Kris Guyer – Page 41

Uncertainty loomed as FDA advisors met to discuss this year’s COVID shot

annual shots, COVID-19, fda, health, seasonal shots, vaccines / Kris Guyer / May 25, 2025

Calling it a “practical question,” he asked, “If we were to change strains, can we assume that age-specific licensure won’t change for any of these [vaccine] products?” Currently, COVID-19 boosters are accessible to those aged 6 months and up.

Weir reiterated that there was no answer. Another FDA official, David Kaslow, chimed in to say only, “Rest assured that we’re engaging with the manufacturers on this topic.”

As a follow-up to that exchange, VRBPAC member and infectious disease expert Eric Rubin of Harvard University shot down the FDA’s plan to use randomized placebo-controlled trials for licensure for healthy children and adults. The plethora of observational data—aka real-world data—on the boosters shows clear efficacy, Rubin pointed out. That suggests that requiring people in a trial to take placebos despite the availability of a clearly effective treatment could be unethical.

It suggests “that a randomized controlled trial (RCT) has no equipoise right now, and that you cannot do one,” Rubin said. “I don’t think the RCT is feasible,” he added.

The selection

While the pushback and the questions lingered, the committee still had to select a strain. For now, omicron still reigns, and variants in the JN.1 lineage are still dominant. That is largely unchanged from last year, when vaccine makers were advised to target their seasonal shots against the JN.1 lineage generally, or KP.2, the leading variant in the JN.1 lineage at the time, specifically.

This year, advisors unanimously voted to stick with vaccines that target the JN.1 lineage, in line with recommendations from the World Health Organization. The question of targeting the JN.1 lineage was the only voting question the FDA tasked them with. But there was open discussion on a more specific recommendation. Given the regulatory uncertainty, advisors were divided on whether to stick with the JN.1 and KP.2 formulations from last year or recommend switching to the latest leading variant in the JN.1 family, LP.8.1.

Shortly after the meeting, the FDA announced that it would essentially leave it up to manufacturers; they could stick with JN.1 or KP.2 but, if feasible, switch to LP.8.1.

“The COVID-19 vaccines for use in the United States beginning in fall 2025 should be monovalent JN.1-lineage-based COVID-19 vaccines (2025–2026 Formula), preferentially using the LP.8.1 strain,” it said.

Uncertainty loomed as FDA advisors met to discuss this year’s COVID shot Read More »

Penguin poop may help preserve Antarctic climate

Antarctica, Arctic, Penguins, poop, poop talk, Science, syndication / Kris Guyer / May 24, 2025

Ammonia aerosols from penguin guano likely play a part in the formation of heat-shielding clouds.

This article originally appeared on Inside Climate News, a nonprofit, non-partisan news organization that covers climate, energy, and the environment. Sign up for their newsletter here.

New research shows that penguin guano in Antarctica is an important source of ammonia aerosol particles that help drive the formation and persistence of low clouds, which cool the climate by reflecting some incoming sunlight back to space.

The findings reinforce the growing awareness that Earth’s intricate web of life plays a significant role in shaping the planetary climate. Even at the small levels measured, the ammonia particles from the guano interact with sulfur-based aerosols from ocean algae to start a chemical chain reaction that forms billions of tiny particles that serve as nuclei for water vapor droplets.

The low marine clouds that often cover big tracts of the Southern Ocean around Antarctica are a wild card in the climate system because scientists don’t fully understand how they will react to human-caused heating of the atmosphere and oceans. One recent study suggested that the big increase in the annual global temperature during 2023 and 2024 that has continued into this year was caused in part by a reduction of that cloud cover.

“I’m constantly surprised at the depth of how one small change affects everything else,” said Matthew Boyer, a coauthor of the new study and an atmospheric scientist at the University of Helsinki’s Institute for Atmospheric and Earth System Research. “This really does show that there is a deep connection between ecosystem processes and the climate. And really, it’s the synergy between what’s coming from the oceans, from the sulfur-producing species, and then the ammonia coming from the penguins.”

Climate survivors

Aquatic penguins evolved from flying birds about 60 million years ago, shortly after the age of dinosaurs, and have persisted through multiple, slow, natural cycles of ice ages and warmer interglacial eras, surviving climate extremes by migrating to and from pockets of suitable habitat, called climate refugia, said Rose Foster-Dyer, a marine and polar ecologist with the University of Canterbury in New Zealand.

A 2018 study that analyzed the remains of an ancient “super colony” of the birds suggests there may have been a “penguin optimum” climate window between about 4,000 and 2,000 years ago, at least for some species in some parts of Antarctica, she said. Various penguin species have adapted to different habitat niches and this will face different impacts caused by human-caused warming, she said.

Foster-Dyer has recently done penguin research around the Ross Sea, and said that climate change could open more areas for land-breeding Adélie penguins, which don’t breed on ice like some other species.

“There’s evidence that this whole area used to have many more colonies … which could possibly be repopulated in the future,” she said. She is also more optimistic than some scientists about the future for emperor penguins, the largest species of the group, she added.

“They breed on fast ice, and there’s a lot of publications coming out about how the populations might be declining and their habitat is hugely threatened,” she said. “But they’ve lived through so many different cycles of the climate, so I think they’re more adaptable than people currently give them credit for.”

In total, about 20 million breeding pairs of penguins nest in vast colonies all around the frozen continent. Some of the largest colonies, with up to 1 million breeding pairs, can cover several square miles.There aren’t any solid estimates for the total amount of guano produced by the flightless birds annually, but some studies have found that individual colonies can produce several hundred tons. Several new penguin colonies were discovered recently when their droppings were spotted in detailed satellite images.

A few penguin colonies have grown recently while others appear to be shrinking, but in general, their habitat is considered threatened by warming and changing ice conditions, which affects their food supplies. The speed of human-caused warming, for which there is no precedent in paleoclimate records, may exacerbate the threat to penguins, which evolve slowly compared to many other species, Foster-Dyer said.

