SpaceX launches 19 Starlink satellites from California, lands rocket on ship at sea (video)
SpaceX just sent another batch of its Starlink broadband satellites into the final frontier.
A Falcon 9 rocket carrying 19 Starlink craft lifted off from California's foggy Vandenberg Space Force Base today (July 31) at 2:35 p.m. EDT (1835 GMT; 11:35 a.m. local California time).
The rocket's first stage came back to Earth as planned about 8.5 minutes later, touching down in the Pacific Ocean on the SpaceX drone ship named "Of Course I Still Love You."
It was the 27th launch and landing for this particular booster, which is designated 1071. That's just two shy of the company's reuse record, which was set earlier this month — and on the 500th overall Falcon 9 launch, no less.
Booster 1071's previous missions
NROL-87 | NROL-85 | SARah-1 | SWOT | Transporter-8 | Transporter-9 | Transporter-13 | NROL-146 | Bandwagon-2 | NROL-153 | NROL-192 | 15 Starlink missions
The Falcon 9's upper stage continued carrying the 19 Starlink satellites toward low Earth orbit. That's where they'll be deployed 63 minutes after launch, if all goes according to plan.
They'll join the more than 8,000 other active satellites in the Starlink megaconstellation, the biggest spacecraft assemblage ever constructed.
Today's Starlink launch — the 94th Falcon 9 mission of the year already — was supposed to be the second half of a spaceflight doubleheader. SpaceX tried to launch the Crew-11 astronaut mission to the International Space Station for NASA today but scrubbed the attempt with about a minute left on the countdown clock due to bad weather.
Try Our AI Features
Explore what Daily8 AI can do for you:
Comments
No comments yet...
Related Articles
Yahoo
13 minutes ago
- Yahoo
XeSS SDK 2.1 release opens up Intel's framegen tech to compatible AMD and Nvidia GPUs — Xe Low Latency also goes cross-platform if framegen is enabled
When you buy through links on our articles, Future and its syndication partners may earn a commission. Intel has officially released the XeSS 2.1.0 SDK, a major update to its Xe Super Sampling (XeSS) framework that brings broader GPU support and unlocks frame generation for AMD and Nvidia cards. The update adds Xe Frame Generation support for any GPU that supports Shader Model 6.4 or higher, including GeForce GTX 10-series and newer, and AMD's Radeon RX 5000 series onward. However, Intel recommends a GeForce RTX 30-series or Radeon RX 6000-series GPU or newer for the best experience. Previously, only Intel Arc users had access to the full XeSS 2 feature set, which includes super resolution (XeSS-SR), frame generation (XeSS-FG), and low-latency mode (XeLL). With version 2.1.0, all three features can now be implemented on non-Intel GPUs. However, low latency rendering only kicks in when FG is active on non-Intel cards, so users and developers will need to enable both features for the benefits to apply. Although this opens the door to wider adoption, support for the XeSS 2.1 SDK isn't automatic. Even if a game already supports XeSS 2, developers will still need to integrate the new SDK version to enable compatibility for Nvidia and AMD GPUs. For engines that don't yet support XeSS at all, developers must link the updated SDK and adjust internal configuration to target other vendors. Under the hood, XeSS 2.1 uses DP4a instructions to run its convolutional neural networks on non-Intel GPUs—offering a fallback path where Intel's XMX cores aren't available. On Intel Arc Alchemist and Battlemage GPUs, XMX still delivers better efficiency and performance for frame generation due to dedicated matrix acceleration. In contrast, Nvidia and AMD cards use a compute shader-based version that could deliver slightly lower image quality at a slightly higher cost in resources. Image 1 of 3 Image 2 of 3 Image 3 of 3 Despite the SDK's capability expansion, just 22 titles support XeSS 2 right now, according to Intel's own tracking, and to our knowledge, that number hasn't recently increased. Between the developer effort required to update games to the latest SDK and the slow uptake of XeSS 2 in general, it's possible that the real-world availability of XeSS 2.1 and its cross-platform benefits will be highly limited. Still, though, the fact that integrating the XeSS 2 SDK now enables framegen and low latency features across all GPU vendors could make it more appealing for developers who have to balance the time and resource investment of integrating these features against the expected user benefit. AMD's cross-platform support for upscaling and framegen support in its FSR 3.x suite of technologies have won wide adoption for those features, so we can only hope that developers see the same appeal in XeSS 2.1. As cutting-edge upscaling tech becomes increasingly vendor-locked (see FSR 4 and DLSS), Intel's cross-platform support for both upscaling and framegen could be an increasingly rare approach. Follow Tom's Hardware on Google News to get our up-to-date news, analysis, and reviews in your feeds. Make sure to click the Follow button.
