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upstart writes:

Botanists vote to remove racist reference from plants' scientific names:

[ Editor's Comment: caffra means 'infidel' in Arabic, and it was used as a racial slur against black (non-arabic) people, predominantly in South Africa. ]

Scientists have voted to eliminate the names of certain plants that are deemed to be racially offensive. The decision to remove a label that contains such a slur was taken last week after a gruelling six-day session attended by more than 100 researchers, as part of the International Botanical Congress, which officially opens on Sunday in Madrid.

The effect of the vote will be that all plants, fungi and algae names that contain the word caffra, which originates in insults made against Black people, will be replaced by the word affra to denote their African origins. More than 200 species will be affected, including the coast coral tree, which will be known as Erythrina affra instead of Erythrina caffra.

The scientists attending the nomenclature session also agreed to create a special committee which would rule on names given to newly discovered plants, fungi and algae. These are usually named by those who first describe them in the scientific literature. However, the names could now be overruled by the committee if they are deemed to be derogatory to a group or race.

A more general move to rule on other controversial historical labels was not agreed by botanists. Nevertheless, the changes agreed last week are the first rule alterations that taxonomists have officially agreed to the naming of species, and were welcomed by the botanist Sandy Knapp of the Natural History Museum in London, who presided over the six-day nomenclature session.

"This is an absolutely monumental first step in addressing an issue that has become a real problem in botany and also in other biological sciences," she told the Observer. "It is a very important start."

upstart writes:

Academic journals are a lucrative scam – and we're determined to change that:

'It's never been more evident that for-profit publishing simply does not align with the aims of scholarly inquiry.' Photograph: agefotostock/AlamyView image in fullscreen'It's never been more evident that for-profit publishing simply does not align with the aims

Giant publishers are bleeding universities dry, with profit margins that rival Google's. So we decided to start our own

If you've ever read an academic article, the chances are that you were unwittingly paying tribute to a vast profit-generating machine that exploits the free labour of researchers and siphons off public funds.

The annual revenues of the "big five" commercial publishers – Elsevier, Wiley, Taylor & Francis, Springer Nature, and SAGE – are each in the billions, and some have staggering profit margins approaching 40%, surpassing even the likes of Google. Meanwhile, academics do almost all of the substantive work to produce these articles free of charge: we do the research, write the articles, vet them for quality and edit the journals.

Not only do these publishers not pay us for our work; they then sell access to these journals to the very same universities and institutions that fund the research and editorial labour in the first place. Universities need access to journals because these are where most cutting-edge research is disseminated. But the cost of subscribing to these journals has become so exorbitantly expensive that some universities are struggling to afford them. Consequently, many researchers (not to mention the general public) remain blocked by paywalls, unable to access the information they need. If your university or library doesn't subscribe to the main journals, downloading a single paywalled article on philosophy or politics can cost between £30 and £40.

The commercial stranglehold on academic publishing is doing considerable damage to our intellectual and scientific culture. As disinformation and propaganda spread freely online, genuine research and scholarship remains gated and prohibitively expensive. For the past couple of years, I worked as an editor of Philosophy & Public Affairs, one of the leading journals in political philosophy. It was founded in 1972, and it has published research from renowned philosophers such as John Rawls, Judith Jarvis Thomson and Peter Singer. Many of the most influential ideas in our field, on topics from abortion and democracy to famine and colonialism, started out in the pages of this journal. But earlier this year, my co-editors and I and our editorial board decided we'd had enough, and resigned en masse.

Arthur T Knackerbracket has processed the following story:

New research led by scientists at the University of Michigan reveals that the Arctic has lost approximately 25% of its cooling ability since 1980 due to diminishing sea ice and reduced reflectivity. Additionally, this phenomenon has contributed to a global loss of up to 15% in cooling power.

Using satellite measurements of cloud cover and the solar radiation reflected by sea ice between 1980 and 2023, the researchers found that the percent decrease in sea ice’s cooling power is about twice as high as the percent decrease in annual average sea ice area in both the Arctic and Antarctic. The added warming impact from this change to sea ice cooling power is toward the higher end of climate model estimates.

“When we use climate simulations to quantify how melting sea ice affects climate, we typically simulate a full century before we have an answer,” said Mark Flanner, professor of climate and space sciences and engineering and the corresponding author of the study published in Geophysical Research Letters.

“We’re now reaching the point where we have a long enough record of satellite data to estimate the sea ice climate feedback with measurements.”

