Eighty days since they took off from Cape Canaveral Space Force Station in Florida onboard Boeing’s Starliner mission, astronauts Suni Williams and Butch Wilmore will have to remain on the International Space Station (ISS) till February 2025. Their return journey to Earth ran into trouble because of issues plaguing the Boeing Starliner spacecraft. 

With the Starliner suffering setbacks with helium leaks and thrusters, NASA on Saturday deemed it was too risky to bring the two astronauts back in the capsule. Instead, the space agency decided to turn to Elon Musk’s SpaceX’s workhorse Crew Dragon spacecraft. 

NASA administrator Bill Nelson said NASA considered its extensive experience with spaceflight — both successful and unsuccessful — when they decided to opt for SpaceX. The agency also held a poll of its representatives from across its departments and oversight and development centres. He added that NASA lost two space shuttles “as a result of there not being a culture in which information could come forward.”  

“Spaceflight is risky, even at its safest and even at its most routine. And a test flight, by nature, is neither safe, nor routine,” he said. 

The starliner will fly home empty in early September.

SpaceX, which has been conducting astronauts to the ISS since 2020, has a routine mission scheduled in September, called Crew-9. This will now have to be reconfigured to carry Williams and Wilmore. It will have to scrap the initial plan to send a four-person crew and leave two seats for the duo. New Dragon spacesuits for the astronauts, along with other necessary supplies, will be brought to the station in the coming months. SpaceX will work with NASA to decide which astronauts will not fly to the ISS on Crew-9.

It was during 2020 that SpaceX’s Crew Dragon completed its first crewed test flight, thereby earning certification from NASA. The successful flights of SpaceX’s workhorse. 

Over the last four years, it has carried a dozen crews to and from the ISS. 

SpaceX president and chief operating officer Gwynne Shotwell has shared that her company is ready to work with NASA to bring back astronauts Butch Wilmore and Suni Williams on the Crew Dragon spacecraft.

If you’re going to university or school, then you’ll probably want to aim for some solid budget laptops that are also pretty portable. Luckily, there are a lot of great options out there, and while you could absolutely aim for some of the best laptops on the market, you’re better off going for something that fits your needs and your budget. For example, there are a lot of great Chromebook deals you can take advantage of that are a lot cheaper than Windows laptops, although if you do need Windows, then there are a lot of great laptop deals for that, too.

Whatever you’re looking for, we’ve collected some of our favorite student laptop deals from that include HP laptop deals, Dell laptop deals, Acer laptop deals, and Lenovo laptop deals.

HP Laptop 14 — $200 $250 20% off

The HP Laptop 14 is a popular choice among students because of its entry level price point. It’s specs aren’t going to blow anyone away, but they’re good value for the price and are plenty to get the job done. This build of the HP Laptop 14 has 4GB of RAM and a quad-core Intel Celeron processor. It does check in with just 128GB of storage space — this may not be enough for some users, but if you aren’t planning on loading your laptop up with media this is one that will accompany you well around campus.

ASUS Vivobook 14-inch — $280 $430 35% off

The ASUS Vivobook 14-inch is a great study companion due to quirks that make it perfect for late-night usage. Like other ASUS laptops (just one reason ASUS is featured among the best budget laptops) it sports a quiet keyboard with slender-pressing keys. And, in this case, they’re also backlit, meaning you can find the right keys easily even in the dark of night. Its 180-degree hinge, when fully opened, means the ASUS Vivobook can lie flat, allowing for multiple comfortable positions for in-bed studying. The ASUS Vivobook 16-inch features 8GB of RAM, 126GB of SSD storage, and an Intel Core i3-1215U processor.

IdeaPad Slim 3i Chromebook — $420 $550 23% off

Fitting in as one of the best Chromebooks for students, the IdeaPad Slim 3 Chromebook runs on 8GB of memory and an Intel i3 processor. The 14-inch FHD screen has a 100% sRGB color gamut and sides of the keyboard contain speakers, making it a serviceable video lecture companion. The IdeaPad Slim 3’s WiFi 6 allows for quick downloads and a solid internet connection. This, combined with the laptop’s 13-hour battery life, solidify it as the perfect laptop to throw in your bag and take notes with at class. You can still watch (purely educational, of course) YouTube videos, but the machine isn’t designed to be overly distracting.

IdeaPad Slim 3 — $430 $750 39% off

When we look at 15 inch laptops we shouldn’t ignore the IdeaPad Slim 3, which comes with an AMD Ryzen 5 7530U processor and Integrated AMD Radeon Graphics. Behind its 1080p, anti-glare screen is the 8GB of memory and a 512GB SSD storage drive. What makes the IdeaPad Slim 3 special is its tough exterior, made for withstanding harsh drops. This, along with its slim build, make it perfect to throw in the backpack and tug along with you wherever you go. Take even 15 minutes between classes for a charge session and you’ll get two full hours of usage out of your IdeaPad Slim 3, it is a truly versatile machine that is ready to go when you are.

HP Pavilion x360 Laptop 14t — $450 $709 36% off

If you’re willing to spend a little bit more, the HP Pavilion Laptop 15t really starts to ramp up the stats. The 8GB of RAM can be especially useful if you need to use advanced creative software, for example, and competes with the very best business laptops. Of course, the Intel Core i3-1315U processor won’t hurt either. Store you projects and PowerPoints locally on the 128GB SSD contained within, as you don’t want poor reception in the depths of the philosophy building keeping you from getting your points across. Overall, this is one of the best student laptop deals for those that need a little extra power but aren’t ready to break the bank on luxuries like an ultra-advanced display (the HP Pavilion Laptop 14t is 1080p).

