critical

Airbus has started moving critical systems to an on-premises cloud

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Airbus has decided to remove its most sensitive applications from the Amazon cloud. And the European aerospace manufacturer has signed a multi-year agreement with the French Scaleway, owned by Iliad, to host the critical systems of its industrial and defense operations, as confirmed by the company itself, a movement that drives the desire for technological sovereignty that more and more companies and institutions are beginning to apply. What has happened? Airbus will begin migrating 70 applications from AWS to Scaleway’s infrastructure, a first package within a much broader plan that could cover up to 900 applications in the next five or six years, according to they count from Reuters. Among the affected systems are aircraft design, engineering, industrial production and corporate management tools, as well as ERP, manufacturing execution, CRM and product lifecycle management programs, as expand from The Register. Strategy. Catherine Jestin, chief digital officer at Airbus, explained that the company sought to ensure that its data remained “under European control”, away from the reach of US laws such as the Cloud Actwhich allows the United States Government to request access to data stored in data centers of American companies, even if they are located outside its territory. The context does not help either, since trade and geopolitical tensions between Washington and Europe, fueled by Donald Trump’s foreign policy, have triggered the distrust of European companies towards the big US technology companies. In detail. According to the company, Airbus evaluated more than 150 technical and legal requirements before choosing Scaleway. One of the points that weighed the most, according to Jestin, was the protection against what the directive itself described as the “kill switch”, that is, the possibility that a foreign provider could cut off access to services by decision of its government of origin. It also influenced that Scaleway already hosts the artificial intelligence models of Mistralthe French startup with which Airbus signed an agreement in May to develop tailored AI tools for the aerospace and defense sector. “The fact that Mistral models are already deployed on Scaleway’s infrastructure will allow us to accelerate our AI approach,” admitted Jestin. Between the lines. It should be noted that the move does not mean a complete break with American suppliers. And Airbus has clarified that it will continue working with AWS for platforms such as Skywise, its aviation data analysis system, and with Microsoft and Google for its productivity tools, according to share from The Register. The company will also continue to rely on providers such as Salesforce, Coupa or Workday. “We do not intend to move away from all non-European solutions; we balance our decisions based on the criticality of the data,” explained Jestin in the middle. And now what. The Airbus case comes at a time when the European Commission has proposed the Cloud and AI Development Act, a regulation aimed at boosting cloud computing and storage capacity within the European Union. Giants such as AWS, Microsoft and Google have already launched their own versions of “sovereign cloud” to try to retain their European customers, although not always successfully. And just as share from The Register, a Microsoft executive even admitted under oath before a French court that he could not guarantee full data sovereignty. Cover image | Airbus and Markus Spiske In Xataka | Technology has become so expensive that Apple has revived a disturbing idea: renting iPhones, iPads and Macs

After 40 years in the Galician sea, the radioactive drums are in a critical state of deterioration. The solution may be worse than letting it be