“Everything’s changing at such a fast rate, it’s really hard to say much about anything,” she said.

Recent research has shown how other types of marine life are also important to the global climate system. Nutrients from bird droppings help fertilize blooms of oxygen-producing plankton, and huge swarms of fish that live in the middle layers of the ocean cycle carbon vertically through the water, ultimately depositing it in a generally stable sediment layer on the seafloor.

Tricky measurements

Boyer said the new research started as a follow-up project to other studies of atmospheric chemistry in the same area, near the Argentine Marambio Base on an island along the Antarctic Peninsula. Observations by other teams suggested it could be worth specifically trying to look at ammonia, he said.

Boyer and the other scientists set up specialized equipment to measure the concentration of ammonia in the air from January to March 2023. They found that, when the wind blew from the direction of a colony of about 60,000 Adélie penguins about 5 miles away, the ammonia concentration increased to as high as 13.5 parts per billion—more than 1,000 times higher than the background reading. Even after the penguins migrated from the area toward the end of February, the ammonia concentration was still more than 100 times as high as the background level.

“We have one instrument that we use in the study to give us the chemistry of gases as they’re actually clustering together,” he said.

“In general, ammonia in the atmosphere is not well-measured because it’s really difficult to measure, especially if you want to measure at a very high sensitivity, if you have low concentrations like in Antarctica,” he said.

Penguin-scented winds

The goal was to determine where the ammonia is coming from, including testing a previous hypothesis that the ocean surface could be the source, he said.

But the size of the penguin colonies made them the most likely source.

“It’s well known that sea birds give off ammonia. You can smell them. The birds stink,” he said. “But we didn’t know how much there was. So what we did with this study was to quantify ammonia and to quantify its impact on the cloud formation process.”

The scientists had to wait until the wind blew from the penguin colony toward the research station.

“If we’re lucky, the wind blows from that direction and not from the direction of the power generator,” he said. “And we were lucky enough that we had one specific event where the winds from the penguin colony persisted long enough that we were actually able to track the growth of the particles. You could be there for a year, and it might not happen.”

The ammonia from the guano does not form the particles but supercharges the process that does, Boyer said.

“It’s really the dimethyl sulfide from phytoplankton that gives off the sulfur,” he said. “The ammonia enhances the formation rate of particles. Without ammonia, sulfuric acid can form new particles, but with ammonia, it’s 1,000 times faster, and sometimes even more, so we’re talking up to four orders of magnitude faster because of the guano.”

This is important in Antarctica specifically because there are not many other sources of particles, such as pollution or emissions from trees, he added.

“So the strength of the source matters in terms of its climate effect over time,” he said. “And if the source changes, it’s going to change the climate effect.”

It will take more research to determine if penguin guano has a net cooling effect on the climate. But in general, he said, if the particles transport out to sea and contribute to cloud formation, they will have a cooling effect.

“What’s also interesting,” he said, “is if the clouds are over ice surfaces, it could actually lead to warming because the clouds are less reflective than the ice beneath.” In that case, the clouds could actually reduce the amount of heat that brighter ice would otherwise reflect away from the planet. The study did not try to measure that effect, but it could be an important subject for future research, he added.

The guano effect lingers even after the birds leave the breeding areas. A month after they were gone, Boyer said ammonia levels in the air were still 1,000 times higher than the baseline.

“The emission of ammonia is a temperature-dependent process, so it’s likely that once wintertime comes, the ammonia gets frozen in,” he said. “But even before the penguins come back, I would hypothesize that as the temperature warms, the guano starts to emit ammonia again. And the penguins move all around the coast, so it’s possible they’re just fertilizing an entire coast with ammonia.”

Penguin poop may help preserve Antarctic climate Read More »

Google’s Will Smith double is better at eating AI spaghetti … but it’s crunchy?

AI, Ai video generator, Biz & IT, Deepfakes, Google, Google Veo, machine learning, Spaghetti, Veo, Veo 3, video synthesis, will smith / Kris Guyer / May 24, 2025

On Tuesday, Google launched Veo 3, a new AI video synthesis model that can do something no major AI video generator has been able to do before: create a synchronized audio track. While from 2022 to 2024, we saw early steps in AI video generation, each video was silent and usually very short in duration. Now you can hear voices, dialog, and sound effects in eight-second high-definition video clips.

Shortly after the new launch, people began asking the most obvious benchmarking question: How good is Veo 3 at faking Oscar-winning actor Will Smith at eating spaghetti?

First, a brief recap. The spaghetti benchmark in AI video traces its origins back to March 2023, when we first covered an early example of horrific AI-generated video using an open source video synthesis model called ModelScope. The spaghetti example later became well-known enough that Smith parodied it almost a year later in February 2024.

Here’s what the original viral video looked like:

One thing people forget is that at the time, the Smith example wasn’t the best AI video generator out there—a video synthesis model called Gen-2 from Runway had already achieved superior results (though it was not yet publicly accessible). But the ModelScope result was funny and weird enough to stick in people’s memories as an early poor example of video synthesis, handy for future comparisons as AI models progressed.

AI app developer Javi Lopez first came to the rescue for curious spaghetti fans earlier this week with Veo 3, performing the Smith test and posting the results on X. But as you’ll notice below when you watch, the soundtrack has a curious quality: The faux Smith appears to be crunching on the spaghetti.

On X, Javi Lopez ran “Will Smith eating spaghetti” in Google’s Veo 3 AI video generator and received this result.

It’s a glitch in Veo 3’s experimental ability to apply sound effects to video, likely because the training data used to create Google’s AI models featured many examples of chewing mouths with crunching sound effects. Generative AI models are pattern-matching prediction machines, and they need to be shown enough examples of various types of media to generate convincing new outputs. If a concept is over-represented or under-represented in the training data, you’ll see unusual generation results, such as jabberwockies.

