Gizmodo reports that increased activity on the Moon "may affect the unique radio silence on the lunar far side, an ideal location for radio telescopes to pick up faint signals from the cosmic past." This week, the International Academy of Astronautics (IAA) held the first Moon Farside Protection Symposium in Italy to advocate for preserving radio silence on the far side of the Moon. The symposium hopes to raise awareness about the threat facing the far side of the Moon and develop approaches to shielding it from artificial radio emissions....

NASA has shown interest in using the lunar radio silence, proposing an ultra-long-wavelength radio telescope inside a crater on the far side of the Moon. The Lunar Crater Radio Telescope is designed to observe the universe at frequencies below 30 megahertz, which are largely unexplored by humans since those signals are reflected by the Earth's ionosphere, according to NASA. At those low frequencies, radio telescopes on the Moon can detect near-Earth objects approaching our planet before other observatories, it can search for signals of alien civilizations, and study organic molecules in interstellar space...

As more missions head towards the Moon, however, that perfect silence is increasingly being compromised. Earlier this week, for example, China launched a satellite to relay communication between ground operations on Earth and an upcoming mission on the far side of the Moon. The satellite, Queqiao-2, is the first of a constellation of satellites that China hopes to deploy by 2040 to communicate with future crewed missions on the Moon and Mars. As part of its Artemis program, NASA is aiming to build the Lunar Gateway, a space station designed to orbit the Moon to support future missions to the lunar surface and Mars. In advance of this, a NASA-funded cubesat, called CAPSTONE, has entered into a unique halo orbit to demonstrate the stability and practicality of this trajectory for future lunar missions... CAPSTONE marks the beginning of something big — establishing a permanent communication link between Earth and lunar assets, and ensuring the steady, uninterrupted flow of data.

NASA and its Chinese counterparts have eerily similar plans for lunar exploration, and the Moon is currently a 'free-for-all' with no regulations set in place as to who can own our dusty orbital companion.
"In other words, things are about to get real loud out there as far as radio transmissions are concerned."

The Associated Press reports on the passing of astronaut Thomas P. Stafford, the commander of a dress rehearsal flight for the 1969 moon landing and the first U.S.-Soviet space linkup. He was 93. From the report: Stafford, a retired Air Force three-star general, took part in four space missions. Before Apollo 10, he flew on two Gemini flights, including the first rendezvous of two U.S. capsules in orbit. He died in a hospital near his Space Coast Florida home, said Max Ary, director of the Stafford Air & Space Museum in Weatherford, Oklahoma. Stafford was one of 24 NASA astronauts who flew to the moon, but he did not land on it. Only seven of them are still alive. After he put away his flight suit, Stafford was the go-to guy for NASA when it sought independent advice on everything from human Mars missions to safety issues to returning to flight after the 2003 space shuttle Columbia accident. He chaired an oversight group that looked into how to fix the then-flawed Hubble Space Telescope, earning a NASA public service award.

"Tom was involved in so many things that most people were not aware of, such as being known as the 'Father of Stealth,'" Ary said in an email. Stafford was in charge of the famous 'Area 51' desert base that was the site of many UFO theories, but the home of testing of Air Force stealth technologies. The Apollo 10 mission in May 1969 set the stage for Apollo 11's historic mission two months later. Stafford and Gene Cernan took the lunar lander nicknamed Snoopy within 9 miles (14 kilometers) of the moon's surface. Astronaut John Young stayed behind in the main spaceship dubbed Charlie Brown. "The most impressive sight, I think, that really changed your view of things is when you first see Earth," Stafford recalled in a 1997 oral history, talking about the view from lunar orbit. Then came the moon's far side: "The Earth disappears. There's this big black void." Apollo 10's return to Earth set the world's record for fastest speed by a crewed vehicle at 24,791 mph (39,897 kph).

After the moon landings ended, NASA and the Soviet Union decided on a joint docking mission and Stafford, a one-star general at the time, was chosen to command the American side. It meant intensive language training, being followed by the KGB while in the Soviet Union, and lifelong friendships with cosmonauts. The two teams of space travelers even went to Disney World and rode Space Mountain together before going into orbit and joining ships. "We have capture," Stafford radioed in Russian as the Apollo and Soyuz spacecraft hooked up. His Russian counterpart, Alexei Leonov, responded in English: "Well done, Tom, it was a good show. I vote for you." [...] The 1975 mission included two days during which the five men worked together on experiments. After, the two teams toured the world together, meeting President Gerald Ford and Soviet leader Leonid Brezhnev. "It helped prove to the rest of the world that two completely opposite political systems could work together," Stafford recalled at a 30th anniversary gathering in 2005. Later, Stafford was a central part of discussions in the 1990s that brought Russia into the partnership building and operating the International Space Station.

