Author: Brett Venter

Someone at China’s National Space Science Centre (CNSSC) has been copying someone else’s homework, by the look of things. The country’s agency unveiled a prototype of the helicopter the country intends to send to Mars at some unspecified point in the future and it looks… well, it looks like we’ve seen it before. How much Ingenuity did that take, China? Which makes a weird kind of sense, really. You don’t want to go making space technology unique so that folks don’t accuse you of copying. You want an idea that has already proven to work because it’s hard enough to…

A relatively inexperienced space company, Firefly Aerospace, become considerably more experienced last week when it attempted its inaugural rocket flight and demonstrated exactly why people equate ‘rocket science’ with ‘something that’s really hard to do’. And that’s because the company’s Alpha launch vehicle, which was attempting to reach orbit on Thursday, 1 September, exploded a few minutes after liftoff. Or, rather, it was terminated. Unlike that other Firefly, this one’s getting another season https://twitter.com/thejackbeyer/status/1433618654889865216? See, Firefly Aerospace is a relatively young company, one aiming to provide launch services for smaller (up to 10,000kg) payloads that need to live out in…

Joby Aviation, in case you need a reminder, is a flying taxi company that recently saw some success testing its prototype flying taxi. The unmanned electric vertical-takeoff-and-landing (eVTOL) craft flew some 240km on a single charge without crashing, blowing up or destroying anything. And now, the company’s testing its vehicle with NASA. A Joby well done See, NASA doesn’t just send large phallic objects into space. It’s the National Aeronautics and Space Administration, and this test falls under the ‘Aeronautics’ bit of the name. The flying taxi is being tested with NASA at Joby’s Electric Flight Base in California as…

Tech-maker Samsung has had its eye on ever-increasing sizes of camera sensors for smartphones. First, we saw them make a 64MP edition, then there was the 108MP attempt. Then the company took a step back and checked out what a 50MP camera sensor was like, which brings us to today and the hugely overkill 200MP ISOCELL sensor. Sharing an ISOCELL with Samsung The company recently took the wraps off its ISOCELL HP1 camera sensor, which crams 200 megapixels into something that’ll fit into a smartphone. It uses 0.64μm-sized pixels, the South Korean outfit’s smallest to date, resulting in a smartphone…

Some features shouldn’t ever exist behind a paywall. Beacon, a location sharing feature in fitness app Strava, is one such item. Happily, the ability to share where you are with friends and family has just been yanked out from behind a paid subscription and given to all of the app’s users, free of charge. Something nice from Strava The way that Beacon works is similar to Uber’s trip-sharing feature — activating it lets you share a URL with whoever you send it to, and they can then keep an eye on where you are. The reason is much the same…

It wasn’t long ago that we saw audio specialist Jabra revealing new earbuds with a slant in a more medical direction, but now the company’s also got three new Elite in-ear buds heading to market for those who don’t have any particular need beyond wanting some excellent audio. There are two headliners incoming, the Elite 7 Pro, the Elite 7 Active and then the Elite 3, which is a slightly more budget version of the ‘buds. Because everyone should have a decent set of wireless in-ears, you know? Jabra looks beyond the elite The Elite 7 Pro are the company’s…

Apple’s Watch has had the feature for a while, now Samsung’s Galaxy Watch 4 wearable becomes the first to get an official walkie talkie app. The app, perhaps fittingly, is simply called WalkieTalkie — you can’t possibly guess what that does based purely on its name, though. Come in, Galaxy Watch 4 The official app was first spotted by the folks over at XDA Developers (on the Android store, obviously) and it allows Watch 4 owners to chat to other Watch 4 owners using only their wristwear. Just like using a walkie talkie, really. But there are limitations, obviously. You…

Look, the perfect eReader already exists — it’s called the Kindle Paperwhite (10th gen), but there are some compelling options out there from Kobo as well. And then there’s the Boox Note Air, which sounds like it was named by someone who used to work at both Samsung and Apple. Let’s be up-front with this — this eReader, which isn’t tied to an app store (though it has one), is a little pricier than the average Kindle at about R6,900 but it’s still cheaper than the Kindle Oasis, which it’s clearly targeting. And it’s also a little difficult to find…

The United Launch Alliance (ULA) has confirmed that it’s retiring its Atlas V rocket from service — this is a move that has been in the works since 2014, when Russia annexed Crimea. See, the ULA’s long-time workhorse is built around the Russia-made RD-180 rocket engine. That made politicians uncomfortable. The ULA was ordered to stop using them back in 2014 and the last of the paid-for engines was delivered earlier this year. No more RD-180 engines means no more Atlas V rockets on sale. ULA CEO Tory Bruno, speaking to The Verge in an interview, explained that all of…

Jeff Bezos blasted into space (more or less) last month on a Blue Origin rocket, a move that didn’t impress… well, most parts of the planet that didn’t include Jeff Bezos. So it might not be the perfect time to mention that you can own your very own New Shepard rocket, for the unfortunate sum of $69. Because of how it looks, naturally. Blue Origin for beginners https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Y_YRr1R1dH8 Perhaps appropriately, the Blue Origin rocket being offered on the Estes Rockets web store is rated for beginners. Jeff Bezos’ company doesn’t have that much experience with putting its hardware up in…