While the US wants to reduce its dependence on Russian rockets, Russia itself is expecting to help for a while yet. Roscosmos chief Dmitry Rogozin recently ordered the construction of two more Soyuz MS spacecraft, one of which will help NASA deliver astronauts to the International Space Station. The decision follows a letter from NASA director Jim Bridenstine warning of a delay in starting American commercial spacecraft flights. The US may need extra seats in 2020 and 2021, Rogozin said, and this extra spacecraft will help in a pinch.
The other Soyuz vessel would be used for a space tourist flight due in late 2021, although this would help free resources for other missions.
Not surprisingly, Russia used the order as a chance to criticize American planning. The country reportedly warned the US that it should have asked for more seats in advance in case its target of a spring 2020 commercial flight didn't pan out. It takes "at least" two years for Energia to make a Soyuz spacecraft, Rogozin said.
This isn't necessarily a sign of serious trouble for the US. SpaceX is still hoping for a Crew Dragon trip in early 2020, and Boeing's CST-100 Starliner might not be far behind. However, the extra construction suggests there may not be a rapid transition toward all-American launches -- the two countries might have to cooperate for a while yet.
All products recommended by Engadget are selected by our editorial team, independent of our parent company. Some of our stories include affiliate links. If you buy something through one of these links, we may earn an affiliate commission.
SpaceX has demonstrated that its latest Mark 3 Crew Dragon parachutes will work even if things don't go quite to plan. On Twitter, the company showed off a short video clip of a payload landing with only three of four parachutes deployed, and said it has successfully tested the system 13 times in a row.
That's a pretty big milestone, as it beats a goal that CEO Elon Musk had set last month. "We certainly want to get ... at least on the order of 10 successful tests in a row before, before launching astronauts," he said. "So that seems like where the behavior of the parachutes is consistent, is across 10 successful tests."
SpaceX team has completed 13 successful tests in a row of upgraded Mark 3 parachutes for Crew Dragon. Most recent test demonstrated the parachute system's ability to land the spacecraft safely in the unlikely event that one of the four main parachutes fails. pic.twitter.com/VJzDeS8UAG
The parachutes now look substantially different from the ones SpaceX first tested. Instead of nylon on the straps, they now use "Zylon" a stronger polymer material developed by Stanford University. The chutes also have a new stitching pattern to more evenly distribute the loads.
In a meeting with NASA administrator Jim Bridenstine, Musk said that Crew Dragon could be ready for its first crewed "Demo-2" test flight in Q1 of 2020. Before that happens, however, SpaceX still has to perform static fire tests of the Crew Dragon abort engine. During the last such test in April, an anomaly caused an uncrewed capsule to explode.
If that goes to plan, SpaceX would then perform an in-flight abort test demonstrating that astronauts would be able to escape alive in the event of an explosion or other launch problem. During that test, an uncrewed Crew Dragon capsule will launch atop a Falcon 9 rocket at Kennedy Space center. Shortly after liftoff, the capsule's SuperDraco thrusters are supposed to blast it a safe distance from the rocket.
If all that works (and that's a big "if"), NASA and SpaceX could start running the crucial Demo-2 tests to the international space station with test-flight crew aboard. Those could take place as early as next year, Musk said in October.
All products recommended by Engadget are selected by our editorial team, independent of our parent company. Some of our stories include affiliate links. If you buy something through one of these links, we may earn an affiliate commission.
While the US wants to reduce its dependence on Russian rockets, Russia itself is expecting to help for a while yet. Roscosmos chief Dmitry Rogozin recently ordered the construction of two more Soyuz MS spacecraft, one of which will help NASA deliver astronauts to the International Space Station. The decision follows a letter from NASA director Jim Bridenstine warning of a delay in starting American commercial spacecraft flights. The US may need extra seats in 2020 and 2021, Rogozin said, and this extra spacecraft will help in a pinch.
The other Soyuz vessel would be used for a space tourist flight due in late 2021, although this would help free resources for other missions.
Not surprisingly, Russia used the order as a chance to criticize American planning. The country reportedly warned the US that it should have asked for more seats in advance in case its target of a spring 2020 commercial flight didn't pan out. It takes "at least" two years for Energia to make a Soyuz spacecraft, Rogozin said.
