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Apple's long-anticipated foldable iPhone Ultra is shaping up to be one of the most disruptive product launches in years — and not entirely in a good way. A new report suggests its arrival could push foldable phone prices up by nearly eighteen percent industry-wide. Samsung and others may quietly benefit, letting Apple absorb the backlash while cashing in on elevated market expectations.
Meanwhile, NASA is making a remarkable last-ditch effort to save the Swift space telescope, which has been slowly losing altitude and drifting toward Earth. The agency has launched a robotic mission aimed at either stabilizing or safely redirecting the observatory. Swift has been a workhorse for studying gamma-ray bursts and black holes since two thousand four, and scientists are understandably reluctant to let it go.
And on a quieter but genuinely sobering note, astronomers are sounding the alarm over expanding satellite constellation plans, calling them an existential threat to ground-based optical astronomy. The concern isn't new, but the scale is accelerating. As more operators crowd low Earth orbit, the interference with telescopes is becoming less theoretical and more nightly reality.
That's your Tech Beat for today — keep surfing. Tech Beat out.
