The drag sail was launched on a Long March 2nd rocket from the Xichang Satellite Launch Centre in southwest China on June 23rd, 2022.

The Long March 2 rocket launching on June 23rd.

The rocket was launched by China to deliver three remote sensing satellites into a low-Earth orbit (LEO) and has now successfully unfurled its drag sail, measuring 25 square meters (269 square feet) when opened completely. The sail is only one-tenth the width of human hair and is designed to slow the rocket's final stage, weighing 300 kilograms (661 pounds), as it orbits Earth following the deployment of its satellite payload.

As it has remained in space along with the satellites it launched, despite serving no additional purpose, it has joined the estimated one billion pieces of space debris floating in Earth's orbit. To lessen its contributions to the growing problem, China has equipped the first-ever rocket with a drag sail so that it will return to Earth sooner than if it did not have the sail.

The asteroids were only discovered on Monday, July 4th, 2022, about two days before they had close encounters with Earth.

The Panoramic Survey Telescope and Rapid Response System (Pan-STARRS) at the Haleakala Observatory in Hawaii was responsible for identifying the two near-Earth asteroids (NEAs), classified as 2022 NE and 2022 NF. 2022 NE spans roughly 20 feet (~6 meters), about the size of a bus, while 2022 NF is a bit larger at around 23 feet (~7 meters).

2022 NE came within 84,000 miles (135,000 kilometers) of Earth on July 6th, and the following day at 14:00 UTC, 2022 NF came even closer, to within 55,000 miles (89,000 kilometers) from Earth, just 23% of the distance the Moon is from the Earth on average. Astronomer Gianluca Masi, the founder of The Virtual Telescope Project, livestreamed the event, observing it with a 17-inch PlaneWave telescope.

Researchers from the Hefei Comprehensive National Science Center in the Chinese province of Anhui are behind the new artificial intelligence (AI) device.

The researchers shared a short video on the institution's Weibo account on June 30th, 2022, demonstrating what they called "artificial intelligence empowering party-building." The video has since been deleted; however, the Internet Archive was able to store a text summary of the video. The video was removed due to the controversial, political nature of the creation and backlash invoking references to George Orwell's 1984.

According to Anhui-based sociologist Song Da'an, the AI was trained using a combination of polygraphs and facial scans, so it could correlate lies detected by a polygraph with various facial expressions. The result is "emotionally intelligent computing," that measures how much people "feel grateful to the CCP [Chinese Communist Party[, do as it tells them and follow its lead."

A report has found that Google, Amazon, and Apple are hiring employees that have left Elon Musk's Tesla, per LinkedIn data.

A new report from Punks & Pinstripes has revealed that many major technology companies are scooping up Elon Musk's Tesla talent after hundreds of employees departed the electric car manufacturer. The report uses LinkedIn data that indicated 450 Tesla employees left the company between June 30, 2021, and June 30, 2022, or the last 90 days.

Of those 450 employees, 51 went to Apple, another 51 went to Amazon, 28 went to Google, 25 to Meta, 23 to Microsoft, and a selection of below 10 individuals joined competing car manufacturers such as General Motors and Ford. Over the last 90 days, Rivian has hired the most departing Tesla talent with 56. The hiring of Tesla's talent is no surprise as most tech giants have been attempting to buy Tesla talent for some time, as it was only last year that Apple poached Tesla's now-former Autopilot software director Christopher Moore.

A watch manufacturer has revealed RM UP-01 FERRARI, the world's thinnest mechanical watch, valued at nearly $2 million.

Luxury watch manufacturer Richard Mille has unveiled its newest watch, the RM UP-01 FERRARI, and according to Richard Mille, it's now the world's thinnest mechanical watch at just 1.75 mm thick - a US quarter is 1.75 mm thick. For reference, an Apple Watch Series 7 is 10.7mm thick. According to the website listing for the RM UP-01 FERRARI, the watch is comprised of 90% grade 5 titanium, 6% aluminum, and 4% vanadium.

