Science

WASHINGTON — A SpaceX Crew Dragon spacecraft splashed down in the Gulf of Mexico May 2, returning four astronauts from a five-and-a-half-month stay on the International Space Station. The Crew Dragon spacecraft Resilience undocked from the station at 8:35 p.m. Eastern May 1. After departing the vicinity of the station and performing a 16-minute deborbit

King: Without an adequate N3C system ‘none of the rest of it works’ WASHINGTON — The U.S. nuclear command, control and communications system that serves as the link between U.S. nuclear forces and presidential authority could be vulnerable to cyber attacks and needs upgrades, Sen. Angus King told reporters May 1. King (I-Maine) is the

Physics in action: two people skipping stones on a picturesque lake in New Zealand. (Courtesy: Stewart Nimmo/CC BY-SA 4.0) The physics that allows spinning stones to skip across the surface of water has been thoroughly analysed by Jie Tang at Southwest Jiaotong University in China and colleagues. The team used theoretical models and simple experiments

Updated 1:55 p.m. Eastern with Nelson statement. WASHINGTON — Vice President Kamala Harris will put her “personal stamp” on the National Space Council as it takes on both existing and new priorities under the Biden administration. Senior administration officials, speaking on background in a call with reporters May 1, confirmed that the administration will retain

WASHINGTON — Raytheon received a $228 million contract to continue development of a ground system for Global Positioning System (GPS) satellites, the Space Force’s Space and Missile Systems Center announced April 30. The contract is for work on the operational control system for the newest version of GPS 3 satellites made by Lockheed Martin. The

[embedded content] Do not linger after using a public toilet is the advice from researchers at Florida Atlantic University (FAU), who have done a comprehensive study of how aerosols with the potential to carry disease are created and dispersed by flushing toilets and urinals. Siddhartha Verma and colleagues studied three scenarios – toilet flushing, covered

WASHINGTON — With four flights now complete, NASA’s Ingenuity Mars helicopter will transition from being strictly a technology demonstration to a test of its ability to work in cooperation with the Perseverance rover. Ingenuity performed its fourth flight April 30, staying aloft for 117 seconds. The helicopter flew to an altitude of 5 meters, then

WASHINGTON — Stratolaunch flew its giant aircraft for the first time in more than two years April 29, marking the start of a new test flight campaign to prepare the plane to serve as a platform for hypersonic vehicles. The aircraft, nicknamed Roc, took off from the Mojave Air and Space Port in California at

By: Hannah Pell The potential impact of a work of art is by no means limited by or related to its size. Whether an intricate mural spanning the side of a building or sculpture carved on the tip of a pencil, the art of all scales is significant and meaningful to us, and the principles

Proton dose distributions for a clinical four-beam plan, a four-beam shoot-through FLASH plan without the protective FLASH effect and the same shoot-through plan accounting for the protective FLASH effect outside the target. (Courtesy: Phys. Med. Biol. 10.1088/1361-6560/abe55a) For the shoot-through plan, the researchers assumed a hypothetical FLASH protective factor for normal tissues of 2. They

WASHINGTON — The Senate unanimously confirmed Bill Nelson to be NASA’s next administrator, wrapping up a whirlwind confirmation process that was vastly different from that experienced by his predecessor. The Senate confirmed Nelson’s nomination to be NASA administrator late April 29 via unanimous consent, a mechanism used for the expedited passage of bills and nominations

WASHINGTON — The chairman of the House space subcommittee says he is working to secure funding for NASA as part of what could be a multitrillion-dollar infrastructure package proposed by the White House. Speaking at a Washington Space Business Roundtable webinar April 28, Rep. Don Beyer (D-Va.), named earlier this year to lead the House

Photo of electric car charging station (Courtesy: iStock/Supersmario) Hybrid cars consume more fossil fuels and emit more carbon dioxide in the real world than they do in lab tests – partly because drivers are not using the cars’ electric side as much as they could, researchers in Germany have concluded. To address this, the researchers

NTS-3 will demonstrate technologies such as phased array antennas, flexible signals and reprogrammable payloads WASHINGTON — The Air Force Research Laboratory is planning a 2023 launch of the NTS-3 experimental satellite the U.S. military will use for positioning, navigation and timing. AFRL previously announced the launch would be in 2022 but the mission will slip

by Allison Kubo Hutchison Approximately 20 million years ago, prehistoric horses grazed on the flat grasslands and the now extinct bear-dog dug burrows for their young throughout the lands we now call Oregon and Washington. But below the ground, there was an eruption brewing that would shape over 81,000 square miles (200,000 square kilometers) reaching

WASHINGTON — The first lunar lander mission by Intuitive Machines, which had been scheduled for launch late this year, has been delayed to early 2022 by its launch provider, SpaceX. Intuitive Machines had planned to launch its Nova-C lander on the IM-1 mission in the fourth quarter of this year on a SpaceX Falcon 9,

Check mates: two chess pieces that were 3D printed with the new artificial ivory. The dark lines were added to more precisely mimic ivory. (Courtesy: Technical University of Vienna) Claimed to be highly realistic and elephant-friendly, a new alternative to ivory has been developed by researchers in Austria. Led by Jürgen Stampfl at the Vienna

WASHINGTON — Dynetics has joined Blue Origin in filing a protest of NASA’s selection of SpaceX for a single Human Landing System award, a move that could force the agency to suspend work on the program. In a statement April 27, Dynetics said it filed a protest of the HLS award with the Government Accountability