space

It seemed that the Fold were the territory of Samsung and Honor. Motorola has arrived to claim its space

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After doing what are, for me, the best folding Flip type, Motorola has just embarked on the adventure of its remaining format: the Fold. And I have already been able to try it: I was alone with the Motorola Razr Fold, I think it is a solid, versatile and high-quality bet. He is coming to cause a lot of war, I am convinced. The first thing I appreciated when holding it in my hand is that Motorola has known how to slim down the thickness of the phone so that it is almost “normal” once it is folded. The two unfolded parts are very thin: reaches 4.55 mm. Of course, only in the areas of the phone that do not correspond to the cameras, because there the thickness, as usual, is much higher. Motorola Razr Fold technical sheet motorola razr fold SCREEN 6.6 inch external Internal 8.1 inch 2K LTPO Corning Gorilla Glass Ceramic 3 outer glass DIMENSIONS AND WEIGHT 4.55mm open thickness 9.89mm closed thickness Weight: – PROCESSOR Snapdragon 8 Gen 5 RAM 16 GB RAM Boost STORAGE 512GB FRONT CAMERA 32 MP internal 20MP Outdoor REAR CAMERA 50 MP main (Sony LYTIA 828) 50 MP telephoto lens, 3x optical zoom, OIS 50 MP ultra wide angle (122 degree field of view) BATTERY 6,000 mAh 80W TurboPower Charging 50W wireless charging OPERATING SYSTEM Android CONNECTIVITY 5G OTHERS Compatible with moto pen ultra Stainless steel hinge and titanium internal plate Stereo speakers with Dolby Atmos and Sound by Bose IP47/IP48/IP49 PRICE From 1,999 euros It feels very good in the hand, as if it were not a foldable This is important, since Motorola makes no compromises: the two wings of the phone are joined together without gaps, as if from the outside it looked like a regular phone. It’s a bit difficult to put your fingers in the phone to unfold it. The movement from there offers no resistance and allows you to hold the hinge at almost any angle. The Pantone finishes, and a rough touch on the back, give it personality, as well as grip. It holds up well when folded and unfolded, just like when it comes to taking photos. I have not noticed that it is greatly offset by the weight of the triple camera. The screen looks fabulous in all conditions: Motorola has achieved extremely high brightness for both panels. The tactile response is good and the fold crease did not seem exaggerated to me. Yes, it is marked more than that of the Honor Magic V6For example. You couldn’t ask for more in terms of power: Snapdragon 8 Elite Gen 516 GB of RAM and 512 GB of storage. The test did not allow me to analyze the performance in depth. From what I tested, I highly doubt that I will have problems on a day-to-day basis, both with regular multitasking and with games. I also didn’t appreciate that it got hotter than normal. Competing to be the reference folding I don’t think he Samsung Galaxy Z Fold7 be the rival to beat for the Motorola Razr Fold: due to the extra-thin design, and the 6,000 mAh battery embedded in the phone, Moto points to Honor with its Magic V. Because that was the feeling I had when I had the new mobile: the Razr Fold reminded me of the Magic V5. When hours later I tried the Honor Magic V6I couldn’t help but draw parallels. Although the design may have certain reminiscences between one and the other, Motorola maintains software with its particular style, customizable to a large extent and with a style of Android 16 that is not too far from the Pixel. Also, very good news: The Motorola Razr Fold is guaranteed with seven years of Android updates and seven years of security updates The resistance is also certified: IP47, IP48 and IP49. It has very good quality sound certified by Bose and compatible with Dolby Atmos. A trio of reliable cameras with an AI-enhanced telephoto Cameras are usually the pending issue with folding phones, especially when they are as thin as the Motorola Razr Fold. Because there are no miracles, physics is physics. And the minimum thickness is enough for what it is, compromises have to be made. Motorola has decided to sacrifice as little as possible. Its triple rear camera debuts a Sony Lytia 828 50 megapixel which seems to behave at a good level. I was taking photos in the testing room, with plenty of light coming in through the windows, and I saw the camera resolute, accurate in colors and with well-applied automatic HDR. The wide angle is also 50 megapixels. Same as the telephoto: Motorola has relied on a trio that produces the same dimensions in the resulting images. With Quad Binning processing at 12.6 megapixels. The telephoto reaches 100x in its maximum hybrid mode, a distance that usually results in a glob. Although I have appreciated great work from the AI: can reconstruct images until you get something drinkable. It won’t be the best photo in the world, but at least it will serve to show it. With the logical risks of parts invented (or recreated) by AI. Motorola rounds off the great work it already did in the Flip format The Motorola Razr Fold is a mobile phone that surprises in the hand due to its lightness and everything it keeps inside. Power, performance, flexibility, very good cameras and the ability to become a very good work tool. At this point I especially like your desktop modeI believe that Motorola has a great asset to enhance productivity in all environments. Especially those of us who travel almost with nothing on. Very good balance between quality, performance and design. Now, it is not a phone that is unique on the market either: the Fold-type folding format is already very mature. And they are all placing themselves in a high price segment, that segment for which They seek to distinguish themselves by appearance rather than … Read more

