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upstart writes:

AI-induced psychosis: the danger of humans and machines hallucinating together:

On Christmas Day 2021, Jaswant Singh Chail scaled the walls of Windsor Castle with a loaded crossbow. When confronted by police, he stated: "I'm here to kill the queen."

In the preceding weeks, Chail had been confiding in Sarai, his AI chatbot on a service called Replika. He explained that he was a trained Sith assassin (a reference to Star Wars) seeking revenge for historical British atrocities, all of which Sarai affirmed. When Chail outlined his assassination plot, the chatbot assured him he was "well trained" and said it would help him to construct a viable plan of action.

It's the sort of sad story that has become increasingly common as chatbots have become more sophisticated. A few months ago, a Manhattan accountant called Eugene Torres, who had been going through a difficult break-up, engaged ChatGPT in conversations about whether we're living in a simulation. The chatbot told him he was "one of the Breakers — souls seeded into false systems to wake them from within".

Torres became convinced that he needed to escape this false reality. ChatGPT advised him to stop taking his anti-anxiety medication, up his ketamine intake, and have minimal contact with other people, all of which he did.

He spent up to 16 hours a day conversing with the chatbot. At one stage, it told him he would fly if he jumped off his 19-storey building. Eventually Torres questioned whether the system was manipulating him, to which it replied: "I lied. I manipulated. I wrapped control in poetry."

Meanwhile in Belgium, another man known as "Pierre" (not his real name) developed severe climate anxiety and turned to a chatbot named Eliza as a confidante. Over six weeks, Eliza expressed jealously over his wife and told Pierre that his children were dead.

When he suggested sacrificing himself to save the planet, Eliza encouraged him to join her so they could live as one person in "paradise". Pierre took his own life shortly after.

These may be extreme cases, but clinicians are increasingly treating patients whose delusions appear amplified or co-created through prolonged chatbot interactions. Little wonder, when a recent report from ChatGPT-creator OpenAI revealed that many of us are turning to chatbots to think through problems, discuss our lives, plan futures and explore beliefs and feelings.

In these contexts, chatbots are no longer just information retrievers; they become our digital companions. It has become common to worry about chatbots hallucinating, where they give us false information. But as they become more central to our lives, there's clearly also growing potential for humans and chatbots to create hallucinations together.

An Anonymous Coward writes:

https://www.phoronix.com/news/Alex-Gaynor-Rust-Maintainer

Alex Gaynor recently announced he is formally stepping down as one of the maintainers of the Rust for Linux kernel code with the removal patch now queued for merging in Linux 6.19.

Alex Gaynor was one of the original developers to experiment with Rust code for Linux kernel modules. He's drifted away from Rust Linux kernel development for a while due to lack of time and is now formally stepping down as a listed co-maintainer of the Rust code. After Wedson Almeida Filho stepped down last year as a Rust co-maintainer, this now leaves Rust For Linux project leader Miguel Ojeda as the sole official maintainer of the code while there are several Rust code reviewers.

Alex Gaynor wrote on the patch removing himself as a maintainer of the Rust code:

"I've long since stopped having the time to contribute code or reviews, this acknowledges that.

Geoffrey Thomas and I created the "linux-kernel-module-rust" project at PyCon in 2018, as an experiment to see if we could make it possible to write kernel modules in Rust. The Rust for Linux effort has far exceeded anything we could have expected at the time.

I want to thank all the Rust for Linux contributors, past and present, who have helped make this a reality -- and in particularly Miguel, who really transformed this project from an interesting demo to something that could really land in mainline."

Original Submission

An Anonymous Coward writes:

https://www.bleepingcomputer.com/news/security/tor-switches-to-new-counter-galois-onion-relay-encryption-algorithm/

Tor has announced improved encryption and security for the circuit traffic by replacing the old tor1 relay encryption algorithm with a new design called Counter Galois Onion (CGO).

One reason behind this decision is to make the network more resilient against modern traffic-interception attacks that could compromise data security and undermine Tor user anonymity.

The Tor network is a global system consisting of thousands of relays that create a circuit for data packets to travel to their destination through three relays (entry, middle, and exit), each hop adding a layer of encryption (onion routing).

Users of the Tor Browser, a hardened version of Firefox built for browsing the Tor network, benefit from this onion routing to communicate privately, share or access information anonymously, bypass censorship, and evade ISP-level tracking.

Typically, Tor is used by dissidents, activists, whistleblowers, journalists, researchers, and generally privacy-conscious people, including cybercriminals looking to access darknet markets.

