The Gold Standard

The houses of faith got the work

Washington named nearly two billion dollars for faith-based health and disaster partners, the largest such global-health allocation in more than twenty years. World Vision and Compassion are on the sheet.

Pad 40 hands Florida Starlink to Starship

The last planned Falcon 9 Starlink from Florida left SLC-40 at 5:33 a.m. Tuesday. The pad is not retiring. The constellation is changing vehicles.

Turin unfolds the legs

ESA posted the Turin test on 6 August: four landing legs, two pairs, less than a second. Rosalind Franklin is starting to look like a landing.

The churches are counting themselves

The eighth National Church Life Survey is open through October. Twenty-one denominations are in. Late congregations can still sign the sheet.

NASA books Falcon Heavy for Europe’s Mars rover

The Rosalind Franklin Support and Augmentation project is in implementation. The launch is late 2028 from 39A — likely SpaceX’s first throw at Mars.

A knight for the family desk

On 25 August Pope Leo XIV named Knights of Columbus Supreme Knight Patrick Kelly to the Dicastery for the Laity, Family and Life. The Vatican bulletin is one sentence. The work is not.

Fujitsu puts Monaka's cache on its own 5 nm die

Hot Chips, 24 August. 144 Armv9.3-A cores on 2 nm, last-level cache on 5 nm. Samples now. Volume in 2027.

The campuses filled the class

Hallow’s August study of nearly sixty U.S. colleges finds OCIA participation up 87.6 percent in a year. Newman Centers are outrunning the dioceses.

The statue went out on the water

Pope Leo XIV became the first pope to ride the Marian procession across Lake Albano. Castel Gandolfo has waited four centuries for that boat.

Trump signed a U.S. Space Academy order at Johnson on Friday

On 28 August at Johnson Space Center the President signed an executive order establishing a national Space Academy on the pattern of West Point and the Air Force Academy. It will serve Space Force, NASA, and civilian spaceflight. A site is still to be chosen.

The farthest loop gets its medal

At Johnson on Friday, President Trump presented the Congressional Space Medal of Honor to the Artemis II crew — the first people to fly to the Moon since 1972, and the farthest humans have ever been from home.