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The letter expresses NASA's concerns about the ever-growing constellation of satellites comprising SpaceX's Starlink network.

SpaceX currently has a pending application to the FFC proposing an additional ~30,000 satellites to enter into a Low-Earth Orbit (LEO) as part of its second-generation non-geostationary orbit satellite system (Gen2), Starlink. NASA notes that there are currently 25,000 total objects tracked on-orbit, with about 6,100 of these objects having a perigee below 600 kilometers altitude.

The Gen2 expansion would mean a doubling in the number of tracked objects in orbit and more than a five-fold increase in the number of objects below 600 kilometers altitude. This is without factoring in the growth of other proposed satellite constellations, and the resultant "substantial congestion" would bring "additional risk of debris-generating collision events based on the number of objects alone."

Amprius Technologies has developed the new lithium-ion battery technology.

The new batteries use Amprius' proprietary Si-Nanowire platform to build its lithium-ion batteries, directly replacing the conventional graphite anodes with 100% silicon nanowire anodes. According to a 2020 paper published in the journal Nature, "silicon (Si) has been recognized as one of the most promising anode materials for Li-ion batteries due to its high gravimetric theoretical lithium storage capacity (3,579 mAh/g), compared to conventionally used graphite anodes (372 mAh/g), while also having a relatively low discharge voltage."

Amprius claims that its lithium-ion batteries have the highest energy density available, with cells boasting 450 Watt-hours per kilogram (Wh/kg) and 1150 Watt-hours per liter (Wh/L). By comparison, the cells in the current Tesla Model 3 have around 260 Wh/kg and 730 Wh/L. Their first shipment of the batteries was made to an "industry leader of a new generation of High-Altitude Pseudo Satellites (HAPS)."

Elizabeth Ann is the world's first cloned black-foot ferret, and was born on December 10th, 2020.

Elizabeth Ann made history just over a year ago as the first-ever cloned black-footed ferret. She was created from the cells of another black-footed ferret that died 35 years ago, named Willa. She was born from a surrogate ferret and, just over a year later, has achieved sexual maturity, one of the first clones of an endangered species to do so.

Now that Elizabeth Ann is of breeding age, conservation biologists hope to use her to help save the species from extinction. It will be the first time cloning has been successfully integrated into such an endeavor. Due to their small population size, the wild ferret colonies are currently suffering from inbreeding, decreasing their genetic diversity and reproductive fitness.

The mission is led by billionaire Jared Isaacman, founder of the online payment processing company Shift4.

After leading Inspiration4, the first all-civilian spaceflight aboard SpaceX's Crew Dragon capsule, in September 2021, Isaacman has now unveiled the Polaris Program. The program involves three commercial spaceflights, beginning with SpaceX's Dragon spacecraft and culminating in the first crewed launch of SpaceX's upcoming Starship.

The first of these flights is dubbed Project Dawn, where Isaacman hopes to achieve "the highest Earth orbit ever flown," beating the previous record of 853 miles (1,373 km) high, set in 1966 by NASA's Gemini 11 astronauts, Charles "Pete" Conrad and Richard "Dick" Gordon.

Previous identification of the WE0913A object destined to crash land into the moon as being of SpaceX origin is likely incorrect.

Astronomer Bill Gray previously suggested that a rocket stage moving through space destined to slam into the moon early next month came from a SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket, which originally launched NASA's Deep Space Climate Observatory (DSCOVR) satellite in 2015. On February 12th, Gray announced that he had made an error in his assessment and instead believes it could belong to a Chinese rocket.

The stage likely belongs to the Long March 3C rocket flown as part of China's Chang'e 5-T1 mission in October 2014. An e-mail from Jon Giorgini, an engineer at NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL), to Gray, led to Gray posting a correction notice on the Project Pluto website, a project which Gray manages the software to track near-Earth objects.

Elon Musk is on the cusp of propelling the space industry to new heights and being so close to the end, Musk's competitors are beginning to shake in their boots, according to reports.

So, what are Musk's competitors so scared of? SpaceX is nearing the end of its development for Starship, a 390-foot reusable, refuelable rocket that is capable of transporting large amounts of cargo/people to the Moon, Mars, and back to Earth. Like other SpaceX rockets such as the Falcon 9, Starship has been designed with re-usability at the forefront. SpaceX having a large reusable rocket dramatically reduces the overall cost for a launch. It thus will no doubt be the option space agencies choose over other launch vehicles that cost millions more.

For example, NASA's Space Launch System (SLS) comes with a $2 billion-per-launch price tag, which is much more expensive than Musk's $1 million-per-launch price tag. Rand Simberg, an aerospace engineer and consultant, spoke to Politico and said, "Once [Starship's] reliability is demonstrated with a large number of flights, which could happen in a matter of months, it will obsolesce all existing launch systems. If SLS is not going to fly more than once every couple of years, it's just not going to be a significant player in the future in space, particularly when Starship is flown."

NASA has published a new update regarding its next-generation space telescope, the James Webb Space Telescope (JWST).

