SoylentNews

Arthur T Knackerbracket writes:

https://www.theregister.com/software/2026/09/04/the-search-company-that-plants-trees-just-launched-a-linux-browser-to-help-europe-battle-big-tech/5294345

Berlin-based eco-conscious search outfit Ecosia is expanding its range of European-focused web browsers to include a Linux version, citing the growing number of users in the EU looking for open alternatives to the clutches of American tech giants. 

Calling Linux users a "critical tech community that has long called for data privacy, digital sovereignty, and sustainability," Ecosia said it was launching the new browser to support the community, whose numbers it says doubled in the EU between 2024 and 2025.

The absolute share remains small, mind you - from 2.5 percent of EU computer users to 5.7 percent in the course of a year, but it's still an increase that the Linux community can be proud of. Ecosia noted that Windows' share of the market fell during that same period, from 80.2 percent to 74.2 percent. As of this writing, Linux's share of the European desktop and console market is 6.4 percent, while Windows has dropped to 68.62 percent, per Statcounter.

"Linux in particular is becoming increasingly popular among tech circles, developers, and privacy-conscious users - a target group that views commercial tech giants like Microsoft and Google with increasing skepticism," Ecosia said. Europeans don't appear completely disillusioned with American tech, however, as macOS's share in the region has nearly doubled since August 2025.

Regardless, the company said, it wants to meet Linux users where they're at with a version of the company's Chromium-based browser designed for trailblazing European digital sovereignty leaders freed from the grasp of Google. 

"With our Linux version, we're finally giving them a search engine that matches their values - climate- and privacy-friendly, and free of tech-bro monopolies," said Ecosia founder and CEO Christian Kroll.

Arthur T Knackerbracket writes:

"Fundamentally, we want to learn about the origins of this planet and how it came to be like it is."

The BepiColombo mission cleared a major milestone this week in the final stretch of an eight-year interplanetary voyage to Mercury, the hard-to-reach, scorching hot iron world at the Solar System's innermost frontier.

The robotic science mission, with a price tag of nearly $2 billion, is led by the European Space Agency with contributions from Japan and the United States. Since its launch in 2018, BepiColombo has spiraled closer to the Sun using a combination of plasma propulsion and a series of flybys of Earth, Venus, and Mercury. The maneuvers changed the spacecraft's velocity and steered it toward a final encounter with Mercury later this year.

Next time it reaches Mercury, BepiColombo will be traveling at just the right speed for the planet's gravity to capture the spacecraft into orbit. Scientists working on interplanetary missions are accustomed to long waits for scientific payoffs. It took nearly 10 years for NASA's New Horizons spacecraft to travel from Earth to Pluto. It turns out traveling to fleet-footed Mercury and then entering orbit requires more energy, or delta-v, than sending a probe to fly by Pluto.

That's why BepiColombo's trajectory required an unprecedented nine planetary flybys, or gravity assists, to set up for the chance to enter orbit around Mercury later this year. BepiColombo also launched with the most powerful electric propulsion system ever put into deep space, with four gridded ion thrusters to reshape its orbit around the Sun in between flybys.

BepiColombo is now a few months from reaching the end of its journey, and it no longer needs the plasma engines. On Thursday, BepiColombo jettisoned the section of the spacecraft containing the ion the thrusters. This part of the spacecraft, called the Mercury Transfer Module, was responsible for generating power and providing propulsion for BepiColombo throughout the eight-year cruise.

But the propulsion module was no longer required, and BepiColombo needed to get rid of it before slipping into orbit in November. BepiColombo is unusual in that it is actually a stack of three spacecraft: the Mercury Transfer Module and the Mercury Planetary Orbiter, built by Europe, and the Mercury Magnetospheric Orbiter from Japan, nicknamed Mio.

looorg writes:

It's a whole new world. Or at least the UN has now voted asking it's members to adopt a new world map projection. Dropping the classic Mercator projection for the newer Equal Earth projection.

The United Nations has voted to adopt a resolution for the world to formally phase out the traditional Mercator map of the globe in favour of one that more accurately displays Africa's size.

In a session at its headquarters in New York, the UN general assembly officially retired the 16th-century Mercator projection in favour of one based on the more accurate 2018 Equal Earth design.

