Technology

China is set to launch its Chang’e-7 unmanned, robotic space mission, possibly as early as Monday morning, to look for ice water in the permanently shadowed craters of the moon’s south pole.

This marks China’s seventh and most ambitious moon mission so far. Here is what we know about it.

What do we know about Chang’e-7?

The Chang’e‑7 launch window runs from Monday, August 24 to Monday, August 31, according to launch observers. That means the mission could lift off on any day in that period.

The Chang’e-7 comprises an orbiter, a lander, a rover and a hopper.

• The orbiter is the main spacecraft which will remain in the moon’s orbit, mapping the surface and taking images while the mission is under way. It will also relay data and communications between the other Chang’e‑7 components and Earth.
• The lander is the vessel that will touch down on the lunar surface, loaded with the necessary scientific instruments for lunar exploration, near the edge of the Shackleton Crater, a 21km-wide (13-mile-wide) pit close to the moon’s south pole. Lunar missions before this have never come this close to the pole.
• The rover is a small robotic vehicle which can drive around the landing site and which carries equipment to analyse the local environment, including rocks and soil.
• The hopper is a small robotic craft powered by solar energy, designed to “hop” – or fly – short distances from the surface of the moon and land again. It will be used to explore the Shackleton Crater.

How do we know there is water on the moon?

Over the past two decades, several space missions have established that there is water on the moon.

Since the 1960s, even before the first Apollo landing in 1969, scientists speculated that water could exist on the moon. However, when Apollo crews returned samples for testing in the late 1960s and early 1970s, they appeared to be dry.

Finally, in 2009, NASA deliberately crashed a rocket segment and its probe into a shadowed lunar crater to analyse the dust plume it kicked up. This provided one of the clearest direct confirmations that significant ice water does exist on the moon, building on earlier detections of water and hydrogen by probes.

In October 2020, NASA scientists announced that water on the moon is more widespread than previously known. They said water molecules had been found to be encapsulated within mineral grains on the lunar surface and speculated that more water is hidden in ice patches which are in permanent shadows.

NASA describes these permanent shadows as dark areas inside deep craters near the north and south poles of the moon where sunlight has not reached for millions or even billions of years. In 2018, prior to confirming it in 2020, NASA had detected water ice in shadowed parts of the moon through mapping.

Why is it important to find out more about the water on the moon?

Expanding knowledge about water on the moon is vital because ancient polar ice may have preserved a record of lunar volcanic activity and of water delivered by comets and asteroids to the Earth-moon system, offering clues to how our own oceans originally formed.

Additionally, if there is enough water on the moon that is realistically accessible, it could serve as a source of drinking water for crewed lunar missions, and could also help to keep equipment cool.

Hydrogen could also be extracted from moon water to provide fuel, while oxygen could be extracted to breathe, supporting onward missions to Mars or lunar mining.

Could anyone ‘own’ the water on the moon?

The 1967 United Nations Outer Space Treaty bans any nation from claiming sovereignty over the moon or owning it as territory. It does not explicitly prohibit commercial operations, but it requires private activities in space to be authorised and supervised by states and leaves key questions about resource ownership unresolved.

Which recent space missions have searched for frozen water on the moon?

In 2023, Russia’s lunar spacecraft, Luna-25, was launched to look for frozen water in the moon’s south pole. However, the Luna-25 spun out of control and crashed. The crash prevented any scientific data collection or water discovery.

Racing against the Luna-25 mission was India’s Chandrayaan-3, which also aimed to expand knowledge of lunar water ice. Chandrayaan-3 successfully landed in August 2023 and found critical new evidence of water on the surface of the moon’s south pole through soil temperature readings.

Why is exploring the moon’s south pole a challenge?

Attempted landings at the moon’s south pole have failed before because of its challenging terrain, which is full of craters and deep trenches.

The south pole is far from the equatorial region targeted by previous missions, including the crewed Apollo landings.

What is different about the Chang’e-7 mission?

The upcoming Chang’e-7 is aiming to expand knowledge about where, exactly, water is located in the craters of the moon, how deep it is, what form it is in and whether it is indeed possible to access it.