The Street interviewed Chad Anderson, founder/managing partner of the "space economy" investment firm Space Capital, who calls SpaceX's progress "unprecedented," and believes their next launch could carry "operational" payloads like Starlink satellites. Anderson added that Starship reaching orbital velocity and reentering the atmosphere at those speeds (roughly 16,000 miles per hour) was "a really big deal," though it's specifically important for the reusability of the vehicle, which would further cheapen the cost of launch.

"The fact that they did all those things and they can now move into operations as an investor is hugely important and significant," Anderson said. "Having an operational Starship vehicle is really important because, at the moment, they just can't launch Starlink satellites fast enough. Starship is going to be able to launch 10 times more than Falcon 9 can, and that's really important...."

The ship is so big that, according to Anderson, Starship could conceivably serve as a space station, or a hotel, or a manufacturing facility. There is also the potential of Starship actually competing with commercial airlines, flying, for example, from New York to Shanghai in 45 minutes.
Clayton Swope, senior fellow at CSIS, also believes Starship could be used for "last-mile delivery... where you could move something in less than an hour, anywhere from a point on Earth to another point on Earth, and you're just kind of using space as that transit point."

There's also defense applications. Defense One notes the U.S. Defense Department uses SpaceX to launch most of its satellites. "With a payload capacity of 100 to 150 tons, Starship could carry a bunch of satellites simultaneously and increase the Space Force's launch rate as it builds out a network of hundreds of satellites in low-Earth orbit." Once Starship is operational, it will be able to put things into higher orbits, which is key for the Pentagon's push to operate in the cislunar environment, the area between the geosynchronous orbit and the moon. "The Chinese have already begun cislunar operations and have put vehicles on the far side of the moon, which is something the U.S. doesn't really have the ability to do right now," said Bryan Clark, a senior fellow at the Hudson Institute.

However, the advantage the U.S. will get with Starship "won't last forever," and it will take years to build satellites specifically designed to take advantage of the rocket's payload capacity, said Todd Harrison, a senior fellow at the American Enterprise Institute. "At this rate, they will have Starship operational this year. We need payloads to go on that, if we're actually going to take advantage of it during this window of opportunity when it's a capability only we have. If you want those payloads available next year, you needed to start building them five years ago," Harrison said.

Starship could be used to put very large objects into space, such as fuel barges or energy stations, at a reasonable cost. "You could use this to put up an orbital bus that you can then put on and remove payloads from, so you can have a satellite on orbit that's basically a large docking station," Clark said... "[I]t could be a way to do that kind of thing where you establish essentially an unmanned, little space station that can carry various payloads."

The Washington Post reports: Nearly a decade ago, Congress passed a law that allows private American space companies the rights to resources they mine on celestial bodies, including the moon.

Now, there's a private venture that says it intends to do just that.

Founded by a pair of former executives from Blue Origin, the space venture founded by Jeff Bezos, and an Apollo astronaut, the company, Interlune, announced itself publicly Wednesday by saying it has raised $18 million and is developing the technology to harvest and bring materials back from the moon... Specifically, Interlune is focused on Helium-3, a stable isotope that is scarce on Earth but plentiful on the moon and could be used as fuel in nuclear fusion reactors as well as helping power the quantum computing industry.

The company, based in Seattle, has been working for about four years on the technology, which comes as the commercial sector is working with NASA on its goal of building an enduring presence on and around the moon... Rob Meyerson, the former president of Blue Origin, co-founded Interlune with Gary Lai, another former executive at Blue, and Harrison Schmitt, a geologist who flew to the moon during Apollo 17... In an interview, Meyerson said that the company intends to be the first to collect, return and then sell lunar resources and test the 2015 law. There is a large demand for Helium-3 in the quantum computing industry, which requires some of its systems to operate in extremely cold temperatures, and Interlune has already lined up a "customer that wants to buy lunar resources in large quantities," he said.

"We intend to be the first to go commercialize and deliver and support those customers," he said. NASA might want to be a customer as well. In 2020, it said it was looking for companies to collect rocks and dirt from the lunar surface and sell them to NASA as part of a technology development program that would eventually help astronauts "live off the land...." The company's funding round was led by the venture capital firm Seven Seven Six, whose founder and general partner, Alexis Ohanian, said that the space sector has become far more appealing to investors. "The space economy is something we can actually talk about with a straight face now, and I think some of the smartest people on the planet are making those efforts," he said...

