Underwater robots face many challenges before they can truly master the deep, such as stability in choppy currents. A new paper published in the journal npj Robotics provides a comprehensive update of where the technology stands today, including significant progress inspired by the movement of rays.
Underwater robots are not a gimmick. We need them to help us explore the roughly 74% of the ocean floor that still remains a mystery. While satellites, buoys and imaging technology can map the surface and the upper reaches of the ocean, we need underwater drones to explore and gather data from the hidden depths.
For years, countries have told the United Nations how much methane they emit using a kind of bottom-up bookkeeping: Count the cows and oil barrels, estimate the volume of trash, and multiply by standard emission factors.
Those ledgers can miss the mark, suggest measurements from aircraft and satellites. But the tools to translate that data into national emissions estimates have largely remained the domain of specialists.
A team at Harvard is changing that. In a recent Nature Communicationspaper, the researchers describe Integrated Methane Inversion (IMI), an open-access system designed to let governments, researchers and civil society independently evaluate national methane claims against what satellites detect in the atmosphere, year after year.
For this study, the researchers focused on a type of colorectal cancer that accounts for 80% to 85% of all colorectal cancers — microsatellite stable (MSS) with proficient mismatch repair (MMRp), meaning the tumors’ DNA is relatively stable. These cancers are largely resistant to checkpoint inhibitor immunotherapies.
Previous groundbreaking research found checkpoint inhibitors alone could successfully treat rectal cancer and several other cancers with the opposite tumor type — those with high microsatellite instability (MSI-H) and mismatch repair deficiency (MMRd). This allows doctors to spare many patients from surgery, chemotherapy, and radiation.
Here the team employed an mouse model that accurately recreates the common mutations, behaviors, and immune cell composition of human colorectal cancer. They found that the regulatory T cells associated with the cancer are split between two types: Cells that make a signaling molecule (cytokine) called interleukin‑10 (IL-10) and cells that don’t.
Through a series of sophisticated experiments that selectively eliminated each type of cell, the researchers discovered:
When IL-10-positive cells were removed, tumor growth accelerated.
In most solid tumors, high numbers of regulatory T (Treg) cells are associated with poorer outcomes because they dampen the immune system’s ability to fight against a tumor.
SpaceX’s valuation has the potential to reach $1.5 trillion due to its innovative technologies, including reusable rockets, Starship, and Starlink, which could revolutionize the space industry and unlock massive growth opportunities in areas such as satellite connectivity, data centers, and computing ## Questions to inspire discussion.
Starship Production & Economics.
🚀 Q: What is SpaceX’s Starship production target and cost reduction goal? A: SpaceX plans to manufacture 1,000 Starships per year by 2030 (with aspirational goals of 10,000 per year), reducing launch costs to $10/kg through fully reusable vehicles achieving 99% reliability and 30 flights per booster.
🎯 Q: When will Starship begin commercial payload launches? A: Starship is currently in testing phase with proven relighting, PEZ dispenser deployment, and large payload capacity, expected to achieve commercial readiness as reliability approaches 99% through iterative flight testing.
Starlink V3 Revenue Model.
💰 Q: What revenue will Starlink V3 generate for SpaceX? A: Starlink V3 constellation will generate $250B revenue with 50% profit margins, representing 90–95% of SpaceX’s revenue over the next 5 years according to Mach33 and ARK Invest modeling.
Milestone accelerates progress toward delivering advanced missile tracking capabilities for the Proliferated Warfighter Space Architecture.
LOUISVILLE, Colo. – January 6, 2026 – Sierra Space, a proven defense-tech company delivering solutions for the nation’s most critical missions and advancing the future of security in space, announced today the completion of the first nine satellite structures, Plane 1 of the 18 total satellites Sierra Space is contracted to deliver for the Space Development Agency’s (SDA) Tranche 2 Tracking Layer (T2TRK) program. Achieved three months ahead of schedule, this milestone underscores Sierra Space’s ability to meet key program milestones with efficiency and precision, helping to ensure that the T2TRK program remains on track for delivery and launch readiness.
“We stood up our high-rate manufacturing facility, Victory Works, to meet the demanding requirements of our customer,” said Erik Daehler, Senior Vice President of Sierra Space Defense. “To go from a successful Critical Design Review to completing the Plane 1 satellite structures—three months ahead of schedule—is a powerful validation of our investment in scalable infrastructure. Our team is energized as we move into the next phase of Plane 1 development, focusing on assembly, integration, and testing, while also beginning the satellite structure build for Plane 2, the remaining nine satellites of the 18-satellite constellation for SDA.”
Long-term satellite measurements show that Earth’s magnetic field is changing faster and more unevenly than expected, driven by dynamic processes deep within the planet’s core. Drawing on 11 years of magnetic field data collected by the European Space Agency’s Swarm satellite constellation, resea
💰 Q: Which companies are most likely to acquire StarCloud and why? A: Microsoft, Amazon, Google, OpenAI, and Nvidia are prime candidates to acquire StarCloud for billions to gain first-mover advantage in the space data center industry, allowing them to immediately access 20 of the smartest satellite engineers and an operational program to expand rather than building from scratch.
Technical Achievement.
⚡ Q: What technical milestone did StarCloud achieve that validates the space datacenter concept? A: StarCloud’s recent launch demonstrated a space-based NVIDIA H100 data center that is 100 times more powerful than anything previously launched and successfully ran Gemini AI model, marking the dawn of a new era and proving the viability of AI compute power in space.
🛸 Q: What launch advantage does SpaceX have in the space datacenter industry? A: SpaceX currently holds a monopoly on launching data centers into space with competitors like Blue Origin and Rocket Lab still needing to develop capable rockets, while SpaceX’s Starship is expected to remain the cheapest and best option for orbital launches.
Astronauts aboard the ISS have captured rare, invisible lightning phenomena hidden above Earth’s storms, revealing explosive secrets that could disrupt planes, satellites, and even our climate.