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“There is no life down there.” For decades it was almost a legend among activists and oceanographers: a giant landfill, with hundreds of thousands of radioactive drums, abandoned in the abyssal plain of the Atlantic. The problem is that there was life and they were killing it. A little less than 300 nautical miles from Cape Fisterra in Galicia – just over 500 kilometers – the Nodssum Project, which is already on its third expedition, has sounded the alarm. Far from the myth, French scientific missions They located thousands of barrels, went down with manned submarines, photographed leaks and measured radionuclides above what was expected. 220,000 barrels They only found a thousand. The rest, some 100,000 tons of nuclear waste, lay at the bottom and was carried away by the currents, its contents scattered. Now, with just over 3,500 barrels located, it is concluded that they are suffering from an “advanced state of deterioration”, according to researchers from the Center National de la Recherche Scientifique (CNRS). A cemetery under the Atlantic. Where does all this come from? The drama began in 1946. And until the early 1990s, British, Dutch, Belgian, French and other European ships continuously dumped low- and medium-level radioactive waste at the bottom of the Atlantic. They are concentrated in an area of ​​about 10,000 square kilometers, at a depth of 4,000–5,000 meters. It is, without hot cloths, the third largest landfill of canned nuclear waste known on the planet. Inside there are no fuel rods, but rather civil and military nuclear waste: sludge, gloves, laboratory equipment, medical remains, resins, contaminated scrap metal, encapsulated in cement or tar to withstand the pressure of the deep ocean. When the landfill began to be mapped, they did not even document 1% of the total. To date, just over 3,000 barrels have been located, identified with the autonomous robot UlyX and high-resolution sonar. A longliner and a lot coraxe. The They came between two freighters that were dumping garbage to the Atlantic Trench. The press took notice and that practice bounced around in newspapers around the world. The protests had an effect, because the European body in charge of controlling this waste declared a moratorium on discharges. Moratorium that is still in force today. The first NODSSUM-I campaign focused on making the invisible visible. since a decadethe expedition has been expanding the mapped area to about 140 square kilometers, with densities of about 20 drums per square kilometer and more than 3,350 barrels cataloged. The great novelty came with the manned submarine Nautile, which made it possible to directly observe the state of the barrels at more than 4,000 meters deep. It was then that the real state could be noticed. Barrels in the last. Corroded surfaces, colonization of anemones, open cracks in dents and leaks of encapsulating material – with tar and cement overflowing – in some containers, in addition to the detection of radionuclides above what was expected. The sea salt is slowly eating away some brass lacking the necessary security. The expedition has taken 345 samples of sediment, about 5,000 liters of water and specimens of abyssal fauna (fish, amphipods, small crustaceans) to analyze them in the laboratory with precision one hundred times greater than that of the instruments on board. To date, no “anomalies” have been found in the sediments and, although the radionuclides are below legal limitsthey do exceed all previous estimates. Rescue them… or leave them where they are. The current objective is to contain the threat. Can 200,000 drums be removed from the bottom of the Atlantic? Technically, yes; Politically, economically and in terms of risk, things get complicated. The Nuclear Safety Council insists on a clear message: the Galician and Cantabrian coastal waters do not show significant levels of radioactivity, below the limits set by Spanish and European regulations. And Spain does not even have responsibilities, since it did not dump waste into the Atlantic trench. In fact, the problem goes beyond the astronomical cost: many barrels are so degraded that they could disintegrate in the lifting process. If deterioration continues, will there be greater problems resulting from bioaccumulation? How does it affect the abyssal food chain? This is exactly what you are looking to answer. At the same time, we are trying to study this deep habitat full of organisms adapted to a darkness that now coexists with an 80-year-old nuclear legacy. Images | BNG (by Wolcott Henry), Flickr (owned by Tomas Vazquez) and Campagne NODSSUM, CNRS, Flotte oceanographique française. In Xataka | 800 meters deep in a 175 million year old rock: Germany’s solution to nuclear waste In Xataka | The big problem with nuclear energy has always been its waste. Russia can now recycle them up to five times

China is strangling critical materials that the US needs for its technology industry. It’s a two speed war

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In early May, Trump went to China on an official trip and took an entourage of CEOs on Air Force One. They were all from the technology (Cristiano Amon, Tim Cook, Elon Musk or Jensen Huang, for example), but also others energy, the space industry or semiconductors. One of them was Jim Anderson of Coherent, who was very interested in something very specific: why China is taking more than necessary in issue export licenses of indium phosphide. Anderson is blown away by indium phosphide for a very specific reason: It’s an essential material for high-speed optical chips. And, although it may seem very specific, it turns out that it is the key piece that the data centers new generation of the United States. And China, as with other strategic materials and metals, is in control. Optical chips. Data centers house miles and miles of visible cables that connect servers to the network and power, but they are not the only ones. Within each device, the chips are linked by cable and it is a functional technology, but with a limit that is beginning to be reached. If you want to improve latency and bandwidth (and, therefore, the performance of artificial intelligence platforms), you must rethink the internal connection to communicate the chips. That’s where optics come into play. By connecting chips by laser, the performance of the equipment is multiplied and Nvidia is so convinced of this that, a few months ago, invested 4 billion dollars in two companies: Lumentum and Coherent. They estimate that, with copper that is at its limit, connecting clusters of thousands of processors by laser is the solution to the physical problem that they are beginning to encounter. They are components with a very high degree of specialization and a series of materials from the rare earth which, as we have said on numerous occasions, are under the control of China. Indium phosphide is not a rare earth derivative, but it is a strategic material. Strangling the market . And therein lies the problem. The United States wants to promote its technological independence (because they have Big Tech, but practically everything is manufactured outside the United States) and, to achieve this, they need a series of materials that are not in their possession. China has that dominancebut with each restriction and veto that is applied to them from the US, they respond with the same currency, but vetoing what American technology companies need so much: rare earth metals. That is why they are classified as minerals, metals and strategic components, and indium phosphide is among them. China produces approximately 70% of the world’s indium and started to apply restrictions to the supply chain in February 2025. This has caused not only prices to skyrocket by 250%, but also American technology companies to pressure to reverse the situation. The main complaint is that, instead of directly blocking the finished products, it slows down the entire process because They are capable of conditioning the export of the materials used to create those products. Therefore, the optical module ecosystem cannot scale as quickly as hyperscalers need. Domino. Taking this situation into account, what is happening with these security systems advanced photonics It is exactly the same as with NAND chips: all the fish are sold for the next few years. In this sense, as consumers we absolutely don’t care because it is something that only affects AI companies, but it is estimated that Lumentum will have everything sold out in 2026, 2027 and… 2028, despite having quadrupled its production. It not only affects American companies, since the Taiwanese VPEC and LandMark Optoelectronics are also suffering interruptions in the supply of the material. And it doesn’t matter if Lumentum or Coherent are multiplying their capacity by opening new plants because the raw materials continue to leave China and, if those export controls are in place, It is an insurmountable funnel. The other side of the coin. On the other hand we have the Chinese industry. In recent years, its technologies have taken a giant leap, expanding its capacity and beginning to make waves in the international conversation with both user level components (RAM memory and computers) and in the high technological spheres (photonics and semiconductors). Because China has detailed the plan to become the world’s leading technological power by 2030 and it is clear that they have both a very defined roadmap and, above all, the materials necessary to achieve that goal and which companies are the ones that will define that future. Huawei or SMIC are two proper namesbut there are others like Yuanjie that have skyrocketed in the stock market. The reason? They are the ones who are creating photonics components for data centers. In Xataka | Huawei no longer competes: it is building its own parallel reality

