Dominique Luchart's Blog, page 612

Canada to launch moon rover by 2026, ,

Canada’s moon plans keep getting more ambitious.

The nation will develop a robotic lunar rover in partnership with NASA and launch it by 2026, Francois-Philippe Champagne, Canada’s Minister of Innovation, Science and Industry, announced on Wednesday (May 26).

“The rover will be carrying at least two science instruments, Canadian and American. The mission will aim to gather imagery and measurements and data of the surface of the moon, as well as to have the rover survive an entire night on the moon,” Canadian Space Agency (CSA) officials said in a statement Wednesday. (One lunar night lasts about 14 Earth days.)

Lunar timeline: Humanity’s exploration of the moon

To get the ball rolling on the project, which will explore a lunar polar region, the CSA will soon select two Canadian companies to develop concepts for the rover and its instruments, agency officials added.

Other Canadian gear will reach the moon in the coming years as well, if all goes according to plan. For example, three commercial technologies funded by the CSA’s Lunar Exploration Accelerator Program are scheduled to get a lunar-surface test in 2022 — an artificial intelligence flight computer from Mission Control Space Services; lightweight panoramic cameras built by Canadensys; and a new planetary navigation system developed by NGC Aerospace Ltd.

All three will travel on the first moon mission of the HAKUTO-R lander, which is built by Tokyo-based company ispace, it was announced on Wednesday. (NGC will use photos captured by HAKUTO-R cameras to help demonstrate its autonomous navigation system.)

“We are honored that all three of the companies awarded by CSA have each entrusted ispace’s services to carry out their operations on the lunar surface,” ispace founder and CEO Takeshi Hakamada said in a different statement. “We see this as a show of the trust that ispace has developed with CSA over the past years, as well as a recognition of ispace’s positive position in the North American market.”

Also aboard that HAKUTO-R mission will be the United Arab Emirates’ first moon rover, a 22-lb. (10 kilograms) robot named Rashid and, we learned Wednesday, a baseball-sized “transformable robot” developed by the Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency (JAXA) and several private companies. The Japanese payload will gather data to aid the development of Lunar Cruiser, a big, pressurized, astronaut-toting rover that JAXA is building with the help of Toyota.

But getting back to Canada’s moon plans: The nation is also a key partner in NASA’s Artemis program of crewed lunar exploration, which aims to establish a long-term, sustainable human presence on and around the moon by the late 2020s. The nation is supplying the robotic arm for one key piece of Artemis infrastructure, a moon-orbiting space station called Gateway.

And a Canadian astronaut will be aboard Artemis 2, a four-person around-the-moon mission that’s scheduled to launch in 2023. (Artemis 3, the first crewed lunar landing mission since NASA’s Apollo 17 in 1972, is currently targeted for 2024, though that timeline is expected to be relaxed.)

Mike Wall is the author of “ Out There ” (Grand Central Publishing, 2018; illustrated by Karl Tate), a book about the search for alien life. Follow him on Twitter @michaeldwall. Follow us on Twitter @Spacedotcom or Facebook.

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Miss the Super Flower Blood Moon this week? Here’s when to see the next total lunar eclipse., ,

If you missed the total lunar eclipse on Wednesday (May 26), you’ll have to wait nearly a year for the next one.

Skywatchers in much of the world were treated to a total lunar eclipse on Wednesday (May 26). The spectacle happened to coincide with May’s “supermoon” — an informal term to describe a full moon at its closest point to Earth, known as perigee.

During this week’s big lunar event, called the “Super Flower Blood Moon,” the moon passed directly through Earth’s shadow, causing it to appear red for observers in parts of the Americas, as well as eastern Asia, Australia, Antarctica and the Pacific Ocean. While the moon was below the horizon and invisible to the rest of the world, clouds and daylight obscured the view for some prospective observers.

Although there is another lunar eclipse coming up in November, that eclipse won’t be a so-called “blood moon,” or total lunar eclipse. The next blood moon will occur on May 16, 2022, but it will be another 12 years before a supermoon coincides with another blood moon. Here’s how to plan for next year’s lunar spectacle.

