Tag: atlas

Colorado’s wildlife community mourns the loss of the famous elk Split 5, an Estes Park icon
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ESTES PARK, Colo. — Wildlife photographers and enthusiasts in Colorado and beyond are mourning the reported death of Split 5, an iconic elk heralded as Rocky Mountain National Park royalty for years.

The bull – named Split 5 for the split in the fifth tine on both of his massive antlers – has long drawn the lenses and eyes of visitors and locals alike for his imposing stature, dominance of the rut and unique personality.

The belief in that community is that the famous elk was legally hunted and harvested in October. Colorado Parks and Wildlife couldn’t confirm the killing since elk hunters aren’t required to report harvests to the agency.

Split 5 was known to arrive in Estes Park in June and leave in October, according to one photographer who has followed the elk since 2019. The bull may have been hunted at or near his wintering grounds outside of town.
- Hear from a photographer who’s followed Split 5 for years about what the elk meant to the wildlife community, in the video player below:
Colorado’s wildlife community mourns the loss of famous elk Split 5, an Estes Park icon

Hunting is illegal inside Rocky Mountain National Park, and a park spokesperson said they couldn’t confirm Split 5’s death.

As word of the elk’s passing spread this week, tributes poured in on social media from fans across the region.

Denver7 caught up with one of the loyal photographers in the station’s Discover Colorado | Through Your Photos group on Facebook who has documented Split 5’s activity for years.

“He was in charge of his own fame,” said Stephen Branum, who operates the photography account The Untamed View and leads guided tours of Estes Park. “I mean, it’s Rocky Mountain National Park. We have over 5 million people come through here annually, and a lot of people just are like, ‘Oh, I hope we see [Split 5].”

Branum says he’s in the park most days, often looking for Split 5 himself and regularly fielding requests from others to catch a glimpse of the well-known wapiti. He tells us he’s had tour cancellations from prospective visitors hoping to see Split 5 who have heard the news.

Social media has helped drive Split 5’s fame, said Branum, who has shared countless photos and videos of the bull that have captivated his roughly 150,000 followers across Facebook and Instagram.

“It’s not just nationwide, that would be worldwide,” he said. “[I have followers from] so many nations that are like, ‘Oh, we saw him,’ or, ‘We’ve been watching him […] He’s just that recognizable.”

Anita Wooldridge Photography

Never a shortage of cameras

Branum said some photographers would travel hours to get to the entrance to Rocky Mountain National Park in the wee hours with hopes of first dibs on finding Split 5.

He had command of the herd – other elk would scatter at just the sight of the massive bull, Branum said – and of the moment. While his majesty has been captured in stoic forest scenes or amid his harems during the fall rut, he was also known to hang out by the YMCA of the Rockies in Estes Park, unbothered by surrounding crowds.

In one clip Branum shared with us, Split 5 can be seen taking a nap on a busy baseball field.

No matter the scene, camera lenses were likely to be nearby.

“He was the entertainer, not me,” Branum said. “I’m just there with a camera to capture some of these moments.”

Denver7 / The Untamed View

Those moments will be missed by Split 5’s fans, he said.

“With him being gone, those of us who are with him daily, weekly to see him and see what he’s up to […] we’re not going to get to see that again,” Branum said. “That kind of sucks.”

Complicated feelings about the end

Split 5 was also known as Atlas for his rack of antlers that looked like it could hold the world. He’s believed to have had what’s called a 400-class rack, marking an extraordinary size based on nuanced measurements known in trophy elk circles.

But he likely wasn’t hunted for his impressive crown.

Split 5’s followers estimate him to have been about 12 years old. The typical lifespan for an elk in the wild is 10-13 years, according to information published by Estes Park.

That’s a lot of ruts, during which bulls battle each other over cows. The last rut seemed to take a toll on Split 5, who was photographed with broken antlers and was seen with a limp in his final weeks, Branum said.

The Untamed View

His death coming at the hands – or the weaponry – of a hunter has stirred up plenty of reaction in the wildlife community.

Those who are supportive of elk hunting may say it’s a necessary means of population control and a meaningful food source. Hunting license fees also help fund wildlife conservation and management projects in Colorado.

Hunting critics would argue that nature is capable of regulating itself, that the sport is disruptive to natural selection or that harm to animals is ethically unsound. There is, of course, also the emotional draw to a beloved animal like Split 5.

Others who fall in between the two sides of the debate may take solace in the fact that Split 5 likely didn’t feel the pain he would’ve had he gone by way of wolf, mountain lion, vehicle or disease.

“He was still a wild animal, and he still went 12 full years staying away from some of the dangers that animals have across the country, across the world,” Branum said.

Who’s the next king?

Split 5 was the most recent bull to reign as “king” in Estes Park.

Decades ago, an elk named Samson was known as the dominant bull. He was illegally poached in the 1990s but is immortalized by a statue at the entrance to Estes Park.

A bull named Kahuna became the most famous in the herd after Samson, and was a draw to the town, Branum said. Kahuna died of natural causes.

After Split 5’s reign, elk admirers await the next bull to take over.

Branum said the leader in the clubhouse is a bull known as Kahuna Jr. or KJ.

“Kahuna Jr, who a lot of us feel like – and nature decides – but he […] was the dominant bull,” Branum said. “Split 5 was getting older, but [KJ] was the show during the rut last year.”

The Untamed View

Kahuna Jr.
- Do you have a Discover Colorado story idea you want told? Shoot me an email: Landon.haaf@denver7.com
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Landon Haaf

