Astronauts Will Share a Painfully Cramped Space Aboard Future Lunar Space Station

Passant Rabie
Mon, January 9, 2023

An illustration of the lunar gateway in orbit around the Moon.

Architects designing the living space for the upcoming lunar Gateway did their best to make it comfortable for astronauts, but technical constraints forced them to create a tiny, noisy corridor with no windows and barely enough room to stand upright.

The European-built international habitat, or I-Hab, is meant to provide living quarters for astronauts on board the Lunar Gateway, a future outpost that will orbit the Moon. The purpose of Gateway, a collaboration between NASA, the European Space Agency, and other international partners, is to provide a place for astronauts to conduct science in lunar orbit and to transfer from one spacecraft to another, such as a lunar lander. But an architect involved in I-Hab’s design recently revealed the claustrophobic conditions for the orbital habitat that’s supposed to house up to four astronauts for around 90 days at a time.
Related story: What to Know About Lunar Gateway, NASA’s Future Moon-Orbiting Space Station

During the Czech Space Week conference in Brno, Czechia (the country formerly known as the Czech Republic), René Waclavicek, a space architect and design researcher at Austria-based LIQUIFER Space Systems, stated that the Lunar Gateway will be roughly one-sixth of the size of the International Space Station (ISS), Space.com reported. Waclavicek, who was involved in I-Hab’s design, said that the architects behind the lunar living quarters were constrained by the amount of material that can be transported to the Moon, requiring them to make some sacrifices.

I-Hab “will have habitable space of about 8 cubic meters [280 cubic feet] and you will have to share it with three others,” Waclavicek said during the conference. “In other words, that would be a room 2 by 2 by 2 meters [6.6 by 6.6 by 6.6 feet], and you are locked in there.”

By comparison, the ISS stretches for about 357 feet (108 meters) from end-to-end, and is essentially a five-bedroom orbital complex complete with a gym, two bathrooms, and a 360-degree window with an enviable view of our home planet.

A view of the Moon wouldn’t be bad either, except I-Hab won’t be equipped with the same luxury. “We always get asked ‘where is the window?’,” Waclavicek said. “The moon is a thousand times farther away [than the ISS] and each window is a disturbance in the continuity of the structure. Also, glass is very heavy so a window is the first thing that gets canceled.” The Gateway will have windows, although not in the living quarters. Instead, the refueling module ESPRIT will have small windows, according to Waclavicek.

With an extremely curtailed view of the surrounding cosmos, the astronauts will have a hard time relaxing during their downtime—especially as they’re being serenaded by the robotic hum of onboard machinery. “Actually, you are living in a machine room,” Waclavicek said. “The life-support systems make noise, they have a lot of fans, and you have [a tiny amount] of private space where you can close the door and tame the noise.”

The architect admits that they began with a design for larger living quarters but had to shrink it down due to mass restrictions for the lunar outpost. As a result, astronauts will be cramped inside a tiny tube for the duration of their mission around the Moon. “[The I-Hab] really is just a cylinder with a hatch on each end and two hatches at the sides and a corridor going through the length axis,” he said. “Even if you want to pass one another, it’s already quite difficult, you have to interrupt whatever you are doing in the moment to let the other [person] pass by you.” It will be a cramped environment, no doubt, but it’s important to remember that a capsule, namely NASA’s Orion spacecraft, will be attached to the Gateway station during these missions, which will allow for some added elbow room. Lunar landers, such as SpaceX’s upcoming Starship, will also dock to Gateway.

NASA’s Artemis program is officially underway, having kicking off in November 2022 with the launch of Artemis 1. Unlike Apollo, Artemis is designed to establish a sustainable presence of astronauts on and around the Moon, with the Lunar Gateway being an essential part of the mission objective.

The first components of the Lunar Gateway could reach orbit as early as 2024, but I-Hab isn’t expected to make it up there until 2027. The living quarters may not sound like it would provide for a pleasant experience on board, but it will likely contribute some valuable science on Earth’s natural satellite and beyond.

