Some time soon, perhaps next year, SpaceX will attempt to fly one of its enormous Starship rockets from low-Earth orbit back to its launch pad in South Texas. A successful return and catch at the launch tower would demonstrate a key capability underpinning Elon Musk's hopes for a fully reusable rocket.

In order for this to happen, SpaceX must overcome the tyranny of geography. Unlike launches over the open ocean from Cape Canaveral, Florida, rockets departing from South Texas must follow a narrow corridor to steer clear of downrange land masses.

All 10 of the rocket's test flights so far have launched from Texas toward splashdowns in the Indian or Pacific Oceans. On these trajectories, the rocket never completes a full orbit around the Earth, but instead flies an arcing path through space before gravity pulls it back into the atmosphere.

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The situation with the fiscal year 2026 budget for the United States is, to put it politely, kind of a mess.

The White House proposed a budget earlier this year with significant cuts for a number of agencies, including NASA. In the months since then, through the appropriations process, both the House and Senate have proposed their own budget templates. However, Congress has not passed a final budget, and the new fiscal year begins on October 1.

As a result of political wrangling over whether to pass a "continuing resolution" to fund the government before a final budget is passed, a government shutdown appears to be increasingly likely.

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No one could accuse the European Space Agency and its various contractors of moving swiftly when it comes to the development of reusable rockets. However, it appears that Europe is finally making some credible progress.

This week, the France-based ArianeGroup aerospace company announced that it had completed the integration of the Themis vehicle, a prototype rocket that will test various landing technologies, on a launch pad in Sweden. Low-altitude hop tests, a precursor for developing a rocket's first stage that can vertically land after an orbital launch, could start late this year or early next.

"This milestone marks the beginning of the 'combined tests,' during which the interface between Themis and the launch pad's mechanical, electrical, and fluid systems will be thoroughly trialed, with the aim of completing a test under cryogenic conditions," the company said.

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A two-day federal vaccine advisory meeting crammed with chaos, confusion, inept debate, bizarre comments, and a hot mic catching someone saying "you're an idiot," ended with an unexpected twist: The advisors unanimously voted—possibly unintentionally—to maintain broad access to COVID-19 vaccines.

In the 12–0 vote, the committee of advisors selected by anti-vaccine activist Robert F. Kennedy Jr. adopted a recommendation for adults 65 and older and people aged 6 months to 64 years to get a COVID-19 vaccine based on shared clinical decision-making. If the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention adopts the recommendation, it will maintain requirements that federal and private health insurance plans cover COVID-19 vaccines at no cost.

Earlier this year, the FDA limited the approvals of this year's shots, which have previously been available to anyone 6 months of age or older. The FDA's new restriction limits them to adults aged 65 and up and for people between the ages of 6 months and 64 years who have an underlying medical condition that puts them at high risk of severe COVID-19.

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Since July, the state of Oklahoma has been consumed by important investigative questions, including:

• Why did naked women appear on a state-owned TV set during an official Board of Education meeting? Was someone in the room inadvertently streaming pornography from a personal device to the TV? Will anyone be prosecuted for what happened?
• Were the board members who complained about the video directed by the governor to "lie about me," as the state's pugnacious, hard-right Superintendent of Education asked?
• Why was a "chiropractic table" involved in the scene? And why did the video feature, as one board member noted, a retro vibe and "a guy with a white hat, kind of a Gilligan-type hat"?

We now have answers to all of those questions.

After a lengthy investigation by the Oklahoma County Sheriff's Office and the State Bureau of Investigation, and then a lengthy consideration of their reports, the Oklahoma County District Attorney this week announced that "there is insufficient evidence to file criminal charges."

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Less than a month ago, we looked at how current game console prices were historically high due to price increases from all three major console makers. Today, that analysis is already a bit out of date, as Microsoft has announced its second set of Xbox price increases this year in the US.

