Author name: Tim Belzer

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Anthropic sues US over blacklisting; White House calls firm “radical left, woke”

Anthropic, Policy / /

Anthropic says it was blacklisted for opposing autonomous weapons, mass surveillance.

Credit: Getty Images | picture alliance

Anthropic sued the Trump administration yesterday in an attempt to reverse the government’s decision to blacklist its technology. Anthropic argues that it exercised its First Amendment rights by refusing to let its Claude AI models be used for autonomous warfare and mass surveillance of Americans and that the government blacklisted it in retaliation.

“When Anthropic held fast to its judgment that Claude cannot safely or reliably be used for autonomous lethal warfare and mass surveillance of Americans, the President directed every federal agency to ‘IMMEDIATELY CEASE all use of Anthropic’s technology’—even though the Department of War had previously agreed to those same conditions,” Anthropic said in a lawsuit in US District Court for the Northern District of California. “Hours later, the Secretary of War [Pete Hegseth] directed his Department to designate Anthropic a ‘Supply-Chain Risk to National Security,’ and further directed that ‘effective immediately, no contractor, supplier, or partner that does business with the United States military may conduct any commercial activity with Anthropic.’”

Anthropic said the First Amendment gives it “the right to express its views—both publicly and to the government—about the limitations of its own AI services and important issues of AI safety.” Anthropic further argued that the process for designating it a supply chain risk did not comply with the procedures mandated by Congress. The supply chain risk designation is supposed to be used only to protect against risks that an adversary may sabotage systems used for national security, the lawsuit said.

Trump’s directive “requiring every federal agency to immediately cease all use of Anthropic’s technology, and actions taken by other defendants in response to that directive, are outside any authority that Congress has granted the Executive,” and violate the Fifth Amendment’s due process clause, Anthropic said.

Anthropic’s lawsuit was filed against Hegseth, the Department of War (previously called the Department of Defense), and numerous other federal agencies. Anthropic also filed a motion for preliminary injunction and a second lawsuit asking for review in the US Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit.

White House: Anthropic is “radical left, woke company”

The Pentagon declined to comment. The White House responded by calling Anthropic a “radical left” and “woke” firm.

“President Trump will never allow a radical left, woke company to jeopardize our national security by dictating how the greatest and most powerful military in the world operates,” a White House spokesperson said in a statement provided to Ars. “The President and Secretary of War are ensuring America’s courageous warfighters have the appropriate tools they need to be successful and will guarantee that they are never held hostage by the ideological whims of any Big Tech leaders. Under the Trump Administration, our military will obey the United States Constitution—not any woke AI company’s terms of service.”

A brief supporting Anthropic was filed in the California federal court by the Foundation for Individual Rights and Expression, the Electronic Frontier Foundation, the Cato Institute, the Chamber of Progress, and the First Amendment Lawyers Association. The groups said that Pentagon retaliation against Anthropic will “silence future speech from those who fear the government attempting to harm their business or extinguish it entirely.”

Calling the government’s actions “transparently retaliatory and coercive,” the advocacy groups wrote that the court “need not guess at the government’s retaliatory motives because the Pentagon has already announced them… Until recently, it was rare for government leaders to so openly and proudly boast about retaliating against someone for their protected speech. Now it is commonplace. Evidently only those who agree to be complicit in this administration’s assertion of unfettered power are safe.”

Google and OpenAI staff support lawsuit

Another brief supporting Anthropic was filed by various technical, engineering, and research employees of Google and OpenAI. Google is an investor in Anthropic. The Google and OpenAI employees wrote that “mass domestic surveillance powered by AI poses profound risks to democratic governance—even in responsible hands.” On the topic of autonomous weapon systems, they wrote that “current AI models are not reliable enough to bear the responsibility of making lethal targeting decisions entirely alone, and the risks of their deployment for that purpose require some kind of response and guardrails.”

The Google and OpenAI employees said that in using the supply chain risk designation “in response to Anthropic’s contract negotiations, [the Pentagon] introduces an unpredictability in our industry that undermines American innovation and competitiveness. It chills professional debate on the benefits and risks of frontier AI systems and various ways that risks can be addressed to optimize the technology’s deployment.”

Anthropic CEO Dario Amodei explained the company’s objections to certain AI uses in a February 26 post. “We support the use of AI for lawful foreign intelligence and counterintelligence missions. But using these systems for mass domestic surveillance is incompatible with democratic values,” he wrote.

Current law allows the government to “purchase detailed records of Americans’ movements, web browsing, and associations from public sources without obtaining a warrant,” and “AI makes it possible to assemble this scattered, individually innocuous data into a comprehensive picture of any person’s life—automatically and at massive scale,” Amodei wrote.

CEO: Autonomous weapons too risky

Amodei expressed support for partially autonomous weapons like those used in Ukraine, but not for fully autonomous weapon systems “that take humans out of the loop entirely and automate selecting and engaging targets.” He said that fully autonomous weapons “may prove critical for our national defense” eventually but that AI is not yet reliable enough to power them.

“We will not knowingly provide a product that puts America’s warfighters and civilians at risk,” he wrote. “We have offered to work directly with the Department of War on R&D to improve the reliability of these systems, but they have not accepted this offer. In addition, without proper oversight, fully autonomous weapons cannot be relied upon to exercise the critical judgment that our highly trained, professional troops exhibit every day. They need to be deployed with proper guardrails, which don’t exist today.”

Trump responded with a Truth Social post on February 27. “The Leftwing nut jobs at Anthropic have made a DISASTROUS MISTAKE trying to STRONG-ARM the Department of War, and force them to obey their Terms of Service instead of our Constitution,” Trump wrote. “Their selfishness is putting AMERICAN LIVES at risk, our Troops in danger, and our National Security in JEOPARDY.”

Hegseth then wrote that “Anthropic delivered a master class in arrogance and betrayal as well as a textbook case of how not to do business with the United States Government or the Pentagon.” Hegseth said the military “must have full, unrestricted access to Anthropic’s models for every LAWFUL purpose in defense of the Republic.”

Anthropic said later that day that it had engaged in months of negotiations with the government and would challenge any supply chain risk designation in court. “Designating Anthropic as a supply chain risk would be an unprecedented action—one historically reserved for US adversaries, never before publicly applied to an American company… No amount of intimidation or punishment from the Department of War will change our position on mass domestic surveillance or fully autonomous weapons,” Anthropic said.

Photo of Jon Brodkin

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.

Anthropic sues US over blacklisting; White House calls firm “radical left, woke” Read More »

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NASA and SpaceX disagree about manual controls for lunar lander

blue moon, blue origin, human landing system, NASA, Space / /

The report notes that during every one of the Apollo program’s crewed lunar landings, astronauts engaged the backup manual control method. (Of course, this occurred six decades ago, when flight software was considerably less sophisticated than today.)

As NASA and SpaceX near a key decision point, known as Critical Design Review, the issue remains unresolved. The new report suggests that this may result in automation being the only landing method.

A similar fight over Dragon

The space agency and SpaceX engaged in a similar back-and-forth during the design process for the Crew Dragon spacecraft a decade ago. SpaceX initially wanted touchscreens only, with limited flight commands available to astronauts. NASA pushed back and wanted what were essentially joysticks for astronauts to fly the vehicles like previous spacecraft. A former NASA astronaut then working at SpaceX, Garret Reisman, helped broker a compromise by which astronauts could manually fly the vehicles using controls on touchscreens.

However, the new report says the flight controls for Dragon were built on many successful missions by a cargo version of the vehicle that flew to the International Space Station.

“Starship will not have the same level of proven flight heritage in the actual operating environment for its crewed lunar missions,” the report states. “Incorporating this system capability is a key element of HLS’s human-rating certification and part of an essential crew survival strategy.”

A design for Blue Origin’s manual control has not yet been made, according to the inspector general.

There is other interesting information in the report, including details on the uncrewed demonstration flights that SpaceX and Blue Origin are both required to fly before human missions can take place. The inspector general notes that these flights will not require life support systems and airlocks, as human missions will. Nor will the tall Starship vehicle be required to test an elevator to bring crew down to the surface.

There will also be a limited ability to test the abrasive impact of lunar dust, expected to be returned inside the vehicles after Moonwalks, on life support equipment during these uncrewed demonstrations.

NASA and SpaceX disagree about manual controls for lunar lander Read More »

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Gemini burrows deeper into Google Workspace with revamped document creation and editing

AI, Artificial Intelligence, Gemini, Google, Google Workspace / /

Google didn’t waste time integrating Gemini into its popular Workspace apps, but those AI features are now getting an overhaul. The company says its new Gemini features for Drive, Docs, Sheets, and Slides will save you from the tyranny of the blank page by doing the hard work for you. Gemini will be able to create and refine drafts, stylize slides, and gather context from across your Google account. At this rate, you’ll soon never have to use that squishy human brain of yours again, and won’t that be a relief?