Employees and managers have a key disagreement about one factor of remote work that affects productivity

Orianna Rosa Royle

Mon, January 9, 2023 

After almost three years of working from home, managers are very much not on the same page as their workers when it comes to productivity.

Simply put: Managers believe that working from home reduces productivity while employees think it massively increases it.

Now, new research published in the Harvard Business Review suggests this massive difference in opinion could boil down to very different parameters of what constitutes a working day.

When thinking about how productive their day was, HBR’s research shows that employees tend to include commuting time in their mental calculations. Therefore, they counted not having to commute on days working from home as an increase in productivity. Managers on the other hand tend to focus on output and ignore commuting time when thinking about staff productivity.

Does commuting count toward productivity?

Neither side is wrong.

First, take the employee's point of view. Imagine a gig economy worker who charges a business a daily rate of $1,000. If they work a nine-hour day and spend an hour commuting, they are charging $100 for every hour they spend on the job. But on days working from home, they’re getting $111 for every hour they put toward the job. They are still putting nine hours of work into the job, but they don’t have to dip into their personal bank of time, energy, and money to commute to the office.

However, from an employer’s perspective, they are getting less bang for their buck—or at least fewer hours for the same amount of money. An increase in productivity would have the employee working during the hour they formerly spent commuting.

Although these calculations are made up, and productivity isn’t only measured by the number of hours dedicated to a job, the disagreement illustrates why employees may perceive working from home as a personal productivity win while bosses do not.

This difference in opinion becomes increasingly important as businesses ask staff to come back to the office—and reflects a need for clarity from employers on where they stand on the matter.

Employees who opt to work from home in order to increase productivity could be putting themselves at risk of termination—especially if they’re specifically dodging “in-office” days. When HBR asked employees, "What happens to workers who work from the office on fewer days than requested?," a third responded “nothing.” However, the majority of managers answered that they risked being fired.

Changing norms

The HBR research comes as many businesses have started defining their policies on working from home.

Although many companies, including BlackRock, PwC, and Aviva, have adopted a hybrid work system, some are scrapping working from home altogether.

After acquiring Twitter, Elon Musk made it his first order of business to end Twitter’s “work from anywhere” policy. Musk emailed the social media giant’s employees that they would be expected in the office for at least 40 hours a week and that unless approved by their manager, an office no-show would automatically equate to “resignation accepted.”

While the billionaire’s actions aren’t an example of leadership at its finest, it does show that clarity and transparency are key to getting employees in line with managers’ expectations on productivity and remote working.

In the end, thousands who weren’t on the same page as Musk left the business.

Southwest Crisis Reveals Clubby World of Airline Leaders



Mary Schlangenstein
Mon, January 9, 2023 

(Bloomberg) -- The operational chaos that engulfed Southwest Airlines Co. over the busy holiday period was a crisis decades in the making.

In the aftermath of a meltdown that led to 16,700 flight cancellations and may cost the airline more than $800 million, blame has fallen on an outmoded crew scheduling system and an unusual point-to-point route network. Southwest was overwhelmed and unable to adapt as a severe storm swept the US.

But behind those specific issues is an insular management team that critics say lacks the imagination and technology expertise to help avoid such crises. While the bootstrap culture instilled by co-founder Herb Kelleher turned Southwest into one of the nation’s largest carriers, the size of the company now demands new ways of thinking and investment in innovation.

“It makes you wonder if there isn’t sort of a correlation or cause and effect here, where you’ve got a fairly entrenched, stagnant board, a grow-your-own leadership team since it was a very small, scrappy airline,” said Keith Meyer, global leader of the CEO and board practice at executive search firm Allegis Partners. “A founder-based culture can only take it so far.”