He said he was aware that it might take years, or longer for a moon mining business to make money. But he said that, "we're comfortable waiting for a decade plus to see those returns."
NASA is planning more missions like the Intuitive Machines landing earlier this year, according to the article, "which it says will not only help pave the way for humans to return to the moon but for private industry to begin commercial operations there as well." Interlune plans "a prospecting machine" as soon as 2026, followed by an "end-to-end demonstration" in 2028 that harvests and returns a small quanity of Helium-3, and then full-scale operations by 2030.

"China has also said that it is interested in extracting other resources, including Helium-3, which it said was present in a sample it returned from the moon in 2020."

An anonymous reader quotes a report from Fortune: We are often told that setting the bar high is key to success. After all, if you shoot for the moon and miss, at least you'll land with the stars. But Nvidia's CEO Jensen Huang wants privileged Gen Z grads to lower their expectations. "People with very high expectations have very low resilience -- and unfortunately, resilience matters in success," Huang said during a recent interview with the Stanford Graduate School of Business. "One of my great advantages is that I have very low expectations."

Indeed, as the billionaire boss pointed out, those at elite institutions like Stanford probably have higher expectations for their future than your average Joe. The university is one of the most selective in the United States -- it ranks third best in the country, according to the QS World University Rankings, and the few students who get picked to study there are charged $62,484 in tuition fees for the premium, compared to the average $26,027 per annum cost. But, unfortunately for those saddled with student debt, not even the best universities in the world can teach you resilience. "I don't know how to teach it to you except for I hope suffering happens to you," Huang added. [...]

For those fortunate enough to never have personally experienced hardship growing up, Huang doesn't have any advice on how to welcome more of it into your life now. But he did have some advice on embracing tough times. "I don't know how to do it [but] for all of you Stanford students, I wish upon you ample doses of pain and suffering," Huang said. "Greatness comes from character and character isn't formed out of smart people -- it's formed out of people who suffered."It's why despite Nvidia's success -- the company has a $2 trillion market cap -- Huang would still welcome hardship at his organization."To this day I use the phrase 'pain and suffering' inside our company with great glee," he added. "I mean that in a happy way because you want to refine the character of your company." Essentially, if you want your workforce to always be on their A game, don't let them rest on their laurels.

Streamers narrowly avoided getting shut out at the 2024 Oscars: Netflix came away with just one trophy and Apple left empty-handed, after they garnered a total of 32 nominations. From a report: Netflix collected its one win for Wes Anderson's "The Wonderful Story of Henry Sugar," an adaptation of a Roald Dahl story, in the live action short film category. The 40-minute film, with a cast that includes Benedict Cumberbatch, Dev Patel, Ben Kingsley, and Ralph Fiennes, is the first Oscar for Anderson (who wasn't in attendance to receive the award). Heading into Sunday's 96th Academy Awards, Netflix led all studios and platforms with 19 nominations across 11 films, including seven for Bradley Cooper's "Maestro" -- which was shut out. Apple had picked up 13 nods, including 10 for Martin Scorsese's "Killers of the Flower Moon," which also drew a goose egg.

Since 2017, Netflix has now won 23 Oscars in all. But the best picture prize continues to elude the streamer as "Maestro" lost out to this year's awards powerhouse, "Oppenheimer." Nor has Netflix won in the lead actor or actress categories, coming up empty this year after four noms (Cooper and Carey Mulligan for "Maestro"; Colman Domingo for "Rustin"; and Annette Bening for "Nyad"). "Killers of the Flower Moon's" nominations included one for Scorsese in the best director category. His only Oscar to date came in 2007 for "The Departed" (for director). In 2020, his mafioso pic "The Irishman" for Netflix was shut out at the Oscars after receiving 10 nominations.

Andrew Jones reports via SpaceNews: The China Aerospace Science and Technology Corporation (CASC) plans to launch four-meter and five-meter-diameter reusable rockets for the first time in 2025 and 2026 respectively, Wang Wei, a deputy to the National People's Congress, told China News Service March 4. The reports do not clearly identify the two rockets. CASC is known to be developing a new, 5.0m-diameter crew launch vehicle, known as the Long March 10. A single stick version would be used to launch a new-generation crew spacecraft to low Earth orbit and could potentially fly in 2025. A three-core variant will launch the "Mengzhou" crew spacecraft into trans-lunar orbit.