College students are rapidly losing a critical skill: reading.

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My students can’t read. It is the title of the opinion column in which Tyler Jagtuniversity literature professor, narrates the situation currently found in his classrooms. Many students are not able to read or maintain the plot of a 20-page text. He believes that AI and mobile phones are to blame. 20 pages is too much. This teacher says that he has been assigning the same task to his rhetoric and writing students for five years: reading a 20-page article. However, this year none of his students finished the work and they were not repeaters, but rather university students who had passed the entrance exams. One of them was honest and admitted that the text was too long and “constantly missed the point of the article.” Jagt acknowledges that the complaint that students do not know how to read is common among teachers, but according to him this time things are serious and there is data that corroborates it. The tests. According to the results of the 2024 National Assessment of Educational Progress (NAEP), students in grade 12 (equivalent to a 2nd year of Baccalaureate in Spain) obtained the lowest score on the reading test since the assessment began in 1992. A third of the participants reached the basic level, which means that they are likely not able to “draw general conclusions based on concepts explicitly presented in a text.” Younger students are even worse off. According to a study by the Annie E. Casey Foundation70% of fourth grade students (like fourth grade) are not able to read fluently. That is in the United States, but in Spain the situation is not ideal either. According to the OECDat least a third of the Spanish population has level 1 reading comprehension, which means that “they can only understand very short texts with a minimum of distracting information.” A report from the BBVA Foundation and the Valencian Institute of Economic Research (Ivie)Spaniards between 25 and 34 years old, who have studied more than their parents, advance much more slowly in basic skills. It’s technology’s fault. Or at least that is what the author maintains, specifically the emergence of smartphones and, more recently, AI. The idea that technology makes us stupid has been accompanying us for decades and with the emergence of AI, technological panic has intensified. That students are using AI to do their jobs is something we already knew. What is still not clear is what consequences it can have on a cognitive level. There is no evidence that technology produces cognitive damage (yes changes), but it is also true that until now we have not had a technology capable of doing everything that AI does. Debt and cognitive surrender. They are two concepts that emerged from recent studies. The first, cognitive debtcomes from a MIT research titled “Your brain on ChatGPT”. Participants who used ChatGPT had the worst brain performance when completing a task that involved writing essays. The researchers conclude that using AI as a complete substitute for mental effort can weaken our neural connections. The idea of cognitive surrender is mentioned in a recent study from the University of Pennsylvania. According to researchers, cognitive surrender arises when we delegate our thinking to AI and accept its answers too confidently. Another study from the University of Oxford saw how If we use AI and then it is taken away from us, our performance worsens. not so fast. There is an important nuance and that is that the concept of “using AI” is very varied. We can use it without checking the answers and accepting everything it tells us or we can use it as a tool in our creative process. In fact, in several of these studies, participants who used AI as support obtained scores very similar to those of the group that did not use AI. Therefore it is not whether we use it or not, it is how we use it. However, the arguments in favor of using AI in educational environments are becoming fewer and fewer. There was a study that said using chatbots like ChatGPT had a positive impact on learning, but was recently withdrawn due to “concerns regarding discrepancies”. Come on, the biggest argument of the defenders of educational AI went down the drain. The other culprit. As we said, this professor also points to smartphones as responsible for this situation. Appointment a 2017 study in which they verified how the simple presence of the mobile phone reduced the “available cognitive capacity”. He also cites another 2022 study in which they saw that reading on a smartphone was associated with prefrontal overload and decreased concentration. Tiktokize the school. The problem is not cell phones, but social networks and doomscrolling that hijacks our attention. We have become accustomed to consuming pills of information in the form of tweets, posts, reels and tiktoks. In this context, a 20-page text is much, much. Tyler Jagt is adapting to this reality by dividing work into two, so they have to read less, and assigning specific tasks so they don’t lose track as much. Image | Siora Photography in Unsplash In Xataka | “I can’t stop”: the addiction to talking to AI is already here and there are even support groups to quit it