Southwest is full of lifers. Bob Jordan, who took over as chief executive officer in February, has been with the airline 34 years. The chief financial officer and communications chief have each worked there 30 years, while the chief commercial and chief legal officers have been around at least 20. The closest to a newbie among Southwest’s top management might be Chief Operating Officer Andrew Watterson, who joined a decade ago from Hawaiian Airlines.

Jordan doesn’t see it as a problem.

“We’ve always been proud of the fact we’ve developed leaders here and that we have folks with so much tenure,” he said in an interview. “They have a very deep airline knowledge, functional knowledge and very deep relationship that serves you well in normal times and when you get into an incident like this.”

Aviation ‘Laggard’

Southwest isn’t alone in recruiting from within. American Airlines Group Inc.’s top leadership had been together since the mid-1990s, first at America West Airlines, then US Airways before a merger with American. The group first began to fracture when Scott Kirby moved to United Airlines Holdings Inc. in 2016 and later became CEO there.

“The aviation industry more broadly has been a bit of a laggard experimenting with executives from outside, let alone their boards,” said Jason Hanold, CEO of executive search firm Hanold Associates.

But Southwest is in a unique position, with the challenges of a major carrier and the mindset of a small one.

The airline, which began flying between a handful of cities within Texas in 1971, has grown into a behemoth that has carried more domestic passengers than any other airline in recent years. That expansion has added complexity to its keep-it-simple business model, and resulting cost pressures mean it often can’t offer the cheapest fares.

Southwest’s focus on stretching every dollar has also made it more conservative than other carriers in a highly regulated, safety-focused industry that rewards consistency, said Samuel Engel, senior vice president for innovation at ICF, and former head of the consultant’s aviation group. It leans more on insiders because of “the continued belief that Southwest is different.”

The airline’s 13-member board has an average tenure of nearly 12 years, compared with about six and a half at Delta Air Lines Inc. and American and five and a half at United, which agreed to a board revamp in 2016 at the behest of activist investors. None of Southwest’s directors has a background in tech.

The carrier has a long-standing reputation of being slow to adopt new technology, and spent years implementing a new reservation system and updating its maintenance operations. It’s now spending $2 billion to improve a balky Wi-Fi system, add power ports at seats and install larger overhead bins.

“Southwest is the largest domestic airline in the US and it should start behaving that way,” Helane Becker, an analyst with Cowen Inc., said in a research note. “There are probably a lot of smart technology people who are getting laid off from tech companies that could help it out.”

Southwest has acknowledged putting updates to its crew scheduling system behind other improvements, despite long-standing complaints from pilots and flight attendants. Watterson called the system its “Achilles’ heel” in the December breakdown.

The airline has said it’s looking at every aspect of operations to find what produced the meltdown, and expects to “swiftly” reach conclusions. It hasn’t said how many passengers were affected, but the company is reimbursing travelers for canceled flights and hotels, meals and other related expenses.

In one sign of frustration among institutional investors, New York State Comptroller Thomas DiNapoli, who oversees the state pension fund, asked Southwest in a letter to provide information on when it “is planning to correct these failures — not just in the immediate term, but for the coming years.”

‘Considerable Concern’

“All of this is of considerable concern to investors, for whom Southwest’s ability to attract customers and retain employees is of paramount importance,” DiNapoli said in the letter, which was dated Jan. 6. “The management of these basic business operations are the heart of a company’s ability to provide a return to shareholders.”

Southwest didn’t immediately respond to a request for comment. New York’s state retirement fund held 1.35 million Southwest shares as of March 31, he said. The comptroller’s letter was reported earlier by the Wall Street Journal.

The carrier’s shares have lagged the broader market since the travel fiasco. The stock rose 2% as of 2:35 p.m. Monday in New York.

Southwest tumbled 21% in 2022, the second-worst performance among the five biggest US carriers. The reputational damage may lead to more volatility, and its shares will underperform the S&P 500 Index by 5% over the next two months, according to Nir Kossovsky, CEO of reputation risk insurer Steel City Re.

Jordan said he’s committed to getting the company back on track, regardless of what it takes.