The rocket is key to China's plans to put astronauts on the moon before 2030. The Long March 10 lunar variant will be 92 meters long and be able to launch 27 tons into trans-lunar orbit. The 4.0-meter-diameter launcher could be a rocket earlier proposed by CASC's Shanghai Academy of Spaceflight Technology (SAST). That rocket would be able to launch up to 6,500 kg of payload to 700-kilometer sun-synchronous orbit (SSO). It would notably use engines developed by the commercial engine maker Jiuzhou Yunjian.

CASC's first move to develop a reusable rocket centered on making a recoverable version of the Long March 8. That plan appears to have been abandoned. SAST also plans to debut the 3.8m-diameter Long March 12 later this year from a new commercial launch site. While the Long March 10 has specific, defined uses for lunar and human spaceflight, the second reusable rocket would appear to be in competition with China's commercial rocket companies. While this suggests duplication of effort, it also fits into a national strategy to develop reusable rockets and support commercial ecosystems. The moves would greatly boost China's options for launch and access to space. It would also provide new capacity needed to help construction planned low Earth orbit megaconstellations.

In an update on CBS' "60 Minutes" on Sunday, Blue Origin said it was aiming to send an uncrewed lander to the surface of the moon in the next 12 to 16 months. A crewed version is expected to follow. GeekWire reports: "We're expecting to land on the moon between 12 and 16 months from today," [said John Couluris, senior vice president for lunar permanence at Blue Origin]. "I understand I'm saying that publicly, but that's what our team is aiming towards." Couluris was referring to a pathfinder version of Blue Origin's nearly three-story-tall Blue Moon Mark 1 cargo lander, which is taking shape at Blue Origin's production facility in Huntsville, Ala. The Pathfinder Mission would demonstrate the MK1's capabilities -- including its hydrogen-fueled BE-7 engine, its precision landing system and its ability to deliver up to 3 tons of payload anywhere on the moon.

Blue Origin envisions building multiple cargo landers, as well as a crewed version of the Blue Moon lander that could transport NASA astronauts to and from the lunar surface. The MK1 cargo lander is designed for a single launch and delivery, but the crewed lander would be reusable. "We'll launch them to lunar orbit, and we'll leave them there," Couluris explained. "And we'll refuel them in orbit, so that multiple astronauts can use the same vehicle back and forth."

The Pathfinder Mission would be funded by Blue Origin, but NASA is providing support for other Blue Moon missions. Blue Origin's $3.4 billion contract with NASA calls for the crewed lander to be available for the Artemis 5 moon mission by 2029, with an uncrewed test flight as part of the buildup. The in-space refueling operation would make use of a cislunar transporter, built by Lockheed Martin, that could travel between low Earth orbit and lunar orbit with supplies. "We are now building with NASA the infrastructure to ensure lunar permanency," Couluris said. NASA is providing funding for the Blue Moon landing system as an alternative to SpaceX's Starship system, which is under development at SpaceX's Starbase in South Texas. The crewed Starship lunar lander is scheduled to come into play for Artemis 3, a milestone landing mission that's currently scheduled for 2026. [...]

Blue Origin plans to send the MK1 lander to the moon on its reusable New Glenn rocket, which is also under development. A couple of weeks ago, a pathfinder version of that rocket was raised on a Florida launch pad for the first time, and it's currently going through a series of cryogenic tanking tests. Blue Origin CEO Dave Limp, who was brought over to the company from Amazon last year to accelerate work on New Glenn, said in a LinkedIn post that he's "looking forward to bringing this heavy-lift capacity to our customers later this year." One of the early launches is tasked with sending a pair of NASA probes to Mars.

An anonymous reader quotes a report from The Guardian: New research suggests there's less oxygen on the icy surface of Jupiter's moon Europa than thought -- and that could affect what if any life might be lurking in Europa's underground ocean. Even with little or no oxygen, microbes might still be bustling around in the ocean believed to exist miles beneath Europa's frozen crust. As for what else, "who knows," said the Nasa scientist Kevin Hand, who was not involved in the study published on Monday in Nature Astronomy. More work is needed to confirm these findings, which are contrary to earlier telescope observations of condensed oxygen in Europa's ice, indicating a higher oxygen concentration, said Hand.

