Sean McVay: Aaron Donald trending toward Week 5 return  nbcsports.com

Development updates, Lammes Candies: Read 6 trending stories in the Austin area  Community Impact Newspaper

Bills trending up, trending down before Week 4’s clash with Patriots  Buffalo Rumblings

Trending stocks this week as markets weigh jobs data, yields (SP500:) (DJI:) (COMP:IND:)  Seeking Alpha

Denver Barkey Injury Update: Flyers Forward Trending Towards Return  Yahoo Sports

1. Amazon Launches Prime Day Discounts on AirPods, iPad, MacBook Air, and More  macrumors.com
2. I’m a devout AirPods user. Here are the best early Prime Day deals on them right now  CNN
3. These Are the Best Deals on Apple Tech From the October Prime Day Sale  Lifehacker
4. Amazon's Best Apple Deals Are Already Live Ahead of the Prime Big Deal Days Sale  IGN
5. Apple AirPods Pro 3 have a whopping $70 off in this early Amazon Prime Day deal  Cyclingnews

1. macOS 27.2 reveals new clues about Apple’s touchscreen MacBook Pro  9to5Mac
2. macOS 27.2 Adds Touch Gestures Ahead of MacBook Ultra  macrumors.com
3. The Upcoming Touchscreen OLED MacBook Pro Is Reportedly 'Significantly Lighter'  Engadget
4. Apple MacBook Pro Release Schedule: What To Expect When  Forbes
5. New MacBook Pro redesign gets exciting launch timing update  9to5Mac

1. Googlebooks with Intel chipsets might have trouble with ‘complex’ Android apps  9to5Google
2. Google says some Googlebooks have better Android app support than others, and here's why  Android Authority
3. Google Acknowledges Day 1 Android App Performance Issues on New Laptops  CNET
4. Google Admits Some 'Complex' Android Apps Run Poorly On Intel Googlebooks  Engadget
5. Don’t Expect Every New Googlebook App to Play Nice With Intel Chips  Gizmodo

1. NYT Strands hints, answers for October 5, 2026  mashable.com
2. Today's NYT Strands Hints (and Answer) for Monday, October 5, 2026  Lifehacker
3. NYT Strands Hints and Answers for Game #945 on October 4  Insider Gaming
4. NYT Strands Hints, Clues And Answer For October 6 (Changing Course)  Forbes
5. Today’s NYT Strands Hints, Answers and Help for Oct. 6, #947  CNET

1. Secret Lair Heads South with Festival in a Box: Atlanta 2026 and Mystery Booster Commander Edition  magic.wizards.com
2. 'MAGIC: THE GATHERING: MYSTERY BOOSTER COMMANDER EDITION' INCOMING  icv2.com
3. New MTG Festival in a Box Offers First-Time 26-Year-Old Reprints and Textless Partner Commanders  MTG Rocks
4. Contents Of MagicCon: Atlanta 2026 Festival In A Box Revealed  Star City Games
5. What’s Inside Magic: The Gathering’s Festival in a Box: Atlanta 2026?  GameDaily

Written by Michelle Minitti, MAHLI Deputy Principal Investigator

Earth planning date: Friday, Oct. 1, 2026

The majority of Curiosity plans involve mosaics from Mastcam and ChemCam, chemistry analyses from ChemCam and APXS, images from MAHLI and MARDI, and systematic measurements from REMS, RAD, and DAN. It is only when we stop to drill that we fully live up to our Mars Science Laboratory designation, using CheMin and SAM to analyze Martian rock. This was one such week, where our focus was wrapping up CheMin analysis of a sample from the “Basque Lakes” drill hole (pictured above), preparing SAM for its analysis, and analyzing the sample with the SAM tunable laser spectrometer (TLS). The CheMin data were key to SAM deciding to analyze the sample at all, and SAM will wait to receive the results from the TLS run (measurement of the volatiles present) to decide if they want to follow up with a separate mass spectrometry analysis next week. 