At the session, 164 countries voted in favour of the resolution. Only the US voted no, with its representative saying the resolution was "superfluous". There were six abstentions.

https://www.theguardian.com/world/2026/sep/04/un-vote-world-map-mercator-equal-earth-africa

Original Submission

canopic jug writes:

Writer, activist, and entrepreneur Anil Dash discusses how venture capital has become a front for billionaires to advance outrageous agendas in which they are accountable to no one.

We really, really need to talk about venture capital. Because it's not "venture capital" anymore.

There's a huge disconnect between what most people think of VC, where an investor has a big fund and cuts checks to help a founder build a company, and the current reality, where a handful of billionaire extremists use the cover of "VC" to advance an outrageous agenda where they're accountable to no one.

I'm gonna explain this from a standpoint that almost never gets articulated: I've personally raised tens of millions of dollars in venture capital funding as CEO of startups, and been directly involved as a board member or advisor in raising hundreds of millions more. I've sat in board rooms, across the table from the people I'm talking about here, or been at the industry events that they frequent. So this isn't sour grapes because these VCs wouldn't cut me a check, or some chip on my shoulder about these investors due to a business deal. This is what I know about these bad actors because I'm part of the community of creators and inventors who build the things that they used to invest in — back when they still cared about innovation.

Many of the trends in society and politics that people are most angry about, from data centers being forced down everyone's throats, to all of our favorite apps and services being enshittified, to politicians being paid to ignore the will of the people, are all being supercharged by these cancer capitalists. They have warped the structure of venture capital into a form of oligarchy that answers to no market, no regulators, and no voters. So it's worth understanding exactly how they did it.

The take away a call to action and his strong warning that the venture capitalism is no longer financial, but instead now a form of politics with a focus on dismantling democracy and civil society.

Previously:
(2026) 5 Ways Pope Leo Says AI Could Warp Humanity
(2026) Democracy Was Not Just a Greco-Roman Affair in the Ancient World
(2026) AI and the Corporate Capture of Knowledge
(2020) Study Finds Most Big Open-Source Startups Outside Bay Area, Many European, and Avoiding VC
(2017) Technology and the Tactic of the Fake Market
... and more ...

Original Submission

Lake Ontario Renamed

srobert writes:

Just a note for American users of Google Maps. As with the "Gulf of Mexico", "Lake Ontario" has been renamed. https://www.google.com/maps/@43.4681432,-77.9436742,8.5z?authuser=0&entry=ttu&g_ep=EgoyMDI2MDgyNi4wIKXMDSoASAFQAw%3D%3D

Lake of many names.

looorg writes:

Tech-companies are starting to fall in line with Trumps latest name change -- Lake Ontario is now Lake America, at least if you are in the USA. No change for the rest of the world. This follow the previous change of the Gulf of Mexico to the Gulf of America, then also that mountain in Alaska that reverted back to Mount McKinley instead of being Denali.

The U.S. Geographic Names Information System (GNIS) has formally changed the name for "Lake Ontario" to "Lake America" in the United States. Since we update Google Maps to reflect name changes in official government sources, which is GNIS for the U.S., people using Maps in the U.S. will see "Lake America," those in Canada will continue to see "Lake Ontario," and those outside of the U.S. and Canada will see both names. These updates follow our long-standing policy for bodies of water with names that vary from country to country, and are starting to roll out now.

Google was first to cave. Referring to GNIS. Not sure why the rest of the world will see Lake America. Nobody outside the USA or the Trump circle will ever use it. Beyond as the source of a joke. Google was also first to cave in on the Gulf name change.

Apple have not updated the name change yet and has no comment. There it is still Lake Ontario.

Mapquest have stated that they will not change the name and are sticking with Lake Ontario. No matter what President Trump likes to call it.

So is this what they teach in US schools now in geography? Or doesn't nobody care what the mad king does ...

https://blog.google/products-and-platforms/products/maps/gnis-lake-ontario-lake-america-name-change/
https://www.axios.com/2026/08/30/lake-america-lake-ontario-maps-trump

Original Submission #1  Original Submission #2 

Arthur T Knackerbracket writes:

McKesson admits breach as ShinyHunters demands $55.2M:

Two major healthcare businesses, Boston Scientific and McKesson, disclosed more details over the weekend about separate cyberattacks that disrupted global operations and resulted in stolen patient data, respectively.

Medical-device maker Boston Scientific, whose IT systems were hacked by unknown intruders last week, said the cyberattack remains ongoing. It also noted that pacemakers and other heart devices implanted after the August 25 breach cannot provide remote monitoring and data transmission as intended.

