As we have been reporting on Ars , NASA's Artemis II lunar mission has been going rather well so far. Of course, Orion's big test is yet to come with the fiery reentry through Earth's atmosphere on Friday. But so far, it's looking like the rocket and spaceship needed for a lunar landing are getting there for NASA.

The biggest remaining piece of the architecture, therefore, is a lunar lander. Known in NASA parlance as the Human Landing System, or HLS, the space agency has contracted with SpaceX for its Starship vehicle and Blue Origin and its Blue Moon lander.

Last year NASA asked both companies for options to accelerate their lunar landers, and both replied that not having to dock with the Lunar Gateway in a highly elliptical orbit, known as near-rectilinear halo orbit, would help a lot. So the space agency has removed that requirement.

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LG was once a heavyweight in the smartphone industry, trading blows with hometown rival Samsung. However, as smartphone sales plateaued, the company struggled to stay competitive. In 2021, LG planned to make waves with a rollable phone , but it never moved beyond the teaser phase. Five years after LG threw in the towel on smartphones , the LG Rollable has appeared in a YouTube teardown that demonstrates why this form factor never took off.

The LG Rollable is just one of several rollable concept phones that appeared throughout the early 2020s. Flexible OLED screens had finally become affordable, leading to foldable phones like the Samsung Galaxy Z Fold. Although, "affordable" is relative here. Foldables were and still are very expensive devices. Based on what we can see of the complex inner workings of the LG Rollable, these devices may have commanded even higher prices.

Noted YouTube phone destroyer JerryRigEverything managed to snag a working prototype LG Rollable. It may even be the unit LG demoed at CES 2021. The device looks like a regular phone at first glance, but a quick swipe activates the motor, which unfurls additional screen real estate from around the back. This makes the viewable area about 40 percent larger without the added thickness of a foldable.

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Sales of used electric vehicles are surging in the US as models bought during a post-pandemic boom flood back onto the market, offering prospective buyers relief from a sharp rise in petrol prices.

First-quarter used EV sales rose 12 percent compared with the same period last year and 17 percent on the previous quarter, according to Cox Automotive estimates. Sales of new EVs in the first quarter are estimated to have slumped by 28 percent year on year following the Trump administration’s withdrawal in 2025 of a $7,500 consumer tax credit.

Analysts attribute the surge to a glut of hundreds of thousands of cheap pre-owned EVs that were purchased on leases in the early 2020s and which are now returning to market as those leases expire. According to credit bureau Experian, EVs will account for 15 percent of all off-lease vehicles at the end of this year, up from 7.7 percent in the first quarter.

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Humanity is about to get its first in-person, up-close look at the Moon in more than half a century.

Four astronauts will spend about seven hours on Monday (April 6) observing the far side of the Moon, the half that constantly points away from Earth. At their closest approach on board their Orion spacecraft Integrity , Reid Wiseman, Victor Glover, and Christina Koch of NASA and Jeremy Hansen with the Canadian Space Agency will be about 4,000 miles (6,400 km) above the surface. The last time any person came that close was during the Apollo 17 mission in 1972.

Although the primary purpose of the Artemis II crew's observations will be to advance scientists' understanding of lunar geology, there is no doubt a spectator and inspirational interest to this as well. The flyby of the Moon is expected to be watched by millions of people on Earth, and while any view will be impressive, it may also leave many wanting for more.

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Christopher Nolan has cemented his status as one of our most consistently original and thought-provoking directors. Over the last 25 years, Nolan has delivered film after film that deftly balances mainstream appeal with eye-popping visuals, inventive narrative structures and special effects, and existential and/or philosophical themes. And it all started with his big breakthrough film: Memento , which marks the 25th anniversary this year of its US release.

(Spoilers below, but we'll give you a heads up before the major reveals.)

The origins of Memento are now the stuff of Hollywood legend. Nolan's brother, Jonathan, pitched him a story during a road trip about a man with anterograde amnesia who can't form new lasting memories and yet is intent on tracking down and killing the man who raped and killed his wife. Nolan liked the idea, and Jonathan sent him a draft a few months later. (That draft would eventually become Jonathan's short story, " Memento Mori ," published after the film's release.)

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A user on Quizlet, an online learning platform, created a public flashcard set in February that appears to have exposed highly confidential information about security procedures in US Customs and Border Protection facilities around Kingsville, Texas.

The Quizlet set, titled “USBP Review,” was available to the public until March 20, when it was made private less than half an hour after WIRED messaged a phone number potentially linked to the Quizlet user. Though an individual with the user’s name was listed at an address of an apartment less than a mile from a Kingsville CBP facility, WIRED has not been able to verify that the flashcard set was created by an active CBP agent or contractor.

“This incident is being reviewed by CBP’s Office of Professional Responsibility,” a CBP spokesperson wrote in a statement to WIRED. “We will not be getting ahead of this review. A review should not be taken as an indication of wrongdoing.”

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The Orion spacecraft is now much closer to the Moon than Earth on its 10-day journey into deep space and back, and overall everything is going smashingly well.

Things are going so well that, during the daily mission briefings at Johnson Space Center in Houston, there's just not that much of substance to talk about. So the discourse keeps coming back to, of all things, the toilet on board Orion.

As you may recall, there were some toilet problems in the initial hours of the mission. During the initial checkout of spacecraft systems, Orion's toilet was supposed to be “wetted” with water to prime the pump. Not enough water was introduced, so the pump was non-responsive. Once more water was added, it began functioning fine.

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Right-to-repair efforts are gaining headway in the US. A lot of that movement has been led by state legislation in Colorado.

Since 2022, Colorado has passed bills giving users the tools, instructions, and legal capabilities to fix or upgrade their own wheelchairs , agricultural farming equipment , and consumer electronics . Similar efforts have rippled out through the country, where repair bills have been introduced in every US state and passed in eight of them.

“Colorado has the broadest repair rights in the country,” says Danny Katz, executive director CoPIRG, the Colorado branch of the consumer advocate group Pirg . “We should be proud of leading the way.”

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President Donald Trump released a budget blueprint on Friday calling for a 23 percent cut to NASA's budget, two days after the agency launched four astronauts on the first crewed lunar mission in more than 50 years.

The spending proposal for fiscal year 2027 is the opening salvo in a multi-month budget process. Both houses of Congress must pass their own appropriations bills, reconcile any differences between the two, and then send the final budget to the White House for President Trump's signature. Fiscal year 2027 begins on October 1.

The White House requested a similar cut to NASA last year. The Republican-led Congress resoundingly rejected the proposal and kept NASA's budget close to its level in the final year of the Biden administration. Like last year's budget, the proposal from the Trump administration will undergo major changes as Congress weighs in over the coming months.

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