Key Facts Space Agency & Policy Developments NASA Leadership and Artemis Momentum On Sept. 3, NASA’s acting Administrator Sean Duffy announced a significant leadership move, naming longtime engineer Amit Kshatriya as the agency’s new Associate Administrator nasa.gov. This top civil-service post puts Kshatriya – previously head of NASA’s Moon-to-Mars architecture team – in charge of driving…
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Google Dodges Antitrust Breakup, Shares Soar Alphabet, Google’s parent company, won a major reprieve in its landmark U.S. antitrust case. On Sept 2, Judge Amit Mehta ruled against breaking up Google, allowing it to retain control of Android and Chrome reuters.com. The decision lifted a huge cloud of uncertainty: Alphabet stock rocketed over 9% in one…
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Corporate Moves and New AI Tools Microsoft Debuts Homegrown AI Models After years of exclusively backing OpenAI’s models, Microsoft announced two powerful AI systems built in-house semafor.com. The first is MAI-1-preview, a text generative model intended to power future versions of Microsoft’s Copilot assistant across Windows and Office semafor.com. The second is MAI-Voice-1, an advanced…
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In-Depth Report COVID-19 Vaccines and U.S. Public Health Upheaval Targeted Fall Boosters, But Access Tightened: U.S. health authorities approved new monovalent COVID-19 vaccines (by Pfizer–BioNTech, Moderna, and Novavax) updated for the 2025–26 season reuters.com. Unlike prior booster rollouts, the FDA restricted under-65 eligibility to those with risk factors, aligning with guidance from HHS Secretary Robert…
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Key Facts Space and Astronomy August 27–28 delivered big news from the cosmos. Astronomers witnessed a planet in the making for the first time: using ESO’s Very Large Telescope, a team directly imaged WISPIT 2b, a gas giant forming within the dusty rings of a young star sci.news sci.news. The newborn planet, about five times Jupiter’s…
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Key Facts SpaceX’s Starship Soars on 10th Test Flight SpaceX’s Starship mega-rocket achieved a long-awaited breakthrough on Aug. 26, completing its first fully successful test flight after several explosive failures earlier in the program reuters.com spacepolicyonline.com. The 400-foot-tall Starship (comprising the Super Heavy booster and Starship upper stage) lifted off from Boca Chica, Texas at 7:30 p.m.…
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Apple Preps New iPhones and More for Sept 9 Event Apple officially sent out invites for a September 9 event at its Cupertino headquarters, where it’s expected to unveil its latest slate of devices reuters.com. Topping the list will be new iPhones, potentially including a dramatically thinner model dubbed the “iPhone Air,” echoing Apple’s MacBook Air…
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SpaceX’s 33rd Cargo Dragon mission (CRS-33) launched from Cape Canaveral at 2:45 a.m. EDT on Aug. 24, 2025, carrying more than 5,000 pounds of supplies and a trunk-mounted boost module to raise the ISS orbit. The Dragon’s trunk contains an independent propulsion system with two Draco engines to perform orbit-raising burns starting in September 2025…
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Meta and Google announced a six-year cloud computing deal worth over $10 billion, making Google the backend for Meta’s AI initiatives. Nvidia announced a GeForce NOW upgrade featuring the Blackwell GPU (RTX 5080 class) to roll out in September, delivering 5K at 120fps and up to 360fps at 1080p with sub-30 millisecond latency via DLSS…
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