Google’s Will Smith double is better at eating AI spaghetti … but it’s crunchy? Read More »

US solar keeps surging, generating more power than hydro in 2025

coal, Energy, hydro, natural gas, Science, solar, Wind / Kris Guyer / May 24, 2025

Under those circumstances, the rest of the difference will be made up for with fossil fuels. Running counter to recent trends, the use of natural gas dropped during the first three months of 2025. This means that the use of coal rose nearly as quickly as demand, up by 23 percent compared to the same time period in 2024.

Despite the rise in coal use, the fraction of carbon-free electricity held steady year over year, with wind/solar/hydro/nuclear accounting for 43 percent of all power put on the US grid. That occurred despite small drops in nuclear and hydro production.

Solar power also passed a key milestone in 2025, although it requires digging through the statistics to realize it. In terms of power on the grid, there was less solar than hydro. But the Energy Information Agency also estimates the production from small-scale solar, like the kind you’d find on people’s roofs. Some of this never enters the grid and instead simply offsets demand locally (in that it gets used by the house that sits beneath the panels). If you combine the TW-hr produced by small- and grid-scale solar, however, they surpass the production from hydropower by a significant margin.

This surge in solar comes on top of a 30 percent increase in production the year prior. The growth curve is clearly not slowing down.

That dynamic is also not likely to change immediately in response to cuts to tax breaks for renewable power that were part of the budget package passed by the House of Representatives on Thursday, and not only because some Republican senators might object to budget changes that will harm their states. Solar power in most areas is now cheaper than alternatives, even without subsidies, and any power plant (renewable or otherwise) will likely see its costs rise due to the tariff environment. Finally, the tax breaks don’t expire immediately, and most power plant construction requires significant advanced planning.

All of those factors should continue the solar boom for at least a couple more years before all of the expected changes apply the brakes.

US solar keeps surging, generating more power than hydro in 2025 Read More »

Rocket Report: SpaceX’s expansion at Vandenberg; India’s PSLV fails in flight

rocket report, Science, Space / Kris Guyer / May 23, 2025

China’s diversity in rockets was evident this week, with four types of launchers in action.

Dawn Aerospace’s Mk-II Aurora airplane in flight over New Zealand last year. Credit: Dawn Aerospace

Welcome to Edition 7.45 of the Rocket Report! Let’s talk about spaceplanes. Since the Space Shuttle, spaceplanes have, at best, been a niche part of the space transportation business. The US Air Force’s uncrewed X-37B and a similar vehicle operated by China’s military are the only spaceplanes to reach orbit since the last shuttle flight in 2011, and both require a lift from a conventional rocket. Virgin Galactic’s suborbital space tourism platform is also a spaceplane of sorts. A generation or two ago, one of the chief arguments in favor of spaceplanes was that they were easier to recover and reuse. Today, SpaceX routinely reuses capsules and rockets that look much more like conventional space vehicles than the winged designs of yesteryear. Spaceplanes are undeniably alluring in appearance, but they have the drawback of carrying extra weight (wings) into space that won’t be used until the final minutes of a mission. So, do they have a future?

As always, we welcome reader submissions. If you don’t want to miss an issue, please subscribe using the box below (the form will not appear on AMP-enabled versions of the site). Each report will include information on small-, medium-, and heavy-lift rockets, as well as a quick look ahead at the next three launches on the calendar.

One of China’s commercial rockets returns to flight. The Kinetica-1 rocket launched Wednesday for the first time since a failure doomed its previous attempt to reach orbit in December, according to the vehicle’s developer and operator, CAS Space. The Kinetica-1 is one of several small Chinese solid-fueled launch vehicles managed by a commercial company, although with strict government oversight and support. CAS Space, a spinoff of the Chinese Academy of Sciences, said its Kinetica-1 rocket deployed multiple payloads with “excellent orbit insertion accuracy.” This was the seventh flight of a Kinetica-1 rocket since its debut in 2022.

Back in action … “Kinetica-1 is back!” CAS Space posted on X. “Mission Y7 has just successfully sent six satellites into designated orbits, making a total of 63 satellites or 6 tons of payloads since its debut. Lots of missions are planned for the coming months. 2025 is going to be awesome.” The Kinetica-1 is designed to place up to 2 metric tons of payload into low-Earth orbit. A larger liquid-fueled rocket, Kinetica-2, is scheduled to debut later this year.

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French government backs a spaceplane startup. French spaceplane startup AndroMach announced May 15 that it received a contract from CNES, the French space agency, to begin testing an early prototype of its Banger v1 rocket engine, European Spaceflight reports. Founded in 2023, AndroMach is developing a pair of spaceplanes that will be used to perform suborbital and orbital missions to space. A suborbital spaceplane will utilize turbojet engines for horizontal takeoff and landing, and a pressure-fed biopropane/liquid oxygen rocket engine to reach space. Test flights of this smaller vehicle will begin in early 2027.

A risky proposition … A larger ÉTOILE “orbital shuttle” is designed to be launched by various small launch vehicles and will be capable of carrying payloads of up to 100 kilograms (220 pounds). According to the company, initial test flights of ÉTOILE are expected to begin at the beginning of the next decade. It’s unclear how much CNES is committing to AndroMach through this contract, but the company says the funding will support testing of an early demonstrator for its propane-fueled engine, with a focus on evaluating its thermodynamic performance. It’s good to see European governments supporting developments in commercial space, but the path to a small commercial orbital spaceplane is rife with risk. (submitted by EllPeaTea)

Dawn Aerospace is taking orders. Another spaceplane company in a more advanced stage of development says it is now taking customer orders for flights to the edge of space. New Zealand-based Dawn Aerospace said it is beginning to take orders for its remotely piloted, rocket-powered suborbital spaceplane, known as Aurora, with first deliveries expected in 2027, Aviation Week & Space Technology reports. “This marks a historic milestone: the first time a space-capable vehicle—designed to fly beyond the Kármán line (100 kilometers or 328,000 feet)—has been offered for direct sale to customers,” Dawn Aerospace said in a statement. While it hasn’t yet reached space, Dawn’s Aurora spaceplane flew to supersonic speed for the first time last year and climbed to an altitude of 82,500 feet (25.1 kilometers), setting a record for the fastest climb from a runway to 20 kilometers.

