“China has successfully landed a reusable rocket for the first time in a major breakthrough for the country's space programme, according to state media.

The China Aerospace Science and Technology Corporation said the Long March 10B rocket lifted off from Hainan in southern China at 12:15 local time (04:15GMT) on Friday.

Around six minutes after separating from the rocket's upper stage, its booster returned to Earth vertically and was recovered on a floating platform…

Unlike the Falcon 9, the Long March 10B does not autonomously land on a ground pad or drone ship. Instead 'landing hooks' on the rocket catch a net attached to a floating platform.”

From BBC.

“Chinese-built AI models are gaining traction among U.S. companies as they narrow the performance gap with leading American rivals while remaining significantly cheaper to use.

Recent model releases from Chinese companies, including DeepSeek and Z.ai, are seen by many as highly competitive compared to leading frontier systems from the likes of Anthropic and OpenAI. Those advances in capability come as token prices for the most advanced models rise at many U.S. AI labs, leaving companies grappling with unexpectedly high costs associated with using the tech.

The share of tokens used by U.S. companies on Chinese AI models via OpenRouter — a platform that enables developers to access a range of AI models — has sat above 30% each week since Feb. 8, with that figure rising as high at 46%. The average across the previous 12 months was just 11%, falling to 4.5% in the first half of 2025.”

From CNBC.

“At the heart of many galaxies lie supermassive blackholes. These engines power quasars—active galactic nuclei that emit some of the brightest light astronomers can possibly see in the sky. How these extreme objects formed in the earliest years of the universe—when the cosmos was less than a billion years old—has long been something of a mystery.

But now, the European Space Agency's Euclid Space Telescope has identified a clutch of primordial quasars, dating to some 13 billion years ago—putting them among the oldest of these objects ever found in the universe.

Ancient quasars offer glimpses into the universe in its chaotic infancy; but actually finding these primordial objects can be very difficult. Because they formed so long ago, they are extremely far away from Earth, which can cause their bright light to be mistaken for a signal of a more run-of-the-mill celestial object.”

From Scientific American.

“Marine wildlife trafficking is a growing global business, driven by demand for ornamental fish, luxury foods and traditional medicines. Much of that trade is routed through airplane luggage or airmail, where the vast majority of animals, dead or alive, go undetected.

The combined use of artificial intelligence (AI) and 3D X-ray machines could change that, according to an international team of researchers. Training an algorithm on samples of seahorses, shark fins and sea cucumbers, the scientists achieved successful detection rates between 86% and 96%, according to a research paper published last week.”

From Earth.Org.