If you go to create a new Google Doc right now, you’ll see an assortment of AI-powered tools at the top of the page. Google is refining and expanding these options under the new system. The new AI editing features will appear at the bottom of a fresh document with a text box similar to your typical chatbot interface. From there, you can describe the document you want and get a first draft in a snap. When generating a new document, you can rope in content from sources like Gmail, other documents, Google Chat, and the web.

This also comes with expanded AI editing capabilities. You can use further prompts to reformat and change the document or simply highlight specific sections and ask for changes. Docs will also support AI-assisted style matching, which might come in handy if you have multiple people editing the text. Google notes that all Gemini suggestions are private until you approve them for use.

Gemini in Google Workspace.

Gemini is also getting an upgrade in Sheets, and Google claims the robot’s spreadsheet capabilities are nearing those of flesh-and-blood humans in recent testing. Similar to text documents, you can tell Gemini in the sidebar what kind of spreadsheet you need and the AI will use the prompt (and whatever data sources you specify) to generate it. Gemini can also allegedly fill in missing data by searching for it on the web. In our past testing, Gemini has had a lot of trouble with spreadsheet layouts, but Google says this revamp will handle everything, from basic tasks to complex data analysis.

Gemini burrows deeper into Google Workspace with revamped document creation and editing Read More »

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Don’t worry, Valve still plans to launch the Steam Machine “this year”

delay, gaming, Hardware, ram shortage, steam, steam machine, valve / /

Valve quickly reconfirmed that it plans to ship the Steam Machine and other recently announced hardware products “this year,” after an official blog post late last week set off some worried speculation about possible delays.

While Steam’s 2025 Year in Review mainly focused on new Steam tools and features released last year, the introductory section focused on the company’s previously announced upcoming hardware plans. However, when that Year in Review post was first published Friday afternoon, it included a surprisingly vague line saying “we hope to ship in 2026, but as we shared recently, memory and storage shortages have created challenges for us.” (Emphasis added.)

As stray chatter about that stray line started to filter through message boards and comment threads, Valve quickly issued a clarification. By late Friday, the blog post had been updated to note that, despite the global supply chain challenges, “we will be shipping all three products this year. More updates will be shared as we finalize our plans.” (Emphasis added.)

Careful readers might notice that even the updated text leaves out the qualifiers that narrowed Valve’s “this year” launch window in the recent past. Valve announced an “early 2026” target in November and later said that “our goal of shipping all three products in the first half of the year has not changed” in a February update (emphasis added). While we’d caution readers not to necessarily read too much into that change (or the initial “hope” messaging), we will note that Valve said in February that it still has “work to do to land on concrete pricing and launch dates we can confidently announce, being mindful of how quickly the circumstances around both of these things can change.”

Don’t worry, Valve still plans to launch the Steam Machine “this year” Read More »

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Chevrolet killed it then brought it back, now we drive it: The 2027 Bolt

Cars, Chevy Bolt, First drive / /

Faster charging, more modern infotainment, and a new LFP battery are highlights.

A row of Chevrolet Bolt noses in the sun

It’s back! Credit: Jonathan Gitlin

It’s back! Credit: Jonathan Gitlin

WESTLAKE VILLAGE, Calif.—When the Chevrolet Bolt debuted in 2017, the electric hatchback stood out: Here was an electric vehicle with more than 200 miles of range for less than half the price of a Tesla Model S. The Bolt had its ups and downs, though. A $1.8 billion recall saw the automaker replace the battery packs in more than 142,000 cars, which wasn’t great. COVID delayed the Bolt’s midlife refresh a little. It got a price cut—the first of several—plus new seats, infotainment, and even the Super Cruise driver assist, plus a slightly more capacious version called the Bolt EUV.

Along the way, the Bolt became GM’s bestselling EV by quite some margin, even as the OEM introduced its new range of more advanced EVs using the platform formerly known as Ultium. But as is often the way with General Motors, a desire to do something else with the Bolt’s assembly plant saw the car’s cancellation, as GM wanted to retool the Orion Township factory as part of its ill-judged bet that American consumers would embrace full-size electric pickups like the Silverado EV. And thus, in 2022, GM CEO Mary Barra announced the Bolt’s impending demise.

This was not well-received. Even though Chevy promised an almost-as-cheap Equinox EV, Bolt fans besieged the company and engineered a volte face. At CES in 2023, Barra revealed the Bolt would be brought back, with an all-new lithium iron phosphate battery in place of the previous lithium-ion pack. When GM originally designed the Bolt, it was the company’s sole EV, but now there’s an entire (not-) Ultium model range. The automaker also has a giant parts bin to pick from, so the Equinox EV donates its drive motor, plus there’s a new Android Automotive OS infotainment system.

But you could have read all that ages ago. Chevy announced some specs and pricing last October, including the news that there would be a sportier RS trim in addition to the LT version. Then, in January, we learned its 262-mile (422 km) range and the fact that it can DC fast-charge at up to 150 kW, using a NACS socket instead of CCS1. Now, we’ve had a chance to spend some time behind the wheel of the 2027 Bolt, and here’s what we found.

Spec sheets can be misleading

As before, the Bolt’s electric motor drives its front wheels. The drive unit generates 210 hp (157 kW), a 4 percent bump on the old car. But its torque output is just 169 lb-ft (230 Nm), well down on the 266 lb-ft (360 Nm) of the earlier Bolts. This had me worried: near-instant and effortless torque practically defines the EV driving experience, and the thought of missing nearly 40 percent of that thrust sounded like it would make for a radically different driving experience.

In fact, the 2027 Bolt is actually slightly zippier than the old car. The motor’s torque output might be less, but with an 11: 59:1 final drive ratio, you would never, ever guess. Zero to 60 mph (97 km/h) takes 6.8 seconds, 0.2 faster than before. The new motor can spin faster than the old one, and so even at highway speed there’s sufficient acceleration when you need it.

If you’re looking for a new EV for between $30,000–$40,000 there’s an awful lot of choice now. Jonathan Gitlin

The new powertrain is also more efficient. Even though much of our drive route was on challenging—and hilly—roads like Mulholland Drive down to Malibu, and mostly in Sport mode, I still saw around 4 miles/kWh (15.5 kWh/100 km). So that 262 mile range estimate from the 65 kWh battery pack sounds spot-on.

Perhaps the old Bolt’s biggest weakness was how slow its DC charging was—almost an hour to 80 percent at a maximum of just 55 kW. Now with NACS, things are a lot better. I tested recharging a Bolt LT from 19–80 percent using a Tesla V4 Supercharger, which took 25 minutes and added an indicated 211 miles of range. The charge curve is much flatter than before, starting at ~110 kW before gradually beginning to ramp down once the state of charge passed 65 percent. Like other batteries, the LFP pack will charge much more slowly once it reaches 80 percent, but unlike lithium-ion, you’re encouraged to charge the car to 100 percent as often as possible.

For most charging networks, recharging is as simple as plugging in and letting the car and charger talk to each other using plug and charge (ISO 15118); this is still being implemented for Tesla Superchargers, but you can initiate a charge from the Bolt’s charging app. A word of caution though: The charge socket is on the driver’s side of the car, which means you’ll have difficulty using a V3 Supercharger—which only features a short cable—without blocking more than one stall, something that may enrage any Tesla owners hoping to charge simultaneously.

A blue Chevy Bolt charges

Fast-charging is actually fast now.

Credit: Jonathan Gitlin

Fast-charging is actually fast now. Credit: Jonathan Gitlin

And before you ask, no, it wasn’t possible to relocate the charge port; this would require a significant redesign to the car’s unibody as well as its powertrain layout, at vast expense.

Drives like a Bolt should

Although the new $32,995 RS trim has a sportier appearance inside and out than the $28,995 LT, both trims use identical suspension tuning. The ride is more than a little bouncy over the expansion gaps of LA’s highways, but a look at previous reviews reminds me that old Bolts also did this. The effect was much less noticeable on the back roads, where the car proved nimble if not exactly captivating to drive: I would very much like to try one on performance tires. The range would suffer a little, but cornering grip would be much improved. That said, the low-rolling resistance tires have more grip and are less likely to break traction than, say, the Toyota bZ we just reviewed.

There’s a new power-steering actuator, and a new rear-twist axle, but the suspension and steering geometry should be the same as older Bolts.

However, if you’re familiar with the old Bolt, you’ll notice a few changes. The cabin has a lot more storage nooks and cubbies than before, and both the main instrument panel and the infotainment screen are larger than in a 2023 Bolt. You use a stalk mounted on the steering column to select D/R/N/P, and must now use a persistent icon on the touchscreen to toggle one-pedal driving on or off. This is less convenient than the old car and its physical controls. The regenerative braking paddle is gone from behind the steering wheel, too.

The new cabin. The seats are better but lack lateral support. If you want wireless phone charging, you’ll have to spend $1,195 on the tech package. Jonathan Gitlin

But there are two settings for one-pedal driving, one gentler than the other, and you’ll also regenerate energy using the brake pedal. Exactly how much regen occurs before the friction brakes take over depends on things like the battery’s state of charge; in high regen, I saw as much as 85 kW by lifting the throttle, and the same with one-pedal driving turned off but using the brake pedal to slow. With one-pedal turned off, the car will still regenerate a few kW when you lift the accelerator pedal, so, unlike a German EV, this car won’t coast freely.