Further along … Aurora is small in stature, measuring just 15.7 feet (4.8 meters) long. It’s designed to loft a payload of up to 22 pounds (10 kilograms) above the Kármán line for up to three minutes of microgravity, before returning to a runway landing. Eventually, Dawn wants to reduce the turnaround time between Aurora flights to less than four hours. “Aurora is set to become the fastest and highest-flying aircraft ever to take off from a conventional runway, blending the extreme performance of rocket propulsion with the reusability and operational simplicity of traditional aviation,” Dawn said. The company’s business model is akin to commercial airlines, where operators can purchase an aircraft directly from a manufacturer and manage their own operations. (submitted by EllPeaTea)

India’s workhorse rocket falls short of orbit. In a rare setback, Indian Space Research Organisation’s (ISRO) launch vehicle PSLV-C61 malfunctioned and failed to place a surveillance satellite into the intended orbit last weekend, the Times of India reported. The Polar Satellite Launch Vehicle lifted off from a launch pad on the southeastern coast of India early Sunday, local time, with a radar reconnaissance satellite named EOS-09, or RISAT-1B. The satellite was likely intended to gather intelligence for the Indian military. “The country’s military space capabilities, already hindered by developmental challenges, have suffered another setback with the loss of a potential strategic asset,” the Times of India wrote.

What happened? … V. Narayanan, ISRO’s chairman, later said that the rocket’s performance was normal until the third stage. The PSLV’s third stage, powered by a solid rocket motor, suffered a “fall in chamber pressure” and the mission could not be accomplished, Narayanan said. Investigators are probing the root cause of the failure. Telemetry data indicated the rocket deviated from its planned flight path around six minutes after launch, when it was traveling more than 12,600 mph (5.66 kilometers per second), well short of the speed it needed to reach orbital velocity. The rocket and its payload fell into the Indian Ocean south of the launch site. This was the first PSLV launch failure in eight years, ending a streak of 21 consecutive successful flights. (submitted by EllPeaTea)

SES makes a booking with Impulse Space. SES, owner of the world’s largest fleet of geostationary satellites, plans to use Impulse Space’s Helios kick stage to take advantage of lower-cost, low-Earth-orbit (LEO) launch vehicles and get its satellites quickly into higher orbits, Aviation Week & Space Technology reports. SES hopes the combination will break a traditional launch conundrum for operators of medium-Earth-orbit (MEO) and geostationary orbit (GEO). These operators often must make a trade-off between a lower-cost launch that puts them farther from their satellite’s final orbit, or a more expensive launch that can expedite their satellite’s entry into service.

A matter of hours … On Thursday, SES and Impulse Space announced a multi-launch agreement to use the methane-fueled Helios kick stage. “The first mission, currently planned for 2027, will feature a dedicated deployment from a medium-lift launcher in LEO, followed by Helios transferring the 4-ton-class payload directly to GEO within eight hours of launch,” Impulse said in a statement. Typically, this transit to GEO takes several weeks to several months, depending on the satellite’s propulsion system. “Today, we’re not only partnering with Impulse to bring our satellites faster to orbit, but this will also allow us to extend their lifetime and accelerate service delivery to our customers,” said Adel Al-Saleh, CEO of SES. “We’re proud to become Helios’ first dedicated commercial mission.”

Unpacking China’s spaceflight patches. There’s a fascinating set of new patches Chinese officials released for a series of launches with top-secret satellites over the last two months, Ars reports. These four patches depict Buddhist gods with a sense of artistry and sharp colors that stand apart from China’s previous spaceflight emblems, and perhaps—or perhaps not—they can tell us something about the nature of the missions they represent. The missions launched so-called TJS satellites toward geostationary orbit, where they most likely will perform missions in surveillance, signals intelligence, or missile warning.

Making connections … It’s not difficult to start making connections between the Four Heavenly Gods and the missions that China’s TJS satellites likely carry out in space. A protector with an umbrella? An all-seeing entity? This sounds like a possible link to spy craft or missile warning, but there’s a chance Chinese officials approved the patches to misdirect outside observers, or there’s no connection at all.

China aims for an asteroid. China is set to launch its second Tianwen deep space exploration mission late May, targeting both a near-Earth asteroid and a main belt comet, Space News reports. The robotic Tianwen-2 spacecraft is being integrated with a Long March 3B rocket at the Xichang Satellite Launch Center in southwest China, the country’s top state-owned aerospace contractor said. Airspace closure notices indicate a four-hour-long launch window opening at noon EDT (16: 00–20: 00 UTC) on May 28. Backup launch windows are scheduled for May 29 and 30.

New frontiers … Tianwen-2’s first goal is to collect samples from a near-Earth asteroid designated 469219 Kamoʻoalewa, or 2016 HO3, and return them to Earth in late 2027 with a reentry module. The Tianwen-2 mothership will then set a course toward a comet for a secondary mission. This will be China’s first sample return mission from beyond the Moon. The asteroid selected as the target for Tianwen-2 is believed by scientists to be less than 100 meters, or 330 feet, in diameter, and may be made of material thrown off the Moon some time in its ancient past. Results from Tianwen-2 may confirm that hypothesis. (submitted by EllPeaTea)

Upgraded methalox rocket flies from Jiuquan. Another one of China’s privately funded launch companies achieved a milestone this week. Landspace launched an upgraded version of its Zhuque-2E rocket Saturday from the Jiuquan launch base in northwestern China, Space News reports. The rocket delivered six satellites to orbit for a range of remote sensing, Earth observation, and technology demonstration missions. The Zhuque-2E is an improved version of the Zhuque-2, which became the first liquid methane-fueled rocket in the world to reach orbit in 2023.