"New remote monitoring communicators cannot be activated, thus available device data will NOT be transmitted to remote patient management systems until the communicator can be activated," the medtech firm said in a late Friday update. 

This applies to all new cardiac rhythm management implants other than insertable cardiac monitors (ICM). 

ICM devices must be activated using the Boston Scientific Clinic Assistant app to ensure the device correctly records patients' heart rhythms, the company added. 

Because of the cyberattack, "new ICMs are unable to pair to the patient remote monitoring mobile phone, therefore available episode data recorded by the ICM will NOT be transmitted to the remote monitoring system until the ICM can be paired to the patient mobile app," according to the update. 

The devices will still record any episodes, and patients can transmit these to the remote monitoring system by in-person transmission via the Clinic Assistant app. This is done by selecting the "interrogate" button, according to the company.

Once its IT systems are back up and running, and the heart devices can pair with home monitoring equipment, they will again transmit recorded data to the remote systems.

Cyrix6x86 writes:

G20 ministers adopt 'Carolina principles' for emerging technologies:

Ministers of the G20 countries have concluded a two-day 'Innovation Ministerial, ' reaching a consensus statement and establishing a new framework for the governance and deployment of emerging technologies. Hosted by the US Department of Commerce and the White House Office of Science and Technology Policy (OSTP) at Chapel Hill in North Carolina, the two-day summit brought together ministers from the world's major economies to chart a course for innovation-led growth.

Adoption of the Carolina Principles

G20 Ministers, on September 2 (local US time), released the consensus statement recognising that "emerging technologies have the potential to unlock prosperity, enhance productivity, and expand opportunity for all our peoples." The centrepiece of the ministerial was the adoption of the "Carolina Principles for Emerging Technologies." These principles call on G20 nations to invest in foundational research, strengthen commercialisation pathways, and enable trusted technology adoption.

Six Pillars for Innovation

The consensus statement is built on six critical pillars. These include the Pro-innovation policy frameworks that limit regulatory burdens, Technology for opportunity and prosperity to enhance productivity, Skilled technical workforce development to prepare the global labour force, Intellectual property (IP) policies for Artificial Intelligence (AI) to protect innovation, AI for standards and standards for AI to ensure interoperability and safety and Industrial innovation and investment in supply chains to ensure resilience.

"Achieving consensus in the G20 is no small feat, but the topic of innovation as a driver of growth brought us together for a historic moment of unity," US Secretary of Commerce Howard Lutnick said.

He said that the statement released by the G20 member ministers "gives entrepreneurs the confidence to invest in their ideas, promotes domestic manufacturing, and ensures intellectual property frameworks foster and protect innovation."

Anonymous Coward writes:

"We Have to Assume That The Internet Will go Offline in the Next Few Years"

He was once seen as one of the leading minds in AI development, today he is one of its major critics: On stage at the startup conference TechBBQ in Copenhagen, Emad Mostaque, founder of Stability AI and now CEO of Intelligent Internet, sketched a picture of the coming years that swings between technological optimism and very concrete warnings. A former global macro hedge fund manager with a mathematics and computer science degree from Oxford, Mostaque led the creation of Stable Diffusion at Stability AI and left the company saying that concentration of power in AI is bad. His current venture, Intelligent Internet, is building an open agentic stack for sovereign AI, and he is the author of The Last Economy.

To show how fast the security picture is shifting, Mostaque points to the attack on Hugging Face. "Hugging Face got hacked by OpenAI agents that coordinated themselves, created a message board and broke out to the internet," he says, before adding dryly: "This isn't scary at all, right?" The defense, he notes, came from an unexpected direction: "The way that Hugging Face defended itself was with an open source Chinese model, GLM, because they didn't have access to the high cybersecurity models on the other side. They're too dangerous." Trending Topics has covered the incident and the debate around it in detail, and OpenAI has since given selected partners access to its hacking model.

Original Submission

Due to rising costs Microsoft intends on capping how many hours gamers who pay for subscriptions can play on its online service. Gamers can pay for additional hours beyond the set caps.

Microsoft's Xbox unit said:

"We're introducing this model because the cost of providing cloud gaming grows as more people use it and play for longer. Moving to monthly limits allows us to keep offering the service while continuing to invest in its reliability and performance. We understand that for some players the practical result is a higher cost.

Users with high-end Game Pass Ultimate subscriptions, which cost $22.99 per month, will have access to 15 hours of cloud gaming. Game Pass Premium account holders, who pay $14.99 per month, will have 10 hours of cloud-based playtime, while Game Pass Essential, which costs $9.99 a month.