The new study is based on data collected by Nasa's Juno spacecraft during a particularly close flyby of Europa in 2022 -- a distance of just 219 miles (353km). A US-European team calculated that between 13 and 39lbs (6 and 18kg) of oxygen are produced every second at Europa's surface. Previous estimates had a much wider spread, with as much as 2,245 pounds (1,100 kilograms) of oxygen produced per second. So "unless Europa's oxygen production was significantly higher in the past," the new measurements provide "a narrower range to support habitability," the researchers wrote. This oxygen is formed, along with hydrogen, as Jupiter's radiation blasts Europa's global shell of frozen water. It is unknown how much oxygen escapes into the moon's atmosphere, how much remains in the ice and how much might find its way to the subterranean sea. The report notes that NASA plans to launch the Europa Clipper this fall. "The spacecraft will make dozens of close flybys of Europa -- nearly the size of our moon -- while orbiting the giant gas planet."

It completed the most precise landing ever on the moon — albeit upside-down. And then it faced a "lunar night" lasting about two weeks where temperatures drop to -270 degrees Fahrenheit, reports the Times of India.

But then, "Despite not being designed for the extreme temperatures, SLIM surprised scientists by coming back to life after the two-week-long lunar night." More from Space.com: The lander woke up on February 26 during extremely hot temperatures of 212 Fahrenheit (100 Celsius) in its region and has been making contact here and there with Earth in the days since. Most recently, SLIM attempted observations with its multiband spectroscopic camera, but "it did not work properly," JAXA officials wrote. "This seems to be due to the effects of overnight," the update continued, referring to the frigid two-week-long lunar night that SLIM experienced before the sun shone near Shioli crater again. "But we will continue to investigate based on the data we have obtained for the next opportunity...."
"We received so much support for our operations after the lunar night," the agency posted on social media — adding "thank you!"

The Times of India reports that "JAXA officially announced SLIM's return to a dormant state on March 1, sharing an image of the lunar surface captured by the probe."

Above the photo, JAXA posted this hopeful message. "Although the probability of a failure increases with the repeated severe temperature cycles, SLIM operation will attempt to resume when the sun rises (late March). #GoodAfterMoon."

And Space.com notes that "Despite all, SLIM has met both main and extended mission objectives: Landing precisely on the moon, deploying two tiny rovers and conducting science with its navigation camera and its spectroscopic camera, particularly searching for signs of olivine on the surface."

Thanks to long-time Slashdot reader AmiMoJo for sharing the news.

Nikon is working with NASA to make a mirrorless camera that astronauts will use during the agency's incoming Artemis III mission to document their return to the Moon. From a report: On Thursday, NASA announced that it had entered a Space Act agreement with Nikon to develop the Handheld Universal Lunar Camera (HULC), a camera system designed to capture imagery in low light and survive the harsh lunar environment. The crewed Artemis III mission -- which will launch "no earlier than September 2026" -- aims to explore the lunar south pole, a region of the Moon that contains water ice within permanently shadowed craters.

That makes it an area of scientific interest, but the extreme lighting and temperature conditions pose particular technical challenges for operating equipment within the lunar south pole region. Nikon's full-frame Z9 flagship has already been used in thermal, vacuum, and radiation testing before the agreement, with a modified version of the camera forming the base of the HULC system alongside Nikkor lenses. The HULC design also implements thermal blankets designed by NASA to protect the camera from dust and extreme temperatures and modified electrical components to minimize potential issues caused by radiation. A custom grip with modified buttons has been used to make it easier for suited crew members to operate the camera system while wearing gloves.

In 2019 a SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket launched an Israeli spacecraft carrying a 30-million page archive of human civilization to the moon. Unfortunately, that spacecraft crashed. But thanks to this week's moon landing by the Odysseus, there's now a 30-million page "Lunar Library" on the moon — according to a Medium post by the Arch Mission Foundation.

"This historic moment secures humanity's cultural heritage and knowledge in an indestructible archive built to last for up to billions of years." Etched onto thin sheets of nickel, called NanoFiche, the Lunar Library is practically indestructible and can withstand the harsh conditions of space... Some of the notable content includes:


The Wikipedia. The entire English Wikipedia containing over 6 million articles on every branch of knowledge.
Project Gutenberg. Portions of Project Gutenberg's library of over 70,000 free eBooks containing some of our most treasured literature.
The Long Now Foundation's Rosetta Project archive of over 7,000 human languages and The Panlex datasets.
Selections from the Internet Archive's collections of books and important documents and data sets.
The SETI Institute's Earthling Project, featuring a musical compilation of 10,000 vocal submissions representing humanity united
The Arch Lunar Art Archive containing a collection of works from global contemporary and digital artists in 2022, recorded as NFTs.
David Copperfield's Magic Secrets — the secrets to all his greatest illusions — including how he will make the Moon disappear in the near future.
The Arch Mission Primer — which teaches a million concepts with images and words in 5 languages.
The Arch Mission Private Library — containing millions of pages as well as books, documents and articles on every subject, including a broad range of fiction and non-fiction, textbooks, periodicals, audio recordings, videos, historical documents, software sourcecode, data sets, and more.
The Arch Mission Vaults — private collections, including collections from our advisors and partners, and a collection of important texts and images from all the world's religions including the great religions and indigenous religions from around the world, collections of books, photos, and a collection of music by leading recording artists, and much more content that may be revealed in the future...


We also want to recognize our esteemed advisors, and our many content partners and collections including the Wikimedia Foundation, the Long Now Foundation, The SETI Institute Earthling Project, the Arch Lunar Art Archive project, Project Gutenberg, the Internet Archive, and the many donors who helped make the Lunar Library possible through their generous contributions. This accomplishment would not have happened without the collaborative support of so many...

We will continue to send backups of our important knowledge and cultural heritage — placing them on the surface of the Earth, in caves and deep underground bunkers and mines, and around the solar system as well. This is a mission that continues as long as humanity endures, and perhaps even long after we are gone, as a gift for whoever comes next.
Space.com has a nice rundown of the other new payloads that just landed on the moon. Some highlights:

• "Cloud computing startup Lonestar's Independence payload is a lunar data center test mission for data storage and transmission from the lunar surface."
• LRA is a small hemisphere of light-reflectors built to servce as a precision landmark to "allow spacecraft to ping it with lasers to help them determine their precise distance..."
• ROLSES is a radio spectrometer for measuring the electron density near the lunar surface, "and how it may affect radio observatories, as well as observing solar and planetary radio waves and other phenomena."
• "Artist Jeff Koons is sending 125 miniature stainless steel Moon Phase sculptures, each honoring significant human achievements across cultures and history, to be displayed on the moon in a cube. "

On Thursday, the Odysseus Moon lander made history by becoming the first ever privately built and operated robot to complete a soft lunar touchdown. While the lander is "alive and well," the CEO of Houston-based Intuitive Machines, which built and flew the lander, said it tipped over during its final descent, coming up to rest propped up sideways on a rock. The BBC reports: Its owner, Texan firm Intuitive Machines, says Odysseus has plenty of power and is communicating with Earth. Controllers are trying to retrieve pictures from the robot. Steve Altemus, the CEO and co-founder of IM, said it wasn't totally clear what happened but the data suggested the robot caught a foot on the surface and then fell because it still had some lateral motion at the moment of landing. All the scientific instruments that planned to take observations on the Moon are on the side of Odysseus that should still allow them to do some work. The only payload likely on the "wrong side" of the lander, pointing down at the lunar surface, is an art project.

"We're hopeful to get pictures and really do an assessment of the structure and assessment of all the external equipment," Mr Altemus told reporters. "So far, we have quite a bit of operational capability even though we're tipped over. And so that's really exciting for us, and we are continuing the surface operations mission as a result of it." The robot had been directed to a cratered terrain near the Moon's south pole, and the IM team believes it got very close to the targeted site - perhaps within a couple of kilometers. A US space agency satellite called the Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter will search for Odysseus in the coming days.

An anonymous reader quotes a report from the Hollywood Reporter: Over the past four years, Tyler Perry had been planning an $800 million expansion of his studio in Atlanta, which would have added 12 soundstages to the 330-acre property. Now, however, those ambitions are on hold -- thanks to the rapid developments he's seeing in the realm of artificial intelligence, including OpenAI's text-to-video model Sora, which debuted Feb. 15 and stunned observers with its cinematic video outputs. "Being told that it can do all of these things is one thing, but actually seeing the capabilities, it was mind-blowing," he said in an interview with The Hollywood Reporter on Thursday, noting that his productions might not have to travel to locations or build sets with the assistance of the technology.

As a business owner, Perry sees the opportunity in these developments, but as an employer, fellow actor and filmmaker, he also wants to raise the alarm. In an interview between shoots Thursday, Perry explained his concerns about the technology's impact on labor and why he wants the industry to come together to tackle AI: "There's got to be some sort of regulations in order to protect us. If not, I just don't see how we survive." What in particular was shocking to you about its capabilities?