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January 31, 2026
The year in space: Here are the top space stories of 2025
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STARTS RIGHT NOW. AND SPLASHDOWN. CREW NINE BACK ON EARTH. BACK ON EARTH. BREAKING AS WE COME ON THE AIR AT SEVEN. WE JUST HEARD IT. HAVE SPLASHDOWN. NEEDHAM NATICK. SONNY WILLIAMS AND FELLOW ASTRONAUT BUTCH WILMORE ARE FINALLY BACK ON EARTH. MONTHS AND MONTHS AND MONTHS AFTER. ORIGINALLY SCHEDULED. AND TAKE A LOOK AT THIS. THIS IS NEW VIDEO INTO US JUST FROM A FEW MINUTES AGO. THAT IS SONNY WILLIAMS BEING HELPED FROM THE CAPSULE ONTO HER FEET ON THE SALVAGE SHIP THAT EIGHT DAY MISSION FINALLY COMING TO AN END AFTER 286 DAYS. THANKS FOR JOINING US TONIGHT, EVERYONE. I’M ED HARDING AND I’M MARIA STEPHANOS. WE DO HAVE TEAM COVERAGE OF THIS LANDING. SONNY’S NEEDHAM NEIGHBORS WATCHING ALL OF IT. LET’S BEGIN WITH OUR DANAE BUCCI OUTSIDE OF THE SUNITA WILLIAMS ELEMENTARY SCHOOL. IN THE SENSE OF PRIDE NEEDHAM FEELS FOR SONNY WILLIAMS IS EVIDENT, AND EVERYONE IS LOOKING FORWARD TO HER SAFE RETURN HOME. WE’RE BOTH VERY, VERY EXCITED TO HAVE HER BACK ON HER SAFELY. SONNY WILLIAMS HAS BEEN IN SPACE SO LONG, HER MOTHER, BONNIE PANDYA AND HER OLDER SISTER DEENA ARE ANXIOUSLY WAITING FOR HER RETURN. I FEEL LIKE, YOU KNOW, WE’RE A VERY ADAPTABLE AND WE WERE LIKE, GETTING USED TO SEEING HER EVERY WEEK ON THE SPACE STATION. IT’S BEEN AN UNEXPECTED NINE MONTH OUTER SPACE MISSION FOR THE NEEDHAM NATIVE. MY FAMILY MIGHT MAY BE A LITTLE UPSET, MAYBE A LITTLE CONCERNED, BUT USUALLY ASTRONAUT FAMILIES KNOW WHAT HAPPENS AND KNOW THAT THIS IS SOMETHING THAT COULD HAPPEN. THINGS GO WRONG ON ALMOST EVERY MISSION. NO ONE KNOWS WHAT SONNY IS LIKELY GOING THROUGH. MORE THAN RETIRED ASTRONAUT CHARLES CAMARDA, AND YOU’RE JUST ANTICIPATING SEEING YOUR FAMILY AND YOUR FRIENDS AND TELLING ALL THOSE GREAT STORIES. HE WORKED ALONGSIDE SONNY AND HER PARTNER BUTCH WILMORE FOR YEARS. BUTCH AND SONNY ARE THE TWO MOST POSITIVE PEOPLE IN THE ASTRONAUT OFFICE. THEY’RE ALWAYS SMILING. THEY’RE SO EXPERIENCED, THEY’RE PROS. BUT BEING IN SPACE FOR NINE MONTHS CAN HAVE A HUGE IMPACT ON THE BODY. THE HEART DOESN’T HAVE TO PUSH AGAINST GRAVITY, SO THE HEART GETS WEAKER. MUSCULOSKELETAL CHANGES, SO THE BONES BECOME WEAKER IN SPACE. DOCTOR LUCA PIZZA IS ON MASS GENERAL SPACE MEDICINE DIVISION. HE SAYS AS SOON AS SONNY AND HER PARTNER, BUTCH LAND OFF THE COAST OF FLORIDA, THE TWO WILL BE MET WITH A TEAM OF DOCTORS. SO THE BODY’S GOTTEN USED TO NOT PUMPING THE BLOOD SO HARD IT’S GOTTEN USED TO NOT HOLDING THE BODY UP AGAINST GRAVITY. IT’S GOT TO RELEARN ALL THOSE THINGS. DOCTOR SAYS IT WILL TAKE MONTHS FOR BOTH BUTCH AND SONNY’S BODIES TO ACCLIMATE BACK TO EARTH. WE’RE LIVE IN NEEDHAM DANAE BUCCI WCVB, NEWSCENTER FIVE. AND A WATCH PARTY IS STILL GOING ON AT THIS HOUR. RIGHT AT SONNY’S HOMETOWN OF NEEDHAM. PEOPLE THERE CHEERED. WE COULD HEAR THEM FROM HERE. SO EXCITED TO HAVE THE WILLIAMS BACK HOME. OUR SONNY WILLIAMS BACK HOME. OUR JOHN ATWATER CONTINUES TONIGHT LIVE AT THE COMMON ROOM. JOHN AND MARIA. YEAH, SO MANY ROUNDS OF CHEERING TONIGHT. THE LATEST JUST A FEW MINUTES AGO WHEN WE SAW SONNY WILLIAMS EMERGE FROM THAT CAPSULE ABOUT AN HOUR AFTER SPLASHDOWN. SO IT’S BEEN A LOT OF EXCITEMENT HERE. YOU CAN SEE DOZENS OF PEOPLE HERE STILL AT THE COMMON ROOM TONIGHT. THEY ALL CAME HERE TO EXPERIENCE THIS TOGETHER BECAUSE, WOW, IT HAS BEEN JUST A NINE MONTH ODYSSEY FOR THESE ASTRONAUTS UP THERE IN SPACE, ONLY SUPPOSED TO BE UP THERE FOR EIGHT DAYS, BUT IT TOOK A LOT LONGER TO GET THEM HOME. WHILE THEY ARE HOME TONIGHT. AND YOU CAN SEE ALL THE CHEERING HERE IN THE COMMON ROOM HERE IN NEEDHAM SONNY WILLIAMS HOMETOWN. WE SPOKE WITH A KINDERGARTEN TEACHER OVER AT SUNITA WILLIAMS ELEMENTARY. SHE AND HER STUDENTS HAVE BEEN FOLLOWING THIS JOURNEY, AND SHE IS SO RELIEVED. TONIGHT. I WENT TO HER FIRST TWO LAUNCH ATTEMPTS THAT DIDN’T MAKE IT, AND I DIDN’T GET TO GO TO THE LAST ONE WHERE SHE DID GO UP. BUT I’VE BEEN WATCHING AND FOLLOWING MY CLASS WATCHES AND FOLLOWS. THEY WERE SO EXCITED TODAY AND NOW I’M LIKE OVER THE TOP, OVER THE MOON AND SO EXCITED. I JUST CAN’T BELIEVE SHE’S BACK. CAN’T BELIEVE SHE’S BACK AFTER SO LONG. THERE WERE TEARS IN THAT TEACHER’S EYES BECAUSE THEY HAVE BEEN FOLLOWING THIS JOURNEY. THE SCHOOL REALLY ALL OF NEEDHAM SONNY WILLIAMS, OF COURSE IN CONTACT WITH THE STUDENTS HERE IN THE SCHOOL DISTRICT, AND THEY ARE JUST LOOKING FORWARD TO THAT DAY WHEN SONNY COMES BACK HERE TO NEEDHAM FOR A
The year in space: Here are the top space stories of 2025

