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NASA pushes back time frame for human moon mission to 2025

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NASA is extending its target date for sending astronauts back to the moon to 2025 at the earliest, the U.S. space agency's chief said on Tuesday, stretching out by at least a year the timeline pronounced under former President Donald Trump.

Trump's administration had set the aggressive goal of returning humans to the lunar surface by 2024, an initiative named Artemis intended as a stepping stone toward the even-more-ambitious objective of sending astronauts to Mars.

NASA Administrator Bill Nelson cited delays from legal wrangling over the SpaceX contract to build the Artemis lunar landing vehicle as a major reason for extending the target date.

"We lost nearly seven months in litigation, and that likely has pushed the first human landing likely to no earlier than 2025," Nelson told a news conference. "We are estimating no earlier than 2025 for Artemis 3, which would be the human lander on the first demonstration landing."

A federal judge last Thursday rejected a lawsuit by Jeff Bezos' space company Blue Origin against the U.S. government challenging NASA's decision to award a $2.9 billion lunar lander contract to rival billionaire Elon Musk's SpaceX.

The ruling allows the National Aeronautics and Space Administration to resume its collaboration with SpaceX on the lander contract, though Nelson said that Musk's company had continued development work on its own in the meantime.

Citing additional factors for the new timeline, Nelson said Congress had previously approved too little money for the program and that the Trump administration's "target of a 2024 human landing was not grounded in technical feasibility."

Nelson, a former astronaut and U.S. senator appointed by President Joe Biden to lead the space agency, said delays caused by the COVID-19 pandemic also played a role.

NASA had previously aimed to return crewed spacecraft to the lunar surface by 2028, after putting a "Gateway" space station into orbit around the moon by 2024.

But the Trump administration, in a surprise 2019 pronouncement from then-Vice President Mike Pence, set a for putting Americans back on the moon within five years "by any means necessary."

At the time, Pence said the United States was in a new "space race," borrowing vocabulary from the 1960s Cold War era, to counter the potential space weaponry capabilities of Russia and China.

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Russia fines Google more than the world’s total GDP over YouTube bans

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Russia has fined Google $2.5 decillion after the US tech giant took action against pro-Kremlin TV channels on YouTube following Moscow’s invasion of Ukraine.

Russia imposed a daily fine four years ago - a fine that has since swelled to an unprecedented level - ($20,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000 - a 33-digit figure).

To put this into perspective, global GDP reaches an estimated $110 thousand billion (12-digit figure), according to the IMF.

Speaking to Russia’s TASS news agency, one expert, Roman Yankovsky from the HSE Institute of Education, said Google “clearly will not pay this penalty, and the Russian Federation will not be able to recover this money from the company."

Euronews reported that a short calculation shows that he is right.

Google's holding company, Alphabet, has a market capitalisation of slightly more than $2 trillion. Even with earnings of $80.54 billion from the last quarter, the tech giant doesn’t seem to be able to afford to pay the fine.

Google first barred pro-Moscow channel Tsargrad TV, which is owned by oligarch Konstantin Malofeev, four years ago.

At the time, Google was fined a daily penalty of 100,000 roubles and warned that amount would double every 24 hours if it went unpaid.

The original fine has been compounded by further penalties after Google eventually blocked a total of 17 Russian TV channels as a result of international sanctions, The Telegraph reported.

The tech giant now owes a staggering $2.5 decillion.

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Apple launches new iPad mini with AI features

Apple said it would roll out the first set of AI features in the U.S. version of the English language this month through a software update with iPadOS 18.1.

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Apple on Tuesday launched its new generation of the iPad mini packed with AI features including writing tools and an improved Siri assistant, as the iPhone maker races to boost its devices with artificial-intelligence capabilities, Reuters reported.

The new iPad mini is powered by Apple's A17 Pro chip, which is used in the iPhone 15 Pro and Pro Max models. With a six-core central processing unit, the A17 Pro would boost CPU performance by 30% compared to the current generation iPad minis and is central to running Apple Intelligence, Apple's AI software.

Apple said it would roll out the first set of AI features in the U.S. version of the English language this month through a software update with iPadOS 18.1.

The features will be available for iPads with A17 Pro or M1 chips and later generations, Apple said, adding it will roll out additional features including image-generation tools, Genmoji and ChatGPT-powered capabilities over the next several months, read the report.

Apple in September unveiled its long-awaited, AI-boosted iPhone 16 lineup, but with the AI features still in test mode, the company failed to excite some investors while early sales data raised some questions around demand.

Still, research firm Canalys on Monday said the iPhone 16 would help Apple's sales in the fourth quarter and drive momentum into the first half of 2025, after Apple reached a record high third-quarter shipments.

The iPad mini, starting at $499, is available for pre-orders starting on Tuesday and will begin arriving to customers and Apple store locations next week, Apple said.

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Iran sends satellites to Russia for rocket launch

In September, Iran carried out its second satellite launch this year using a rocket built by its Revolutionary Guards

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Iran has sent two locally made satellites to Russia to be put into orbit by a Russian space vehicle, the semi-official news agency Tasnim reported on Saturday, in the latest space cooperation between the two U.S.-sanctioned countries.

The development of Kowsar, a high-resolution imaging satellite, and Hodhod, a small communications satellite, is the first substantial effort by Iran's private space sector, the report said.

Russia sent Iranian satellites into orbit in February and in 2022, when U.S. officials voiced concern over space cooperation between Russia and Iran, fearing the satellite will not only help Russia in Ukraine but also help Iran monitor potential military targets in Israel and the wider Middle East, Reuters reported.

Kowsar could be used in agriculture, natural resource management, environmental monitoring, and disaster management, Tasnim said.

Hodhod is designed for satellite-based communications and could be used in remote areas with little access to terrestrial networks.

In September, Iran carried out its second satellite launch, this year using a rocket built by its Revolutionary Guards. 

The launch came as the United States and European countries accuse Tehran of transferring ballistic missiles to Russia that could be used in its war with Ukraine. Iran has denied this.

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