“We have a 51-year history of doing really well, operating really well,” he said. “This one event, which is significant, won’t define us.”

Germany's new China strategy 'guided by ideology', ambassador says

 

FRANKFURT, Jan 8 (Reuters) - Plans for a tougher China strategy by Germany are "guided by ideology" and reflect a Cold War mentality that could put cooperation between the world's second- and fourth-largest economies at risk, China's ambassador to Berlin was quoted saying.

"What I read about it in the media and know from many conversations is very disconcerting to me," Wu Ken told Handelsblatt. "The paper gives the impression that it is guided primarily by ideology. It is not based on the common interests of Germany and China."

Germany is working on a new strategy taking a more sober look at its relations with China and aiming to reduce its dependence on Asia's economic superpower.

"As far as I know, the paper exaggerates competition and confrontation between our two countries in a way that has nothing to do with reality. I'm also hearing that certain values and human rights are to be a prerequisite for cooperation in the future," Ken said.

He added that if this happened it would put obstacles in the way of both countries' cooperation.

"Moreover, according to the draft at least, Germany wants to coordinate its China policy more closely in future with 'like-minded' allies such as the U.S. This suggests that the German government is forfeiting its independence and is instead following the U.S. completely in matters of China policy."

The planned measures include requirements for German firms particularly exposed to China to share details on that business with the government and undergo regular stress tests, according to the ministry's "Internal Guidelines on China" seen by Reuters last month.

"In doing so, the German government is ultimately contradicting itself. After all, it has always emphasised that it is not aiming for a confrontation between different camps. To me, this smells suspiciously of a Cold War mentality," Ken said. (Reporting by Christoph Steitz; Editing by David Holmes)

Tesla price cut sees customers storm stores to demand compensation—and a rival BYD employee may have led the charge

Christiaan Hetzner

Mon, January 9, 2023 

Elon Musk’s gambit to slash Tesla prices in China may have partly backfired as angry owners protested the instant loss of value of their new vehicles over the weekend.

Feeling the heat from local rival BYD, Tesla lowered the entry point for its two main model lines on Friday to lure customers back into showrooms and build up its depleted order book.

The move worked, but not entirely for the reason desired.

A mob of angry Tesla customers reportedly showed up at several Tesla showrooms across the country demanding some form of compensation for buying a new car at the older, higher prices.

One protest even appears to have at least in part been organized by none other than an employee from Tesla’s biggest competitor.

A man identifying himself on Chinese social media site Weibo as "Wang Xingguang" acknowledged he had participated in a protest at the Tesla dealership in Xi’an, Shaanxi province. He claimed he was there strictly in a personal capacity, not as an employee of BYD.

Whether credible or not, his confession only encouraged further gloating in the Tesla community, because he revealed being there on behalf of his wife. A Tesla customer herself, she apparently preferred Musk’s cars to those built by her own husband’s employer.

“I defend my family's rights and interests, which is a personal act and has nothing to do with the company I work for,” he posted to Weibo. “As a family member of the car owner, can't I protect my rights?”

With legacy automakers still diverting much of their attention to their bread-and-butter combustion engine business to the detriment of their less-profitable EV models, China’s BYD has emerged as Tesla’s single biggest competitor.

The carmaker is not as well known internationally as other main competitors like General Motors, Ford or Volkswagen, because BYD has only just begun to sell vehicles outside of China.

BYD's vehicle sales in China doubled those of Tesla and then some last year, although the former's revenue per unit was nowhere near as high due to lower average selling prices.

Why is Tesla cutting prices?

The price cut, Tesla’s second since late October, is a subject of intense debate given ongoing fears that Musk’s incredible growth story is starting to take on water as production begins to exceed demand.

The last time Musk lowered the starting price of his vehicles, the stimulative effect lasted only briefly.

While weekly unit sales tripled to 16,000 by the end of November, they subsequently dropped to just 4,338 going into the new year.

