New Rejects

20/08/2022

Stars in the new images from the James Webb Space Telescope look sharper than they did before. And I’m not just talking about the image quality, which is astounding. I’m talking about the fact that many of the bright stars in the images have very distinct Christmas-ornament-looking spikes or, as one of my colleagues put it, “It looks like a J.J. Abrams promo poster, and I love it.”

Trying to distinguish between a Hubble and JWST image? Look at the stars.

18/08/2022

NASA is aiming to launch its new monster rocket, the Space Launch System, on its first trip to deep space as early as late August, the agency announced today. NASA says it has placeholder dates for August 29th, September 2nd, and September 5th for the rocket’s debut, though there is still plenty of work left to do on the vehicle between now and then.

The Space Launch System, or SLS, is a major component of NASA’s Artemis program, the agency’s initiative to send humans back to the Moon. Designed to carry NASA’s Orion crew capsule into deep space, the rocket is slated to perform a series of missions over the next few years that should eventually culminate with astronauts landing on the lunar surface again. But first, NASA wants to see it fly without a crew on board, sending an empty Orion capsule around the Moon.

The timeline could still certainly shift in the coming weeks.

16/08/2022

The Wentian module contains equipment that allows the Chinese astronauts, also known as taikonauts, to perform various scientific experiments during their time on the station. As noted by The New York Times, the additional module will also provide three extra spaces to sleep, as well as another airlock that crewmembers can use to conduct spacewalks.

China launched the lab module aboard a Long March 5B rocket.

14/08/2022

“Vladimir Vladimirovich, you know that we are working within the framework of international cooperation at the International Space Station,” Borisov said, according to a translated report from TASS. “Of course, we will fulfill all our obligations to our partners, but the decision [on] leaving this station after 2024 [has] been made.”

Exactly when that will happen is unclear.

12/08/2022

Satellite companies OneWeb and Eutelsat have agreed to a $3.4 billion merger to create a player in global internet connections that competes with SpaceX’s Starlink and Amazon’s Kuiper. Combined, the two companies say they will tie together low Earth orbit satellites that offer faster connections with less lag and geostationary satellites that have more capacity and cover wider areas, with OneWeb continuing to operate as its own brand under Eutelsat.

10/08/2022

Sometime this weekend, a massive booster from a Chinese rocket will begin an uncontrolled fall back to Earth from space — and because of its considerable size and weight, parts of it may survive the descent through our planet’s atmosphere and hit the ground. The chances of the rocket hitting anyone and killing them are exceedingly rare, but a similar falling Chinese rocket last year sparked major concern worldwide, which means this rocket will probably do the same.

The risk to any one person is exceedingly low

08/08/2022

The US Space Command confirmed the rocket’s reentry at 12:45PM ET, but it remains unclear where its debris landed. In a translated post on Weibo, China’s Manned Space Agency said the rocket reentered near the same area, and that most of it burned up on its way down.

UNCERTAINTY ABOUT WHERE THE ROCKET WOULD LAND RIPPLED ACROSS THE GLOBE
On July 24th, China used a Long March 5B rocket to launch a lab module to its unfinished Tiangong space station. Unlike most rockets, the Long March 5B thrusts its first stage into orbit when delivering its payload. This piece, which is over 100-feet-long and weighs over 22 tons, orbits the Earth for a bit until it comes crashing down to Earth, with no way to control its movement.

Debris from China’s rocket might’ve landed near Borneo.

26/07/2022

DespiteDespite all of the mystery that Men, writer / director Alex Garland’s new folk horror for A24, has been shrouded in, the movie’s story about a haunted woman trying to find peace in a world full of leering, lecherous men is a surprisingly straightforward one. Men is often arresting in its brutality as it spins a stomach-turning tale about the multifaceted monster that misogyny truly is. But Men struggles to keep its messages and all their headiness in focus largely because of its frustrating obsession with making you question just how much of its otherworldliness is real.