The laboratory activities require a significant portion of the daily power budget of the rover so the rest of the payload largely takes a back seat during drill campaigns, a worthy trade for CheMin and SAM’s valuable data. However, using the power that was available, we gathered data to contextualize our drill location and continued our systematic environmental monitoring. Mastcam acquired a 360-degree mosaic of our surroundings to build a full picture of the geologic setting of the sample. Its color and improved resolution relative to Navcam also guided subsequent science requests, such as more focused Mastcam imaging of structures near the workspace, and ChemCam RMI imaging of the “Cordillera” butte. Mastcam, coupled with Navcam, also planned a series of seven photometry observations spread across fixed times of day. These observations evaluate how the observed spectral characteristics of targets change as the Sun angle on them changes. They help us better interpret images from the rover and from cameras in orbit. ChemCam gathered more chemistry data from the variety of materials in the workspace, from the Basque Lakes drill hole interior, to sand ripples (“French Creek”) covering the bedrock, to loose gray clasts of unknown origin (“Wooley” and “Fireside”) sprinkled across the workspace. Our environmental monitoring activities included regular REMS, RAD, and DAN measurements and Navcam and Mastcam monitoring of dust loading in the atmosphere, cloud activity, and dust-devil activity.

Written by Alex Jones, Ph.D. candidate at Imperial College London

Sept. 29, 2026

After spending the last six months exploring “Lac de Charmes,” a region of ancient rock beyond Jezero crater’s western rim, Perseverance has stumbled upon a vast field of light-toned rocks peppering the Martian surface. 

Light-colored rocks are a strange sight on Mars, a planet dominated by dark-colored basaltic rocks. This many light-colored rocks in one place piqued the Science Team’s interest… what are they? How did they get here? 

To answer the first question, Perseverance has been investigating the composition and textures of these rocks. Data so far indicates that many of them are igneous rocks called gabbro, which are dominated by minerals rich in iron and magnesium. Such rocks typically form by slow cooling and crystallization of magma deep in the crust. 

So how did these deep fragments of Mars find their way to the surface? 

Perseverance has spent the last week trying to answer this question by investigating a patch of possible bedrock poking out between the light-toned boulders and loose regolith. 

Initial images suggest that the rock is made up of light- and dark-colored, angular fragments of rock, forming what geologists call a breccia. One possibility the team is investigating is that the light-toned boulders scattered across the hillside have eroded out of this breccia. 

Breccias often form through violent processes involving the fracturing and transport of rock to produce their angular shapes. Layers of breccia observed outside Jezero have previously been attributed to asteroid impacts on early Mars. Perhaps similar impacts (or the Jezero impact itself?) could be responsible for digging up these light-colored blocks.  

Only time (and of course, Perseverance), will tell. 

NASA and SpaceX are targeting no earlier than 8:05 a.m. EDT, Wednesday, Oct. 7, for the undocking of the agency’s SpaceX Crew-12 mission from the International Space Station, pending weather conditions.

An Oct. 7 undock puts NASA astronauts Jessica Meir and Jack Hathaway, ESA (European Space Agency) astronaut Sophie Adenot, and Roscosmos cosmonaut Andrey Fedyaev on schedule to splash down off the coast of California at approximately 11:34 a.m. on Thursday, Oct. 8.

NASA’s live Crew-12 return coverage will stream through a variety of platforms. Learn where to watch online:

https://www.nasa.gov/live

Mission managers continue monitoring conditions in the recovery area, as undocking of the SpaceX Dragon depends on spacecraft readiness, recovery team readiness, weather conditions in the Pacific off the coast of California, and other factors.

NASA’s coverage is as follows (all times Eastern and subject to change based on real-time operations):

Wednesday, Oct. 7

6 a.m.: Hatch closure coverage begins

6:20 a.m.: Hatch closing

7:45 a.m.: Undocking coverage begins

8:05 a.m.: Undocking

Following the conclusion of undocking coverage, NASA will provide audio-only communications between Crew-12, the space station, and flight controllers during Dragon’s transit away from the orbital complex.

Thursday, Oct. 8

10:20 a.m.: Return coverage begins

10:46 a.m.: Deorbit burn

11:34 a.m.: Splashdown

1:15 p.m.: International Space Station briefing for Crew-12 return and SpaceX Commercial Resupply Services-35 launch with the following participants:

• Bill Spetch, deputy manager of Commercial, NASA’s Low Earth Orbit Program
• Dr. Liz Warren, deputy chief scientist, NASA’s Low Earth Orbit Program
• Lee Echerd, senior mission manager, Customer Operations and Integration, SpaceX
• Andreas Mogensen, leader, Human Exploration Group, ESA

To participate virtually in the teleconference, media must contact the NASA Johnson newsroom for call details by 12 p.m., Oct. 8, at: jsccommu@mail.nasa.gov or 281-483-5111. To ask questions, media must dial in no later than 10 minutes before the start of the call. The agency’s media credentialing policy is available online.

