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DTN 156: We're going back to the f*cking moon

Plus: Navy's big bet on automated submarine production, Texas' $350M nuclear fund, demoing underground wireless communication, the gig workers training humanoid robots, and more.

— 5 min read

"In distributed maritime operations, the ability to move mass, distribute it across austere shorelines, and continue operating after losses becomes decisive.”

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Artemis 2 launches on first human mission to the moon in more than 50 years

“The Artemis II crew will not land on the moon (that will happen on Artemis IV ). Instead, their capsule will fly at altitudes between 6,000 and 9,000 kilometers above the surface of the far side of the moon, circle it, and begin the return journey to Earth. The mission's main objective is to demonstrate that the space agency has the technological capability to send people to the Moon safely and without incident.

Once they achieve this, NASA will begin preparations for new moon landings in the following years, which will aim to establish the first lunar bases in history and, with them, the sustained and sustainable presence of humans on the satellite.”

WIRED

At the CryOgenic Laboratory for Detectors (COLD) at INFN, Raffaella Donghia operates a cryostat, which cools materials to a few thousandths of a degree above absolute zero. At these temperatures, scientists can hunt for dark matter, the mysterious substance that glues galaxies together.

“A panel of judges in the 2025 Global Physics Photowalk contest were impressed by the moment that Marco Donghia captured of his sister, Rafaella at the National Institute for Nuclear Physics in Italy. His photo (above) won first place in the competition organized by a collaboration of 16 particle physics laboratories around the world, from the United States to France to Japan. Dozens of amateur and professional photographers were invited to find beauty in the invisible world of force fields and subatomic particles, which blip into existence for fractions of a second and hold secrets about the origin and fate of the universe.” (via Quanta)

China now tops the U.S. in R&D spending by one key measure / Even Artemis II Astronauts Have Microsoft Outlook Problems / Across the social sciences, half of research doesn't replicate / The gig workers who are training humanoid robots at home / The New Era of Militia Influencers / Can AI Agents Automate Scientific Discovery? / Engineering Biology to Fight Cancer / Making custom CRISPR therapies could be harder than initially thought / SpaceX quietly files for big bang IPO / Who's driving Waymo's self-driving cars? Sometimes, the police. / Bernie Sanders and AOC propose a ban on data center construction / Wikipedia cracks down on the use of AI in article writing / US regulator blacklists all new foreign-made routers / SpaceX Starlink satellite suffers mysterious 'anomaly' in orbit / Squirrel seen 'vaping' in London park / Obsolete Sounds / 'She's Never Going to Age': Porn Stars Are Embracing AI Clones to Stay Forever Young / How human neurons on a chip learned to play Doom / Static electricity has baffled scientists for centuries. Can new research solve the puzzle? / 'Guns, Beer, Titties, Freedom': Inside the World's Toughest Off-Road Race / Trump, global investors launch mineral, energy consortium / Biopharma Benefitting from AI in Manufacturing / SpaceX offers details on orbital data center satellites / NASA to test nuclear electric propulsion with 2028 mission to Mars

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