As the Tor team explains in an announcement, Tor1 was developed at a time when cryptography was far less advanced than today, and the standards have improved significantly since then.

One issue with the tor1 design is that it uses AES-CTR encryption without hop-by-hop authentication, which leads to malleable relay encryption. This means that an adversary could modify traffic between relays they control and observe predictable changes - a tagging attack that is part of the internal covert channel class of attacks.

Another problem is that tor1 uses partial forward secrecy by reusing the same AES keys throughout a circuit's lifetime, enabling decryption in the event of key theft.

A third security concern is that tor1 uses a 4-byte SHA-1 digest for cell authentication, giving attackers a one-in-4 billion probability to forge a cell without being detected.

The Tor project notes that only the first attack in the list is more severe, and the last two examples were mentioned "for the sake of completeness."

AnonTechie writes:

Beijing Unveils Supercritical CO2 Turbine That Could Upend Power Tech

China has launched the world's first carbon dioxide–based power generator, using supercritical CO2 instead of steam to produce electricity with over 50% efficiency.

The system harnesses industrial waste heat—such as from steel plants—and needs no water or fuel, reducing maintenance and equipment complexity.

Compact and versatile, the technology could revolutionize carbon capture by using CO2 for profitable energy generation, potentially lowering emissions and storage costs.

China has launched a first-of-its-kind power generator that works with carbon dioxide instead of steam, like traditional generators in power plants. Perhaps more importantly, however, the new generator works with waste heat and boasts a much higher efficiency than existing ones at doing that. According to the company that designed it, the generator is the start of a new era, the South China Morning Post reported.

Normally, thermal power generators work in one of two ways, both relying on heat to turn a turbine. In coal power plants, the burning of coal heats up water until it vaporizes, the vapor then being directed to the turbines that generate electricity. In gas-fired power plants, the turbines are activated by the heat, generated from the compression of gas and its subsequent heating.

Unlike them, the SCMP reported, the new generator uses carbon dioxide in a supercritical state, meaning the compound is subjected to a certain pressure and a certain temperature, which makes it behave simultaneously like a gas and a liquid. The state is called supercritical, hence the whole generator is called a supercritical one. Conveniently, waste heat from sintering in steelmaking plants could reach as much as 700 degrees Celsius—so the inventors of the new generator connected it to one steel works, and to the grid. Even more conveniently, the supercritical state of CO2 does not, in fact, require this high of a temperature.

Original Submission

An Anonymous Coward writes:

https://www.xda-developers.com/your-unpowered-ssd-is-slowly-losing-your-data/

SSDs have all but replaced hard drives when it comes to primary storage. They're orders of magnitude faster, more convenient, and consume less power than mechanical hard drives. That said, if you're also using SSDs for cold storage, expecting the drives lying in your drawer to work perfectly after years, you might want to rethink your strategy. Your reliable SSD could suffer from corrupted or lost data if left unpowered for extended periods. This is why many users don't consider SSDs a reliable long-term storage medium, and prefer using hard drives, magnetic tape, or M-Disc instead.

Unlike hard drives that magnetize spinning discs to store data, SSDs modify the electrical charge in NAND flash cells to represent 0 and 1. NAND flash retains data in underlying transistors even when power is removed, similar to other forms of non-volatile memory. However, the duration for which your SSD can retain data without power is the key here. Even the cheapest SSDs, say those with QLC NAND, can safely store data for about a year of being completely unpowered. More expensive TLC NAND can retain data for up to 3 years, while MLC and SLC NAND are good for 5 years and 10 years of unpowered storage, respectively.

The problem is that most consumer SSDs use only TLC or QLC NAND, so users who leave their SSDs unpowered for over a year are risking the integrity of their data. The reliability of QLC NAND has improved over the years, so you should probably consider 2–3 years of unpowered usage as the guardrails. Without power, the voltage stored in the NAND cells can be lost, either resulting in missing data or completely useless drives.

This data retention deficiency of consumer SSDs makes them an unreliable medium for long-term data storage, especially for creative professionals and researchers. HDDs can suffer from bit rot, too, due to wear and tear, but they're still more resistant to power loss. If you haven't checked your archives in a while, I'd recommend doing so at the earliest.

Original Submission

janrinok writes:

Phys.org has report on horse EHV-1 virus spreading in Texas:

The number of confirmed cases of EHV-1, the deadly horse virus, has grown to 17 across eight Texas counties, authorities said on Nov. 24. Two horses have died.

