Technologies

What’s life like in space? Astronauts share moving memories in new film

In the documentary The Wonderful: Stories from the Space Station, astronauts’ candid testimonials about going to space shed light on their humanity.

Millions of Americans stared in horror on Sept. 11, 2001, as their TVs flashed with images of hijacked airplanes crashing into New York’s Twin Towers. Former NASA astronaut Frank Culbertson watched from the International Space Station.

He recounts the despair he felt in orbit while looking down on Earth. The ISS’s cameras deftly located a seemingly peaceful, cloudless sky above North America and caught sight of the thick shrouds of smoke ascending from lower Manhattan. His distance from the planet made him conscious of his safety from the chaos, a safety that almost felt unfair to him. Later, Culbertson learned one of the American pilots on the attack’s painfully long list of victims was his friend.

Like the entire nation, Culbertson was abruptly reminded of what it means to feel human.

Culbertson’s story is just one of many intimate anecdotes told by international astronauts in the new documentary The Wonderful: Stories from the Space Station. It’s already out in theaters in New York and Los Angeles and will be available for digital download on Sept. 17 from services including Amazon Prime Video, iTunes and Google Play.

Director Clare Lewins, known for her 2014 documentary I Am Ali, about boxer Muhammad Ali, focuses her film on the quiet emotions and experiences that accompany space travel. She does this by drawing attention away from the cosmos and putting its explorers at the forefront.

The Wonderful isn’t really a movie about space; it’s a story about the people who upended their lives to go there.

The film is strung together with music ranging from Claire de Lune to rock ‘n’ roll, sometimes a bit of an odd choice, and cinematic sequences of cruising over Earth that are occasionally a bit longer than needed. However, the movie’s carried by minimalistic scenes of astronauts simply narrating their memories of journeying to and making the ISS their home.

Some are remarkable accounts of the grandeur of the station’s solar panels or the car-crash-like descent back to Earth. Others are charmingly banal recollections, such as listening to Coldplay in a space capsule.

Docking on the ISS elicited an «Oh my!» from European Space Agency astronaut Samantha Cristoforreti and Peggy Whitson, a former NASA astronaut, actually felt like one when she first saw her reflection during a spacewalk.

Scott Kelly viscerally describes the Earth’s atmosphere as a contact lens placed on the planet, and recalls his surprise when he finally was invited to interview at NASA. Like anyone vying for a new job, he worries about which suit to wear.

You can’t help but notice that many of the astronauts share unifying pasts of peering up at the sky, believing they’d one day float among the stars. Admittedly somewhat cliche, their wide-eyed childhood dreams reminded me of how lovely it is that humans have repeated the desire to shoot for the moon frequently enough for it to become a hallmark of our culture.

Interviews are also interspersed with touching details about what it’s like for families to suddenly be separated by the clouds.

In a powerful statement, former astronaut Cady Coleman’s husband, Josh Simpson, discusses how he felt when his wife’s rocket climbed into the night sky until it became a speck of light in the darkness. «It’s amazing to think that someone that you love is that pinpoint of light,» he says.

Astronauts themselves are asked how it feels to leave behind fathers, wives, brothers, children and friends — unsure if it would be their last goodbye — as the iconic 10…9…8 countdown is chanted during their rocket’s launch.

But the pain of leaving behind one family is soon alleviated by their entrance into another. Cristoforreti calls the experience of finally setting foot in the ISS a «new birth.»

Particularly, because the film’s testimonials represent global institutions including NASA, the Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency and Russia’s Roscosmos, the movie successfully underlines the ISS’s role in providing an apolitical oasis for adventurers of the world to embark on the same mission.

Despite any minor shortcomings, it’s nearly impossible to watch this movie and not feel inspired. It’s a grounded version of the classic, epic space documentary that illustrates how incredible things can be achieved by humans — who eat the same food as the rest of us, listen to the same music and love their families the same way.

Coleman’s son summarizes The Wonderful best when he chuckles and describes his reaction when his friends ask him what it’s like to have an astronaut mother: «Well, it’s just mom.»

Technologies

Google races to put Gemini at the center of Android before Apple’s AI reboot

Google is using its latest Android rollout to position Gemini as the AI layer across phones, Chrome, laptops and cars.

