Science

SAN FRANCISCO – NASA continues to face difficulties in sending some of its payloads to orbit as hosted payloads on commercial satellites. The space agency is looking for a geostationary commercial satellite to house the Geostationary Carbon Cycle Observatory or GeoCARB, an instrument to measure carbon dioxide, carbon monoxide and methane over North and South

A quantum probe for gravity: Physicists have detected a tiny phase shift in atomic wave packets due to gravity-induced relativistic time dilation – an example of the Aharonov-Bohm effect in action. (Courtesy: Shutterstock/Evgenia Fux) The idea that particles can feel the influence of potentials even without being exposed to a force field may seem counterintuitive,

The FTC opposes the merger due to antitrust concerns WASHINGTON — Lockheed Martin’s proposed $4.4 billion acquisition of rocket engine manufacturer Aerojet Rocketdyne is likely to be blocked by the Federal Trade Commission, Aerojet said in a news release Jan. 25.  Lockheed Martin in December 2020 announced its intent to acquire Aerojet but the acquisition

TOKYO — The launch of Japan’s new workhorse H3 rocket has been postponed again as engineers continue to wrestle with engine problems first uncovered in 2020 during qualification testing. After spending most of 2020 and all of 2021 struggling with the expendable H3’s novel LE-9 main engine, officials with the Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency (JAXA)

Chiral characterization: Upon illumination with red light, semiconductor nanohelices generate twisted blue light. (Courtesy: Ventsislav Valev, Kylian Valev and Lukas Ohnoutek) Researchers in the UK and the US have discovered a novel photonic effect that could make it far easier for chemists to assess the chirality of new drug candidates. Led by Ventsislav Valev at

WASHINGTON — A proposal by the National Transportation Safety Board (NTSB) that would give the agency a greater role in investigating failures of commercial launches is facing strong opposition from both the industry and the Federal Aviation Administration. The NTSB issued a notice of proposed rulemaking, or NPRM, in November regarding commercial space investigations. The

WASHINGTON — After missing its initial launch window in 2020 in part because of the pandemic, the European Space Agency’s ExoMars mission is on schedule for a launch in September. ESA said Jan. 18 preparations for the mission, which will land a rover named Rosalind Franklin on the surface of Mars, are on track for

Snapshots from depth-resolved movies at progressively increasing scene depths. (Courtesy: Daan Stellinga) A new three-dimensional imaging system uses multimode optical fibres (MMFs) rather than traditional bulk optics, paving the way for applications in medical imaging. The system can scan a scene at a rate of nearly 23 000 points per second over depths of up to

Satellites in space harvesting sunlight and turning solar energy into usable power for applications on Earth is an idea that has been studied for decades. But even though the United States was a pioneer in this technology, government interest in taking it from the lab to orbit has been tepid at best. The U.S. military

The Northrop Grumman-made satellites, named GSSAP-5 and GSSAP-6, are part of the Geosynchronous Space Situational Awareness Program WASHINGTON — In its first mission of 2022, a United Launch Alliance Atlas 5 rocket on Jan. 21 launched a pair of space-monitoring satellites for the U.S. Space Force.  The rocket lifted off at 2:00 p.m. Eastern from

An artistic depiction of both works. In the background: spin liquids. (Courtesy: Google Quantum AI) Physicists have measured long-range quantum entanglement in special, topologically ordered phases of matter for the first time. This feat, which was achieved independently by two research groups using coupled superconducting circuits and arrays of atoms, could aid the development of

TAMPA, Fla. — Spanish-German startup Plus Ultra Space Outposts plans to deploy the bulk of its proposed lunar communications and navigation constellation with ispace, the Japanese lunar transportation venture selling accommodations on its moon-bound landers. Plus Ultra and ispace announced a collaboration agreement Jan. 20 that includes the transport and deployment of Plus Ultra’s Harmony

TAMPA, Fla. — Space Norway has restored communications on an undersea fiber-optic cable it operates between its Svalbard satellite station and mainland Norway, which had left the Arctic region without a backup connection after failing Jan. 7. A shunt failure caused a loss of power to signal repeaters on one of two cables that connect

Nose for water: the camel inspired humidity sensor. (Courtesy: Weiguo Huang and Jian Song) Camels are adapted for life in arid environments and are therefore very good at finding sources of drinking water. Now, Weiguo Huang at the Fujian Institute of Research on the Structure of Matter, Chinese Academy of Sciences and colleagues have developed

WASHINGTON — NASA has hired a new company to provide engineering support for an inflatable module on the International Space Station originally built and managed by Bigelow Aerospace. In a Jan. 18 procurement filing, NASA announced it awarded a $250,000 contract to ATA Engineering of San Diego, California, to provide engineering support services for the

WASHINGTON — The head of the European Space Agency says he hopes an upcoming space summit provides a political endorsement for major European space initiatives, including a human space exploration program. At a Jan. 18 press conference to discuss his agency’s plans for the year, ESA Director General Josef Aschbacher said a Feb. 16 space

Everyone knows that the World Wide Web was invented at CERN in Switzerland, but the technology really began to take off when it reached the Stanford Linear Accelerator Center (SLAC) in California’s Silicon Valley. In this episode of the Physics World Weekly podcast, the physicist and writer Michael Riordan explains how today’s Web was forged

SAN FRANCISCO — Mission Space, a Latvian startup focused on space weather monitoring, announced an agreement Jan. 20 to launch a set of high energy particle detectors later this year on a cubesat manufactured by Bulgarian startup EnduroSat. “We tested our detectors in the stratosphere last year,” Ksenia Moskalenko, Mission Space CEO and co-founder, told