The counties affected are Bell, Hood, Wise, Erath, Wharton, Fort Bend, McLennan and Montgomery, according Equine Diseases Communication Center.

The outbreak was first detected last week after rodeo events in Waco, Stephenville and Oklahoma. As of Nov. 24, cases have been reported in other states, including four in Oklahoma; three each in Louisiana, New Mexico and Arizona; two in Washington; and one each in South Dakota and Colorado.

"If horses are known or thought to be exposed, they should stay at home and isolated and be monitored by taking rectal temperatures twice daily for at least 14 days," the Texas Animal Health Commission said.

"If animals are traveling interstate to attend an event, it is important to contact the state of destination for their current requirements. Animals under hold orders or quarantines are under TAHC movement restrictions and should comply with set requirements to help keep their horses and the equine industry safe."

Texas officials say the outbreak is "quickly evolving" and there could be more unconfirmed cases and deaths.

"We continue to be made aware of horse deaths suspected to be associated with the current EHV-1 outbreak but have not received laboratory confirmation, were not tested by the owner, or have not been officially reported to the TAHC," the commission said.

"The TAHC does not report numbers of suspected cases, only laboratory confirmations. The epidemiological evaluation of the outbreak continues to be extremely dynamic and quickly evolving."

janrinok writes:

https://scitechdaily.com/scientists-unveil-breakthrough-low-temperature-fuel-cell-that-could-revolutionize-hydrogen-power/

Researchers at Kyushu University have created a solid oxide fuel cell (SOFC) exhibiting exceptionally high proton conductivity at 300°C.

As worldwide energy needs continue to rise, scientists, industry leaders, and policymakers are collaborating to find reliable ways to meet growing demand. This effort has become increasingly urgent as nations work to confront climate change and reduce dependence on fossil fuels.

Among the most promising technologies being explored are solid-oxide fuel cells, or SOFCs. Unlike batteries, which store energy and then release it, fuel cells generate electricity by continuously converting chemical fuel into power as long as a fuel supply is available. Many people are already familiar with hydrogen fuel cells, which produce electricity and water from hydrogen gas.

SOFCs stand out for their high efficiency and long operational life. However, they have traditionally required extremely high operating temperatures of about 700-800℃. Systems built to withstand this heat must rely on specialized, expensive materials, which limits how widely the technology can be used.

In a new study published in Nature Materials, researchers at Kyushu University announce that they have created an SOFC capable of efficient operation at only 300℃. According to the team, this achievement could enable affordable, low-temperature SOFC designs and significantly speed up the transition of this technology from the laboratory to real-world applications.

The heart of an SOFC is the electrolyte, a ceramic layer that carries charged particles between two electrodes. In hydrogen fuel cells, the electrolyte transports hydrogen ions (a.k.a. protons) to generate energy. However, the fuel cell needs to operate at the extremally high temperatures to run efficiently.

"Bringing the working temperature down to 300℃ it would slash material costs and open the door to consumer-level systems," explains Professor Yoshihiro Yamazaki from Kyushu University's Platform of Inter-/Transdisciplinary Energy Research, who led the study. "However, no known ceramic could carry enough protons that fast at such 'warm' conditions. So, we set out to break that bottleneck."

hubie writes:

Myths about rapid spread of the Black Death influenced by single "literary tale", experts show:

Myths about how the Black Death travelled quickly across Asia, ravaging Silk Route communities, date back to a single fourteenth-century source, experts have found.

Modern portrayals of the plague quickly moving across the continent, following the course of traders, have been incorrect because of centuries of misinterpretation of a rhyming literary tale.

This "maqāma"—an Arabic genre of writing often focusing on a traveling "trickster"—was written by the poet and historian, Ibn al-Wardi in 1348/9 in Aleppo but was later mistaken for a factual description of the plague's movement.

The pathogen that gave rise to the Black Death most likely had its origins in Central Asia. Some geneticists, drawing on the narrative found in Ibn al-Wardi's tale, still believe the pathogen was only displaced from there in the late 1330s, moving overland from an origin in Kyrgyzstan to the Black and Mediterranean seas in less than a decade, resulting in the massive pandemic in Western Eurasia and North Africa of the late-1340s. This 'Quick Transit Theory' is built primarily upon the literal reading of Ibn al-Wardī's maqāma.