[...] The Arctic has seen the largest and most steady declines in sea ice cooling power since 1980, but until recently, the South Pole had appeared more resilient to the changing climate. Its sea ice cover had remained relatively stable from 2007 into the 2010s, and the cooling power of the Antarctic’s sea ice was actually trending up at that time.

That view abruptly changed in 2016, when an area larger than Texas melted on one of the continent’s largest ice shelves. The Antarctic lost sea ice then too, and its cooling power hasn’t recovered, according to the new study. As a result, 2016 and the following seven years have had the weakest global sea ice cooling effect since the early 1980s.

owl writes:

https://pldb.io/blog/JohnOusterhout.html

Dr. John Ousterhout is a computer science luminary who has made significant contributions to the field of computer science, particularly in the areas of operating systems and file systems. He is the creator of the Tcl scripting language, and has also worked on several major software projects, including the Log-Structured file system and the Sprite operating system. John Ousterhout's creation of Tcl has had a lasting impact on the technology industry, transforming the way developers think about scripting and automation.

Original Submission

Arthur T Knackerbracket has processed the following story:

Two new studies suggest that antibodies that attack people’s own tissues might cause ongoing neurological issues that afflict millions of people with the disease. 

When scientists transferred these antibodies from people with long COVID into healthy mice, certain symptoms, including pain, transferred to the animals too, researchers reported May 31 on bioRxiv.org and June 19 on medRxiv.org. 

Though scientists have previously implicated such antibodies, known as autoantibodies, as suspects in long COVID, the new studies are the first to offer direct evidence that they can do harm. “This is a big deal,” says Manali Mukherjee, a translational immunologist at McMaster University in Hamilton, Canada, who was not involved in the work. The papers make a good case for therapies that target autoantibodies, she says.

The work could also offer “peace of mind to some of the long-haulers,” Mukherjee says. As someone who has endured long COVID herself, she understands that when patients don’t know the cause of their suffering, it can add to their anxiety. They wonder, “What the hell is going wrong with me?” she says.

[...] Scientists have proposed many hypotheses for what causes long COVID, including SARS-CoV-2 virus lingering in the tissues and the reawakening of dormant herpes viruses (SN: 3/4/24). Those elements may still play a role in some people’s long COVID symptoms, but for pain, at least, rogue antibodies seem to be enough to kick-start the symptom all on their own. It’s not an out-of-the-blue role for autoantibodies; scientists suspect they may also be involved in other conditions that cause people pain, including fibromyalgia and myalgic encephalomyelitis/chronic fatigue syndrome.

But if doctors could identify which long COVID patients have pain-linked autoantibodies, they could try to reduce the amount circulating in the blood, says Iwasaki, who is also a Howard Hughes Medical Institute investigator. “I think that would really be a game changer for this particular set of patients.” 

The work represents a “very strong level of evidence” that autoantibodies could cause harm in people with long COVID, says Ignacio Sanz, an immunologist at Emory University in Atlanta. Both he and Mukherjee would like to see the findings validated in larger sets of participants. And the real clincher, Sanz says, would come from longer-term studies. If scientists could show that patients’ symptoms ease as these rogue antibodies disappear over time, that’d be an even surer sign of their guilt. 

Arthur T Knackerbracket has processed the following story:

Europe’s largest local authority faces a $15.58 million (£12 million) bill for manually auditing accounts which should have been supported by an Oracle ERP systems installed in April 2022.

The £3.2 billion ($4.1 billion) budget authority has become infamous for its ERP project disaster, which has seen its switch from legacy SAP software to cloud-based Oracle Fusion, a customer win co-founder and CTO Larry Ellison once flaunted to investors.

The delayed project left the council without auditable accounts, and without security features, along with costs climbing from around £20 million to as much as £131 million. The IT problems contributed to the Birmingham City Council becoming effectively bankrupt in September last year.

A report from external auditors stated the council will not have a fully functioning cash system until April next year, three years after it went live on an Oracle ERP, and will have to wait until September 2025 for a fully functioning finance system.

Yesterday, Mark Stocks, head of public sector practice at external auditors Grant Thornton, told councillors that officials had told him the new accounting “out-of-the-box” system might not be ready until March 2026, nearly four years after the failing customized system first went live.

The lack of a functioning accounting system was making it costly and time consuming to produce a full audit, the auditors concluded after exploratory work.

