SpaceX will soon send the Polaris Dawn crew off to attempt the first commercial spacewalk

Polaris Dawn, a private space mission that aims to complete the first-ever civilian spacewalk, is expected to launch this week. On X, SpaceX said it’s targeting Tuesday August 27 at 3:38AM ET for liftoff of the Falcon 9 rocket that will carry the Polaris Dawn crew to orbit. Led by billionaire Jared Isaacman, Polaris Dawn plans to send its crew of four private citizens as far as 870 miles from Earth — farther than any human has traveled since the Apollo program. The spacewalk, in which two of the crew members will step outside the SpaceX Dragon capsule, will take place at an altitude of 435 miles above Earth.

The Polaris Dawn crew includes Isaacman, CEO of Shift4, as commander, retired Air Force Lieutenant Colonel Scott “Kidd” Poteet as its pilot, and SpaceX engineers Sarah Gillis and Anna Menon as mission specialists. Menon will also serve as the medical officer. The mission is expected to last about five days. 

Polaris Dawn and SpaceX completed a full rehearsal of launch day activities ahead of liftoff on Tuesday pic.twitter.com/qz2RD5bnVM

— SpaceX (@SpaceX) August 25, 2024

While only two crew members will actually leave the spacecraft during the flight, all will be exposed to the vacuum of space when the hatch opens — the Dragon capsule doesn’t have an airlock. It’ll be a critical test for SpaceX’s new Extravehicular Activity space suits, which the entire Polaris Dawn crew will have to wear to keep them safe. In an interview with Florida Today ahead of the mission, Menon said the suits have gone through extensive testing on the ground and expressed confidence in their performance. “We absolutely know the suits can pressurize there,” Menon said, adding that the team has “spent a lot of time pressurizing the suits at this point.”

Polaris Dawn will also put Starlink laser-based communications to the test in space for the first time, and gather data to support research into the effects of spaceflight on human health. The mission comes several years in the making and is the first of three planned Polaris spaceflights.

This article originally appeared on Engadget at https://ift.tt/9NWmXfy

from Engadget is a web magazine with obsessive daily coverage of everything new in gadgets and consumer electronics https://ift.tt/9NWmXfy

Telegram CEO Pavel Durov was reportedly arrested in France

Pavel Durov, the CEO of Telegram, was arrested at an airport near Paris on Saturday, reportedly as part of a preliminary investigation into the app’s lax approach to moderation and failure to curb possible criminal activities, according to Reuters, which cites the French news outlets BFM and TF1. Telegram is also reportedly being accused of not cooperating with police. Durov was taken into custody after arriving at Le Bourget airport on a private jet, Reuters reported.

Telegram is one of the most popular social media platforms in the world, and is widely used in parts of Europe and Asia especially. Durov said earlier this year that it was nearing one billion active monthly users. The app uses end-to-end encryption and supports groups containing tens of thousands of members, allowing mass sharing of information and uncensored content. According to the BBC, the concerns of the current investigation include the app’s failure to crack down on drug trafficking, child sexual abuse materials, and fraudulent activities.

This article originally appeared on Engadget at https://ift.tt/CtvaXcA

from Engadget is a web magazine with obsessive daily coverage of everything new in gadgets and consumer electronics https://ift.tt/CtvaXcA

Deals On Amazing Games, Early Black Myth: Wukong Tips, And More Gaming Pointers

This week’s catch-all of gaming “tips” has caught all manner of things, from an early look at just how mages will play in Dragon Age: The Veilguard to pointers for the best skills to invest in early on in Black Myth: Wukong. We’ll also point you toward a host of deals on must-play indie gems, and show you what the…

Read more...

from Kotaku https://ift.tt/26qVyA7

One Btn Bosses gets a ton of mileage from single-button gameplay

One Btn Bosses does exactly what it says in the tin, but there's more to this tongue-in-cheek bullet-hell boss rush than you initially might suspect. You play as a small ship that moves along tracks and battles a string of bosses (quite literally, as you're fighting your way through the ranks of a peculiar corporation). The only real control you have at your disposal is a single button.