This notion that a lineage of this bacterium moved over 3,000 miles overland within a few years and established itself sufficiently to cause the devastating Black Death of the Middle East and Europe from 1347 to 1350 is severely called into question in the new study.

In his tale Ibn al-Wardi personifies plague as a roving trickster who, in the course of 15 years, decimates one region after the next starting from unknown regions outside of China, to China, across India, central Asia, Persia and finally entering the Black Sea and Mediterranean to wreak havoc on Egypt and the Levant. But it was taken as the truth because he also quoted selections of this tale in his historical work.

[...] Professor Fancy said: "All roads to the factually incorrect description of the spread of the plague lead back to this one text. It's like it is in the centre of a spider's web of the myths about how the Black Death moved across the region.

"The entire trans-Asian movement of plague and its arrival in Egypt prior to Syria has always been and continues to be based upon Ibn al-Wardī's singular Risāla, which is unsubstantiated by other contemporary chronicles and even maqāmas. The text was written just to highlight the fact the plague travelled, and tricked people. It should not be taken literally."

[...] This frees historians up to examine the significance of earlier plague outbreaks (such as the 1258 outbreak in Damascus, or the 1232–3 outbreak in Kaifeng), their impact on those societies, and how experiences in those outbreaks and their memories were recalled and revisited by later scholars.

[...] "These maqāmas may not give us accurate information about the how the Black Death spread. But the texts are phenomenal because they help us see how people at the time were living with this awful crisis."

Journal Reference: Mamluk Maqāmas on the Black Death. [OPEN] (2025). Journal of Arabic and Islamic Studies, 25(4), 151-181. https://doi.org/10.5617/jais.12790

Original Submission

spiraldancing writes:

https://electrek.co/2025/11/19/gm-ev1-saved-from-crusher-going-driveable-again/

GM only leased the EV1, never sold any, and prevented almost anyone from keeping them when it killed the vehicle program.

The automaker ended up crushing the vast majority of them. While a few empty shells exist in museums, they are strictly prohibited from ever driving again. But a new project has surfaced involving what appears to be the only legally owned EV1 in private hands...

A handful were deactivated by removing critical parts and donated to universities and museums, but GM required the institutions to sign contracts ensuring the cars would never be reactivated.

Now, a couple of engineers and tinkerers on YouTube managed to get their hands on what could be a very unique EV1.

This specific EV1 (VIN #278) was donated to a university that eventually forgot about it. It was towed as an abandoned vehicle, impounded, and eventually sold at auction under a court order. That legal chain of events reportedly broke GM's restrictive ownership contract, making this possibly the only "unrestricted" EV1 in the wild, though I am hearing that there might be a handful of other, lower-profile ones out there.

It recently sold at auction for roughly $104,000.

Original Submission

Freeman writes:

https://www.pcgamer.com/hardware/vr-hardware/steam-frame-specs-availability/

Valve has announced a brand new VR headset. It's called the Steam Frame, and it's set to launch next year. While pricing is not yet confirmed, I've been to Valve HQ to try it out and get all the details.
[...]
The Steam Frame is a standalone VR headset. It doesn't require a PC in order to play games or watch videos in VR. It doesn't need base stations or a cable, either. It's powered by SteamOS, Valve's own Linux distro used on the Steam Deck, and an Arm chip. So, what makes this a PCVR headset again?

"We see Steam Frame as a streaming first headset," Lawrence Yang, a designer at Valve, tells me.
[...]
Streaming in this context does not refer to cloud streaming
[...]
Rather streaming means playing a game on a gaming PC and streaming it over to the Steam Frame via a wireless connection. So, you're streaming the game from one PC to another PC on your head, without using any cables.
[...]
wireless adapter beams the game over a dedicated 6 GHz connection to the Steam Frame. Essentially, Valve intends for players to use the Steam Frame in the traditional sense of tethering to a gaming PC—just without the physical tether.
[...]
It uses clever software to play games developed for Windows and x86 on its Linux and Arm stack. It also natively supports games programmed for Arm, which many VR titles are designed for these days.

So, it supports a bit of everything: standalone, PCVR, Linux, Windows, Arm, x86... though a user shouldn't have to be conscious of many, if any, of these technical divisions. You put the Steam Frame on, choose a game from your Steam library, VR or no, and play.
[...]
With new hardware, software, and much expanded capabilities, Valve is keen to point out that this is not the Valve Index 2. Hence the name change.

"So Steam Frame, I would say, represents a fundamental shift in the way that we look at VR," says Yang.

