DirecTV is buying Dish and Sling, a deal it has sought to complete for years, as the company seeks to better compete against streaming services that have become dominant.

DirecTV said Monday that it will acquire Dish TV and Sling TV from its owner EchoStar in a debt exchange transaction that includes a payment of $1, plus the assumption of approximately $9.8 billion in debt.

The prospect of a DirecTV-Dish combo has long been rumored, with headlines about reported talks popping up over the years. And the two almost merged more than two decades ago—but the Federal Communications Commission blocked their owners’ then-$18.5 billion deal, citing antitrust concerns.

The pay-for-TV market has shifted significantly since. As more and more consumers tune into online streaming giants, demand for more traditional satellite continues to shrink. And, although high-profile acquisitions have proven to be particularly tough under the Biden-Harris administration, that may make regulators more inclined to approve DirecTV and Dish’s pairing this time around.

DirecTV said Monday that the transaction will help it bring smaller content packages to consumer at lower prices and essentially provide a one-stop shopping experience for entertainment programming.

It’s hoping this will appeal to those who have left satellite video services for streaming. The company said that combined, DirecTV and Dish have collectively lost 63% of their satellite customers since 2016.

“DirecTV operates in a highly competitive video distribution industry,” DirecTV CEO Bill Morrow said in a statement. “With greater scale, we expect a combined DirecTV and Dish will be better able to work with programmers to realize our vision for the future of tv, which is to aggregate, curate, and distribute content tailored to customers’ interests, and to be better positioned to realize operating efficiencies while creating value for customers through additional investment.”

The current deal could provide a key lifeline for EchoStar. The Colorado-based telecommunications company has reportedly faced the prospect of bankruptcy as it continues to burn through cash and see losses pile up.

In a recent securities filing, EchoStar disclosed that it had just $521 million in “cash on hand.” And the company forecast negative cash flows for the remainder of the year—while also pointing to major looming debt payments, with more than $1.98 billion of debt set to mature in November.

“With an improved financial profile, we will be better positioned to continue enhancing and deploying our nationwide 5G Open RAN wireless network,” EchoStar President and CEO Hamid Akhavan said. “This will provide U.S. wireless consumers with more choices and help to drive innovation at a faster pace.”

By shedding Dish, EchoStar will be able to focus its efforts elsewhere, like its wireless carrier Boost Mobile.

“We are playing to win in the wireless business. there’s no doubt about it,” Akhavan said during a conference call, adding that the company may need to seek additional funding and financing in the future to achieve its goals.

Shares of EchoStar fell more than 14% in Monday midday trading.

The DirecTV and Dish deal is targeted to close in 2025’s fourth quarter. But it is contingent on several factors, including regulatory approvals and bondholders writing off nearly $1.6 billion in debt related to Dish.

The combined company will be based in El Segundo, California.

“We believe regulatory approval is likely to be greater than 50% given the opportunity for the combined company to improve its competitiveness to offer a range of linear video packages as well as to take a more aggressive stance on offering a live streaming video product,” Michael Rollins of Citi Investment Research wrote in a note to clients.

But the analyst added that there’s still significant uncertainty related to whether or not the Federal Communications Commission, Department of Justice and other possible regulators give the necessary approvals, based on previous talks with company management and industry experts over the last few years.

Shortly before DirecTV made its announcement, AT&T said it was selling its remaining stake in DirecTV to private equity firm TPG in a deal valued at about $7.6 billion.

The move ends the communication giant’s remaining ties to the entertainment industry.

AT&T said Monday in a filing with the Securities and Exchange Commission that it will receive payments from TPG and DirecTV for its remaining 70% stake in the satellite TV company. This includes $1.7 billion in the second half of the year and $5.4 billion next year. The remaining amount will be paid in 2029.

AT&T purchased DirectTV for $48.5 billion back in 2015. But in 2021, following the loss of millions of customers, AT&T sold a 30% stake of the business to TPG for $16.25 billion.

