The Artemis III mission and those beyond should be canceled and we should start over, proceeding with all deliberate speed," Griffin said. He included a link to his plan, which is not dissimilar from the "Apollo on Steroids" architecture he championed two decades ago, but was later found to be unaffordable within NASA's existing budget.
Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang met separately with President Donald Trump and Republican senators Wednesday as tech executives work to secure favorable federal policies for the artificial intelligence industry, including the limited sale of Nvidia's highly valued computer chips to U.S. rivals like China. Huang's closed-door meeting with Republicans on the Senate Banking Committee came at a moment of intensifying lobbying, soaring investments, and audacious forecasts by major tech companies about AI's potential transformative effects.
Brazil's President Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva insisted this week that there are no remaining obstacles to signing the EU-Mercosur trade agreement next month after more than two decades of negotiations. Speaking on the sidelines of the G20 summit in South Africa, Lula said the deal would represent "possibly the largest agreement" in global trade, citing both blocs' nearly 722 million population and $22 trillion in gross domestic product (GDP).
The watershed moment came in July when the federal government became the largest shareholder of MP Materials, a California miner of rare earth elements for the oft-overlooked but critical magnets that help connect the global economy. The government's unusual foray into private industry was accompanied by new rules setting minimum U.S. market prices for some of these materials-a pricing floor it said was necessary to protect MP Materials from Chinese competitors it accused of "dumping" their goods at artificially low prices.
Deep below the surface of the Pacific Ocean, the seafloor is dotted with clusters of brown and black rocks, each containing valuable metals. The rocks, known as polymetallic nodules, hold reserves of critical minerals that could be used to power clean energy and fuel a new industrial future. In the Cook Islands, a nation halfway between Hawaii and New Zealand, exploration vessels are mapping the mineral-rich seabeds.
