Enlarge / This artist's illustration released by Astroscale shows the ADRAS-J spacecraft (left) approaching the defunct upper stage from a Japanese H-IIA rocket. (credit: Astroscale )

Astroscale, a well-capitalized Japanese startup, is preparing a small satellite to do something that has never been done in space.

This new spacecraft, delivered into orbit Sunday by Rocket Lab, will approach a defunct upper stage from a Japanese H-IIA rocket that has been circling Earth for more than 15 years. Over the next few months, the satellite will try to move within arm's reach of the rocket, taking pictures and performing complicated maneuvers to move around the bus-size H-IIA upper stage as it moves around the planet at nearly 5 miles per second (7.6 km/s).

These maneuvers are complex, but they're nothing new for spacecraft visiting the International Space Station. Military satellites from the United States, Russia, and China also have capabilities for rendezvous and proximity operations (RPO), but as far as we know, these spacecraft have only maneuvered in ultra-close range around so-called "cooperative" objects designed to receive them.

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Off in the southwest, the last colors of sunset lit up the rim of the sky, as a crescent Moon and two planets lined up above. It was a gorgeous scene, but one that everyone was ignoring. Instead, all eyes were focused on a bright patch of artificial light on a barrier island a couple of miles away. The lights there were focused on a small, slender needle—small enough to be hauled to the launch pad by a pickup truck.

For years, the Electron rocket and the company behind it had been stuck in limbo at the Virginia launch site, waiting on various approvals—for regulatory agencies to share enough paperwork with each other to convince everyone that the launch was safe. Then weather and the end-of-year holidays kept pushing the launch back. But on Tuesday, everything went as smoothly as it is possible to imagine, and the Electron shot to orbit almost as soon as the launch window opened.

The launch is critical for Rocket Lab, which in some ways invested the future of the company in its Virginia operations. But it's also critical for the launch site, which is billed as a spaceport but hasn't seen much traffic leaving Earth.

Enlarge / Using Teams in a browser is actually safer than using Microsoft's desktop apps, which are wrapped around a browser. It's a lot to work through. (credit: Jernej Furman / Flickr )

Microsoft's Teams client stores users' authentication tokens in an unprotected text format, potentially allowing attackers with local access to post messages and move laterally through an organization, even with two-factor authentication enabled, according to a cybersecurity company.

Vectra recommends avoiding Microsoft's desktop client, built with the Electron framework for creating apps from browser technologies, until Microsoft has patched the flaw. Using the web-based Teams client inside a browser like Microsoft Edge is, somewhat paradoxically, more secure, Vectra claims. The reported issue affects Windows, Mac, and Linux users.

Microsoft, for its part, believes Vectra's exploit "does not meet our bar for immediate servicing," since it would require other vulnerabilities to get inside the network in the first place. A spokesperson told Dark Reading that the company will "consider addressing (the issue) in a future product release."

Enlarge / An artist's impression of Rocket Lab's proposed mission to Venus. (credit: MDPI Aerospace/Rocket Lab)

Never let it be said that Rocket Lab founder Peter Beck lacks a flamboyant streak.

Although his Electron launch vehicle is one of the smallest orbital rockets in the world, Beck gleans every bit of performance from the booster he can. On just the rocket's second launch, in January 2018, he added a disco-ball like geodesic sphere called "Humanity Star" to give humans a small and bright shining object to, however briefly, gaze upon in the night sky.

"The whole point of the program is to get everybody looking up at the star, but also past the star into the Universe, and reflect about the fact that we’re one species, on one planet," he said at the time.

Enlarge / An Electron rocket launches a mission for the US National Reconnaissance Office on August 4, 2022. (credit: Rocket Lab)

For a rocket named after a negatively charged particle, the Electron launch vehicle has generated a lot of positive news lately.

Rocket Lab's small booster has already tied its record for annual launches with six this year, and it recently stepped up its cadence to complete three Electron missions in just five weeks. And these were not just any launches; they were arguably the most consequential missions since Rocket Lab began flying in May 2017.