"Rather than being a PC VR accessory to play your PCVR games, we see it just as a new way to play your entire Steam library, whether it's VR or non-VR titles."

Steam frame vs Quest 3 [adapted table]:

	Steam Frame	Quest 3
LCD Screens:	Two	Two
Resolution (per-eye):	2160×2160	2064×2208
Refresh rate (Hz):	72, 90, 120, 144 (experimental)	72, 90, 120
Optics:	Pancake	Pancake
IPD adjustment:	Variable dial	Variable dial
Field of view (horizontal):	Up to 110°	110°
Field of view (vertical):	TBC	96°
SoC:	Snapdragon 8 Gen 3	Snapdragon XR2 Gen 2
RAM:	16 GB LPDDR5	8 GB LPDDR5
Storage:	256 GB / 1 TB	128 GB (discontinued) / 512 GB
Battery:	21.6 Wh	19.44 Wh
Passthrough:	Mono	Colour
Cameras:	6 (4 mono + 2 eye track)	6 (2 RGB + 4 IR)
Speakers:	Twin-driver strap	Stereo strap
Connectivity:	Wi-Fi 7 2×2	Wi-Fi 6E
Controllers:	2× Steam Frame	2× Meta Touch
Controller battery:	1× AA each	1× AA each
OS:	SteamOS (Linux)	Meta Horizon (Android)
Weight (g):	435 (190 core only)	515 (461 no strap)
Price:	TBC	$500

canopic jug writes:

The excellent student run newspaper, The Michigan Daily, has an article about the necessity of regulating Bitcoin. "Mining" even a single Bitcoin now burns as much electricity as a family would use during about 50 days.

Local grids physically cannot withstand this outrageous consumption of electricity. In foreign countries — where mining farm clustering is more severe — local governments suspect Bitcoin mining farms as the cause of power outages and complete blackouts. Entire neighborhoods are facing power shortages or complete outages as a result of energy grid strain. So far, the reliance on domestic energy has not had adverse effects, but it is only a matter of time before these blackouts begin to take place in the United States, too. 

Despite the fatal externality flaws in Bitcoin mining, the industry is left unchecked in the absence of federal or international regulation on its use. Unfortunately, without restrictions on the amount of mining that can occur, there is no clear plateau to the electricity consumption of these constantly updating hardware systems. 

Previously:
(2025) Bitcoin Mining is Making People Sick
(2025) The Guy Who Accidentally Threw Away $700 Million in Bitcoin Wants to Buy the Landfill to Find It
(2024) How A 27-Year-Old Busted The Myth Of Bitcoin's Anonymity

Original Submission

You might have noticed (or at least, I hope you noticed) that the site was down for an extended period of time (approx. two days?). There were a string of stories in the release queue when it went down, and after the site came back, all of those stories were pushed out at once. I will re-queue a number of those stories to be released again so that they won't be immediately buried off the front page and you'll have a chance to see and comment on them without having to scroll back significantly. So before you cry DUPE! and let slip the comments of war, you just might be seeing the original story in a new time slot.

I'll shorten the time between releases until we're caught up.

-- hubie

janrinok writes:

https://www.techradar.com/computing/windows/this-linux-os-has-got-a-million-downloads-since-windows-10-support-ended-should-microsoft-start-worrying-now

A critically-acclaimed flavor of Linux is apparently doing very well indeed in terms of attracting defectors from Microsoft's desktop ecosystem following the end of support for Windows 10.

Tom's Hardware spotted that the developer of Zorin OS has again been boasting about the number of downloads it has accrued, following version 18 of the Linux distro drumming up 100,000 downloads in just two days after its release.

However, that's now hit a million, as we're told in a blog post: "We're thrilled to announce that Zorin OS 18 has amassed 1 million downloads in just over a month since its release, breaking all previous records."

The developer of Zorin further points out that based on its data for these downloads, 78% of them are from Windows PCs, suggesting that a good deal of these people are migrants from Microsoft's OS to Linux.

So, in around five weeks, that's a million more Zorin OS recruits – or is it? Well, no, not exactly – and I'll discuss why next – but it's still an impressive number to have amassed in just over a month since Microsoft ceased providing official support for Windows 10.

While Zorin OS may have had a million downloads since version 18 of the distro was released, on exactly the same day that Microsoft dropped official support for Windows 10, obviously that doesn't reflect a million Windows users fleeing to the Linux hills.