AT&T’s deal is expected to close in the second half of 2025.

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Rats and humans have lived together for thousands of years. However, written historical records of rats migrating alongside people are sparse and some are entangled with myth and folklore.

Researchers at Drexel University, who are working to gain a better understanding of the evolutionary history of wild and domestic brown rats (Rattus norvegicus), recently presented a review of research on domestication events and genomic studies in the journal Science. The piece brings together findings about how rats moved from one place to another, particularly in association with humans.

Led by Jason Munshi-South, Ph.D., Betz Chair and professor in the College of Arts and Sciences, researchers scoured written records, archaeological remains and genomic data to bring together what we know about the evolutionary history of rats.

“We’re trying to understand how rats travel with humans and how, along the way, they have changed because of the types of environments humans have created,” said Munshi-South.

Using recent discoveries about the evolutionary history of brown rats and advances in zooarchaeology and population genomics, the research team anticipates new inquiries in the field will help to answer questions about the evolution of human migrations, trade corridors and economies of various societies—using rats as a proxy to understand what humans were doing in various places and times throughout history.

One example of a waypoint in this evolutionary history happened in Philadelphia in 1892, when Wistar Institute became one of the first biomedical research institutions to take wild rats from the streets and begin breeding them for laboratory research. Laboratory strains of rats, still used for biomedical models across the United States, can be traced back to Wistar.

According to the Drexel researchers, thousands of high-quality whole genomes from ancient and contemporary wild rats, as well as lab strains, will be sequenced in the next decade, thanks to advances in technology and a growing research focus on rats.

These resources, coupled with analytical advances, should vastly improve the understanding of the movement of brown rats around the world, their adaptations to diverse environmental conditions—particularly cities and other human-dominated contexts—and of the novel functional variation that will likely improve the utility of rats as biomedical models.

“The mindset of people about rats, typically, is that they’re pests. But now, people are reconsidering them as something important in evolutionary history—an organism that we should care about for other reasons,” said Munshi-South.

Mars presents a highly complex natural environment, characterized by a variety of gas components—95.32% carbon dioxide, 2.7% nitrogen, 1.6% argon, 0.13% oxygen, and 0.08% carbon monoxide—as well as extreme temperature fluctuations, with day-to-night temperature differences of about 60 °C.

To address these challenges, Prof. Peng Tan and Dr. Xu Xiao have developed a novel Mars battery that uniquely utilizes the Martian atmosphere as fuel during discharge. This approach significantly reduces the battery’s weight, making it more suitable for space missions.

Their study, “A high-energy-density and long-cycling-lifespan Mars battery,” is published in the journal Science Bulletin.

Once depleted, the battery can be recharged using solar energy harvested from the Martian surface, enabling it to be prepared for subsequent discharges. Furthermore, the team simulated Martian surface conditions, including temperature fluctuations, to develop a Mars battery system capable of continuous power output.

The researchers also demonstrate that at a low temperature of 0 °C, the battery achieves an energy density of up to 373.9 Wh kg^-1 and a charge/discharge cycle life of 1,375 hours, which corresponds to approximately two Martian months of continuous operation.

The battery’s charge and discharge processes involve the formation and decomposition of lithium carbonate, while trace amounts of oxygen and carbon monoxide in the Martian atmosphere act as reaction catalysts, significantly accelerating the carbon dioxide conversion kinetics.

The team maximized the effective reaction area of the Martian atmosphere through integrated electrode preparation and a folded cell structure design. By enlarging the cell size to 4 cm², they further enhanced the energy density of the pouch battery to 765 Wh kg^-1 and 630 Wh l^-1.

According to the researchers, this study offers a critical proof-of-concept for the application of Mars batteries in real Martian environments.

They aim to advance the development of solid-state Mars batteries in future research, addressing the challenges of electrolyte volatilization under low pressure, and supporting thermal and barometric management systems. This work lays a foundational step toward the development of multi-energy complementary systems for future space exploration.