The Chang’e-7’s six-legged hopper has been designed to jump into and out of the deep, shadowed craters near the south pole that are hard for traditional rovers to reach, to look for water ice and other resources.

No previous space mission has used a dedicated hopper to jump in and out of lunar craters in this way.

The government has announced investments of about 2.3 billion reais ($444.2m) to bolster its artificial intelligence ecosystem.

Brazil will invest about 2.3bn reais ($444.2m) to bolster its artificial intelligence ecosystem, splitting projects between United States and Chinese tech firms in a strategic move that underscores its efforts to balance ties with both superpowers.

Just more than half the total, 1.3bn reais ($251m), will fund a supercomputing infrastructure project in Rio de Janeiro developed in partnership with China’s Huawei Technologies and iFlytek, President Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva‘s government said on Thursday.

The infrastructure will be used primarily to develop large language models for general and sector-specific applications, it said.

Separately, about 1 billion reais ($193.1m) will be allocated through a tender for a supercomputer that Brazil expects to rank among the world’s 10 most powerful AI processing machines.

The machine will be installed in the northeastern state of Rio Grande do Norte, chosen for its energy potential. Lula attended an announcement ceremony in the state on Thursday.

The Reuters news agency quoted unnamed government officials as saying they expect US chipmaker Nvidia to win the tender. Science and Technology Minister Luciana Santos told the Folha de S Paulo newspaper last week that she anticipated the company would be the supplier.

“The strategy is not to depend on a single company, technology or country,” Lula’s administration said in a statement, adding that the investments are aimed at strengthening national sovereignty over data.

China, a leading player in AI, has expanded its role as Brazil’s largest trading partner. The US, meanwhile, remains the biggest source of foreign direct investment in Latin America’s largest economy despite losing market share in trade and recently imposing additional tariffs on Brazilian goods.

The investments will be funded by the National Fund for Scientific and Technological Development (FNDCT) through phased disbursements. The government expects the supercomputer to begin operating by the end of next year, while the cooperation agreement with the Chinese companies is scheduled to start in July 2027.

Social media giant Meta is facing a landmark trial that could impact its future.

Opening statements began on Tuesday in a US federal court case brought by 29 state attorneys general, who have accused Facebook and Instagram’s parent company of designing platforms to encourage infinite scrolling and keep their youngest users hooked, despite allegedly knowing they could fuel addictive behaviour. The company is also accused of collecting data on minors.

The case is expected to last as long as six weeks. If the attorneys general get their way, the Silicon Valley-based tech company might have to make structural changes to its platform and pay as much as $1.4 trillion in fines.

While Meta denies the allegations, the potential consequences of this case could be significant for the company, which is already facing low employee morale, waves of layoffs and a series of lagging investments.

Significant financial impact

The potential exposure to Meta is significant. State penalties could reach as high as $1.4 trillion, Meta has said, although that is unlikely, as the coalition of states said it is seeking $200bn in damages.

To put that in context, the amount is roughly the equivalent of Meta’s revenue last year. In 2025, the tech giant generated nearly $201bn in revenue, and it had $83.2bn in operating income.

The $200bn ask is significantly higher than any penalty the company has had to face so far. In March, a jury in a separate New Mexico lawsuit ordered Meta to pay $375m in civil penalties, and another $567m was ordered by a judge earlier this month.

At the time of the March penalty, financial services firm Morningstar said it was not overly concerned about the impact of the looming court cases on Meta’s valuation, even if governments around the world use these cases as a reason to push for structural changes to the business.

“We think that any algorithmic changes imposed on the firm via legislation are also a manageable risk, given the firm’s monetizable user base, which is overwhelmingly adult, thereby insulating the firm against such legislation,” a Morningstar analyst note said.

While no one can predict which way the coalition case will go, Meta’s problems extend to concerns about significant financial exposure in some of its investments and business units.

For instance, Reality Labs, the division responsible for Meta’s virtual and augmented reality tools and software like the metaverse, has lost $70bn since 2020.

Meta has also ramped up spending to build out AI infrastructure as growing concerns about an AI bubble loom over the sector.

Cash flow for the business fell significantly, from $12bn in the first quarter to $784m in the second quarter, although it did not go into negative territory as some analysts had expected.