Mars was the great space battleground between China and the US. Now it’s the Moon (and the stakes are too high)

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For years, Mars has been the great horizon of space exploration: the inevitable destination to which, sooner rather than later, humanity had to head. Earlier this year, Elon Musk, one of the main drivers of that narrative, assured that The United States could land on the red planet within a period of between five and ten years. In parallel, in China, different voices from its aerospace sector They located the first manned mission Mars around 2033. The message was clear: the race for Mars was already underway. On paper, deadlines are as stimulating as they are challenging. Because sending humans to Mars is not a simple evolution of what has already been achieved, but rather a leap in scale. NASA itself has detailed the enormous technical complexity involved in a mission of this type: from entry, descent and landing systems capable of landing heavy loads in an extremely tenuous atmosphere, to infrastructure that guarantees energy, communications and life support during prolonged stays. Depositing a one-ton rover is not the same as lowering dozens of tons of habitable modules and critical equipment. The race no longer looks at Mars, it looks at the lunar south pole However, while Mars made headlines, the real strategy has been taking another direction. As the NASA Artemis Program and the Chinese Lunar Exploration Program have consolidated calendars, investments and technological milestones, the focus has shifted to a more immediate and pragmatic objective: the Moon. Everything seems to indicate that It’s not about giving up Marsbut to assume that the most sensible path goes through intermediate stages. In both cases, the satellite is emerging as a technological test bed, logistics platform and operational experience before facing a journey of months and millions of kilometers. The new space race, therefore, is not being fought, at least for the moment, at tens of millions of kilometers, but at a few 400,000 kilometers away. This proximity changes the equation: it reduces transit times, facilitates the shipment of supplies and allows us to react to unforeseen events with reasonable margins. But, above all, it opens the door to something that is beginning to take shape: the birth of a lunar economy. Permanent bases, scientific experiments, transportation contracts and infrastructure development could make the Moon not only a destination, but a key node of human expansion in space. The epicenter of this new phase is not just any place, but the environment of the Shackleton craterat the lunar south pole. A permanent darkness, as we can see in the photo that accompanies this article, has fueled the hypothesis that in its shadow areas it could keep water ice. This possibility explains why both the United States and China are targeting this region in their next landings, with the stated objective of studying and, eventually, taking advantage of these resources. In practical terms, we talk about water for consumption, generation of oxygen and production of hydrogen and oxygen as a propellant, whenever technology and economic viability allow it. Illuminated rim and shadowed interior of Shackleton Crater The question, then, is not just what is at the south pole, but what changes if those resources are confirmed as usable. In this scenario, the Moon would cease to be solely a scientific destination and would become a functional piece within space architecture. We are not yet talking about industrial exploitation, but about something more basic: reducing absolute dependence on the Earth in each mission. This nuance introduces a real economic dimension to the lunar race, because it alters the logic of costs, transportation and planning of future operations. This is where the notion of an Earth-Moon supply chain stops sounding futuristic and starts to fit into concrete timetables. Although the lunar economy, with its own supply chainmay seem like a distant concept, its foundations are beginning to be built. On the American side, that architecture is beginning to take shape with very specific missions. Firefly Aerospace launched its Blue Ghost 1 module on January 15integrated into the initiative NASA Commercial Lunar Payload Services. This is a mission that aims to demonstrate what a cargo delivery system would look like for our satellite when it lands on the moon on March 2. In parallel to these cargo missions, Blue Origin is preparing its own movement towards the lunar south pole. The company founded by Jeff Bezos is working on the first demonstration flight of its cargo module Blue Moon Mark 1known as MK1, scheduled for early 2026. The eight-meter-high lander will take off aboard the rocket New Glenn and will need to validate key systems before any more ambitious operations. It should be noted that the mission does not involve resource extraction, but it is a necessary step to operate in the environment where expectations about the ice are concentrated. Render of a multidome base under construction on the Moon The good news is that the MK1 has been tested at NASA’s Johnson Space Center, including thermal vacuum chamber simulations to replicate the extreme conditions of space and the lunar surface. If it passes this phase and the final integration with the launcher, the ship could become a relevant asset for future missions to the south pole. Another important fact is that the US agency you have already selected this module for transport the VIPER rover in 2027whose task will be to search for volatiles such as water ice in permanently shadowed regions. On the Chinese side, the centerpiece is the mission Chang’e 7conceived as a more complex deployment than a simple lander. The mission is targeting August aboard a Long March 5 rocket and will include an orbiter, a lander, a rover and a small jump probe. The set aims to operate in the vicinity of the lunar south pole, where experiments aimed at studying the surface and searching for signs of ice in permanently shadowed regions will be concentrated. Render of Blue Origin’s Blue Moon Mark 1 lander and VIPER If the schedule holds, China could make these measurements before the American … Read more

