Lifeboat Foundation: Safeguarding Humanity
Toggle light / dark theme

Blog

Category: space – Page 540

Third-party cookie trackers live to fight for another year.

Google is announcing today that it is delaying its plans to phase out third-party cookies in the Chrome browser until 2023, a year or so later than originally planned. Other browsers like Safari and Firefox have already implemented some blocking against third-party tracking cookies, but Chrome is the most-used desktop browser, and so its shift will be more consequential for the ad industry. That’s why the term “cookiepocalypse” has taken hold.

In the blog post announcing the delay, Google says that decision to phase out cookies over a “three month period” in mid-2023 is “subject to our engagement with the United Kingdom’s Competition and Markets Authority (CMA).” In other words, it is pinning part of the delay on its need to work more closely with regulators to come up with new technologies to replace third-party cookies for use in advertising.

Few will shed tears for Google, but it has found itself in a very difficult place as the sole company that dominates multiple industries: search, ads, and browsers. The more Google cuts off third-party tracking, the more it harms other advertising companies and potentially increases its own dominance in the ad space. The less Google cuts off tracking, the more likely it is to come under fire for not protecting user privacy. And no matter what it does, it will come under heavy fire from regulators, privacy advocates, advertisers, publishers, and anybody else with any kind of stake in the web.

Continue reading “Google delays blocking third-party cookies in Chrome until 2023” | >

China’s first-ever Mars rover was on the move earlier this month, imagery by a NASA spacecraft shows.

The rover, named Zhurong, is part of Tianwen-1, China’s first fully homegrown Red Planet mission, which arrived in orbit around Mars in February. Zhurong separated from the Tianwen-1 orbiter on May 14 and touched down on the vast plain Utopia Planitia a few hours later.

Read more | >

China’s prime rocket manufacturer has unveiled a roadmap for the country’s future manned Mars exploration missions, which not only includes manned landing missions but also Mars base building.

Wang Xiaojun, head of the state-owned China Academy of Launch Vehicle Technology (CALT), outlined the plans in his speech themed “The Space Transportation System of Human Mars Exploration” at the Global Space Exploration Conference (GLEX 2021) via a virtual link, the academy told the Global Times on Wednesday.

After reviewing the successful mission of the Tianwen-1 probe mission, the country’s first interplanetary exploration that achieved a successful orbiting, landing and roving the Red Planet all in one go, Wang introduced the three-step plan for future Mars expedition.

Read more | >

Astronomers Pedro Bernardinelli and Gary Bernstein discovered a space object recently that has an orbit around the sun and also stretches into the Oort cloud—they have named it 2014 UN271. The researchers made the discovery while studying archival images collected for the Dark Energy Survey over the years 2014 to 2018. Since its discovery, entities such as the MMPL forum, the Minor Planet Center and JPL Solar System Dynamics have been tracking the object and have found that it will make its closest approach to Earth in 2031.

Measurements of the object put it between the size of a very small planet and a comet—it is believed to have a diameter of 100 to 370 km. If it turns out to be on the larger end of that spectrum, it would mark the largest Oort cloud object discovered to date. But it is the path of the object that has drawn the attention of astronomers—its orbit is nearly perpendicular to the plane created by the nine inner planets and takes it deep into the solar system and into the Oort cloud. One trip around the sun has been calculated to take 612190 years. It is currently moving deeper into the solar system, which means astronomers will have an opportunity to observe it 10 years from now.

Sam Deen, an amateur astronomer posting on the MMPL forum described the find as “radically exceptional.” Study of 2014 UN271 as it draws closer will allow researchers to analyze an that sometimes passes through the Oort cloud at distances as close as 10.9 AU from the sun—near the orbit of Saturn. As it draws nearer to the sun, it is likely to develop a comet-like tail as frozen material on its surface is vaporized. It is not clear just yet, however, how bright 2014 UN271 will appear in the night sky here on Earth—but it is likely that its brightness will fall somewhere between that of Pluto or its moon Charon; enough for amateurs and professionals alike to get a good view of it using strong telescopes.

Read more | >

O„ o!!!

Estimated to be between 100 to 370 kilometres in width, the object is bigger than the normal specification of a comet and is likely to be a dwarf planet.

A 6, 00000 year orbit

When first observed in 2014, the mega comet was about 29 Astronomical Units away from Sun — 1 AU is the distance between Earth and Sun. Since then, the 2014 UN271 has travelled nearly 7 AU and is now nearly 22 AU away from Sun. This distance brings it closer to us than Neptune. At its closest approach to planets in our Solar System, it is expected to pass by just 10.9 AU of the Sun, almost reaching the orbit of Saturn.

Continue reading “A mega comet has entered our Solar System: Observations place it closer than Neptune” | >

Boeing finished loading hydrazine and nitrogen tetroxide maneuvering propellants over the weekend into the company’s second space-rated Starliner capsule at the Kennedy Space Center, days after stacking of its Atlas 5 launcher began a few miles away at Cape Canaveral Space Force Station.

The capsule is scheduled to launch July 30 at 2:53 p.m. EDT (1853 GMT) on a test flight to the space station. If all goes according to plan, it will clear the way for Boeing to carry astronauts to the station, possibly before the end of this year.

That will be welcome news to NASA, which has funded the Starliner spacecraft’s development through its a commercial crew program in a cost-sharing arrangement with Boeing. NASA’s commercial crew contracts with Boeing since 2010 are valued at more than $5 billion.

Read more | >