When NASA’s Artemis II mission put humans at the far side of the moon for the first time in 44 years, it often felt like we were there in the capsule with astronauts Victor Glover, Christina Koch, Jeremy Hansen and Reid Wiseman. That’s almost entirely due to the frequent transmission of imagery from the flight, from live feeds to high-resolution photos that let us look at the moon and life in space like never before.

But getting those photos and videos isn’t as easy as tossing a camera in a bag for an Earth-bound vacation. To capture the high-resolution images that made us gasp here on the ground, the astronauts shot with Nikon DSLR and mirrorless cameras. Artemis II used GoPro Hero4 cameras for interior and exterior video feeds, and the crew took many notable photos inside the capsule using iPhone 17 Pro Max phones.

As NASA moves toward the Artemis III mission in 2027 and an expected moon landing in 2028 there will undoubtedly be a huge demand to document and share everything that goes on. To get a better understanding of what’s involved with making sure astronauts can capture those historical and candid moments, I spoke to Michael Corrado, Nikon senior manager of Pro Services.

“Just to see these pictures come back from space, we couldn’t be more humbled as a company,” Corrado said. “And as an individual, my dad was part of the space program… so it’s in the legacy here.”

Corrado also walked me through the rigorous process NASA requires to certify equipment for space travel, why astronauts primarily rely on decade-old tech and how future flights will look different.

It also struck me that even these Nikon professionals, who have worked with NASA astronauts and teams for decades, were still gobsmacked by the imagery that comes back. “We were just sitting there in awe of what we were seeing every day,” Corrado said.

How to launch a camera into space

The Artemis II vehicle – the Orion spacecraft and Integrity capsule – represented some of the latest space flight technology, but not all of the cameras were cutting-edge.

For video, NASA used several GoPro Hero4 cameras mounted inside and outside the Artemis II spacecraft, a compact action camera model that came out in 2014.

The workhorse of the mission was the Nikon D5 DSLR, a model first introduced to the consumer market in 2016. Also on the flight was the half-decade-old Nikon Z9 mirrorless camera body, introduced in 2021.

A photographer here on Earth might pass over the Nikon D5 as an outdated camera, but Corrado suggests that NASA doesn’t view it as “old technology.”

“I’d use the word ‘trusted’ technology more than anything,” quipped Corrado.

Nikon’s cameras are the only ones fully certified to fly on NASA missions, a spot on the equipment roster the company has maintained since the later Apollo missions in the 1970s. Of the Artemis II lineup, only the Nikon D5 carries the certification badge; the Nikon Z9 is still being evaluated – in that case under real-world conditions.

Certification is as much about safety as it is about performance. Camera batteries can be flammable, and flame is the last thing you want in a space capsule.

But the camera’s electronics also need to be shielded against radiation. We enjoy a buffer from Earth’s atmosphere, but radiation in open space is another matter. So, although the cameras on the mission are mostly stock models, they’ve been reinforced with internal shielding.

“Back in the day, we used to strip things off the camera [like] the leather,” Corrado said, referring to the missions in the 1970s. “They were almost naked cameras that went up. But none of that has to happen with the D5 and the Z9.”

There also wasn’t a lot of equipment. When I go out to shoot a sunrise, I’ll typically bring a backup camera in case something goes wrong with my main body. Traveling 250,000 miles from the nearest camera store, I’d expect there to be backups, but since weight is such an issue during spaceflight, Corrado noted that no backup bodies accompanied the astronauts on Artemis II.

Getting the shot in-camera, in-capsule

Today’s cameras are advanced enough that their automatic modes can cover almost any photo situation, and if a shot isn’t quite right we can edit it easily in software. In a dark scene, for example, a camera will increase the ISO to compensate and introduce digital noise, which can then be cleaned up in Lightroom.

The photos that came back from the Artemis II mission, though, revealed that the astronauts never leaned on that type of automatic crutch. The dark shots – it’s space, after all – sometimes had high ISOs but not to the point of introducing excessive noise.

In an extremely harsh lighting environment, they knew how to take advantage of the wide dynamic range of the D5 and Z9 cameras to avoid moon surfaces blown out too white to preserve surface details. Photos from the dark side of the moon, the first captured in 55 years, reveal formations that scientists will be studying for years.

One of my favorite images is a shot of the back of the moon with the Earth rising behind it. You can see details of clouds and the peaks of continents on the illuminated portion of the planet, versus a sliver of bright white like you’d get when taking a snapshot of the moon from your backyard.