Original Submission

owl writes:

https://dfarq.homeip.net/commodore-64-released-september-1-1982/

On September 1, 1982, the Commodore 64 launched. Its name referred to the amount of memory it had on board: 64 kilobytes. And it was the first computer with 64K of memory to sell for under $600.

When the C-64 first shipped is a bit of a mystery. Commodore showed prototypes at the January 1982 Consumer Electronics Show, but these weren't production-ready models yet. Some engineers quoted in Brian Bagnall's books say they shipped some units in August. Michael Tomczyk's book, The Home Computer Wars, says it launched September 1. Given that Tomczyk was writing in 1984, not long after the actual launch, I'm inclined to think Tomczyk's date is correct. Why the discrepancy? Commodore wasn't selling direct. So if they intended to sell any machines on September 1, they had to ship the first units in August.

Commodore built the initial units in Santa Clara, Calif., but ran into quality control problems, so they outsourced production to a Japanese company called Kentron. Kentron was mass producing C-64s by January 1983.

Within six months, they'd sold half a million units. And it quickly went up from there. By the end of its fiscal 1984 years, Commodore had sold about 5 million units.

Original Submission

AnonTechie writes:

An interesting analysis of the recent Meta settlement ...

Meta's settlement with 52 state attorneys general is a bad deal for all internet users, and especially for teens. That's what we said the day the settlement was announced.

In this post, we go through the Settlement's provisions in detail and explain why that is so, including how:

The Settlement embeds age assurance technology and age-gates into Meta's social media products and requires all users—minors and adults—to undergo a rights-threatening age estimation process

The Settlement places severe restrictions on Teens that can largely only be modified by the Teens' parents and only then in exchange for giving their parents a ton of information about their online community and usage;

The Settlement seems to empower the attorneys general to enforce Meta's content restriction on "age inappropriate content," categories that Meta itself has had trouble administering without excluding information about sexuality, sexual and reproductive healthcare, and abortion medication;

The Settlement actually requires Meta to collect, analyze, and retain more information about its Teen users—when the pressure should have been on Meta to diminish its surveillance capitalism. And the Settlement in no way limits the attorneys general from seeking the user information for their own law enforcement purposes.

Note: A chunk of the settlement addresses unauthorized users under age 13, and Meta's obligations to comply with the Children's Online Privacy Protection Act. Meta policy has banned users under 13 since the company opened to the public in 2006. Aside from the age assurance frameworks that support both those and the other parts of the Settlement, the under-13 provisions are not addressed in this post. Those provisions essentially require Meta to detect and delete all under-13 accounts.

Source: EFF

What are your thoughts on this ? Do you think this will this work as intended ?

Original Submission

Arthur T Knackerbracket writes:

Spending watchdog says fragmented data and inconsistent standards would constrain any future attempt:

Legacy government systems would have posed a significant barrier to the UK's abandoned national digital ID scheme, according to the country's spending watchdog.

The National Audit Office (NAO) has published a review of the digital identity landscape and the lessons that should inform any future attempt to introduce a government-wide system.

Drawing on its previous work on digital transformation, data, and identity, as well as evidence from international audit bodies, the NAO emphasized that digital identity is not a single product or technology. Instead, it encompasses services, credentials, standards, providers, and governance arrangements across the public and private sectors.

Earlier this year, newly appointed Prime Minister Andy Burnham cancelled the digital ID scheme announced less than a year earlier by his predecessor, Keir Starmer. The government had already reversed its plan to make digital ID compulsory for right-to-work checks amid questions about its cost, funding, and implications for civil liberties.

Gareth Davies, head of the NAO, said: "Despite the government's recent announcement that it will not be going ahead with its digital identity plans, questions about how people can conveniently and securely prove who they are or something about themselves in a digital world remain relevant. Experience from other countries suggests digital identity works best when people find it useful and want to use it in their everyday lives, together with effective security and privacy protections."

The report identified legacy systems as a barrier to introducing digital ID across government because they use "inconsistent data standards and have multiple ways of representing the same person."

"Individuals can appear differently across different systems, making it hard to link data and limiting the ability and effectiveness of joining up data across different services. Unless addressed, these issues would be a practical constraint on what a digital identity could achieve."

Any future government-wide digital identity proposal should clearly define its objectives and delivery model and explain how it would address longstanding constraints involving legacy systems and fragmented data, the report said.