Two Spanish space giants have joined forces to take 5G defense satellites into space: PLD Space and Sateliot

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Two Spanish companies they have sealed an agreement to launch new generation satellites without depending on any other foreign company. In Europe we have been with the run run of technological sovereignty. This agreement is a perfect example of this, and also a milestone for Spain if the project ends up materializing. The agreement. PLD Space, manufacturer of the Miura 5 rocket based in Elche, and Sateliot, a telecommunications satellite operator based in Barcelona, ​​have signed a contract to launch two satellites from Sateliot’s Tritó constellation aboard the Miura 5. The launch is scheduled for the last quarter of 2027, expectedly on the fourth commercial flight of the Elche rocket, and will do so from the Kourou Space Port, in French Guiana. Each satellite weighs about 160 kilos and will be launched on a dedicated mission, without sharing space with other operators. Why is it important? This agreement is presented as the first entirely Spanish private space mission, with satellites designed, manufactured and operated in the country, launched using a rocket also of Spanish origin. And the interesting thing about the project is that it would cover the entire value chain of the sector (manufacturing, launch, operations and commercial exploitation) without foreign intermediaries. Although the European Union has been trying for years reduce your dependence on operators like SpaceXthis alliance fits directly into this context. What are Tritó satellites? The Tritó constellation is a significant evolution of the current satellites that Sateliot has, weighing 15 kg and dedicated exclusively to the Internet of Things (IoT). In this case, the new Tritó have greater capacity and will combine IoT connectivity with direct device-satellite communication (D2D), including data, voice and video through 5G. Marco Guadalupi, CTO of Sateliot, counted to El Español that one of its key points is that they will be able to “establish the connection when the device is in the pocket”, being key for emergencies, natural disasters and defense applications. The risk they assume. Guadalupi does not hide that it is “a risky mission.” The Miura 5 is a new rocket, whose first launch test is scheduled for the end of this year, and its reliability has yet to be demonstrated in real flight. “We are crazy and we know what we want,” I was joking Guadalupi himself in the interview with the media. The Sateliot team claims to have visited the PLD Space integration and testing facilities on three occasions before signing. In exchange for the risk, they get something that few options on the market offer: a dedicated mission, without competing for space, and the flexibility to adapt flight conditions to their specific needs. Review. Last November, PLD Space closed financing of 169 million euros through ESA’s European Launcher Challenge, backed almost entirely by Spain, for launch contracts and improvements to the Miura 5. Sateliot, for its part, has plans to deploy up to 100 satellites in 2028 and aims to reach revenues of 1 billion euros in 2030, according to they count from Reuters. Among its shareholders is Indra, with 4% of the capital. The agreement with PLD Space also occurs while Sateliot is opening market in India. Jaume Sanpera, CEO of the company, traveled to the Asian country coinciding with the announcement, where the company already has headquarters and sees potential for a future business in which they offer connectivity in remote areas. What’s coming Before the satellites board the Miura 5, Sateliot plans to launch a prototype of the Tritó platform in mid-2027 to validate the payload. The more capable commercial satellites would be integrated into the rocket in the final stretch of that same year. Regarding the total number of satellites they hope to put into orbit, Guadalupi counted that “there will be hundreds.” Sateliot’s intention is to centralize launches to simplify logistics, and although they do not rule out other suppliers, they aim to continue working with PLD Space. Cover image | Satellite In Xataka | A new “solar system” has just been discovered. There’s just one problem: it shouldn’t exist.

Data centers in space promise to save the planet. And also ruin the earth’s orbit