Notably, the watch was birthed out of more than 6,000 hours of collaborative laboratory testing between Richard Mille and Ferrari. The design has been tested to meet "rigorous optimal strength requirements", with the watch reportedly able to withstand 5,000 g's and is also water resistant to 32 feet. The RM UP-01 FERRARI has now taken first place as the world's thinnest watch, knocking off Bulgari's Octo Finissimo Ultra, which was 1.88 mm thick.

NASA's 55-pound CAPSTONE satellite that was recently launched from New Zealand on July 4 experienced a communications issue.

The space agency revealed the news via its blog, where it wrote on July 5 that the spacecraft was unable to communicate with the Deep Space Network while it was on its journey to the moon. The spacecraft is relatively small, but will provide very important data on the moon, which will be used by NASA researchers to inform decisions leading up to humans revisiting the lunar surface.

NASA provided an update on the spacecraft on July 5 and wrote that its health is in good shape and that it's been in partial communication with ground systems. From the partial contact, mission operators were able to determine the speed and position of CAPSTONE, but due to the choppy communication, the spacecraft's first maneuver had to be delayed.

A derecho has hit several states in the US, and the storm was so powerful it changed the color of the sky.

A derecho is a collection of powerful thunderstorms that are known to travel extremely far and fast, as well as cover an area as large as 100 miles across. South Dakota, Iowa, Nebraska, Minnesota, and Illinois all experienced a derecho on July 5, and the massive storm brought gale-force winds to several areas across the aforementioned states. Huron, South Dakota, recorded wind speeds of up to 90 mph, with Miner, S.D reporting wind speeds of 99 mph and softball-sized hail.

The American Meteorological Society will classify a storm as a derecho when it has caused damage either continuously or intermittently over a region of 400 miles, 60 miles wide. Notably, the National Weather Service adds that windspeed is also taken into account when a classification is being made, with meteorologists taking into account top wind speeds of 75 mph or more.

Tesla's new software update for its electric vehicles will see it scanning the roads ahead of you for possible danger, like potholes and more, and then avoiding them by adjusting the suspension.

The news is coming from the new Tesla 2022.20 software update, in which the company explains that the new feature is part of the "Tesla Adaptive Suspension" system. Tesla explains: "Tesla Adaptive Suspension will now adjust ride height for an upcoming rough road section. This adjustment may occur at various locations, subject to availability, as the vehicle downloads rough road map data generated by Tesla vehicles".

It's out of nowhere, but very welcomed... another step towards the world of full Self-Driving goodness through Tesla Autopilot. You can't be driven by AI and not have it scanning the road to avoid things like potholes, but adjusting the suspension on-the-fly as it looks ahead with its sensors, is very cool.

Micron has just announced the commercial and industrial availability for its new DDR5 DRAM, which is destined for AMD and Intel's next-gen server and workstation platforms.

The company announced the news with a press release, with Micron saying its new DDR5 server DRAM maximizes performance for AI, HPC, and data-intensive applications that require more CPU compute capacity, and higher memory bandwidth than what DDR4 technology is capable of.

Teresa Kelley, vice president and general manager of Micron's Commercial Products Group explains: "As data continues to grow exponentially, the need to derive insights from that data is critical to business success. Data center operators need to maximize platform performance with advanced memory capabilities and processor advancements".

The new ASUS ROG Phone 6 gaming smartphone has been teased for a while now, with more and more details over the last few days... but now we have the official announcement. It's not just the new ROG Phone 6 that we've got, but an even higher-end ROG Phone 6 Pro gaming smartphone, too.

ASUS is powering its new flagship gaming smartphones with Qualcomm's very largest Snapdragon 8+ Gen1 chip, and what should be a gorgeous 6.78-inch FHD+ AMOLED panel (2488 x 1080 resolution) with a super-smooth 165Hz refresh rate, and Gorilla Glass Victus protection on the front, with a 720Hz touch sample rate.

The company is keeping the hardware inside of both the ROG Phone 6 and ROG Phone 6 gaming smartphones nearly identical, apart from RAM and SSD configurations. ASUS kicks things off with 12GB of RAM and 256GB of storage, but you can go up to 16GB of LPDDR5 RAM + 512GB of UFS 3.1 storage.