Video: Super Flower Blood Moon over California in amazing timelapse
Related: Amazing photos of the Super Flower Blood Moon

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This composite image shows the moon in various stages of the Super Flower Blood Moon total lunar eclipse in Christchurch, New Zealand on May 26, 2021. (Image credit: Sanka Vidanagama/NurPhoto/Getty Images)

The total lunar eclipse on May 16, 2022 — the first of two total lunar eclipses in 2022 — will be visible from North and South America, Europe, Africa and parts of Asia. Totality, or the point when Earth’s shadow is fully obscuring the moon, will last about 85 minutes, according to Time and Date.

The May 16 total lunar eclipse of 2022 occurs just before the moon reaches perigee on May 17. As a result, the full moon appears to be bigger and brighter than usual — often referred to as a supermoon. Lunar eclipses are also often called “blood moons” because the face of the moon turns red when it passes into Earth’s shadow.

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A visibility map for the total lunar eclipse of May 16, 2022. (Image credit: Fred Espenak/NASA)Image 2 of 2

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A visualization of the total lunar eclipse of May 16, 2022. (Image credit: Fred Espenak/NASA)

The second total lunar eclipse of 2022 will occur on Nov. 8. The event will be visible from parts of Asia, Australia, North America, parts of northern and eastern Europe, and most of South America. Totality will last approximately 85 minutes, according to Time and Date.

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A visibility map for the total lunar eclipse of Nov. 8, 2022. (Image credit: Fred Espenak/NASA)Image 2 of 2

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A visualization of the total lunar eclipse of Nov. 8, 2022. (Image credit: Fred Espenak/NASA)

While the next total lunar eclipse won’t occur again until May 16, 2022, there will be a partial lunar eclipse on Nov. 19, 2021, which will be visible from North and South America, Australia and parts of Europe and Asia. The partial lunar eclipse will last about 3 hours and 28 minutes, according to Time and Date.

There will also be two solar eclipses in 2021. An annular, or “ring of fire” solar eclipse, will occur on June 10 and will be visible from North America, Europe and Asia, with Canada, Greenland and Russia to see the best views. A total solar eclipse will occur on Dec. 4, but its total phase will only be visible from Antarctica.

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A visibility map for the partial lunar eclipse of Nov. 19, 2021. (Image credit: Fred Espenak/NASA)Image 2 of 2

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A visualization of the partial lunar eclipse of Nov. 19, 2021. (Image credit: Fred Espenak/NASA)

The total lunar eclipse on Wednesday (May 26) represents a rare lunar trifecta, in which a full moon, a supermoon and a total lunar eclipse occurred simultaneously, and was the first in nearly six years.

Skywatchers will have to wait another 12 years to see the next total lunar eclipse supermoon on Oct. 8, 2033, according to NASA and AstroPixels.com, a skywatching site run by retired NASA eclipse expert Fred Espenak.

Editor’s Note: If you captured an amazing photo or video of the total lunar eclipse and would like to share it with Space.com’s readers, please send your images with comments to spacephotos@space.com.

Follow Samantha Mathewson @Sam_Ashley13. Follow us on Twitter @Spacedotcom and on Facebook.

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Halfway to the holidays, check out the winning entries from Lego’s ‘Star Wars Holiday Contest’, ,

About six months until the winter holidays, the winners have been announced for LEGO’s 2020 “Star Wars Holiday Contest.”

LEGO, the beloved brick-building toy company with an impressive line of “Star Wars” playsets, minifigs, dioramas and accessories, challenged fans of a galaxy far, far away with a contest this past December.

Within this contest, talented hobbyists of all ages have snapped together some remarkable, scratch-built “Star Wars” scenes displaying boundless imagination, time and patience.

Related: The best Star Wars Lego sets of 2021: Great deals and more

Following “Star Wars Day,” and halfway to the 2021 holidays, check out the five winning entries for the “LEGO Star Wars Holiday Contest,”, all featuring festive vignettes starring a broad spectrum of “Star Wars” characters and cinematic moments pieced together using thousands of LEGO bricks.

Organized by “Star Wars: Force for Change,” FIRST, the World’s Leading Youth-Serving Nonprofit Advancing STEM Education, and the LEGO Group this past winter as tie-in event to celebrate the “LEGO Star Wars Holiday Special” on Disney Plus, fans from around the world were invited to create yuletide-themed LEGO “Star Wars” builds for this contest.