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Wikipedia should update its page dedicated to the word “ambition” to include Elon Musk’s photo. The tycoon has announced a megaproject according to which his two companies SpaceX and xAI will work together to launch a constellation of one million satellites that will function as data centers in orbit. The problem is that although the idea It has its advantages, it also has an impact potentially terrible for the future of our planet. Energy efficiency. That is the great advantage of the space data centers that Musk proposes. In space, solar panels can perform optimally without the obstacles posed by Earth’s atmosphere and climate. According to SpaceX, the reduction in the cost of launching its rockets makes space a perfect alternative for AI data centers. The plan. He project that has been presented to the US Federal Communications Commission (FCC) consists of placing these satellites in sun-synchronous orbits between 500 and 2,000 km high. That would allow the satellites to act as interconnected nodes among themselves and also with the satellites of the Starlink network through optical laser links. The plan, of course, will have to overcome important challenges like refrigeration. Dissipating the heat generated by millions of chips in the vacuum of space is complex, since satellites act as “natural thermoses.” And radiation, what? The problem of cosmic radiation will also have to be solved. Advanced chips are very vulnerable to processing errors caused by energetic particles. It seems that AI processors are surprisingly resistant to this type of problembut the deployment of such chips on a massive scale in space could introduce new conflicts. On-site repair, nothing. In today’s data centers, if a problem arises, a technician can physically travel if necessary to solve it. In space, physical repair is not feasible, which would force a strategy of assuming that those chips that become functionally damaged will be completely lost. SpaceX would have to continuously launch substitutes to compensate for this “mortality” of components, which complicates logistics and costs. There are optimistic perspectives in this regard, and for some the bills do work out. Kessler syndrome. But above all there is a latent concern in the field of space security. Launching a million new satellites into already congested orbits multiplies the probability of chain collisions, validating the theory proposal in Kessler syndrome. A single major collision could generate a cloud of debris that would take decades to clear, further threatening climate monitoring missions or even global communications. There are already ideas to “regulate orbital traffic” by coordinating it, and SpaceX has its own “situational awareness” system, Stargazeto avoid problems, but of course, no system is completely perfect. air pollution. Without forgetting that the atmospheric impact is equally worrying. Some are estimated 25,000 Starship flightsand the re-entry of satellites that end their life cycle or die prematurely would cause metals and particles to be released into the upper atmosphere. According to experts, these chemical residues could damage the ozone layer and cause uncertain climate consequences. You can’t see anything. The astronomers, who They had already protested about Starlinkthey will have an even bigger problem with this new idea. The threat to astronomy is clear, because given the altitude and size of these satellites, it is likely that they form a bright band visible even to the naked eye, making scientific observation difficult and even changing the way we see the sunset. Orbital computing may have advantages, but before launching it we should remember that space—especially the space we see—is a shared and finite resource. In Xataka | Starlink’s dominance in space begins to move: another company already has permission for a constellation of 4,000 satellites

The scientist who made the AI ​​we know today possible has just raised 1 billion. His new goal is to teach him to see space

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Fei-Fei Li, known as the godmother of AIjust closed a $1 billion round for World Labs, his startup dedicated to teaching machines to understand the world in three dimensions. Behind this bet are large companies such as NVIDIA, AMD, Autodesk or the Andreessen Horowitz fund, among others. Li, like other important figures in the field of AI, believes that world models are the way to go, instead of the AGI. Who you are and why what you do matters. Li is one of the people who made it possible for the Generative AI as we know it today existed. He was part of the team that developed ImageNet, a database of millions of images that allowed computers to learn to recognize objects in photos. That academic work was the trigger for the leap towards deep learning that gave rise to everything that came after: from voice assistants to generative models of text and images. Now, from Stanford University, where he directs the Institute for Human-Centered Artificial Intelligence, and from World Labs, the startup he founded in 2024, Li points to what he considers the next big unsolved problem in AI: that machines understand the physical world, not just text or flat images. The problem you want to solve. The great language models like GPT either Claude They are extraordinarily good at processing text. But the real world is not text, or at least it is not only text: it is three-dimensional, it has physics, it has geometry, it has objects that move and relate to each other. “If AI is to be truly useful, it must understand worlds, not just words,” counted Li in his statement. That is what so-called spatial intelligence, the central focus of World Labs, pursues. Unlike working with two-dimensional data, the models the startup works on are designed to perceive, generate and interact with three-dimensional environments. The idea is that an AI with spatial intelligence can reason about how things work in space, where an object is, how it moves, what will happen if it is pushed, how it fits into a larger environment, etc. What already exists and what is coming. In November of last year released Marbleits first commercial product. It is a model that generates editable and downloadable 3D environments from text, images, videos or panoramas. The user can create a virtual world, modify it, expand it and export it in different formats. The startup positions it mainly for video games, visual effects and virtual reality, or sectors with a huge demand for 3D content in which there are few tools to put them into operation. With this new round of financing, the focus also expands to robotics. And in this field, spatial intelligence is especially critical, since a robot that understands the space around it can plan actions before executing them, process different ways of completing a task or adapt to changing environments without needing to be reprogrammed for each situation. Autodesk has put 200 million at your table. It really makes perfect sense. It is the company that makes the design software used by architects, engineers, animation studios and manufacturers around the world. Your business is, by definition, thinking in three dimensions. And if Li’s models can generate and reason about 3D environments, Autodesk tools can also benefit from what the startup aims to offer. Daron Green, chief scientist at Autodesk, explained to TechCrunch that the collaboration between both companies will initially focus on entertainment and audiovisual production. The idea is that design workflows can be combined with AI-generated worlds. In this way, a user designs an object in Autodesk and places it in an environment created by World Labs, or the other way around. “You might anticipate that we will consume their models or that they will consume ours in different contexts,” Green said. You are not alone in this race. World Labs is not the only commitment to world models. Google DeepMind works on your family of Genie modelscapable of generating and simulating 3D environments. Yann LeCun, who was chief AI scientist at Meta, just founded AMI Labs with the same approach. Startups like Decart and Odyssey They also move in this spacealthough with products still in the demo or research phase. However, there are differences in their respective approaches. LeCun, for example, defends that to build true world models a completely new AI architecture will be needednot generative. Li, from World Labs, is committed to advancing with current generative models and improving from there. Cover image | World Labs and Andria Lo In Xataka | We’d love to tell you that ‘Her’ hasn’t come true and there aren’t people dating an AI, but we can’t.