Is this the McRib of EVs?

Any worries that the rebatteried Bolt would be missing the car’s essential character were misplaced. Although some of the numbers on paper look lower, the driving experience is no worse than the old car in most ways, and improved in terms of onboard safety systems, powertrain efficiency, and so on. The comments will no doubt reflect antipathy that GM dropped Apple CarPlay and Android Auto to cast one’s phone, but the inclusion of apps like Apple Music might go some way toward alleviating this angst. In all, the 2027 Bolt represents a solid upgrade.

But there’s a catch. Just like last time, GM has other designs on the Bolt’s assembly plant—now in Fairfax, Kansas. That factory will churn out Bolts for just 18 months; next year production ends and the automaker repurposes the site to build gasoline-powered Buick Envisions and Chevy Equinoxes. Chevy told us that it expects there will be sufficient Bolts to stock dealerships for the next two years, but after that, it’s done.

Photo of Jonathan M. Gitlin

Jonathan is the Automotive Editor at Ars Technica. He has a BSc and PhD in Pharmacology. In 2014 he decided to indulge his lifelong passion for the car by leaving the National Human Genome Research Institute and launching Ars Technica’s automotive coverage. He lives in Washington, DC.

Chevrolet killed it then brought it back, now we drive it: The 2027 Bolt Read More »

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Jessica Jones joins the fray in Daredevil: Born Again trailer

culture, Daredevil: Born Again, Disney Plus, marvel studios, mcu, MCU Phase Six / /

Ayelet Zurer returns as Fisk’s wife Vanessa Marianna, along with Wilson Bethel as Benjamin “Dex” Poindexter/Bullseye; Margarita Levieva as Matt’s ex-girlfriend Heather Glenn, now Fisk’s Mental Health Commissioner; Zbryna Guevara as Fisk’s campaign director Shiela Rivera; Nikki M. James as Matt’s former law partner Kirsten McDuffie; Genneya Walton as journalist BB Urich; Arty Froushan as Fisk’s fixer, Buck; Clark Johnson as Cherry, an investigator for Matt’s law firm; Michael Gandolfini as Danial Blake, deputy mayor of communications; Tony Dalton as Jack Duquesne/Swordsman; and Camila Rodriguez as Angela del Toro, teenaged niece of the late vigilante Hector Ayala/White Tiger, assassinated in S1.

So good to have Jessica Jones (Krysten Ritter) back. Marvel Studios

Henson is also back as Foggy, most likely in cameo flashback sequences (we got a glimpse of him in an extended teaser that dropped last month).  There have been rumors but no official confirmation that Jon Bernthal will also be back as Frank Castle/The Punisher. The biggest addition, of course, is Ritter’s Jessica Jones, but Matthew Lillard is also joining the cast as a mysterious power player named Mr. Charles, along with Lili Taylor as New York Governor Marge McCaffrey, Fisk’s political opponent.

The S1 finale saw Fisk pulling a major power move by declaring martial law in New York City and outlawing nay masked vigilante heroes. The second season takes place six months later and will naturally deal with the fallout of that momentous decision.

The second season of Daredevil: Born Again premieres on March 24, 2026, on Disney+.

Jessica Jones joins the fray in Daredevil: Born Again trailer Read More »

tiny,-long-armed-dinosaur-leads-to-rethink-of-dinosaur-miniaturization

Tiny, long-armed dinosaur leads to rethink of dinosaur miniaturization

Biology, dinosaurs, evolution, paleontology, Science / /

Small size seems to have come before a change in diet for a tiny dinosaur lineage.

Alvarezsaurids were mostly small-bodied theropods that paleontologists originally misinterpreted as early flightless birds, only to later recognize them as an ant-eating lineage of non-avian dinosaurs. For years, we suspected that Alvarezsaurids underwent a rare process of evolutionary miniaturization directly coupled to a diet of social insects like ants and termites. It was a tidy hypothesis: They got smaller to become more efficient at catching ants.

Now, a recently discovered fossil of one of the smallest alvarezsaurids ever found suggests that the evolution of miniature dinosaurs likely wasn’t as neat and linear as we thought. This new species, called Alnashetri cerropoliciensis, probably did not feed on ants at all. “It was a pursuit predator actively hunting insects and small mammals,” said Peter Makovicky, a paleontologist at the University of Minnesota.

The oddball

Alverezsaurids, found mostly in the Late Cretaceous rocks of Asia and South America, had short forelimbs tipped with a single oversized thumb claw built for digging. They also had minute teeth and sensory adaptations akin to those in modern nocturnal birds—everything necessary to work on termite mounds. “The explanation of their small body size has been tied to this specialization,” Makovicky explained.

The dinosaur he and his colleagues found, however, did not look like a specialized ant-eater.

The fossil of Alnashetri cerropoliciensis was unearthed from the Candeleros Formation at the Cerro Policía locality in Argentina’s Río Negro Province and is estimated to have lived roughly 90 million years ago. It currently stands as the most complete and smallest Alvarezsaurid skeleton found in South America.

While missing its skull roof, parts of its right arm, its lower right leg, and much of its tail, the skeleton preserves plenty of its crucial anatomy. Its bone tissue reveals that the alvarezsaurid was a subadult, likely approaching sexual maturity, as indicated by the presence of what appears to be medullary bone, a temporary tissue associated with egg-laying in modern birds. Despite being nearly fully grown, this dinosaur is estimated to have weighed a mere 700 grams.

The real surprise, though, came when researchers realized that Alnashetri wasn’t a highly specialized, late-stage Alvarezsauroid. Instead, despite living in the Late Cretaceous, it occupied an early-branching position among earlier, basal members of the clade.

This combination of tiny size and early-branching status fundamentally breaks our previous model of how these animals evolved. If the miniaturization of Alvarezsauroids was strictly tied to their lifestyle as stubby-armed insect-eaters, an early-diverging species like Alnashetri should have some transitional features on a steady, clade-wide march toward that extreme endpoint. But it didn’t look that way.

“It’s a very long-limbed animal, so it was probably fairly fast. My best analogy would be something like a roadrunner from the American West,” Makovicky said.

Arms and teeth

Late Alvarezsaurids had tiny, robust forelimbs that were less than half the length of their femurs. Alnashetri, though, sported comparatively long forelimbs that were 61 percent of the length of its entire hindlimb. While it had three-fingered hands with a robust first digit, a hallmark of its group, it still retained slender second and third digits, unlike its later cousins.

Other features that challenge the established evolutionary model of miniature dinosaurs are Alnashetri’s jaws and teeth. Its dentition features non-serrated teeth set into sockets, but importantly, these teeth are not extremely small, as they were in the late Alvarezsaurids like Shuvuuia or Jaculinykus. “This decoupled the evolution of small body size from anatomical specializations,” Makovicky explained.

The team concluded that extreme miniaturization in Alvarezsaurids did not necessarily co-evolve with either the evolution of smaller arms more suitable for digging or small teeth built for crushing ants and/or termites. Instead of a clade-wide trend where the entire lineage steadily shrank over time, a new evolutionary model that includes Alnashetri suggests that Alvarezsaurid body mass fluctuated repeatedly. Alnashetri, it turns out, achieved its 700-gram frame independently from the other, highly specialized alvarezsaurid species.

But Alnashetri didn’t just upend the understanding of how Alvarezsaurids evolved their tiny bodies. It also redrew the map of where they lived.

Museum tour

Before Makovicky’s study, it was a mystery why Alvarezsaurids were found almost exclusively in the late Cretaceous rocks of Asia and South America. The previous leading hypothesis suggested that the group must have dispersed back and forth between these two landmasses relatively late in the game. But placing Alnashetri, a remarkably basal member, into their evolutionary tree created a massive ghost lineage. The phylogenetic analysis linked geographically close South American species to much older, geologically distant Asian taxa like Bannykus and Xiyunykus, implying that the group must have diverged way back in the Jurassic period.

To explain this chronological and geographic gap, Makovicky and his colleagues started digging through historical museum collections to see if early Alvarezsaurids had been hiding there under different names. It turned out they had.

The team successfully reidentified a small, fragmentary theropod from the Upper Jurassic Morrison Formation in North America, as well as a Lower Cretaceous taxon from the Isle of Wight in Europe. These were early, diverging Alvarezsaurids, and they possessed distinct features such as specialized ball-and-socket joints in the neck vertebrae that are unique in the Alvarezsaurid clade. These museum reidentifications entirely changed the biogeographical story.

If Alvarezsaurids were roaming North America and Europe in the Jurassic and Early Cretaceous, they weren’t just performing a late-stage migration between Asia and South America. Instead, the new model proposed by Makovicky and his team reconstructs a widespread Pangaean distribution. Early Alvarezsaurids were likely present across the globe before the supercontinent Pangaea fully fractured.