“I think it’s [Meta] in an unenviable spot, because it’s facing pressure from multiple fronts,” Aleksandar Tomic, associate dean for strategy, innovation, and technology at Boston College, told Al Jazeera.

“These verdicts are going to put pressure on their advertising business. The AI development seems to have stalled, and the virtual reality thing seems to be dead on arrival, at least for now. So the only bright spot is that they might be able to get into the AI infrastructure game, but that is no guarantee.”

Meta itself is worried about the financial strain. “There can be no assurances that a favorable final outcome will be obtained in all our cases, and defending any lawsuit is costly and can impose a significant burden on management and employees,” the company said in a January Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) filing.

Can the lawsuit impact its core product?

While financial penalties might be a strain, a legal requirement to fundamentally alter the machinery that makes Instagram and Facebook so valuable to advertisers would be much harder for Meta to absorb.

The lawsuit calls for changes to its business model, including eliminating the infinite scroll that allows users to continually look at new posts. Meta’s advertising business is dependent on impressions, or the number of times a content appears on a user’s screen. The longer someone is on the app, the more impressions they can see.

“Our financial performance has been and will continue to be significantly determined by our success in adding, retaining, and engaging active users of our products that deliver ad impressions, particularly for Facebook and Instagram,” the company said in an SEC filing.

“User growth and engagement are also impacted by a number of other factors, including competitive products and services, such as TikTok, that have reduced some users’ engagement with our products and services,” the filing added.

In 2025, Meta reported 12 percent more advertisement impressions than in 2024, while the average price per advertisement jumped by 9 percent.

The plaintiff states want the company to make other changes, including getting rid of algorithms and AI models made from data compiled from minors. The states are also asking the court to compel the company to promote the wellbeing of its users and set time restrictions for its youngest consumers.

Meta has introduced features that have reminded teens of their time use on their platforms. In January 2023, it gave teens ways to manage the kinds of advertisements they could see on Instagram and Facebook. In June 2023, it introduced a feature to notify teen users that they have spent more than 20 minutes on the platform and to set daily time limits.

“We stand by our record of creating strong protections for teens, and look forward to making our case in court,” Stephanie Otway, a Meta spokesperson, told Al Jazeera.

But the lawsuit says that is not enough, alleging that teens could easily dismiss the notification and continue scrolling.

How will this impact future lawsuits?

Meta is currently facing lawsuits from more than 100,000 different parties, according to its SEC filings, including individuals, cities, states, and school districts around the US.

“These first few cases going out are really going to set the standard,” Tre Lovell, a Los Angeles-based media law and entertainment lawyer, told Al Jazeera.

Lovell predicted that, ultimately, there will be a combined settlement.

“We’re going to get close to some type of global settlement, a global resolution. I think, ultimately, that’s where this is going to end.”

Snap, TikTok, and Google’s YouTube have also faced litigation amid allegations that their products are built to encourage compulsive use by young people, Tomic told Al Jazeera. The claims could open the floodgates to the type of litigation that challenged the tobacco industry in the late 1990s, he said.

“This is the tobacco litigation of the information age. They [the plaintiffs in the Meta lawsuit] have identified this addiction component of social networks. Now that there is a judgement against Meta, I would be shocked if we don’t see everybody else getting sued, and once they get sued, it will be pretty much the same,” Tomic said.

In 1998, 46 states settled lawsuits with major cigarette makers over health costs and forced the companies to impose restrictions on advertising, especially targeting younger audiences.

Opening statements in a landmark US case brought by a bipartisan coalition of 29 states against Meta – the parent company of Facebook and Instagram – began on Tuesday, with Colorado, California, New Jersey and Kentucky arguing that the company’s popular social media apps were designed in ways that harmed the mental health of young users.

The trial, which is expected to last several weeks, began in a US federal court in California before District Judge Yvonne Gonzalez Rogers. While there is an eight-person jury, the group is serving in an advisory role as Judge Rogers will ultimately decide the case.

Megan O’Neill, a deputy California attorney general, in her opening statement said that the company designed its products to “hook the users, hold them for as long as they can, harvest their data, and then hide the truth from the public”.