In 1968 the Soviet Union launched two turtles into space. The most incredible thing is that the two came back to tell it

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After the applause, whistles and the clinking of vodka bottles with which the night had started, silence now extends through the control center of Yevpatoria like a cold blizzard. The Soviet engineers, standing scattered in front of the monitors, can almost feel their icy, wet touch on their skin. All eyes are focused on the same person: Vasili Mishin, the chief designer who arrived from Baikonur to supervise the launch of the Soyud spacecraft of the Zond 5 mission. Sitting in front of the computers, Mishin does not take his penetrating eyes off the flashing lights on the panel. The Soyud which shortly before had successfully taken off towards the Moon (with a Proton rocket) from the Baikonur Cosmodrome in Kazakhstan, is having problems. And serious. With each clearing of Mishin’s throat, the silence in the Yevpatoria room becomes denser and denser. Although, like the rest of his comrades, Mishin had celebrated the takeoff of the Soyud ship in style, now beneath his thick, tangled eyebrows his pupils shine with a concentrated expression. History remembers him as “the loser in the race to the moon“, but that night he hits the nail on the head. Before the expectant gaze of his colleagues (and the distant but overwhelming tutelage of the Moscow leaders, immersed at that time in the space race with the United States), Mishin gives some precise and the ship 7K-L1 solves its first incident. The gyrfalcons of Moscow breathe a sigh of relief. Mishin’s brow relaxes. And at the Yevpatoria control center, bottles of vodka are being uncorked again. The celebration continues. Zond 5 at the time of being rescued. (POT) It is the night of September 14-15, 1968. Hundreds of meters above the heads of Mishin and the Yevpatoria engineers, 7k-L1 rises unstoppably towards the Moon. The journey of Zond 5 will go down in history for being the first probe to hit one turn around the satellite and return to Earth. An odyssey not without difficulties. The problem that the ship registered shortly after taking off from Kazakhstan would not be the only one on its eventful journey. Zond and his peculiar crew Zond 5 does not attract attention, however, due to the incidents it has had since its takeoff. He does it for the curious crew that was on board. The same one that would have perished in space if Mishin and the rest of the Yevpatoria team had not shown their cold blood. In order to check whether trips around the Moon could pose any problems for astronauts, the Soviets introduced Zond 5 capsule fruit flies, worms, plants, seeds, bacteria and… two turtlestwo copies of Testudo horsfieldii. In the pilot’s seat there was also a mannequin that emulated a Soviet astronaut: it was 1.75 meters tall and weighed 70 kilos. Space technicians had inserted sensors to monitor the levels of radiation to which he was exposed. A peculiar Noah’s Ark… With a rag and plastic Noah at the controls. Scientists with turtles in their hands. As Brian Harvey tells it in Soviet and Russian Lunar Explorationthe turtles had to face a journey worthy of Hollywood. On the way to the Moon, part of the mechanism contaminated and became unusable. During their return to Earth, another incident prevented the operation from proceeding as planned. The work that the Soviets had done left much to be desired: the sensor to locate the Earth was poorly mounted and the optics of the stellar sensors were blocked by the thermal insulation. On their return, the Chelonians had to endure a tremendous sway. The violent descent caused the outer shield of the ship (which weighed about 5,400 kilos) to reach very high temperatures. The capsule landed in the Indian Ocean on September 21, around seven in the afternoon. Their large parachutes were deployed to cushion the fall and beacons marked their location, not far from the Borovichy ship, who took it out of the water the next morning. From there he transferred to the cargo ship Viasili Golovin bound for Bombay, where he embarked on a Antono planev that took her back to the USSR. When they checked the interior of the ship, the technicians met the watery eyes of the pair of intrepid turtles who had flown around the Moon. They arrived before all of us. (Schorle/Wikipedia) Although their health was good, the turtles looked like two newcomers from the war: they had lost 10% of their body weight, they were starving (they had not eaten since days before takeoff, when they were placed in the capsule) and to make matters worse, it is said that one of them had hurt her eye. Not a bad balance if you take into account the stellar journey they had undergone. Their triumphant return after making a historic return to the Moon, however, did not help them save their lives. What the violent splashdown in the Indian Ocean had not done, scientists from the USSR did shortly after. After your first exam they sacrificed to perform an autopsy on them and study them in depth. The trip that had ended successfully. Zond 5 had been about 1,950 kilometers from the Moon and made a historic circumlunar journey. He also left impressive images for posterity. The Legacy of the Space Turtles The maneuvers of the Zond 5 mission generated excitement even outside Soviet borders. At the Jodrell Bank Observatory in Manchester, the famous radio astronomer Sir Bernard Lovell He tracked the ship. The English center would set off alarms by intercepting a message with a human voice that had its origins in Soviet ingenuity. Had the USSR managed to make a trip around the Moon piloted by an astronaut? In reality, what they were listening to was a recording to test transmissions in space. Among the voices they heard in Manchester was in fact that of the veteran Russian cosmonaut Valeri Bykovsky. On the pages of the book Animals in SpaceColin Burgess and Chris Dubbs point out that the voice was … Read more

