During a 6 hours 23 minutes US Spacewalk 97 (or Extravehicular Activivity, EVA) which began at 1229 UTC outside the International Space Station (ISS) on Tuesday (Aug. 18), two Expedition 75 crew members NASA's Anil Menon (EV-1) and European Space Agency (ESA)'s Sophie Adenot (EV-2) successfully removed a failed Space-to-Ground antenna from the orbital station's Z1 truss.

With assistance from inside the station by NASA astronauts Jack Hathaway operating the Canadarm2 robotic arm and Jessica Meir assisting with suit-ups, the primary goal of the EVA was to replace a high-speed communications antenna that had failed in November, disrupting high-bandwidth data transmission between the ISS and Mission Control Houston. Though the station continues to operate with a fully functional Space-to-Ground antenna, which provides high-data rate communications with NASA’s Tracking Data and Relay Satellites and control centers across the world, including the agency’s Mission Control Center in Houston.

During the spacewalk, Menon and Adenot completed the removal of the failed Space-to-Ground antenna and performed a long-duration tie down of the unit on the space station truss structure. The crew members needed more time than expected to disconnect electrical cables and loosen bolts, delaying work to install a replacement antenna.

"We got into this with the mindset that we wanted everything to go perfectly," said Menon as the spacewalk came to an end. "Things were a lot different than expected, but what I would say that I am really impressed with is that all of those contingencies were well thought out."

Mission managers will decide whether to add the task of installing the replacement antenna to a spacewalk already planned for next Tuesday (Aug. 25) or to leave it for a later outing.

"We are looking at times," radioed Mission Control to the spacewalkers. "We are going to go directly to the long-duration tie-down of this SGANT on the Z-1 truss."

Near the end of the spacewalk, the crew also performed clean up tasks and an inspection and swap of a portable foot restraint near the Quest airlock. Their EVA ended once they were back inside the U.S. Quest airlock and re-pressurization began at 1852 UTC.

Spacewalk 97 was the first EVA for Adenot, making her the first female and fifth citizen of France to perform a spacewalk after Jean-Loup Chrétien, Jean-Pierre Haigneré, Philippe Perrin, and Thomas Pesquet. This also marked Menon's second EVA, bringing his total spacewalking time to 12 hours and 50 minutes.

The EVA is the fifth conducted out of the ISS this year, the second for Expedition 75, the 97th using U.S. extravehicular mobility unit (EMU) spacesuits and overall the 282nd EVA to date in support of ISS assembly, maintenance, and upgrades.

Cursor, now owned by SpaceX, launched Origin, a code hosting platform built for AI coding agents, on Monday. The platform is currently in beta for paid users and allows developers to sync existing repositories from GitHub, with real-time two-way synchronization available--mirrors commit history, branches, and PR activity, keeping GitHub as the canonical source of truth until a team chooses to detach.

Built by the Graphite team acquired in late 2025, Origin is designed to handle high-frequency commits and parallel agent workloads, featuring AI-powered automated merge conflict resolution and sub-400-millisecond global sync latency.

Unlike GitHub, which was built for human-first developers, Origin is architected to manage fleets of AI agents committing simultaneously, addressing the bottleneck of manual code review. Early previews highlighted capabilities such as 296,000 clones per hour and the ability to handle 22 commits per second per repository.

The platform integrates directly into the Cursor IDE, featuring a Codebase tab for repository management and a Review tab for automated pull request processing. Instead of forcing developers to jump between a local editor and an external browser tab to check pull requests or review builds, Origin integrates repository management straight into Cursor.

Initial integrations include Vercel, Buildkite, and Depot, with support for existing GitHub Actions workflows to facilitate CI/CD pipelines.

"You can now host your repos in Cursor Origin and deploy to Vercel via Cursor Origin which is itself hosted on Vercel," Vercel chief executive Guillermo Rauch posted on X. "And unlike GitHub, it's online 😁" Asked why he was smiling, Rauch replied: "trying to make light of the situation. We ourselves are stuck because of github rn!"

Origin was first unveiled at Cursor’s Compile conference on June 16, 2026, alongside a new iOS app and a 1.5-trillion-parameter model. The launch follows SpaceX’s $60 billion all-stock acquisition of Cursor, which aims to consolidate control over the entire software development pipeline from editor to infrastructure.

By launching Origin, SpaceXAI and Cursor are shifting AI development from the editor level down to the infrastructure layer. Rather than relying on Microsoft-owned GitHub to store code while using Cursor to write it, Origin creates a vertically integrated ecosystem.

GitHub has been unreliable, in recent years and was down for several hours Monday, as Cursor launched Origin. An analysis by LeadDev counted 257 incidents between May 2025 and April 2026, 48 of them major — roughly one significant disruption per week. February was the worst month on record with 37.

GitHub Actions alone accounted for 57 outages in twelve months. Chief technology officer Vlad Fedorov has said the platform "wasn't built for the scale it's now being asked to handle" and must design for 30 times today's load. In an April engineering post covered by InfoQ, the company acknowledged it "failed to meet its own reliability standards," citing rapid growth, tight architectural coupling and inadequate load shedding. Monday's outage was the seventh incident on GitHub's status page in fifteen days.

The fatigue is audible. "GitHub really doesn't feel built for the agent era," one developer wrote on X as Origin went live. "It goes down way too often, but until now there haven't been many real alternatives."

