1. Rocket Lab has launched a spacecraft in Earth's orbit, the first of its Photon satellite line. The satellite called 'First Light' was deployed to orbit on Rocket Lab's 14th Electron mission and is designed to carry customer payloads to a variety of destinations, including the Moon and Venus. After lift-off, Electron deployed a 100 kg microsatellite for Capella Space.
2. American defence contractor Northrop Grumman named its NG-14 Cygnus spacecraft 'S.S. Kalpana Chawla' after the late astronaut. "It's (our) tradition to name each Cygnus after an individual who has played pivotal role in human spaceflight. Chawla was selected in honour of her prominent place in history as the first woman of Indian descent to go to space," Northrop Grumman said.
3. The controversial push to force Chinese tech unicorn ByteDance to divest part or all of its smash-hit TikTok social media service to a U.S.-based company could be in doubt after a report today indicated that China’s government may oppose the transaction. According to reporting by Reuters, the Chinese government may prefer TikTok to simply shutter its U.S. operations instead of allowing it to be sold to an American company.
4.Ahead of the U.S. presidential election, Google says it has taken a number of steps to improve the quality of information that it highlights across its various search and news products. The company says that it will now remove any Autocomplete predictions that seem to endorse or oppose a candidate or a political party, or that make a claim about voting or the electoral process. That would mean eliminating predictions like “you can vote by phone,” “you can’t vote by phone” or anything suggesting that you donate to a party or candidate.
5. A bug in United Airlines’ website let anyone access the ticket information for travelers who requested a refund. The airline’s website lets users check their refund status by entering their ticket number and last name. But the website wasn’t validating the last name, making it possible to access other travelers’ refund information by changing the ticket number.