September 2026
All columns and Brief analyses.
10 results
Link falls back to Earth after missing Swift
Katalyst's three-armed spacecraft Link reentered on Friday, closing a 30 million dollar NASA attempt to raise the 22-year-old Swift observatory. Link had closed to 12 to 15 km and taken pictures before the rescue was dropped for lack of fuel. Swift itself may reenter in November.
More than 100 screws still go into each Optimus hand by hand
Tesla built several hundred Optimus robots a week last month, against a stated goal of 20,000 a week. On the V3 machines a worker still fits more than 100 screws into each hand and forearm. The robots stay inside Tesla for now, and the company plans to lease them before any customer deployment.
NASA assigns Crew-14, with launch no earlier than spring 2027
NASA assigned Kayla Barron as commander, Chris Birch as pilot, JAXA astronaut Makoto Suwa and Roscosmos cosmonaut Arutyun Kiviryan to Crew-14. It is the 14th commercial crew rotation NASA flies with SpaceX. The agency's schedule puts launch no earlier than spring 2027. After docking, the four join the station's Expedition 75/76 crew. Barron is the one making a second station flight. TeslaNorth's report names the same commander, the same cosmonaut and the same spring window.
NATO's top commander widens intelligence sharing and hedges the American troop count
Alexus Grynkewich said NATO is sharing more intelligence on the Russian threat and that no figure is fixed for how many American troops stay in Europe. He cited a drone attempt at Leipzig/Halle and flares from a Russian ship toward a Danish helicopter. Moscow denies hybrid attacks. The account is one Straits Times report of a Reuters interview.
New Surface PCs meet the old Copilot+ bar and leave the name unused
Microsoft is not calling its new Surface PCs Copilot+ PCs, Windows Central and The Verge reported, even though the machines still meet the previous bar. Windows Central quotes Surface vice president Brett Ostrum. The Verge, citing that interview, spells the name Brett Ostrom and names the 12-inch Surface Pro and 13-inch Surface Laptop. Qualcomm's Kedar Kondap told Windows Central that one example of the old bar was a 45 TOPS NPU and that the same experiences no longer need the name.
New U.S. unemployment filings eased to 197,000
Seasonally adjusted new filings were 197,000 in the week that ended 19 September, down 1,000. The prior week now reads 198,000 after a 2,000 upward revision. Across four weeks the mean moved down by 1,750 and the printed level is 202,250. A week earlier the insured-unemployment rate was still 1.1 percent.
New York sues Polymarket US as the company files its own federal case
Attorney General Letitia James and Governor Kathy Hochul sued Polymarket US on 24 September as an unlicensed gambling business. They want it stopped, with gains forfeited and users repaid. CNBC reported that Polymarket filed its own federal case against the state the same day. The release also says the service opened in December 2025 and that people under 21 can reach it. The requested result is a stop order, fines, forfeiture, and restitution.
One laboratory electrolysis stack kept splitting steam for 25,000 hours
Seventy solid-oxide cells, tested as one stack, ran on steam for 25,000 hours. After conditioning, the voltage loss across 22,000 of those hours was 0.05 percent per 1,000 hours, or 0.65 millivolts per cell in that same span. The authors call the run the longest and least degraded full stack they know. It is one laboratory stack.
Oracle sent a force majeure notice on the Project Jupiter data center
Gizmodo, citing Bloomberg, reports that Oracle sent a force majeure notice on Project Jupiter. CNA reported that the notice went to a Blue Owl unit developing a large New Mexico data center, citing delays in securing power. The site is planned at 2.45 GW, with a target of coming online in 2028. The notice covers obligations on that planned site.
Paramount launched a 7.5 billion dollar loan syndication for the Warner merger
Variety reported that Paramount Skydance launched a 7.5 billion dollar secured term-loan syndication on 24 September for the Warner Bros. Discovery merger. Deadline reported that the same syndication opened to finance the Warner deal. The company said it plans about 44.4 billion dollars of additional secured debt on top of financings already announced. Variety reported the merger price as 111 billion dollars.