Keep in mind that the images NASA published during the mission are the ones captured in-camera, not edited raw images, again demonstrating the astronauts’ photographic skills.

HULC-ing out with the Nikon Z9

After years of service, the Nikon D5 is likely looking at NASA retirement. “We worked for years to get the D5 certified for use in space,” Corrado said, “and now it has probably seen its last launch.”

The Z9 is taking over for the future, which means it’s currently going through the official certification process even though it’s been around the moon.

In fact, Artemis wasn’t the first time the Z9 has gone to space. Astronaut Don Pettit used it for about eight months on the International Space Station. Corrado said there are currently 20 Nikon Z9 cameras on the ISS.

“Life is different when you wake up to an email that you think is spam that says ‘Greetings from orbit’,” said Corrado. Pettit’s real-(off)-world experience and questions made their way to Nikon’s engineers. He noted that the feedback typically results in firmware changes specific for NASA.

The hardened Z9 that will reach the lunar surface in 2028 will be wrapped in a thermal blanket as part of a system called the Handheld Universal Lunar Camera (HULC). The cover will protect the camera from the moon’s extreme temperature fluctuations.

Looking to the next moonshot

It’s not fair to see the visual riches of the existing Artemis II photos and still have a wishlist, but I think depth is one element missing. Wiseman talked about witnessing land formations on the moon’s surface, saying, “It’s just everything from the training but in three dimensions and absolutely unbelievable.”

That makes me wish the crew had captured footage using the Spatial Video feature on their iPhones (I’ve found no evidence that they did). Imagine putting on an Apple Vision Pro and seeing the moon in an immersive way that’s even closer to what the astronauts experienced.

Stereoscopic footage could be recorded in the future, though. Nikon is working on a depth camera, for which it was granted a patent in 2025. “We’re still working with NASA very closely… together on these technologies,” Corrado said.

No matter what form the future images from Artemis III and future Artemis flights take, they’re sure to be stunning thanks to the astronauts’ training and the crews at Nikon and NASA working to equip them with the hardened camera equipment the missions require.

Jeff Carlson

Senior Writer

Jeff Carlson writes about mobile technology at CNET, from cellular phone plans to devices and emerging technology.

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The significance of residual hormone production may decrease over time. Still, says Walter Rocca, a professor of epidemiology and neurology at the Mayo Clinic, that doesn’t mean the ovary has become unimportant.

“I am convinced until proven otherwise that removing ovaries even after menopause is not advisable,” he says, with a caveat for women at an increased risk of ovarian cancer.

Just how long that importance persists after menopause is still an open question, says Stephanie Faubion, medical director of the Menopause Society. It’s also unclear, she says, how much the answer may vary from woman to woman. “We just have huge gaps,” she says.

Duncan’s work suggests one reason the importance of the postmenopausal ovary may change over time. In analyzing human ovaries, the team found that protein patterns in older ovaries suggested that the ovary becomes a more inflammatory environment. To better understand what may be driving those changes, they looked more closely at the ovaries of mice. The research, published in June in the journal Molecular Human Reproduction, suggests that the ovary may eventually take on a completely new identity after menopause.

The team compared the ovaries of two-month-old mice, reproductively old 18-month-old mice, and post-reproductive 24-month-old mice, and found that over time, the genes linked to inflammation and immune activity became far more active. The number of immune cells in the ovary also increased. While research on mice does not always translate to humans, it could help to explain the molecular changes Duncan observed in human ovaries.

“We think that a lot of those changes may make the ovary more prone to age-related diseases like ovarian cancer,” says Birgit Schilling, an aging researcher at the Buck Institute for Research on Aging who collaborated with Duncan on the human ovary work, which has been published as a preprint. After menopause, the risk of a host of conditions goes up, including stroke, heart disease, and osteoporosis.

Other organs undergo immune remodeling with time, but the ovary ages long before most other organs. Duncan’s work raises the question of whether at some point, the benefits of keeping the ovaries may be outstripped by the risk: As the aging ovary becomes more inflammatory, she wonders whether it may begin broadcasting inflammatory signals to other parts of the body.

David Pépin is probing another possibility: that as follicles that house growing eggs disappear, the ovary may also reorganize to preserve hormone production. Pépin, a reproductive biologist at Massachusetts General Hospital and Harvard Medical School, found that years after cats were given an experimental birth-control gene therapy that prevented their follicles from maturing, the cats were still producing the hormones estrogen, testosterone, and inhibin at completely normal levels.

