• 

  The United Launch Alliance Atlas V rocket at Cape Canaveral Air Force Station undergoes a Wet Dress Rehearsal in preparation for launching Mars Perseverance. [credit:
  United Launch Alliance
  ]

NASA says it will be forced to delay the launch of its multibillion-dollar Perseverance mission to no earlier than July 30. The Mars-bound large rover must launch on an Atlas V rocket from Cape Canaveral Air Force Station in Florida before the middle of August, or it will miss Earth’s conjunction with the red planet.

This is the third delay in the launch campaign for Perseverance, formerly known as Mars 2020, and the most concerning because a new, formal launch date has not been set.

A problem arose during a Wet Dress Rehearsal test earlier this month. During this standard prelaunch test, an Atlas V rocket is fueled with propellant and a countdown is conducted until the final moments before ignition. So what happened? “A liquid-oxygen sensor line presented off-nominal data during the Wet Dress Rehearsal, and additional time is needed for the team to inspect and evaluate,” NASA said in a statement on Tuesday afternoon, in response to a query from Ars.

Enlarge / Crucible is going back into a “closed beta” cell starting July 1. (credit: Amazon / Getty Images / Sam Machkovech)

Less than two months after the formal launch of Amazon Games’ first major PC game on Steam, Crucible, the company has chosen to yank it right out of Steam’s store. Its developers at Relentless Studios (a wholly owned Amazon subsidiary) have announced plans to delist the free-to-play action-MOBA game from Steam starting tomorrow, July 1, while continuing to operate the game as a “closed beta” for anyone who already downloaded the game (or paid for one of its “founders packs” of cosmetic DLC).

In an announcement on the game’s official site, its developers describe this change as a way to “help us focus on providing the best possible experience for our players.” As far as remaining players go, however, that assurance may ring a bit hollow, since its delisting will likely reduce the available player pool from its already minuscule population (as of press time, it’s only had more than 200 concurrent players once over the past week).

Although the game will continue to launch through Steam, starting at 12pm on July 1, new players will no longer be able to search for the game and freely download its client. Instead, they’ll have to sign up to play the game at the official site, where they will wait for a closed-beta invite. (If you think you’ll want to play the game eventually and want to save yourself some headaches, head to Crucible‘s Steam listing and add it to your library right now.)

Enlarge / macOS Big Sur. (credit: Apple)

There is one important caveat, though. 4K HDR Netflix streams are only supported on a few Macs. Only the 2018 or 2019 MacBook Pro models and the iMac Pro support HDR on the device’s own display (though again, the specs don’t meet the same HDR brightness standards that high-end TVs do). Those machines plus the 2018 Mac mini and the 2019 Mac Pro can do HDR on external displays.