Top 10 space stories of 2025

Updated: 7:26 PM EST Dec 24, 2025

Editorial Standards ⓘ

From private space tourism to secret moons to new images of our very old observable universe, 2025 was an exciting year in space. The privatization of space travel continued apace, with companies like Elon Musk’s SpaceX and Jeff Bezos’ Blue Origin making strides this year. Despite privatization and looming funding cuts, the National Aeronautics and Space Administration and its various projects and endeavors still managed to surprise us and expand our knowledge of our solar system. Check out the 10 best space stories from the past year:No. 1 — The space saga of Butch and SuniWithout a doubt, the space story that filled the most airtime this year was the tale of NASA astronauts Butch Wilmore and Suni Williams. In June 2024, the pair signed on for a NASA mission to conduct a crew flight test of Boeing’s Starliner craft, which had previously only been used for uncrewed tests between Earth and the International Space Station. The mission was meant to last eight days — but ended up lasting more than nine months. The stranded astronauts became space celebrities and brought renewed attention to spaceflight during a time when space travel has morphed into a blend of public-private partnerships. The astronauts were eventually brought home on SpaceX’s Crew-9 vessel in March, marking a success for SpaceX but a blow to Boeing in the private space race.Watch video of Williams and Wilmore splashing down back to Earth in the video player above.No. 2 — Perseverance finds possible hints of ancient life on MarsNASA’s Perseverance rover has been roaming the Martian surface and collecting samples since 2021. But in the summer of 2024, the rover collected rock samples from a dried riverbed near the Jezero Crater with “leopard spots.” This year, scientists said those spots could suggest the existence of ancient microbial life on the red planet. “All we can say is one of the possible explanations is microbial life, but there could be other ways to make this set of features that we see,” a researcher told The Associated Press.However, this story is not over. More testing is needed to confirm what the samples contain, meaning they need to be retrieved from Mars and brought back to labs on Earth. A Mars Sample Return trip was hopefully scheduled for the early 2030s, but various factors, including President Donald Trump’s reorganized budget plan for NASA, mean that the return expedition is on hold indefinitely. For now, Perseverance and a potential secret to ancient life sit waiting in a rocky Martian desert.No. 3 — NASA probe takes closest-ever images of sunThe Parker Solar Probe, the fastest human-made object in the universe, is on a mission to “touch the Sun” — and it’s getting pretty close. In December 2024, the probe made its closest pass yet of the solar atmosphere, traveling at a speed of 430,000 mph. On Jan. 1, 2025, it sent back the closest images of the Sun ever captured, specifically of solar wind approximately 3.8 million miles from the surface.No. 4 — NASA’s Webb telescope discovers new moon orbiting UranusIt’s not every day you find a new moon. Using NASA’s Webb space telescope, a team from the Southwest Research Institute studying the rings and moons of Uranus made a stunning discovery — a small moon, only about 6 miles wide, had been “hiding” close to the seventh planet this whole time. The discovery joins the planet’s 28 existing moons, designated S/2025 U1. However, all of Uranus’ moons are named after characters from the works of either William Shakespeare or Alexander Pope, so it will have a colorful literary name in no time.No. 5 — Third-ever interstellar object tears through our solar systemThe astronomical talk of the town this year was definitely 3I/ATLAS. First spotted by the NASA-funded ATLAS telescope in Chile, the comet started as a rapidly moving dot appearing in the sky. After NASA and the European Space Agency retraced its steps, it was confirmed that the comet was actually from outside our solar system — only the third known such object. While it was only briefly close to Earth near the end of this year, astronomers stole a few glances while they could. 3I/ATLAS is currently tracing its long path out of and away from our solar system — so long and farewell.No. 6 — Space tourism, or Katy Perry in spaceSpace tourism also had quite a year in 2025. In April, pop star Katy Perry and TV personality Gayle King boarded Blue Origin’s New Shepherd rocket with an all-female crew, a first for space travel. The technicality here is that New Shepherd is a reusable rocket, capable of vertical takeoffs and landings, designed to deliver tourists past the Karman Line, which is defined as the edge of space. It is also where you begin to experience weightlessness in atmospheric travel. Perry was reportedly so moved by the experience of entering the thermosphere that she couldn’t help singing “What A Wonderful World.” In other news, Blue Origin also recently sent the first paraplegic person into space, and SpaceX’s Fram2 mission saw four space tourists make a three-day trip around Earth’s poles.No. 7 — A nuclear reactor on the moon? It’s less crazy than it soundsActing NASA Administrator Sean Duffy made headlines earlier this year with an ambitious announcement concerning NASA’s wishes to put a nuclear reactor on Earth’s moon in the near future. While it does sound like the setup for a supervillain’s lair, the plan is actually quite practical. The name of the game in space exploration in the 21st century has become about repetition and reliability — typified by the reusable rockets favored by private space companies. NASA’s upcoming moon mission, Artemis III, will require a lot of fuel and power, especially if NASA wants to eventually station astronauts there. Add in the fact that China and Russia have announced a joint space venture to place a nuclear reactor on the moon. Before long, the international powers will be in a new space race. The moon is also becoming a critical juncture in the effort to reach Mars — the rocky satellite’s low gravity would make space missions easier. In that way, stating a goal of putting a nuclear reactor on the moon is the first step to reaching Mars, another stated goal of NASA. And for a country — and a species — that put a man on the moon only 56 years ago, anything might be possible.No. 8 — India, Poland and Hungary: Welcome to the ISSIt was a celebration on the International Space Station this summer when three astronauts from countries never before represented on the space station arrived. The last time anyone from India, Poland or Hungary traveled to orbit was in the 1970s and ‘80s, with the Soviet Space Program. While each of these countries have their own space programs, these true newcomers to the ISS came via Axiom Space, a Houston-based company that charters flights to the station. Axiom is also positioning itself as a potential replacement for the ISS when it is retired and decommissioned in 2030, carving out a niche in the private space race.No. 9 — ‘Cosmic treasure chest’: Say hello to the Vera C. Rubin ObservatoryThe summer of 2025 saw the debut of the Vera C. Rubin Observatory, the largest camera ever built, located on a mountaintop in Chile. According to the acting director of the National Science Foundation, the telescope “will capture more information about our universe than all optical telescopes throughout history combined.” That’s quite a claim, but Rubin already has the legwork to back it up — as part of its debut, it spotted 2,104 never-before-seen asteroids. The observatory also released a dramatic video showing the scale of its capability: the cosmic pan displays about 10 million galaxies in the camera’s wide view, which is only 0.05% of the 20 billion galaxies the observatory will map over 10 years.No. 10 — Space is now a battlefieldAside from international cooperation and discovery, space has also become a new frontier for something else: warfare. In the Russia/Ukraine war this past year, Ukraine accused Russian operators of hijacking a crucial satellite, replacing its broadcast with film of Russian military parades. More recently, there has been chatter of a Russian anti-satellite weapon, which one U.S. representative likened to “the Cuban Missile Crisis in space.”
From private space tourism to secret moons to new images of our very old observable universe, 2025 was an exciting year in space. The privatization of space travel continued apace, with companies like Elon Musk’s SpaceX and Jeff Bezos’ Blue Origin making strides this year. Despite privatization and looming funding cuts, the National Aeronautics and Space Administration and its various projects and endeavors still managed to surprise us and expand our knowledge of our solar system. Check out the 10 best space stories from the past year:

No. 1 — The space saga of Butch and Suni

NASA/AP via CNN Newsource
Butch Wilmore, left, and Suni Williams pose on the International Space Station.

Without a doubt, the space story that filled the most airtime this year was the tale of NASA astronauts Butch Wilmore and Suni Williams. In June 2024, the pair signed on for a NASA mission to conduct a crew flight test of Boeing’s Starliner craft, which had previously only been used for uncrewed tests between Earth and the International Space Station. The mission was meant to last eight days — but ended up lasting more than nine months. The stranded astronauts became space celebrities and brought renewed attention to spaceflight during a time when space travel has morphed into a blend of public-private partnerships. The astronauts were eventually brought home on SpaceX’s Crew-9 vessel in March, marking a success for SpaceX but a blow to Boeing in the private space race.

Watch video of Williams and Wilmore splashing down back to Earth in the video player above.

No. 2 — Perseverance finds possible hints of ancient life on Mars

NASA’s Perseverance rover has been roaming the Martian surface and collecting samples since 2021. But in the summer of 2024, the rover collected rock samples from a dried riverbed near the Jezero Crater with “leopard spots.” This year, scientists said those spots could suggest the existence of ancient microbial life on the red planet. “All we can say is one of the possible explanations is microbial life, but there could be other ways to make this set of features that we see,” a researcher told The Associated Press.

However, this story is not over. More testing is needed to confirm what the samples contain, meaning they need to be retrieved from Mars and brought back to labs on Earth. A Mars Sample Return trip was hopefully scheduled for the early 2030s, but various factors, including President Donald Trump’s reorganized budget plan for NASA, mean that the return expedition is on hold indefinitely. For now, Perseverance and a potential secret to ancient life sit waiting in a rocky Martian desert.

No. 3 — NASA probe takes closest-ever images of sun

The Parker Solar Probe, the fastest human-made object in the universe, is on a mission to “touch the Sun” — and it’s getting pretty close. In December 2024, the probe made its closest pass yet of the solar atmosphere, traveling at a speed of 430,000 mph. On Jan. 1, 2025, it sent back the closest images of the Sun ever captured, specifically of solar wind approximately 3.8 million miles from the surface.

No. 4 — NASA’s Webb telescope discovers new moon orbiting Uranus

NASA, ESA, CSA, STScI, M. El Moutamid (SwRI), M. Hedman (University of Idaho)
This Near Infrared Camera image shows the moon, designated S/2025 U1, as well as 13 of the 28 other known moons orbiting the planet.

It’s not every day you find a new moon. Using NASA’s Webb space telescope, a team from the Southwest Research Institute studying the rings and moons of Uranus made a stunning discovery — a small moon, only about 6 miles wide, had been “hiding” close to the seventh planet this whole time. The discovery joins the planet’s 28 existing moons, designated S/2025 U1. However, all of Uranus’ moons are named after characters from the works of either William Shakespeare or Alexander Pope, so it will have a colorful literary name in no time.

No. 5 — Third-ever interstellar object tears through our solar system

NASA/ESA/David Jewitt (UCLA) via CNN Newsource
Hubble captured this image of the interstellar comet 3I/ATLAS on July 21.

