A small satellite tagging along on the Artemis 1 moon mission will seek out the asteroid.

The mission's target is 2020 GE, a near-Earth asteroid (NEA) less than 60 feet (18 meters) in size. To investigate it, the Near-Earth Asteroid Scout, or NEA Scout, the satellite will coast toward the satellite using solar sails. It will mark the first use of solar sails by NASA, and the first time an asteroid smaller than 330 feet (100 meters) across will be explored up close.

The camera aboard the NEA Scout has a resolution of fewer than 4 inches (10 centimeters) per pixel and will be used by scientists to determine the asteroid's size, shape, rotation and ascertain whether 2020 GE is solid or a conglomerate of smaller rocks and dust.

The iceberg is named A68A, and it snapped off the Larsen-C Ice Shelf on the Antarctic Peninsula in July, 2017.

The iceberg spanned 5719 square kilometers, one-quarter the size of Wales, making it the largest iceberg on Earth at the time it formed and the sixth-largest ever recorded. It traveled 4,000 kilometers across the Southern Ocean over three and a half years, drifting close to South Georgia at the end of 2020.

It avoided damaging the seafloor near South Georgia by melting sufficiently to reduce its size as it traveled from Antarctica. However, this melting meant it released 152 billion tons of fresh water into the ocean close to the island, potentially compromising the fragile marine ecosystem in the area. Five satellites were involved in tracking changes to A86A: Sentinel-1, Sentinel-3, MODIS, CryoSat-2, and ICESat-2.

NASA's Neil Gehrels Swift Observatory is in safe mode to allow the mission team to investigate the issue.

On the evening of January 18th, the Swift observatory temporarily halted its science operations after potentially experiencing a reaction wheel failure. Swift has six reaction wheels, which are used to autonomously orient the telescope towards possible gamma-ray bursts (GRBs).

The suspected wheel has since been powered off by the mission team, with the observatory put into safe mode as a precaution while the team investigates the issue. The rest of the wheels and instruments aboard the observatory are operating as expected, so the team is working to restore science operations with five reaction wheels.

The Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists hasn't moved the hands of the Doomsday Clock for another year.

The Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists was founded in 1945 by scientists that worked on the Manhattan Project, including Albert Einstein and J. Robert Oppenheimer. In 1947, they introduced the Doomsday Clock to symbolize the world's proximity to catastrophe. Now, on the 75th anniversary of the clock's unveiling, the position of its hands has stayed unchanged since 2020, when they were moved to 100 seconds to midnight in 2020.

"If humanity is to avoid an existential catastrophe, one that would dwarf anything it has yet seen, national leaders must do a far better job of countering disinformation, heeding science and cooperating," said Rachel Bronson, president of the Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists.

Axiom Space has been contracted to build the new orbital film studio.

It will be the first space-based "multipurpose entertainment and content studio," attached to the International Space Station (ISS) as a new commercial segment. Based out of the United Kingdom, Space Entertainment Enterprise (SEE) contracted Axiom Space to build the SEE-1, an inflatable module that will serve as the new segment.

"Axiom Station, the world's first commercial space station, is designed as the foundational infrastructure enabling a diverse economy in orbit. Adding a dedicated entertainment venue to Axiom Station's commercial capabilities in the form of SEE-1 will expand the station's utility as a platform for a global user base and highlight the range of opportunities the new space economy offers," said Axiom Space CEO Michael Suffredini in a press release.

A new report released by the Bank of Russia indicates that the central bank is advocating for a blanket ban on cryptocurrency trading and mining.

Russia's central bank argues that cryptocurrency investments is a danger to the financial system that millions of Russian's use. Additionally, the report goes on to push that financial institutions and commercial banks should sever themselves from cryptocurrency and be prevented from allowing transfers of fiat into cryptocurrency.

The Bank of Russia didn't stop at cryptocurrency trading and investing, it also took aim at cryptocurrency mining, stating that it should be prohibited. The report cites energy concerns for cryptocurrency mining, and currency Russia is the third-largest country for cryptocurrency mining when it comes to global hash rate distribution. At the moment, cryptocurrency remains legal in Russia, but it seems that the Bank of Russia won't stop pushing until its banned.

Digital assets are making a slow climb into everyday life as more people adopt cryptocurrencies in various forms.

Cryptocurrency platform Voyager Digital published the first annual Crypto Confidence Survey that found 61% of individuals that participated in the survey are likely to purchase some form of cryptocurrency throughout 2022. The results from this most recent survey have increased substantially when compared to 2021's survey that found 27% of Americans planned on investing in cryptocurrency throughout 2021.

The survey also found that individuals would prioritize purchasing cryptocurrencies over traveling on a plane, purchasing a new car, buying a house, or even starting a romantic relationship. Additionally, 66% of survey participants indicated that cryptocurrency should be taught in schools and be a part of the educational system. 33% of participants believe that cryptocurrency educated should begin in middle school.

The co-founder of Reddit has predicted that in five years, 90% of people won't play games unless they are paid for it.

The Reddit co-founder Alex Ohanian appeared on the "Where It Happens" podcast, where he said that 90% of people won't play a game "unless they are being properly valued for that time". Ohanian continued and predicted that in five years, people will have their time "valued properly", and that instead of people playing games as they are now and their data being harvested for advertisements, the people will become the harvesters as they are rewarded for spending their time.

Ohanian predicted that 90% of gamers will be playing some Play-to-Earn game on the blockchain that will reward players with in-game items, perhaps in the form of loot or tokens that have intrinsic value in the real-world. Depending on the game being played, these tokens or items could then be traded for cryptocurrency stable coins that are pegged to the value of the US dollar, for example - USDC.

One lucky miner received a very handsome reward for participating in a relatively small Ethereum mining pool.

The miner was using the 2Miners: Solo pool on January 17 when they were awarded with 168 Ethereum (ETH) for successfully mining one block. Cointelegraph reports that the average reward for successfully mining one block is around 4 ETH, or about $11,965. The miner was using a pool that has around 854 miners online pushing 1.5 Tera hashes per second, which equals out to each miner putting forward 1.85 Giga hashes per second of GPU power.

Despite these jackpot rewards from mining blocks, average daily Ethereum profitability has been on a decline since May 12, 2021 as the all-time high peaked at $0.282 and is now around $0.0474, according to BitInfoCharts. The reason for this decline, in part, is because of EIP-1559 which burns fees instead of distributing them out to miners.

AMD has launched its new Navi 24 GPU with barely a whimper, powering the new Radeon RX 6500 XT -- of which I'll have my review up soon, my card only arrived a few hours ago -- and now an AMD staffer has cleared up how the company will be deploying its Navi 24 GPU.

AMD Linux NPI SW Architect John Bridgman explains: "The primary use of Navi 24 will be in laptops paired with a Rembrandt APU, which has full video functionality and Gen4 PCIe. My impression was that it was just encode that was limited in Navi 24, not decode - still not sure if that limitation is real or just a typo on the product page. Trying to find out a definitive answer".

The reason Bridgman addressed the video functionality on Navi 24 is that the GPU itself doesn't support H264/265/AV1 encoding -- which is a big deal, something all Navi 24 GPUs -- the workstation-focused GPUs in the PRO W6400, W6500M, and W6300M, and the new W6400.