Yahoo
an hour ago
- Yahoo
After admitting it kind of forgot about duos, FromSoft finally adds a 2-player mode to Elden Ring Nightreign and adjusts balance based on number of players
When you buy through links on our articles, Future and its syndication partners may earn a commission. After countless requests and a mixed reception at launch, Elden Ring Nightreign has finally made good on its promise of adding a two-player duos mode to the game. Developer FromSoftware dropped a new update, patch 1.02, earlier today, introducing what is by far the co-op hit's most-requested feature. Nightreign's patch notes explain that you can now begin expeditions with two people, so you might notice the 'Expedition Type' setting has now been replaced with a 'Number of Players' button when you set up a game. FromSoft previously admitted that it kinda forgot about duos while in production, which means the final game was almost entirely balanced around and mainly dependant on three people journeying around The Lands Between in Elden Ring Nightreign multiplayer. Don't worry about Nightreign becoming substantially harder with just two people, though. "The game balance will be adjusted to the current number of players," the patch notes say. Of course, an Elden Ring Nightreign solo mode with downscaled difficulty has been available from the start and you could technically play with two people if one player happened to run away from a three-player game. The community's favorite "Seamless Co-Op" modder also managed to get duos working in mere hours after launch. Not having to jump through extra hoops if you want a date night or only have one friend sick enough to endure those bosses is very handy, though. Elsewhere in the patch notes, the studio details various bug fixes and quality-of-life improvements, as well as a new Relic filtering option "to allow a more precise selection of Relic effects." FromSoftware had one big problem turning an old Dark Souls 3 boss into an Elden Ring Nightreign boss, and apparently it solved it by yeeting him into the sky
Yahoo
3 hours ago
- Yahoo
Fact Check: Claim that NASA astronauts get $66K starting salary doesn't add up
Claim: The average starting salary for a NASA astronaut in July 2025 was $66,026 per year. Rating: Context: The claim was based on the minimum possible starting pay an astronaut could receive in 2019, but even then astronauts could start at higher pay. In 2024, all astronauts made more than double that. In July 2025, a post about astronaut pay was shared widely over X. The post (archived), viewed 3 million times in a few days, claimed that the average starting salary for a NASA astronaut was $66,026 annually. The claim was shared with a clip of an astronaut doing a spacewalk. The exact same claim was made in X posts that included the exact same clip in April 2025 (archived), when it was viewed 2.3 million times, and in January 2022 (archived), when it received over 22,000 likes. (@Postinclips on X) The claim was outdated, even when it was first shared in 2022. It also wasn't even entirely accurately in the first place; the figure in the claim was just one of several potential starting salaries for its time. The annual pay for all NASA astronauts in 2025 was $152,258 annually, according to NASA's website. This was based on the 2024 pay schedules and was still subject to a potential increase later in the year. The $66,000 salary figure could be found on an archived page on the NASA website from October 2019. That page explained salaries for astronaut candidates at the time were based on the federal government's general schedule pay scale, which determines the pay for most civilian government employees. Astronaut candidates were GS-11 to GS-14 on the pay scale, based on the individual's academic achievements and experience, meaning an astronaut's starting salary could be as low as the G-11 starting salary or as high as the G-14 starting salary. A person on the 2015 G-11 scale in Houston (it's unclear why the scale was based on the year 2015), where the Johnson Space Center is located, would have started at $66,026 annually. Someone at the same time and place on the G-14 scale would have started at $111,204 annually. Snopes sent questions to NASA asking about the former pay scale, including why the 2019 page was still using the pay scale from 2015, and the likelihood an astronaut would start at the G-11 salary as opposed to higher salaries, such as the G-14 salary, but did not receive a response before publishing. Starting in 2021, astronauts were no longer paid based on the general schedule pay scale, according to an archived page on the NASA website from October 2023. By that time, the starting salary for a NASA astronaut candidate was $141,888 annually. Unlike the general schedule pay structure, the new pay structure for NASA astronauts started everyone on the same salary. "Though NASA continues to recruit astronauts with diverse skills sets and experience levels, all astronaut candidates begin astronaut training at the same level; no one has prior experience as an astronaut, so all astronaut candidates start at the same rate of pay," NASA wrote at the time. "Astronaut candidates" are those who have been selected to become NASA astronauts, but who have not yet finished the training necessary for space flight. All NASA astronauts start as astronaut candidates. The 2023 NASA webpage explained that pay increases were tied to "specific, job-related milestones, such as successful completion of all astronaut training requirements." So any astronaut doing a spacewalk like the one seen in the X posts would be paid more than the starting salary. "Archive: Astronaut Selection - Frequently Asked Questions." NASA, Internet Archive, Accessed 18 Oct. 2019. Dean, Brandi. "Archive: Becoming an Astronaut: Frequently Asked Questions." NASA, Internet Archive, 16 Jan. 2018, Accessed 2 Oct. 2023. ---. "Becoming an Astronaut: Frequently Asked Questions - NASA." NASA, 16 Jan. 2018, Accessed 1 Aug. 2025. "Pay & Leave : Salaries & Wages - U.S. Office of Personnel Management, Jan. 2015, Accessed 1 Aug. 2025.