The new Xbox price hikes, which will go into effect on October 3, or roughly five months after the last set of Xbox price hikes , are as follows:

• Xbox Series S 512GB: $400 (up from $380 in May / launched at $300 in 2020)
• Xbox Series S 1TB: $450 (up from $430 in May / launched at $350 in 2023)
• Xbox Series X Digital: $600 (from $550 in May / launched at $450 in 2024)
• Xbox Series X: $650 (up from $600 in May / launched at $500 in 2020)
• Xbox Series X 2TB Galaxy Special Edition: $800 (up from $730 in May / launched at $600 in 2024)

In an Xbox Support post , Microsoft cited the now-standard "changes in the macroeconomic environment" for the decision to move pricing yet again. "We understand that these changes are challenging, and they were made with careful consideration," the company wrote. "Looking ahead, we continue to focus on offering more ways to play more games across any screen and providing value for Xbox players.

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In 2014, University of California, Berkeley biologist Robert Dudley wrote a book called The Drunken Monkey: Why We Drink and Abuse Alcohol . His controversial " drunken monkey hypothesis " proposed that the human attraction to alcohol goes back about 18 million years, to the origin of the great apes, and that social communication and sharing food evolved to better identify the presence of fruit from a distance. At the time, skeptical scientists insisted that this was unlikely because chimpanzees and other primates just don't eat fermented fruit or nectar.

But reports of primates doing just that have grown over the ensuing two decades. Dudley co-authored a new paper published in the journal Science Advances reporting the first measurements of the ethanol content of fruits favored by chimps in Ivory Coast and Uganda, finding that the chimps are consuming 14 grams of alcohol every day, the equivalent of a standard alcoholic drink in the US. After adjusting for the chimps' lower body mass, the authors concluded the chimps are consuming nearly two drinks per day.

Earlier this year, we reported that researchers had caught wild chimpanzees on camera engaging in what appears to be sharing fermented African breadfruit with measurable alcoholic content. That observational data was the first evidence of the sharing of alcoholic foods among nonhuman great apes in the wild. They recorded 10 instances of selective fruit sharing among 17 chimps, with the animals exhibiting a marked preference for riper fruit. Between April and July 2022, the authors measured the alcohol content of the fruit with a handy portable breathalyzer and found almost all of the fallen fruit (90 percent) contained some ethanol, with the ripest containing the highest levels—the equivalent of 0.61 percent ABV (alcohol by volume).

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Welcome to Edition 8.11 of the Rocket Report! We have reached the time of year when it is possible the US government will shut down its operations at the end of this month, depending on congressional action. A shutdown would have significant implications for many NASA missions, but most notably a couple of dozen in the science directorate that the White House would like to shut down. At Ars, we will be watching this issue closely in the coming days. As for Artemis II, it seems to be far enough along that a launch next February seems possible as long as any government closure does not drag on for weeks and weeks.

As always, we welcome reader submissions , and if you don't want to miss an issue, please subscribe using the box below (the form will not appear on AMP-enabled versions of the site). Each report will include information on small-, medium-, and heavy-lift rockets as well as a quick look ahead at the next three launches on the calendar.

Rocket Lab to sell common shares . The space company said Tuesday that it intends to raise up to $750 million by selling common shares, MSN reports . This new at-the-market program replaces a prior agreement that allowed Rocket Lab to sell up to $500 million of stock. Under that earlier arrangement, the company had sold roughly $396.6 million in shares before ending the program.

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Federal prosecutors charged a UK teenager with conspiracy to commit computer fraud and other crimes in connection with the network intrusions of 47 US companies that generated more than $115 million in ransomware payments over a three-year span.

A criminal complaint unsealed on Thursday (PDF) said that Thalha Jubair, 19, of London, was part of Scattered Spider, the name of an English-language-speaking group that has breached the networks of scores of companies worldwide. After obtaining data, the group demanded that the victims pay hefty ransoms or see their confidential data published or sold.

Bitcoin paid by victims recovered

The unsealing of the document, filed in US District Court of the District of New Jersey, came the same day Jubair and another alleged Scattered Spider member—Owen Flowers, 18, from Walsall, West Midlands—were charged by UK prosecutors in connection with last year’s cyberattack on Transport for London . The agency, which oversees London’s public transit system, faced a monthslong recovery effort as a result of the breach.

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