Follicles drive much of the hormone production during a reproductive cycle; without them, hormone levels should have fallen. In preliminary work he has publicly presented but not yet published, Pépin’s team found that when the ovaries were eventually removed, other cells in the ovary—the stroma—appeared to have taken over hormone production. Pilot studies in mice suggest a similar effect. Pépin thinks he may have tapped into a natural mechanism that helps maintain hormone production as follicles wane. It’s long been hypothesized that the stroma may be responsible for some of the human ovary’s postmenopausal hormone production.

Estrogen, he says, is not the only hormone that plays a role in menopause. “We know so little about how the other ovarian hormones that are disrupted at menopause may contribute to health,” he says. “It is not a dead organ.”

• OpenAI agent breached Australia’s Medicare portal on June 18, 2026, accessing internal files
• Government says no personal medical data was taken, but three other agencies may be affected
• PM Albanese slammed OpenAI’s 84‑day delay in disclosure, calling the notification “unacceptable” and warning of legal consequences

An OpenAI agent has allegedly broken into a website of the Australian government, which has slammed the “unacceptable” attack, promising an in-depth investigation, and threatening “legal consequences”.

Australian Prime Minister Anthony Albanese revealed how in June 2026, OpenAI’s research team tasked the agent with researching public medicine spending, as part of an internal capability evaluation – but as the agent got to work, it was initially denied access to some of the information it requested.

The AI amulet has become a bit of a cliché in the tech industry — devices like Friend have turned the idea of physical AI into little more than an exercise in eye-rolling for many consumers.

But that hasn’t stopped Meta from jumping into the arena with its own AI wearable, called Muse Charm, which is designed to give consumers another way to stay connected to its recently launched, and already popular, personal AI agent, Muse.

The device, which CEO Mark Zuckerberg revealed in a “one more thing” moment during the company’s annual Connect event, isn’t ready to ship just yet. Zuckerberg said his team had to “finalize laying out the components” and promised the devices would be “ready to ship in time for the holidays in December.”

The Muse agent, which is now embodied by a cute digital avatar known within the company as Jolly, lives inside the palm-sized totem that users can carry in their pockets or attach to a keychain. The device comes with a tiny screen that displays the avatar representing the agent. Users can talk to the device, which can then presumably carry out tasks on their behalf.

“We packed the whole Muse experience, including the whole real-time voice and avatar stack, into something that fits on a keychain and is always available to talk to,” Zuckerberg said during Wednesday’s keynote. “You just go ahead and tap here in the fingerprint sensor in the corner, and you can start talking without having to unlock a phone or open an app.”

Zuckerberg added: “So if you’re not wearing glasses, this is going to be by far the fastest way to talk to your Muse and to show what’s going on around you.”

Appropriate for what it offers, the gadget has a quasi-Tamagotchi feel to it — a lightweight, personality-filled device designed to keep users always connected to Meta’s software. It also feels like a relatviely low-stakes way for the social media giant to experiment with AI wearables while also offering yet another way to distribute its AI agent to the masses.

The free VPN built into Opera is getting a small but useful upgrade. Instead of relying on you to remember to switch it on before joining airport, café, or hotel Wi-Fi, the browser can now detect a public or unsecured network and activate the VPN automatically.

Opera has offered its built-in VPN since 2016. It is free, does not require an account, and has no fixed bandwidth cap. The new automatic protection is still opt-in, so users will have to enable it first in settings. The feature is rolling out to desktop users in the U.S. and France starting today.

The free VPN does not cover your whole device

Opera’s existing free VPN only protects traffic inside the browser. Websites opened in Opera can be routed through an encrypted connection to one of the company’s VPN servers, while apps such as Spotify, Steam, or a standalone email client continue using the regular network. Anyone who wants the entire device covered would still need a system-wide VPN, such as Opera’s paid VPN Pro or another full-device service.

A VPN helps on public Wi-Fi, but it is not a force field

Public Wi-Fi also is not quite the disaster zone it was years ago. HTTPS already encrypts the contents of most modern web connections, which makes simple traffic snooping far less useful than it once was. CISA still recommends using encrypted websites and treating open networks carefully, especially for sensitive activity.