China’s nuclear renaissance is now visible from space

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Since China detonated its first atomic bomb In the midst of the Cold War, its relationship with nuclear matters has been marked by secrecy, declared prudence and a deep distrust of the great powers. For decades it chose to stay in the background, building capabilities away from the spotlight and speaking little about them. This historical silence is key to understanding why, each time that something moves In that area, the world pays attention. A silent resurgence in the mountains. The story was brought in a special the new york times this weekend through satellite images. In the humid and rugged valleys of Sichuan, far from prying eyes, China is reactivating and expanding a nuclear infrastructure conceived for another era but adapted to a rivalry between superpowers that is intensifying again after the end of the historic pact between Moscow and Washington that we counted recently. Images from space show new bunkers, ramps and industrial complexes with ventilation and thermal dissipation systems that aim to high risk activitiesintegrated into a framework that no longer seems defensive or residual, but rather coherent with an accelerated and planned expansion that has been gaining pace since the end of the last decade. The inheritance of the “Third Line” and its update. These enclaves are not born from nothing, but sink their roots in what was called lto “Third Line”promoted by Mao Zedong to protect the nuclear heart of the country from American or Soviet attacks. For decades, that internal nuclear empire remained in the backgroundreduced and fragmented when global tensions eased. Today, those same facilities seem regain prominencenot as relics, but as modernized nodes that recover their central function in a China that has left behind the doctrine of minimum containment. Zitong in 2022 (top) and 2026 (bottom) Zitong and Pingtong: key pieces. They explained in the Times that the work detected in Zitong suggests advanced testing of high-precision explosives, essential to perfect the implosion that initiates a nuclear reaction, while the Pingtong complex, with its large ventilation chimney and its characteristic architecture, points to the manufacture of metal cores of the warheads, probably plutonium. The structural similarity with foreign facilities specialized in this process, like Los Alamos National Laboratory, reinforces the idea that China is closing the full cycle of design, testing and production of modern nuclear weapons. Intelligence, data and the value of what is not seen. Beyond the visible, the real leap is in the integration of intelligence, geospatial analysis and advanced simulation capabilities. The great laser ignition laboratory in Mianyang allows the behavior of nuclear warheads to be studied without the need for actual detonations, an approach that reduces political and environmental risks while accelerating technical refinement. In this way, each work detected is only a fragment, but together they form a mosaic that reveals a strategy based on accumulating knowledge, validating designs and gaining operational confidence without openly crossing international red lines. A direct challenge to gun control. There has been a lot of talk about these in recent weeks with the end of the New Start treaty. This Chinese acceleration would complicate any attempt to revive global nuclear control agreements after the expiration of that last treaty between the United States and Russia. Washington insists that China must form part of any new framework, but Beijing avoids commitments that limit growth that it considers necessary for its status as a global power. The American accusations of covert tests, rejected by China, add a layer of mistrust that pushes both sides to plan based on worst-case scenarios. Taiwan and the logic of enhanced deterrence. The backdrop to this effort is China’s perception of vulnerability to nuclear coercion American, especially in a plausible crisis over Taiwan. As? A largest arsenaldiverse and technologically tuned offers Beijing the feeling of sufficient immunity to maneuver more freely in a conventional conflictraising calculation risks for all parties. In that sense, what is happening under the mountains of Sichuan is not only an industrial modernization, but rather points more to a strategic bet that redefines the balance and forces the rest of the world to interpret, and the “intimate enemies” to react, if They are not doing it anymore. Image | Planet Labs, Google Earth, Airbus In Xataka | The United States is convinced that China is conducting nuclear tests. The problem is that you can’t prove it. In Xataka | China is building something that looks like an oil well. It is actually a nuclear bunker with a command center

China needed space to power millions of homes, so it built a mega solar plant in the open sea