The astronomical talk of the town this year was definitely 3I/ATLAS. First spotted by the NASA-funded ATLAS telescope in Chile, the comet started as a rapidly moving dot appearing in the sky. After NASA and the European Space Agency retraced its steps, it was confirmed that the comet was actually from outside our solar system — only the third known such object. While it was only briefly close to Earth near the end of this year, astronomers stole a few glances while they could. 3I/ATLAS is currently tracing its long path out of and away from our solar system — so long and farewell.

No. 6 — Space tourism, or Katy Perry in space

Blue Origin via CNN
The all-female crew of Blue Origin’s New Shepherd.

Space tourism also had quite a year in 2025. In April, pop star Katy Perry and TV personality Gayle King boarded Blue Origin’s New Shepherd rocket with an all-female crew, a first for space travel. The technicality here is that New Shepherd is a reusable rocket, capable of vertical takeoffs and landings, designed to deliver tourists past the Karman Line, which is defined as the edge of space. It is also where you begin to experience weightlessness in atmospheric travel. Perry was reportedly so moved by the experience of entering the thermosphere that she couldn’t help singing “What A Wonderful World.” In other news, Blue Origin also recently sent the first paraplegic person into space, and SpaceX’s Fram2 mission saw four space tourists make a three-day trip around Earth’s poles.

No. 7 — A nuclear reactor on the moon? It’s less crazy than it sounds

Acting NASA Administrator Sean Duffy made headlines earlier this year with an ambitious announcement concerning NASA’s wishes to put a nuclear reactor on Earth’s moon in the near future. While it does sound like the setup for a supervillain’s lair, the plan is actually quite practical. The name of the game in space exploration in the 21st century has become about repetition and reliability — typified by the reusable rockets favored by private space companies. NASA’s upcoming moon mission, Artemis III, will require a lot of fuel and power, especially if NASA wants to eventually station astronauts there. Add in the fact that China and Russia have announced a joint space venture to place a nuclear reactor on the moon.

Before long, the international powers will be in a new space race. The moon is also becoming a critical juncture in the effort to reach Mars — the rocky satellite’s low gravity would make space missions easier. In that way, stating a goal of putting a nuclear reactor on the moon is the first step to reaching Mars, another stated goal of NASA. And for a country — and a species — that put a man on the moon only 56 years ago, anything might be possible.

No. 8 — India, Poland and Hungary: Welcome to the ISS

It was a celebration on the International Space Station this summer when three astronauts from countries never before represented on the space station arrived. The last time anyone from India, Poland or Hungary traveled to orbit was in the 1970s and ‘80s, with the Soviet Space Program. While each of these countries have their own space programs, these true newcomers to the ISS came via Axiom Space, a Houston-based company that charters flights to the station. Axiom is also positioning itself as a potential replacement for the ISS when it is retired and decommissioned in 2030, carving out a niche in the private space race.

No. 9 — ‘Cosmic treasure chest’: Say hello to the Vera C. Rubin Observatory

NSF-DOE Vera C. Rubin Observatory via CNN Newsource
This composite image combines 678 separate images from the Vera C. Rubin Observatory to show faint details like clouds of gas and dust in the Trifid nebula (top right) and the Lagoon nebula.

The summer of 2025 saw the debut of the Vera C. Rubin Observatory, the largest camera ever built, located on a mountaintop in Chile. According to the acting director of the National Science Foundation, the telescope “will capture more information about our universe than all optical telescopes throughout history combined.” That’s quite a claim, but Rubin already has the legwork to back it up — as part of its debut, it spotted 2,104 never-before-seen asteroids. The observatory also released a dramatic video showing the scale of its capability: the cosmic pan displays about 10 million galaxies in the camera’s wide view, which is only 0.05% of the 20 billion galaxies the observatory will map over 10 years.

No. 10 — Space is now a battlefield

Aside from international cooperation and discovery, space has also become a new frontier for something else: warfare. In the Russia/Ukraine war this past year, Ukraine accused Russian operators of hijacking a crucial satellite, replacing its broadcast with film of Russian military parades. More recently, there has been chatter of a Russian anti-satellite weapon, which one U.S. representative likened to “the Cuban Missile Crisis in space.”
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December 24, 2025
OpenAI says AI browsers may always be vulnerable to prompt injection attacks | TechCrunch

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Even as OpenAI works to harden its Atlas AI browser against cyberattacks, the company admits that prompt injections, a type of attack that manipulates AI agents to follow malicious instructions often hidden in web pages or emails, is a risk that’s not going away anytime soon — raising questions about how safely AI agents can operate on the open web.

“Prompt injection, much like scams and social engineering on the web, is unlikely to ever be fully ‘solved,’” OpenAI wrote in a Monday blog post detailing how the firm is beefing up Atlas’ armor to combat the unceasing attacks. The company conceded that “agent mode” in ChatGPT Atlas “expands the security threat surface.”

OpenAI launched its ChatGPT Atlas browser in October, and security researchers rushed to publish their demos, showing it was possible to write a few words in Google Docs that were capable of changing the underlying browser’s behavior. That same day, Brave published a blog post explaining that indirect prompt injection is a systematic challenge for AI-powered browsers, including Perplexity’s Comet.

OpenAI isn’t alone in recognizing that prompt-based injections aren’t going away. The U.K.’s National Cyber Security Centre earlier this month warned that prompt injection attacks against generative AI applications “may never be totally mitigated,” putting websites at risk of falling victim to data breaches. The U.K. government agency advised cyber professionals to reduce the risk and impact of prompt injections, rather than think the attacks can be “stopped.”

For OpenAI’s part, the company said: “We view prompt injection as a long-term AI security challenge, and we’ll need to continuously strengthen our defenses against it.”

The company’s answer to this Sisyphean task? A proactive, rapid-response cycle that the firm says is showing early promise in helping discover novel attack strategies internally before they are exploited “in the wild.”

That’s not entirely different from what rivals like Anthropic and Google have been saying: that to fight against the persistent risk of prompt-based attacks, defenses must be layered and continuously stress-tested. Google’s recent work, for example, focuses on architectural and policy-level controls for agentic systems.

But where OpenAI is taking a different tact is with its “LLM-based automated attacker.” This attacker is basically a bot that OpenAI trained, using reinforcement learning, to play the role of a hacker that looks for ways to sneak malicious instructions to an AI agent.

The bot can test the attack in simulation before using it for real, and the simulator shows how the target AI would think and what actions it would take if it saw the attack. The bot can then study that response, tweak the attack, and try again and again. That insight into the target AI’s internal reasoning is something outsiders don’t have access to, so, in theory, OpenAI’s bot should be able to find flaws faster than a real-world attacker would.

It’s a common tactic in AI safety testing: build an agent to find the edge cases and test against them rapidly in simulation.

“Our [reinforcement learning]-trained attacker can steer an agent into executing sophisticated, long-horizon harmful workflows that unfold over tens (or even hundreds) of steps,” wrote OpenAI. “We also observed novel attack strategies that did not appear in our human red teaming campaign or external reports.”

Image Credits:OpenAI

In a demo (pictured in part above), OpenAI showed how its automated attacker slipped a malicious email into a user’s inbox. When the AI agent later scanned the inbox, it followed the hidden instructions in the email and sent a resignation message instead of drafting an out-of-office reply. But following the security update, “agent mode” was able to successfully detect the prompt injection attempt and flag it to the user, according to the company.

The company says that while prompt injection is hard to secure against in a foolproof way, it’s leaning on large-scale testing and faster patch cycles to harden its systems before they show up in real-world attacks.

An OpenAI spokesperson declined to share whether the update to Atlas’ security has resulted in a measurable reduction in successful injections, but says the firm has been working with third parties to harden Atlas against prompt injection since before launch.

