A key part of the SpaceX-xAI deal's rationale is to move datacentres - the central nervous system of AI tools - into space. A key part of the SpaceX-xAI deal's rationale is to move datacentres - the central nervous system of AI tools - into space. Why has Elon Musk merged his rocket company with his AI startup? SpaceX's acquisition of xAI creates business worth $1.25tn but whether premise behind deal will work is questioned The acquisition of xAI by SpaceX is a typical Elon Musk deal: big numbers backed by big ambition. As well as extending "the light of consciousness to the stars", as Musk described it, the transaction creates a business worth $1.25tn (£920bn) by combining Musk's rocket company with his artificial intelligence startup.

The Cybertruck answers a question no one in the auto industry even thought to ask: what if there was a truck that a Chechen warlord couldn't possibly pass up – a bulletproof, bioweapons-resistant, road rage-inducing street tank that's illegal to drive in most of the world? Few had seen anything quite like the Cybertruck when it was unveiled in 2019. Wrapped in an "ultra-hard, 30X, cold-rolled stainless steel exoskeleton", the Cybertruck was touted as the ultimate doomsday chariot – a virtually indestructible, obtuse-angled, electrically powered behemoth that can repel handgun fire and outrun a Porsche while towing a Porsche, with enough juice leftover to power your house in the event of a blackout. At the launch, Tesla's CEO, Elon Musk, said the truck could tackle any terrain on Earth and possibly also on Mars – and all for the low, low base price of 40,000. "Sometimes you get these late-civilization vibes [that the] apocalypse could come along at any moment," Musk said.

SpaceX has launched its fifth Starship test flight from Texas and returned the rocket's towering first-stage booster back to land for the first time, achieving a novel recovery method involving large metal arms. The rocket's Super Heavy first-stage booster lifted off at 7:25 am (12:25 GMT) on Sunday from SpaceX's launch facilities in Boca Chica, Texas, sending the second-stage Starship rocket on a path in space bound for the Indian Ocean west of Australia, where it will attempt atmospheric reentry followed by a water landing. The Super Heavy booster, after separating from the Starship booster some 74km (46 miles) in altitude, returned to the same area from which it was launched to make its landing attempt, aided by two robotic arms attached to the launch tower. "The tower has caught the rocket!!" SpaceX founder Elon Musk posted on X. Towering almost 121 metres (400 feet), the empty Starship arched over the Gulf of Mexico like the four Starships before it that ended up being destroyed, either soon after liftoff or while ditching into the sea. The last one in June was the most successful yet, completing its flight without exploding.

Sex is probably the last thing on your mind when thinking of Tesla. But Elon Musk's firm has shared a very saucy video of its seat-testing robot, with Twitter users joking that the'chair is about to have an orgasm'. New footage of Tesla's bionic red arm shows a seat being repeatedly pressed down in time with the 2003 hit Satisfaction by Benny Benassi and The Biz. As the seat bounces, Tesla explained that it underwent 50,000 'ingress/egress cycles' - the equivalent to a vehicle's lifetime use. Even still, just one thing was on the minds of Twitter users, and it wasn't the standard of Tesla's quality tests.

Russell Wald, director of the Stanford Institute for Human-Centered AI, sounds off on'The Story.' OpenAI CEO Sam Altman says the age of the giant artificial intelligence model is already over. "I think we're at the end of the era where it's going to be these, like, giant, giant models," he told an audience at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology over Zoom last week. "We'll make them better in other ways." During the same event, Altman also confirmed that his company is not developing Chat GPT-5. "An earlier version of the letter claimed OpenAI is training GPT-5 right now," he said, referencing a letter from billionaire Elon Musk and Apple co-founder Steve Wozniak.

In robotic-assisted partial nephrectomy, surgeons remove a part of a kidney often due to the presence of a mass. A drop-in ultrasound probe paired to a surgical robot is deployed to execute multiple swipes over the kidney surface to localise the mass and define the margins of resection. This sub-task is challenging and must be performed by a highly skilled surgeon. Automating this sub-task may reduce cognitive load for the surgeon and improve patient outcomes. The overall goal of this work is to autonomously move the ultrasound probe on the surface of the kidney taking advantage of the use of the Pneumatically Attachable Flexible (PAF) rail system, a soft robotic device used for organ scanning and repositioning. First, we integrate a shape-sensing optical fibre into the PAF rail system to evaluate the curvature of target organs in robotic-assisted laparoscopic surgery. Then, we investigate the impact of the stiffness of the material of the PAF rail on the curvature sensing accuracy, considering that soft targets are present in the surgical field. Finally, we use shape sensing to plan the trajectory of the da Vinci surgical robot paired with a drop-in ultrasound probe and autonomously generate an Ultrasound scan of a kidney phantom.

After months of anticipation, Elon Musk finally took the wraps off Tesla's first AI humanoid robot, 'Optimus' last week. Optimus, which was first announced in August last year, received a frenzied reception at the firm's AI Day event in California on Friday. The bot was filmed emerging from behind a wall with two robotic hands in a heart shape, before taking a few tentative steps to wild applause. Musk said Tesla is planning to sell the bot for'probably less than $20,000' (£17,700) in three to five years' – meaning another long wait for Tesla fans to get their hands on the firm's most anticipated technology. Following its unveiling, MailOnline has taken a look at the Tesla products that have been announced but are still yet to be released - including Cybertruck, Robotaxi and the second-generation Roadster.

SpaceX has sent Nasa astronauts into space in a historic mission. The Falcon 9 rocket carried the astronauts into orbit in SpaceX's Crew Dragon capsule. Minutes after launch, the rocket detached and landed safely on a drone ship while the capsule continued to carry the astronauts on to the International Space Station. The successful launch is the first time that humans have been shot into space from US soil since the Space Shuttle programme ended in 2011. And it is the first time that humans have been sent into space by a private company, a feat only previous achieved by the space agencies of the US, Russia and China.

As Japan's second female astronaut to fly up in the Space Shuttle Discovery, Naoko Yamazaki didn't expect to spend a quarter of her time dusting, feeding mice and doing other menial jobs. It can cost more than $430 million a year to keep an astronaut in orbit, according to three-year-old startup called Gitai Inc. It's only possible to keep humans alive in outer space because of the money and effort poured into ensuring their safety. One way to bring down the cost and risks is to send an avatar -- a remotely controlled robot. "There's a need for robots that can help us," Yamazaki, 49, said.

Tesla CEO Elon Musk has been left embarrassed after the glass on his new electric'Cybertruck' was smashed just after he boasted about it being'shatterproof'. During the announcement of the truck - which looks like a armoured vehicle with angular sides - Tesla design chief Franz von Holshausen tried to prove the glass was'shatterproof' by throwing a heavy metal ball at close range. Musk was heard muttering'oh my f***ing God' when the glass smashed. It is the second embarrassing mishap for Musk in as many days, after the first full-size prototype of the SpaceX Starship rocket exploded during pressure testing on Wednesday. The Tesla Cybertruck is unveiled at Tesla's design studio Thursday in Hawthorne, California.