This isn't necessarily a sign of serious trouble for the US. SpaceX is still hoping for a Crew Dragon trip in early 2020, and Boeing's CST-100 Starliner might not be far behind. However, the extra construction suggests there may not be a rapid transition toward all-American launches -- the two countries might have to cooperate for a while yet.
All products recommended by Engadget are selected by our editorial team, independent of our parent company. Some of our stories include affiliate links. If you buy something through one of these links, we may earn an affiliate commission.
Google made much ado of its recently created Health unit, but it didn't offer much insight into what that division would actually... well, do. Now, however, it's considerably clearer. Google Health lead David Feinberg and CNBC sources have outlined some of the ideas his team has, and they revolve around (surprise!) search for both you and your doctor. Feinberg envisions a search bar that would help doctors search medical records like they do the web. A doctor could search for "87" to find an 87-year-old patient instead of using the patient's name, as an example.
An insider also claimed that Google is considering a Flights-style dedicated search experience for health. You could research conditions without wading through the regular web to find trustworthy info.
It's not certain how close either idea is to fruition, and CNBC's tipster warned that it wasn't certain the Google search team would sign off on the dedicated health search. Google might have to ditch advertising on the health page. They do indicate how Google Health and Feinberg are thinking, however, and give you a hint of what to expect in the future.
Whatever comes about, Feinberg may have been busy behind the scenes. Other CNBC sources claim he's been "building bridges" to improve health-related searches in Google and YouTube, such as downplaying videos that push anti-vaccination myths. The team could be very busy bolstering your healthcare experiences -- it just isn't particularly apparent yet.
All products recommended by Engadget are selected by our editorial team, independent of our parent company. Some of our stories include affiliate links. If you buy something through one of these links, we may earn an affiliate commission.
Microsoft, the NSA and even the U.S. Government warned Windows users to update: now the inevitable ... [+] BlueKeep attack is underway.
SOPA Images/LightRocket via Getty Images
When Microsoft issued the first patch in years for Windows XP in May 2019, you knew that something big was brewing. That something was a wormable Windows vulnerability that security experts warned could have a similar impact as the WannaCry worm from 2017. The BlueKeep vulnerability exists in unpatched versions of Windows Server 2003, Windows XP, Windows Vista, Windows 7, Windows Server 2008 and Windows Server 2008 R2: and it’s now been confirmed that a BlueKeep exploit attack is currently ongoing.
A little bit of BlueKeep history
Microsoft twice warned users to update vulnerable Windows systems, first on May 14, and then again with even more urgency on May 30. Those warnings appeared to go unheeded in enough numbers to warrant an escalation on the update alerts. On June 4, the National Security Agency (NSA) took the unusual step of publishing an advisory urging Microsoft Windows administrators to update their operating system or risk a "devastating" and "wide-ranging impact" in the face of a growing threat. This warning was given even more gravitas on June 17 when the U.S. Government, via the Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency (CISA), issued an "update now" activity alert. At much the same time, security researchers were predicting that a "devastating" BlueKeep exploit was only weeks away.
The Windows BlueKeep exploit attack
Security researchers, including Kevin Beaumont who originally named the vulnerability and Marcus Hutchins (also known as MalwareTech) who was responsible for hitting the kill switch that stopped the WannaCry, have confirmed that a widespread BlueKeep exploit attack is now currently underway. Hutchins told Wired that "BlueKeep has been out there for a while now. But this is the first instance where I’ve seen it being used on a mass scale."
It would appear that rather than a wormable threat, where the BlueKeep exploit could spread itself from one machine to another, the attackers are searching for vulnerable unpatched Windows systems that have Remote Desktop Services (RDP) 3389 ports exposed to the internet. This dampens the panic that there could be another WannaCry about to happen, although the potential for such a scenario, albeit on a much smaller scale, certainly remains. For now though, this looks like being an attack campaign with a cryptocurrency miner payload.
BlueKeep exploit attack mitigation
While there is always the possibility that the threat actors behind this attack could drop more malicious payloads than a crypto-miner, for now, this acts as yet another warning for users of the 700,000 or so still vulnerable Windows systems to get patching. Cryptocurrency miners are resource hogs at best, and a roadmap that further malware installations could follow. In the case of this attack, though, there's another problem to be aware of: the exploit code isn't all that. It would appear that the attackers are using the demo exploit code released by the Metasploit team at Rapid7 in September 2019, but without enough coding skills to get this to work without it causing a Blue Screen of Death (BSOD) error.
