Google's Schmidt Arrives In North Korea

Enlarge / Elon Musk speaks as Yusaku Maezawa, founder and president of Start Today Co., looks on at an event at the SpaceX headquarters in Hawthorne, California, in 2018. (credit: Patrick T. Fallon/Bloomberg via Getty Images) On Friday night the dearMoon project—a plan to launch a Japanese billionaire and 10 other 'crew members' on a circumlunar flight aboard SpaceX's Starship vehicle—was abruptly canceled. "It is unfortunate to be announcing that 'dearMoon', the first private circumlunar flight project, will be cancelled," the mission's official account on the social media site X said.

Enlarge / The regular Hyundai Elantra is a perfectly fine compact sedan. But once the boffins at Hyundai N got hold of it, they transformed it into something with a lot more character. (credit: Peter Nelson) Hyundai provided accommodation in Monterey, California, so Ars could drive the Elantra N. Ars does not accept paid editorial content. Few cars are aimed quite at driving enthusiasts like the wholesome sport compact.

JOHANNESBURG — The African National Congress party lost its parliamentary majority in a historic election result Saturday that puts South Africa on a new political path for the first time since the end of the apartheid system of white minority rule 30 years ago. With more than 99% of votes counted, the once-dominant ANC had received just over 40% in Wednesday’s election, well short of the majority it had held since the famed all-race vote of 1994 that ended apartheid and brought it to power under Nelson Mandela.

Enlarge / Behold, the most distant galaxy found to date. (credit: NASA, ESA, CSA, STScI et al.) Welcome to the Daily Telescope. There is a little too much darkness in this world and not enough light, a little too much pseudoscience and not enough science. We'll let other publications offer you a daily horoscope.

Enlarge (credit: Timothy Hearsum) Fritz Haber: good guy or bad guy? He won the Nobel Prize in Chemistry in 1918 for his part in developing the Haber-Bosch process, a method for generating ammonia using the nitrogen gas in air. The technique freed agriculture from the constraint of needing to source guano or manure for nitrogen fertilizer and is widely credited for saving millions from starvation.