Lucky winners were picked by a stellar panel of judges including actor Kelly Marie Tran who played Rose Tico in “Star Wars: The Last Jedi,” LEGO “Star Wars” design director Jens Kronvold Frederiksen and FIRST LEGO League alumni Sanjay and Arvind Seshan.

Here are the five finalists:

Steve Leuer was the Grand Prize Winner of the 2020 “Star Wars Holiday Contest” from LEGO. (Image credit: Steve Leuer/LEGO)

Grand Prize Winner: Steve Leuer

“In my mind, [Yoda’s] teaching is all about doing your best; giving your best effort, no matter what,” Leuer, an engineering teacher, toldStarWars.com. “Don’t take the easy way out, don’t get lazy and put in a lesser effort, don’t miss an opportunity to be successful. Anything worth doing is worth doing well. This is the mindset I want my students to have.”

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Lindsay Virgilio snagged the “runner up” spot for LEGO’s 2020 “Star Wars Holiday Contest.” (Image credit: Lindsay Virgilio/LEGO)

“Jedi stand for good and they must be their best selves to stand against darkness in a wide galaxy … if I’m out meditating, healing with Force energy, and protecting citizens of the universe, then plain old white isn’t good enough for me. Have you ever seen a bad guy wearing glittering neon rainbow robes? Nope, me neither,” Virgilio explained to StarWars.com.

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Erik Etz was a runner up in LEGO’s 2020 “Star Wars Holiday Contest.” (Image credit: Erik Etz/LEGO)

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Brian Steinberg was a runner up in LEGO’s 2020 “Star Wars Holiday Contest.” (Image credit: Brian Steinberg/LEGO)

“My initial idea was that I would build Chewbacca’s home from the original “Star Wars Holiday Special” all decorated for Life Day,” Steinberg toldStarWars.com. “I included a little decoration of a sandcrawler being pulled by an AT-AT walker and decided that a holiday-inspired Tatooine build would be a unique and exciting direction to take a Life Day celebration!”

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Dylan Drew was a runner up in LEGO’s 2020 “Star Wars Holiday Contest.” (Image credit: Dylan Drew/LEGO)

Runner up: Dylan Drew for his awesome holiday-themed Star Destroyer

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Join our Space Forums to keep talking space on the latest missions, night sky and more! And if you have a news tip, correction or comment, let us know at: community@space.com.

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Astra to launch Earth-observing satellites for Planet in 2022, ,

Two Bay Area startups will work together to get satellites to orbit next year.

San Francisco-based company Planet has tapped Astra, which is based in the East Bay, to launch some of its Earth-observing spacecraft in 2022.

“We are thrilled to be working with Planet Labs on a multi-launch mission in 2022,” Astra CEO and co-founder Chris Kemp wrote in a blog post last week, referring to Planet by another name that the company has used.

“This is a milestone for both of our companies and creates an important inflection point as we begin delivering launch services to our customers that are creating a healthier and more connected planet,” Kemp added.

Gallery: Planet’s photos of Earth from space

He didn’t disclose the value of the contract, the number of launches it will cover or which type of Planet satellite will ride aboard Astra’s 38-foot-tall (12 meters) Rocket 3. Planet manages two active constellations of Earth-observing satellites: a huge flock of Dove cubesats, each of which is about as big as a loaf of bread, and a much smaller network of minifridge-sized SkySats.

Planet sells the imagery captured by these spacecraft to a variety of customers. The company also commonly releases especially important photos free of charge — shots showing the aftermath of Iranian missile attacks on Iraqi military bases in January 2020, for example.

Astra aims to become a big player in the small-satellite launch market by providing fast, flexible and cost-effective rides to orbit with the two-stage Rocket 3, which has one spaceflight under its belt. That milestone occurred in December 2020, during a test launch from the Pacific Spaceport Complex on Alaska’s Kodiak Island.

Planet isn’t the only customer that Astra has lined up. In February, for example, Astra won a $7.95 million contract to launch NASA’s Time-Resolved Observations of Precipitation Structure and Storm Intensity with a Constellation of Smallsats (TROPICS) mission.

