The five-year mission will attempt to land a robotic prospector plus a rover on Phobos, the larger and closer of Mars’ two pint-sized moons.
Oct 19, 2026
The Department of Homeland Security (DHS) has ordered that products from the Chinese AI startup DeepSeek be removed from federal agency IT systems and barred from government contracting. The order, which initially went out in July, was published on the Federal Register website Monday. It said DeepSeek’s AI models present “multiple threat vectors,” noting the...
Facebook's parent company Meta apologized Sunday for suspending the "No Kings" Instagram account, saying the suspension was caused by a high increase in traffic by bots. Meta spokesperson Andy Stone wrote in a statement that the company's engineering team found the "spike that triggered the incorrect enforcement was primarily in the account’s 'reading' behavior" attributed...
The artificial intelligence firm Anthropic announced it will commit 5 percent of its shares to its new public benefit fund as the industry faces heat over its potential impact on society and the labor market. Anthropic, in a blog post Sunday, said the Anthropic Public Benefit Fund will help the company pursue it's "mission in...
Tech mogul Elon Musk said Monday he will give every child in the U.S. one share of SpaceX next year. “This will be the first of many,” Musk wrote in a post on the social platform X, which he also owns and is technically part of SpaceX. He did not specify how he plans to...
Oct 18, 2026
Rep. Mike Turner (R-Ohio) called for an investigation into Ukrainian forces losing access to a military version of Starlink temporarily last week. Appearing on CBS News’s “Face the Nation” on Sunday, Turner was asked if Secretary of State Marco Rubio saying the outage “sort of happened” was sufficient explanation for lawmakers on the House Armed...
Comedian and satirist Nathan Fielder’s documentary about Elizabeth Holmes drew 2,000 sold-out shows in its limited release across the United States. The documentary – called “You Can See Everything” – was released on 855 screens over the weekend, with sold-out shows showing the nearly three-hour film that was expected to focus on Holmes’s life before...
Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent said Sunday that Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky “should be careful” with “reckless” comments about the U.S. slowing down Starlink. “President Trump and Secretary [of State Marco] Rubio have categorically said that no one in the Trump administration did that. And I think it is very reckless for President Zelensky to make...
Oct 17, 2026
Sen. Marsha Blackburn (R-Tenn.) is defending herself after coming under fire for sharing a video — which seemed to be AI-generated — in which she appeared in the place of rapper Kendrick Lamar during his 2025 Super Bowl LIX halftime show performance. In a clip Fox 13 Memphis's Rob Sneed posted to Instagram Friday, the...
Oct 16, 2026
{beacon} Technology Technology The Big Story GOP senators press Pentagon over Starlink restrictions in Ukraine Four Republican senators joined their Democratic colleagues in pressing the Trump administration for information about whether Pentagon officials ordered restrictions on Ukraine’s access to the satellite-based Starshield network. © Tom Brenner, Associated Press Ukraine needs access to fast Starshield data...
The Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) said Friday it is restricting unauthorized drones along the U.S.-Mexico border. This move comes as the government ramps up efforts to address concerns about illegal drug shipments across the border, Reuters reported Friday. It is a temporary flight restriction that bars any unauthorized drone activity up to 400 feet above...
President Trump claimed on Friday that neither he nor SpaceX founder Elon Musk caused Ukraine’s Starlink outage earlier this week as the president clashed with Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky over resumed strikes on Russian oil refineries. “I didn’t do that. No, we didn’t do that at all. In fact, I don’t even think it was...
Tech mogul Elon Musk agreed to settle two lawsuits over his $1 million check handouts to battleground voters in the 2024 election, according to court filings published Thursday. The suits, filed in the Western District of Texas, accused the Tesla and SpaceX CEO of defrauding voters when his America PAC offered a $1 million giveaway...