 2023 on the top, labeled with the subtitle "AI Video 1 year ago." Below that, in a box titled "AI Video Now," the real Smith shows 11 video segments of himself actually eating spaghetti by slurping it up while shaking his head, pouring it into his mouth with his fingers, and even nibbling on a friend's hair. 2006's Snap Yo Fingers by Lil Jon plays in the background.

In the Instagram comments section, some people expressed confusion about the new (non-AI) video, saying, "I'm still in doubt if second video was also made by AI or not." In a reply, someone else wrote, "Boomers are gonna loose [sic] this one. Second one is clearly him making a joke but I wouldn’t doubt it in a couple months time it will get like that."

Enlarge (credit: Rob Engelaar | Getty Images)

Law enforcement agencies including the FBI and the UK’s National Crime Agency have dealt a crippling blow to LockBit, one of the world’s most prolific cybercrime gangs, whose victims include Royal Mail and Boeing.

The 11 international agencies behind “Operation Cronos” said on Tuesday that the ransomware group—many of whose members are based in Russia—had been “locked out” of its own systems. Several of the group’s key members have been arrested, indicted, or identified and its core technology seized, including hacking tools and its “dark web” homepage.

Graeme Biggar, NCA director-general, said law enforcement officers had “successfully infiltrated and fundamentally disrupted LockBit.”

Enlarge / Russian President Vladimir Putin (L) and Roscosmos Space Corporation Chief Yuri Borisov peruse an exhibit while visiting the Korolev Rocket and Space Corporation Energia last October. (credit: Contributor/Getty Images)

Russia's Duma, the lower house of the nation's federal legislature, passed a new law earlier this month that directs the Roscosmos State Corporation to make purchases through a closed bidding process.

According to the Interfax news agency, the legislation expands the list of corporations, including Roscosmos subsidiaries and other "legal entities," that must participate in the government contract procurement processes via a closed bidding process.

Passage of the amendment by the Duma, which is dominated by President Vladimir Putin's "United Russia" political party, signals that it will almost certainly become the law of the land. Based on the Russian news report, translated for Ars by Rob Mitchell, the idea for the law came from Roscosmos, the sprawling corporation that operates the majority of the country's civil and military space programs.

Enlarge / Polluted street scenes like this will remain common in the United States, which will abandon ambitious fuel efficiency standards in the face of complaints from automakers and unions. (credit: Getty Images)

It appears as if ambitious new fuel efficiency regulations that would require Americans to adopt many more electric vehicles are to be watered down. Last year, President Biden's administration published proposed new Corporate Average Fuel Economy regulations for 2027–2030, regulations that would require automakers to sell four times as many zero-emissions vehicles as they do now.

But opposition to the new CAFE standards has been fierce, and now Reuters reports that the White House is backing down and will issue new guidelines with less ambitious goals in the coming weeks.

The White House's goal had been for US EV adoption to reach 50 percent of all new light vehicle sales by 2030, rising to 60 percent by 2032. In part, it proposed changing the modifier applied to each new zero-emissions vehicle when used to calculate an automaker's fleet emissions.