For the moment, the fresh cuts appear to have spurred some improved demand in the world's largest EV market, but only for certain Model Y crossovers.

Wait times for the single motor entry version and the maximum range dual motor variant have now widened to two to five weeks.

Every other Chinese-built model continued to feature the same one- to four-week waiting times as before. In the past, Chinese customers might not have had their new Tesla vehicle delivered for months.

[hotlink ignore=true]News of the budding price war sent shares of Chinese EV manufacturers tumbling on Friday and even briefly pushed Tesla stock to a fresh two-year low.

Bulls have argued Tesla’s automotive gross margins of near 30% give it the wherewithal to withstand a withering price war far longer than less profitable competitors, including BYD.

They have cited comments for example from Tesla official Grace Tao, who posted to her Weibo account on Friday that the cuts would not dilute margins since they could be offset by “numerous engineering innovations.”

This story was originally featured on Fortune.com

SK On says it is undecided whether to proceed with battery venture with Ford, Koc


The logo of SK Innovation is seen in front of its headquarters in Seoul

Sun, January 8, 2023 

SEOUL (Reuters) - South Korean electric vehicle battery maker SK On said on Monday it has not decided whether to pursue a battery cell venture in Turkey with Ford Motor Co and Koc Holding AS, after signing a memorandum of understanding (MoU) in March.

The Dong-A Ilbo daily newspaper earlier reported, citing an unidentified source, that SK On plans to scrap the idea due to a weak macro economic environment.

"After signing the MoU in March 2022, we have been discussing the joint venture case in Turkey, but discussions have not been completed. The final decision whether or not to halt negotiations regarding the joint venture has not been made yet," SK On said in a statement.

SK On is the wholly owned battery unit of SK Innovation Co Ltd, and counts Hyundai Motor Co, Volkswagen AG and Ford Motor among its customers.

In announcing the joint venture plans in March, SK On said the partners aimed for annual production capacity of 30-45 gigawatt hours (GWh) with production starting in 2025.

SK On has battery manufacturing sites in South Korea, China, Hungary and the United States.

(Reporting by Heekyong Yang; Editing by Christopher Cushing)


Ford, SK Cancel Turkey Battery Joint Venture Plan, Daily Reports



Heejin Kim and Shinhye Kang
Sun, January 8, 2023

(Bloomberg) -- Ford Motor Co. and SK Innovation Co.’s battery unit canceled plans to build an electric-vehicle battery plant in Turkey amid rising global interest rates and weaker EV demand in Europe, the Korea Economic Daily reported.

The two companies recently withdrew an initial accord that was signed in March 2022, the paper said Monday, citing unidentified sources. The plant was slated to start operation as soon as 2025 with annual production capacity of 30 to 45 gigawatt hours and was part of a push by Ford to produce 2 million electric vehicles a year by 2026.

In a text message response to Bloomberg News, SK On said it hasn’t decided whether to stop negotiations with Ford on setting up the joint venture in Turkey.

--With assistance from Seyoon Kim.

US tech giants say Indian panel's recommended competition act 'absolutist and regressive'



Manish Singh
Sun, January 8, 2023

An influential industry group that represents Google, Meta and Amazon, among other tech firms, has expressed concerns about the digital competition law recommended by an Indian parliamentary panel that seeks to regulate their alleged anticompetitive practices, calling the proposal "absolutist and regressive" in nature in the latest escalation of tension between U.S. tech giants and New Delhi.

The Parliamentary Standing Committee on Finance recommended last month that the government enact a digital competition act to regulate anticompetitive business practices by Big Tech companies on its platforms, prohibiting them from preferentially promoting their in-house brands or not supporting third-party systems. The competition act, the panel said, “will be a boon not only for our country and its nascent startup economy but also for the entire world.”

Industry group Asia Internet Coalition said in a statement that the proposed digital competition law may hurt digital innovation in India and could impact the investments by businesses in India and have "disproportionate costs" to consumers in the South Asian market. "The report put forward by the committee is prescriptive, absolutist and regressive in nature," it added.