NASA has taken to its blog to update the public on Webb's development process as the next-generation space telescope nears the completion of its first of the months-long process of aligning its 18 primary mirror segments. The space agency writes that the Webb team faced two challenges, the first was making sure the observatory's NIRCam was ready for operation, and the second was preparing its 18 primary mirror segments for observing light from the same star.

The result was a mosaic image that has now become the "foundation to align and focus the telescope in order for Webb to deliver unprecedented views of the universe this summer." The space agency continued to write that the Webb team, over the coming months, will continue to optimize Webb's mirror so all of the blurry dots seen in the below image turn into one dot or one single star. For more information on this story, check out this link here.

Cyanide is renowned as that lethal pill that is taken by bad guys in movies once they are caught, usually by spies of secret service agents.

While the compound has notoriously got a bad wrap when it comes to public opinion, biology scientists see much more potential in it than just killing villains, as it may have been a key player in the first metabolic reactions on Earth. Chemists at Scripps Research found that cyanide has a carbon atom bonded to a nitrogen atom and performed tests that were designed to create more complex compounds that are fundamental for life to exist.

Knowing that cyanide was present in a young Earth's atmosphere allowed the researchers to devise a list that features a possible set of chemical reactions that could produce more complex organic molecules from carbon dioxide by cyanide interacting with them. This list of possible chemical reactions was tested in a lab, and according to Dr. Ramanarayanan Krishnamurthy, an associate professor of chemistry at Scripps Research and the study's lead author, "It was scary how simple it was. We really didn't have to do anything special, we mixed together these molecules, waited and the reaction happened spontaneously."

Coinbase, one of the largest cryptocurrency exchanges in the world, purchased an advertising slot during the Super Bowl, and while the ad was certainly a hit, it didn't go exactly as planned.

The advertising slots at the Super Bowl are some of the most expensive advertising slots in the world, and that is because around 200 million people are watching. Coinbase reportedly spent $14 million on its ad, which was just a black screen with a QR code bouncing from corner to corner. It seems the ad was based on the classic DVD screensaver that featured the DVD logo bouncing around the screen.

Viewers of Coinbase's ad that scanned the code were redirected to Coinbase's website, where they could claim $15 in free Bitcoin. Although, it didn't all go to plan as millions of people scanned the QR code to find that Coinbase's website wasn't displaying due to the immense load of traffic that was rushing to Coinbase's servers. Chief Product Officer Surojit Chatterjee said the website was getting "more traffic than we've ever encountered".

SpaceX has been working on Starship, the biggest and most advanced rocket ever made, for quite some time, and now SpaceX's CEO Elon Musk is showcasing how the company may catch the rocket on its descent back down to Earth.

As with all of SpaceX's rockets, they must be reusable as the reusability of its rockets is the company's main attraction as it saves millions in manufacturing rocket parts after every launch. SpaceX is already leading the reusable rocket industry with its workhorse rocket, the Falcon 9, and while that rocket can certainly get the job done when it comes to ferrying satellites and astronauts into low-Earth orbit, it doesn't quite cut it for an attempt on reaching Mars.

This is why SpaceX is building Starship, the largest and most advanced rocket ever created. Starship stacked on top of SpaceX's SuperHeavy Booster stands at a whopping 390 feet tall and will output up to a total of 7,600 tons of thrust at liftoff, which is more than double the power of a Saturn V rocket. As for how much it can carry, Starship will be able to carry between 100 and 150 tonnes to orbit and about 100 tonnes to Mars.

Intel is preparing another flagship Alder Lake CPU with the introduction of the upcoming Core i9-12900KS, which is a heavily-binned 12900K with higher max Turbo CPU clocks.

Intel's new Core i9-12900KS still packs 8 Golden Cove CPU cores and 8 Gracemont CPU cores, which means there's a total of 16 cores (8+8) and 24 threads (16+8) in total. The hybrid architecture sees the P-cores operating at a maximum boost clock of 5.5GHz on 1-2 active cores, and 5.2GHz on all cores. The Gracemont-based E-cores clocks are 3.9GHz with 1-4 cores, and up to 3.7GHz for all cores.

We have a higher base 150W TDP for the new Core i9-12900KS, which is a 25W increase over the 125W TDP on the normal Core i9-12900K. The normal Core i9-12900K has a maximum turbo power rating of 241W, so we can expect an increase on that for the new binned Core i9-12900KS variant.

NVIDIA has released its new GeForce Game Ready 511.79 WHQL drivers, which offer the best day one experience for new games including Elden Ring, GRID Legends, Total War: Warhammer III, and Martha is Dead.

The new drivers also pack support for the latest updates in games including Destiny 2: The Witch Queen, and iRacing which now includes NVIDIA Reflex support. The new NVIDIA GeForce Game Ready 511.79 WHQL drivers also include support for NVIDIA's new GeForce RTX 3080 Ti Laptop GPU and GeForce RTX 3070 Ti Laptop GPUs.

You can download the new NVIDIA GeForce Game Ready 511.79 WHQL drivers here (768MB download).