Rami McCarthy, principal security researcher at cybersecurity firm Wiz, says that reinforcement learning is one way to continuously adapt to attacker behavior, but it’s only part of the picture.

“A useful way to reason about risk in AI systems is autonomy multiplied by access,” McCarthy told TechCrunch.

“Agentic browsers tend to sit in a challenging part of that space: moderate autonomy combined with very high access,” said McCarthy. “Many current recommendations reflect that trade-off. Limiting logged-in access primarily reduces exposure, while requiring review of confirmation requests constrains autonomy.”

Those are two of OpenAI’s recommendations for users to reduce their own risk, and a spokesperson said Atlas is also trained to get user confirmation before sending messages or making payments. OpenAI also suggests that users give agents specific instructions, rather than providing them access to your inbox and telling them to “take whatever action is needed.”

“Wide latitude makes it easier for hidden or malicious content to influence the agent, even when safeguards are in place,” per OpenAI.

While OpenAI says protecting Atlas users against prompt injections is a top priority, McCarthy invites some skepticism as to the return on investment for risk-prone browsers.

“For most everyday use cases, agentic browsers don’t yet deliver enough value to justify their current risk profile,” McCarthy told TechCrunch. “The risk is high given their access to sensitive data like email and payment information, even though that access is also what makes them powerful. That balance will evolve, but today the trade-offs are still very real.”

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Rebecca Bellan

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December 22, 2025
Interstellar comet 3I/ATLAS will fly by Earth Friday — Here’s how you can see it

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An interstellar comet first spotted passing through our solar system in July is beginning its departure from our corner of the universe — but first it will fly by Earth, and scientists are capturing stunning new images during its approach.Related video above: Why asteroid 2024 YR4 is unlikely to hit Earth in 2032Known as 3I/ATLAS, the comet will make its closest pass by us on Friday, coming within about 167 million miles (270 million kilometers) of our planet, but on the other side of the sun. For reference, the sun’s distance from Earth is about 93 million miles (150 million kilometers).Comet 3I/ATLAS won’t be visible to the naked eye and the optimal viewing window, which opened in November, has passed. Those hoping to glimpse it will need an 8-inch (20-centimeter) telescope or larger, according to EarthSky.The Virtual Telescope Project will share a livestream of the comet at 4:00 a.m. UTC on Saturday, or 11 p.m. ET Friday, after cloudy weather prevented a Thursday night streaming opportunity, said Gianluca Masi, astronomer and astrophysicist at the Bellatrix Astronomical Observatory in Italy and founder and scientific director of the Virtual Telescope Project.The comet is expected to remain visible to telescopes and space missions for a few more months before exiting our solar system, according to NASA.Astronomers have closely tracked the comet since its initial discovery over the summer in the hopes of uncovering details about its origin outside of our solar system as well as its composition. Multiple missions have observed the object in optical, infrared and radio wavelengths of light — and recently, scientists captured their first glimpses in X-rays to and discovered new details. The ingredients of an interstellar cometComets are like dirty snowballs left over from the formation of solar systems.A comet’s nucleus is its solid core, made of ice, dust and rocks. When comets travel near stars such as the sun, heat causes them to release gas and dust, which creates their signature tails.Astronomers are interested in capturing as many observations of the comet as they can because as it nears the sun, material releasing from the object could reveal more about its composition — and the star system where it originated.“When it gets closest to the sun, you get the most holistic view of the nucleus possible,” Seligman said. “One of the main things driving most cometary scientists is, what is the composition of the volatiles? It shows you the initial primordial material that it formed from.”Scientists have used powerful tools, such as the Hubble Space and James Webb Space telescopes, along with a multitude of space-based missions, such as SPHEREx, to study the comet.The SPHEREx and Webb observations detected carbon dioxide, water, carbon monoxide, carbonyl sulphide and water ice releasing from the comet as it neared the sun, according to the ESA.Preliminary estimates indicate that the interstellar comet is 3 billion to 11 billion years old, according to a study coauthored by Seligman and Aster Taylor, a doctoral student and Fannie and John Hertz Foundation Fellow at the University of Michigan, in August. For reference, our solar system is estimated to be about 4.6 billion years old.Carbon dioxide turns directly from a solid into a gas in response to temperature changes much more easily than most elements — which means the comet has likely never been close to another star before its brush with the sun, Seligman said.All eyes on 3I/ATLASThe interstellar comet faded from the view of ground-based telescopes in October, but it remained in sight for missions such as PUNCH, or Polarimeter to Unify the Corona and Heliosphere, and SOHO, or the Solar and Heliospheric Observatory. The object also made its closest approach of Mars on October 3, coming within 18.6 million miles (30 million kilometers) of the red planet — and the spacecraft orbiting it.While the government shutdown has prevented data sharing from any NASA missions that have observed the comet since October 1, the ESA’s Mars Express and ExoMars Trace Gas Orbiter attempted to capture views of 3I/ATLAS in October.The cameras aboard those missions are designed to study the relatively close, bright surface of Mars, but ExoMars Trace Gas Orbiter managed to observe the comet as a fuzzy white dot.“This was a very challenging observation for the instrument,” Nick Thomas, principal investigator of the orbiter’s camera, said in a statement, noting the comet is around 10,000 to 100,000 times “fainter than our usual target.”ESA’s Jupiter Icy Moons Explorer, or Juice, will also attempt to observe 3I/ATLAS in November using multiple instruments despite the comet being farther from the spacecraft than it was when observed by the Mars orbiters. But astronomers don’t expect to receive the observations until February due to the rate at which the spacecraft is sending data back to Earth.“We’ve got several more months to observe it,” Seligman said. “And there’s going to be amazing science that comes out.”X-raying an interstellar visitorComets that originate in our solar system emit X-rays, but astronomers have long wondered whether interstellar comets behave the same.Although previous attempts to find out were made as two other interstellar comets passed through our solar system in 2017 and 2019, no X-rays were detected.But that all changed with 3I/ATLAS.Japan’s X-Ray Imaging and Spectroscopy Mission, or XRISM, observed 3I/ATLAS for 17 hours in late November with its Xtend telescope. The instrument captured X-rays fanning out to a distance of 248,000 miles (400,000 kilometers) from the comet’s solid core, or nucleus, which could be a result of clouds of gas around the object, according to the Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency. But more observations are needed to confirm the finding.X-rays can originate from interactions between gases given off by the comet — such as water vapor, carbon monoxide or carbon dioxide — and the continuous stream of charged particles releasing from the sun called solar wind. Comets, which are a combination of ice, rock, dust and gas, heat up as they approach stars like the sun, causing them to sublimate materials. XRISM detected signatures of carbon, oxygen and nitrogen near the comet’s nucleus. The European Space Agency’s X-ray space observatory XMM-Newton also observed the interstellar comet on December 3 for about 20 hours using its most sensitive camera. A dramatic image released by the agency shows the red X-ray glow of the comet.The X-ray observations, combined with others across various wavelengths of light, could reveal what the comet is made of — and just how similar or different the object is from those in our own solar system.

An interstellar comet first spotted passing through our solar system in July is beginning its departure from our corner of the universe — but first it will fly by Earth, and scientists are capturing stunning new images during its approach.

Related video above: Why asteroid 2024 YR4 is unlikely to hit Earth in 2032

Known as 3I/ATLAS, the comet will make its closest pass by us on Friday, coming within about 167 million miles (270 million kilometers) of our planet, but on the other side of the sun. For reference, the sun’s distance from Earth is about 93 million miles (150 million kilometers).

Comet 3I/ATLAS won’t be visible to the naked eye and the optimal viewing window, which opened in November, has passed. Those hoping to glimpse it will need an 8-inch (20-centimeter) telescope or larger, according to EarthSky.

