NASA has once again postponed the launch of Artemis II, the crewed lunar flyby mission, setting a new launch window for April. Although March 6 had been tentatively planned as the launch date, the US space agency revealed that a problem with the rocket has caused further delay.

According to NASA administrator Jared Isaacman, the failure was due to an interruption in the helium flow in the interim cryogenic propulsion stage of the Space Launch System (SLS). The helium flow is essential for purging the engines and pressurizing the fuel tanks. This system had functioned correctly in the two dress rehearsals conducted this month, but the failure occurred during a routine operation.

Due to the nature of the problem, NASA engineers will have to fix it from the Vehicle Assembly Building (VAB), so there’s no way to proceed with the March launch window. The rocket is on its way back to the hangar.

“I understand people are disappointed by this development,” the official stated on his X account. “That disappointment is felt most by the team at NASA, who have been working tirelessly to prepare for this great endeavor. During the 1960s, when NASA achieved what most thought was impossible, and what has never been repeated since, there were many setbacks.”

Will Artemis II be able to embark on its mission in April? NASA reported that rapid preparations have allowed it to potentially preserve the April launch window in the event of a reversal. It all depends on what the data, the repair efforts, and how the schedule comes together in the coming days.

Artemis II: The Setbacks

The mission had its first launch window between February 6 and 11. However, during the wet dress rehearsal (WDR), which is a full rehearsal with fuel, the team detected small hydrogen leaks during refueling and some minor technical glitches. After analyzing the situation, NASA concluded that the risk was considerable and could endanger the lives of the astronauts, so it decided to postpone the launch.

A second dress rehearsal, conducted on February 19, was successful. In a statement, the space agency explained that it loaded 700,000 gallons of liquid propellant with no leaks. “During the test, teams closely monitored liquid hydrogen fueling operations, which proved challenging during previous tests. Hydrogen gas concentrations remained under allowable limits, giving engineers confidence in new seals installed in an interface used to route fuel to the rocket,” NASA said.

At a subsequent press conference, mission representatives confirmed to the media that the new tentative liftoff date would be March 6. However, on February 20, the team failed to get helium to flow through the vehicle, a failure that also occurred during testing of the Artemis I mission. Isaacman noted that the cause could be due to a faulty filter, valve or connector plate.

“There are many differences between the 1960s and today, and expectations should rightfully be high after the time and expense invested in this program,” Isaacman said in his post. “I will say again, the President created Artemis as a program that will far surpass what America achieved during Apollo. We will return in the years ahead, we will build a Moon base, and undertake what should be continuous missions to and from the lunar environment.”

When it eventually launches, the Orion capsule will travel farther than any other manned spacecraft during its 10-day mission, surpassing on the sixth day the record of 400,171 kilometers set by Apollo 13. The return will conclude with Orion’s landing in the Pacific Ocean off the coast of San Diego, California.

Although there will be no lunar landing—that feat will fall to the Artemis III mission—the second launch is of crucial importance. Its success will demonstrate that NASA has the technical capabilities to return to the moon and begin a new phase of space exploration.

This story originally appeared in WIRED en Español and has been translated from Spanish.

Owners of handheld gaming PCs powered by AMD’s Ryzen Z1 chips may have reason to feel uneasy. What started as a support message regarding the Lenovo Legion Go has quickly turned into a broader concern that driver updates for the Ryzen Z1 and Z1 Extreme platform may have slowed or even paused across multiple devices.

The situation first came to light when Lenovo Korea reportedly informed customers that the original Legion Go would not receive further BIOS or driver updates. Instead, users were advised to rely on Windows Update and generic AMD drivers, where compatible. Now, additional reports suggest the issue may extend to ASUS’s popular ROG Ally, another flagship Ryzen Z1 Extreme handheld. According to user reports, the device appears to be stuck on graphics drivers dating back to August 2025, with no newer releases despite several major game launches since then.

Is handheld driver support quietly stalling?

This detail matters because the ROG Ally and Legion Go are the two most recognizable Windows gaming handhelds powered by AMD’s custom Z1 silicon. If both devices are relying on older drivers, it suggests the slowdown could be happening at the platform level rather than being isolated to a single manufacturer.

