Technologies

A Room With a View: Check Out This Stunning Aurora From the ISS

Astronaut Don Pettit captured the footage while the ISS was flying backward.

There are some stunning views out there, like hotels that let you see the New York City skyline and resorts with gorgeous mountain or ocean views. But there are few places with a view as absurdly cool as the International Space Station. On Wednesday, astronaut Don Pettit — who is also a noted photographer and inventor of the zero-G coffee cup — took a gorgeous time-lapse video of the ISS as it flew over an aurora.

The video, viewable on X, is about 50 seconds long. It shows the ISS orbiting around Earth. It’s a cool shot all on its own, but around the 27-second mark, the aurora starts to show up from the left. A few short seconds later, viewers are greeted with what looks like a snaking, flowing mist covering part of the Earth.

Then, the Earth is awash in a green glow that looks like something out of a movie or a video game. As quickly as the aurora shows up, it leaves the camera’s view, and the POV is stretched back into space.

Despite its misty appearance, the aurora borealis is anything but. The glowing effect is caused by an interaction between the sun’s solar winds and Earth’s magnetic field. These interactions most often happen when the sun emits coronal mass ejections, which massively eject plasma into the Earth’s magnetic field.

With the sun at its solar maximum and amid aurora season, it may only be a matter of time before those green lights stretch far down into the US, like we saw last year.

Moving backward through space

Pettit was able to get the time-lapse video because the ISS is currently flying backward. It doesn’t typically do this, but the space station was expecting company. On Tuesday, the Soyuz MS-27 spacecraft launched with NASA astronaut Jonny Kim and Russian cosmonauts Sergey Ryzhikov and Alexey Zubritsky, with the final destination being the ISS. Flipping the entire space station 180 degrees helped to facilitate the docking maneuver, which was successfully completed 3 hours after launch.

In addition to flipping 180 degrees, the ISS also intentionally lowers its altitude, as hinted by Pettit in his tweet when he said «changes in altitude, changes in latitude.» While this isn’t a maneuver that the ISS performs often, it is performed virtually every time a Soyuz spacecraft launches to the ISS. With the slight drop in altitude (usually around one kilometer) and the reorientation, it allows the Soyuz to dock just a few hours after launch, instead of longer like some other spacecraft.

Technologies

Blue Origin Rocket Grounded After ‘Mishap’ Destroys Customer Satellite

After failing to deliver its first customer satellite into the correct orbit, the FAA grounds Blue Origin’s New Glenn rocket pending an investigation.

Blue Origin‘s New Glenn Mission 3 (NG-3) was supposed to mark another step forward for the company’s long-awaited entry into the commercial space launch market. Instead, the heavy-lift rocket’s third flight ended in a partial failure and, for now, a full stop. The Federal Aviation Administration has grounded the New Glenn vehicle from future missions following a «mishap» during Sunday’s launch from Cape Canaveral Space Force Station in Florida until an investigation into the incident can be completed.

The mission wasn’t a total loss. New Glenn’s reusable first-stage booster performed as expected and landed successfully. However, the upper stage failed at the job that mattered most for the mission: delivering its payload into the correct orbit.

That payload (the BlueBird 7 communications satellite for AST SpaceMobile, Blue Origin’s first commercial launch payload for a customer) was supposed to be deployed into a roughly 285-mile orbit. Instead, it reached only about 95 miles — far too low for the satellite’s boosters to keep it in orbit. BlueBird 7 will now be deorbited and destroyed during reentry.

The issue appears to trace back to the rocket’s upper stage. In a statement Monday, Blue Origin CEO Dave Limp said «one of the BE-3U engines didn’t produce sufficient thrust» during its second burn, a critical phase that’s needed to raise and circularize the orbit. Without it, the rocket didn’t have the energy to get the satellite where it needed to go.

