NASA announced a delay of at least one month to the launch of its Artemis II lunar fly-by mission, originally slated for March 2026, due to issues uncovered during critical pre-launch testing. The mission, which would be the first crewed mission to the Moon in over 50 years, will now launch no earlier than April 2026, according to a statement released by the agency on February 3, 2026.
The Artemis II mission, carrying a crew of four astronauts, aims to send humans around the Moon and back, serving as a crucial step towards establishing a long-term lunar presence. The delay stems from a number of issues detected during testing of the rocket and capsule at the Kennedy Space Center in Florida, according to NPR News.
In other technology news, a potential $100 billion deal between Nvidia and OpenAI appears to have stalled. In September 2025, the companies announced a letter of intent for Nvidia to invest up to $100 billion in OpenAI's AI infrastructure. However, five months later, the deal has not been finalized. Nvidia's CEO now states that the $100 billion figure was never a firm commitment. Reuters reported that OpenAI has been quietly seeking alternatives to Nvidia chips since last year, citing dissatisfaction with the speed of some Nvidia chips for inference tasks, according to eight sources familiar with the matter. Inference is the process by which a trained AI model generates responses.
Meanwhile, development on the Nintendo Switch 2 version of "Borderlands 4" is on pause, according to a statement from a Take-Two spokesperson given to Variety. "We made the difficult decision to pause development on that SKU," said Take-Two spokesperson Alan Lewis. "Our focus continues to be delivering quality post-launch content for players on the ongoing improvements." The game had already been delayed from a planned October 2025 release date, according to The Verge.
Elsewhere, Apple TV released a full trailer for the second season of "Monarch: Legacy of Monsters," part of Legendary Entertainment's MonsterVerse. The trailer reveals a gigantic tentacled undersea being dubbed Titan X, which threatens humanity. Only Kong and Godzilla can stop it, according to Ars Technica.
Finally, MIT Technology Review reports that demand for metals like nickel, copper, and rare earth elements is rapidly increasing amid the growth of data centers, electric cars, and renewable energy projects. However, producing these metals is becoming harder and more expensive as miners have already exploited the best resources. Biotechnology could offer a solution by extracting more metal from aging mines, such as the Eagle Mine in Michigan's Upper Peninsula.
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