Adding to the confusion, Lenovo forum posts also warn users not to install Legion Go S drivers on the original Legion Go. Interestingly, the Legion Go S uses the Z2 Go chip based on the older Zen 3 architecture, while the Z1 Extreme, whose updates now appear to have stalled, is built on the newer Zen 4 architecture. The generational mismatch makes cross-installation risky and further limits options for affected users.

Driver updates play a crucial role in handheld gaming performance. They often bring game-specific optimizations, power management refinements, and bug fixes tailored to each device’s thermal and battery constraints. Without consistent updates, handheld PCs risk gradually falling behind newer games and evolving Windows builds. For handheld gamers, the uncertainty is the biggest concern. While nothing has been officially confirmed by AMD yet, with both Legion Go and ROG Ally owners noticing stalled updates, the conversation around long-term handheld support is clearly gaining momentum.

A gravity-wielding winder appears, which resembles a sci-fi gadget rather than something you’d want on your desk. Metilis refers to it as the Gravity Furnace, which will come as no surprise. This single-watch winder spins automatic watches with the precision of a Swiss watchmaker, but instead of a boring wooden box, it resembles a chunky robot from an old-school anime.

Collectors of automatic watches will understand that you have to keep these bad boys moving when they’re not on your wrist or it just stops working. Standard winders do the work quietly inside an oak case, rotating the watch in smooth cycles, but the Gravity Furnace is unique. It’s designed around a robot arm that wraps around and rotates the watch, all encased in a full-metal shell with sharp pieces and modular panels that can be swapped out for a new look. It has an industrial air, as in, “I’ve got a garage full of tools.” There are adjustable side plates, odd antenna-like pieces, and even swappable metal or rubber feet to give it a unique look.

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You have to open the large metal door by hand; there are no finicky buttons for this thing, and when you do, it clicks shut with this delightfully satisfying sound. The touch screen comes to life in a deep blue tone, and from there you can play with the settings. It’s very simple: do you want to wind the watch every day, every now and then, or just let it run on its own? You can even give it a manual spin if it needs some extra TLC. The UI is a little rough around the edges, and I’m sure there are some spelling errors in there, but once you get the feel of it, you’re golden.

The power comes from two USB-C ports, which are useful for charging your phone, and there’s an internal battery that’s coupled with a real-time clock, so it keeps nice and accurate even when not plugged in. The motors are also extremely quiet; you don’t want a noisy humming object to distract you as you work. When it’s finished, it returns the watch to its proper position, allowing you to read the time.

The Gravity Furnace costs $800, which is a lot for a watch winder, especially since there are cheaper multi-watch winders available. The weight is also an issue, as moving it to your desk is similar to moving a little boulder. There are still certain parts of the prototype that don’t look finished, but that’s part of the appeal.

NASA’s Perseverance rover has just reached a small but significant milestone on Mars. After five years of carefully traveling about the bottom of Jezero Crater, the rover now knows exactly where it is without having to rely on a crew on Earth. A new system called Mars Global Localization has made the task possible in less than two minutes, with accuracy to within ten inches.

Engineers at NASA’s Jet Propulsion Lab came up with the idea of allowing the rover to match what it sees on the ground to the super precise maps acquired from space. Perseverance begins by capturing a full 360-degree panorama with its cameras, similar to the vision you get when spinning around in a circle. It then stitches that together to provide a circular perspective from above, similar to a bird’s-eye view. The software then compares that to some ultra high-resolution topography maps taken by the Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter.

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Matching up the features between the two is quick since the program just looks for similar rocks, ridges, and slopes in both the rover’s perspective on the ground and from space. And once it finds a match, the rover is quite accurate. The entire operation is powered by an outdated processor from the Ingenuity helicopter, which is far faster than the technology in the rover. That’s why it can all be done in two minutes.

Perseverance had previously become trapped as it drove larger distances. The visual odometry was attempting to follow how the rocks around it moved in the camera frames, but the wheel simply slipping on the soft soil was causing the position to shift over time. After a few hundred feet, the position could shift by more than a hundred feet. So the team would send it more photographs, and the specialists on Earth would manually align them with the images from space, which could take a full day or longer.

Mars Global Localization changes all of that because the rover can now determine its position immediately after a drive, make any necessary corrections, and simply keep going. With it linked with the existing AutoNav system, which can already handle obstructions, the rover can just keep going. The more ground it traverses per Martian day, the faster it will pass through Jezero Crater and beyond.