new scrub on the most critical flight in its history

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After postponing the release date several times, it seemed that, finally, version 3 of Starship I was going to take flight. However, flight 12 of the SpaceX giant had to do a scrub after stopping and restarting the countdown several times. In principle, the company is expected to make a new attempt today, at 5:30 p.m., local time in Texas (00:30, Spanish peninsular time). However, it has not been completely confirmed. A countdown that never ends. During the countdown prior to the launch of Starship there were several arrests. This occurs when engineers detect problems that they must solve for the imminent launch. After the necessary checks, the clock was moving again, but then it stopped again. It stopped up to 5 times. Unfortunately, not all the technical problems were solved, so a scrub was finally chosen. This is similar to the launch abort, although the abort occurs when ignition and scrubbing have already begun before ignition. The technical problems. The first stop in the countdown occurred shortly after T-40. That is, when there were 40 seconds left until the launch. At this point, engineers had to check the quick-disconnect grilles for their final setbacks. After this point, the countdown began, but not for long, as it stopped again at T-35 to manage the pressures of the quick disconnect system. Next, the big part came in the T-28. First, a problem was detected in the water diverter. This seemed solved, but when the countdown was reactivated, not even a second passed. He stopped again at T-28 so that the sensors on the arm that controls the quick disconnect system could be checked. And if that were not enough, there was one last stoppage, also in T-28, due to an error in the hydraulic pin that maintains said arm. Did not carry out the necessary retractionso it had to be reviewed. There were already too many problems and they could not be solved properly, so the launch was cancelled. SpaceX has a lot at stake. This is a very important release. It is not just another Starship flight, but the first in which its version 3 will be tested. Both the ship itself and the Super Heavy rocket incorporate a large number of modifications that should make its flight much more efficient. This is very important for future SpaceX missions, but also so that the company can maintain the proposed timeline for joining the Artemis missions as human landing system. If the flight failed, the losses, both economic and confidence, would be immense. It is important to solve even the smallest incident so that everything goes well. another try. Another attempt is expected this afternoon in Texas. In fact, the roads around the Starbase launch pad will be closed from 10 a.m. local time. That is, 17:00, Spanish peninsular time. Unless engineers cannot resolve all the issues, there will be another flight attempt today. We’ll see if this is the definitive one. Image | SpaceX In Xataka | SpaceX is preparing the largest IPO in history: the fact that it is doing so right now is no coincidence

Europe has been depending on Amazon, Google and Microsoft for its most critical data for years. You are about to cut off their access