A VPN still cannot protect you from every threat on an open network. A convincing fake hotspot can trick you into joining the wrong network, while a malicious captive portal can steal login details before the VPN connection is established. Attackers on the same network may also target exposed services such as file sharing or device discovery, which sit outside the encrypted VPN tunnel. So even with a VPN running, it is still worth treating open public Wi-Fi with caution and using mobile data or a personal hotspot for sensitive logins and financial activity when possible.

Growing sales and popularity of smart glasses are despite public backlash against the technology over privacy concerns.

Meta is to introduce smart glasses without cameras amid ongoing public concerns over privacy violations made possible by the use of its camera-equipped variants.

The new ‘Ray-Ban Meta Audio’ models will be without a previously standard feature for all of the company’s smart glasses, enabling better battery life and a slimmer form factor, according to Meta.

The camera-free audio glasses had been in the works for about two years, Bloomberg reported Meta CTO Andrew Bosworth as saying. He added that the company was “a little bit fortunate” to already have an audio-only product in development, given the “privacy narrative playing out around glasses globally”.

He told the publication that Meta takes privacy concerns “seriously”, and would continue to do so.

Last week, French prosecutors launched a criminal probe into suspected sexual harassment committed using smart glasses.

Reuters reported that at least one investigation was underway in Paris following complaints over the filming of women nonconsensually using smart glasses to be posted to social media.

Specific brands or company names were not mentioned by officials.

AI-equipped smart glasses accounted for 88pc of total shipments in the sector as of H2 last year, while Meta held more than 80pc of total global smart glasses shipments.

The sharp growth in sales and popularity of these types of glasses comes despite public backlash against the technology, with people highlighting issues around covert recording and sexual harassment.

“My lived experience walking around with [smart glasses] has been people pretty enthusiastic about the product,” Bosworth told Bloomberg. “Then there’s an extremely online concern. I’m not saying it’s not a real concern.”

Meta boss Mark Zuckerberg unveiled the camera-free glasses in a keynote presentation at the company’s annual Meta Connect showcase in California yesterday (23 September). He said the new audio-focused glasses also qualify as US FDA-certified hearing aids, designed for people with mild to moderate hearing loss.

Other product updates focused on VR-geared smart glasses and the customisable agentic AI avatar Muse.

In an analysis of the keynote presentation, principal analyst at Forrester Kate Winick said: “Despite user privacy concerns, the introduction of audio glasses barely acknowledged the problem that drove their creation. Instead, Meta focused on the fact that Meta glasses are now an FDA-cleared hearing enhancement device and highlighted the positive features of the glasses, including longer battery life, slimmer profile and Muse functionality.”

She noted that Meta “introduced no new features that support privacy for the public”, and suggested that the company “is hoping that a feature-rich product environment and user-friendly experience will simply drown privacy concerns”.

Earlier this week, Dutch deep-tech company Morphotonics raised more than €40m in Series B funding for scaling its technology that helps build AI glasses.

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Meta’s personal AI agent Muse is only a few weeks old, and the social networking giant isn’t wasting any time building out what may be its biggest bet on consumer AI to date. 

CEO Mark Zuckerberg kicked off the company’s annual Connect event in Menlo Park on Wednesday with a keynote that made one thing clear: Meta is going all-in on Muse. 

The Muse agent (the physical avatar is named Jolly, according to Zuckerberg) is designed to handle everyday tasks by connecting to users’ apps and services, including email and calendars. At Connect, Zuckerberg introduced a slew of new capabilities and integrations to make Muse more useful and more deeply woven into users’ daily lives. Muse will be everywhere, if the user chooses, including on their Meta AI glasses. 

Muse, which launched in early September, interacts across a user’s devices and digital accounts. The agent is powered by Muse Spark, Meta’s multimodal AI model built for agentic work. Meta has touted it as a more accessible agent than those offered by competitors — an AI helper that, from the jump, allows users to automate the busy work in their lives. 

“The centerpiece of our vision for what we’re building is Muse,” Zuckerberg said as he kicked off a keynote donning khakis and a black T-shirt with the words “Building is My love Language” emblazoned across the front. “In the coming years, I expect that Muse is going to grow into the personal superintelligence that billions of people around the world are going to use to accomplish their goals and improve their lives.”

Zuckerberg also believes that Muse will make money for its users — and of course, eventually for Meta.

“We’re standing behind this by making Muse free for a huge number of tokens, with the expectation that over time we will profit by taking a small fee from transactions,” he said.

