technical updates

The history of Alien video games is long and twisty, but Mike Diver — veteran writer, editor, critic, and journalist — decided a few years ago to make a complete chronicle of Xenomorph -filled games his next big adventure. Ahead of Aliens: The Video Games ' August 30 release, we sat down with him and discussed the franchise's past, present, and future in games. The following interview has been edited for better flow. "I played a lot of Alien 3 on Mega Drive," Diver recalls when asked about his first few contacts with Alien. "I was slightly too young to be watching those movies... I was also quite taken with a book that a friend of mine's dad owned – it was a book with stills of the film in it... I saw the chestbursters in those stills before I saw it moving on-screen, and in a way that was more striking." He believes that left an impression on him, which likely he...

Betelgeuse may be a well-known and often-studied stellar object, but that doesn't mean astronomers aren't capable of capturing this doomed star in a completely new light. A team of scientists examined the doomed red supergiant star with the Atacama Large Millimeter/submillimeter Array (ALMA), gaining new, highly detailed insights into its turbulent surface. Betelgeuse, located around 600 light-years away, captured the public's attention a few years ago when the rapid and dramatic dimming of the infamous highly evolved star led some scientists to hypothesize that it was about to explode in a spectacular supernova . That hasn't happened, and scientists are now less convinced that this explosion is immediately imminent, but Betelgeuse remains the subject of intense scientific scrutiny. "Its eventual fate as a supernova makes it fascinating to know what it actually looks like ...

In August 2001, filmmaker John Carpenter said "Boo!" and unleashed " Ghosts of Mars " on the world. While not one of Carpenter's most revered works, it's still a neat sci-fi horror movie in which Mars has been terraformed – 84% terraformed to be exact – and inhabited by humans. Plus, it has Jason Statham and Ice Cube in it, so it's automatically 99% better than all other movies ever made. Now, the action takes place at Shining Canyon, a remote mining outpost on Mars that has a gritty wild west/Mad Max-ness vibe; it's cold, harsh, and so so so so soooooo dusty – not exactly a dream home location. Then there's the whole "scary horde possessed by ancient extraterrestrial evil spirits trying to kill you" thing. But let's remove the spooky elements and put them aside for one second, and really consider the possibility of actually living on Mars....

Amiable sci-fi author Andy Weir, the New York Times bestselling author of " The Martian ," " Artemis ," and " Project Hail Mary ", is embarking on an entirely new imaginative odyssey later this year. It's not exactly another sci-fi book, though; It's an audiobook, and Weir is foregoing sole authorship of the project and instead co-shepherding this captivating space opera drama for the folks at Audible. Arriving on Nov. 5, 2026, "Exoplanet" is an ambitious celestial thriller written by comic book veteran and acclaimed author Benjamin Percy ("Red Moon"), executive produced by Weir, and showcasing a stellar vocal cast that includes Anthony Mackie, the Oscar-winning Ariana DeBose, and John Leguizamo. "When the starship Wild Blue Yonder is torn apart by a quantum anomaly, each surviving crew member crash-lands in a different era on the sa...

The rumors are true. SpaceX plans to retire its workhorse Falcon 9 rocket once the company's giant next-generation Starship begins regular operational flights. SpaceX launched the Falcon 9 for the first time in 2010, and the rocket soon chiselled itself a place in spaceflight history. The Falcon 9 has lifted off nearly 700 times to date, and it's the first orbital rocket ever to land and refly its first-stage booster. Russia's Soyuz rocket , which has been in operation since 1957, is the only launch vehicle with more missions under its belt, but the Falcon 9 is on track to pass it next year. However, "winding down Falcon" — both Falcon 9 and Falcon Heavy, a triple-booster variant that has flown 12 times to date — is inevitable, SpaceX founder and CEO Elon Musk said in an Aug. 22 post on X . "Once Starship is flying reliably several times per week, it makes sense to ...

The Nancy Grace Roman Space Telescope is NASA's next great observatory poised to lead humanity's next generation of astronomical discoveries. The Roman Space Telescope will research the mysteries of dark energy, search for exoplanets and investigate the physics of distant stars. SpaceX will launch Roman on a Falcon Heavy rocket from NASA's Kennedy Space Center (KSC) in Florida. Liftoff is scheduled for no earlier than 7:26 a.m. EDT (1126 GMT) on Sunday, Aug. 30. from Launch Complex-39A (LC-39A). Follow this blog for live updates as Roman is prepped for launch and delievered to space for a brand new mission of discovery. Nancy G. Roman Space Telescope | Falcon Heavy August 24, 2026 – 7:45 AM NASA's next great space telescope is almost ready to leave Earth. (Image credit: NASA/Sydney Rohde (Rocz)) Roman has spent the last several weeks undergoing its final launch preparations ...