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That China is building power plants As if there were no secret, it is not a secret. Without going any further, in the last four years it has been able to replicate the power of the United States, the largest electrical grid in the West. And a good part of the blame solar energy has it. In fact, in 2023 it installed more solar panels than the United States in all of history, as reported by Bloomberg. Solar energy requires space, so China is finding the most varied gaps, from the tibetan plateau to the open sea, where from the end of 2025 It is already connected to the electrical network a mega solar plant that breaks records. In China there are solar panels even in the soup. The largest offshore solar plant in the world. We are talking about the solar plant located off the coast of Kenli district in Dongying city, Shandong province. This engineering project is carried out by China Energy Investment Corporation (CHN Energy) and has a nominal capacity of 1 GW. As explains People’s Dailythe official newspaper of the Central Committee of the Communist Party of China, is China’s first gigawatt-level offshore photovoltaic project and currently the largest offshore solar installation in the world. This is what the Shandong plant looks like. Via: People’s Daily The context: why at sea. Because land space near its large coastal cities is a precious commodity. The Chinese government has a policy of red line to safeguard land used for agriculture and solve the line “Hu Huanyong Line“: while its great solar and wind potential is concentrated in the west, in the Gobi Desert and Inner Mongolia, the megacities and their most powerful industrial fabric are in the east. China is already developing parks of renewables in their deserts, but running Ultra High Voltage lines is very expensive, involves losses along the way and crosses complicated orography. The logical but technically infernal solution is to jump into the water. Until now, floating solar energy was limited to calm waters, such as what Germany is doing with its lakesbut China is another story. The open sea brings salt corrosion, typhoons and waves. Why is it important. Because China’s coastal provinces such as Shandong or Jiangsu constitute large centers of industrial consumption. Generating energy right there avoids those transportation losses of thousands of kilometers from the Gobi desert. If it works within the expected design parameters and the maintenance costs are affordable, it will be a good boost to take advantage of the coasts within the energy transition process from fossil to renewables. The panels are simply colossal. Via: X from People’s Daily A prodigious work of engineering. We are talking about an area of ​​more than 1,200 hectares where 2,934 enormous marine photovoltaic panels are located with standardized dimensions of 60 meters long and 35 meters wide. And they are not drifting panels: it is a large infrastructure designed to withstand extreme conditions ranging from storms to freezing water. In addition, it is hybridized: under the panels the project integrates fish farms, that is, producing electricity above and fish below. This type of combination is not new, as in Guizhou province there is a giant solar plant in whose basement mushrooms are grown. Shandong is aquavoltaic and Guizhou is agrivoltaic. Some numbers that make you dizzy. This installed power of 1 Gigawatt is similar to that of a modern nuclear reactor, so that according to estimates, it will be capable of producing 1,780 million kWh of energy that will be fed into the grid each year and thus supply 2.6 million homes in the region. approximately 60% of your demand. According to the estimates of the engineering company behind it, 1.3 million tons of carbon dioxide will no longer be emitted. In Xataka | Germany has had a crazy idea to solve one of the problems of renewables: covering a lake with solar panels In Xataka | The great myth of solar panels: producing them emits hundreds of times less than coal and gas Cover | People’s Daily

China wants to win the military space race and that is why it is working on a humble project: a space destroyer

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China has underway a space project worthy of ‘Star Wars’. In another context, it could sound like a tremendous exaggeration, but only one thing has to be said: the image that crowns this article belongs to a propaganda video from the Nantianmen Project. Specifically, it is the Luanniao, a larger space aircraft carrier than any aircraft carrier and able to throw hypersonic missiles and unmanned space fighters. More than terrifying, for some, it is simply high-tech theater. Nantianmen. First of all, you have to separate concepts. Nantianmen is a Chinese air force project that began in 2017 focused on the design of a global defense system. This includes practically everything we can think of such as fighters, weapons, autonomous vehicles, transport and launch platforms. It is a program that seeks to explore the paths that Chinese military aviation may have in the future, and it must be understood that, within Nantianmen, there are two types of designs: those that have been brought to the real plane through models and those that are on paper. An example of the first is Baidi, a manned aircraft that would become the jewel in the crown of the People’s Liberation Army Air Force. And an example of the second is the monstrous destroyer Imperial Chinese. Luanniao. The video that I leave above these lines is the one that the state channel CCTV published a few days ago in which we can see… a lot of 3D elements doing movie things. In certain fragments the Luanniao appears, but it is not the first time that this space aircraft carrier can be seen. As pointed out South China Morning Postin 2018, shortly after the project started, the AVIC Global Culture Communication Company – a subsidiary of the Aviation Industry Corporation of China – showed a conceptual model of the Luanniao at an air show. We now have some more details thanks to the most recent CCTV broadcast. According to the network’s data, the Luanniao will make any conventional aircraft carrier look ridiculous: 242 meters long. 684 meters wingspan. Weight of more than 100,000 tons. Capable of carrying 88 unmanned Xuannv fighters both inside and outside the Earth’s atmosphere. And a full weapons team, with particle acceleration cannons and hypersonic missiles. To give us an idea, the American aircraft carrier Gerald R. Ford It measures 337 meters by 77 meters. Pride. In the same video a model of the Baidi appears, a variable geometry wing aircraft that, as we say, seems to be the banner of Chinese aerospace innovation. In fact, the Asian giant is testing its new generation of both combat-ready fighters like those focused on air supremacy and reconnaissance. But, obviously, the one that attracts the most attention is Lunniao. From the network, it was commented that the aircraft carrier will become operational in two or three decades, and military analyst Wang Mingzhi, from the PLA Air Force Command College, affirms that technologies such as those of the Nantianmen Project reflect both the “expectations for future aerospace and space superiority and the directions being pursued to safeguard national security.” “It is not a question of whether they can be achieved, but rather which ones will be done first and when they will be implemented,” pointed out. “China is creating the impression that it is working on technologies that no one else can achieve. It is still ‘Star Wars’ material to inspire the Chinese audience” – Peter Layton Arching an eyebrow. Now, Western analysts are not so optimistic about something that has been described as mere propaganda rather than practical weapons development. Attacking the more earthly issue, defense analyst Peter Layton of Australia’s Griffith Asia Institute point Yes, the Luanniao would surpass both current defenses as storms when flying at an altitude higher than that which surface-to-air missiles and conventional fighter aircraft can reach. The “but” is that the technology to remain suspended at the edge of the atmosphere and launch missiles from there is science fiction. Layton comments that “it would require enormous amounts of fuel and propulsion mechanisms that have not yet been created,” ensuring that China has between 10 and 15 years left to develop the rocket technology necessary to put such an aircraft carrier into orbit. In D.W.space analyst Heinrich Kreft describe the project as “completely unreal from today’s perspective,” but he does not say that it is smoke because “much of what was fiction 20 or 30 years ago is real today.” Other analysts closer to the United States see the Luanniao as something with a single objective: to make the world believe that China has the technology to build this while hoarding resources to do other things. The undeniable. Whether it is psychological warfare, excessive ambition, smoke or something it is really working on, the undeniable thing is that China is taking giant steps in the new space race and weapons. We have already mentioned that they are accelerating the development of combat aircraft with stealth capabilities capable of standing up to whatever the United States deploys near its waters, but they have also joined that “first come, first served” space policy. Beyond satellites and systems that are a threat to security in space – according to the United States – they have been developing satellite technology for years. autonomous spacecraft and of reusable rockets with LandSpacethe answer to SpaceX’s Starship. But, in the end, all that is much more realistic than the enormous ship of 120,000 tons and more than 600 meters in span. But, as Kreft says, 30 years ago we also thought that current vehicles They were science fiction… Image | CCTV In Xataka | The US operation in Iran has staged one of the most impressive milestones of military engineering: the B-2 Spirit