The Late Cretaceous distributions we see in the fossil record today would therefore be the result of populations slowly becoming isolated as the continents drifted apart, combined with regional extinctions that wiped them out in places like North America and Europe. The populations in Asia and South America represent surviving pockets.

Still, Makovicky’s work produced far more questions than answers. If at least some Alvarezsaurids did not evolve their miniature bodies as an adaptation to eating ants, what made them so small?

Messy evolution

“We sort of falsified this nice narrative where Alvarezsaurid body size change was driven by ecology, but unfortunately, we don’t have anything good to replace it,” Makovicky acknowledged.

The classic story of Alvarezsaurids—a lineage steadily shrinking in lockstep as it committed to a life of termite-hunting, finally migrating across the Late Cretaceous globe—was neat and logical, but it’s apparently gone now. “That’s science. Sometimes you can falsify a hypothesis without necessarily finding a better one to support,” Makovicky added. But his team is already busy looking for evidence documenting the new, more complex and messier version of Alvarezsaurid evolutionary history. “We have a couple of angles we’re pursuing,” he said.

The first involves taking a closer look at Alnashetri’s anatomy using CT scans. The goal here is to treat Alnashetri as a starting point to understand the stepwise evolution of its ant-eating, specialized cousins. Most of this meticulous scanning is currently happening in Argentina. The second angle, though, seems way more thrilling. “By pure luck, we found another Alvarezsaur in the same general area,” Makovicky said.

The other Alvarezsaur is bigger than Alnashetri and has slightly shorter forelimbs. “It’s still being prepared, but I think it will sort of give us the next chapter in the story of how Alvarezsaurids evolved,” Makovicky explained. “It’s probably a few years out in the making.”

Makovicky’s work on Alnashetri is published in Nature: https://doi.org/10.1038/s41586-026-10194-3

Photo of Jacek Krywko

Jacek Krywko is a freelance science and technology writer who covers space exploration, artificial intelligence research, computer science, and all sorts of engineering wizardry.

Tiny, long-armed dinosaur leads to rethink of dinosaur miniaturization Read More »

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A unicorn-like Spinosaurus found in the Sahara

Biology, dinosaurs, evolution, paleontology, Science, spinosaurus / /

A unique head spike and fish-eating jaws help make sense of these dinosaurs.

The Spinosaurus is a sail-backed, crocodile-snouted dinosaur that Hollywood depicted as a giant terrestrial predator capable of taking down a T. rex in Jurassic Park 3. Then they changed their mind and made it a fully aquatic diver in Jurassic World Rebirth—a rendering that was more in line with the latest paleontological knowledge.

But now, deep in the Sahara Desert, a team of researchers led by Paul C. Sereno, a paleontologist at the University of Chicago, discovered new Spinosaurus fossils suggesting both scientists and filmmakers might have got it all wrong again. The Spinosaurus most likely wasn’t an aquatic diver because, apparently, it couldn’t dive.

Bones in the sand

While the T. rex-beating version of the Spinosaurus was considered unlikely due to its relatively fragile skull, the newer depiction as an aquatic diver made more sense in light of paleontological evidence. Until now, all remains of these predators were pulled from coastal deposits near ancient seas and oceans. That geographic distribution was consistent with the aquatic lifestyle interpretation. If a creature lived on the coast, maybe it swam out to sea like a prehistoric seal, only crawling out to the beaches to rest just as it was depicted in Jurassic World Rebirth.

But the Spinosaurus found by Sereno and his colleagues lived in a completely different neighborhood. The fossils were discovered in the central Sahara of Niger, in what was a terrestrial area called Jenguebi. “When you want to find something really, truly new, you have to go where few have been or maybe nobody has been,” Sereno says. “In the case of Jenguebi, I don’t think it’s seen a paleontologist before.” His team managed to find the site, led by local Tuareg guides after driving for over a day and half through the desert. “We had a team of nearly 100, including paleontologists, filmmakers, guides, and 64 armed guards. You feel like you’re in an Indiana Jones movie,” Sereno recalls. But the effort paid off.

Back in the Cenomanian stage of the Late Cretaceous, the Jenguebi was an inland basin laced with rivers—a riparian habitat situated between 500 and 1,000 kilometers away from the nearest marine shoreline. In these riverbank sediments, Sereno and his team unearthed multiple specimens of the new Spinosaurus species they called S. mirabilis. The skeletons were buried right alongside massive, long-necked dinosaurs, including various species of titanosaurian and rebbachisaurid sauropods. To Sereno, the proximity of these bones left no doubt that the animals they belonged to lived and died together in the same inland freshwater environment. And this inland existence drives a pretty big nail in the coffin of the aquatic diver idea.

Prehistoric heron

The researchers point out that all large-bodied secondarily aquatic tetrapods like whales, mosasaurs, or plesiosaurs, are marine. Finding a giant Spinosaurus thriving in an inland river system strongly supports the idea that it was a semiaquatic, shoreline ambush predator that would wade into shallow waters like a giant crane or heron. But there were other hints that the Spinosaurus was not a diver.

“When you calculate this animal’s lung volume and the air that was permanently in its bones, you’ll find out it was buoyant,” Sereno explains. The permanent air sacks in the bones, an anatomical feature shared by many modern birds, most likely kept the Spinosaurus afloat even when it exhaled all the air out of its lungs. “Birds that dive get rid of those air sacks—penguins got rid of them,” Sereno says. “It’s a balloon you can’t fight against.” He added that even its limbs were far too long to be effectively used as paddles.

This wading lifestyle, the team argues in the paper, was not something unique to the S. mirabilis but extended to other Spinosaurus species as well—the skeletal features of the newly discovered S. mirabilis were found fundamentally similar to its shoreline cousins like S. aegyptiacus on which the Jurassic World Rebirth vision was largely based. Sereno argues it’s highly unlikely that one was a wading river monster while the other was a deep-diving pursuit predator with limited land mobility.

But there was one thing that made S. mirabilis different from S. aegyptiacus. The word “mirabilis” in the newly discovered Spinosaurus’ name translates to “astonishing” in Latin. What Sereno’s team found so astonishing was the prominent crest atop the animal’s head, one of the largest we’ve ever discovered.

The scimitar crown

Instead of the bumpy, fluted ridge seen on S. aegyptiacus, S. mirabilis sported a blade-shaped, scimitar-like bony crest that arched upward and backward from its snout, reaching an apex high over its eyes. This structure was composed of solid bone, unlike the highly porous, pneumatic casques found on some modern birds. However, the bone itself was etched with fine longitudinal striations and deep grooves, indicating that the bony core was just the foundation.

The newly discovered skull, along with a model of what its spike might have looked like on a living animal.

The newly discovered skull, along with a model of what its spike might have looked like on a living animal. Credit: UChicago Fossil Lab

In a living S. mirabilis, this crest would have been enveloped and substantially extended by a keratinous sheath, much like the vibrant growth developed by modern helmeted guinea fowls. If scaled up to a fully mature adult, the bony core alone would measure around 40 centimeters in length; with its keratinous sheath, it could have easily exceeded half a meter. For Sereno, the purpose of this “astonishing” scimitar crown was similar to crests worn today by cranes and herons. “It was asymmetrical. It varied between individuals. So, I think it was solely for display,” Sereno explains.

His team hypothesizes that visual signaling was the primary function of both the cranial crests and the massive trunk and tail sails that define spinosaurids. In the crowded shoreline and riverbank habitats, a towering, brightly colored crest or sail would be an excellent way to broadcast your size, maturity, and genetic fitness to rivals and potential mates without having to engage in a costly physical brawl.

Still, when it came down to it, S. mirabilis, weighing in at well over 7 tons, totally could brawl. “The Spinosaurus was enormous. I think it could have eaten anything it wanted even though its mainstay was fish,” Sereno says.

Crocodile jaw

The showpiece on its forehead aside, the S. mirabilis was a highly specialized killing machine. Its snout featured a low profile with parallel dorsal and ventral margins, terminating in a mushroom-shaped expansion at the tip. The upper and lower jaws allowed the teeth to interdigitate perfectly—there was a notable diastema, a gap in the upper row of teeth, that neatly accommodated the large teeth of the lower jaw. The S. mirabilis jaw structure appears similar to that of modern long-snouted crocodiles, optimized for snatching and snaring aquatic prey with a rapid, trap-like closure. Surprisingly, S. mirabilis showed greater spacing between the teeth in the posterior half of its snout compared to S. aegyptiacus despite being otherwise nearly identical.

Analysis of the animals’ overall body proportions led Sereno and his colleagues to suspect these dinosaurs resided in the functional middle ground between semiaquatic waders like herons and aquatic divers like darters, placing them in an ecological niche entirely separate from all other predatory theropods. Based on Sereno’s paper, the evolutionary history of the spinosaurids started in the Jurassic, when their ancestors first evolved that distinctive, elongate, fish-snaring skull before splitting into two main lineages: baryonychines and spinosaurines.

Then, during the Early Cretaceous, the spinosaurines enjoyed a golden age, diversifying across the margins of the Tethys Sea, a late Paleozoic ocean situated between the continents of Gondwana and Laurasia, to become the dominant predators in their respective ecosystems. What most likely brought an end to their reign was climate change.