Larger envelope … This was the second flight of the Zhuque-2E rocket design, but the first to utilize a wider payload fairing to provide more volume for satellites on their ride into space. The Zhuque-2E is a stepping stone toward a much larger rocket Landspace is developing called the Zhuque-3, a stainless steel launcher with a reusable first stage booster that, at least outwardly, bears some similarities to SpaceX’s Falcon 9. (submitted by EllPeaTea)

FAA clears SpaceX for Starship Flight 9. The Federal Aviation Administration gave the green light Thursday for SpaceX to launch the next test flight of its Starship mega-rocket as soon as next week, following two consecutive failures earlier this year, Ars reports. The failures set back SpaceX’s Starship program by several months. The company aims to get the rocket’s development back on track with the upcoming launch, Starship’s ninth full-scale test flight since its debut in April 2023. Starship is central to SpaceX’s long-held ambition to send humans to Mars and is the vehicle NASA has selected to land astronauts on the Moon under the umbrella of the government’s Artemis program.

Targeting Tuesday, for now … In a statement Thursday, the FAA said SpaceX is authorized to launch the next Starship test flight, known as Flight 9, after finding the company “meets all of the rigorous safety, environmental and other licensing requirements.” SpaceX has not confirmed a target launch date for the next launch of Starship, but warning notices for pilots and mariners to steer clear of hazard areas in the Gulf of Mexico suggest the flight might happen as soon as the evening of Tuesday, May 27. The rocket will lift off from Starbase, Texas, SpaceX’s privately owned spaceport near the US-Mexico border. The FAA’s approval comes with some stipulations, including that the launch must occur during “non-peak” times for air traffic and a larger closure of airspace downrange from Starbase.

Space Force is fed up with Vulcan delays. In recent written testimony to a US House of Representatives subcommittee that oversees the military, the senior official responsible for purchasing launches for national security missions blistered one of the country’s two primary rocket providers, Ars reports. The remarks from Major General Stephen G. Purdy, acting assistant secretary of the Air Force for Space Acquisition and Integration, concerned United Launch Alliance and its long-delayed development of the large Vulcan rocket. “The ULA Vulcan program has performed unsatisfactorily this past year,” Purdy said in written testimony during a May 14 hearing before the House Armed Services Committee’s Subcommittee on Strategic Forces. This portion of his testimony did not come up during the hearing, and it has not been reported publicly to date.

Repairing trust … “Major issues with the Vulcan have overshadowed its successful certification resulting in delays to the launch of four national security missions,” Purdy wrote. “Despite the retirement of highly successful Atlas and Delta launch vehicles, the transition to Vulcan has been slow and continues to impact the completion of Space Force mission objectives.” It has widely been known in the space community that military officials, who supported Vulcan with development contracts for the rocket and its engines that exceeded $1 billion, have been unhappy with the pace of the rocket’s development. It was originally due to launch in 2020. At the end of his written testimony, Purdy emphasized that he expected ULA to do better. As part of his job as the Service Acquisition Executive for Space (SAE), Purdy noted that he has been tasked to transform space acquisition and to become more innovative. “For these programs, the prime contractors must re-establish baselines, establish a culture of accountability, and repair trust deficit to prove to the SAE that they are adopting the acquisition principles necessary to deliver capabilities at speed, on cost and on schedule.”

SpaceX’s growth on the West Coast. SpaceX is moving ahead with expansion plans at Vandenberg Space Force Base, California, that will double its West Coast launch cadence and enable Falcon Heavy rockets to fly from California, Spaceflight Now reports. Last week, the Department of the Air Force issued its Draft Environmental Impact Statement (EIS), which considers proposed modifications from SpaceX to Space Launch Complex 6 (SLC-6) at Vandenberg. These modifications will include changes to support launches of Falcon 9 and Falcon Heavy rockets, the construction of two new landing pads for Falcon boosters adjacent to SLC-6, the demolition of unneeded structures at SLC-6, and increasing SpaceX’s permitted launch cadence from Vandenberg from 50 launches to 100.

Doubling the fun … The transformation of SLC-6 would include quite a bit of overhaul. Its most recent tenant, United Launch Alliance, previously used it for Delta IV rockets from 2006 through its final launch in September 2022. The following year, the Space Force handed over the launch pad to SpaceX, which lacked a pad at Vandenberg capable of supporting Falcon Heavy missions. The estimated launch cadence between SpaceX’s existing Falcon 9 pad at Vandenberg, known as SLC-4E, and SLC-6 would be a 70-11 split for Falcon 9 rockets in 2026, with one Falcon Heavy at SLC-6, for a total of 82 launches. That would increase to a 70-25 Falcon 9 split in 2027 and 2028, with an estimated five Falcon Heavy launches in each of those years. (submitted by EllPeaTea)

Next three launches

May 23: Falcon 9 | Starlink 11-16 | Vandenberg Space Force Base, California | 20: 36 UTC

May 24: Falcon 9 | Starlink 12-22 | Cape Canaveral Space Force Station, Florida | 17: 19 UTC

May 27: Falcon 9 | Starlink 17-1 | Vandenberg Space Force Base, California | 16: 14 UTC

Stephen Clark is a space reporter at Ars Technica, covering private space companies and the world’s space agencies. Stephen writes about the nexus of technology, science, policy, and business on and off the planet.

Rocket Report: SpaceX’s expansion at Vandenberg; India’s PSLV fails in flight Read More »

The Pentagon seems to be fed up with ULA’s rocket delays

Air Force, rocket, Space, ula, vulcan / Kris Guyer / May 23, 2025

Some of the displeasure was apparent in April when the US military announced that it would ask SpaceX to launch a plurality of its missions during the next round of national security launches, reversing the preeminent role that ULA had held for the last two decades.