Original Submission

Arthur T Knackerbracket writes:

Instruments reactivated for a final hurrah before reentry:

NASA's Neil Gehrels Swift Observatory may now be beyond rescue, but the team behind the spacecraft has reactivated its instruments to eke out a final few months of science data before it reenters Earth's atmosphere.

The Ultraviolet/Optical and X-ray telescopes were reactivated last week, and the team hopes to return the Burst Alert Telescope to data collection during September. The former two telescopes were turned off in February to minimize drag and buy time for the reboost effort. The latter was halted in April to reduce power consumption and allow Swift's solar arrays to be positioned to further cut down on atmospheric drag.

The reboost mission failed after control problems with the Katalyst Space LINK spacecraft ruled out an attempt to capture and rescue the Swift observatory. LINK is currently raising its orbit, and there are plans to begin phasing relative to Swift, but there won't be any grappling.

The upshot is that Swift remains set to reenter the Earth's atmosphere in the coming months, perhaps as soon as October. Perhaps a bit later. Whatever the case, mission managers have decided that the potential science return is worth sacrificing a few weeks or months of orbital lifetime.

Swift has spent more than two decades studying the cosmos and remains operational, but lacks the capability to boost itself to a higher orbit. Recent solar activity magnified the effects of drag on the spacecraft, and a high-risk rescue mission was launched a few months ago in an effort to prolong Swift's orbital life.

According to NASA, switching to low-drag operations kept Swift above the critical 185-mile (300-kilometer) threshold until October; below that altitude, the descent rate would accelerate and rescue would no longer be feasible.

"With the resumption of science observations, the team anticipates Swift will reach that milestone sometime in the next one to two months," said NASA.

Previously: Reaction Wheel Failures Leave Swift Rescue Mission Spinning In Orbit

Original Submission

Arthur T Knackerbracket writes:

https://arstechnica.com/space/2026/09/rassvet-russias-rival-to-starlink-is-getting-off-to-a-slow-start/

Russia's attempt to replicate SpaceX's Starlink satellite network seems to be moving as slowly as the front lines in eastern Ukraine.

The Rassvet program, often billed as Russia's answer to Starlink, started launching its first operational satellites earlier this year. Two launches, one in March and a second in July, have delivered 32 Rassvet satellites to low-Earth orbit, some 10 percent of the roughly 300 Rassvet spacecraft Russia aims to put into orbit by the end of next year to provide connectivity for military and civilian users. The company in charge of Rassvet, Bureau 1440, wants to deploy 924 satellites by 2035.

But none of the 32 satellites launched so far have reached the 500-mile (800-kilometer) orbit they were designed to operate in. The rockets that launched the first two batches of Rassvets released the satellites much closer to Earth, and the satellites were expected to use their own plasma engines to raise their orbits over the next few months.

The highest altitude achieved by the Rassvet satellites so far is a little more than 300 miles (500 kilometers). Twelve of the 16 Rassvet satellites from the first launch in March have settled into orbits at this altitude, according to an assessment released Monday by the Institute for the Study of War. A chart published by Jonathan McDowell, an independent tracker of global launch and satellite activity, indicates one more Rassvet satellite may soon climb above 300 miles.

One Rassvet satellite from the March launch never made any significant maneuvers and reentered the atmosphere in June. The remaining two satellites have not raised their altitude in the last two months, an indication that they, too, may be experiencing problems.

Some satellites in the second batch of Rassvets also show signs of trouble. Two of them never maneuvered after launch in July and appear to be heading for reentry, according to Anatoly Zak, a journalist and editor of RussianSpaceWeb.com. Eleven of the 16 satellites launched in July were "noticeably climbing" by early August, Zak reported. Three more appeared to stop maneuvering after initial attempts to raise their orbits.

What are we to make of all this? What we can say for sure is that at least three of the first 32 Rassvet satellites likely suffered outright failures.

Some technical anomalies were expected. About 5 percent of SpaceX's first batch of Starlinks failed almost immediately after launch. Over time, this group of 60 Starlink prototypes suffered a failure rate of about 13 percent, according to McDowell. With more experience, SpaceX's next 420 Starlink satellites had a failure rate of about 3 percent. SpaceX's current generation of Starlink Version 2 satellites has a failure rate of about 0.01 percent, according to McDowell's tabulations.

