NASA has launched a first-of-its-kind mission to save an orbiting telescope from falling back to Earth. Swift, a $500 million observatory launched in 2004, detects gamma-ray bursts triggered by the deaths of massive stars, but recent solar storms have increased atmospheric drag, causing it to lose altitude faster than expected. Arizona-based Katalyst Space won a $30 million contract last year to rescue the telescope by raising its orbit to around 370 miles before it drops below 185 miles, a benchmark considered the point of no return before an uncontrolled reentry. A rocket has sent Katalyst’s device into orbit, where it will spend several weeks approaching Swift before attaching with custom robotic arms.
In occupied Vienna, a quiet parish church became the center of a civilian spy ring. Gersthof Church, in the city’s 18th district, looked ordinary from the outside: red brick, cobblestones, trees, a place for children to play. Inside its circle of worshippers, however, Austrians were building a resistance network known as CASSIA.
The group began around Heinrich Maier, a young parish priest, and Franz Josef Messner, the CEO of Semperit, a major rubber company tied to the Reich’s war machine. Together, they recruited an unlikely mix of communists, monarchists, pacifists, doctors, industrial contacts, and other citizens who opposed Nazi rule.
None were trained spies. Still, they used their access to gather intelligence on weapons, factories, machinery, and concentration camps, then tried to pass that information to the Allies. Their work reached the OSS, the wartime American intelligence agency that later became the CIA.
Join ex-CIA officer Christopher Turner and Austrian intelligence expert Siegfried Beer in this week’s podcast selection, ‘CASSIA Spy Ring', for a story of civilian courage, resistance, and espionage under Nazi occupation.
Take on immersive games and challenges at SPYGAMES! Test your team's skills and strategy, compete to climb the leaderboards, and recharge with food and drink in your own private space hosted by a dedicated staff member.
Book your next team social.
Take on immersive games and challenges at SPYGAMES! Test your team's skills and strategy, compete to climb the leaderboards, and recharge with food and drink in your own private space hosted by a dedicated staff member.
University of California, Berkeley researcher Julie Elie has won the 2026 Coller-Dolittle Prize for work on interspecies communication. She was awarded $100,000 for research on decoding Zebra Finch bird calls.
Elie identified 11 core calls used by the birds, from introductory calls to distress signals. She then tested whether zebra finches could recognize those calls as distinct forms of communication. In the experiment, one call type was linked to a reward, while unrelated calls were not.
The birds learned to press a button to skip the wrong calls. In some cases, their mistakes were just as revealing. They sometimes confused calls with similar meanings, such as calls linked to different distances, even when the sounds themselves were not tonally similar. Researchers suggest the birds were responding to meaning, not just sound. The Coller-Dolittle Prize is awarded each year, with a $10 million grand prize reserved for a breakthrough in two-way human-animal communication.
Puzzles
The Bank Heist
Can you follow the money before Raven slips away?
San Francisco, 1942. Private detective Sam Spade is shadowing members of Raven, a foreign spy ring he has linked to a huge bank robbery in the city. The case points from wartime espionage to a broken bank vault, with clues hidden in the details of the heist. Solve this week’s SPYSCAPE crossword to help Spade follow Raven’s trail before they disappear with the loot!
Give your party guests an unforgettable experience designed to engage, entertain, and inspire. Our dedicated staff will be on hand to help, and you'll even get your own private space to celebrate.
Host your birthday at SPYSCAPE or SPYGAMES.
Give your party guests an unforgettable experience designed to engage, entertain, and inspire. Our dedicated staff will be on hand to help, and you'll even get your own private space to celebrate.
A University of Minnesota team has created a synthetic cell from dozens of lifeless chemicals, marking a first for biology. The cell, named SpudCell for its potato-like shape, can eat, grow, reproduce, and compete for food in ways that resemble naturally occurring cells.
The work builds on decades of research into how little genetic material a cell needs to function. Earlier experiments usually started with living cells and stripped them down. This one took the opposite route, assembling a cell piece by piece from 150 to 200 simple molecules.
SpudCell carries just 36 genes, including some taken from a virus and E. coli. Earlier experiments required nearly 500 genes, while humans have roughly 20,000. The result could advance synthetic biology, with potential applications in medicine and other fields, though the work also raises concerns among skeptics. SpudCell still has limits: it cannot consistently pass on all its genetic material to future generations or make its own proteins.
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