ThinkPad E16 Gen 2 — $799 $1,331 40% off

When we think of the best Lenovo laptops, one line always comes to mind: ThinkPad. They have a reputation for high durability and good keyboards. While we’ve warned in the past that the latest laptop model isn’t always the best, there is something to be said about the ThinkPad E16 Gen 1 being a new arrival to the Lenovo store. It’s got the latest features that you’ll want for the long term, in abundance. For example its got both USB-C ports and WiFi 6, which are becoming increasingly useful. Furthermore, the ThinkPad E16 has a 16-inch 1920 x 1200p screen, 1 TB of storage, and a whopping 24 GB memory.

Dell XPS 14 — $1,010 $1,560 35% off

Consistently one of the best laptops around, the Dell XPS 14 is a dream in almost every way. The thinnest and lightest 14-inch XPS laptop yet, it’s powerful too. It has a Ultra 7 Processor 155H processor, 16GB of memory, and 512GB of SSD storage. Its 14.5-inch full HD+ display with a 1920 x 1200 resolution is a delight to look at with 500 nits of brightness ensuring it can handle all lighting situations too. An impressive battery life of up to 12 hours means it’ll handle the busiest days of classes while you can enjoy streaming your favorite shows in style later in the day thanks to the great display and bigger internal speakers than previous models.

HP Envy Laptop 17t — $1,250 $1,500 16% off

Featured among our best HP laptop deals as well, the HP ENVY Laptop 17t is praised for its photo connectivity features. By using HP Palette, you can search through the images of your college memories with photo recognition software. (Yes, the guy you went to chemistry with was also the awful karaoke singer last night.) The HP ENVY Laptop 17t also has quick file sharing between connected devices. Another thing to note about this laptop is how bit it is. It has a 17.3-inch, 1080p screen, so be sure to check out our favorite 17-inch laptop bags if you pick up this offering, as your current one might not be able to handle it. And that big size won’t go to waste at all, as it will not only help you see your pictures better, but also see yourself better from its 5MP built-in webcam. The HP ENVY Laptop 17t uses an Intel Core i7 processor, gets 16GB of RAM, and 512GB of storage.

Right now Amazon has an incredible deal on the Razer Universal Quick Charge stand for Xbox controllers that saves you quite a bit of money on the accessory. This charging stand will fit one controller and it normally retails for $40 to $50 depending on the style you pick. For instance, some styles like the Electric Volt are $40 at full price while the Forza Horizon 5 model is $50 at full price.

However, Amazon is knocking the price down on many of the available options to $20. So depending on the color or style you choose, you’re saving either 50% or 60%. This is easily the lowest price we’ve tracked for this accessory at any point and if you need an easy way to keep your wireless controller charged, this is a deal you don’t want to miss.

Now it is probably obvious but it needs to be said for clarification, this deal is only for Razer’s quick charge stand and it does not come with an Xbox wireless controller. The stand does come with the necessary USB cable to plug it into a power source though. You can sit your controller on the stand at any point and charge your wireless controller and it should be charged up in under a few hours.

The stand also serves as a nice place to store the controller when you’re not playing, which also looks nice. So it keeps things organized in your setup. In terms of the available colors/styles for this deal, Amazon is offering the $20 price on the Deep Pink, Electric Volt, Forza Horizon 5, Mineral Camo, Robot White, and Velocity Green variants.

Buy at Amazon

Informatica launched Generative AI Blueprints, a set of guidelines and features designed to speed and simplify developing generative AI tools on six prominent cloud-based data management platforms.

The blueprints, available at no cost in Informatica’s Architecture and were released on Oct. 24, enable customers to use the vendor’s Intelligence Data Management Cloud (IDMC) platform in concert with AWS, Databricks, Google Cloud, Microsoft Azure, Oracle Cloud Infrastructure and Snowflake to develop generative AI capabilities.

Key features of the blueprints include vector database and language model connectors, prebuilt no-code data integration recipes, data quality and master data management capabilities and standard reference architectures to guide developers as they build new tools.

Given that enterprise interest in developing generative AI models and applications has exploded over the past two years yet the actual building of such tools is complicated, Informatica’s launch of Generative AI Blueprints will be useful for the vendor’s customers, according to Kevin Petrie, an analyst at BARC U.S.

“Data and AI teams struggle to integrate the many elements of a GenAI architecture, from data sources to pipelines to [retrieval-augmented generation] workflows and the applications that contain language models,” he said. “The more you can simplify this architecture, the better you can reduce risk to determine the value of pilots and limited production deployments.”

Beyond being assistive to customers, the launch of Generative AI Blueprints also represents Informatica capitalizing on an opportunity, Petrie continued.

BARC’s research shows that more than 80% of enterprises are likely or extremely likely to work with vendors when developing AI initiatives. In addition, more than half are likely or extremely likely to engage a global consulting firm.

“As incumbent providers in many environments, Informatica and its consulting partners recognize this opportunity and aim to capitalize on it,” Petrie said.

Based in Redwood City, Calif., Informatica is a data management vendor whose IDMC is designed to enable its users to integrate and prepare data for analysis and AI development.

Earlier this month, the vendor’s most recent platform update featured capabilities aimed at enabling customers to prepare their data for developing AI models and applications. Generative AI Blueprints builds on that by providing users with the next steps to take that data and use it to build models and applications.