Month: January 2022

Enlarge / The Chromecast with Google TV. It comes in colors. (credit: Google)

9to5Google reports that Google is prepping a sequel to the Google Chromecast with Google TV. Last year, Google changed the high end of the Chromecast line from a dead-simple, streaming-only video device to a full-blown Android streamer with installable apps, a navigable UI, and a physical remote. The move was effectively a merger of Google’s two TV products, the Chromecast and Android TV, with the revamped, Android TV-based software being rebranded “Google TV.”

9to5Google says the next-generation version of the device is codenamed “Boreal” and was spotted in some documentation next to “Sabrina,” the code name for the current Chromecast with Google TV (which 9to5Google was also the first to discover). The report doesn’t have any details about what we can expect from the new Chromecast, but the current device has some glaring shortcomings that will hopefully be fixed.

The biggest problem with the current Chromecast? You really have to wonder if it was actually designed from the ground up to run Android. The device has a measly 8GB of storage for the entire OS and all your apps and updates. Even $100 Android phones have 64GB of storage now, and 8GB isn’t enough for even light app usage. Some Android games are exceeding 10GB these days, so you can’t install them on the new Chromecast, even before half the storage is reserved for the base OS.

Enlarge / On February 11, 2015, a Falcon 9 lifted off from SpaceX’s Launch Complex 40 at Cape Canaveral Air Force Station, Florida, carrying the Deep Space Climate Observatory satellite on SpaceX’s first deep space mission. (credit: SpaceX)

SpaceX launched its first interplanetary mission nearly seven years ago. After the Falcon 9 rocket’s second stage completed a long burn to reach a transfer orbit, NOAA’s Deep Space Climate Observatory began its journey to a Sun-Earth LaGrange point more than 1 million km from the Earth.

By that point, the Falcon 9 rocket’s second stage was high enough that it did not have enough fuel to return to Earth’s atmosphere. It also lacked the energy to escape the gravity of the Earth-Moon system, so it has been following a somewhat chaotic orbit since February 2015.

Now, according to sky observers, the spent second stage’s orbit is on course to intersect with the Moon. According to Bill Gray, who writes the widely used Project Pluto software to track near-Earth objects, asteroids, minor planets, and comets, such an impact could come in March.