Europa and Enceladus are two ocean moons that scientists have concluded have liquid water oceans underneath their outer icy shells. The Europa Clipper mission should reach Europa around April of 2030. If it collects data hinting at the moon’s potential habitability, robotic lander missions could be the only way to confirm if there’s really life in there or not.

To make these lander missions happen, NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory team has been working on a robot that could handle the search for life and already tested it on the Matanuska Glacier in Alaska. “At this point this is a pretty mature concept,” says Kevin Hand, a planetary scientist at JPL who led this effort.

Into the unknown

There are only a few things we know for sure about conditions on the surface of Europa, and nearly all of them don’t bode well for lander missions. First, Europa is exposed to very harsh radiation, which is a problem for electronics. The window of visibility—when a potential robotic lander could contact Earth—lasts less than half of the 85 hours it takes for the moon to complete its day-night cycle due to the Europa-Jupiter orbit. So, for more than half the mission, the robot would need to fend for itself, with no human ground teams to get it out of trouble. The lander would also need to run on non-rechargeable batteries, because the vast distance to the Sun would make solar panels prohibitively massive.

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Broadband lobby groups asked the Trump administration to block state laws that require Internet service providers to offer cheap plans to people with low incomes. The biggest lobby groups for the cable, telecom, and mobile industries made the request in a filing with the US Department of Justice this week.

The groups want Trump's Justice Department to sue states such as New York, which requires ISPs to offer broadband for $15 or $20 a month to people who meet income eligibility requirements. "The Antitrust Division should work with other components of the Department of Justice to consider bringing affirmative preemption litigation against the harmful state laws already on the books or soon enacted—particularly those that directly regulate broadband rates," the lobby groups said.

The lobby groups also said the Justice Department should collaborate with the Federal Communications Commission "to thoroughly examine every possible tool in the federal government's toolbox, including any and all ways in which the Commission can take regulatory action to preempt harmful state regulations." The filing was submitted by CTIA-The Wireless Association, NCTA-The Internet & Television Association, and USTelecom-The Broadband Association.

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Using Google products in 2025 means using (or avoiding) AI features, which are becoming a core part of the experience across the board. Last year, Gmail gained the ability to summarize emails on demand. Now, Google says AI summaries will be generated and displayed automatically in the Gmail app for Android and iOS.

Before this latest change, you had to tap the "Summarize this email" chip at the top of the screen to generate an AI summary of the message contents. Google has decided to make this automatic for emails "where a summary is helpful." That means messages that are longer or threads that contain multiple replies. The announcement is a bit vague about how much detail will trigger a summary, but it probably won't take much, as Google wants people interacting with AI features as much as possible.

Gmail's AI summaries use Gemini to generate a brief list of bullet points that break down the content of the thread. It appears at the top of the app, which may not be ideal. In the same way that AI Overviews appear at the top of search results and push the actual search results farther out of reach , Gmail's AI summaries take up valuable real estate at the top of the screen.

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On Thursday, a Google Maps glitch accidentally made it appear that the most desirable routes on German autobahns and highways were shut down, The Guardian reported .

It remains unclear what unleashed a flood of stop signs on Google Maps in the area just ahead of a four-day holiday break when many drivers had travel plans. Maps of roadways in Belgium and the Netherlands were also affected.

If drivers had stopped to check alternative apps, they would have learned that traffic was flowing normally and may have avoided clogging traffic on alternative routes or wasting time speculating about what could have happened to close so many major roads. Apple Maps and Waze accurately charted traffic patterns, and only Google Maps appeared to be affected.

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Once hailed as a triumph of public health, water fluoridation is now under intense attack in the US.

Despite decades of data proving its efficacy at protecting teeth from decay—particularly children's teeth—two states have now banned the use of fluoride in public water, and communities around the country have followed suit or are considering doing the same. The current US health secretary, Robert F. Kennedy Jr., who is known for his anti-vaccine advocacy and for peddling conspiracy theories, has pledged to remove fluoride from US water.