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The European Commission is taking action. This organization is expected to present its “Technological Sovereignty Package” on May 27. This directive will include a series of measures aimed at boosting the EU’s strategic autonomy in sensitive areas, and that means something unique: stopping depending as much as possible on US hyperscalers to store critical data. The fear of the off button. The measures are being applied due to growing political instability and some recent cases that have demonstrated the power that the US has over the European technological infrastructure. In May Microsoft “cancelled” the email of Karim Khan, a prosecutor who had been directly cited in an executive order from Donald Trump. Microsoft he denied itbut the damage had already been done, and these problems have raised fears that Trump could use a kind of “off button” against European institutions that depend on the hardware and software infrastructure provided by companies like Microsoft, Google or Amazon. Legal espionage. The CLOUD Act (Clarifying Lawful Overseas Use of Data Act) is a 2018 US law that allows law enforcement to force US-based technology companies (such as Google, Microsoft or Amazon) to provide data, regardless of where it is stored, whether inside or outside the United States. This law updates the Stored Communications Act to prioritize data control over its location. Or what is the same: if you use the services of US hyperscalers, the US may end up accessing your data. And since you’ve accepted their terms of use, you agree to let them legally spy on you if they “need to.” If you want my critical data, you’ll have to protect it. The new regulations require service providers who want to work with critical European data to demonstrate that they are not subject to requests from non-EU governments. This automatically excludes Microsoft, Google or Amazon, because all three are subject to the CLOUD Act. Europe is thus looking for providers that guarantee that critical data will not be in the possession of companies that then have to transfer it to foreign powers. Europe depends on the American cloud. The reality is that today Amazon (AWS), Microsoft (Azure) and Google (Google Cloud) currently control more than 70% of the Cloud Computing market in the old continent. Losing these institutional contracts would mean a significant financial blow, but it also sends a powerful signal to European private companies: if Brussels does not trust the US with its secrets, why should European corporations? The domino effect could be huge. Europe has its own clouds. This directive would give an important opportunity to initiatives that seemed stalled like GAIA-Xbut there are also companies with their own infrastructure such as OVH (France) or T-Systems (Germany). There are significant technical challenges in that area, because US hyperscalers have been refining their offering over the past two decades. However, Brussels seems willing to accept a somewhat less efficient or complete service in exchange for greater autonomy. The options existno doubt, but the challenge is enormous. Migrating is going to be expensive. It is one thing to make the decision and quite another to complete that migration that will require moving decades of data and systems to a different infrastructure. Current data centers would have to be expanded to meet demand, they say some analysisand that would mean a cost of between 14,000 and 24,000 million euros. Consulting companies like Forrester they don’t see anything clear that the EU can achieve cloud sovereignty, and other experts also make it clear that Europe will not abandon the hyperscalers. Traceability. In addition to changing suppliers, the board also wants to impose strict requirements regarding transparency. AI systems that have access to that data must be auditable by the newly created EU AI Office. The Commission wants to know who has access to the code, who maintains the servers and who has the technical capacity to manage and even intercept such data transfers. Data too sensitive. In comments to CNBCEU officials explained that there are active debates demanding that financial, judicial or health data used at the government level and in the public sector have a sovereign cloud infrastructure. That’s also true for military data, of course, and There are already movements in that direction. Fragmented Internet. The move confirms that the world appears to be heading toward a future with a fragmented internet and one that will have important geopolitical boundaries. While the US tries to defend its technology against China, Europe and the entire world are trying to avoid or at least mitigate their excessive dependence on American technological solutions. Image | İsmail Enes Ayhan and François Genon In Xataka | Europe no longer trusts Google. That is why several start-ups are designing an independent payment system on Android

The war in Iran has destroyed another critical supply chain for consumer technology: PCBs