Seriously folks, if you are using one of the vulnerable versions of Windows, then what more is it going to take to get you to apply the update that fixes the BlueKeep vulnerability? I'd have thought that a wormable exploit, even if it hasn't been "wormed" on this occasion, that vampires your system resources or crashed your machine was warning enough. But, hey, what do I know?
Google made much ado of its recently created Health unit, but it didn't offer much insight into what that division would actually... well, do. Now, however, it's considerably clearer. Google Health lead David Feinberg and CNBC sources have outlined some of the ideas his team has, and they revolve around (surprise!) search for both you and your doctor. Feinberg envisions a search bar that would help doctors search medical records like they do the web. A doctor could search for "87" to find an 87-year-old patient instead of using the patient's name, as an example.
An insider also claimed that Google is considering a Flights-style dedicated search experience for health. You could research conditions without wading through the regular web to find trustworthy info.
It's not certain how close either idea is to fruition, and CNBC's tipster warned that it wasn't certain the Google search team would sign off on the dedicated health search. Google might have to ditch advertising on the health page. They do indicate how Google Health and Feinberg are thinking, however, and give you a hint of what to expect in the future.
Whatever comes about, Feinberg may have been busy behind the scenes. Other CNBC sources claim he's been "building bridges" to improve health-related searches in Google and YouTube, such as downplaying videos that push anti-vaccination myths. The team could be very busy bolstering your healthcare experiences -- it just isn't particularly apparent yet.
All products recommended by Engadget are selected by our editorial team, independent of our parent company. Some of our stories include affiliate links. If you buy something through one of these links, we may earn an affiliate commission.
After years of rumours, Google looks as if it’s about to get very serious about smartwatches. The long-rumoured Pixel Watch, developed by the same industrial design team behind the likes of the Pixel 4, Google Home, and PixelBook, was allegedly pulled at the eleventh hour before it was unveiled on-stage during one of the Mountain View-based company’s annual Made By Google hardware showcases.
It’s unclear why the smartwatch was ditched from the portfolio. However, it seems Google has decided it’s ready to think again.
Google’s parent company, Alphabet Inc, has bought smartwatch and fitness tracking manufacturer Fitbit for a whopping $2.1billion. The company, which is behind wearables including Fitbit Versa 2, Versa Lite, Charge 3, and connected home products like the Aria Smart Scales, will now report to Google Senior Vice President of Devices, Rick Osterloh.
The Google SVP is already in-charge of ensuring the company has a unified approach to design. Speaking about the acquisition, Osterloh said it was “an opportunity to invest even more in Wear OS as well as introduce Made by Google wearable devices into the market".
The acquisition makes a lot of sense.
Google has managed to build a very successful line of smartphones, with the Pixel 4 and 4 XL being the most recent additions to the portfolio. Its connected home range, including the Google Nest Mini, Nest Max, and Nest Hub, has also enjoyed a huge amount of success.
However, the Californian company has struggled to translate that success into other product lines, most notably its pricey PixelBook range, or the (currently) non-existent wearable and smartwatch department.
Buying Fitbit could change that overnight.
Fitbit has always been widely-praised for its build quality and feature set. However, the company has struggled against increased smartwatch competition from high-end fitness trackers, like Garmin, and the tight-integration with iOS and design offered by consumer brands, like Apple.
Operating inside Google will surely allow Fitbit products – provided they continue to be branded as such – to offer close ties with Google’s existing Google Fit health apps as well as faster pairing à la Pixel Buds. On the flip side, Google could nab some of Fitbit’s extraordinary social features, including head-to-head competitions with friends and challenges and medals to keep users motivated towards their goal.
Google Fit does not currently offer menstrual tracking, something Fitbit has boasted for a long time.
Following the acquisition announcement, Fitbit issued a statement to reassure existing users that it’s new position inside the search giant would not alter its stance on securing health and fitness data. It states, “Fitbit health and wellness data will not be used for Google ads”.
The latest move comes as Google announced a deal to buy $40 million worth of Fossil’s smartwatch technology back in January. Fossil was already one of a handful of premium brands building smartwatches on Google’s open-source wearable operating system, Wear OS.
Combining the hardware know-how of the Fitbit team with the smartwatch technology used to power Fossil, Google could be poised to build a truly competitive Pixel Watch to take on the best-selling Apple Watch range for the first time under the watchful eye of Rick Osterloh.