The end of the line

The final chapter in the Spinosaurus history played out just before the Late Cretaceous, as the Atlantic Ocean was opening up. This is when spinosaurines, limited geographically to what today is Northern Africa and South America, pushed their biological limits, attaining their maximum body sizes as highly specialized shallow-water ambush hunters. This specialization, though, probably led to their extinction.

Around 95 million years ago, at the end of the Cenomanian stage, the world started to shift. An abrupt rise in global sea levels driven by climate changes drowned the low-lying continental basins and created the Trans-Saharan seaway. The complex, shallow river systems and coastal swamps that supported giant wading spinosaurines vanished beneath the waves. “We don’t see spinosaurid fossil records beyond this period,” Sereno explains. The spinosaurid lineage, unable to dive and adapt to more aquatic lifestyles, was brought to an end.

But we still don’t know much about its beginning. “This is going to be the subject of our next paper—where did the Spinosaurus come from?” Sereno says.

Sereno’s paper on the S. mirabilis is published in Science: https://doi.org/10.1126/science.adx5486

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Jacek Krywko is a freelance science and technology writer who covers space exploration, artificial intelligence research, computer science, and all sorts of engineering wizardry.

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Rocket Report: SpaceX launch prices are going up; Russia fixes broken launch pad

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It looks like United Launch Alliance will build more upper stages for NASA’s SLS rocket.

A welder works on repairs to the Soyuz launch pad at the Baikonur Cosmodrome in Kazakhstan. Credit: Roscosmos

Welcome to Edition 8.32 of the Rocket Report! The big news this week is NASA’s shake-up of the Artemis program. On paper, at least, the changes appear to be quite sensible. Canceling the big, new upper stage for the Space Launch System rocket and replacing it with a commercial upper stage, almost certainly United Launch Alliance’s Centaur stage, should result in cost savings. The changes also relieve some of the pressure for SpaceX and Blue Origin to rapidly demonstrate cryogenic refueling in low-Earth orbit. The Artemis III mission is now a low-Earth orbit mission, using SLS and the Orion spacecraft to dock with one or both of the Artemis program’s human-rated lunar landers just a few hundred miles above the Earth—no refueling required. Artemis IV will now be the first lunar landing attempt.

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.

Sentinel missile nears first flight. The US Air Force’s new Sentinel intercontinental ballistic missile is on track for its first test flight next year, military officials reaffirmed last week. The LGM-35A Sentinel will replace the Air Force’s Minuteman III fleet, in service since 1970, with the first of the new missiles due to become operational in the early 2030s. But it will take longer than that to build and activate the full complement of Sentinel missiles and the 450 hardened underground silos to house them, Ars reports.

Nowhere to put them... No one is ready to say when hundreds of new missile silos, dug from the windswept Great Plains, will be finished, how much they cost, or, for that matter, how many nuclear warheads each Sentinel missile could actually carry. The program’s cost has swelled from $78 billion to an official projection of $141 billion, but that figure is already out of date, as the Air Force announced last year that it would need to construct new silos for the Sentinel missile. The original plan was to adapt existing Minuteman III silos for the new weapons, but engineers determined that it would take too long and cost too much to modify the aging Minuteman facilities. Instead, the Air Force, in partnership with contractors and the US Army Corps of Engineers, will dig hundreds of new holes across Colorado, Montana, Nebraska, North Dakota, and Wyoming. The new silos will include 24 new forward launch centers, three centralized wing command centers, and more than 5,000 miles of fiber connections to wire it all together, military and industry officials said.

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Space One is now 0-for-3. Japan’s Space One said its Kairos small ‌rocket self-destructed 69 seconds after liftoff on Thursday, failing to achieve the country’s first entirely commercial satellite launch for the third attempt in a row, Reuters reports. Three months after a failure of Japan’s flagship H3 rocket, the unsuccessful flight of the smaller Kairos launcher dealt a fresh blow to Japan’s efforts to establish domestic launch options and reduce its reliance ​on American rockets amid rising space security needs to counter China. Kairos measures about 59 feet (18 meters) long with three solid-fueled boost stages and a liquid-fueled upper stage to inject small satellites into low-Earth orbit. The rocket is capable of placing a payload of about 330 pounds (150 kilograms) into a Sun-synchronous orbit.

Accidental detonation... The Kairos rocket terminated its flight Thursday at an altitude of approximately 18 miles (29 kilometers) above the Pacific Ocean, just downrange from Space One’s spaceport on the southern coast of Honshu, the largest of Japan’s main islands. “No significant abnormalities were found in the flight or onboard equipment” before the self-destruction, Space One’s vice president, Nobuhiro Sekino, told a press conference, suggesting that the rocket’s autonomous flight termination system went wrong. This is a rare mode of failure in rocketry, but it has happened before. The first flight of Rocket Lab’s Electron rocket was terminated erroneously in 2017, despite no issues with the launch vehicle itself. (submitted by EllPeaTea)

PLD Space raises $209 million. PLD Space has raised 180 million euros ($209 million) to ramp up production of the Spanish startup’s Miura 5 launch vehicle, marking the largest funding round for a European space business announced this year, Space News reports. PLD said the Series C equity funding round is led by Japan’s Mitsubishi Electric Corporation, with co-investment from the Spanish Ministry of Science, Innovation, and Universities, and the Spanish public funds management company Cofides. The startup has now raised more than 350 million euros ($400 million) to date. Miura 5 has not flown yet, but PLD says it is designed to place more than a metric ton (2,200 pounds) of payload mass into low-Earth orbit.

All about scaling... The fresh cash will support PLD’s “transition to commercial operations and the scaling of its industrial and launch capabilities,” the company said in a statement. “Miura 5 was designed to address a clear and growing capacity gap in the market, and this investment support strengthens our ability to transition into commercial operations,” said Ezequiel Sánchez, PLD Space’s executive president. “It accelerates the build‑out of the industrial and launch infrastructure required to deliver reliable access to space for an expanding pipeline of global customers.” (submitted by Leika and EllPeaTea)

MaiaSpace delays first launch. Another European launch startup, the French company MaiaSpace, has announced the first flight of its two-stage Maia rocket will take place in 2027, slipping from a previously expected late 2026 launch, European Spaceflight reports. MaiaSpace is a subsidiary of ArianeGroup, which builds Europe’s flagship Ariane 6 rocket. The Maia rocket will be partially reusable, with a recoverable first stage. Just two months ago, MaiaSpace said it was targeting an initial suborbital demonstration flight of the Maia rocket in late 2026.

Ensemble de lancement... On February 24, officials from MaiaSpace and the French space agency CNES gathered at the site of the former Soyuz launch pad in Kourou, French Guiana, to sign a temporary occupancy agreement allowing MaiaSpace to begin dismantling Soyuz-specific infrastructure at the site. During the event, MaiaSpace officials revealed they expected to host the inaugural flight of Maia from the facility in 2027. When asked for comment by European Spaceflight, a representative explained that the company remained committed to launching its first rocket less than five years after the company’s creation in April 2022. (submitted by EllPeaTea)

Korean company eyes launching from Canada. South Korean launch newcomer Innospace is exploring a planned spaceport in Nova Scotia, Canada, as a potential facility to expand operations to North America, Aviation Week & Space Technology reports. The company, which has yet to successfully fly its Hanbit-Nano rocket, said on March 4 that it has reached a nonbinding, preliminary “letter of intent” with Canada’s Maritime Launch Services. Innospace said the letter of intent “establishes a strategic framework” for Korean and Canadian officials to “assess the technical, regulatory, and commercial feasibility” of launching Hanbit rockets from Nova Scotia. The first flight of the Hanbit-Nano rocket failed shortly after liftoff last year from a spaceport in Brazil, and Innospace already has preliminary agreements for potential launch sites in Europe and Australia.

Looking abroad... Several launch startups are looking at establishing additional launch sites beyond their initial operating locations. Firefly Aerospace is looking at Sweden, and Rocket Lab has already inaugurated a second launch site for its Electron rocket in Virginia after basing its first flights in New Zealand. Innospace is unique, though, in that the South Korean rocket company’s first launch pad is already halfway around the world from its home base. Meanwhile, Canada is investing in its own sovereign orbital launch capability. “We look forward to working with Innospace to evaluate how our strategic position on the Eastern Atlantic rim of North America can support their launch program while advancing reliable, repeatable access to orbit and strengthening Canada’s commercial launch capability,” said Stephen Matier, president and CEO of Maritime Launch Services.

Russia completes launch pad repairs. Late last year, a Soyuz rocket launched three astronauts to orbit from the Russian-run Baikonur Cosmodrome in Kazakhstan. But post-launch inspections revealed significant damage. A service structure underneath the rocket was unsecured during the launch of the three-man crew to the International Space Station. The structure fell into the launch pad’s flame trench, leaving the complex without the service cabin technicians use to work on the Soyuz rocket before liftoff. But Russia made quick repairs to the launch pad, the only site outfitted to launch Russian spacecraft to the ISS. Rockets will soon start flying from Pad 31 again, if all goes to plan, Space.com reports.