TROPICS will use a network of six cubesats to study how hurricanes form and evolve. The spacecraft will be lofted by three Rocket 3 launches from Kwajalein Atoll in the Marshall Islands, which will take place over a 120-day period between Jan. 8 and July 31 of next year, NASA officials said.

Mike Wall is the author of “ Out There ” (Grand Central Publishing, 2018; illustrated by Karl Tate), a book about the search for alien life. Follow him on Twitter @michaeldwall. Follow us on Twitter @Spacedotcom or Facebook.

Join our Space Forums to keep talking space on the latest missions, night sky and more! And if you have a news tip, correction or comment, let us know at: community@space.com.

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What Instagram really learned from hiding like counts,

In April 2019, amid growing questions about the effects of social networks on mental health, Instagram announced it would test a feed without likes. The person posting an image on the network would still see how many people had sent it a heart, but the total number of hearts would remain invisible to the public.

“It’s about young people,” Instagram chief Adam Mosseri said that November, just ahead of the test arriving in the United States. “The idea is to try and depressurize Instagram, make it less of a competition, give people more space to focus on connecting with people that they love, things that inspire them. But it’s really focused on young people.”

After more than two years of testing, today Instagram announced what it found: removing likes doesn’t seem to meaningfully depressurize Instagram, for young people or anyone else, and so likes will remain publicly viewable by default. But all users will now get the ability to switch them off if they like, either for their whole feed or on a per-post basis.

“What we heard from people and experts was that not seeing like counts was beneficial for some, and annoying to others, particularly because people use like counts to get a sense for what’s trending or popular, so we’re giving you the choice,” the company said in a blog post.

At first blush, this move feels like a remarkable anticlimax. The company invested more than two years in testing these changes, with Mosseri himself telling Wired he spent “a lot of time on this personally” as the company began the project. For a moment, it seemed as if Instagram might be on the verge of a fundamental transformation — away from an influencer-driven social media reality show toward something more intimate and humane.

In 2019, this no-public-metrics, friends-first approach had been perfected by Instagram’s forever rival, Snapchat. And the idea of stripping out likes, view counts, followers and other popularity scoreboards gained traction in some circles — the artist Ben Grosser’s Demetricator project made a series of tools that implemented the idea via browser extensions, to positive reviews.

So what happened at Instagram?

“It turned out that it didn’t actually change nearly as much about … how people felt, or how much they used the experience as we thought it would,” Mosseri said in a briefing with reporters this week. “But it did end up being pretty polarizing. Some people really liked it, and some people really didn’t.”

On that last point, he added: “You can check out some of my @-mentions on Twitter.”

While Instagram ran its tests, a growing number of studies found only limited evidence linking the use of smartphones or social networks to changes in mental health, The New York Times reported last year. Just this month, a 30-year study of teenagers and technology from Oxford University reached a similar finding.

Note that this doesn’t say social networks are necessarily good for teenagers, or anyone else. Just that they don’t move the needle very much on mental health. Assuming that’s true, it stands to reason that changes to the user interface of individual apps would also have a limited effect.

At the same time, I wouldn’t write off this experiment as a failure. Rather, I think it highlights a lesson that social networks are often too reluctant to learn: rigid, one-size-fits-all platform policies are making people miserable.

Think of the vocal minority of Instagram users who would like to view their feed chronologically, for example. Or the Facebook users who want to pay to turn off ads. Or look at all the impossible questions related to speech that are decided at a platform level, when they would better be resolved at a personal one.

Last month, Intel was roasted online after showing off Bleep, an experimental AI tool for censoring voice chat during multiplayer online video games. If you’ve ever played an online shooter, chances are you haven’t gone a full afternoon without being subjected to a barrage of racist, misogynist, and homophobic speech. (Usually from a 12-year-old.) Rather than censor all of it, though, Intel said it would put the choice in users’ hands. Here’s Ana Diaz at Polygon:

The screenshot depicts the user settings for the software and shows a sliding scale where people can choose between “none, some, most, or all” of categories of hate speech like “racism and xenophobia” or “misogyny.” There’s also a toggle for the N-word.

An “all racism” toggle makes us understandably upset, even if hearing all racism is currently the default for most in-game chat today, and the screenshot generated many worthwhile memes and jokes. Intel explained that it built settings like these to account for the fact that people might accept hearing language from friends that they won’t from strangers.