The Indian panel said last month that its recommendation was systemically important to counter monopoly and warned that tech giants "must not favour its own offers over the offers of its competitors" when acting as mediators to supply and sales markets.

The parliamentary panel’s recommendation cites the EU’s proposed Digital Markets Act and the U.S.’s American Innovation and Choice Online Act and the Open App Market Act.

The industry group AIC said that both AICOA and OAMA have "failed to attain bipartisan support due to substantive disagreements and concerns for unintended consequences on consumers, growth, and innovation. In sum, there is no consensus that a DMA-style ex ante legislation is the way forward for addressing potential competition concerns in the digital space,” it said in the statement.

India is the world's second largest internet market and has in the past decade attracted more than $75 billion in investment from firms including Google, Meta and Amazon, and investment shops Sequoia, Lightspeed, SoftBank and Tiger Global. New Delhi has enforced and proposed a number of policy changes in the past three years to bring more accountability and fairness in how the tech firms operate in the country in moves that have rattled many U.S. giants.

New Delhi is entering 2023 with several more such policy changes, including a telecom law that would tighten the government's grip on internet firms.

"We urge the government to first observe whether these overseas regulatory developments bring about benefits that outweigh costs. Specifically, it is important to note that the government has recently proposed two significant bills, i.e the Digital Personal Data Protection Bill and the Competition Amendment Bill (CAB), both of which seek to protect consumers, preserve competition and promote tech innovation, with a special focus on digital markets," said Asia Internet Coalition.

"Accordingly, it is critical to first understand the effects of these two bills on the digital ecosystem before introducing any new legislative proposals."

Google chief executive Sundar Pichai said last month that India was going through an important period of time as it drafts several key regulations and asserted that it stands to benefit from open and connected internet.

PRICE GOUGING

Moderna considers pricing COVID vaccine at $110-$130 - WSJ

Mon, January 9, 2023 

Jan 9 (Reuters) - Moderna Inc is considering pricing its COVID-19 shot at $110 to $130 per dose in the United States when it shifts from government contracting to commercial distribution of the shots, the company's Chief Executive Officer Stephane Bancel told the Wall Street Journal on Monday.

"I would think this type of pricing is consistent with the value," said Bancel, according to the WSJ report, adding the company was in discussions with hospital systems, pharmacies and pharmacy-benefit managers to line up distribution of its vaccine ahead of a potential fall booster shot campaign.

Moderna had previously estimated the commercial price expectations in a range of $64 to $100 a shot.

Moderna did not immediately respond to a Reuters request for comment on the report.

In October last year, rival Pfizer Inc said it planned to hike its COVID vaccine's price to about the same range - $110 to $130 per dose - after the United States government's current purchase program expires. 

(Reporting by Raghav Mahobe in Bengaluru; Editing by Krishna Chandra Eluri)

United Arab Emirates says it will teach Holocaust in schools


FILE, -The Emirati and Israeli flags fly overhead as Israeli President Isaac Herzog gives a speech at Expo 2020 in Dubai, United Arab Emirates, Monday, Jan. 31, 2022. When Israel struck an agreement to establish diplomatic ties with the United Arab Emirates in 2020, but two years after an expected windfall of Gulf Arab tourists to Israel has been little more than a trickle.

Mon, January 9, 2023 

DUBAI, United Arab Emirates (AP) — The United Arab Emirates will begin teaching about the Holocaust in history classes in primary and secondary schools across the country, the country's embassy in the United States said.

The embassy provided no details on the curriculum and education authorities in the Emirates, a federation of seven sheikhdoms, on Monday did not acknowledge the announcement.

However, the announcement comes after the UAE normalized relations with Israel in 2020 as part of a deal brokered by the administration of President Donald Trump.