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While the war in Iran is leaving us with a global energy crisis unprecedented, it is also hitting the technology industry squarely in one of its most critical components: printed circuit boards (PCB). These boards are found in basically any device, and in the last month their price has skyrocketed by up to 40%, according to they count from Goldman Sachs. The reason: an attack on a critical plant for the manufacture of PCBs that puts the global supply of these boards in check. Stroke. ANDIn the first days of April, Iranian forces attacked the Jubail petrochemical complex in Saudi Arabia. SABIC (Saudi Basic Industries Corporation) operates in this complex, a company that produces approximately 70% of the world’s supply of high-purity polyphenylene ether (PPE) resin, an essential material for manufacturing the laminates with which PCBs are built. According to they count From Reuters, since the attack, SABIC has been unable to resume production. And that is a problem on a global scale. Raw material at stake. It is not just about the direct attack on Jubail. The conflict has also generated serious disruption in maritime traffic in the Persian Gulf, one of the most critical logistics routes connecting Middle Eastern chemical producers with Asian electronics manufacturers. Added to this is the pressure on copper, which represents around 60% of the total cost of raw materials in PCB manufacturing, according to they count from Victory Giant Technology, one of the largest Chinese suppliers in the sector with clients such as Nvidia. The company warned this month that the conflict could make key materials such as resin and copper even more expensive. According to Reuters, the price of sheet copper has risen up to 30% since the beginning of the year. Qproduction ties. From Daeduck Electronics, a major South Korean PCB manufacturer that supplies Samsung, SK Hynix and AMD, among others, confirmed Reuters that the company has started talks with its customers to pass on the price increases. The company pointed out that the waiting period for materials such as epoxy resin has gone from three weeks to fifteen. A market that was already stressed. PCB prices had already been rising for months due to the skyrocketing demand for AI servers. According to Reutersdemand has accelerated sharply since March, with manufacturers trying to secure supplies before the situation worsens. Goldman Sachs points out that large cloud service providers are willing to take on further increases because they expect demand to outstrip supply for years. On the other hand, research firm Prismark projects that the global PCB sector will grow 12.5% ​​in 2026, reaching $95.8 billion. And PCBs aren’t the only thing affected. The technology supply chain is taking hits from all sides. According to inform The Elec Korea, large Japanese manufacturers of photoresist (a key chemical in chip production) have begun to notify clients such as Samsung and SK Hynix of problems in the supply of gasoline, a raw material that these suppliers obtain more than 40% from the Middle East. Besides, the price of helium (essential gas in the manufacture of semiconductors) has almost doubled after the Iranian attacks on Ras Laffan, in Qatar, which provides about a third of the global supply, according to Fitch Ratings. What does this mean for the consumer. The impact will end up reaching the final price of the products. PCBs are in absolutely everything that has electronics inside, and a 40% increase in their cost is difficult to absorb without the increase being passed on to the user. Manufacturers are already negotiating price transfers with their customers, and these, in turn, will transfer them downstream. The worst thing is the timing, since we are also in the middle of a RAM and storage crisis and the pressure around the markets only increases. Cover image | Random Thinking In Xataka | There is a company that has grown 3,000% in the stock market, even beating the performance of Nvidia: Sandisk

The Artemis II countdown has already begun, but many critical points must still be overcome

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If everything goes well, humans will return to the moon todayafter more than 50 years without manned trips to our satellite. The Artemis II mission has a two-hour launch window, which will begin at 6:24 p.m. local time in Florida (00:24 a.m. PST). Before that launch the countdown will take place. But not the typical 10-second countdown that comes to mind, but a much longer one that has, in fact, already started. During the 50 hours that the countdown lasts, each of the factors that could make it necessary to postpone the launch are analyzed point by point. Only if everything is fine or can be solved at the moment will we finally see this mission begin, which breaks records and barriers in many ways. Who. The crew of Artemis II They will be very different from those of the Apollo missions. Although all of them were crewed by three white American men, this time there will be more variety. The four astronauts who will go aboard the Orion capsule are Reid Wiseman, Victor Glover, Christina Koch and Jeremy Hansen. The last three will be the ones that will make the difference, since Glover and Koch will potentially be the first black person and the first woman to travel to the Moon and Hansen the first Canadian to leave Earth’s orbit. The Artemis II crew will be pioneers in many ways So that. Artemis II will not land on the lunar surface. That will be the goal of Artemis III. However, its 10-day trip will include a flyby to the Moon, in which key systems, such as life support, navigation and communications, will be tested. Photographs will also be taken of the hidden side of the Moon, in order to analyze its geology. and other data of scientific interest. Meanwhile, astronauts will carry sensors that will help verify the alterations that their biological parameters experience in space. The countdown. While it is true that the true countdown lasts 10 minutes, during the 50 hours prior to launch There is a very well established testing and preparation schedule. It all starts with preparing the fuel loading systems and powering up the ship. Other important key points are, for example, the ignition of the batteries, which occurs 33 hours before or the cooling and subsequent filling of the various fuel charging and propulsion systems. These steps are taken starting 10 hours before launch. Also very important is the flight crew’s weather briefing, which takes place 6 hours before the rocket is launched. The real countdown. During the last 10 minutes, very sensitive tasks for the launch are carried out. Above all, in this countdown the last checks are made to all the systems and the refueling of the fuel tanks is carried out. This means that the tank is refilled to the optimal level to replace the fuel that has evaporated during the filling stages. In these last minutes, the final pressurization of the tanks is also carried out and the rocket goes into internal energy mode. That is, it stops using energy from the terrestrial electrical system and uses only its batteries. What can go wrong. Any minor detail that does not work properly during the 50 hours before launch could cause the mission to be postponed. The most sensitive points are, without a doubt, those that have to do with fuel. For example, many missions have been canceled when leaks were detected in the tanks that could not be solved at the time. Adverse weather could also force the launch to be delayed. When. A launch cannot take place at any time. The Earth revolves around the Sun and the Moon orbits the Earth. In order for a rocket launched from Earth to follow a suitable trajectory towards the Moon, it is important that it be in a suitable orientation, taking into account their respective orbits. These specific moments are known as launch windows. Artemis II will have one of these windows today for two hours. If the launch could not be carried out due to any error, this month there will be several more opportunities, on April 2, 3, 6 and 30. After takeoff. The first 8 minutes after takeoff are critical. The engines are working at maximum power to leave the Earth’s atmosphere and arrive, now, slowly. Above all there will be two critical ignitions in the rocket’s upper stage, known as ICPS. The first serves to stabilize the orbit and the second to take the rocket to high Earth orbit. It is important that these go well so that the mission can move forward. Once those critical 8 minutes have been passed, the mission will have a lot of flight ahead of it, but at least the most complicated part will have passed. Even so, still We will have 10 days to closely follow the work of these 4 astronauts which, of course, have already gone down in history. Images | POT In Xataka | Spanish technology in the return to the Moon: the system designed in Madrid that NASA will use in Artemis II