The technology underwent extensive testing prior to its debut. The engineers tested it on data from 264 previous rover pauses and found that it correctly identified every single one by comparing old photographs to space maps. Then it saw its first real use on February 2, 2026, and it worked again a few weeks later. One of the first times it was utilized was in a somewhat dull section of the crater rim known as Mala Mala, where there aren’t many fascinating landmarks to look at, but the system still managed to pinpoint the location within the target margin of error.

It looks like a March launch is no longer in the cards for Artemis II, NASA’s first crewed trip to the moon’s vicinity since the final Apollo mission over 50 years ago. While preparations were underway at the Kennedy Space Center for a launch as soon as March 6, the space agency says it ran into an issue with the flow of helium to its SLS rocket’s upper stage this weekend and it now has to roll the rocket from the launch pad back to the Vehicle Assembly Building (VAB) to figure out what’s wrong and fix it. A media briefing is planned for sometime this week to discuss the problem and what’s next.

But in a post on X, NASA Administrator Jared Isaacman confirmed the rollback will “take the March launch window out of consideration.” NASA noted on its blog that the current effort “potentially preserves the April launch window, pending the outcome of data findings, repair efforts, and how the schedule comes to fruition in the coming days and weeks.” It’s a four-mile trip back to the VAB that will take hours to carefully transport the massive rocket and the Orion spacecraft. NASA says it’s eyeing February 24 for this trek.

The issue occurred overnight in the early hours of February 21, when NASA says it observed “interrupted flow of helium to the SLS (Space Launch System) rocket’s interim cryogenic propulsion stage.” The space agency explained:

The upper stage uses helium to maintain the proper environmental conditions for the stage’s engine and to pressurize liquid hydrogen and liquid oxygen propellant tanks. The systems worked during NASA’s Artemis II wet dress rehearsals, but teams were not able to properly flow helium during normal operations and reconfigurations following the wet dress rehearsal that concluded Feb. 19. Operators are using a backup method to maintain the environmental conditions for the upper stage engines and the rocket, which remains in a safe configuration.

The Artemis II crew — Commander Reid Wiseman, Pilot Victor Glover, Mission Specialist Christina Koch and Canadian Space Agency astronaut Jeremy Hansen, Mission Specialist — had just entered quarantine a day before the issue arose. NASA says the astronauts have since come out of quarantine.

At the start of this year, NASA announced an accelerated timeline for Artemis II, which was previously set for April 2026 after experiencing delays in 2024. For this 10-day mission, which will be the first crewed flight of the SLS rocket, the Artemis II astronauts will take a trip around the moon in the Orion spacecraft. While it initially targeted early February, the launch was pushed to March due to issues that popped up during the wet dress rehearsal. Now, we’re back to the beginning with a possible April launch, but that’ll depend on the fix being a quick one.

• AI-generated passwords follow patterns hackers can study
• Surface complexity hides statistical predictability beneath
• Entropy gaps in AI passwords expose structural weaknesses in AI logins

Large language models (LLMs) can produce passwords look complex, yet recent testing suggests those strings are far from random.

A study by Irregular examined password outputs from AI systems such as Claude, ChatGPT, and Gemini, asking each to generate 16-character passwords with symbols, numbers, and mixed-case letters.

Apple Store gift cards are a convenient gifting option for many people, since they allow a person to buy whatever they want. If you recently received an Apple Store gift card, but aren’t sure of its balance, there are plenty of ways to check it from different devices like your iPhone, MacBook, or even a Windows laptop. Here’s how.

1. Use Apple’s Website

The easiest way to check your Apple Store gift card balance is by heading to the official Apple website. To do this:

1. Go to the Apple Support website.
2. Sign in with your Apple ID.
3. Enter the PIN of your gift card.
   

That’s it. You should now see the remaining balance on your gift card.

2. Check Balance on iPhone & iPad

1. Open the App Store on your iPhone.
2. Click on the profile button on the top right.
3. Your balance would be visible underneath your name.

3. Check Balance on MacBook

1. Open the App Store on your Mac.
2. Tap on your name located at the bottom left corner.
   
3. Your balance should appear underneath the Apple ID.

4. Check Balance on Windows

If you’re using a Windows device and want to check your balance there, you can do so with the iTunes website.

1. Head to the iTunes website and sign in with your account.
2. Navigate to Account > View My Account.
3. Look for your gift card balance.

Frequently Asked Questions (FAQs)