Douglas Wright Jr., a 27-year old operations manager for Amazon, has pleaded guilty to stealing over $273,000 worth of PC hardware from an Amazon warehouse in Charlotte.

The goods were stolen during June 2020 and September 2021, where Wright used his special access at Amazon to steal PC components including CPUs, GPUs, and storage devices. The US Department of Justice reports that Wright shipped the items from the Amazon warehouse to his home address -- stupidly, I might add -- and then sold them to a California-based wholesaler.

The DOJ report reads: "According to plea documents and today's hearing, from June 2020 to September 2021, Wright executed a scheme to defraud Amazon by stealing merchandise worth over $273,000 from the company's warehouse. Over the course of the scheme, Wright was employed as an Operation's Manager at Amazon's warehouse in Charlotte".

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We are hours away from the unleashing of Call of Duty: Vanguard and Warzone Pacific Season 2, which will introduce some map changes to Caldera, new vehicles, weapons, and so much more.

Warzone Pacific Season 2 kicks off today across all platforms, weighing in at up to 47GB on the PlayStation... while there's something that was music to my ears: Rebirth Island Iron Trials on a new Rebirth Reinforced layout that will change up Rebirth in a huge way.

There's a new Bomber for Warzone Season 2, with the new Bomber plane capable of destroying Loadout Drops... which were, until now at least, indestructible. That's a huge change to the meta of Warzone, and will surely have people yelling into their mics for days. Now while the new Bomber sounds OP, the developer has been nerfing planes in preparation for Season 2 -- plane health decreases will be unveiled in full when the update goes live.

It turns out that Square Enix had the metaverse figured out a while back.

As more and more companies announce their plans for the metaverse, it's important to take a look at key examples that already exist in the market today. With its penchant for inter-connected transmedia and multi-game releases, Square Enix had inadvertently created a conceptual metaverse for Final Fantasy 15 years ago. Now it's doing the same thing with Final Fantasy 7.

A while back, Square Enix was going all-in on Final Fantasy 15. The plans were so ambitious that I called FF15 the new Skyrim. Square Enix created what it called the Final Fantasy 15 Universe, which included a vast webwork of games, animated shows, and even a stunning feature-length CGI film. The mainline FF15 game was the core of this early metaverse and everything branched out--and led to--the centralized framework.

Bandai Namco outlines plans for its IP Metaverse, a vast inter-connected webwork of services, games, and interactive media.

The metaverse is gaming's latest hot trend. The nebulous concept is a convergence of the most powerful mechanisms of gaming: online interaction, personalized customizable social hubs, launching/playing/sharing games, and a service-based ecosystem that offers games, movies, and interactive experiences that are monetized and scaled across a huge network. It's basically a combination of Final Fantasy 14, the PlayStation Network, and the PlayStation Store all-in-one.

Bandai Namco is the latest publisher to embrace the metaverse. The company says it plans to launch a new initiative for an IP Metaverse, which would create a "metaverse", or a ring of inter-connected interactive experiences, for each of its IPs. This strongly implies that franchises like Tekken, Dragon Ball, Gundam, Pac-Man, and Naruto would all get their own content hubs.

A Cryptopunk NFT has sold for nearly $24 million, proving the speculative market is extremely lucrative.

Chain.com CEO Deepak Thapliyal just purchased CryptoPunk#5822 for $23.6 million, or 8,000 ETH, making it the most expensive NFT in the CryptoPunk collection. This is also the fourth largest NFT purchase of all time, and dwarfs the previous CryptoPunk sales record, CryptoPunk#7523's sale for $11.8 million in 2021.

Data from DappRadar notes that the CryptoPunk line generated over $31 million in NFT sales in the week from February 7 - February 13.

Cyberpunk 2077's PS5 and Xbox Series X/S release date could finally be announced tomorrow.

Gamers who have been waiting for the definitive, fixed version of Cyberpunk 2077 on consoles may get some good news soon. CD Projekt today announced a special Cyberpunk stream will go live tomorrow, February 15 at 4PM CET (10AM EST) on the official CDPR Twitch channel.

The developer previously said Cyberpunk 2077's next-gen release would launch in Q1 2022. It's already February, so the game could still release across the rest of the month and the full month of March. CDPR also confirmed CP2077's PS5 and Xbox Series X/S launch would be free for existing PS4 and Xbox One owners, and rightly so given the game's near-unplayable launch condition.

Nintendo may delay its next-gen Switch Pro or Switch 4K due to the ongoing chip shortage.

Now is not a good time to release games hardware. 2023 may not be much better, either. Nintendo, Sony, Microsoft, and a multitude of hardware makers are facing a worldwide chip shortage. Supply lines are constrained and production costs have risen as a result, and hardware is more expensive to make. This typically leads to two things: lower production volume and lower profits.

Meanwhile the gaming market is booming. The pandemic has kicked off a new level of hardware and software spending, and consumer hardware demand has been voracious throughout the shortage. It's not an issue of gamers wanting to buy hardware. It's an issue of companies being able to produce hardware, ship it, and then make enough of a profit on the hardware to make it necessarily worth it--or at least maintain according values.