Four astronauts are headed back to the moon 🌕

Welcome back to the Technology newsletter 🤖

Four astronauts are on their way to the moon right now, the first humans to leave Earth's orbit since 1972.

Let's get into it 👇

🔒 Google pushed an emergency Chrome update to fix a security flaw that hackers are already exploiting in the wild. It's the fourth "zero-day" vulnerability Chrome has had to patch this year, and this one targets a component used for graphics processing. If you haven't updated your browser recently, now's the time. (Bleeping Computer)

🌐 Global startup funding hit $297 billion in the first quarter of 2026, shattering every previous record. That single quarter outpaces every full year of venture capital activity before 2019. The surge was driven largely by massive AI deals, including OpenAI's $122 billion round and Anthropic's $30 billion raise. (TechCrunch)

🎮 Sony's PlayStation division acquired Cinemersive Labs, a UK startup that uses machine learning to convert regular photos and videos into 3D images you can look around in with natural head movements. The team will join Sony's Visual Computing Group to work on next-generation game graphics and rendering. (Engadget)

🤖 Google released Gemma 4, a new family of open AI models built on the same tech behind its Gemini 3 series. For the first time, they're available under an Apache 2.0 license, so anyone can use them commercially with no restrictions. The top model ranks third globally among open models, and the smallest ones are designed to run on phones and laptops. (9to5Google)

💳 A startup called Cognichip just raised $60 million to use AI to design the very chips that power AI. The company's platform uses physics-based models to understand things like heat distribution and power flow on a chip, and claims it can cut chip development costs by more than 75% and timelines in half. Intel CEO Lip-Bu Tan is joining the board. (TechCrunch)

🆕 Apple reportedly has four new products sitting in warehouses ready to ship: a new Apple TV, two HomePods, and a smart display called "HomePad." The holdup? They're all waiting on an upgraded Siri that keeps getting delayed and now isn't expected until iOS 27 in September. (9to5Mac)

On Wednesday evening, NASA's Orion spacecraft fired its main engine for five minutes and 50 seconds, and four astronauts left Earth's orbit for the first time since December 1972.

The Artemis II crew (Commander Reid Wiseman, Pilot Victor Glover, Mission Specialist Christina Koch, and Canadian Space Agency astronaut Jeremy Hansen) launched from Kennedy Space Center on April 1 and is now on a 10-day trip that will take them looping around the far side of the moon before coming home.

They won't land on the surface, but they'll come within about 4,700 miles of it, and in the process they'll travel farther from Earth than any human being has ever gone, breaking the distance record set by Apollo 13 in 1970.

The mission is historic for reasons beyond the distance.

Victor Glover will become the first person of color to travel to the moon's vicinity, Christina Koch the first woman, and Jeremy Hansen the first non-American.

The spacecraft, which the crew nicknamed "Integrity," is on a "free return" trajectory, meaning the moon's gravity will sling it back toward Earth even if the engines never fire again. That's a safety feature born out of the lessons of Apollo 13.

When Orion returns, it will re-enter Earth's atmosphere at about 25,000 miles per hour, the fastest crewed re-entry ever attempted, before splashing down in the Pacific Ocean off San Diego around April 11.

Artemis II is technically a test flight. NASA needs to prove that Orion's life support, navigation, and communication systems all work with humans on board before attempting an actual lunar landing, which is currently targeted for 2028 with Artemis IV.

The last time anyone saw Earth shrinking in a spacecraft window was when Apollo 17 astronauts Gene Cernan and Harrison Schmitt headed home 54 years ago.

An entire generation grew up hearing about these expeditions in the past tense.

As of this week, manned missions to the moon are back on the menu 🚀