The consequences of that shortfall begin with the FAA classifying the event as a «mishap,» which sounds innocuous, but automatically triggers a mandatory grounding of the New Glenn vehicle while a full safety review is conducted. Blue Origin will lead the investigation under FAA oversight, working to pinpoint the root cause and outline corrective actions.

Until the agency determines the issue poses no risk to public safety, New Glenn isn’t flying again. How long that process takes is uncertain and can vary wildly. The last time New Glenn was grounded, following a landing failure on its debut mission, it was unable to fly again for months.

The longer the rocket is grounded, the more friction this will apply to Blue Origin’s 2026 and 2027 plans. In the short term, ripples may delay the deployment of Amazon’s already-delayed satellite broadband network, which would rely in part on New Glenn. Further out, the company’s Blue Moon MK1 lander mission’s target may also be affected by how long New Glenn remains sidelined.

Then there’s the reputational hit. This was New Glenn’s first mission carrying a commercial customer payload, which would have been a key milestone for the heavy-lift rocket program. While AST SpaceMobile expects the cost of the satellite to be «recovered under the company’s insurance policy,» this is certainly egg on Blue Origin’s face and an opportunity for competitors like SpaceX to exploit.

AST SpaceMobile said in a statement issued Sunday evening that it expects to continue its plans to expand its satellite network with «an orbital launch every one to two months on average during 2026,» supported by agreements with multiple launch providers.

Blue Origin didn’t immediately respond to a request for comment.

Technologies

Today’s NYT Connections: Sports Edition Hints and Answers for April 21, #575

Here are hints and the answers for the NYT Connections: Sports Edition puzzle for April 21, No. 575.

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 is a tough one. If you’re struggling with it 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: Choosing your team’s future.

Green group hint: Olympic sport.

Blue group hint: Play ball!

Purple group hint: Initials.

Answers for today’s Connections: Sports Edition groups

Yellow group: People involved in making a draft pick.

Green group: Pole vault equipment.

Blue group: First words of baseball positions.

Purple group: T.J. ____

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 people involved in making a draft pick. The four answers are coach, GM, owner and scout.

The green words in today’s Connections

The theme is pole vault equipment. The four answers are crossbar, mat, pole and spikes.

The blue words in today’s Connections

The theme is first words of baseball positions. The four answers are center, designated, first and third.

The purple words in today’s Connections

The theme is T.J. ____. The four answers are Ford, Hockenson, Houshmandzadeh and Watt.

Technologies

Pixel 11 May Revive the Old-School Notification LED With ‘Pixel Glow’

What’s old is new again.

The next Pixel phone may get a feature reminiscent of Nothing’s LED glyphs and old-school Android phones: a notification LED — only more interesting.

What looks to be a new feature called Pixel Glow was reported earlier Monday by 9to5Google. The name was discovered in the latest Android 17 beta 4, which was released on April 16. Pixel Glow is described as using «subtle light and color on the back of your device to inform you of important activity when it’s face down.» In essence, it’s a fancy notification LED.

Google didn’t immediately respond to a request for comment.

It appears that Pixel Glow will work in certain situations, like when a favorite contact calls. Unsurprisingly, it seems like the feature might also work when interacting with Gemini hands-free.

While 9to5Google says the feature was referenced in previous Android beta and Canary builds under code names, the latest Android 17 gave us an official name for the feature. The progression makes it seem that the feature will debut on the upcoming Pixel 11, which we expect to be announced later this year, a few months after Google I/O in May.

The exact location where the LED array might be placed is anyone’s guess at this point. The first CAD renders that we saw for the standard Pixel 11 showed a very similar design, suggesting that the LEDs could be living in the now all-black camera bar, the «G» logo on the back, or perhaps the feature will be reserved for the Pixel 11 Pro models only.

The Pixel Glow feature will apparently also work on laptops. This cohesion also isn’t surprising, as we already know that Android and ChromeOS will be merged into a single operating system at some point to bring a robust desktop and laptop operating system.