Technologies

Chinese Rocket Plummets to Earth, Causing One Country to Halt Air Traffic

The booster eventually broke up over the Pacific Ocean.

A Chinese rocket booster made an out-of-control reentry into Earth’s atmosphere over the water early Friday, the US military’s Space Command confirmed.

The booster is the first stage of a Long March 5B rocket that several days ago sent a large module to orbit to expand China’s Tiangong space station.

«The People’s Republic of China Long March 5B #CZ5B rocket reentered the atmosphere over the south-central Pacific Ocean at 4:01 a.m. MDT/10:01 UTC on 11/4,» the US Space Command tweeted Friday.

The Long March 5B weighs over 20 metric tons, measures 10 stories tall and appears to lack the hardware to make a controlled reentry and steer itself toward a safe, planned splashdown.

Instead, the Chinese space program rolled the dice that what remained of the rocket, after much of it burned up in the atmosphere, would land somewhere on the majority of the planet’s surface that is either unpopulated or covered by ocean.

It seems the gamble worked out this time, but in the process the dramatic descent caused a 40-minute closure of a significant portion of Spanish airspace, causing delays to around 300 flights, according to the Reuters news agency. It also potentially littered debris over an area in Mexico.

Jonathan McDowell, Harvard astronomer and leading expert on all things orbital, noted that the hunk of space junk likely broke apart as it was speeding over the Pacific in the direction of Mexico and that some of the debris may have made it ashore.

There have been no reports of debris on the ground just yet.

If the rocket broke up over the Pacific, why was there was concern on the other side of the world in Spain? It’s because the exact point of reentry is hard to predict. The errant object is traveling at thousands of miles per hour as it collides with the atmosphere and begins to slow down while burning up and being shredded by the friction.

The rocket remnant appears to have passed through Spain’s airspace without incident and broke up 40 minutes later — far, far away.

«The uncertainty of where the large debris will ultimately land presents a level of risk to human safety and property damage that is well above commonly accepted thresholds,» the Aerospace Corporation, which tracks reentries, wrote in a statement.

The rocket was used to send Mengtian, the third and final section of Tiangong, to orbit for installation on a launch that took place Monday.

Similar reentry risks were seen with the launch of the previous two Tiangong space station modules as well. A spent rocket landed in the Indian Ocean on May 8, 2021, and another broke up over Malaysia, Indonesia and the Philippines on July 30, 2022. In 2020, a Long March 5B mission also led to debris falling on western Africa.

Falling space junk has damaged property, but there has never been a report of human injuries or death. Earth’s population distribution makes it most likely any trash making it all the way from orbit to the surface ends up either in the ocean or someplace remote (rural Australia seems popular).

Technologies

Google’s New AI Features Are Trying to Make Data Entry a Thing of the Past

More Gemini AI features will come to Google Docs, Sheets and Slides.

The latest batch of Google updates to its workspace tools highlights AI’s promise to automate mundanity in the workplace. Google Docs, Slides, Sheets and Drive all have new AI-powered features, the company announced Tuesday. The one thing all these updates have in common? Gemini is using your files, emails and chats to give you relevant information, not random answers gleaned from the web.

These updates come as AI is playing a bigger role in our work lives, for better or worse. Agentic tools like Claude Cowork and coding assistants like Anthropic’s Claude Code and OpenAI’s Codex are more capable than chatbots and able to handle tasks announced independently. AI tools are also becoming more customized, with Google’s personalized intelligence rolling out across its platforms to help refine AI outputs to things that are relevant and useful for you. Google continues that trend with this new batch of Workspace updates.

New Gemini AI features in Google Workspace apps will cite their sources after each query. For example, if you ask Gemini in Google Docs to fill out an itinerary template, it will pull the information from your email, chats and files. The «sources» tab in the Gemini side panel will show you where it found the information it used, like your flight confirmation email and chats discussing dinner plans. Seeing where Gemini pulled its answers from is also how you’ll double-check Gemini’s work.

The most impressive new features are in Sheets, where AI can fill in the holes in your spreadsheets. You can describe what you want the AI to do with a simple prompt and avoid writing an exact formula. You can click on an empty cell, select the pop-up that says «Drag to fill with Gemini,» then highlight the cells you want Gemini to fill in. That deploys an AI agent to search the web to fill each cell with the necessary information.

For example, if you have a spreadsheet of the contact info for local companies, you can have Gemini search the web to fill in a the location, CEO and other publicly available information of each company. The tool aims to dramatically reduce the time needed for manual data entry. Gemini can also summarize, categorize and create charts with prompts alone.

You can also chat with Gemini in Sheets and have it scour your raw data to make custom reports and charts. No need for pivot tables if they confound you as much as they baffle me. One of the biggest uses of AI at work is helping create presentations.

In Google Slides, you can now tell Gemini in natural language what you want to appear on a slide, and it will create it, matching the style of your existing slides. You can also ask Gemini to edit your slides if you don’t want to waste time painstakingly moving design elements around the slide. The AI should fill the slides with relevant information based on your instructions and the work files it has access to, so you shouldn’t need to replace a bunch of filler text.

If you use Docs, Sheets and Slides through the Workspace account of your company, then you won’t be able to turn off AI features individually. The managing company is in control of AI access for users. Personal users can tweak their settings to limit Gemini. The new features are rolling out in beta now, in English only, to Google AI Ultra and Pro subscribers in the US, as well as some Google Workspace customers who are part of the Gemini Alpha testing program.

For more, check out the new cowork feature in Copilot and how to use Perplexity AI for deep research.

Technologies

Nintendo Switches Lanes, Sues US Over Tariffs

Mario wants his money back.

Tariffs implemented by President Donald Trump were struck down by the Supreme Court last month. Companies that were subjected to those fees, such as FedEx and Dollar General, have since sued the federal government, and Nintendo wants a piece of the action.

Nintendo filed a lawsuit against the federal government in the US Court of International Trade on Friday, as first spotted by Aftermath. The complaint seeks refunds of tariffs Nintendo paid, plus interest, and asks the court to declare the tariffs unlawful and stop the government from collecting them going forward.

«Since February 1, 2025, President Trump has executed the unlawful Executive Orders, imposing tariffs on imports from a vast swath of countries,» Nintendo said in the complaint.

When reached for comment, Nintendo of America confirmed the lawsuit.

«We can confirm that we filed a request. We have nothing else to share on this topic,» Nintendo of America said in an emailed statement on Friday, March 6.

It’s unclear how much Nintendo paid in tariffs, and it did not state an amount in the lawsuit. While the Switch 2 was priced at $450 when it launched last year, and has stayed at that amount, Nintendo did increase the price of the original Switch and accessories for both consoles. Microsoft and Sony also increased the prices of their hardware and accessories last year due to tariffs.

The White House didn’t immediately respond to a request for comment.

On Feb. 20, the Supreme Court ruled by a vote of 6 to 3 that the sweeping tariffs Trump instituted last year exceeded his executive powers. Following the ruling, on the same day, Trump announced a new set of tariffs of 10% on imported goods that would last for 150 days, starting Feb. 24.

The decision on what to do with the collected tariffs — a reported $166 billion — has been left to the US Court of International Trade. Judge Richard Eaton told the US Customs and Border Protection on Wednesday, March 4, to refund the importers that were forced to pay tariffs, which is more than 330,000. On Friday, the CBP said it couldn’t easily issue tariff refunds because its system requires duties to be recalculated and refunds processed entry by entry. This process would involve tens of millions of transactions. The agency said it’s updating its systems and could start providing refunds by late April.