Perry: I no longer would have to travel to locations. If I wanted to be in the snow in Colorado, it's text. If I wanted to write a scene on the moon, it's text, and this AI can generate it like nothing. If I wanted to have two people in the living room in the mountains, I don't have to build a set in the mountains, I don't have to put a set on my lot. I can sit in an office and do this with a computer, which is shocking to me. It makes me worry so much about all of the people in the business. Because as I was looking at it, I immediately started thinking of everyone in the industry who would be affected by this, including actors and grip and electric and transportation and sound and editors, and looking at this, I'm thinking this will touch every corner of our industry.

How are you thinking about approaching the threat that AI poses to certain job categories at your studio and on your productions?

Perry: Everything right now is so up in the air. It's so malleable. The technology's moving so quickly. I feel like everybody in the industry is running a hundred miles an hour to try and catch up, to try and put in guardrails and to try and put in safety belts to keep livelihoods afloat. But me, just like every other studio in town, we're all trying to figure it all out. I think we're all trying to find the answers as we go, and it's changing every day -- and it's not just our industry, but it's every industry that AI will be affecting, from accountants to architects. If you look at it across the world, how it's changing so quickly, I'm hoping that there's a whole government approach to help everyone be able to sustain.

You can read the full interview here.

The first privately built spacecraft has successfully landed on the lunar surface on Thursday. "We can confirm, without a doubt, that our equipment is on the surface of the moon," said Stephen Altemus, CEO of Intuitive Machines, the Houston-based company that operated the Odysseus spacecraft. "Welcome to the moon." From a report: As it approached the surface of the moon, Odysseus lost contact with NASA, resulting in several anxious minutes for those who worked on the joint project. But after approximately 15 minutes of searching, officials confirmed that they were once again receiving signals from the spacecraft. "A commercial lander named Odysseus, powered by a company called Intuitive Machines, launched up on a Space X rocket, carrying a bounty of NASA scientific instruments and bearing the dream of a new adventure, a new adventure in science, innovation and American leadership, well, all of that aced the landing of a lifetime," NASA Administrator Bill Nelson said after contact had been reestablished. "Today for the first time in more than a half century, the U.S. has returned to the moon."

Altemus had estimated that Odysseus had an 80% chance of successfully landing on the moon, citing previous failed attempts as an advantage. "We've stood on the shoulders of everybody who's tried before us," Altemus said. It was the first American mission to land on the moon since Apollo 17 in 1972 and the first private spacecraft ever to make a soft landing there. While it was a private mission, NASA paid Intuitive Machines $118 million to deliver six instruments to the moon. And the U.S. space agency provided streaming video of the landing.

"Would you like to live on Mars?" NASA asked Friday on social media.

"You can help us move humanity toward that goal by participating in a simulated, year-long Mars surface mission at NASA's Johnson Space Center." NASA is seeking applicants to participate in its next simulated one-year Mars surface mission to help inform the agency's plans for human exploration of the Red Planet. The second of three planned ground-based missions called CHAPEA (Crew Health and Performance Exploration Analog) is scheduled to kick off in spring 2025.

Each CHAPEA mission involves a four-person volunteer crew living and working inside a 1,700-square-foot, 3D-printed habitat based at NASA's Johnson Space Center in Houston. The habitat, called the Mars Dune Alpha, simulates the challenges of a mission on Mars, including resource limitations, equipment failures, communication delays, and other environmental stressors. Crew tasks include simulated spacewalks, robotic operations, habitat maintenance, exercise, and crop growth.

NASA is looking for healthy, motivated U.S. citizens or permanent residents who are non-smokers, 30-55 years old, and proficient in English for effective communication between crewmates and mission control. Applicants should have a strong desire for unique, rewarding adventures and interest in contributing to NASA's work to prepare for the first human journey to Mars...

As NASA works to establish a long-term presence for scientific discovery and exploration on the Moon through the Artemis campaign, CHAPEA missions provide important scientific data to validate systems and develop solutions for future missions to the Red Planet. With the first CHAPEA crew more than halfway through their yearlong mission, NASA is using research gained through the simulated missions to help inform crew health and performance support during Mars expeditions.
You can see the simulated Mars habitat in this NASA video.

The deadline for applicants is Tuesday, April 2, according to NASA. "A master's degree in a STEM field such as engineering, mathematics, or biological, physical or computer science from an accredited institution with at least two years of professional STEM experience or a minimum of one thousand hours piloting an aircraft is required."