The United States had not manufactured its most critical uranium for 20 years. He has just resurrected his production with an old metallurgy trick

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In the hills of Oak Ridge, Tennessee, lies a place that carries the weight of contemporary history in its foundation: the Y-12 National Security Complex. According to the files of the US Department of Energy (DOE)these facilities were born in 1943 as a vital cog in the Manhattan Project. However, for more than two decades, the halls of its most advanced nuclear processing sector had remained in a prolonged dormancy. Today, that industrial silence has been broken. The United States has just ended a long gap in its domestic processing capabilities. The milestone that marks this rebirth is as visual as it is forceful: the National Nuclear Security Administration (NNSA) has successfully manufactured its first “button” of purified enriched uranium, an achievement that opens a new era in the American nuclear deterrent. In short. From the NNSA have confirmed the restart of uranium purification at the Y-12 complex. It is not a sudden step; This achievement comes months after, in September 2025, the start of the project will be authorized electrorefining. This is the first authorization of its kind since the opening of the Highly Enriched Uranium Materials Facility 15 years ago. More in depth. The new process allows installation slam the door definitively on the old Y-12 plants. For years, uranium processing depended on complex chemical treatments that were inefficient and, above all, posed greater risks for workers. The new era abandons these legacy systems in favor of much cleaner and safer technology. A strategic milestone. According to the statement from the NNSAthis purified uranium is a critical material that will support unavoidable national security missions, from the production of nuclear weapons to providing the fuel needed for the reactors of the United States Navy’s aircraft carriers and submarines. This effort is not a coincidence, but respond directly to the security and defense guidelines promoted under the mandate of President Donald Trump. Added to this military strategy is a pressing need for independence of resources. In November of last year, the US Geological Survey (USGS) added uranium to its final list of 60 critical minerals. This government directive has a clear objective: to shield the country against the risks of interruption in global supply chains. The “magic” of electrorefining. The secret behind this renaissance is called electrorefining. Although it may sound like science fiction, it is based on well-established commercial processes commonly used to purify everyday metals such as aluminum, titanium or copper. The method was originally developed by the prestigious Argonne National Laboratory and later perfected by the Y-12 development team itself. A simple process (at first glance). To understand how it works, the magazine Science Direct explains it in a simple way: The process uses an electrolytic cell where two electrodes are immersed in a chemical solution. One of them acts as an anode (where the impure recycled material is placed) and the other as a cathode. Through a controlled electrical reaction, metal ions travel to the cathode, where the pure metal is deposited, while the impurities fall to the bottom as an “anode sludge.” The result: An astonishing 99.9% purity. The format: An NNSA spokesperson He explained that the process It first generates “purified uranium crystals,” which are then melted in a furnace to create the compact, secure, high-purity uranium “buttons.” Additionally, Nikolai Sokov, senior researcher at the Vienna Center for Disarmament and Non-Proliferation, explained that this innovative technology allows recovering and recycling uranium from various byproducts. Along the same lines, this method drastically reduces the waste generated compared to old chemical treatments. The weight of history: environmental debt. No story about the Y-12 complex would be complete without looking at its darker side. The background documents of the US Department of Energy rreveal the heavy inheritance of the Cold War. During the 1950s and 1960s, facilities used massive amounts of mercury for lithium separation. The ecological toll was devastating: an estimated 700,000 pounds (more than 317,000 kilos) of mercury were lost in the buildings and the surrounding environment. Today, to contrast technological advancement with the mistakes of the past, the top priority of the Environmental Management (EM) program at Y-12 is the cleanup of this mercury. He DOE informs that it is being built the Outfall 200 Mercury Treatment Facility. Scheduled for 2027, this plant will be capable of treating up to 3,000 gallons of water per minute. This vital infrastructure will allow older, more contaminated facilities (such as Alpha-2 by 2029 and Beta-1 by 2030) to be safely demolished without mercury ending up in the nearby Upper East Fork Poplar Creek. A process of metamorphosis. Audrey Beldio, NNSA Principal Deputy Administrator for Production Modernization, summed it up forcefully in the statements. project startup: “Electrorefining revolutionizes the processing of enriched uranium.” With uranium flowing again into Y-12, the United States is not just abandoning aging infrastructure. It is sending a clear message to the world: after twenty years of lethargy, the US nuclear sector has taken a leap towards a future where technological efficiency, the safety of its workers and the reliability of its arsenal are once again the spearhead of its defense policy. Image | HeUraniumC Xataka | While the West does not decide on nuclear, China already has a reactor 100 times more efficient than traditional ones