For more information about the Crew-12 mission, visit:

https://www.nasa.gov/mission/nasas-spacex-crew-12

-end-

Joshua Finch / Jimi Russell
Headquarters, Washington
202-358-1100
joshua.a.finch@nasa.gov / james.j.russell@nasa.gov

Sandra Jones / Joseph Zakrzewski
Johnson Space Center, Houston
281-483-5111
sandra.p.jones@nasa.gov / joseph.a.zakrzewski@nasa.gov

Steve Siceloff
Kennedy Space Center, Fla.
321-867-2468
steven.p.siceloff@nasa.gov

NASA astronaut and mission specialist of the agency’s Artemis II mission, Christina Koch, leads the fans in singing the Eagles Fight Song from the field at an NFL game between the Philadelphia Eagles and the Los Angeles Rams at Lincoln Financial Field on Sunday, Oct. 4, 2026, in Philadelphia.

NASA’s engagement at NFL games is part of the agency’s Inspiration Tour, aimed at strengthening connections between NASA and its partners and showcasing innovation in air and space in the lead up to the MAX POWER aerospace technology expo and airshow at the agency’s Kennedy Space Center in early November.

Image credit: NASA/Thalia Patrinos

NASA is leveraging its expertise and enhancing its test facilities to help address a rare but persistent aviation hazard: icing that occurs when aircraft encounter unusually large, very cold water droplets in clouds.  

The problem, known as “supercooled large droplet icing,” occurs when aircraft fly through clouds containing unusually large drops of water that are very cold but remain liquid. When a plane passes through those drops, they can rapidly freeze to surfaces that are not protected from ice buildup.  

With a series of tests in the Icing Research Tunnel at Glenn Research Center in Cleveland, NASA researchers are helping U.S. industry better understand the phenomenon. 

Supercooled water is common in clouds – droplets can go below 32 degrees Farenheit but not freeze unless they encounter dust or other tiny particles around which they can crystalize. Aircraft are designed to encounter typical icing conditions where droplets range from 2 to 100 microns in diameter (for comparison, a human hair is about 70 microns wide). But in rarer cases, clouds can contain supercooled large drops up to 2,000 microns in diameter (if you’ve ever been caught in freezing rain, you’ve encountered these droplets at ground level). These much larger droplets can hit or splash to the aft of an aircraft, including areas behind conventional ice protection systems.  

The aviation industry relies on engineering tools to help design their aircraft. Current tools work well for typical clouds, but engineers have questions about how well they account for the physics of supercooled large drops. To help answer those questions, NASA is working to enhance the equipment it uses to generate and measure experimental clouds for testing in the Icing Research Tunnel.  

NASA researchers have experimented with brand new probes that help calibrate the sizes of the drops in the clouds the tunnel produces. The probes can “see” drops larger than 45 microns and perform a real-time analysis of their sizes. NASA will compare these results, a laborious technique of post-processing droplet size image data from the tunnel. The results will be mated to results from a different probe that measures droplets smaller than 45 microns. With this, the complete droplet size spectrum is known. 

The test campaign marks an important milestone for the Subsonic Flight Demonstrator project, part of NASA’s Research and Technology Mission Directorate. Detailed analysis of the collected data continues, and NASA’s project team will share results with the broader aerospace community once complete.

The company is deliberately limiting production after years of struggling to find mass-market demand for its EVs.

OpenAI will watermark ChatGPT and Codex text in the EU to comply with the AI Act. Editing can make the invisible marks harder to detect, it says.

Just a couple of months after its last big raise, the AI chip startup is already being plied with investment offers at double or more its current value, sources tell TechCrunch.

Days after Vinod Khosla called Factory a struggling also-ran, Menlo has shown up with a check and a glowing blog post.

Reflection is aiming Beam and future models at enterprises and sovereign nations. The pitch is to build “AI factories,” a product that would let institutions build their own customized, local AI system by training Reflection’s AI models on their own proprietary data.