Men tells the story of Harper Marlowe (Jessie Buckley), a young widow who takes off to the English countryside for a solitary retreat following her husband James’ (Paapa Essiedu) unexpected and grisly death by su***de. Men doesn’t reveal much about either Harper or James as individual people or what first brought them together as a couple, but through flashbacks, the movie details the toxic mix of abuse and emotional manipulation that ultimately led to the end of their marriage. Though Harper knows that leaving James was the right decision and that James’ su***de was not her fault, she can’t help but feel partially responsible and psychologically trapped by the traumatic circumstances of his death.

Director Alex Garland’s Men will leave you shaken.

25/07/2022

Deadline reports that Christopher Walken has signed on to Dune: Part II to portray the Padishah Emperor Shaddam IV who is initially responsible for sending Paul Atreides’ father Leto to the planet Arrakis. In Herbert’s novel, House Harkonnen and the emperor are both shocked when they learn of the Fremen’s continued resistance on Arrakis following an attempt at eliminating House Atreides. Considering how Dune: Part II is meant to cover elements from the book that the first film didn’t get around to, the emperor’s not going to be the only interesting new part of the story. But he’ll definitely be one of the most important parts when Dune: Part II hits theaters on October 20th, 2023.

FEATURED VIDEOS FROM THE VERGE
All-new MacBook Air with M2 hands-on

Apple announced a fully redesigned MacBook Air with an M2 processor. The display is now larger at 13.6 inches and gets closer to the edge of the lid because the new 1080p camera has been hidden in a notch. It features two thunderbolt ports, a headphone jack, and a MagSafe charging port. The M2 MacBook Air will be available in July 2022, starting at $1,199.

Christopher Walken will fight Timothée Chalamet in Dune 2.

24/07/2022

Over the course of Geeked Week’s five days, Netflix is set to spotlight more than 60 different projects currently in development, including The Umbrella Academy’s third season, Stranger Things 4, Resident Evil, and Cyberpunk: Edgerunners. In addition to those series, the new trailer for Geeked Week features quite a few new glimpses of Netflix’s live-action adaptation of Neil Gaiman’s The Sandman starring Tom Sturridge as Dream and Gwendoline Christie as Lucifer. Because Netflix has so much planned for Geeked Week, the streamer’s smartly choosing to dedicate each day of the event to different kinds of content: episodic series, followed by film, animation, an entire day dedicated to Stranger Things, and finally, a look at some of Netflix’s upcoming games.

A new trailer for Netflix’s Geeked Week ‘22 shows us a new side of The Sandman.

23/07/2022

Three Thousand Years of Longing — an epic fantasy based on novelist A.S. Byatt’s short story “The Djinn in the Nightingale’s Eye” — tells the story of Dr. Alithea Binnie (Tilda Swinton), a solitary mythography scholar who’s almost entirely thrown herself into her work. The movie’s new trailer finds Alithea on her way to Istanbul both for a conference and a bit of shopping at a bazaar where she just so happens to purchase the bottle containing a djinn (Idris Elba). Being the expert of myths and legends that she is, Alithea knows that taking the djinn up on his offer of three wishes is a surefire way to inadvertently end up ruining her life, and so she instead implores the djinn to tell her about the people he’s granted wishes for in the past.

George Miller’s new film is based on A.S. Byatt’s The Djinn in the Nightingale’s Eye.

22/07/2022

In both the Mark Greaney book, The Gray Man, and Netflix’s forthcoming movie adaptation by the Russo Brothers, one of the CIA’s most highly-trained and valuable agents becomes its number one target after he unearths a dark truth about the agency. The Gray Man’s first trailer introduces you to Court Gentry (Ryan Gosling) as he fights to stay alive with one of the world’s largest bounties looming over his head and a mustachioed psychopath hot on his heels.

Though Lloyd Hansen (Chris Evans) and Gentry were once technically colleagues, the two men find themselves at odds in The Gray Man’s first trailer as Hansen’s tapped to lead the worldwide hunt for Gentry’s head. Gentry’s able to hold his own against Hansen to a point, but his survival seems to hinge on the support people like Dani Miranda (Ana de Armas) are willing to give him. That being said, Hansen isn’t the only professional killer hunting for Gentry, and being in a constant state of motion is seemingly going to be the key to his survival.

Netflix’s The Gray Man finds Ryan Gosling on the run in first trailer