Sailors aboard the USS Abraham Lincoln (CVN-72) have reported severely deteriorating conditions to family members, including food shortages, broken plumbing, and mental health crises, following a record-breaking deployment of over 250 consecutive days at sea amid the Iran war.

There are unconfirmed reports of "low marale," sailors writing "anti-Israel and anti-war messages," using words like "goyims" and mocking President Donald Trump's repeated claims about iminent peace deals with Iran. Text messages published online and reported by military observers showed extreme frustration with the indefinite deployment. Some sailors reportedly wrote home that they felt trapped in an unclear mission, with messages such as "the Navy does not care" and questioning U.S. involvement in the wider Middle Eastern conflict.

Supply chain disruptions reportedly stemming from Iranian attacks on the Naval Support Activity in Bahrain forced the U.S. Navy to relocate its primary logistics hub to Diego Garcia, located roughly 3,540 kilometers from operational areas. This distance, combined with the "highly contested environment," have severely lengthened the carrier’s replenishment timelines.

Supplies that previously moved seamlessly via supply ships out of Bahrain began taking weeks to arrive, stalling shipments of mails, spare parts, fresh food, hygiene items (soap, toothpaste), and mails, while causing care packages to be lost or delayed for months. 

Sailors reportedly described eating dry cereal due to a lack of milk, consuming rotten meat, and dealing with moldy showers and non-functional toilets, which family members argue has created unbearable living conditions for the 5,000 personnel on board.

Although the Navy acknowledged logistical challenges like clogged toilets and ventilation issues causing mildew, officials maintain that sailors have access to clean water and healthy meals, attributing the hardships to the necessities of combat operations against Iran.

While families and lawmakers cite reports of suicide attempts and overboard incidents linked to exhaustion and supply failures, the Navy and Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth have disputed these accounts as "completely misrepresented," saying there is no confirmed increase in suicidal ideation on the career. Acting Navy Secretary Hung Cao acknowledged that crew members were "pushed to their limits" and confirmed temporary meal adjustments, but maintained that no core operational capabilities or meals were dropped.

While opposition Democrat lawmakers demand investigations into the "unbearable" conditions and the mental health toll on the crew, Trump downplayed the concerns, remarking that the deployment was "not nearly long enough," even as the Navy announced plans to replace the USS Abraham Lincoln with the USS George Washington.

Meanwhile, frustration with the Trump administration has reached a critical point among U.S. allies in the Persian Gulf, driven by concerns that he lacks the diplomatic capability to end the prolonged war with Iran. Saudi Arabia, the United Arab Emirates, Qatar, Kuwait, and Bahrain are now reportedly united in their aggravation with Washington.

The Gulf nations reportedly feel "unnecessarily entangled" in a conflict they did not start but are forced to endure; with one Gulf official saying bluntly, "Trump started this war, and we are paying the price," and noting that anger toward the U.S. is at its highest level since joint U.S.-Israeli attacks on Iran in February 2026.

Gulf leaders complain that Trump’s policy is "erratic" and "unpredictable," characterized by repeated threats against Iran followed by sudden withdrawals citing diplomatic progress that never materializes.

The breakdown in trust is exacerbated by the failure of recent diplomatic initiatives, specifically the June Memorandum of Understanding (MOU) between the U.S. and Iran. Gulf leaders dismissed the agreement as a "joke" because it failed to address their top security concerns: Iran’s ballistic missile arsenal and its support for proxy forces. Furthermore, the continued closure of the Strait of Hormuz has inflicted severe economic damage on Gulf economies, yet the U.S. has been unable to force its reopening despite months of conflict.

For the first time, this diplomatic friction has led to concrete strategic debates regarding the presence of U.S. military installations. While Qatar and Bahrain currently host large U.S. bases essential to American regional power projection, officials in multiple Gulf states have begun questioning the utility of continuing to host these facilities. The concern is that these bases make them less safe, not more safe, by painting them as primary targets for Iranian missile and drone strikes without guaranteeing a decisive U.S. victory or security guarantee.

For now, a complete expulsion of U.S. forces is not imminent. Gulf states remain heavily dependent on Washington for security support, intelligence, and arms supplies. As one official reportedly admitted, "Whatever we do, we cannot say no to the United States." However, the mere discussion of closing bases signals a significant erosion of the trust that has underpinned Gulf security architecture for decades.

Gulf nations are actively diversifying their security and defense partnerships. A pivotal development occurred last week with the signing of the Makkah Defense Agreement, a mutual defense agreement between Saudi Arabia, Turkey, and Pakistan. Senior European officials reportedly describe this pact as a direct "signal to the U.S." that regional powers are preparing for a future where American guarantees are insufficient.

This shift indicates that while the U.S. remains a primary partner, Gulf leaders no longer view it as the sole guarantor of regional security. The strategy involves building a network of Sunni Muslim alliances to manage local threats independently, reducing vulnerability to the whims of U.S. domestic politics and presidential decision-making.

While the White House reportedly maintains that Trump has "extraordinary relationships" with Gulf partners and that Iran is "more isolated than ever," the reality on the ground suggests a deepening rift. Analysts warn that unless a clear strategy emerges, the security lockdown and economic strain could destabilize the region further, pushing Gulf states to seek accommodations with Tehran independent of Washington.