Restored to service... Russia’s space agency, Roscosmos, announced Tuesday that the launch pad has been repaired. More than 150 employees from the agency’s Center for Operation of Space Ground-Based Infrastructure and representatives from four contractors have wrapped up work at the damaged launch pad. Roscosmos said 2,350 square meters of structures were prepared and painted, and more than 250 linear meters of welds were completed during the repair. Meanwhile, the head of the Roscosmos ground infrastructure division told a Russian TV channel in January that “multiple members” of the launch pad team were under criminal investigation after leaving the service structure unsecured during the November launch, according to Russian space reporter Anatoly Zak. The first launch from the restored pad is scheduled for March 22, when a Soyuz rocket will boost a Progress supply ship to the ISS. A Soyuz crew launch will follow this summer.

SpaceX price hike. SpaceX recently increased launch prices from $70 million to $74 million for a dedicated Falcon 9 ride, and $6,500 per kilogram to $7,000 per kilogram for a rideshare slot, Payload reports. The company has long signaled a steady pace of price bumps, so the move does not come as a surprise. Nonetheless, the increase (along with the lack of real alternatives) highlights a tough truth in the industry: Access to orbit has gotten significantly more expensive in recent years despite all the hoopla and hopium of falling launch prices.

Keeping up… The price of a dedicated launch on a Falcon 9 has risen about 20 percent since 2021, in line with US inflation. A rideshare slot, on the other hand, now costs about 40 percent more than it did in 2021, doubling the rate of inflation, according to Payload. Rideshare pricing is the far more important number to track here. Without a price-competitive alternative, the broader space startup community has relied almost exclusively on Falcon 9 Transporter and Bandwagon missions to get to space over the last five years. Ars has previously reported on how NASA pays more for launch services than it did 30 years ago, a trend partly driven by the agency’s requirement for dedicated launches for many of its robotic science missions.

NASA aims for standardized SLS rocket. NASA Administrator Jared Isaacman announced sweeping changes to the Artemis program on February 27, including an increased cadence of missions and cancellation of an expensive rocket stage, Ars reports. The upheaval comes as NASA has struggled to fuel the massive Space Launch System rocket for the upcoming Artemis II lunar mission and Isaacman has sought to revitalize an agency that has moved at a glacial pace on its deep space programs. There is growing concern that, absent a shake-up, China’s rising space program will land humans on the Moon before NASA can return there this decade with Artemis.

CU later, EUS… “NASA must standardize its approach, increase flight rate safely, and execute on the president’s national space policy,” Isaacman said. “With credible competition from our greatest geopolitical adversary increasing by the day, we need to move faster, eliminate delays, and achieve our objectives.” The announced changes to the Artemis program include the cancellation of the Exploration Upper Stage and Block IB upgrade for SLS rocket, and future SLS missions, starting with Artemis IV, will use a “standardized” commercial upper stage. Artemis III will no longer land on the Moon. Instead, the Orion spacecraft will launch on SLS and dock with SpaceX’s Starship and/or Blue Origin’s Blue Moon landers in low-Earth orbit.

NASA favors ULA upper stage. United Launch Alliance’s Centaur V upper stage, used on the company’s Vulcan rocket, will replace the Exploration Upper Stage (EUS) on SLS missions beginning with Artemis IV, Bloomberg reports. ULA, a 50-50 joint venture between Boeing and Lockheed Martin, also built the interim upper stages flying on the Artemis I, II, and III missions. Those stages were based on designs used for ULA’s now-retired Delta IV Heavy rocket. With that production line shut down, ULA will now provide Centaur Vs to NASA. This means Boeing, which was on contract to develop the EUS, will still have a role in supplying upper stages for the SLS rocket. Boeing is also the prime contractor for the rocket’s massive core stage.

Building on a legacy… The Centaur V upper stage is the latest version of a design that dates back to the 1960s. Centaurs began flying in 1962, and the Centaur V is the most powerful variant, with a wider diameter and two hydrogen-fueled RL10 engines. The Centaur V still uses the ultra-thin, pressure-stabilized stainless steel structure used on all Centaur upper stages. The Centaur has a reliable track record, and the Centaur V’s predecessor, the Centaur III, was human-rated for launches of Boeing’s Starliner crew capsule.

Artemis II helium issue fixed. NASA has fixed the problem that forced it to remove the rocket for the Artemis II mission from its launch pad last month, but it will be a couple of weeks before officials are ready to move the vehicle back into the starting blocks at Kennedy Space Center in Florida, Ars reports. Ground teams moved the SLS rocket back to the Vehicle Assembly Building last month to repair an issue with the upper stage’s helium system. Inspections revealed that a seal in the quick disconnect, through which helium flows from ground systems into the rocket, was obstructing the pathway, according to NASA. “The team removed the quick disconnect, reassembled the system, and began validating the repairs to the upper stage by running a reduced flow rate of helium through the mechanism to ensure the issue was resolved,” NASA said in an update posted Tuesday.

Targeting April 1… NASA is not expected to return the SLS rocket and Orion spacecraft to the launch pad until later this month. Inside the VAB, technicians will complete several other tasks to “refresh” the rocket for the next series of launch opportunities. NASA has not said whether the launch team will conduct another countdown rehearsal after it returns to Launch Complex 39B at Kennedy. The first of five launch opportunities in early April is on April 1, with a two-hour launch window opening at 6: 24 pm EDT (22: 24 UTC). There are additional launch dates available on April 3, 4, 5, and 6.

Next three launches

March 7: Falcon 9 | Starlink 17-18  | Vandenberg Space Force Base, California | 10: 58 UTC

March 10: Alpha | Stairway to Seven | Vandenberg Space Force Base, California | 00: 50 UTC

March 10: Falcon 9 | EchoStar XXV | Cape Canaveral Space Force Station, Florida | 03: 14 UTC

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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.

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Musk fails to block California data disclosure law he fears will ruin xAI

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Musk can’t convince judge public doesn’t care about where AI training data comes from.

Elon Musk’s xAI has lost its bid for a preliminary injunction that would have temporarily blocked California from enforcing a law that requires AI firms to publicly share information about their training data.

xAI had tried to argue that California’s Assembly Bill 2013 (AB 2013) forced AI firms to disclose carefully guarded trade secrets.

The law requires AI developers whose models are accessible in the state to clearly explain which dataset sources were used to train models, when the data was collected, if the collection is ongoing, and whether the datasets include any data protected by copyrights, trademarks, or patents. Disclosures would also clarify whether companies licensed or purchased training data and whether the training data included any personal information. It would also help consumers assess how much synthetic data was used to train the model, which could serve as a measure of quality.

However, this information is precisely what makes xAI valuable, with its intensive data sourcing supposedly setting it apart from its biggest rivals, xAI argued. Allowing enforcement could be “economically devastating” to xAI, Musk’s company argued, effectively reducing “the value of xAI’s trade secrets to zero,” xAI’s complaint said. Further, xAI insisted, these disclosures “cannot possibly be helpful to consumers” while supposedly posing a real risk of gutting the entire AI industry.

Specifically, xAI argued that its dataset sources, dataset sizes, and cleaning methods were all trade secrets.

“If competitors could see the sources of all of xAI’s datasets or even the size of its datasets, competitors could evaluate both what data xAI has and how much they lack,” xAI argued. In one hypothetical, xAI speculated that “if OpenAI (another leading AI company) were to discover that xAI was using an important dataset to train its models that OpenAI was not, OpenAI would almost certainly acquire that dataset to train its own model, and vice versa.”

However, in an order issued on Wednesday, US District Judge Jesus Bernal said that xAI failed to show that California’s law, which took effect in January, required the company to reveal any trade secrets.

xAI’s biggest problem was being too vague about the harms it faced if the law was not halted, the judge said. Instead of explaining why the disclosures could directly harm xAI, the company offered only “a variety of general allegations about the importance of datasets in developing AI models and why they are kept secret,” Bernal wrote, describing X as trading in “frequent abstractions and hypotheticals.”

He denied xAI’s motion for a preliminary injunction while supporting the government’s interest in helping the public assess how the latest AI models were trained.

The lawsuit will continue, but xAI will have to comply with California’s law in the meantime. That could see Musk sharing information he’d rather OpenAI had no knowledge of at a time when he’s embroiled in several lawsuits against the leading AI firm he now regrets helping to found.

While not ending the fight to keep OpenAI away from xAI’s training data, this week’s ruling is another defeat for Musk after a judge last month tossed one of his OpenAI lawsuits, ruling that Musk had no proof that OpenAI had stolen trade secrets.

xAI argued California wants to silence Grok

xAI’s complaint argued that California’s law was unconstitutional since data can be considered a trade secret under the Fifth Amendment. The company also argued that the state was trying to regulate the outputs of xAI’s controversial chatbot, Grok, and was unfairly compelling speech from xAI while exempting other firms for security purposes.