The Virtual Telescope Project will share a livestream of the comet at 4:00 a.m. UTC on Saturday, or 11 p.m. ET Friday, after cloudy weather prevented a Thursday night streaming opportunity, said Gianluca Masi, astronomer and astrophysicist at the Bellatrix Astronomical Observatory in Italy and founder and scientific director of the Virtual Telescope Project.

The comet is expected to remain visible to telescopes and space missions for a few more months before exiting our solar system, according to NASA.

NASA/ESA/David Jewitt (UCLA) via CNN Newsource
Hubble captured this image of the interstellar comet 3I/ATLAS on July 21.

NASA, ESA, STScI, D. Jewitt (UCLA), M.-T. Hui (Shanghai Astronomical Observatory), J. DePasquale (STScI) via AP
This image, provided by NASA, shows the interstellar comet 3I/ATLAS captured by the Hubble Space Telescope on Nov. 30, 2025, about 178 million miles from Earth.

Astronomers have closely tracked the comet since its initial discovery over the summer in the hopes of uncovering details about its origin outside of our solar system as well as its composition. Multiple missions have observed the object in optical, infrared and radio wavelengths of light — and recently, scientists captured their first glimpses in X-rays to and discovered new details.

The ingredients of an interstellar comet

Comets are like dirty snowballs left over from the formation of solar systems.

A comet’s nucleus is its solid core, made of ice, dust and rocks. When comets travel near stars such as the sun, heat causes them to release gas and dust, which creates their signature tails.

Astronomers are interested in capturing as many observations of the comet as they can because as it nears the sun, material releasing from the object could reveal more about its composition — and the star system where it originated.

“When it gets closest to the sun, you get the most holistic view of the nucleus possible,” Seligman said. “One of the main things driving most cometary scientists is, what is the composition of the volatiles? It shows you the initial primordial material that it formed from.”

Scientists have used powerful tools, such as the Hubble Space and James Webb Space telescopes, along with a multitude of space-based missions, such as SPHEREx, to study the comet.

Gianluca Masi
This photo provided by Gianluca Masi shows the interstellar comet 3I/ATLAS as it streaks through space, 190 million miles from Earth, on Wednesday, Nov. 19, 2025, seen from Manciano, Italy.

The SPHEREx and Webb observations detected carbon dioxide, water, carbon monoxide, carbonyl sulphide and water ice releasing from the comet as it neared the sun, according to the ESA.

Preliminary estimates indicate that the interstellar comet is 3 billion to 11 billion years old, according to a study coauthored by Seligman and Aster Taylor, a doctoral student and Fannie and John Hertz Foundation Fellow at the University of Michigan, in August. For reference, our solar system is estimated to be about 4.6 billion years old.

Carbon dioxide turns directly from a solid into a gas in response to temperature changes much more easily than most elements — which means the comet has likely never been close to another star before its brush with the sun, Seligman said.

All eyes on 3I/ATLAS

The interstellar comet faded from the view of ground-based telescopes in October, but it remained in sight for missions such as PUNCH, or Polarimeter to Unify the Corona and Heliosphere, and SOHO, or the Solar and Heliospheric Observatory. The object also made its closest approach of Mars on October 3, coming within 18.6 million miles (30 million kilometers) of the red planet — and the spacecraft orbiting it.

While the government shutdown has prevented data sharing from any NASA missions that have observed the comet since October 1, the ESA’s Mars Express and ExoMars Trace Gas Orbiter attempted to capture views of 3I/ATLAS in October.

The cameras aboard those missions are designed to study the relatively close, bright surface of Mars, but ExoMars Trace Gas Orbiter managed to observe the comet as a fuzzy white dot.

Credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech
This diagram shows the trajectory of interstellar comet 3I/ATLAS as it passes through the solar system. It made its closest approach to the Sun in October.

“This was a very challenging observation for the instrument,” Nick Thomas, principal investigator of the orbiter’s camera, said in a statement, noting the comet is around 10,000 to 100,000 times “fainter than our usual target.”

ESA’s Jupiter Icy Moons Explorer, or Juice, will also attempt to observe 3I/ATLAS in November using multiple instruments despite the comet being farther from the spacecraft than it was when observed by the Mars orbiters. But astronomers don’t expect to receive the observations until February due to the rate at which the spacecraft is sending data back to Earth.

“We’ve got several more months to observe it,” Seligman said. “And there’s going to be amazing science that comes out.”

X-raying an interstellar visitor

Comets that originate in our solar system emit X-rays, but astronomers have long wondered whether interstellar comets behave the same.

Although previous attempts to find out were made as two other interstellar comets passed through our solar system in 2017 and 2019, no X-rays were detected.

But that all changed with 3I/ATLAS.

Japan’s X-Ray Imaging and Spectroscopy Mission, or XRISM, observed 3I/ATLAS for 17 hours in late November with its Xtend telescope. The instrument captured X-rays fanning out to a distance of 248,000 miles (400,000 kilometers) from the comet’s solid core, or nucleus, which could be a result of clouds of gas around the object, according to the Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency. But more observations are needed to confirm the finding.

JAXA/ESA via CNN Newsource
XRISM captured an image of comet 3I/ATLAS in X-ray light.

X-rays can originate from interactions between gases given off by the comet — such as water vapor, carbon monoxide or carbon dioxide — and the continuous stream of charged particles releasing from the sun called solar wind. Comets, which are a combination of ice, rock, dust and gas, heat up as they approach stars like the sun, causing them to sublimate materials. XRISM detected signatures of carbon, oxygen and nitrogen near the comet’s nucleus.

ESA/XMM-Newton/C. Lisse; S. Cabot & the XMM ISO Team via CNN Newsource
The XMM-Newton observatory spotted a red X-ray glow around the interstellar comet on Dec. 3.

The European Space Agency’s X-ray space observatory XMM-Newton also observed the interstellar comet on December 3 for about 20 hours using its most sensitive camera. A dramatic image released by the agency shows the red X-ray glow of the comet.

The X-ray observations, combined with others across various wavelengths of light, could reveal what the comet is made of — and just how similar or different the object is from those in our own solar system.

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December 19, 2025
Move Over Chrome: OpenAI Launches Atlas Browser

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OpenAI said Tuesday it is introducing its own web browser, Atlas, putting the ChatGPT maker in direct competition with Google as more internet users rely on artificial intelligence to answer their questions.

Making itself a gateway to online searches could allow OpenAI, the world’s most valuable startup, to pull in more internet traffic and the revenue that comes from digital advertising.

OpenAI has said ChatGPT already has more than 800 million users but many of them get it for free. The San Francisco-based company is losing more money than it makes and has been looking for ways to turn a profit.

OpenAI said Atlas launches Tuesday on Apple laptops running macOS and will later come to Microsoft’s Windows, Apple’s iOS phone operating system and Google’s Android phone system.

An Inc.com Featured Presentation

OpenAI’s browser is coming out just a few months after one of its executives testified that the company would be interested in buying Google’s industry-leading Chrome browser if a federal judge had required it to be sold to prevent the abuses that resulted in Google’s ubiquitous search engine being declared an illegal monopoly.

But U.S. District Judge Amit Mehta last month issued a decision that rejected the Chrome sale sought by the U.S. Justice Department in the monopoly case, partly because he believed advances in the AI industry already are reshaping the competitive landscape.

OpenAI’s browser will face a daunting challenge against Chrome, which has amassed about 3 billion worldwide users and has been adding some AI features from Google’s Gemini technology.

Chrome’s immense success could provide a blueprint for OpenAI as it enters the browser market. When Google released Chrome in 2008, Microsoft’s Internet Explorer was so dominant that few observers believed a new browser could mount a formidable threat.

But Chrome quickly won over legions of admirers by loading webpages more quickly than Internet Explorer while offering other advantages that enabled it to upend the market. Microsoft ended up abandoning Explorer and introducing its Edge browser, which operates similarly to Chrome.