ULA retired its Delta IV Heavy rocket in April 2024, and the handful of Atlas V rockets that remain are committed to other missions. This has left the Air Force dependent on SpaceX, with its Falcon 9 and Falcon Heavy vehicles, as the only provider of launch services to get its most expensive and highest priority satellites into orbit.

ULA must “repair trust”

In his testimony, Purdy said ULA completed certification of the initial variant of its Vulcan rocket for military launches from Cape Canaveral, Florida, on March 25, but added that “open work” remains. The military and the company are currently working through “risk reduction plans” to limit the chances of an issue with the first launch of a military payload on Vulcan.

“To address these challenges ULA has increased its engineering resources and management focus to resolve design issues,” Purdy wrote. “Government and Federally Funded Research and Development Center personnel have increased involvement in technical and program management challenges.

Vulcan’s first military mission, USSF-106, currently has a no earlier than launch date of July 2025, Purdy wrote. These outstanding risks will ultimately be assessed during a Flight Readiness Review a week or two prior to this launch.

At the end of his written testimony, Purdy emphasized that he expected ULA to do better. As part of his job as the Service Acquisition Executive for Space (SAE), Purdy noted that he has been tasked to transform space acquisition and to become more innovative.

“For these programs, the prime contractors must re-establish baselines, establish a culture of accountability, and repair trust deficit to prove to the SAE that they are adopting the acquisition principles necessary to deliver capabilities at speed, on cost and on schedule,” Purdy said.

The Pentagon seems to be fed up with ULA’s rocket delays Read More »

Musk’s DOGE used Meta’s Llama 2—not Grok—for gov’t slashing, report says

AI, azure ai, department of government efficiency, doge, elon musk, grok, Llama 2, Meta, microsoft, Policy, xAI / Kris Guyer / May 23, 2025

Why didn’t DOGE use Grok?

It seems that Grok, Musk’s AI model, wasn’t available for DOGE’s task because it was only available as a proprietary model in January. Moving forward, DOGE may rely more frequently on Grok, Wired reported, as Microsoft announced it would start hosting xAI’s Grok 3 models in its Azure AI Foundry this week, The Verge reported, which opens the models up for more uses.

In their letter, lawmakers urged Vought to investigate Musk’s conflicts of interest, while warning of potential data breaches and declaring that AI, as DOGE had used it, was not ready for government.

“Without proper protections, feeding sensitive data into an AI system puts it into the possession of a system’s operator—a massive breach of public and employee trust and an increase in cybersecurity risks surrounding that data,” lawmakers argued. “Generative AI models also frequently make errors and show significant biases—the technology simply is not ready for use in high-risk decision-making without proper vetting, transparency, oversight, and guardrails in place.”

Although Wired’s report seems to confirm that DOGE did not send sensitive data from the “Fork in the Road” emails to an external source, lawmakers want much more vetting of AI systems to deter “the risk of sharing personally identifiable or otherwise sensitive information with the AI model deployers.”

A seeming fear is that Musk may start using his own models more, benefiting from government data his competitors cannot access, while potentially putting that data at risk of a breach. They’re hoping that DOGE will be forced to unplug all its AI systems, but Vought seems more aligned with DOGE, writing in his AI guidance for federal use that “agencies must remove barriers to innovation and provide the best value for the taxpayer.”

“While we support the federal government integrating new, approved AI technologies that can improve efficiency or efficacy, we cannot sacrifice security, privacy, and appropriate use standards when interacting with federal data,” their letter said. “We also cannot condone use of AI systems, often known for hallucinations and bias, in decisions regarding termination of federal employment or federal funding without sufficient transparency and oversight of those models—the risk of losing talent and critical research because of flawed technology or flawed uses of such technology is simply too high.”

Musk’s DOGE used Meta’s Llama 2—not Grok—for gov’t slashing, report says Read More »

Destructive malware available in NPM repo went unnoticed for 2 years

Biz & IT, code repositories, malware, npm, Security / Kris Guyer / May 23, 2025

Some of the payloads were limited to detonate only on specific dates in 2023, but in some cases a phase that was scheduled to begin in July of that year was given no termination date. Pandya said that means the threat remains persistent, although in an email he also wrote: “Since all activation dates have passed (June 2023–August 2024), any developer following normal package usage today would immediately trigger destructive payloads including system shutdowns, file deletion, and JavaScript prototype corruption.”

Interestingly, the NPM user who submitted the malicious packages, using the registration email address 1634389031@qq[.]com, also uploaded working packages with no malicious functions found in them. The approach of submitting both harmful and useful packages helped create a “facade of legitimacy” that increased the chances the malicious packages would go unnoticed, Pandya said. Questions emailed to that address received no response.

The malicious packages targeted users of some of the largest ecosystems for JavaScript developers, including React, Vue, and Vite. The specific packages were:

Anyone who installed any of these packages should carefully inspect their systems to make sure they’re no longer running. These packages perfectly mimic legitimate development tools, so it may be easy for them to have remained undetected.

Destructive malware available in NPM repo went unnoticed for 2 years Read More »

Trump admin tells Supreme Court: DOGE needs to do its work in secret

doge, Policy / Kris Guyer / May 22, 2025

DOJ complains of “sweeping, intrusive discovery” after DOGE refused FOIA requests.

A protest over DOGE’s reductions to the federal workforce outside the Jacob K. Javits Federal Office Building on March 19, 2025 in New York City. Credit: Getty Images | Michael M. Santiago

The Department of Justice today asked the Supreme Court to block a ruling that requires DOGE to provide information about its government cost-cutting operations as part of court-ordered discovery.