At this stage of the litigation, Bernal disagreed that xAI might be irreparably harmed if the law was not halted.

On the Fifth Amendment claim, the judge said it’s not that training data could never be considered a trade secret. It’s just that xAI “has not identified any dataset or approach to cleaning and using datasets that is distinct from its competitors in a manner warranting trade secret protection.”

“It is not lost on the Court the important role of datasets in AI training and development, and that, hypothetically, datasets and details about them could be trade secrets,” Bernal wrote. But xAI “has not alleged that it actually uses datasets that are unique, that it has meaningfully larger or smaller datasets than competitors, or that it cleans its datasets in unique ways.”

Therefore, xAI is not likely to succeed on the merits of its Fifth Amendment claim.

The same goes for First Amendment arguments. xAI failed to show that the law improperly “forces developers to publicly disclose their data sources in an attempt to identify what California deems to be ‘data riddled with implicit and explicit biases,’” Bernal wrote.

To xAI, it seemed like the state was trying to use the law to influence the outputs of its chatbot Grok, the company argued, which should be protected commercial speech.

Over the past year, Grok has increasingly drawn global public scrutiny for its antisemitic rants and for generating nonconsensual intimate imagery (NCII) and child sexual abuse materials (CSAM). But despite these scandals, which prompted a California probe, Bernal contradicted xAI, saying California did not appear to be trying to regulate controversial or biased outputs, as xAI feared.

“Nothing in the language of the statute suggests that California is attempting to influence Plaintiff’s models’ outputs by requiring dataset disclosure,” Bernal wrote.

Addressing xAI’s other speech concerns, he noted that “the statute does not functionally ask Plaintiff to share its opinions on the role of certain datasets in AI model development or make ideological statements about the utility of various datasets or cleaning methods.”

“No part of the statute indicates any plan to regulate or censor models based on the datasets with which they are developed and trained,” Bernal wrote.

Public “cannot possibly” care about AI training data

Perhaps most frustrating for xAI as it continues to fight to block the law, Bernal also disputed that the public had no interest in the training data disclosures.

“It strains credulity to essentially suggest that no consumer is capable of making a useful evaluation of Plaintiff’s AI models by reviewing information about the datasets used to train them and that therefore there is no substantial government interest advanced by this disclosure statute,” Bernal wrote.

He noted that the law simply requires companies to alert the public about information that can feasibly be used to weigh whether they want to use one model over another.

Nothing about the required disclosures is inherently political, the judge suggested, although some consumers might select or avoid certain models with perceived political biases. As an example, Bernal opined that consumers may want to know “if certain medical data or scientific information was used to train a model” to decide if they can trust the model “to be sufficiently comprehensively trained and reliable for the consumer’s purposes.”

“In the marketplace of AI models, AB 2013 requires AI model developers to provide information about training datasets, thereby giving the public information necessary to determine whether they will use—or rely on information produced by—Plaintiff’s model relative to the other options on the market,” Bernal wrote.

Moving forward, xAI seems to face an uphill battle to win this fight. It will need to gather more evidence to demonstrate that its datasets or cleaning methods are sufficiently unique to be considered trade secrets that give the company a competitive edge.

It will also likely have to deepen its arguments that consumers don’t care about disclosures and that the government has not explored less burdensome alternatives that could “achieve the goal of transparency for consumers,” Bernal suggested.

One possible path to a win could be proving that California’s law is so vague that it potentially puts xAI on the hook for disclosing its customers’ training data for individual Grok licenses. But Bernal emphasized that xAI “must actually face such a conundrum—rather than raising an abstract possible issue among AI systems developers—for the Court to make a determination on this issue.”

xAI did not respond to Ars’ request to comment.

A spokesperson for the California Department of Justice told Reuters that the department “celebrates this key win and remains committed to continuing our defense” of the law.

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Ashley is a senior policy reporter for Ars Technica, dedicated to tracking social impacts of emerging policies and new technologies. She is a Chicago-based journalist with 20 years of experience.

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Climate change sucks, but at least it won’t kill your EV battery

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The good news is that technological progress more than offsets the effect of a warming world, even (hopefully) extreme scenarios like warming of 4° C. Those older batteries, which have a median lifespan of around 15 years in the current climate, would decrease by about 20 percent to a median of 12 years under 4° of warming, the study finds. But newer batteries, which have a current median lifespan of 17 years, should still last about 17 years on average under such conditions.

Older batteries also have a greater distribution of aging. The percentiles are much closer to the median for newer batteries, which under the worst conditions might see a lifetime degradation of up to 10 percent; by contrast, older batteries may suffer a loss of 30 percent or more.

“I think these improvements are well-known to experts in the field. But when I started this project, I was looking at web forums and reading how people were deciding on cars,” Wu said. “There are still a lot of durability concerns about EV batteries.”

After modeling battery lifetimes in 300 cities around the world, Wu and his co-authors found that with older battery technology, countries with the lowest GDP per capita had the greatest reductions in battery lifespan. Under the worst outcomes, Africa, Southeast Asia, and India could see those EV batteries lose 25 percent of their lifespan, compared to 15 percent in Europe or North America. But newer batteries should lose only 4 percent of their lifespan at worst in low-income countries and remain stable in the affluent West.

Of course, this assumes that those lower-GDP nations adopt EVs with the same kinds of battery technology we see in more well-off markets, and they don’t take into account factors like vehicle reliability, changes in powertrain efficiency, or whether charging infrastructure will remain stable in a warmer world. But it’s just another bit of data we can point to showing that EVs aren’t really that scary, just different.

Nature Climate Change, 2026. DOI: 10.1038/s41558-026-02579-z (About DOIs).

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nerve-damage,-energy-management,-and-apple-tv:-f1-in-2026-starts-today

Nerve damage, energy management, and Apple TV: F1 in 2026 starts today

Cars, F1, Formula 1 / /

Drivers aren’t happy about energy management, and one team won’t finish the race.

Credit: Rudy Carezzevoli/Getty Images

Later this evening—Friday morning local time—the new 1.6 L V6 engines that power this year’s crop of Formula 1 machinery will roar into life as practice for the first race of the year gets underway in Melbourne, Australia. After several years in which the teams’ performances converged so much that the sport was determined by finer margins than ever, 2026 sees a comprehensive reset.

The cars are smaller and lighter, and they have different aerodynamic configurations for the corners and the straights. The hybrid systems are more powerful, and each runs on its own bespoke sustainable fuel. There’s even a new way to watch as F1 makes a $750 million move from ESPN to Apple. Over the offseason, throughout the preseason shakedown in Barcelona, and then two three-day tests in Bahrain, plenty of questions have arisen: Are the new technical regulations a mistake? Can we still watch F1TV? And just what the heck is going on, Aston Martin?

400 kW + 350 kW = headaches?

After more than a decade with the same power units—and the same few manufacturers—the sport wanted to attract some new blood. Drawing in more car companies, which have boards and shareholders to answer to, required acknowledging road relevance and some commitment to sustainability and decarbonization. Since OEMs are all about electrification, that meant a greater emphasis on the hybrid side of the power units. And the veneer of environmental responsibility arrives in the form of heavily audited, fully sustainable fuels.

The engines are still 1.6 L V6s and turbocharged, but those turbochargers no longer contain the hybrid system known as the MGU-H. (It was dropped for cost grounds and a lack of road applications, but Porsche has started selling cars using this technology, and boy, are they good.) There’s now a much more powerful MGU-K, the electric motor that lives between the V6 and the transmission, and a more powerful battery. The combustion engines now generate 400 kW (536 hp), with the MGU-K adding another 350 kW (469 hp).

The rules package succeeded in attracting new power unit makers to the sport. Ferrari and Mercedes have been joined by Audi, Honda, and Red Bull’s in-house engine program (with help from Ford), although it is true that Alpine (formerly Renault) ended its long-running engine operation at the end of 2025 as its team opts for Mercedes power instead, joining the other customer teams McLaren and Williams.

Cadillac signed up, too, and it takes to the grid in Australia as the sport’s 11th team, although it will use Ferrari power units (like Haas) for the next three years while it develops its own for 2029.

BAHRAIN, BAHRAIN - FEBRUARY 11: The 2026 Formula 1 drivers pose for a photo during the F1 Photocall at Bahrain International Circuit on February 11, 2026 in Bahrain, Bahrain. (Photo by Mark Sutton - Formula 1/Formula 1 via Getty Images)

The 22 drivers who will compete in the 2026 season.

Credit: Mark Sutton – Formula 1/Formula 1 via Getty Images

The 22 drivers who will compete in the 2026 season. Credit: Mark Sutton – Formula 1/Formula 1 via Getty Images

On paper, 750 kW (1,006 hp) F1 cars should get everyone pretty excited. But they’ll only have that much power when the 4 MJ (1.1 kWh) battery is fully charged. That can happen in a couple of ways: regen via the rear wheels under braking and by siphoning power from the V6, which the sport calls “superclipping.” You’ll hear the engines continue to strain even as the cars lose speed at the end of long straights as horsepower is diverted into the battery and away from pushing the car through the air.

