❌

Normal view

There are new articles available, click to refresh the page.
Today β€” 29 October 2026Main stream

Ukraine’s Linza bomber drone clears path for UGV in German exercise

29 October 2026 at 07:13
Ukrainian drone maker Frontline Robotics flew its Linza bomber drone alongside German, Ukrainian and other unmanned air, ground and sea systems during Forward Edge 26, a two-week exercise in Germany hosted by Quantum Systems, the company said on social media. In one deployment, Quantum Systems’ Vector reconnaissance drone spotted simulated enemy drones along the route […]
Yesterday β€” 28 October 2026Main stream

Artemis III SLS Core Stage Joins Boosters at Kennedy

28 October 2026 at 14:59
A view of the bottom portion of the 212-foot core stage of the Space Launch System rocket as a crane moves it vertically above the transfer aisle of the Vehicle Assembly Building. Dominating the center of the image are four rocket engines covered in red caps.
The SLS (Space Launch System) core stage is lifted from the transfer aisle of the Vehicle Assembly Building at NASA’s Kennedy Space Center in Florida on Thursday, Oct. 22, 2026.
NASA/Sean Cannon
Four people in hard hats are silhouetted against the side of the core stage of the Space Launch System rocket as it is raised in the transfer aisle of the Vehicle Assembly Building. A spotlight on the group’s right shines a bright spot on a portion of the orange stage which is very close and fills the image.
The SLS (Space Launch System) core stage is lifted from the transfer aisle of the Vehicle Assembly Building at NASA’s Kennedy Space Center in Florida on Thursday, Oct. 22, 2026.
NASA/Sean Cannon
Vertical overhead view of a rocket stage extending through the center of a large assembly building, framed by surrounding platforms and structure.
The SLS (Space Launch System) core stage is horizontal in the transfer aisle of the Vehicle Assembly Building at NASA’s Kennedy Space Center in Florida on Friday, Oct. 23, 2026.
NASA/Cory S Huston
The 212-foot core stage of the Space Launch System rocket is vertical in High Bay 3 of the Vehicle Assembly Building. The nose cones of the two side boosters are visible as the crane places the core stage between them where they are already set on the Mobile Launcher.
The SLS (Space Launch System) core stage is integrated alongside the twin solid rocket booster motor segments on Sunday, Oct. 25, 2026, inside the Vehicle Assembly Building at NASA’s Kennedy Space Center in Florida completing its short stack configuration.
NASA/Sean Cannon
The central portion of the Space Launch System rocket stack is seen from a platform across the central aisle in the Vehicle Assembly Building. The nose cones of the solid rocket booster flank the orange core stage and are surrounded by platforms and staircases.
The SLS (Space Launch System) rocket core stage is integrated with the solid rocket boosters for Artemis III in High Bay 3 of the Vehicle Assembly Building at NASA’s Kennedy Space Center in Florida to complete its short stack configuration.
NASA/Frank Michaux

NASA’s Artemis III SLS (Space Launch System) core stage is integrated alongside the twin solid rocket boosters on Oct. 28 inside the Vehicle Assembly Building’s High Bay 3 at NASA’s Kennedy Space Center in Florida. Β 

Technicians lifted the 212-foot rocket stage from the facility’s High Bay 2 using a one-of-a kind lifting beam designed to place the stage onto the mobile launcher. Once testing and checkouts are complete, teams will roll the core stage and booster stack out to Launch Pad 39B to conduct a tanking test where liquid hydrogen and liquid oxygen fuel will be loaded only into the core stage and launch teams will practice countdown procedures and timelines.Β Β 

The Artemis III mission will launch NASA astronauts Randy Bresnik, Frank Rubio, Andre Douglas, and ESA (European Space Agency) astronaut Luca Parmitano in the Orion spacecraft on top of the SLS rocket to test rendezvous and docking capabilities between Orion and commercial spacecraft from Blue Origin and SpaceX ahead of future mission to land astronauts on the Moon.β€―Β 

Photo credit: NASA/Sean Cannon, Cory S Huston, and Frank Michaux

UK hires Astroscale for $20 million LEDA military space mission

28 October 2026 at 06:54
The UK Ministry of Defence has hired Astroscale UK as prime contractor for LEDA, a new Β£15 million (about $20 million) military space program under which the company will build, launch and operate a spacecraft to study how satellites maneuvering close to other spacecraft could be used in orbital warfare, and how to counter them. […]

BAE Systems test-fires new deck launcher for U.S. Navy

28 October 2026 at 06:48
BAE Systems has completed the first live-fire test of its Adaptable Deck Launcher, a deck-mounted missile launcher that lets U.S. Navy and allied ships carry more Evolved SeaSparrow air defense missiles and reload them at sea with standard shipboard equipment. The company announced the test on Oct. 27 from China Lake, California, home of the […]

German drone maker unveils armed version of its Reliant spy drone

28 October 2026 at 04:28
Quantum-Systems has unveiled an armed version of its Reliant long-range drone, showing the aircraft fitted with a mixed load of 82 mm mortar rounds and 40 mm grenades. Dave Sharpin, chief executive of Quantum-Systems Inc., the U.S. arm of the German drone maker, shared images of the configuration on social media on Oct. 28, thanking […]
Before yesterdayMain stream

How a Single University Project Started Everything

27 October 2026 at 19:00

If we care to cast an eye over the history of ubiquitous personal computing as we know it today, we might immediately point at the original IBM PC. After all, for most of us our machines share backward compatibility in some form through multiple generations back to that original box from 1981.

But if we look at the things we use today and take for granted, from laser printers to graphics cards to the routers which power most of the Internet, they’re not from IBM at all. At the recent Vintage Computing Festival Berlin, [Michael Engel] delivered a talk naming a surprising progenitor for much of that technology, none other than Sun Microsystems.

It all starts with [Andy Bechtolsheim], famously Sun’s co-founder, when at the end of the 1970s he was a postgraduate at Stanford University. Working on the Stanford University Network β€” SUN β€” project he designed a computer to be used as a workstation on the network. The processor of choice then was Motorola’s 68000, but it lacked the MMU that would be required to run UNIX. His design had an MMU implemented externally to the 68000, with a bank of SRAM serving as the page table. This design would form the CPU board of the first Sun workstation.

The story might end there, were it not that many other companies had the same requirement, and Sun could supply them a CPU board. Silicon Graphics, the distant ancestral progenitor of your GPU, was one of them, so the first SGI workstation also had the same CPU as the first Sun. It appeared in the early Imagen laser printers too, as well as commercial AppleTalk to Ethernet bridges. Perhaps the biggest surprise is that because the original Stanford board had also been used as a router, the software for that became part of Cisco’s first product.

The video is below the break, and it’s a fascinating watch.

Β 

X-Bow to build boosters for CoAspire’s CHAOS cruise missile

27 October 2026 at 14:19
X-Bow Systems will build the solid rocket booster that launches CoAspire’s ground-based cruise missile under the U.S. Navy’s CHAOS program, an effort to give allied nations a low-cost weapon for striking ships and land targets. The Albuquerque, New Mexico, company said Tuesday that CoAspire, the prime contractor, selected it to develop and produce the ground-launched […]

General Dynamics gets $136M to upgrade Stryker power system

27 October 2026 at 04:25
The U.S. Army has awarded General Dynamics Land Systems a $135.9 million contract modification that sets prices for buying complete retrofit kits for the Stryker armored vehicle’s Enhanced Power Distribution Unit Version 2, raising the total value of the contract to $162.4 million, the Department of War announced on Oct. 26. The kits are designed […]
❌
❌