China has spent 2025 putting things into orbit. Now they have gone further by launching a reusable space plane

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Where I said ‘Mars’, I say ‘Moon’. For years, Elon Musk and SpaceX have maintained that colonize Mars It was humanity’s next great leap. While others (and NASA itself) considered the Moon still interesting, SpaceX looked down on her. Until recently, whenThe company has taken a step back recognizing that colonizing the Moon is easier than Mars. And of course, on the other side of the world we can have an explanation: China has the Moon in its sights. And they have just done another test with their mysterious reusable ship. The test. Last Saturday, and in the most aseptic way possible, China launched a reusable spacecraft. This was confirmed by the state news media Xinhua through an release Which leaves more questions than answers. Officially, we only know that, from one of its multiple launch bases, the country launched the vehicle on the back of a Long March-2F rocket. Mission? “The experimental spacecraft will carry out technological verification of reusable spacecraft, providing data and technical support for the peaceful use of space.” What technologies? Why do you want to know that, good night. TOP SECRET. This vehicle it’s not new. In fact, this would be the fourth trip since 2020 of an experimental ship whose characteristics are being kept in a state of absolute secrecy. On the first trip, this model would have been orbiting the Earth for two days. In 2022 it was launched again and returned in 2023 after 276 days going around. And in September 2024 there was another launch that returned after 268 days. As we say, the secrecy is total, so we do not know what type of vehicle it is, but there has been speculation that it may be the answer to the X-37B robotic vehicle of the United States Air Force. Neither Reuters nor Xinhua comment that it could be the Shenlong, the Chinese ‘Divine Dragon’ which is the competition of the aforementioned X-37B. Because if we talk about reusable rockets like SpaceX’s Falcon, China also has an answer: the LandSpace. They don’t stop throwing things. Beyond the reusable ship, China has gotten right into the space race. Like Europeis another of the countries that seeks space sovereignty, and one of the toughest tests was carried out at the beginning of December. To test the overload capacity of its systems and analyze whether they can handle several missions at the same time, in early December, China completed four space missions in four days. In total, there were 80 orbital launches in 2025, surpassing the previous record of 68 launches and achieving with this proof of this something only within the reach of the current SpaceX. And it seems that 2026 has started as last year ended. Target: Moon. Among China’s medium-term objectives is to take astronauts to the Moon before 2030. They want to compete against the NASA and its Artemis mission for establish a research base on the satellite while they finalize the building your own space station. The Moon has become that last piece of cheese on the plate, but instead of giving it up, the great powers want to get hold of it. Reason? Its great value to carry out experiments to expand sovereignty on other planets, but also with regard to resources that can be exploited and sent to Earth refers. Image | Baijiahao In Xataka | We have not known for 10 years what the US fighter jets saw in the sky. Until a Chinese copy has appeared

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