Science

ORLANDO, Fla. — Virgin Orbit placed seven cubesats for three customers into orbit Jan. 13 on the third consecutive successful operational flight of its LauncherOne air-launch system. Cosmic Girl, the Boeing 747 aircraft that serves as the launch platform for LauncherOne, took off from the Mojave Air and Space Port in California at 4:39 p.m.

ORLANDO, Fla. — NASA officials are holding out hope that the first Space Launch System launch can still take place as soon as March despite a delay in the rollout of the vehicle for a key test until mid-February. In an update on preparations for the Artemis 1 mission published Jan. 5, NASA said it

ORLANDO, Fla. — NASA is starting to implement recommendations of the astrophysics decadal survey by announcing plans for a new line of missions and laying the groundwork for future large space telescopes. During an online town hall meeting Jan. 11, originally intended to take place at the American Astronomical Society conference before that meeting was

Taken from the January 2022 issue of Physics World. Members of the Institute of Physics can enjoy the full issue via the Physics World app. Thirty years after the World Wide Web first expanded from Europe to North America, Michael Riordan reveals how physicists and programmers played important roles in shaping the current wave of

TAMPA, Fla. — Intelsat has ordered two software-defined satellites from Thales Alenia Space as the operator edges closer to emerging from bankruptcy. The Intelsat 41 (IS-41) and Intelsat 44 (IS-44) satellites, scheduled to enter service in 2025, will be based on Thales Alenia Space’s Space Inspire platform. They will join two other satellites that Intelsat

WASHINGTON — Astroscale U.S., a provider of on-orbit services to extend the life of satellites, has signed an agreement to use Orbit Fab’s in-space refueling tankers, the companies announced Jan. 11. Orbit Fab, a startup offering “gas stations in space,” will refuel Astroscale’s geostationary satellite servicing spacecraft known as LEXI, short for Life Extension In-Orbit.

Real and imaginary: the time-dependent Schrödinger equation formulated using complex numbers. (Courtesy: iStock/piranka) Complex numbers are essential to achieve the most accurate quantum-mechanical description of nature, according to experiments done by two independent teams of physicists. Both studies were inspired by the Bell’s inequality test of quantum theory and suggest that complex numbers are more

ORLANDO, Fla. — The Space Force lacks spare parts for much of the equipment needed to support launches from the Eastern and Western Ranges, an issue that could loom larger as launch activities at both spaceports increase. A report released by the Department of Defense Office of Inspector General Jan. 7 found that the Eastern

TAMPA, Fla. — SpaceX has dropped a plan to use Falcon 9 to launch the 30,000 satellites in its proposed second-generation Starlink broadband constellation, and is instead focusing on a configuration leveraging its upcoming Starship vehicle. The decision follows development progress that SpaceX said exceeded the company’s expectations and means it could start “launching the

Leidenfrost expert: Felipe Pacheco-Vázquez in his lab at the Autonomous University of Puebla. (Courtesy: BUAP) A new type of Leidenfrost effect that causes droplets of different liquids to bounce off each other when placed on a hot surface has been discovered by researchers in Mexico and France. Led by Felipe Pacheco-Vázquez at the Autonomous University

WASHINGTON — The White House’s decision to extend operations of the International Space Station through the end of the decade is a “trigger” for other partners to make their own plans to continue participation in the station. NASA announced Dec. 31 that the Biden administration agreed to continue operations of the ISS to 2030. Federal

WASHINGTON — What mix of satellites will be needed to meet rising demand for connectivity and make systems resilient to cyber attacks will be the subject of a deep-dive study by the U.S. Space Force. The work will be done by the Space Warfighting Analysis Center, or SWAC, a new organization created to design the

Charges are accelerated away from each other by the fluctuating electric field from a terahertz laser. Courtesy: Brian Long) Researchers at the University of California at Santa Barbara in the US have reconstructed a representation of the electron’s wave nature – its Bloch wavefunction – in a laboratory experiment for the first time. The work

WASHINGTON — After setting a record for launch activity in 2021, SpaceX started 2022 with the Falcon 9 launch of a set of Starlink satellites Jan. 6. The Falcon 9 lifted off from Launch Complex 39A at the Kennedy Space Center in Florida at 4:49 p.m. Eastern on a mission designated Starlink 4-5 by SpaceX.

WASHINGTON — The primary mirror of NASA’s James Webb Space Telescope unfolded into place Jan. 8, completing the major steps in the post-launch deployment of the giant observatory. Controllers issued commands to deploy an assembly called the starboard primary mirror wing, containing 3 of the 18 segments of the primary mirror. The wing was folded

The two-dimensional crystal on top of the microscopically small wire. (Courtesy: Florian Dirnberger) Using a technique known as strain engineering, researchers in the US and Germany have constructed an “excitonic wire” – a one-dimensional channel through which electron-hole pairs (excitons) can flow in a two-dimensional semiconductor like water through a pipe. The work could aid

WASHINGTON — After its most active year in two decades capped by the launch of the James Webb Space Telescope for NASA, Arianespace is heading into a period of transition in 2022 marked by the introduction of new vehicles and a changing mix of customers. At a press briefing Jan. 6, Stéphane Israël, chief executive