[...] Problems with the customized ERP system were multiple, but cash management, bank reconciliation and accounts receivable were of particular concern. The council has bought third-party software — CivicaPay/Civica Income Management — as the replacement for the banking system.

Stocks said officials had been working hard to improve the current Oracle system, and said he did not “lose that message.”

Nonetheless, serious issues continue. “You're not going to have a fully functioning finance system and cash system [until] April next year. The actual financial ledger could be April 2026. That's really difficult from a finance officer point of view [and] it's particularly difficult from an external audit point of view to draw a conclusion on your accounts,” he said.

Original Submission

Editor's note: Due to the extensive use of buzzwords, the submitter questions whether this was written by a human or not, but perhaps those who are knowledgeable in network architecture can comment on whether this idea is as revolutionary as TFA suggests.

Arthur T Knackerbracket has processed the following story:

A research team has proposed a revolutionary polymorphic network environment (PNE) in their study, which seeks to achieve global scalability while addressing the diverse needs of evolving network services. Their framework challenges traditional network designs by creating a versatile “network of networks” that overcomes the limitations of current systems, paving the way for scalable and adaptable network architectures.

A recent paper published in Engineering by scientists Wu Jiangxing and his research team introduces a theoretical framework that promises to transform network systems and architectures. The study tackles a critical issue in network design: how to achieve global scalability while meeting the varied demands of evolving services.

For decades, the quest for an ideal network capable of seamlessly scaling across various dimensions has remained elusive. The team, however, has identified a critical barrier known as the “impossible service-level agreement (S), multiplexity (M), and variousness (V) triangle” dilemma, which highlights the inherent limitations of traditional unimorphic network systems. These systems struggle to adapt to the growing complexity of services and application scenarios while maintaining global scalability throughout the network’s life cycle.

To overcome this challenge, the researchers propose a paradigm shift in network development—an approach they term the polymorphic network environment (PNE). At the core of this framework lies the separation of application network systems from the underlying infrastructure environment. By leveraging core technologies such as network elementization and dynamic resource aggregation, the PNE enables the creation of a versatile “network of networks” capable of accommodating diverse service requirements.

Through extensive theoretical analysis and environment testing, the team demonstrates the viability of the PNE model. Results indicate that the framework not only supports multiple application network modalities simultaneously but also aligns with technical and economic constraints, thus paving the way for scalable and adaptable network architectures.

Reference: “Theoretical Framework for a Polymorphic Network Environment” by Jiangxing Wu et al., 28 February 2024, Engineering. DOI: 10.1016/j.eng.2024.01.018

Original Submission

Arthur T Knackerbracket has processed the following story:

A new study published in Science Advances reveals a surprising twist in the evolutionary history of complex life. Researchers at Queen Mary University of London have discovered that a single-celled organism, a close relative of animals, harbors the remnants of ancient giant viruses woven into its own genetic code. This finding sheds light on how complex organisms may have acquired some of their genes and highlights the dynamic interplay between viruses and their hosts.

The study focused on a microbe called Amoebidium, a unicellular parasite found in freshwater environments. By analyzing Amoebidium's genome, the researchers led by Dr. Alex de Mendoza Soler, Senior Lecturer at Queen Mary's School of Biological and Behavioural Sciences, found a surprising abundance of genetic material originating from giant viruses—some of the largest viruses known to science. These viral sequences were heavily methylated, a chemical tag that often silences genes.

[...] "These findings challenge our understanding of the relationship between viruses and their hosts," says Dr. de Mendoza Soler. "Traditionally, viruses are seen as invaders, but this study suggests a more complex story. Viral insertions may have played a role in the evolution of complex organisms by providing them with new genes. And this is allowed by the chemical taming of these intruders DNA."

Furthermore, the findings in Amoebidium offer intriguing parallels to how our own genomes interact with viruses. Similar to Amoebidium, humans and other mammals have remnants of ancient viruses, called endogenous retroviruses, integrated into their DNA.

While these remnants were previously thought to be inactive "junk DNA," some might now be beneficial. However, unlike the giant viruses found in Amoebidium, Endogenous retroviruses are much smaller, and the human genome is significantly larger. Future research can explore these similarities and differences to understand the complex interplay between viruses and complex life forms.

