Technologies

NASA’s mega moon rocket fitted with Orion capsule for the first time

The SLS rocket is now wearing Orion like a crown in preparation for testing ahead of the Artemis I moon mission in 2022.

What a glorious beast. The most powerful rocket NASA has ever built is now standing tall with an Orion spacecraft on top, and the views NASA shared this week are spectacular.

The Space Launch System, aka SLS, rocket and Orion are going to be best buds for the launch of the Artemis I mission, an uncrewed trip around the moon and back. The rocket and spacecraft system have come together like a giant Lego tower inside the spacious Vehicle Assembly Building at the Kennedy Space Center in Florida.

It can be challenging to comprehend the sheer scale of SLS and Orion. NASA says the configuration stands at 322 feet (98 meters) tall, making it taller than the Statue of Liberty.

Kennedy Space Center shared an update on Thursday with an epic video sweeping up from the bottom of the rocket all the way to the spacecraft on top. «Work is currently underway to fully secure the spacecraft to the rocket,» NASA tweeted.

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A longer version of the video shows the careful choreography it took to lift Orion and slowly lower it to meet SLS.

We had previously seen SLS standing up with its boosters added in June, and then got fresh images in September, but it was still lacking the Orion component at that time. The process of adding Orion started in the early morning hours on Wednesday with lifting the spacecraft into place with an overhead crane.

Fans of big rockets can pore over NASA’s Artemis I lift-and-mate photo album, which shows the process of moving Orion into place.

The space agency had been targeting a November launch for Artemis I, but that could easily slip into 2022. The mission is designed to test SLS and the performance of the Orion spacecraft before humans take a ride for the Artemis II mission.

A successful Artemis I mission would be a major milestone toward returning humans to the moon. NASA had been talking up a 2024 date for a moon landing (with Artemis III), but that’s likely to get pushed back. Before astronaut feet hit the lunar surface, NASA will need to prove all of its equipment is working well. That’s the big promise that Artemis I holds.

Technologies

Today’s NYT Connections Hints, Answers and Help for March 11, #1004

Here are some hints and the answers for the NYT Connections puzzle for March 11, No. 1,004.

Looking for the most recent Connections answers? Click here for today’s Connections hints, as well as our daily answers and hints for The New York Times Mini Crossword, Wordle, Connections: Sports Edition and Strands puzzles.

Once I spotted «ice cream» and «traffic» in today’s NYT Connections puzzle, I had the blue category all but filled in. But that purple category was even more bizarre than usual. Read on for clues and today’s Connections answers.

The Times has a Connections Bot, like the one for Wordle. Go there after you play to receive a numeric score and to have the program analyze your answers. Players who are registered with the Times Games section can now nerd out by following their progress, including the number of puzzles completed, win rate, number of times they nabbed a perfect score and their win streak.

Read more: Hints, Tips and Strategies to Help You Win at NYT Connections Every Time

Hints for today’s Connections groups

Here are four hints for the groupings in today’s Connections puzzle, ranked from the easiest yellow group to the tough (and sometimes bizarre) purple group.

Yellow group hint: Bring that back!

Green group hint: Fancy ____.

Blue group hint: Think of a certain shape.

Purple group hint: Sounds like…

Answers for today’s Connections groups

Yellow group: Steal.

Green group: Make nicer, with «up.»

Blue group: Kinds of cones.

Purple group: Pronoun homophones.

Read more: Wordle Cheat Sheet: Here Are the Most Popular Letters Used in English Words

What are today’s Connections answers?

The yellow words in today’s Connections

The theme is steal. The four answers are lift, palm, pinch and pocket.

The green words in today’s Connections

The theme is make nicer, with «up.» The four answers are dress, jazz, spiff and spruce.

The blue words in today’s Connections

The theme is kinds of cones. The four answers are ice cream, pine, snow and traffic.

The purple words in today’s Connections

The theme is pronoun homophones. The four answers are hee, mi, oui and yew.

Technologies

Today’s NYT Connections: Sports Edition Hints and Answers for March 11, #534

Here are hints and the answers for the NYT Connections: Sports Edition puzzle No. 534 for Wednesday, March 11.

Looking for the most recent regular Connections answers? Click here for today’s Connections hints, as well as our daily answers and hints for The New York Times Mini Crossword, Wordle and Strands puzzles.

Today’s Connections: Sports Edition features a real mix of categories, but the yellow one came easily to this Seahawks fan. If you’re struggling with today’s puzzle but still want to solve it, read on for hints and the answers.

Connections: Sports Edition is published by The Athletic, the subscription-based sports journalism site owned by The Times. It doesn’t appear in the NYT Games app, but it does in The Athletic’s own app. Or you can play it for free online.

Read more: NYT Connections: Sports Edition Puzzle Comes Out of Beta

Hints for today’s Connections: Sports Edition groups

Here are four hints for the groupings in today’s Connections: Sports Edition puzzle, ranked from the easiest yellow group to the tough (and sometimes bizarre) purple group.

Yellow group hint: Super Bowl champs’ division.

Green group hint: Baseball stats.

Blue group hint: Stars on ice.

Purple group hint: You wear it around your waist.

