NASA has confirmed the pending launch of the European Space Agency's (ESA) Rosalind Franklin rover, which is being sent to Mars. The current plan is to launch via a SpaceX Falcon Heavy rocket from Kennedy Space Center. The timing is still being worked out, but the space agency says this won't happen until at least 2028. This is a partnership between NASA and the ESA, with the European agency providing the rover, the spacecraft and the lander. The US will provide braking engines for the lander, heater units for the rover's internal systems and, of course, assistance with the actual launch. The rover will be outfitted with scientific instruments to look for signs of ancient life on the red planet. These include a state-of-the-art mass spectrometer and an organic molecule analyzer, which will come in handy as the vehicle collects samples at the Oxia Planum landing site. This is a mission that has suffered years of delays for all kinds of wild reasons. It was actually first conceived all the way back in 2001 . The rover mission was originally scheduled for 2009, after NASA came on board. Budget constraints forced NASA to drop out in 2012, so Russia signed on as the ESA's launch partner. During this period, the mission experienced technical malfunctions which forced additional delays . The ESA suspended its partnership with Russia in 2022 after the country invaded Ukraine. This left the mission in doubt until 2024, when NASA came back into the fold . In the middle of a historic mission back to the Moon, this Administration is proposing to a 47% cut to NASA science and a 23% cut to NASA’s budget overall. Last week’s launch showed our country and world what we’re capable of when we work together toward a common goal. None of… pic.twitter.com/zW3i3iFaEQ — Senator Mark Kelly (@SenMarkKelly) April 10, 2026 However, the setbacks didn't even end there. The Trump administration has repeatedly tried to end NASA's involvement with the project, and many others, via stark budget cuts . The current proposal was made while the Artemis II crew was on their mission around the Moon, according to a report by The Register . Here's hoping the launch actually happens in 2028. This article originally appeared on Engadget at https://www.engadget.com/science/space/nasa-restarts-work-to-support-europes-uncrewed-trip-to-mars-after-years-of-setbacks-161524488.html?src=rss
Bluesky is once again having a wobble. The platform said some of its systems are down and that it’s “investigating an incident with service in one of our reginos” (that’s Bluesky’s typo, not mine). The issue appears to have started at 1:42AM ET and was still persisting as of 11AM when this story was originally published. Since then, the site has been experiencing intermitent interuptions, including at times to its status page where users should be able to monitor outages. At 7:47PM ET, the platform explained that it’s been attempting to mitigate “a sophisticated Distributed Denial-of-Service (DDoS) attack, which intensified throughout the day.” It said the attack had caused interruptions to users’ feeds, notifications, threads and search, all of which the Engadget team experienced first-hand at various points through the day. While DDoS attacks are frequently used as virtual smokescreens for hacks, Bluesky says it has “not seen any evidence of unauthorized access to private user data.” The social media service had another brief outage earlier this month. In a later update on April 17, Bluesky noted that the DDoS attacks are “ongoing” but that the service has been stable since about 9PM PT last night. The company also reaffirmed that it hasn’t seen any evidence of access to user data. The next update is set to arrive by end of day Friday. Update, April 17, 12:47PM ET: This story was updated with Bluesky’s latest outage update. Update, April 16, 8PM ET: This story was updated after publish with an of the outage from Bluesky. This article originally appeared on Engadget at https://www.engadget.com/social-media/bluesky-blames-ddos-attack-for-server-outages-150515882.html?src=rss
