Thursday, August 27, 2026
237 stories
The FCC recently approved Reflect Orbital’s test that could lead to tens of thousands of mirror-equipped satellites to power solar energy. Astronomers say it will make almost impossible to observe the night sky.
AI has already had a significant impact on Amazon’s carbon emissions, which it reported were up 16% last year — the wrong direction for a company that pledged to eliminate its carbon emissions by 2040.
You gotta pay to play though.
The Trump administration has now convinced developers to abandon 12 offshore wind leases. The latest will cost taxpayers $1.2 billion.
The fab is intended to build chips for data centers that will be run by SpaceX and its xAI subsidiary.
A roughly five-ton upper stage of a discarded Falcon 9 rocket crashed into the moon on Wednesday after floating in space since its launch last year. The impact, which SpaceX says was unintentional, was too faint for ground telescopes to see, but South Korea’s lunar orbiter has now shared images of the crater it created. [Image: These satellite images show what the impact zone looked like before (left) and after (right) the crash. https://platform.theverge.com/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2026/08/SpaceX-rocket-moon-impact-crater.png?quality=90&strip=all]
Srini Gopalan in response to SpaceX saying it plans to “acquire quite a few” of T-Mobile, AT&T, and Verizon’s customers by turning Starlink dishes into tiny cellular base stations using the limited spectrum it acquired from EchoStar: > You’ve got to ask the question of ‘What is the gap in the market that they’re looking to serve? I always prefer starting these conversations back from the customer: Why would a customer buy a new cellular service? Where do they go? What’s their differentiation? It’s clearly not having a broad network. [Link: Starlink mobile threat has been exaggerated, says T-Mobile CEO | https://www.ft.com/content/5d6b7dcf-fe0e-4cb1-ad1d-0157407296cc | Financial Times]
West Virginia University researchers are extracting critical rare earth minerals from polluted mine water, creating a potential U.S. supply chain solution.
The company shared research about how its WeatherNext AI model can predict a cyclone’s track, intensity, and wind structure up to 15 days in advance, giving “forecasters an extra day’s worth of predictive accuracy.” [Link: AI model achieves breakthrough in forecasting cyclones | https://deepmind.google/blog/weathernext-ai-model-achieves-breakthrough-in-forecasting-cyclones/ | Google DeepMind]
The massive $16.8 billion chip facility, which is being built by Tesla and SpaceX with help from Intel, will be located in Grimes County, population 29,268. After securing over a billion dollars in tax breaks from two rural school districts, SpaceX says it will break ground later this year. The fab will supply AI chips to power Musk’s plans to build a “robot army” that includes self-driving cars and humanoid robots, as well as for the data centers he plans on launching into space. [Media: https://twitter.com/Tesla/status/2085365278276284803?s=20]
Despite the preferences of some, Moderna announced that after years of work, mFLUSIVA (mRNA-1010) has been approved for use in adults aged 50 to 64, with an accelerated approval for adults 65 and up as they wait for the results of a follow-up study. While Moderna plans to roll it out by this fall, the WSJ notes it’s still unclear what RFK Jr.‘s vaccine recommendation panel will say about this use of the Nobel Prize-winning approach. [Link: F.D.A. Approves Moderna’s mRNA Flu Vaccine | https://www.nytimes.com/2026/08/05/health/mrna-flu-vaccine-moderna.html? | The New York Times]
SpaceX’s first quarterly earnings make it clear where the company’s priorities are. It’s building out compute to sell — not rocketry.
Climate nonprofits can again access their federal funding more than a year after the Trump EPA ordered Citibank to freeze their accounts.
Mitti Labs plans to expand beyond India and enter the Philippines and Indonesia while growing its carbon credits and agricultural data business.
SpaceX is preparing to build a terrestrial mobile network to “acquire quite a few” of the customers now subscribed to T-Mobile, AT&T, and Verizon.
The purchase illustrates just how interconnected Elon Musk's universe of companies are.
Tech companies and developers have been scouring the U.S. for places to build data centers, and they’ve been drawn to Texas’ loose regulations and seemingly abundant power supply. But even Texas can be pushed to the brink.
NASA's new wind tunnel has a diameter of 20 feet and stands 24 feet tall, with wind speeds of up to 117 miles per hour. It will help test technology for future space missions.