On June 28, Electron launched the CAPSTONE mission to the Moon, demonstrating that a small rocket could launch a deep space mission and proving out the capability of the company's Photon satellite bus for complex in-space operations. And then, on July 13 and August 4, Electron launched a pair of missions for the US National Reconnaissance Office that showcased the company's "responsive" space capabilities.

30000 gallons = circa 136000 litres.

Via https://arstechnica.com/cars/2021/04/cops-almost-99-9-sure-tesla-had-no-one-at-the-wheel-before-deadly-crash/

#electron #electricCar #electricCars #Electric_Vehicle #battery 

If you ever think about using Electron for your next application, think twice. Or thrice. It's probably a bad idea:

Github user miksuhwrites:

It is an really bad idea to use Electron. Electron is completely 100% inaccessible and unusable with the Orca screen reader on Linux. None of the Electron applications work with the Orca screen reader. All of the Electron applications are completely unusable if you are visually impaired or blind like I am. Orca screen reader speaks absoletely nothing when you try to use Electron based applications. Electron is based on Chromium technology. Chromium web browser is also completely inaccessible and unusable with the Orca screen reader. During the last 10 years people have requested several times that Chromium developers should start to support the Orca screen reader. But nothing has happenened. People have requested the same from Electron developers but nothing has happened. Chromium and Electron are still completely inaccessible and unusable. Blind users like me must use computer using screen reader which speaks the content on scree. blind and other visually impaired people can not use any Electron applications because Electron does not work with the Orca screen reader. It also looks like situation will not change, looks like Chromium and Electron developers have no plans to supoort the Orca screen reader. There is now applications like Skype which is made using Electron. Because of that Skype on Linuxx is completely inaccessible and unusable if you are visually impaired. So visually impaired users can not use e.g Skype or e.g Signal on Linux. that is simply discriminitaing visually impaired users. So no, use of Electron is not ok.

#orca #accessability #a17y #blind #visuallyimpaired #electron #signal #chromium #screenreader #jaws

Je n'ai pas donné beaucoup de nouvelles récemment.

Mais pas de panique je continue toujours les travaux sur Movim (comme vous pouvez le voir sur mon profil GitHub). Je prépare, entre autre, une assez importante release-note pour la prochaine version du projet qui sera très certainement une 0.10 et non plus une 0.9.1 comme je l'avais annoncé jusqu'ici. En effet les avancées ont été tout de même assez conséquentes et je préfère itérer de cette façon pour éviter la confusion.

Comme vous l'avez peut être constaté de nouveaux projets ont rejoins l'organisation Movim sur GitHub. En effet les clients Android et Electron commencent à être assez matures pour être considérés comme faisant partie intégrante de l'environnement de Movim.

Je renouvelle mon appel à tout ceux qui pourraient venir aider à l'amélioration mais aussi au packaging de ces clients (l'application Electron n'est pour l'instant packagée que pour Ubuntu/Debian).

Lié au projet, j'ai également gracieusement offert l'utilisation de l'interface de Movim pour la réalisation d'un clip de sensibilisation aux risques de fugues des enfants par l'association CFPE. Vous pouvez trouver la vidéo ici: La fugue, c'est pas ce que tu crois - 116 000 Enfants disparus, sur Youtube. Merci à eux.

Suite à une conférence faite à Strasbourg pour présenter Movim, organisée par le Hackerspace Strasbourgeois Hackstub il y a quelques semaines j'ai eu droit à une petite rémunération en plus du remboursement de mes frais de déplacement. N'ayant, pour le moment, pas de status légal pour le projet je ne pouvais accepter cet argent. J'ai donc accepté l'idée d'offrir cet argent à des associations qui sont selon moi en adéquation avec l'idéologie du projet: La Quadrature du Net et l'April.

Et pour finir, une petite photo du concert des Yes qui sont passés il y a pas longtemps à Tivoli Vredenburg à Utrecht. J'ai vraiment passé un merveilleux moment ! Merci à eux :)