Now, a pair of researchers at Harvard—Sung Eun Choi and Lisa Simon—have modeled exactly what will happen in the US if Kennedy follows through on his pledge: The number of cavities and decayed teeth in American children and teens (ages 0–19) will increase by an estimated 7.5 percentage points over the first five years. That means there will be 25.4 million more rotten teeth in the mouths of children and teenagers. The dental bills for the added decay will total at least $9.8 billion in that time. Other costs, such as loss of work among parents, were not included, making the financial estimate conservative. But children will also be more miserable, with an estimated loss of 2.9 million quality-adjusted life years.

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AUSTIN, Texas—By just my third lap in the top-spec 2025 Chevrolet Corvette ZR1, I glanced down at the speedometer toward the end of the Circuit of the Americas' long back straight and spied 181 mph (291 km/h) displayed for a split second. Not bad for Chevy’s newest flagship sports car, especially given that the $174,995 ZR1’s twin-turbocharged V8 pumps all 1,064 horsepower to the rear wheels only.

The US’s only purpose-built F1 track made for an excellent setting to taste Corvette’s latest; the ZR1 also commanded your attention while conquering the steep uphill toward the first corner, then winding through a series of challenging corners with plenty of elevation change. Luckily, the car itself is an engineering marvel, and Chevy brought along a team of engineers to explain exactly how the total package comes together to enable such a breathtaking pace, as well as how Chevy can responsibly sell such a powerful car to the general public at all.

The entire point of switching the Corvette’s eighth generation to a mid-engine layout was to improve weight distribution and allow the Corvette to compete against much more exotic competition from European OEMs like Ferrari. The front-engined car's engine bay also lacked the width to add a pair of turbos, due to the suspension and tire orientation, which dictated the use of a supercharger that kept peak power to “just” 755 hp (563 kW) in the last Corvette to wear the ZR1 badge.

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Elon Musk’s four-month blitz through the US government briefly made him Washington’s most powerful businessman since the Gilded Age. But it has done little for his reputation or that of his companies.

Musk this week formally abandoned his role as the head of the so-called Department of Government Efficiency (Doge), which has failed to find even a fraction of the $2 trillion in savings he originally pledged.

On Thursday, Donald Trump lamented his departure but said Musk “will always be with us, helping all the way.”

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Eighteen months after leaving his job as a vice president at Amazon to take over as Blue Origin's chief executive, Dave Limp has some thoughts on how commercial companies and government agencies like NASA should explore the Solar System together.

Limp had no background in the space industry before taking the helm of Jeff Bezos' space company in December 2023. He started his career as a computer scientist at Apple, took a stint at a venture capital firm, and joined Amazon in 2010 , where he managed development of consumer devices like Alexa, Kindle, and the Fire TV.

"I had no thoughts of ever running a space company," Limp said Thursday at a space conference in Washington, DC. "I've done consumer electronics my whole life. Started at Apple and did a bunch of other things, and so when I decided to retire from Amazon, I was looking for something that I could give back a little bit, be a little bit more philanthropic in the sort of second half of my career. I didn't want to stop working, just wanted to do something different. And about that same time, Jeff was looking for a CEO."

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Welcome to Edition 7.46 of the Rocket Report! As I write this, the date is May 29. From a meteorological standpoint, "spring" ends in fewer than three days. Summer lasts from June 1 through August 31. Consider this a public service announcement for launch companies targeting "spring" and "summer" launches for various missions.

As always, we welcome reader submissions , and if you don't want to miss an issue, please subscribe using the box below (the form will not appear on AMP-enabled versions of the site). Each report will include information on small-, medium-, and heavy-lift rockets as well as a quick look ahead at the next three launches on the calendar.

Xodiac rocket makes its final flight . Originally built by Masten Space Systems, the suborbital Xodiac rocket had flown 175 successful missions before a flight from Mojave, California, on Wednesday. But now, it will fly no more. "While the vehicle remained within its planned flight envelope, it detected an anomalous condition and commanded a flight termination," said Astrobotic , which acquired Masten a couple of years ago. "This resulted in a rapid descent and caused a loss of the vehicle upon impact with its launch pad."

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