But the basic idea of sliders for speech issues is a good one, I think. Some issues, particularly related to non-sexual nudity, vary so widely across cultures that forcing one global standard on them — as is the norm today — seems ludicrous. Letting users build their own experience, from whether their like counts are visible to whether breastfeeding photos appear in their feed, feels like the clear solution.

There are some obvious limits here. Tech platforms can’t ask users to make an unlimited number of decisions, as it introduces too much complexity into the product. Companies will still have to draw hard lines around tricky issues, including hate speech and misinformation. And introducing choices won’t change the fact that, as in all software, most people will simply stick with the defaults.

All that said, expanded user choice is clearly in the interest of both people and platforms. People can get software that maps more closely to their cultures and preferences. And platforms can offload a series of impossible-to-solve riddles from their policy teams to an eager user base.

There are already signs beyond today that this future is arriving. Reddit offered us an early glimpse with its policy of setting a hard “floor” of rules for the platform, while letting individual subreddits raise the “ceiling” by introducing additional rules. Twitter CEO Jack Dorsey has forecast a world in which users will be able to choose from different feed ranking algorithms.

With his decision on likes, Mosseri is moving in the same direction.

“It ended up being that the clearest path forward was something that we already believe in, which is giving people choice,” he said this week. “I think it’s something that we should do more of.”

This column was co-published with Platformer , a daily newsletter about Big Tech and democracy.

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Lime Prime is the scooter company’s new monthly subscription service,

Lime is rolling out a new monthly subscription service for its electric scooters that’s called — no joke — Lime Prime.

Lime typically charges a fixed rate to unlock a vehicle and then a per-minute fee to ride. For $5.99 a month, the company will waive that initial fee for Lime Prime subscribers. And in markets with no unlock fees, riders will receive 25 percent off the price of their ride. Subscribers will still pay the per-minute charge, but Lime says that someone who uses one of its scooters every day would save approximately $25 a month under the subscription plan.

There are other perks that come with a subscription. Lime Prime members can reserve any scooter or bike for up to 30 minutes at no cost, for example, compared to just 10 minutes for a standard user. And for a limited time, the company is offering the first month of its new plan for free as a promotion to entice new customers.

Subscriptions are fast becoming a way for scooter- and bike-sharing companies to lock in more customers in the hopes of boosting their revenue stream. And this isn’t the first iteration of Lime’s subscription service. In 2019 the company launched Lime Pass, a weekly plan that also eliminated the unlock fee for subscribers. Prices varied for Lime Pass, but San Francisco subscribers, for example, were charged $4.99-a-week.

Lime also isn’t the first scooter company to dabble in subscriptions. Bird has been experimenting with its own plan for its shared electric scooters with mixed results. Scooter manufacturer Unagi has a plan available in several cities in the US. And electric bikes are jumping on the subscription bandwagon, too, with Revel in New York City, Dance in Berlin, and Swapfiets and VanMoof as well.

Subscriptions have been a mixed bag for the auto industry. Ford walked away from its service last fall following low demand. Cadillac shut down its service, Book, in 2018, only to resurrect it several months later with fewer options. And BMW recently discontinued its own subscription service.

Other automakers have had some success. BMW, Porsche, Audi, Volvo, Nissan, and Jaguar are still offering some variation of a subscription service. Even the big car rental companies, Hertz and Enterprise, are getting in on the action. Most of these subscriptions are only available in specific cities and are still in the pilot phase.

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Clearview AI hit with sweeping legal complaints over controversial face scraping in Europe,

Privacy International (PI) and several other European privacy and digital rights organizations announced today that they’ve filed legal complaints against the controversial facial recognition company Clearview AI. The complaints filed in France, Austria, Greece, Italy, and the United Kingdom say that the company’s method of documenting and collecting data — including images of faces it automatically extracts from public websites — violates European privacy laws. New York-based Clearview claims to have built “the largest known database of 3+ billion facial images.”

PI, NYOB, Hermes Center for Transparency and Digital Human Rights, and Homo Digitalis all claim that Clearview’s data collection goes beyond what the average user would expect when using services like Instagram, LinkedIn, or YouTube. “Extracting our unique facial features or even sharing them with the police and other companies goes far beyond what we could ever expect as online users,” said PI legal officer Ioannis Kouvakas in a joint statement.

