GoKawiil
Tech News
A Verge editor traces his discovery of The Units through a synthpunk.org archive found via the Wayback Machine, leading him to the band's 1980 record Digital Stimulation. He argues the album, led by Scott Ryser and Rachel Webber, sounds startlingly modern despite its era-specific production, with tracks resembling contemporary acts like MSPAINT, DFA-era dance-punk, and Single Frame.
A team led by Xin Li at Westlake University identified an intermediate-mass black hole, roughly 35,000 times the sun's mass, sitting outside the star-forming disk of the dwarf galaxy UGCA 320, about 20 million light-years away. Hubble imaging and MUSE spectroscopy showing broad Balmer emission confirmed the object is actively accreting material as it drifts through the galaxy, dragging surrounding gas behind it.
A player analyzed Factorio's Space-Age DLC quality system, which uses a pseudo-random number generator rather than true randomness to determine item and building quality upgrades. The write-up documents an in-game implementation that exploited this predictable RNG, though it notes the technique breaks under Factorio version 2.1 due to changes in how the RNG is invoked, while the underlying algorithm remains the same.
China's Yaogan 50-02 reconnaissance satellite, which had settled into an unusual retrograde orbit roughly 590 miles up, broke apart months after launch. The US Space Force has tracked 43 fragments now circling Earth at altitudes between 372 and 683 miles, and the cause of the breakup remains unannounced, though astronomer Jonathan McDowell speculated it could be a battery explosion or a debris strike.
Astroscale executive Ron Lopez discussed the company's upcoming ISSA-J1 mission for JAXA, which will require rendezvousing with two decommissioned Japanese satellites rather than a rocket body. Unlike the ADRAS-J2 mission targeting a stable rocket stage, ISSA-J1 must approach satellites with protruding solar arrays that are likely tumbling, demanding more advanced rendezvous and proximity operations technology.
NASA has issued a Request for Information outlining plans for a United States Space Academy, aiming for a 2026 groundbreaking, a 2028 opening in temporary facilities, and a permanent campus by 2031. The agency wants a site of at least 300 acres, initially serving 1,200 undergraduates with room to grow to 4,000, and is inviting all 50 states to submit proposals detailing land, funding, and infrastructure support.
The European Space Agency is pressing ahead with its Envision mission to Venus after NASA signaled it likely can't deliver the US-built synthetic aperture radar it had promised under a 2024 partnership agreement. That radar was meant to be the spacecraft's main tool for mapping the planet's volcanic surface through its thick sulfuric-acid clouds at ten times the resolution of NASA's 1990s Magellan mission. ESA's project scientist says development will continue at full pace regardless.
Odin Space is selling adhesive vibration sensor strips that satellites can use to detect and measure debris impacts, addressing the mystery behind many small-satellite failures. Meanwhile, Atlanta-area company Atomic-6 is working on lighter alternative shielding to replace or improve upon traditional aluminum panels and Whipple shields used to protect spacecraft from high-speed debris strikes.
NASA and Katalyst Space attempted to use a robotic probe called LINK to grab the aging Neil Gehrels Swift Observatory and push it back into a stable orbit, but the probe suffered altitude-control failures shortly after its July launch, forcing cancellation of the mission. Swift, launched in 2004, is now expected to reenter Earth's atmosphere and burn up as soon as later this year, sooner than the 2030 estimate scientists once projected.
Star Trek celebrates six decades since its original series premiered in 1966, having since expanded into more than 25 series and films spanning multiple generations of fans. Media outlets are marking the occasion with retrospectives on the franchise's cultural influence, from its many captains to its shared lexicon of stardates, warp factors and Vulcan salutes.
Longshot Space is developing what it calls the world's largest gun, a cannon that uses successive bursts of compressed gas rather than traditional rocket fuel to hurl satellites into orbit. The barrel, eventually planned to stretch for miles, is designed to gradually accelerate payloads to the speeds needed to reach space. Company representatives say the ruggedized satellites they envision could survive the launch shock, though they acknowledge the method isn't suited for delicate equipment or people.
European space startup The Exploration Company has secured $450 million in a Series C round, which it calls the largest ever raised by a European space company. The Germany-based firm, led by former Airbus and ArianeGroup executive Hélène Huby, plans to use the funds to develop a reusable heavy-lift launcher aimed at rivaling SpaceX. The company says it already has 10 missions booked and over $2 billion in contracts, including commitments from the European Space Agency and NASA.