Perplexity, another smaller AI startup, rolled out its own Comet browser earlier this year. It also expressed interest in buying Chrome and eventually submitted an unsolicited $34.5 billion offer for the browser that hit a dead end when Mehta decided against a Google breakup.

Copyright 2025. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed.

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Associated Press

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October 21, 2025
The Just Cause Games are Becoming an Inevitably Gonzo Action Movie

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Image: Avalanche Studios/WB Games

Do you like action movies? Do you like the ones where a bunch of crazy nonsense is happening that seems like it defies all the laws of physics? Do you like video games? Good news, all three of those itches are going to be scratched with an adaptation of the Just Cause games.

Will the Fallout TV Series Radiate the Tone of the Video Games?

Per the Hollywood Reporter, Universal’s picked up the rights to the open-world franchise and enlisted Blue Beetle’s Ángel Manuel Soto to direct. Action movie studio 87North will produce the film via Kelly McCormick and action guy David Leitch, coming off the heels of The Fall Guy from earlier in May. Also producing is Story Kitchen, a company that’s already involved in the recent live-action adaptations of Tomb Raider and Sonic the Hedgehog.

The Just Cause games center on Rico Rodriguez, a secret agent tasked with traveling to various islands and saving the people by overthrowing the current regime of whover’s in charge. Since 2006, the series has been well-liked, largely due to the sequels enabling players to create as much carnage as they can by destroying government property with whatever they’ve got on hand. The stories are cliche and not all that interesting, but the games make up for it by allowing players to wreak havoc and pull off some wild death-defying stunts with Rico’s handy grappling hook and wingsuit. If you can imagine a Mission Impossible game that doesn’t take itself all that seriously, that’s basically these games.

Interestingly, a movie adaptation was reportedly getting off the ground back in 2010 (the same year Just Cause 2 released), but nothing came of it. In 2017, Jason Momoa was tapped to play Rico in an adaptation from Atlas director Brad Peyton, which also never happened since at the point, the two were both individually pretty busy. After another false start in 2020, it looks like the stars have aligned for a movie to finally happen. Now if only there were a game along with it: the last entry was Just Cause 4 back in 2018, and Avalanche is currently working on the open-world co-op game Contraband for Xbox, which we haven’t really heard much about since its initial reveal in 2021.

Want more io9 news? Check out when to expect the latest Marvel, Star Wars, and Star Trek releases, what’s next for the DC Universe on film and TV, and everything you need to know about the future of Doctor Who.

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Justin Carter

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June 1, 2024
Atlas director says Jennifer Lopez’s dance skills were key to mech fights

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A lifetime of scarfing down sci-fi, video games, and comic books brought director Brad Peyton to the job of said lifetime: directing Jennifer Lopez in a frickin’ mech-suit movie. Signing on for Atlas, now streaming on Netflix, was an easy yes: With two big-budget Dwayne Johnson vehicles under his belt, Rampage and San Andreas, Peyton was no stranger to A-list-driven spectacle. Still, the film was an intimidating prospect for someone with a deep appreciation for mech suits, mech tanks, oversized mecha, and all the made-up classifications in between.

“I was very aware of what had come out ahead of me,” Peyton tells Polygon. The director cites James Cameron’s Aliens and Avatar as obvious but undeniable milestones in the art of on-screen mechs. He knew that the Titanfall games put pressure on any new live-action attempt, having created full immersion into the experience of mech fighting. But when he started imagining how to rethink mechs, he returned to the first piece of mecha media that really blew him away: Stuart Gordon’s Robot Jox.

Peyton can’t quite explain why Robot Jox was his holy grail, but in talking to him, it’s obvious: Like Gordon’s whiz-bang vision of the future, where Earth’s conflicts are settled by colorful mech duels, Atlas needed clear, well-defined logic that would ground the world-building, but also let him rip in the action department in a way that would delight his inner child. And at the end of the day, he needed to be original.

“My biggest thing was: I knew I had to separate from everything,” Peyton says. “I had no interest in repeating. I said, Pac Rim’s [mechs] are this big. In Avatar, they’re this big. In Titanfall, they’re this big. So mine is gonna be this big. This one might be square and blocky, so mine is gonna be circular. I come from animation. So a lot of it started with me sketching the silhouette and figuring how to make it unique and different.”

Atlas takes place in a relatively sunny future that still exists in the shadow of an impending apocalypse. Decades earlier, a rogue artificial intelligence named Harlan (Shang-Chi’s Simu Liu) fled Earth for an alien planet with the intent of one day returning to lay waste to humanity. When scientists discover Harlan’s whereabouts, Terran forces launch a mission to take the fight to the robot army’s doorstep. Leading the charge: Atlas Shepherd (Lopez), a data analyst recruited to go full Jack Ryan on Harlan’s ass. Of course, the attack doesn’t go as smoothly as the Earthlings would hope, and Atlas has to begrudgingly click into an AI-powered mech suit in order to survive an alien planet populated with androids who want her dead.

The grounded futurism of Atlas’ Earth led Peyton and his creative team to extrapolate from current military tech for the mech design. Rounded edges and exhaust pipes are lifted from F-18 planes. The interior control panels were built for theoretical functionality.

“I had to understand all the tech from the inside out,” Peyton says. “Because of my experience on San Andreas, where I had to understand how a helicopter worked intimately to tell Dwayne what buttons to press and not to press — at least when he would listen to me! — I took that experience and wanted to make a similar experience for [Lopez]. I laid it out with the art department of why there are screens in certain places, why there are holograms in other places. And then on the day, I’m giving her little wires to be like, ‘That’s what this screen is. That’s where the screen is.’ So after going through the blocking, I pulled those away, and she had to memorize where they were.”

Image: Netflix

Drawings and schematics were only half of the equation. After drafting a design, Peyton set out to make his vision come to life. Coming at it from an animation background, that meant animating various walk cycles to see if the bipedal machine could move the right way.

“The first couple of designs we had when we animated them to see how they would work — very basic animation, walk, run, walk, jog, run cycles — looked so clunky and terrible,” Peyton says. The animation team found a groove when they clarified the dynamic between man and machine. “[The mechs] are intuitive devices. The concept that I came up with was, the soldier is the brain. He doesn’t have to be super strong. He’s not like a grunt — the machine is the grunt. He is the emotional cognitive device that syncs with this thing. So it has to be able to be as fluid as a person who’s been trained in it.”

As Atlas traverses the biomes of Harlan’s base planet — from snowy tundras to swamps inspired by Peyton’s love for Return of the Jedi — the film’s hero loosens up on her “no AI” stance and forms a cognitive link with her mech’s digital interface. Like a twist on the buddy-cop movie, the two bond for survival, which presents itself as more fluid mech motions. Early on, Atlas might be bumbling around a rocky cliff. By the end, she’s running, rolling, and slapping the hell out of robot assailants with mech-fu. The early walk cycle tests came in handy for the dramatic evolution, which Peyton was able to program into an enormous soundstage gimbal rig that stood in for the mech suit. Lopez was surprisingly well suited for the demands of the mech choreography.

“Her background as a dancer is what allowed her to really gauge that quickly,” Peyton says. “As much as she looks like she’s walking, [the mech] is walking her, and she has to react like she’s walking. So that training as a dancer allowed her to step right into it.”

Image: Netflix

It also helps that Lopez routinely performs for thousands all by her lonesome on a stadium stage. Peyton says Atlas turned out to be one of the most demanding shoots of his career, simply because for six to seven weeks, it was just Lopez performing solo on a gimbal rig that would be completely painted over with plate shots, VFX environments, and bursts of other action sequences shot elsewhere. Occasionally, voice actor Gregory James Cohan would dial in to perform the dialogue of Smith, her AI companion.

