SpaceX, owned by Elon Musk, is preparing, on Friday, to conduct the latest test of its Starship rocket, the largest and most powerful in the world, in an unprecedented attempt to capture the spacecraft after spending a day in Earth’s orbit, according to Agence France-Presse.
The success of capturing the upper stage of “Starship” will constitute an important achievement in the space sector’s decades-long endeavor to develop fully reusable spacecraft, allowing to significantly reduce mission costs and make repeated spaceflights possible.
SpaceX said: “If the attempt succeeds, this will be the first complete recovery of an orbital launch system, and a turning point in the effort to make Starship a reliable rocket that can be quickly reused.”
On the fifteenth test flight, scheduled for Friday, SpaceX seeks to recover the two stages of the huge, 124-meter-long rocket.
The company has previously succeeded three times in capturing the propulsion booster, known as “Super Heavy,” as the first stage of the missile returns vertically to the launch site after its launch, to rest between two mechanical arms.
The company will now try to repeat the process with the same spacecraft. Some versions are designed to launch satellites and data centers into orbit, while others are intended to be used to transport humans to the moon and Mars.
Space expert at the Center for Strategic and International Studies, Clayton Swope, said that developing a fully reusable spacecraft represents the “ultimate goal” of the space sector.
He added: “No one has actually been able to achieve this yet.” "People have been trying since the time of NASA's space shuttle, but the shuttle ended up being a compromise, because large parts of it were not reusable."
Imagine starting your work day as usual, only to discover that you cannot send an email, communicate with your colleagues via Teams, or access the files you need. Your device is working, your Internet connection is intact, but the services you rely on to get your work done are no longer responding. You may discover that you have many ways to communicate, but you do not know how to reach someone you need outside of the platform you are used to using.
The widespread failure that struck Microsoft services on November 12, 2026, and its repercussions extended to today, raised a question that goes beyond the technical problem itself: Has the abundance of means of communication made us more able to communicate, or more dependent on the systems that provide them?
Services including Outlook and Teams were affected, in addition to other applications linked to the Microsoft 365 system. What has disrupted the businesses of users and organizations that depend on them for correspondence, meetings, and information exchange.
Always connected... but on one platform
Over the past years, communication at work has become easier than ever. You can hold a meeting between employees in different countries within seconds, exchange files instantly, and follow up on conversations and projects from a single device.
But this ease hides a paradox worth noting. We may use multiple applications and think we have different options, but they all rely on a common technical architecture. When this structure breaks down, we may lose more than one means of communication at the same time.
It's no longer just a question of email being down, but of how our business and professional relationships are tied to services we may have no direct control over running or restoring.
Do we know how to reach each other?
We may have been accustomed to communicating with a colleague via Teams for years, but do we have his phone number? Does the work team know how to react if the messaging platform suddenly stops? What if the list of contacts and instructions needed to deal with the malfunction are kept within the stopped system itself?
These are not questions about returning to the past, but about our ability to maintain means of communication independent of the applications we use daily.
Reaching others has often become linked more to their digital accounts than to alternative means of communication. We send a message and assume it will arrive, we arrange a meeting and trust that the link will work, and we store our information within platforms that we expect to be constantly available.
But communication does not start or end with the application. The ability to reach a person, exchange information with him, and act when the usual means cannot be used, remains an essential part of any professional or human relationship.
When comfort turns into dependence
There is no doubt that digital platforms have improved the way we work, helping to bridge distances and save time. But as these services become more integrated, the potential for multiple functions to be affected by a single disruption increases.
As AI enters email, meetings, file management, and task execution, this network of adoption expands. Downtime of a core service may disrupt other tools that depend on it, even if they perform completely different functions.
This does not mean that the solution lies in using a greater number of applications, because the diversity of interfaces does not guarantee the independence of the architecture on which they operate. It also does not mean dispensing with technology, but rather thinking in advance about alternatives, and knowing what can continue when major services stop.
Communication is bigger than technology
Microsoft's failure can be viewed as a transient operational problem, which is addressed by technical teams and after which services return to normal. But it also provides an opportunity to reflect on the way we have come to organize our communication with others.
Technical progress has given us unprecedented speed in reaching people, but it does not guarantee that this ability will remain available in all circumstances. Between having dozens of applications and maintaining a physical means of reaching others, there may be a difference that we only notice when one service stops.
Perhaps the most important question after this holiday is not about when email or virtual meetings will return, but rather about something simpler: If the applications we use daily stop tomorrow, how many people will we still be able to reach them?
European Union leaders will meet in Dublin, today (Friday), for their first ever summit on artificial intelligence, to discuss how the bloc can catch up with the United States and China, and address financing and other problems, according to a Reuters report.
This summit comes amid growing concerns about a technology that could cause a major transformation in the shape of industries and societies, but it has raised concern in the past few months after a series of incidents that occurred due to out-of-control artificial intelligence systems. This week witnessed more turmoil with the resignation of Jensen Huang, CEO of Nvidia; This deprived this sector of one of its most prominent pioneers.
Leaders in Dublin will evaluate ways to overcome other problems, such as red tape and putting in place preventative controls.
European Council President Antonio Costa wrote in an invitation letter addressed to European Union leaders last week: “In light of the rapid pace of development of artificial intelligence. “I believe that there is now a need to hold the first discussion focusing on this file at the leadership level about the opportunities provided by artificial intelligence, as well as about its impact, which is causing a major transformation in our economies and societies.”
Arthur Mensch, CEO of Mistral AI, and Nobel Prize-winning artificial intelligence pioneer Geoffrey Hinton are scheduled to participate to brief European Union leaders on the latest developments.
Europe is intensifying its efforts to be a prominent player in the field of artificial intelligence. An initiative known as the “Chip Act,” implemented three years ago, appears to fall short of its goal of attracting advanced manufacturing and doubling the EU’s share of the global chip market to 20 percent by 2030.
A plan to build seven giant artificial intelligence factories that include under one roof advanced artificial intelligence processors, software, cloud technology, high-speed connectivity, and data centers has not yet been fully launched, due to disagreement among European Union countries over spending on competitiveness in the Union’s budget for the period 2028-2034.
In addition to artificial intelligence, the leaders are also scheduled to discuss the Ukraine file, which was added to the agenda, a day after American envoys Steve Witkoff and Jared Kushner arrived in Dublin to meet with Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky, following talks they held with Russian President Vladimir Putin in Moscow.
A high-ranking European Union official stated that the Union's leaders are likely to discuss their participation in negotiations to end the war, and the potential security guarantees that the Union can provide in the event of a ceasefire.