“In the wake of the historic (hashtag)AbrahamAccords, (the UAE) will now include the Holocaust in the curriculum for primary and secondary schools,” the embassy said in a tweet, referring to the normalization deal that also saw Bahrain and ultimately Morocco also recognize Israel.

Ambassador Deborah E. Lipstadt, the U.S. special envoy to monitor and combat antisemitism, praised the announcement in her own tweet.

“Holocaust education is an imperative for humanity and too many countries, for too long, continue to downplay the Shoah for political reasons,” Lipstadt wrote, using a Hebrew word for the Holocaust. “I commend the UAE for this step and expect others to follow suit soon.”

The announcement comes as a meeting of the Negev Forum Working Groups, which grew out of the normalization, began in Abu Dhabi on Monday. Officials from Bahrain, Egypt, Israel, Morocco, the UAE and the U.S. are to attend. Egypt has diplomatically recognized Israel for decades.

In the Holocaust, Nazi Germany systematically killed 6 million European Jews during World War II. Israel, founded in 1948 as a haven for Jews in the wake of the Holocaust, grants automatic citizenship to anyone of Jewish descent.

Other Arab nations have refused to diplomatically recognize Israel over its decades-long occupation of land Palestinians want for their future state.

The announcement by the UAE also comes after the federation and other Arab nations condemned an ultranationalist Israeli Cabinet minister for visiting a flashpoint Jerusalem holy site last week, for the first time since Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s new far-right government took office.

The site, known to Jews as the Temple Mount and to Muslims as the Noble Sanctuary, is the holiest site in Judaism, home to the ancient biblical Temples. Today, it houses the Al Aqsa Mosque, the third-holiest site in Islam. Since Israel captured the site in 1967, Jews have been allowed to visit but not pray there.

___

Follow Jon Gambrell on Twitter at www.twitter.com/jongambrellAP.

Court revives claims by Texas death row inmate backed by DA


In courtrooms across America, defendants get additional prison time for crimes that juries found they didn’t commit. The Supreme Court is being asked, again, to put an end to the practice.

MARK SHERMAN
Mon, January 9, 2023 

WASHINGTON (AP) — The Supreme Court on Monday revived claims by a Texas inmate who has the rare support of the state prosecutor's office that put him on death row.

The justices threw out a Texas appeals court ruling that refused to grant the inmate, Areli Escobar, a new trial. The state appeals court had overruled a lower court judge who documented the flaws in the forensic evidence used to convict Escobar.

The high court's action returns the case to the appeals court.

Escobar was convicted and sentenced to death in the May 2009 fatal stabbing and sexual assault of Bianca Maldonado, a 17-year-old high school student in Austin. They lived in the same apartment complex.

The focus of the prosecution case against Escobar was evidence from the Austin Police Department's DNA lab.

But a later audit turned up problems at the lab that led Judge David Wahlberg of the Travis County District Court to conclude that Escobar's trial was unfair.

“The State’s use of unreliable, false, or misleading DNA evidence to secure (Escobar's) conviction violated fundamental concepts of justice,” Wahlberg wrote.

When the case returned to the Texas Court of Criminal Appeals, Travis County prosecutors no longer were defending the conviction. Voters had elected a new district attorney, Jose Garza, who ran on a promise to hold police accountable in Austin, the state capital and county seat.

But the appeals court refused to go along, saying it had conducted its own review that justified affirming the conviction and sentence, and not mentioning the prosecution's change of position. Even after Garza's office pointed out it was no longer standing behind the conviction, the appeals court stuck with its ruling.

In its filing with the Supreme Court, Garza's office wrote that prosecutors have a duty to see justice done and that the appeals court “undermined the District Attorney’s historical role in the criminal justice system.”

Escobar's lawyers, unsurprisingly, agreed, telling the court that their case is so clear, the justices could reverse the appellate ruling without hearing arguments.

“If ever there were a case calling for summary reversal, it is this capital case. Denying the petition would be a grave miscarriage of justice,” they wrote.