More information: Luke A. Sarre et al, DNA methylation enables recurrent endogenization of giant viruses in an animal relative, Science Advances (2024). DOI: 10.1126/sciadv.ado6406

Original Submission

hubie writes:

CrowdStrike broke Debian and Rocky Linux months ago, but no one noticed:

A widespread Blue Screen of Death (BSOD) issue on Windows PCs disrupted operations across various sectors, notably impacting airlines, banks, and healthcare providers. The issue was caused by a problematic channel file delivered via an update from the popular cybersecurity service provider, CrowdStrike. CrowdStrike confirmed that this crash did not impact Mac or Linux PCs.

It turns out that similar problems have been occurring for months without much awareness, despite the fact that many may view this as an isolated incident. Users of Debian and Rocky Linux also experienced significant disruptions as a result of CrowdStrike updates, raising serious concerns about the company's software update and testing procedures. These occurrences highlight potential risks for customers who rely on their products daily.

In April, a CrowdStrike update caused all Debian Linux servers in a civic tech lab to crash simultaneously and refuse to boot. The update proved incompatible with the latest stable version of Debian, despite the specific Linux configuration being supposedly supported. The lab's IT team discovered that removing CrowdStrike allowed the machines to boot and reported the incident.

A team member involved in the incident expressed dissatisfaction with CrowdStrike's delayed response. It took them weeks to provide a root cause analysis after acknowledging the issue a day later. The analysis revealed that the Debian Linux configuration was not included in their test matrix.

"Crowdstrike's model seems to be 'we push software to your machines any time we want, whether or not it's urgent, without testing it'," lamented the team member.

This was not an isolated incident. CrowdStrike users also reported similar issues after upgrading to RockyLinux 9.4, with their servers crashing due to a kernel bug. Crowdstrike support acknowledged the issue, highlighting a pattern of inadequate testing and insufficient attention to compatibility issues across different operating systems.

To avoid such issues in the future, CrowdStrike should prioritize rigorous testing across all supported configurations. Additionally, organizations should approach CrowdStrike updates with caution and have contingency plans in place to mitigate potential disruptions.

Source: Ycombinator, RockyLinux

Original Submission

Arthur T Knackerbracket has processed the following story:

At the end of a small country road in Denmark is the "Enorm" factory, an insect farm set up by a Danish woman who wants to revolutionize livestock feed.

Jane Lind Sam and her father, Carsten Lind Pedersen, swapped pigs for soldier flies and created a 22,000-square-metre (237,000 square feet) factory where they intend to produce more than 10,000 tonnes of insect meal and oil a year.

The factory, which opened in December 2023, is the largest of its kind in northern Europe, and its products will initially be used by farmers for animal feed and, perhaps in the future, for human consumption.

The two entrepreneurs are making products that will be "substituting other, maybe less climate-friendly products", Lind Sam, co-owner and chief operations officer, explained to AFP.

They hope to contribute to the evolution of agriculture in a country where the sector's climate impact is under scrutiny.

[...] Under turquoise fluorescent lights, millions of black flies buzzed inside some 500 plastic cages, where they lay hundreds of thousands of eggs every day.

Inside the facility, it was impossible to escape the roar of insects who incessantly lay eggs throughout their 10-day lifespan.

"The female fly lays its eggs in this piece of cardboard," Lind Sam explained as she pulled out a sheet with a honeycomb pattern at the bottom of one of the cages.

About 25 kilograms (55 pounds) of eggs are produced per day. A single gram corresponds to about 40,000 eggs.

From these eggs come some of tomorrow's feeder flies, but also the future maggots which, once they have become pupae, will be transformed.

An Anonymous Coward writes:

https://www.indiewire.com/news/breaking-news/spaceballs-sequel-amazon-mgm-mel-brooks-josh-gad-1235017862/

"Spaceballs" the t-shirt! "Spaceballs" the coloring book! "Spaceballs" the....sequel?

Yup. A source told IndieWire that Amazon MGM Studios is currently in early development on a sequel to "Spaceballs." Mel Brooks is returning to produce the feature, a direct follow-up to his 1987 "Star Wars" spoof. Josh Gad is also on board to star in and also produce what we'll call "Spaceballs 2."

[...] Josh Greenbaum, who directed "Barb & Star Go to Vista Del Mar" and this year's documentary "Will & Harper," is attached to direct the sequel. He's working from a script by Benji Samit, Dan Hernandez, and Josh Gad. Samit and Hernandez are known for working on "Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles: Mutant Mayhem," "Pokemon Detective Pikachu," and the upcoming "Lego Star Wars: Rebuild the Galaxy."

