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Trends with Benefits: Did Apple’s WWDC 2015 Disappoint?

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The long awaited VR headset from Oculus is finally on its way. After a handful of development kit iterations, Oculus this week unveiled the consumer edition of the Rift, available in early 2016. It boasts a fabric exterior, redesigned sensor and tracking system, and will include an Xbox One controller.

Apple’s WWDC 2015 is in the rear view mirror, and there were nearly no surprises. Apple Music is a step forward, but it doesn’t live up to the status of past ‘One more thing’ announcements. Does this mean Apple isn’t innovating the way they used to, or are they saving the goods for this fall?

This homemade laser shotgun is insane, and it comes with the disclaimer “Do not point at satellites.” Enough said.

After landing on the Moon nearly a half century ago, the list of galactic milestones has grown. Now Pornhub wants to film a porn in space. The plot of a spaceship repairman stopping by in the middle of the day might be a stretch.

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Digital Trends Staff
Digital Trends Staff
Digital Trends has a simple mission: to help readers easily understand how tech affects the way they live. We are your…
See a flyby of Io, a hellish moon with lakes of lava and an otherworldly mountain
The JunoCam instrument on NASA’s Juno captured this view of Jupiter’s moon Io — with the first-ever image of its south polar region — during the spacecraft’s 60th flyby of Jupiter on April 9.

NASA's Juno mission is best known for the gorgeous images of Jupiter that it has taken since its launch in 2011 and arrival at Jupiter in 2016. But the spacecraft hasn't only investigated the planet -- it has also studied Jupiter's many moons, like the large Ganymede and the icy Europa. Recently, the spacecraft has been making close flybys of the Jovian moon Io, which is the most volcanically active body in the solar system. And it has observed some dramatic features there, like a lake of lava and a large mountain.

Even though Jupiter (and Io) are both far from the sun, and therefore receive little heat from sunlight, Io still has high internal temperatures. That's because Jupiter is so large that its gravitational pull acts on Io and creates friction, heating it up in a process called tidal heating. Though the surface of the moon is cold, at below minus 200 degrees Fahrenheit (minus 130 degrees Celsius), the volcanoes spewing out material from the planet's hot interior can reach temperatures of thousands of degrees Fahrenheit.

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NASA video maps all 72 flights taken by Mars Ingenuity helicopter
NASA's Ingenuity helicopter.

NASA has shared a video (above) that maps all of the flights taken on Mars by its trailblazing Ingenuity helicopter.

Ingenuity became the first aircraft to achieve powered, controlled flight on another planet when its rotors fired up for the first time to carry it above the martian surface in April 2021.

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Voyager 1 spacecraft is still alive and sending signals to Earth
NASA’s Voyager 1 spacecraft is depicted in this artist’s concept traveling through interstellar space, or the space between stars, which it entered in 2012.

NASA's two Voyager spacecraft, launched in the 1970s, have passed beyond the orbit of Pluto and into interstellar space, making them the most distant man-made objects to exist in the universe. However, as you'd expect from technology that is nearly 50 years old, the pair of probes have had their share of technical difficulties in their time. But now, NASA has announced that it is back in contact with Voyager 1, around five months after communications with the spacecraft were disrupted. The remarkable pair of explorers continue out into the depths of space to fight another day.

NASA’s Voyager 1 spacecraft is depicted in this artist’s concept traveling through interstellar space, or the space between stars, which it entered in 2012. NASA/JPL-Caltech

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