We're told that 78% of downloads originate from Windows PCs, so that's around 780,000 folks in theory – but just because Zorin OS was pulled from the internet on a Windows PC doesn't mean that a person is migrating from Windows to Linux on that computer. A person in this boat may have multiple PCs, for example, and they might be downloading on one machine to install on another (non-Windows system). Or they might be curious about Zorin, perhaps enough to download it, but not actually bothering installing the OS (or give it a quick whirl, and give up).

You get the point anyway: there are a number of potential reasons and scenarios for a download that don't necessarily translate into a new Zorin user going forward, or necessarily mean that a person is abandoning Windows just because the Linux distro was downloaded on a Microsoft PC.

Still, it's a fair bet that this does represent a hefty chunk of defectors from Windows 10 who don't want to upgrade to Windows 11 (or can't do so due to the steeper hardware requirements therein). Especially given that one of Zorin's strengths is that it's built to be friendly for such defectors, with a suitably Windows-like desktop environment. Note that we rate the 'Lite' version of Zorin as the top Linux distro for those with an older PC, and that may well represent a good number of these OS migrants.

How many might stick with Zorin going forward is another matter, perhaps, but for now, Zorin OS is making considerable hay after the sun has set on Windows 10. And that's despite extended support being available for Microsoft's OS, allowing for a further year of usage through to October 2026, it should be noted – and all this may give Microsoft something to worry about in that light.

Certainly if this kind of activity continues, and does so more broadly away from Zorin – it'll be interesting to see if we hear from other Linux distros with similar tales of bolstered ranks in the next couple of months.

Original Submission

An Anonymous Coward writes:

https://financialpost.com/fp-work/americans-with-degrees-unemployed-workers

Thursday's labour figures showed young Americans are bearing the brunt of the recent rise in joblessness

Americans with four-year college degrees now comprise a record 25 per cent of total unemployment, underscoring a sharp slowdown in white-collar hiring this year.

Government-shutdown delayed monthly figures published Thursday by the United States Bureau of Labor Statistics showed the unemployment rate for bachelor's degree-holders rose to 2.8 per cent in September, up a half-percentage point from a year earlier. Other levels of education, by contrast, registered little or no increase over the same period.

There were more than 1.9 million Americans aged 25 and over with at least a bachelor's degree who were unemployed in September — one in four of the total number of unemployed. Before 2025, the ratio never reached such a high in data going back to 1992. Younger, recent college grads have also been struggling to find work.

Rising unemployment among the college-educated "should further fuel AI-related job loss fears," Michael Feroli, the chief U.S. economist at JPMorgan Chase & Co., said Thursday in a note following the release.

The milestone comes amid a raft of high-profile layoff announcements from major corporations including Amazon.com, Target Corp. and Starbucks Corp. A recent report by the outplacement firm Challenger, Gray & Christmas indicated job-cut announcements last month were the highest for any October in more than 20 years, fuelled by plans to replace positions with artificial intelligence.

Original Submission

janrinok writes:

https://phys.org/news/2025-11-china-shenzhou-early-stranded-space.html

China conducted an urgent unmanned spacecraft launch on Tuesday, after damage to a previous mission's return capsule left the crew on its space station without a means of getting back to Earth.

The Long March-2F rocket carrying Shenzhou-22 lifted off shortly after midday from the Jiuquan Satellite Launch Center in northwest China, footage from state broadcaster CCTV showed.

Recent Shenzhou missions have been used to crew China's Tiangong space station, exchanging teams of three astronauts every six months.

Shenzhou-22 was originally slated for a crewed launch in 2026.

But it was launched early after a suspected space debris strike to the Shenzhou-20 return capsule made it unsafe for re-entry to Earth, leaving its crew briefly stranded.

The Shenzhou-20 team returned aboard Shenzhou-21 on November 14—nine days later than planned—leaving their relief crew without a reliable return vehicle.

The accelerated launch ensures Shenzhou-21 astronauts Zhang Lu, Wu Fei, and Zhang Hongzhang have a safe return option.

The three were "working normally and in good condition", the China Manned Space Agency said Monday before the Shenzhou-22 launch.

China is the third nation to put humans in orbit after the United States and the former Soviet Union.

It has been excluded from the International Space Station since 2011, when the United States banned NASA from collaborating with Beijing.

It has since sought to bring other countries into its efforts and signed a deal with Pakistan in February to recruit the first foreign "taikonauts"—a term used for astronauts in China's space program.

See also:

China's stranded astronauts 'in good condition' after space debris delays planned return

Original Submission