Google is using its latest Android rollout to make Gemini less of a chatbot and more of an operating layer across the phone, browser, car and laptop, just weeks before Apple is expected to show its own Gemini-powered Apple Intelligence reboot at WWDC.
Ahead of its Google I/O developer conference next week, the company previewed a number of Android updates, including AI-powered app automation, a smarter version of Chrome on Android, new tools for creators, a redesigned Android Auto experience, and a sweeping set of new security features.
Alphabet is counting on Gemini to help Google compete directly with OpenAI and Anthropic in the market for artificial intelligence models and services, while also serving as the AI backbone across its expansive portfolio of products, including Android. Meanwhile, Gemini is powering part of Apple’s new AI strategy, giving Google a role in the iPhone maker’s reset even as it races to prove its own version of personal AI on the phone is further along.
Sameer Samat, who oversees Google’s Android ecosystem, told CNBC that Google is rebuilding parts of Android around Gemini Intelligence to help users complete everyday tasks more easily.
“We’re transitioning from an operating system to an intelligence system,” he said.
As part of Tuesday’s announcements. Google said Gemini Intelligence will be able to move across apps, understand what’s on the screen and complete tasks that would normally require a user to jump between multiple services. That means Android is moving beyond the traditional assistant model, where users ask a question and get an answer, and acting more like an agent.
For instance, Google says Gemini can pull relevant information from Gmail, build shopping carts and book reservations. Samat gave the example of asking Gemini to look at the guest list for a barbecue, build a menu, add ingredients to an Instacart list and return for approval before checkout.
A big concern surrounding agentic AI involves software taking action on a user’s behalf without permissions. Samat said Gemini will come back to the user before completing a transaction, adding, “the human is always in the loop.”
Four months after announcing its Gemini deal with Google, Apple is under pressure to show a more capable version of Apple Intelligence, which has been a relative laggard on the market. Apple has long framed privacy, hardware integration and control of the user experience as its advantages.
Google’s Android push is designed to show it can bring AI deeper into the device experience while still giving users control over what Gemini can see, where it can act and when it needs confirmation.
The app automation features will roll out in waves, starting with the latest Samsung Galaxy and Google Pixel phones this summer, before expanding across more Android devices, including watches, cars, glasses and laptops later this year.
The company is also redesigning Android Auto around Gemini, turning the car into another major surface for its assistant. Android Auto is in more than 250 million cars, and Google says the new release includes its biggest maps update in a decade and Gemini-powered help with tasks like ordering dinner while driving.
Alphabet’s AI strategy has been embraced by Wall Street, which has pushed the company’s stock price up more than 140% in the past year, compared to Apple’s roughly 40% gain. Investors now want to see how Gemini can become more central to the products people use every day.
WATCH: Alphabet briefly tops Nvidia after report of $200 billion Anthropic cloud deal

Technologies

Waymo recalls 3,800 robotaxis after glitch allowed some vehicles to ‘drive into standing water’

Waymo issued a voluntary recall of about 3,800 of its robotaxis to fix software issues that could allow them to drive into flooded roadways.

Waymo is recalling about 3,800 robotaxis in the U.S. to fix software issues that could allow them to “drive onto a flooded roadway,” according to a letter on the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration’s website.
The voluntary recall is for Waymo vehicles that use the company’s fifth and sixth generation automated driving systems (or ADS), the U.S. auto safety regulator said in the letter posted Tuesday.
Waymo autonomous vehicles in Austin, Texas, were seen on camera driving onto a flooded street and stalling, requiring other drivers to navigate around them. It’s the latest example of a safety-related issue for the Alphabet-owned AV unit that’s rapidly bolstering its fleet of vehicles and entering new U.S. markets.
Waymo has drawn criticism for its vehicles failing to yield to school buses in Austin, and for the performance of its vehicles during widespread power outages in San Francisco in December, when robotaxis halted in traffic, causing gridlock.
The company said in a statement on Tuesday that it’s “identified an area of improvement regarding untraversable flooded lanes specific to higher-speed roadways,” and opted to file a “voluntary software recall” with the NHTSA.
“Waymo provides over half a million trips every week in some of the most challenging driving environments across the U.S., and safety is our primary priority,” the company said.
Waymo added that it’s working on “additional software safeguards” and has put “mitigations” in place, limiting where its robotaxis operate during extreme weather, so that they avoid “areas where flash flooding might occur” in periods of intense rain.
WATCH: Waymo launches new autonomous system in Chinese-made vehicle

Technologies

Qualcomm tumbles 13% as semiconductor stocks retreat from historic AI-fueled surge

Semiconductor equities reversed sharply after a broad AI-driven advance, with Qualcomm suffering its worst day since 2020 amid inflation concerns and rising oil prices.

Semiconductor stocks fell sharply on Tuesday, reversing course after an extensive rally that had expanded the artificial intelligence investment theme well past Nvidia and driven the industry to unprecedented levels.

Qualcomm plunged 13% and was on track for its steepest single-day decline since 2020. Intel shed 8%, while On Semiconductor and Skyworks Solutions each lost more than 6%. The iShares Semiconductor ETF, which benchmarks the overall sector, fell 5%.

The sell-off came after a key gauge of consumer prices came in above forecasts, and as conflict in Iran pushed crude oil higher—prompting investors to shift away from riskier assets.

The preceding advance had widened the AI opportunity set beyond longtime industry leader Nvidia, which for much of the past several years had largely carried the market to new peaks on its own.

Explosive appetite for central processing units, along with the graphics processing units that power large language models, has sent chipmakers to all-time highs.

Market participants are wagering that the shift from AI model training to autonomous agents will lift demand for additional AI hardware. Among the beneficiaries are memory chip producers, which are raising prices as supply remains tight.

Micron Technology slid 6%, and Sandisk cratered 8%. Sandisk’s stock has surged more than six times over since January.