[...] "Spaceballs" from 1987 starred Brooks, Rick Moranis as Dark Helmet, the late John Candy as the Chewbacca parody Barf, and Bill Pullman as the hero Lone Starr. In classic Brooks fashion the film mercilessly ripped off "Star Wars" and featured everything from heroes fighting with pseudo lightsabers extending from rings, characters using the "Schwartz" to save the day, and even Brooks playing a Yoda parody, Yogurt, who shamelessly plugged fourth-wall-breaking "Spaceballs" merchandise.

The film made $38 million worldwide but has become part of the canon of staples for Brooks acolytes. Brooks recently wrote the Hulu series "History of the World: Part II," a sequel to his 1981 sketch film. That series also featured Gad in one episode playing Shakespeare.

Original Submission

Freeman writes:

https://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2024/07/dirty-diaper-resold-on-amazon-ruined-a-family-business-report-says/

A feces-encrusted swim diaper tanked a family business after Amazon re-sold it as new, Bloomberg reported, triggering a bad review that quickly turned a million-dollar mom-and-pop shop into a $600,000 pile of debt.

Paul and Rachelle Baron, owners of Beau & Belle Littles, told Bloomberg that Amazon is supposed to inspect returned items before reselling them. But the company failed to detect the poop stains before reselling a damaged item that triggered a one-star review in 2020 that the couple says doomed their business after more than 100 buyers flagged it as "helpful."

"The diaper arrived used and was covered in poop stains," the review said, urging readers to "see pics."
[...]
Amazon says that it prohibits negative reviews that violate community guidelines, including by focusing on seller, order, or shipping feedback rather than on the item's quality. Other one-star reviews for the same product that the Barons seemingly accept as valid comment on quality, leaving feedback like the diaper fitting too tightly or leaking.
[...]
But Amazon ultimately declined to remove the bad review, Paul Baron told Bloomberg. The buyer who left the review, a teacher named Erin Elizabeth Herbert, told Bloomberg that the Barons had reached out directly to explain what happened, but she forgot to update the review and still has not as of this writing.

"I always meant to go back and revise my review to reflect that, and life got busy and I never did," Herbert told Bloomberg.

Her review remains online, serving as a warning for parents to avoid buying from the family business.
[...]
On Amazon's site, other sellers have complained about the company's failure to remove reviews that clearly violate community guidelines. In one case, an Amazon support specialist named Danika acknowledged that the use of profanity in a review, for example, "seems particularly cut and dry as a violation," promising to escalate the complaint. However, Danika appeared to abandon the thread after that, with the user commenting that the review remained up after the escalation.

Arthur T Knackerbracket has processed the following story:

Opioids, like morphine, are effective painkillers but have led to widespread addiction and serious side effects like respiratory depression, notably seen in the U.S. opioid crisis that claimed nearly 645,000 lives from 1999 to 2021. Researchers at Johannes Gutenberg University Mainz have identified a potential alternative, aniquinazolin B, from the marine fungus Aspergillus nidulans, which binds to opioid receptors and could replace opioids with fewer undesirable effects, after rigorous testing including over 750,000 calculations per substance using the MOGON supercomputer.

Opioids, recognized for their significant pharmacological effects, have long been used as effective painkillers. Morphine, a notable example first isolated and synthesized in the early 19th century, provides crucial relief for patients in the final stages of severe illness.

However, when opioids are used inappropriately they can cause addiction and even the development of extremely serious undesirable effects, such as respiratory depression. In the USA, opioids were once widely promoted through the media and, as a consequence, were often prescribed to treat what were in fact mild disorders. According to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), there were nearly 645,000 cases of mortality due to opioid overdose in the United States between 1999 and 2021.

And the opioid crisis has arrived in Germany, too. The main problem is street drugs and the fact that the synthetic opioid heroin, in particular, is cut with other, cheaper opioids, such as fentanyl. While a dose of 200 milligrams of heroin is fatal, just two milligrams of fentanyl can kill. In 2022, more than 1,000 people in Germany died as a result of the consumption of opioids.

Governments have introduced measures to contain this epidemic. However, opioid addiction rates are high. Others suffer from extreme pain that needs to be alleviated. There is thus an urgent need for safe analgesics. Researchers at Johannes Gutenberg University Mainz (JGU) – with the financial support of the Research Training Group “Life Sciences – Life Writing”, funded by the German Research Foundation (DFG) – have now made progress towards this goal.