For the first time, scientists say they've detected water molecules on the surface of an asteroid. Space.com reports: Scientists studied four silicate-rich asteroids using data gathered by the now-retired Stratospheric Observatory for Infrared Astronomy (SOFIA), a telescope-outfitted plane operated by NASA and the German Aerospace Center. Observations by SOFIA's Faint Object InfraRed Camera (FORCAST) instrument showed that two of the asteroids -- named Iris and Massalia -- exhibit a specific wavelength of light that indicated the presence of water molecules at their surface, a new study reports.

While water molecules have previously been detected in asteroid samples returned to Earth, this is the first time that water molecules have been found on the surface of an asteroid in space. In a previous study, SOFIA found similar traces of water on the surface of the moon, in one of the largest craters in its southern hemisphere. [...]

Therefore, the findings at Iris and Massalia suggest that some silicate asteroids can conserve some of their water over the eons and may be more commonly found in the inner solar system than previously thought. In fact, asteroids are believed to be the primary source of Earth's water, providing the necessary elements for life as we know it. Understanding of the distribution of water through space will help researchers better assess where to search for other forms of potential life, both in our solar system and beyond. The findings have been published in The Planetary Science Journal.

Texas-based Intuitive Machines' inaugural moon mission began early Thursday morning, heading toward what could be the first U.S. lunar landing in more than 50 years. From a report: Intuitive Machines' Nova-C lander launched from Florida on SpaceX's Falcon 9 rocket, beginning the IM-1 mission. "It is a profoundly humbling moment for all of us at Intuitive Machines. The opportunity to return the United States to the moon for the first time since 1972 is a feat of engineering that demands a hunger to explore," Intuitive Machines vice president of space systems Trent Martin said during a press conference.

The IM-1 lander, named "Odysseus" after the mythological Greek hero, is carrying 12 government and commercial payloads -- six of which are for NASA under an $118 million contract. NASA leadership emphasized before the launch that "IM-1 is an Intuitive Machines' mission, it's not a NASA mission." But it marks the second mission under NASA's Commercial Lunar Payload Services (CLPS) initiative, which aims to deliver science projects and cargo to the moon with increasing regularity in support of the agency's Artemis crew program. The agency views CLPS missions as "a learning experience," NASA's deputy associate administrator for exploration in the science mission directorate, Joel Kearns, told press before the launch.
UPDATE: See their first images transmitted from space....

An anonymous reader shares a report: Alphabet's Google is rolling out a new version of its powerful artificial intelligence model that it says can handle larger amounts of text and video than products made by competitors. The updated AI model, called Gemini 1.5 Pro, will be available on Thursday to cloud customers and developers so they can test its new features and eventually create new commercial applications. Google and its rivals have spent billions to ramp up their capabilities in generative AI and are keen to attract corporate clients to show their investments are paying off. [...]

Gemini 1.5 can be trained faster and more efficiently, and has the ability to process a huge amount of information each time it's prompted, according to Vinyals. For example, developers can use Gemini 1.5 Pro to query up to an hour's worth of video, 11 hours of audio or more than 700,000 words in a document, an amount of data that Google says is the "longest context window" of any large-scale AI model yet. Gemini 1.5 can process far more data compared with what the latest AI models from OpenAI and Anthropic can handle, according to Google. In a pre-recorded video demonstration for reporters, Google showed off how engineers asked Gemini 1.5 Pro to ingest a 402-page PDF transcript of the Apollo 11 moon landing, and then prompted it to find quotes that showed "three funny moments."

After climbing the charts of Apple's App Store, the trendy Kimi app, with its collection of bootlegged movies, has disappeared. From a report: Pretending to be a spot-the-difference vision-testing game, the widely downloaded app ranked above Netflix, Hulu, and Amazon Prime Video in Apple's charts this week for free entertainment apps before it was removed. Without having to pay for anything or log in to any kind of account, iPhone owners could previously use Kimi to browse a wide selection of bootlegs for popular movies and TV shows. Many of the movies up for Best Picture at this year's Oscars were on Kimi, at varying levels of quality.

Poor Things was included in a grainy, pixelated state, but a high-quality version of Killers of the Flower Moon was on Kimi to stream, although an intrusive ad for online casinos was splashed across the top. That definitely isn't the viewing experience Martin Scorsese imagined for audiences. Not just limited to movies, viewers were also able to access episodes of currently airing TV shows, like RuPaul's Drag Race, through the Kimi app. Who was behind this piracy app? It remains a mystery. The developer was listed as "Marcus Evans" in the app store before Kimi was taken down, and this was the only app listed under that name, likely a pseudonym.