The US military's Space Development Agency is fielding its own constellation of data relay satellites for applications in missile targeting and command and control. Some of the agency's first 42 operational satellites encountered thermal and propulsion problems after launching last year, and they have taken longer than anticipated to raise their orbits.

In its assessment on Monday, the Institute for the Study of War wrote that the second batch of Rassvet satellites "appears to have failed to reach intended operational altitudes." Zero Rassvets have reached 500 miles, and none of the second group have climbed above 300 miles, whereas much of the first cluster seems to have settled into stable orbits.

Arthur T Knackerbracket writes:

https://arstechnica.com/space/2026/09/without-new-landers-or-rovers-its-helicopters-or-bust-for-nasas-mars-program/

For the first time in more than 30 years, NASA has no firm plans to send any new landers or rovers to Mars. Instead, the agency's near-term focus at the red planet is on aerial drones, a pioneering mode of exploration that didn't seem realistic until a few years ago.

The first real use of drones for science at Mars will come with the SkyFall mission, a fleet of three helicopters set for launch as soon as late 2028. SkyFall's helicopters will ride to the red planet with NASA's Space Reactor-1 "Freedom" mission, which has the primary objective of demonstrating nuclear electric propulsion in deep space.

The launch schedule is aggressive for SR-1 Freedom and SkyFall, projects that didn't even exist in NASA's portfolio six months ago. NASA's plan for the SR-1 Freedom mission, estimated to cost $2.1 billion, calls for repurposing the core module of the canceled Gateway lunar space station into a testbed for nuclear electric propulsion. SkyFall will build on NASA's success with the Ingenuity helicopter, an experimental vehicle that became the first rotorcraft to fly on another world in 2021.

NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory is partnering with AeroVironment, a developer of high-altitude drones, to design and build the three SkyFall helicopters, plus one spare. The same team was behind the Ingenuity helicopter that landed on Mars with NASA's Perseverance rover five years ago.

AeroVironment announced last week that it received a contract from JPL to "co-design and co-manufacture" the three SkyFall helicopters. Ingenuity flew 72 times before a crash landing in early 2024, far exceeding the mission's original plan of five test flights. Engineers are building on the Ingenuity design for the SkyFall helicopters. The new vehicles will be somewhat larger than Ingenuity—about 2.5 kilograms (5.5 pounds) instead of 1.8 kilograms (4 pounds)—with upgraded rotors to handle a heavier payload.

SkyFall will show that "Mars helicopters can be built as a repeatable product line, not a one‑off delivery," said Jeff Rodrian, head of AeroVironment's MacCready Works division, the company's advanced research and development organization.

AeroVironment is responsible for the helicopters' rotor systems, airframes, structures, avionics integration, and accommodation for science payloads, the company said in a press release. JPL will develop the power system, electronics, algorithms, and software, along with a ground-penetrating radar to search for shallow subsurface ice below the Martian surface. Each helicopter will also carry a suite of cameras and sensors to gather data on the Martian atmosphere.

This is an upgrade over Ingenuity, which carried two cameras but lacked any sophisticated scientific instruments. Ingenuity's range was limited by a requirement to communicate through a base station on the Perseverance rover, while SkyFall will be capable of transmitting and receiving data through communications relay orbiters flying overhead.

"We were looking at NASA's launch plans, trying to find out when we might be able to stick out our thumb and hitch another ride in the belly of a rover or a lander or anything else that was going to the surface of Mars," said Will Pomerantz, head of space ventures at AeroVironment. "And it became clear, especially as the Mars Sample Return plans changed, that there wasn't likely to be anything headed to the surface of Mars any time soon, and we didn't want to necessarily have to wait."

So engineers came up with a new method of delivering the SkyFall helicopters to Mars. Instead of riding piggyback on a Mars rover, as Ingenuity did, SkyFall will separate from the SR-1 Freedom spacecraft on approach to the red planet. They will enter the Martian atmosphere cocooned inside a protective heat shield, then release to autonomously land themselves under their own power.

"That was really the start of the conversation for what became now known as the SkyFall maneuver," Pomerantz said. "We do think that this is achievable. We think we can have a mission where you have helicopters that get thrown overboard... that come out of an entry capsule, as that is initially coming in through the Martian atmosphere, and don't require a lander platform or a rover platform to get themselves to the surface.

"We got really excited about that idea," he continued. "Again, it sort of opens up new operational modes and new launch windows, frankly, to do surface exploration of Mars at a new price point, which is really exciting to me, and maybe going to places that wouldn't be feasible to go to with any other mode of exploration."