Each lap, each car is allowed to deploy up to 8.5 MJ (2.36 kWh), which means depleting and replenishing the battery more than once per lap. Because electrical energy is limited, drivers will have to use it intelligently. An optimal lap probably won’t be completely flat out the entire way; making up too much time in one corner using the full hybrid deployment might cost more on the following straight when there’s no more MGU-K contribution.

It’s fair to say some of F1’s biggest stars have not been entirely enthusiastic about having to adopt some of the same energy management techniques already used by their peers driving hybrid prototypes in the World Endurance Championship and all-electric single-seaters in Formula E.

After the first day of testing last month, four-time world champion Max Verstappen had some thoughts. “As a pure driver, I enjoy driving flat out,” he said. “And at the moment, you cannot drive like that. There’s a lot going on. A lot of what you do as a driver, in terms of inputs, has a massive effect on the energy side of things. For me, that’s just not Formula 1. Maybe it’s better to drive Formula E, right? Because that’s all about energy efficiency and management. That’s what they stand for.”

Not every track shares the same characteristics, however.

“Some tracks, you don’t have to do lift and coast for a single lap, and in some places, you have to do a lot of lift and coast for a qualifying lap,” driver Lewis Hamilton told reporters today. “There can be a big difference between deployment, of a second. If you don’t lift in one corner, for example Turn 6 and Turn 5 here [in Australia], if you take it flat or if you lift, it has a massive compound effect through the rest of the lap. You can do a good lap, but you could be a second down because the deployment is off.”

MELBOURNE, AUSTRALIA - MARCH 5: Lewis Hamilton of Great Britain and Scuderia Ferrari in the drivers' press conference during previews ahead of the F1 Grand Prix of Australia at Albert Park Grand Prix Circuit on March 5, 2026 in Melbourne, Australia. (Photo by Jayce Illman/Getty Images)

Will we see a smiling Lewis Hamilton more often this year? He might not love the new style of racing, but at least he’s much more comfortable with the way the cars handle.

Credit: Jayce Illman/Getty Images

Will we see a smiling Lewis Hamilton more often this year? He might not love the new style of racing, but at least he’s much more comfortable with the way the cars handle. Credit: Jayce Illman/Getty Images

An MGU-K on the front axle would have helped; about 60 percent of the braking is done by the front wheels, and that energy is lost as heat instead. But all-wheel drive was vehemently opposed by every other OEM during the planning stages out of fear of Audi’s experience with all-wheel-drive hybrids in WEC. And they probably did us a favor in that regard: Mark Hughes convincingly argues that adding a front motor would open the door to stability control in F1, something that was already prevented in 2008 and which would certainly ruin the sport if allowed.

An easier fix, albeit one that would slow lap times, would be to restrict the amount of energy the MGU-K could deploy, down to 250 or even 200 kW (335–268 hp). During testing in Bahrain, the sport’s organizing body, the FIA, had some teams try this out. Don’t expect any power restriction for the first few races, though; sensibly, the sport will give it some time to see how everything works in practice.

Six laps? All day??

F1 in 2026 will see much greater variability in performance between the teams than the ultra-tight gaps we saw last year. That, of course, was the result of several years of stable rules that didn’t allow much freedom due to factors like weight balance and suspension setup. Mercedes is a favorite going into this year, but Ferrari, Red Bull, and McLaren also look very strong. Haas, Alpine, and Racing Bulls head the midfield, with Audi impressing and Williams disappointing, and Cadillac certainly hasn’t embarrassed itself.

If only Aston Martin or its engine partner, Honda, could say the same. The team’s Canadian billionaire owner, Lawrence Stroll, has invested hundreds of millions into the UK-based team, building a state-of-the-art factory and wind tunnel and recently hiring Adrian Newey, the megastar designer and aerodynamicist whose cars have been responsible for 12 championships so far (Newey even has a stake in the team).

2026 is Aston Martin’s first year with a works engine supply, provided by Honda. The Japanese OEM has an on-off relationship with the sport, most recently deciding in 2020 to leave, then changing its mind again in 2024 due to the new rules. That four-year gap meant that the current program at Honda was effectively started from scratch, and it has been hard going.

In fact, as early as January last year, the head of Honda Motorsport, Koji Watanabe, told me that Honda was having problems. “Everything is new. [The] motor is new, [developing] 350 kW—it’s a very compact one that we need. And also the lightweight battery is not so easy to develop. Also the small engine with big power. So everything is very difficult, but we try our best,” Watanabe said.

Once the power unit was fitted to the car, things got much worse. Aston Martin was late to the Barcelona shakedown, and its drivers posted the slowest lap times in both the first and second Bahrain tests. The team also completed fewer laps than any other—just 206 during the first three-day test and a mere 128 laps during the second test. (For comparison, Mercedes, McLaren, and Ferrari each did more than 420 laps during the first test, and Mercedes, Racing Bulls, and Haas did more than 400 laps during the second test.)

Aston Martin's Spanish driver Fernando Alonso inspects his car with team mechanics in the garage ahead of the Formula One Australian Grand Prix at Melbourne's Albert Park on March 5, 2026. (Photo by Paul Crock / AFP via Getty Images)

Alonso has already fallen out with Honda once during his career over engine problems.

Credit: Paul Crock / AFP via Getty Images

Alonso has already fallen out with Honda once during his career over engine problems. Credit: Paul Crock / AFP via Getty Images

The problems were myriad, affecting both the gearbox and the power unit. Chief among the issues was a vibration that shook apart components like the battery pack, destroying spares. So on the final day of testing, the team was limited to a mere six laps of the Bahrain circuit. With so little testing and so much to debug, the prospect of Aston Martin finishing in Australia—or any of the first few races—seems doubtful.

But wait, it gets worse. Earlier today, Newey held a press conference in Australia, where he explained that the team hadn’t made any progress in damping the vibration, which resonates through the carbon fiber tub. Having parts like mirrors shake off is less than ideal, but the vibration is also transmitted through the steering wheel, and the problem is so severe that both Fernando Alonso and Lance Stroll risk permanent nerve damage if they try to complete an entire race distance.

Asked to describe conditions in the car, Stroll (who suffered a hand injury last year) said, “I don’t know how you can compare it. I guess just electrocute yourself on a chair or something like that, not far off. It’s just… it’s very uncomfortable vibrations. It’s bad for the engine but also for the human inside the car. We need to get on top of it, but I think we will.”

Could this precipitate a driver move? Stroll Jr. is a permanent fixture as long as Stroll Sr. owns the team. But two-time champion Alonso already lost several years of his career to a poor Honda power unit and uncompetitive McLarens, and at 44, he’s now much closer to retiring. Rather than the Newey world-beater he thought he was getting, Alonso, who hasn’t won a race for 13 years, might well be looking at his old home Alpine a little wistfully. Alpine boss Flavio Briatore is also Alonso’s long-time manager, and Briatore certainly has no qualms when it comes to benching or replacing drivers. If I were Franco Colapinto or Pierre Gasly, I’d keep an eye on that.

Apple

If you had come into the #macintosh channel on the Ars IRC server in 2003 and told us that Apple would one day be the broadcast home of F1 in the US, you probably would have been asked where you got such good drugs. But last year, after producing a blockbuster movie about the sport, Apple snatched the US rights from ESPN.

Understandably, for existing ESPN customers who don’t have and don’t want an Apple TV subscription ($13 a month), this wasn’t great news. There was also a lot of confusion about F1’s standalone digital TV offering. After a rocky launch in 2018, F1TV has come into its own, offering a much less British-centric commentary feed than the UK’s Sky (which it includes as an alternate audio option), in-car feeds, and a comprehensive archive of races dating back decades.

If you were previously subscribed to both Apple TV and F1TV Premium, you have one less bill to pay. If you’re an Apple TV subscriber in the US, you now have access to F1TV Premium via its website and apps. I’m a subscriber to both, and my two accounts were tied together without any problems.

Whether you use the F1TV app or Apple’s, you’ll have the option for both the F1TV commentary of Alex Jacques and Joylon Palmer or the Sky audio feed of David Croft and Martin Brundle, plus Spanish-language audio. Apple says each Grand Prix will have up to 30 other feeds, including in-car from all 22 cars, a driver tracker, a telemetry feed, and more.

Here’s what F1’s multi view looks like in Apple’s TV app. Apple

The computer company is going all out, with integrations across its various services. Apple Music will offer live audio broadcasts of races and curated playlists from drivers, and F1 will feature in the Podcast and News apps. There are even enhanced maps for some circuits—if Monza makes the cut, I will report back on it later this year. For a non-Apple Maps map look at the sport, consider this interactive map created by an Ars reader, F1 fan, and geospatial expert that includes all the team factories and the 24 circuits.

Photo of Jonathan M. Gitlin

Jonathan is the Automotive Editor at Ars Technica. He has a BSc and PhD in Pharmacology. In 2014 he decided to indulge his lifelong passion for the car by leaving the National Human Genome Research Institute and launching Ars Technica’s automotive coverage. He lives in Washington, DC.

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