All the prep work required to realize a mech with the capacity for real action, and clicking in a star who was up to control it, was in service of jolting the audience, says Peyton. The first time we see the mechs in action isn’t in an act of valor; they’re caught in an ambush, mid-flight. The carrier ship goes down — and so does Atlas, in her rig. Peyton’s imagination swirled at the possibilities, as evidenced in the finished sequence. “[The mech] would be tumbling, it would be spinning, it would be hit by debris. What would it be like to be trapped in that tin can? What would it sound like? What would it feel like? And once I get through that experience, well then, how can I up the ante? Well, what if I fall through black clouds, and I’m falling into basically a World War II dogfight, but with mechs and drones? […] That’s just the first, I don’t know, 20 seconds of a two-minute sequence.

“That’s how I design,” he says. “I want to surprise you. I want to give you something you can’t see anywhere else.”

Atlas is streaming on Netflix now.

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Matt Patches

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May 25, 2024
Watch This New Robot Relax in the Creepiest Way Possible

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The past decade has seen humanoid robot makers trying to make their creations more and more like humans. But here in 2024, we seem to be witnessing an odd shift in the dexterity of our bipedal robo-dreams. Put bluntly, robotics companies aren’t afraid of getting weird with the contortions of their latest offerings.

Warning! Microsoft Wants ChatGPT to Control Robots Next

China-based Unitree Robotics released a new video on Monday, available on YouTube, showing off the new G1 which retails for $16,000. It’s just the latest demonstration of a robot maneuvering in entirely un-human ways to accomplish its goals, as you can see in the GIF above.

The video includes lots of odd movements, showing how the robot can get up off the ground or greet people by pulling a sort of Exorcist move with its torso, rotating 180 degrees. And it all looks strikingly similar to the new version of Boston Dynamics’ Atlas, which has a novel way of getting on its feet.

There’s also a demonstration of the Unitree robot getting kicked and pushed, presumably to show how well it can balance, even when it meets resistance. But we’d be lying if we said it didn’t make us uncomfortable. These are, after all, robots made to look like humans. And watching wanton cruelty, even against a machine that doesn’t have feelings, sets off something deep in our brain that says they shouldn’t be doing that.

Unitree Introducing | Unitree G1 Humanoid Agent | AI Avatar | Price from $16K

Again, these contortions all seem a bit new. A decade ago, Gizmodo attended the DARPA Robotics Challenge in Southern California, where teams largely competed by trying to make their robots as much like humans as possible. Companies like Boston Dynamics released new videos each year showing its robots walking, running, and then eventually doing backflips, all in the same way that talented humans might do it.

But we seem to be on the cusp of a new era when it comes to robotics. Most robot makers have achieved basic human-style walking and running. The new frontier is taking that form factor and turning them into super-humans, whether by performing gymnastics or applying logic and reason to the world in front of them.

We’re still a long way from AGI that’ll help robots get chores done, but if we continue on this trajectory, it seems unlikely robots will be doing the mundane tasks that humans don’t want to do. We allowed AI to skip all the boring stuff and jump right ahead to making music and writing poetry. It seems silly to think we’re building an army of butlers to serve humanity with that technology. No, we’re probably going to be letting the robots paint beautiful landscapes while we’re all stuck at our desks filling out Excel spreadsheets if the recent past is any guide.

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Matt Novak

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May 14, 2024
Inversion Space will test its space-based delivery tech in October | TechCrunch

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Inversion Space is aptly named. The three-year-old startup’s primary concern is not getting things to space, but bringing them back — transforming the ultimate high ground into “a transportation layer for Earth.”

The company’s plan — ultra-fast, on-demand deliveries to anywhere on Earth — sounds like pie in the sky, but it’s the sort of moonshot goal that could transform terrestrial cargo transportation. The aim is to send up fleets of earth-orbiting vehicles that will be able to shoot back to Earth at Mach speeds, slow with specially-made parachutes, and deliver cargo in minutes.

Inversion has developed a pathfinder vehicle, called Ray, that’s a technical precursor to a larger platform that will debut in 2026. Ray will head to space this October, on SpaceX’s Transporter-12 ride share mission, paving the way for Inversion’s future plans on orbit (and back).

Ray is small — about twice the diameter of a standard frisbee — and will spend anywhere from one and five weeks in space, depending on factors like weather and how the orbit aligns with the landing site, Inversion CEO Justin Fiaschetti explained in a recent interview.

This first mission will have three phases: the initial on-orbit phase, where the spacecraft will power on, charge its batteries, and hopefully send telemetry to the ground. During the second phase, Ray will use its onboard propulsion system to slow down the vehicle so it starts losing altitude and reentering the atmosphere. The reentry capsule will separate from the satellite bus (both designed in-house), with the latter structure burning up.

The third and final phase will see Ray slow down using a supersonic drogue parachute, from a reentry speed of Mach 1.8 to Mach 0.2. The main parachute will then deploy, further slowing the capsule to a soft splashdown off the coast of California.

Impressively, the company has designed and built almost all of the Ray vehicle in-house, from the propulsion system to the structure to the parachutes. This last component is key: almost no space company designs parachutes themselves, and they’re incredibly challenging to engineer from the ground up. Inversion’s engineering team completed qualification testing of the deployment and parachute systems last year.

We’ve completed a successful qualification campaign of the full recovery system for Ray, our pathfinder vehicle! Both of the parachutes and their deployment systems have been developed in-house by our recovery engineers, Connor & Daniel. pic.twitter.com/mPquy1nGbE

— Inversion (@InversionSpace) September 5, 2023

Fiaschetti said strong vertical integration has helped the company move so quickly.

“The purpose of our Ray vehicle is to develop technology for our next-gen vehicle. As such, we’ve built basically the entire vehicle in-house,” Fiaschetti said. “What we saw was that if we can build in-house now, do the hard thing first, that allows us to scale very quickly and meet our customer needs.”

The reentry vehicle is totally passive — meaning it doesn’t have active controls to navigate its reentry to Earth — but the company’s larger next-gen vehicle, called Arc, will have “football field-level” accuracy.

Inversion was founded by CEO Justin Fiaschetti and CTO Austin Briggs in 2021, but the two go back further: they met for the first time when they sat next to each other at a Boston University freshman matriculation ceremony. The pair eventually got jobs in southern California — Briggs, as a propulsion development engineer at ABL Space Systems, while Fiaschetti had brief engineering stints at Relativity and SpaceX — and they were actually roommates when they first floated the idea of developing technology to deliver cargo anywhere on Earth.

The company went through Y Combinator in the summer of 2021 (it was one of our favorites from the cohort) and closed its $10 million seed round in November that same year.

“We’ve been off to the races ever since,” Fiaschetti said. The company’s grown to 25 employees, who are based out of Torrance, California, where they have a 5,000-square-foot facility. The startup also owns five acres of land in the Mojave Desert, where it conducts engine testing. The scaling of the team and this first mission have been entirely financed by that round.

The startup sees promising markets in both government agencies and private companies; both segments could use Inversion’s reusable platform as an on-orbit testbed, or as a delivery vehicle to a private commercial space station. Inversion is aiming on pushing both reusability and duration-on-orbit “to the maximum” to bring down costs and also to support different mission profiles, Fiaschetti said.

Inversion aims to fly the next-gen vehicle, Arc, for the first time in 2026. While the two cofounders declined to provide more details on the spacecraft, the company’s website says it will be capable of carrying over 150 kilograms of cargo, to provide “proliferated” delivery in space.

“We are testing hardware consistently. We’re developing an infrastructure to be able to scale ourselves. Just as our decision to bring parachutes in house was a decision because the parachutes are so directly applicable to what we’re building, it’s making those kinds of key decisions that allows us to move move much faster than another reentry vehicle would take much longer to develop.”

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Aria Alamalhodaei

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April 17, 2024