Science

SAN FRANCISCO – Six months after unveiling its next generation Pelican satellite constellation, Planet shared details April 21 on the 32-satellite constellation designed to offer higher resolution Earth imagery with more frequently updates than the San Francisco company’s SkySat constellation. “As you get more operational with your customers, they want more capacity and they want

South Korea’s KPLO lunar orbiter, shownbeing lifted off the floor by its mounting ring,is slated to launch in August on a SpaceXFalcon 9 rocket. Credit: KARI SEOUL, South Korea — South Korea is boosting its space spending this year by 19% over 2021 levels as it seeks to bounce back from October’s failed attempt to

Taken from the April 2022 issue of Physics World, where it appeared under the headline “Letting demons do the teaching”. Members of the Institute of Physics can enjoy the full issue via the Physics World app. Smart and rebellious, demons have a long and rich history in both science and culture. Robert P Crease explains

VICTORIA, British Columbia — Canada’s military will establish a new space division later this year as it further develops its capabilities and skills for space operations. Royal Canadian Air Force Brig. Gen. Michael Adamson is the services’s director general for space. Credit: Royal Canadian Air Force Royal Canadian Air Force Brig. Gen. Michael Adamson, the services’s

WASHINGTON — A study outlining priorities in planetary science for the next decade backs continued efforts to return samples from Mars while recommending NASA pursue missions to the planet Uranus and an icy moon of Saturn. The final report of the planetary science decadal survey, developed by a committee of the National Academies and released

Ice world: a mission to search for life on Saturn’s moon Enceladus has been deemed high priority by the US planetary science community (Courtesy: NASA/JPL/Space Science Institute) NASA should send a probe to Uranus within the coming decade as well as develop a craft to see if Saturn’s icy moon Enceladus harbours life in its

TAMPA, Fla. — Cloud computing startup Lonestar said April 19 it has contracted commercial lunar lander developer Intuitive Machines to deploy a mini proof-of-concept data center on the moon next year.  The hardback novel-sized “data center in a box” is part of a series of increasingly larger payloads that Lonestar plans to install for data

WASHINGTON — NASA managers said a rollback of the Space Launch System from its launch pad after three truncated countdown tests will allow them to address issues both at the pad and with the vehicle, but that it was too early to predict what it would do to the schedule for the vehicle’s first launch.

Sounds good: machine learning could soon be used to create better hearing aids. (Shutterstock/FusionMS) Machine learning algorithms could one day be used to improve speech recognition in hearing-impaired people, researchers in Germany have shown. Using a novel algorithm, Jana Roßbach and colleagues at Carl von Ossietzky University could accurately predict when people with both normal

2022 continues to be a year full of uncertainty, with events in Ukraine creating global instability and considerable uncertainty within European nations. This will no doubt cast a long shadow over the year ahead. But alongside supporting our Eastern European neighbors as they go through a tragic conflict, 2022 is a landmark year for the

Langster will fill a new post at the office of the assistant secretary of defense for space policy WASHINGTON – Travis Langster, vice president and general manager of COMSPOC, will be leaving the company to join the Defense Department as principal director of DoD space policy. COMSPOC,  previously known as the Commercial Space Operations Center,

Dedicated to showcasing the latest innovations in all types of optical technologies, LASER World of PHOTONICS will feature more than 800 suppliers of both industrial systems and scientific equipment New innovations: Read on to find out more about some of the companies and product innovations that will be featured at LASER World of PHOTONICS. (Courtesy:

NROL-85 was the 148th launch of the Falcon 9 and the rocket’s 14th mission of 2022 WASHINGTON — A SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket launched a U.S. National Reconnaissance Office spy satellite into orbit April 17 from Vandenberg Space Force Base, California.  The payload, designated NROL-85, was the agency’s second mission of the year and the

WASHINGTON — NASA says it could attempt another countdown rehearsal of the Space Launch System as soon as April 21 depending on how quickly they can fix a hydrogen leak that stopped the previous test. At an April 15 briefing, SLS managers said they were beginning work to track down the source of the leak

In this episode of the Physics World Weekly podcast, four physicists at the University of Birmingham explain how they used two clouds of ultracold atoms as a portable gravity sensor. Their device was able to locate a small tunnel on the university campus and can be used outdoors – and impressive feat because the atoms

As NASA pushes forward to get humans back on the moon, questions have emerged on what this means for the Space Force and what role it might play in lunar activities. If successful, NASA’s return to the moon will lead to a permanent presence there and lay the groundwork for scientific research and commercial development.

WASHINGTON — NASA says it’s gearing up for a rapid-fire series of events on the International Space Station that includes the return of a private astronaut mission and the launch of a new long-duration crew of American and European astronauts. NASA announced April 15 that Axiom Space’s Ax-1 mission to the station, which launched April

Sticky stuff: pasta noodles are shown fixed at the top and hanging vertically after cooling. They stick near the bottom. The stick length, which can be measured by a ruler, is directly correlated to how much the pasta is cooked. (Courtesy: Jonghyun Ha, Jonghyun Hwang, and Sam Tawfick) For some reason physicists love pasta –