While the visual language draws from Asteroids, it plays a bit like Vampire Survivors, in that your weapon auto fires at your enemy but your agency is even more limited as you can't move wherever you want. At first, pressing the button will reverse your ship’s direction as you try to avoid attacks (generally, you can take damage three times before you lose a fight). But going the other way means slowing down both your movement and the firing rate. That adds a fun wrinkle to figuring out your approach: play it as safe as possible and take longer to defeat an enemy, or go high risk and try to win as quickly as possible so you can soar up the leaderboard.

As you progress, you’ll unlock different weapons and movement abilities, as well as different color schemes. You can choose your loadout for each round. On the movement front, you might opt to hold the button to dash through enemy attacks without incurring damage or keep it pressed down to build up speed and accelerate in the other direction. In terms of dealing damage, you might opt for a laser that grows more powerful as you pick up sparks or a pickup weapon that only fires when you run across an item on the track. Experiment to figure out works best for you.

Along with the campaign, there's a separate roguelite mode called Rifts & Developments that randomizes enemy attacks and layouts (it's possible to memorize the attacks in campaign levels). Here, you have a total of three lives and they aren't replenished between rounds unless you choose an upgrade that lets you do so. Nothing carries back over from the roguelite mode to the campaign except for XP, so if you're stuck on a boss and you're close to unlocking a new weapon, you can switch over to earn some juicy experience to expand your arsenal.

One Btn Bosses is tough, but it never feels unfair. The enemy attacks are as clear as day thanks to the clean art direction. I haven't felt that I've been boxed in between enemy attacks so that losing a life was inevitable — to my eye, all the damage I've sustained was my own fault.

In a weird way, One Btn Bosses kind of reminds me of the early days of Twitter, in that one could only be creative on that platform within the confines of a single 140-character message. The limitation that the studio, Midnight Munchies, placed on itself here forced the developers to come up with inventive ways of keeping One Btn Bosses engaging throughout its duration.

Oneside note: this is one of the first batch of games that received backing from Outersloth, a side project of Among Us developer Innersloth. The whole idea behind Outersloth is to offer indie developers an alternative funding model and to help "fun, original and clever games get made." One Btn Bosses definitely fits the brief.

One Btn Bosses is out on Steam now.

This article originally appeared on Engadget at https://ift.tt/brj1q4h

from Engadget is a web magazine with obsessive daily coverage of everything new in gadgets and consumer electronics https://ift.tt/brj1q4h

Indiana Jones Looks Thrilling, Tactical Breach Wizards Is Brilliant, And More Of The Week's Opinions

This week, Gamescom gave us fresh looks at Starfield’s upcoming Shattered Space DLC as well as Indiana Jones and the Great Circle. We’ll tell you all about what we thought of those. We also have hands-on impressions for Kingdom Come: Deliverance 2, speak to the folks behind Dying Light: The Beast, get nostalgic with…

Read more...

from Kotaku https://ift.tt/2VzBTAD

Every Big Announcement From Gamescom, Breaking Down The Borderlands 4 Trailer, And More Of The Week's Gaming News

This week, one of the three events each year in which we’re routinely graced with the presence of Geoff Keighley took place, with Gamescom Opening Night Live kicking off the week-long convention in Cologne, Germany. A host of World Premiere trailers and other announcements came out of that, including the first teaser…

Read more...

from Kotaku https://ift.tt/35TJxNm

Every Kotaku Black Myth: Wukong Guide From The Game's First Week

In a week that included a Geoff Keighley-led showcase and dozens of announcements, the most talked-about topic in games was Black Myth: Wukong, the Chinese action-RPG that earned a mixed Kotaku review for at times undermining its own epic ambitions. As those ambitions have awed some players and absolutely wrecked…

Read more...

from Kotaku https://ift.tt/uzfEkZm