NASA chose it for a critical spacecraft system

by

After some delays and problems, the Artemis II mission will take off next April 1, 2026 towards the Moon after half a century without humanity setting foot on the Earth’s satellite. And well, the reality is that the four people who will travel will not touch the Moon: they will simply circle it in a 10-day mission that will put humanity one step further: they will be the human beings who have been the furthest from Earth. And in that ship there will be critical technology made in Spain. Because the Orion ship consists of two modules: a crew capsule manufactured by Lockheed Martin for NASA and the European Service Module, provided by the European Space Agency, with the German Airbus Defense and Space as main contractor. That’s where the Madrid piece is: the thermal control unit, which is carried out by Airbus Crisa. TCU arrives from Tres Cantos. The Airbus Crisa plant in Tres Cantos (Madrid) has designed, manufactured and validated the Thermal Control Unit (TCU) of the European Service Module. As explains the Madrid company on its website, this piece will allow the supply of air and water to the astronauts, while ensuring that the temperature on board remains within comfortable levels for astronauts and equipment. As account for El Mundo Fernando Gómez-Carpintero, general director of Airbus Crisa, Orion does not carry one TCU but two. “Both are identical and redundant, that is, the ship carries two units because all the systems are duplicated in case one fails.” After all, it is the life support of the crew capsule: it monitors and regulates the conditions inside, providing propulsion, communications and energy. ESA module breakdown. THAT Why it is important. Because as recognizes NASA itselffor the first time in history has entrusted a non-American company with the construction of a crucial element for a United States manned space mission. Among the chosen European ones is Airbus Crisa from Tres Cantos and also with a critical component Who is Airbus Crisa. CRISA was born in 1985 independently, but since 2000 is integrated within the Airbus group. Its activity focuses on the development and manufacture of electronic components for space missions, both for the Airbus group and for third parties. In 2012, ESA launched the public tender and in 2014, Airbus Crisa signed the contract. As tells its directorwith Artemisa 1 its units recorded impeccable operation. His resume includes his participation in some of the most ambitious space missions of recent years, such as electronics for the James Webb Space Telescope, monitoring Martian rovers Curiosity and Perseverancecomponents for the Ariane and Vega rockets and also for ESA’s Gaia star mapper or the electronics of the SPAINSAT NG antennaEurope’s most advanced military secure communications satellites. Spain and the moon are old acquaintances. Spain’s connection with lunar exploration is not new. Without going any further, in the Apollo mission the antenna through which we received Neil Armstrong’s first words It was from Fresnedillas de la Oliva (Madrid). Its successor is still in Madrid today, but has changed location: now It is in Robledo de Chavela and remains operational as part of NASA’s Deep Space Network. However, Airbus Crisa’s contribution to Artemis II represents a qualitative leap: we are talking about critical components integrated into a manned spacecraft. In Xataka | Artemis: launch plans and everything we know about the mission to return man to the Moon In Xataka | We have been deceived by the distances of the Solar System: the closest neighbor to Neptune is Mercury Cover | Airbus Crisa and NASA

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