“A natural product called aniquinazolin B that is isolated from the marine fungus Aspergillus nidulans stimulates the opioid receptors and could possibly thus be used instead of opioids in the future,” explained Roxana Damiescu, a member of the research team headed by Professor Thomas Efferth.

Arthur T Knackerbracket has processed the following story:

North Korean nukes look like disco balls, olives, and peanuts, according to a group of scientists and researchers who study nuclear weapons. Newly released research puts the DPRK’s devastating stockpile of quirkily named nightmare machines at around 50. And it could get that number up to 130 by the end of the decade.

The world’s nuclear powers are cagey about the exact nature of their nukes. It’s a weapon you want everyone to know you have, but you don’t necessarily want them to know how many.

Enter the Federation of American Scientists [FAS], a U.S. nonprofit that attempts to use science to make the world a better place. One of its big projects is the Nuclear Notebook, a constantly updating list of the world’s nuclear weapons. Cataloging world-ending weapons is a challenge in countries like France and the U.S. which have certain amounts of transparency around their arsenals. In North Korea, it’s almost impossible. Almost.

North Korea was not always as closed as it is now. International officials did once visit the country and knowledge from those visits gave the FAS critical information that it used to suss out what, exactly, the DPRK is capable of. North Korea also does a lot of media events that create pictures and videos that help experts figure out the size of its arsenal. Kim Jong-un loves to pose with nukes and launchers in parades.

“Using these resources and other open sources, including commercial satellite imagery and publicly available reports from the [International Atomic Energy Agency] and the UN Panel of Experts on North Korea, analysts at independent organizations have been able to examine industry networks, locate key facilities, and map North Korea’s nuclear fuel cycle to generate estimates of fissile material stockpiles and production—all of which are key factors in assessing the size, sophistication, and status of North Korea’s nuclear arsenal today,” the FAS said in its latest nuclear notebook.

In its research, the FAS identified three kinds of North Korean warheads which it gave nicknames. There’s the disco ball, which the DPRK first showed off in 2016. Supposedly, this is a single-stage implosion nuke. Basically, it’s a big silver ball with a bit of nuclear material surrounded by high explosives. The implosion of the high explosives would trigger the nuclear explosion. This is similar to the nuclear device detonated at the Trinity site in Oppenheimer.

In 2017, Kim Jong Un posed with what the FAS dubbed the peanut. This is supposedly a two-stage thermonuclear device. A thermonuclear device consists of a series of nuclear explosions that feed off each other and generate a massive blast. FAS said in its report that the peanut might not be a thermonuclear weapon at all, however. This could be a device filled with tritium, which would improve the efficiency of a single-stage device.

In 2023, the DPRK unveiled photos of what the FAS called the olive. The small warhead appeared to be a single-stage nuke similar to the disco ball but designed to fit inside a variety of delivery systems. “North Korea’s display of different devices demonstrates an aspirational progression toward more sophisticated and efficient warhead design,” the FAS said in its research.

Arthur T Knackerbracket has processed the following story:

NASA and Boeing engineers are evaluating results from last week’s engine tests at NASA’s White Sands Test Facility in New Mexico as the team works through plans to return the agency’s Boeing Crew Flight Test from the International Space Station in the coming weeks.

Teams completed ground hot fire testing at White Sands and are working to evaluate the test data and inspect the test engine. The ongoing ground analysis is expected to continue throughout the week. Working with a reaction control system thruster built for a future Starliner spacecraft, ground teams fired the engine through similar inflight conditions the spacecraft experienced on the way to the space station. The ground tests also included stress-case firings, and replicated conditions Starliner’s thrusters will experience from undocking to deorbit burn, where the thrusters will fire to slow Starliner’s speed to bring it out of orbit for landing in the southwestern United States.

For a detailed overview of the test plans, listen to a replay of a recent media teleconference with NASA and Boeing leadership:

“I am extremely proud of the NASA, Boeing team for their hard work in executing a very complex test series,” said Steve Stich, manager, NASA’s Commercial Crew Program. “We collected an incredible amount of data on the thruster that could help us better understand what is going on in flight. Next, our team has moved into engine tear downs and inspections which will provide additional insight as we analyze the results and evaluate next steps.”

Integrated ground teams also are preparing for an in-depth Agency Flight Test Readiness Review, which will evaluate data related to the spacecraft’s propulsion system performance before its return to Earth. The date of the agency review has not yet been solidified.

NASA and Boeing leadership plan to discuss the testing and analysis work in detail during a media briefing next week. More information on the briefing will be made available soon.

Original Submission