Clearview AI uses an image scraper to automatically collect publicly available photos of faces across social media and other public websites to build out its biometric database. It then sells access to that database — and the ability to identify people — to law enforcement agencies and private companies.

The legality of Clearview AI’s approach to building its facial recognition service is the subject of a number of legal challenges globally. Authorities in the UK and Australia opened a privacy probe last year into the company’s data scraping techniques. In February, Canada’s privacy commissioners determined that Clearview’s face scraping is “illegal” and creates a system that “inflicts broad-based harm on all members of society, who find themselves continually in a police lineup.”

Swedish police were fined by the country’s data regulator for using Clearview’s offerings to “unlawfully” identify citizens. And in one case in Germany, the Hamburg Data Protection Agency ordered Clearview to delete the mathematical hash representing a user’s profile after he complained.

In the US, Clearview was sued by the American Civil Liberties Union in the state of Illinois in 2020 for violating the Illinois Biometric Privacy Act. The results of that lawsuit contributed to the company’s decision to stop selling its product to private US companies. Clearview also faced legal action in Vermont, New York and California.

Privacy International say regulators have three months to respond to the complaints. In the meantime, you can request any data Clearview might have on you via the email and forms provided on its site and ask that your face be omitted from client searches.

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Google makes it easier to transfer Gmail photos to Google Photos,

Google is adding a new “Save to Photos” button to Gmail which you can press to automatically save an emailed image to Google Photos, the company has announced. It’s rolling out to personal Gmail users, Google Workspace, G Suite Basic, and G Suite Business customers over the next couple of weeks and will be available alongside the existing “Add to Drive” button. Unfortunately it only works on JPEGs for the time being. Sorry PNG stans.

It’s a good time to be getting a more convenient way to add images to Google Photos, because the service’s storage options are getting a big overhaul on June 1st. At that time, the service’s unlimited storage for “high quality” photos will disappear and will be replaced with a 15GB cap. Importantly, any images uploaded before the change comes into force won’t count towards the new limit.

In other words, start smashing that “Save to Photos” button and make the most of your free uploads while they’re still available. Check out our exhaustive explainer for a complete rundown of the changes coming to Google Photos next month, including how they apply to Pixel owners who got free Google Photos uploads as part of their purchase.

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Nintendo’s OLED Switch could come in September,

Nintendo could release its heavily rumored new version of the Switch in September or October, according to a report by Bloomberg. Manufacturing is reportedly planned to start as soon as July, and Bloomberg says the system may be announced before the E3 trade show, which kicks off in virtual form on June 12th.

As Bloomberg notes, an announcement ahead of E3 would allow third-party publishers, as well as Nintendo itself, to show their games running on the new hardware. This version of the Switch is said to use more powerful silicon from Nvidia that works with DLSS technology, allowing for 4K output to a TV. It also reportedly has a 7-inch OLED display sourced from Samsung.

Bloomberg says Nintendo’s suppliers are “confident” in their ability to fulfill the orders even though there’s a global shortage of chips and other components. “Production lines are better prepared for the potential component shake-up and the parts Nintendo is using are subject to less competition than those in its rivals’ more powerful consoles,” according to the report, though it still warns that “the company’s ability to meet consumer demand won’t be guaranteed.”

The current model of the Switch has been difficult to find in many regions throughout the past year, with increased demand during the pandemic exacerbated by challenges with the supply chain.

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Nintendo’s OLED Switch could come in September, Sam Byford

Illustrations by Alex Castro / The Verge

Nintendo could release its heavily rumored new version of the Switch in September or October, according to a report by Bloomberg. Manufacturing is reportedly planned to start as soon as July, and Bloomberg says the system may be announced before the E3 trade show, which kicks off in virtual form on June 12th.

As Bloomberg notes, an announcement ahead of E3 would allow third-party publishers, as well as Nintendo itself, to show their games running on the new hardware. This version of the Switch is said to use more powerful silicon from Nvidia that works with DLSS technology, allowing for 4K output to a TV. It also reportedly has a 7-inch OLED display sourced from Samsung.

Bloomberg says Nintendo’s suppliers are “confident” in their…

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