Daily Brief — April 10: Moon, Grid, and Code

Three things are converging today: a crewed spacecraft is coming home, a grid is being remade by solar, and the Bitcoin protocol is hours away from its next major release. Each one moves faster than it did a year ago.

Artemis II splashes down off San Diego tonight at approximately 8:07 p.m. EDT. Four crew members — Reid Wiseman, Victor Glover, Christina Koch, and Canada's Jeremy Hansen — are returning from a lunar flyby that marks the first time a non-American has flown a deep-space mission. This matters because it unlocks the timeline for Artemis III, the actual landing. Space agencies across the Global South, including India's ISRO, are watching crew return protocols as they plan their own human spaceflight programs. ISRO's Gaganyaan-1 uncrewed orbital test had been targeted for late March.

On energy, the IEA just published two reports this week that reframe how fast the grid is actually shifting. Solar PV generation saw its largest-ever year-on-year increase in 2025 at 620 TWh — nearly 40% more than the previous year's 450 TWh. Around 80% of global solar PV and wind now cost less to operate than coal or gas. Battery prices fell 75% over the past decade. The US alone plans to add 86 GW of new capacity this year; solar accounts for 51% of that. But here is what matters for emerging markets: Africa is targeting 28% of additional electricity supply from solar PV, while Southeast Asia will see 35% come from solar. Sub-Saharan Africa still has roughly 600 million people without electricity — 83% of the global unelectrified population. Grid investment must rise 50% by 2030 to support renewable expansion across those regions. Watch for South Africa and North African states to drive continent-wide infrastructure spending.

On freedom tech, Bitcoin Core's development team shipped both v31.0rc3 and rc4 on April 8 — two release candidates on the same day — signaling the stable release is imminent. This is the most significant protocol cycle since v28.0 and includes mempool policy and P2P transport refinements. Simultaneously, researchers just mapped the threat surface: a new arXiv preprint, 'Post-Quantum Cryptographic Analysis of Message Transformations Across the Network Stack' (Kundu et al., April 9), analyses how Bitcoin's ECDSA-based infrastructure remains vulnerable to quantum attack at every network layer from application to physical medium. This directly frames the long-term upgrade challenge ahead. In parallel, Mostro — a non-custodial P2P Bitcoin exchange running on Lightning and Nostr — continues gaining traction in Latin America as a censorship-resistant on-ramp, while Fedimint shipped v0.11.0-beta.1 on April 9, advancing the federated custody infrastructure that could serve unbanked communities in MENA and Sub-Saharan Africa.

By the numbers: Solar PV generation reached 620 TWh in 2025, a 38% jump year-on-year. Energy storage now accounts for 40% of all energy patenting, the highest share ever recorded. Bitcoin's network hashrate sits at 940.1 EH/s with mempool fees at 1 sat/vB — among the lowest congestion states of the year. India added 21.9 GW of renewable capacity in the first half of 2025, up 56% year-on-year.

What to watch: Artemis II crew health assessments tonight will shape the Artemis III landing timeline; monitor NASA's post-mission presser. Bitcoin Core v31.0 stable release expected any day — watch the bitcoin-dev mailing list and GitHub for the final tag; node operators should test rc4 on signet/testnet4 now.