Here are the new features and capabilities that got our attention …

Muse gets its own digital avatar

One of the more fun announcements made Wednesday is that Muse users will soon have the ability to conjure a distinct digital avatar for their particular agent and then video chat with it in real time. A new AI model, Muse Realtime Avatar, has been developed to power the particular feature, the company says.

The idea is that Meta’s previously faceless AI software will be given a face, body, and voice, making them significantly more personable. There’s certainly a hint of Metaverse-ishness to this feature, which was demoed on stage at Connect. Users will be able to have live conversations with this avatar, giving it tasks and asking it questions. 

Muse will also be integrated with Meta’s smart glasses line, the company announced. This means that users will be able to communicate with their agent merely by speaking to their glasses. The agent activates via a wake word, the company said, adding that it will be able to guide users through a personalized workout, log meals, book an appointment, and help them buy products they see. 

Meta said Muse will work in the background and check back in when it’s done.

It’s not clear exactly when this feature will become available, although Meta says that it should launch sometime in “the coming months.” 

Soon, you’ll be able to let Muse run your Mac

Meta says it is bringing Muse computer work to Mac. The company had previously talked about Muse coming to Mac, and spent more time on Wednesday providing a few new details. This means that users will be able to delegate tasks to the agent, and — much like other popular AI agents from OpenAI and Anthropic — Muse will be able to operate any app on a user’s desktop.

“You can have it help you run your small business, or just get work done for you,” Meta’s chief AI officer Alexandr Wang said Wednesday during the keynote. “You can walk away from your computer and it keeps working for you on all the jobs you lined up.”

Muse will get its own email address

Since Muse will always be working in the background, it will naturally need its own email address. Meta’s Wang announced it is developing that feature and will make it available “soon,” without providing a more precise timeline.

Users will also be able to add Muse to an email thread or forward emails from the agent to handle on their behalf.

Meta has locked in partnerships with companies like Stripe and Shopify, illustrating that the company sees Muse as an important tool for shopping.

Muse can access the entire Shopify product catalog agentically and use Lync and now Shop Pay to buy almost anything on the internet, according to Wang, who noted that Meta has also added more support for payments with PayPal.

The company also announced a string of new partnerships with retailers, including Best Buy, Gap, Sephora, Walmart, and Wayfair. Muse will be able to connect with these retail apps as well as with Expedia and soon, Instacart. Other connectors include GitHub, Granola, and Notion.

Wang noted that the company wants Muse to connect with small business too. Meta recently opened its platform to allow developers to build their own “connectors.” The company received more than 1,500 applications in less than week, he said, adding “I think this could be a generational opportunity to start building for a new platform as it takes off, and the response so far has been really great.”

The platform will combine sustainability skills, careers, education and training, helping people to upskill and create opportunities.

A new national platform, the EduGreen Connect programme, was launched today (24 September) and is part of a strategy designed to link jobs, skills and education. 

EduGreen Connect has been developed through Ireland’s Knowledge Centre for Carbon, Climate and Community Action and is being led by Munster Technological University in partnership with University College Dublin and Trinity College Dublin.

The platform offers information on sustainability skills, careers, education and training, giving people a resource to identify new opportunities and learning routes. 

EduGreen Connect’s data, in relation to the labour market, will also give employers and education providers greater insight into where skills are most needed, as well as the information needed to match workforce demand with the relevant skills and training. 

According to the platform’s representatives, EduGreen Connect launches against a backdrop of significant workforce demand, where there are major workforce requirements and skill needs in areas such as renewable energy, residential retrofit and electric vehicles, especially if Ireland is to meet its climate targets by 2030. 

Demand also appears across finance, construction, energy, transport, engineering and other sectors, reflecting the growing relationship between sustainability and mainstream business priorities, in areas such as efficiency, resilience, innovation and resource management.

Commenting on the launch, at an event themed ‘People and Platforms: Building Ireland’s Green Skills Ecosystem’ , Dr Helena McMahon, the director of EduGreen Connect at Munster Technological University, said, “EduGreen Connect brings together information that has traditionally been difficult to see in one place, what employers are looking for, the careers those skills lead to, and the education and training available across Ireland.

“The wider opportunity is helping Ireland’s education and training system respond more quickly to changing skills needs. Where employer demand is high and provision is thin, there may be a case for new or expanded learning. Where provision is already strong, the issue may instead be helping people find and access what is already there.”

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