President Trump’s Justice Department sought an immediate halt to orders issued by US District Court for the District of Columbia. US Solicitor General John Sauer argued that the Department of Government Efficiency is exempt from the Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) as a presidential advisory body and not an official “agency.”

The district court “ordered USDS [US Doge Service] to submit to sweeping, intrusive discovery just to determine if USDS is subject to FOIA in the first place,” Sauer wrote. “That order turns FOIA on its head, effectively giving respondent a win on the merits of its FOIA suit under the guise of figuring out whether FOIA even applies. And that order clearly violates the separation of powers, subjecting a presidential advisory body to intrusive discovery and threatening the confidentiality and candor of its advice, putatively to address a legal question that never should have necessitated discovery in this case at all.”

The nonprofit watchdog group Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington (CREW) filed FOIA requests seeking information about DOGE and sued after DOGE officials refused to provide the requested records.

US District Judge Christopher Cooper has so far sided with CREW. Cooper decided in March that “USDS is likely covered by FOIA and that the public would be irreparably harmed by an indefinite delay in unearthing the records CREW seeks,” ordering DOGE “to process CREW’s request on an expedited timetable.”

Judge: DOGE is not just an advisor

DOGE then asked the district court for a summary judgment in its favor, and CREW responded by filing a motion for expedited discovery “seeking information relevant to whether USDS wields substantial authority independent of the President and is therefore subject to FOIA.” In an April 15 order, Cooper ruled that CREW is entitled to limited discovery into the question of whether DOGE is wielding authority sufficient to bring it within the purview of FOIA. Cooper hasn’t yet ruled on the motion for summary judgment.

“The structure of USDS and the scope of its authority are critical to determining whether the agency is ‘wield[ing] substantial authority independently of the President,'” the judge wrote. “And the answers to those questions are unclear from the record.”

Trump’s executive orders appear to support CREW’s argument by suggesting “that USDS is exercising substantial independent authority,” Cooper wrote. “As the Court already noted, the executive order establishing USDS ‘to implement the President’s DOGE Agenda’ appears to give USDS the authority to carry out that agenda, ‘not just to advise the President in doing so.'”

Not satisfied with the outcome, the Trump administration tried to get Cooper’s ruling overturned in the US Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit. The appeals court ruled against DOGE last week. The appeals court temporarily stayed the district court order in April but dissolved the stay on May 14 and denied the government’s petition.

“The government contends that the district court’s order permitting narrow discovery impermissibly intrudes upon the President’s constitutional prerogatives,” the appeals court said. But “the discovery here is modest in scope and does not target the President or any close adviser personally. The government retains every conventional tool to raise privilege objections on the limited question-by-question basis foreseen here on a narrow and discrete ground.”

US argues for secrecy

A three-judge panel at the appeals court was unswayed by the government’s claim that this process is too burdensome.

“Although the government protests that any such assertion of privilege would be burdensome, the only identified burdens are limited both by time and reach, covering as they do records within USDS’s control generated since January 20,” the ruling said. “It does not provide any specific details as to why accessing its own records or submitting to two depositions would pose an unbearable burden.”

Yesterday, the District Court set a discovery schedule requiring the government to produce all responsive documents within 14 days and complete depositions within 24 days. In its petition to the Supreme Court today, the Trump administration argued that DOGE’s recommendations to the president should be kept secret:

The district court’s requirement that USDS turn over the substance of its recommendations—even when the recommendations were “purely advisory”—epitomizes the order’s overbreadth and intrusiveness. The court’s order compels USDS to identify every “federal agency contract, grant, lease or similar instrument that any DOGE employee or DOGE Team member recommended that federal agencies cancel or rescind,” and every “federal agency employee or position that any DOGE employee or DOGE team member recommended” for termination or placement on administrative leave. Further, USDS must state “whether [each] recommendation was followed.”

It is difficult to imagine a more grievous intrusion and burden on a presidential advisory body. Providing recommendations is the core of what USDS does. Because USDS coordinates with agencies across the Executive Branch on an ongoing basis, that request requires USDS to review multitudes of discussions that USDS has had every day since the start of this Administration. And such information likely falls within the deliberative-process privilege almost by definition, as internal executive-branch recommendations are inherently “pre-decisional” and “deliberative.”

Lawsuit: “No meaningful transparency” into DOGE

The US further said the discovery “is unnecessary to answer the legal question whether USDS qualifies as an ‘agency’ that is subject to FOIA,” and is merely “a fishing expedition into USDS’s advisory activities under the guise of determining whether USDS engages in non-advisory activities—an approach to discovery that would be improper in any circumstance.”

CREW, like others that have sued the government over DOGE’s operations, says the entity exercises significant power without proper oversight and transparency. DOGE “has worked in the shadows—a cadre of largely unidentified actors, whose status as government employees is unclear, controlling major government functions with no oversight,” CREW’s lawsuit said. “USDS has provided no meaningful transparency into its operations or assurances that it is maintaining proper records of its unprecedented and legally dubious work.”

The Trump administration is fighting numerous DOGE-related lawsuits at multiple levels of the court system. Earlier this month, the administration asked the Supreme Court to restore DOGE’s access to Social Security Administration records after losing on the issue in both a district court and appeals court. That request to the Supreme Court is pending.

There was also a dispute over discovery when 14 states sued the federal government over Trump “delegat[ing] virtually unchecked authority to Mr. Musk without proper legal authorization from Congress and without meaningful supervision of his activities.” A federal judge ruled that the states could serve written discovery requests on Musk and DOGE, but the DC Circuit appeals court blocked the discovery order. In that case, appeals court judges said the lower-court judge should have ruled on a motion to dismiss before allowing discovery.

Jon is a Senior IT Reporter for Ars Technica. He covers the telecom industry, Federal Communications Commission rulemakings, broadband consumer affairs, court cases, and government regulation of the tech industry.