Answers for today’s Connections: Sports Edition groups

Yellow group: NFC West teams.

Green group: «WHIP» in baseball.

Blue group: Hockey Hall of Famers.

Purple group: ____ belt.

Read more: Wordle Cheat Sheet: Here Are the Most Popular Letters Used in English Words

What are today’s Connections: Sports Edition answers?

The yellow words in today’s Connections

The theme is NFC West teams. The four answers are Arizona, Los Angeles, San Francisco and Seattle.

The green words in today’s Connections

The theme is «WHIP» in baseball. The four answers are hits, inning, pitched and walks.

The blue words in today’s Connections

The theme is Hockey Hall of Famers. The four answers are Bossy, Iginla, Orr and St. Louis.

The purple words in today’s Connections

The theme is ____ belt. The four answers are black, Brandon, sun and title.

Technologies

150 Years After the First Phone Call, We’re Still Looking for 1-on-1 Connections

I spoke to an AT&T archivist about Alexander Graham Bell’s famous transmission. Even though calls have changed, the reasons behind them are still the same.

My interview with William Caughlin, the head of AT&T Archives and History Center, started with an ironic twist. Our Microsoft Teams video call failed, so we ended up talking over the «regular» phone.

Perhaps «regular» isn’t entirely accurate, given the infrastructure. But it was fitting for the topic of our conversation: the very first phone call, which occurred exactly 150 years ago.

On March 10, 1876, Alexander Graham Bell made a famous exclamation to his assistant: «Mr. Watson, come here, I want you.» That sentence crossed a single copper wire to the next room. Though the technology that enabled the call has changed drastically over the past century and a half, the experience was fundamentally the same. Two people in two different locations were having a conversation — and seeking a connection — in real time.

Caughlin told me that Bell had been working on experiments for a year by then. But even though he was able to transmit speech sounds over copper wire in 1875, it was inarticulate. «Watson could hear noises, sounds, but he couldn’t really make out what Bell was saying. But Bell knew he was on the right path at that point,» Caughlin said.

Those experiments culminated on March 10, when the sounds became clear.

Read more: AT&T Says It’s Pumping $250 Billion Into New Infrastructure Improvements

Artifacts of the future

To celebrate the anniversary of that first transmission, AT&T created a pop-up exhibit at its Dallas headquarters, open to the public through Thursday, March 12.

Some notable artifacts on display from this day 150 years ago include the copper wire over which the message was sent, which in 1914 was wrapped in a loose spool and set behind glass. There’s also Thomas Watson’s notebook, where he recorded those historic first words.

«It’s one of the greatest treasures in our collection,» said Caughlin.

And with its red ribbon and official seal, the original March 7, 1876, patent for «Improvement in Telegraphy,» is said to be the most valuable patent ever granted.

The telephone occupied Bell’s attention for only a few years. Though it launched an industry, Bell was still tinkering elsewhere, according to Caughlin.

«He was a lifelong learner, a scientist, researcher, and even though he left the telephone business in 1878, he continued experimenting.»

Bell considered the «photophone» to be his greatest invention, said Caughlin. In 1880, Bell transmitted a human voice over a beam of light. It was a precursor to today’s fiber-optic cables, which essentially do the same thing: sending pulses of light through glass fibers across thousands of miles. Bell transmitted his voice using mirrors and a parabola receiver 1,300 feet away in another building. It required direct sunlight, but the voice was very clear.

Also in the archive is the original transistor that was invented by AT&T physicists John Bardeen and Walter Brattain, which Caughlin says is «the second greatest invention that ever came out of AT&T.»

It’s the technology that underlies most of the items on my desk and whatever device you’re reading this story on. «In your smartphone, you have something like 20 billion transistors,» Caughlin pointed out.

Its 1950 patent is also included in the collection.

Connections then and now

In that Boston lab in 1876, the network consisted of a copper wire running from Bell’s transmitter to the receiver Watson was using. Now, AT&T says it moves an exabyte (1 billion gigabytes, or the storage equivalent of nearly 4 million iPhone 17E smartphones) of data across its network every day.

Voice calls represent a small fraction of that traffic. The technology that connects our phones — 5G networks, fiber backbones, satellite calling — continues to evolve even as the number of calls remains a small portion of how we communicate. Nearly three times more texts than voice calls passed through AT&T’s network in 2025.

I, for one, will almost always prefer to chat via text rather than make a phone call, mostly for expediency.

But phone calls haven’t disappeared. If anything, they’ve morphed into a nuisance, given the barrage of scam calls and now impersonal AI-based customer service systems that get in the way of human connection. Today’s carriers and phone-makers are having to implement more aggressive filtering tools, though with mixed success.

And yet when I want to connect and focus my full attention on someone, a voice call or video call is the way to do it. And unlike days past, I can make a call from anywhere without worrying about long-distance charges. Heck, I don’t even need to memorize phone numbers anymore — I just tap one of my favorite contacts or ask the resident disembodied voice assistant to make the call for me.

Bell no doubt knew the importance of hearing someone’s voice, live, over the phone line. A century and a half later, through incredible advancements in telephony technology, that connection is still just as valuable.