She added that it worked “especially well for kids”.

The lawsuit, which was first filed in 2023, alleges that Meta made decisions to design its apps to hook users and facilitate excessive use among the platforms’ youngest users. The coalition also alleges that the company collected data on children under the age of 13 in violation of federal law.

“Meta needed kids, and it needed to reassure the people who cared about those kids that the kids are safe,” O’Neill said.

‘Limited claims’

Meta has long pushed back on allegations against the Silicon Valley social media behemoth.

In a statement before the trial, a Meta spokesperson said the states’ claims are unsubstantiated, and the company stands by its record of creating strong protections for teenagers, including launching Instagram Teen Accounts in 2024, which limit who can contact underage users, as well as a feature that allows parents to set time limits on usage.

“The State AGs may call this a landmark case, but their limited claims are unsubstantiated and their financial demands are vastly disproportionate,” Stephanie Otway, a Meta spokesperson, told Al Jazeera in a statement.

“The AGs offer no proof anyone in their states was misled, claim benign features like having an additional Instagram account somehow harmed their residents, and attempt to penalize Meta for industry-wide challenges like age verification. Rather than sticking to the facts or the law, the states have instead decided to chase an outlandish payout.”

The potential impact on Meta’s bottom line is existential. The company could face fines as high as $1.4 trillion, which is just shy of its $1.5 trillion market cap. However, the coalition is seeking fines of roughly $200bn.

Meta has already been ordered to pay $942m in fines in a separate New Mexico lawsuit – $375m in civil penalties in a March jury verdict and $567m ordered by a judge earlier this month.

Meta has acknowledged that the lawsuits it faces, including those related to youth social media addiction, could lead to “substantial monetary damages or fines” in a Securities and Exchange Commission filing in January.

A long time coming

Meta, along with other social media giants, has faced a growing slate of cases across the United States, including from cities, states, school districts and even individuals.

The coalition of states is asking Meta to make changes to its platforms, including introducing new age restrictions and cutting the infinite scroll.

The case’s impetus came from a US Senate committee hearing in 2021, when whistleblower Frances Haugen, a former data scientist at Facebook, claimed that the company knowingly pushed products that could impact the health of young users as the Mark Zuckerberg-led company pursued higher profits.

Meta has repeatedly tried to end the coalition lawsuit, including in 2024 and as recently as June, when it sought summary judgement – a decision that a court might make without going to trial – which would have ended the lawsuit.

The case is impacting the company’s stock. On Wall Street, the social media giant is down more than 3 percent in midday trading.

Aug. 17 (UPI) — Nvidia announced on Monday that it will finance an OpenAI data center in Ohio for up to $105 billion.

The credit from Nvidia will fund the data center’s first 4.25 gigawatts in computing capacity with an option to bring 3.75 gigawatts more online. The center is slated to begin operating in Pike City, Ohio, in 2028.

The data center will be located at the PORTS-Pike Technology Campus in Pike City. It will be constructed and managed by SB Energy, a subsidiary of SoftBank Group.

Nvidia is also providing the compute power to the data center.

“This is the essential economic point: the [Load Power Supply] commitment secures a long-lived AI factory site, while the NVIDIA compute inside can be upgraded repeatedly,” NVIDIA said in a press release. “Each new generation can deliver greater production, more intelligence and better economics.”

SB Energy and SoftBank agree to build enough power supply for 10 gigawatts of energy and invest at least $4.2 billion into the regional power grid infrastructure. Nvidia has also agreed to invest $1.5 billion into SB Energy.

OpenAI said the data center will support 35,000 construction jobs through 2032. It will also support 2,500 long-term jobs.

OpenAI will pay the least on the data center as its tenant, Nvidia said.

The biggest danger facing mankind is a machine that can “outsmart the whole species”, argues Max Tegmark, professor of physics at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and founder of the Future of Life Institute.

Tegmark tells host Steve Clemons that governments and tech companies are in a “race to replace” human labour, instead of solving human problems. “It’s aimed at getting more money and power to a very small number of individuals,” he says.

But a slew of suicides and murders committed by people chatting with AI chatbots has led to pushback against the Silicon Valley “don’t regulate us” lobby.