NASA Mission, With Help From UC Berkeley, To Explore Earth's Exosphere

Here are the morning’s top stories on Friday, September 26, 2025…

• This week a SpaceX Falcon9 rocket launched from Florida – the mission?  To study the outermost parts of the earth’s atmosphere. The mission is being steered by remote control from UC Berkeley’s Space Sciences Laboratory. 
• A report out this week details major failures in LA County’s response to the January firestorms.
• Immigration agents arrested three day laborers outside of a well-known worker center in Pomona Thursday morning. Immigration advocates say they’re worried about the health and safety of the people now being detained. 
• A Southern California attorney is facing a historic fine for filing a state court appeal full of fake quotations generated by the artificial intelligence tool ChatGPT.

Space Mission Aims To Study Outermost Parts Of Earth’s Atmosphere

A SpaceX Falcon 9 launched from Kennedy Space Center in Florida this week. The Carruthers mission is named after Dr. George Carruthers, creator of the Moon-based telescope that captured the first images of Earth’s exosphere. The project will look to expand his work by charting changes in the outermost parts of our atmosphere.

The mission is being steered from UC Berkeley’s Space Science Laboratory.  Abhi Tripathi is director of mission operations for the lab. He said there are only a few windows throughout the day where operators can receive information from the spacecraft and send instructions back. “If something flashes red, we have to quickly diagnose what is the issue and then figure out what we want to do to get it back within limits,” he said.

The mission’s vantage point is expected to offer a complete view of the exosphere that is not visible from the Moon. Lindy Elkins-Tanton is the director of the Berkeley laboratory. She said it’s fundamental because the exosphere is where satellites orbit and right now, we don’t know very well how to protect them from violent space weather coming from the sun. “The kind of information this mission is gathering is good for every person because of the need that we have for the instrumental security of our satellites around the Earth that we all use literally every day in ways that we don’t even notice,” she said.

Independent Review Finds ‘Outdated’ Policies Hampered Response To LA Fires

An after-action report released Thursday about the Eaton and Palisades fires details how the unprecedented January firestorms unfolded and the failings of L.A. County’s emergency response. It also lays out recommendations for changes and reforms.

At a news conference Thursday, county leaders and one of the report’s authors repeatedly emphasized that there was no single point of failure that led to the deaths of 31 people and devastation, but rather, a number of failures caused by a lack of preparation, coordination and resources. Those shortcomings were amplified by extreme winds and fire behavior.

The report — compiled by the McChrystal Group and released more than eight months after the fires — found that county practices around issuing emergency alerts, specifically evacuations, are “outdated, unclear and contradictory.” That, coupled with confusion about who has what authority around evacuation decision-making, “led to inconsistencies in preparedness strategies across the county and a lack of clear documentation and communication processes,” the report said. In addition, the report said, first responders using a variety of unconnected platforms and inconsistent practices struggled to share information in real-time.

“The extreme and rapidly moving fire conditions challenged the situational awareness of fire and law enforcement first responders,” the report said, “making it difficult to communicate the fire’s location to the public. This was especially prevalent during the Eaton Fire, when wind conditions grounded aerial resources, including surveillance, almost immediately after the fire started.”

The report recommends restructuring and increasing staffing at the Office of Emergency Management, updating emergency preparedness training and policies and upgrading obsolete systems, as well as investing in public education about emergencies. County officials repeatedly said Thursday that they were committed to making the changes necessary, and have already begun to do so in some cases. Including, exploring new incident management systems.

Federal Immigration Agents Arrest Three Workers At Pomona Day Labor Center

Immigration agents arrested three day laborers outside of a well-known worker center in Pomona on Thursday. Immigration advocates say they’re worried about the health and safety of the people now being detained.

Staff at the Pomona Day Labor Center say federal agents showed up around 9 a.m. to their site located next to a Contractors’ Warehouse store on Mission Boulevard. A video obtained by KVCR shows agents surrounding two workers inside the parking lot and taking them into custody. One man’s identity remains unknown, but another is believed to be Fernando Salazar, a Mexican worker who regularly visits the center, said Alexis Teodoro, worker-rights director at the Pomona Economic Opportunity Center. “When we looked up, we were extremely surprised to see the agents,” he said. “I immediately started questioning the agents to identify themselves.”

Agents ignored repeated demands from witnesses and PEOC staff to leave the property. Video shows Teodoro and other staffers urging them to produce a warrant. A separate Ring camera video captures a third worker sprinting into a nearby neighborhood. Teodoro identified him as Benjamin Alcocer, who was later detained.

Pomona has experienced several incidents involving ICE and Border Patrol since April, which PEOC said resulted in several detentions and deportations. Federal immigration arrests also took place in nearby Chino Hills and Montclair on Thursday, according to immigrant rights organizations.

California Issues Historic Fine Over Lawyer’s ChatGPT Fabrications

A California attorney must pay a $10,000 fine for filing a state court appeal full of fake quotations generated by the artificial intelligence tool ChatGPT.

The fine appears to be the largest issued over AI fabrications by a California court and came with a blistering opinion stating that 21 of 23 quotes from cases cited in the attorney’s opening brief were made up. It also noted that numerous out-of-state and federal courts have confronted attorneys for citing fake legal authority.

The opinion from California’s 2nd District Court of Appeal is a clear example of why the state’s legal authorities are scrambling to regulate the use of AI in the judiciary. Earlier this month, the state’s Judicial Council issued guidelines requiring judges and court staff to either ban generative AI or adopt a generative AI use policy by Dec. 15. Meanwhile, the California Bar Association is considering whether to strengthen its code of conduct to account for various forms of AI following a request by the California Supreme Court last month.

The Los Angeles-area attorney who was fined, Amir Mostafavi, told the court that he did not read text generated by the AI model before submitting the appeal in July 2023, months after OpenAI marketed ChatGPT as capable of passing the bar exam. A three-judge panel fined him for filing a frivolous appeal, violating court rules, citing fake cases, and wasting the court’s time and the taxpayers money, according to the opinion. Mostafavi told CalMatters he wrote the appeal and then used ChatGPT to try and improve it. He said that he didn’t know it would add case citations or make things up. He thinks it is unrealistic to expect lawyers to stop using AI. It’s become an important tool just as online databases largely replaced law libraries and, until AI systems stop hallucinating fake information, he suggests lawyers who use AI to proceed with caution.