Trump admin tells Supreme Court: DOGE needs to do its work in secret Read More »

“Microsoft has simply given us no other option,” Signal says as it blocks Windows Recall

Biz & IT, microsoft, privacy, recall, Security, signal messenger, Windows / Kris Guyer / May 22, 2025

But the changes go only so far in limiting the risks Recall poses. As I pointed out, when Recall is turned on, it indexes Zoom meetings, emails, photos, medical conditions, and—yes—Signal conversations, not just with the user, but anyone interacting with that user, without their knowledge or consent.

Researcher Kevin Beaumont performed his own deep-dive analysis that also found that some of the new controls were lacking. For instance, Recall continued to screenshot his payment card details. It also decrypted the database with a simple fingerprint scan or PIN. And it’s unclear whether the type of sophisticated malware that routinely infects consumer and enterprise Windows users will be able to decrypt encrypted database contents.

And as Cunningham also noted, Beaumont found that Microsoft still provided no means for developers to prevent content displayed in their apps from being indexed. That left Signal developers at a disadvantage, so they had to get creative.

With no API for blocking Recall in the Windows Desktop version, Signal is instead invoking an API Microsoft provides for protecting copyrighted material. App developers can turn on the DRM setting to prevent Windows from taking screenshots of copyrighted content displayed in the app. Signal is now repurposing the API to add an extra layer of privacy.

“We hope that the AI teams building systems like Recall will think through these implications more carefully in the future,” Signal wrote Wednesday. “Apps like Signal shouldn’t have to implement ‘one weird trick’ in order to maintain the privacy and integrity of their services without proper developer tools. People who care about privacy shouldn’t be forced to sacrifice accessibility upon the altar of AI aspirations either.”

Signal’s move will lessen the chances of Recall permanently indexing private messages, but it also has its limits. The measure only provides protection when all parties to a chat—at least those using the Windows Desktop version—haven’t changed the default settings.

Microsoft officials didn’t immediately respond to an email asking why Windows provides developers with no granular control over Recall and whether the company has plans to add any.

“Microsoft has simply given us no other option,” Signal says as it blocks Windows Recall Read More »

Google pretends to be in on the joke, but its focus on AI Mode search is serious

AI, Artificial Intelligence, Google, search, Tech / Kris Guyer / May 22, 2025

AI Mode as Google’s next frontier

Google is the world’s largest advertising entity, but search is what fuels the company. Quarter after quarter, Google crows about increasing search volume—it’s the most important internal metric for the company. Google has made plenty of changes to its search engine results pages (SERPs) over the years, but AI mode throws that all out. It doesn’t have traditional search results no matter how far you scroll.

To hear Google’s leadership tell it, AI Mode is an attempt to simplify finding information. According to Liz Reid, Google’s head of search, the next year in search is about going from information to intelligence. When you are searching for information on a complex issue, you probably have to look at a lot of web sources. It’s rare that you’ll find a single page that answers all your questions, and maybe you should be using AI for that stuff.

Google Elizabeth Reid — Google search head Liz Reid says the team’s search efforts are aimed at understanding the underlying task behind a query. Credit: Ryan Whitwam

The challenge for AI search is to simplify the process of finding information, essentially doing the legwork for you. When speaking about the move to AI search, DeepMind CTO Koray Kavukcuoglu says that search is the greatest product in the world, and if AI makes it easier to search for information, that’s a net positive.

Latency is important in search—people don’t like to wait for things to load, which is why Google has always emphasized the speed of its services. But AI can be slow. The key, says Reid, is to know when users will accept a longer wait. For example, AI Overviews is designed to spit out tokens faster because it’s part of the core search experience. AI Mode, however, has the luxury of taking more time to “think.” If you’re shopping for a new appliance, you might do a few hours of research. So an AI search experience that takes longer to come up with a comprehensive answer with tables, formatting, and background info might be a desirable experience because it still saves you time.

Google pretends to be in on the joke, but its focus on AI Mode search is serious Read More »

Apple legend Jony Ive takes control of OpenAI’s design future

AI, Apple, Biz & IT, chatgpt, Io, Jony Ive, LoveFrom, machine learning, openai, sam altman / Kris Guyer / May 22, 2025

On Wednesday, OpenAI announced that former Apple design chief Jony Ive and his design firm LoveFrom will take over creative and design control at OpenAI. The deal makes Ive responsible for shaping the future look and feel of AI products at the chatbot creator, extending across all of the company’s ventures, including ChatGPT.

Ive was Apple’s chief design officer for nearly three decades, where he led the design of iconic products including the iPhone, iPad, MacBook, and Apple Watch, earning numerous industry awards and helping transform Apple into the world’s most valuable company through his minimalist design philosophy.

“Thrilled to be partnering with jony, imo the greatest designer in the world,” tweeted OpenAI CEO Sam Altman while sharing a 9-minute promotional video touting the personal and professional relationship between Ive and Altman.

A screenshot of the Jony Ive / Sam Altman collaboration website captured on May 21, 2025. — A screenshot of the Jony Ive/Sam Altman collaboration website captured on May 21, 2025. Credit: OpenAI

Ive left Apple in 2019 to found LoveFrom, a design firm that has worked with companies including Ferrari, Airbnb, and luxury Italian fashion firm Moncler.

The mechanics of the Ive-OpenAI deal are slightly convoluted. At its core, OpenAI will acquire Ive’s company “io” in an all-equity deal valued at $6.5 billion—Ive founded io last year to design and develop AI-powered products. Meanwhile, io’s staff of approximately 55 engineers, scientists, researchers, physicists, and product development specialists will become part of OpenAI.

Meanwhile, Ive’s design firm LoveFrom will continue to operate independently, with OpenAI becoming a customer of LoveFrom, while LoveFrom will receive a stake in OpenAI. The companies expect the transaction to close this summer pending regulatory approval.

Apple legend Jony Ive takes control of OpenAI’s design future Read More »

Author name: Kris Guyer