Blue sky thinking: the new solar device is said to be very good at both electricity generation and desalination. (Courtesy: iStock/ELyrae) A device that can generate electricity while desalinating seawater has been developed by researchers in Saudi Arabia and China, who claim that their new system is highly efficient at performing both tasks. The device
Science
HELSINKI — China plans to use a new super heavy-lift rocket currently under development to construct a massive space-based solar power station in geostationary orbit. Numerous launches of the upcoming Long March 9 rocket would be used to construct space-based solar power facilities 35,786 kilometers above the Earth, according to Long Lehao, chief designer of
The U.S. Space Force is eager to tap into the vibrant commercial market for space services enabled by increasingly capable small satellites and cheaper access to orbit. Commercial services of particular interest to the military include imagery, analytics, weather data and broadband from low-Earth orbit constellations. “It’s really crucial that we figure out how to
HELSINKI — China has released landing process footage from its Zhurong rover as well as video and sounds of the vehicle roving on Mars. Footage of the entry, descent and landing shows deployment of a supersonic disk-gap-band parachute, separation of the backshell, followed by powered descent, a hazard-avoidance hover phase, and landing. The China National
WASHINGTON — SpaceX President Gwynne Shotwell says the company is “shooting for July” for the first orbital launch of the company’s Starship vehicle despite lacking the regulatory approvals needed for such a launch. Speaking at the National Space Society’s International Space Development Conference (ISDC) June 25, Shotwell said the company was pressing ahead with plans
SAN FRANCISCO – The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration announced plans June 25 to move its geostationary weather satellite scheduled to launch in December into an operational role “as soon as possible.” NOAA’s Geostationary Operational Environmental Satellite, GOES-T, will replace the GOES-17 satellite in the GOES West position because of problems with the satellite’s main
International space law and the treaty regime have remained largely theoretical constructs for most of the Space Age. While great for moot-court exercises or the occasional congressional hearing on treaty obligations, their real-world applications were scarce. Yet those of us who have practiced commercial space law have long warned that a time would come when
How it works: electrons accelerated by a laser pulse (left) are used to drive the second-stage particle accelerator (right). (Courtesy: Thomas Heinemann/Strathclyde and Alberto Martinez de la Ossa/DESY) Laser wakefield acceleration and plasma wakefield acceleration have the potential to boost the energy of particle accelerators, but implementing the techniques is challenging. Now, an international team
WASHINGTON — The Federal Aviation Administration has granted permission to Virgin Galactic to fly customers, and not just employees, on its SpaceShipTwo suborbital vehicle, a move that could allow the company’s founder to fly to the edge of space soon. Virgin Galactic announced June 25 that the FAA’s Office of Commercial Space Transportation had updated
WASHINGTON — With the Ingenuity helicopter continuing to demonstrate its abilities on Mars, NASA engineers are examining concepts for larger, more capable rotorcraft that could be flown on future missions. Ingenuity performed its eighth flight on Mars June 21, traveling 160 meters and landing at a new site 133.5 meters from the Perseverance rover. The
Photoluminescent lead-exchanged zeolites with different Pb loadings under UV illumination. (Courtesy: Journal of Physics: Photonics) Researchers in Mexico have used zeolites – porous aluminosilicate minerals widely used in water purification – to detect toxic lead in water for the first time. The team’s new one-step technique, which can rapidly detect lead concentrations as low as
WASHINGTON — Masten Space Systems is pushing back the launch of its first lunar lander mission by nearly a year, the latest in a series of delays by companies with NASA contracts to transport payloads to the moon. Masten said June 23 that its Masten Mission 1 lander, which had been scheduled to launch in
Col. Eric Felt: ‘Operating spacecraft beyond geosynchronous Earth orbit poses unique challenges’ WASHINGTON — A new report published by the Air Force Research Laboratory suggests the U.S. Space Force has to prepare for a day when the moon and the volume of space around it could become the next military frontier. “A Primer on Cislunar
Earth observation: this imagined view is of the Earth and Sun from thousands of kilometres above our planet. Stars that enter and exit a position where they can see Earth as a transiting planet around the Sun are brightened. (Courtesy: OpenSpace/American Museum of Natural History) Over the past 25 years astronomers have observed thousands exoplanets
SDA’s experiments were done in collaboration with the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency and the Air Force Research Laboratory WASHINGTON — The U.S. Space Development Agency has five satellites riding on SpaceX’s Transporter-2 rideshare mission scheduled to launch June 25. “There’s nothing in the space business that gets your blood pumping like the idea of
WASHINGTON — The Space Development Agency is looking to work with commercial operators of imaging satellites so they can send data directly to U.S. government satellites in orbit, the agency’s director Derek Tournear said June 22. The idea is to make it easier for Earth observation satellite operators to sell their data to the government
Active matter: this microscope image shows part of a cluster of self-propelled particles, colour-coded according to their distance from the centre. (Courtesy: Jie Zhang, Ricard Alert, Jing Yan, Ned S Wingreen and Steve Granick) A new kind of phase separation that occurs when self-propelled particles are subject to torque has been discovered by researchers in
WASHINGTON — Dust accumulation on the solar panels of NASA’s InSight Mars lander is reducing the power to the spacecraft and could force the mission to end within a year. At a June 21 meeting of NASA’s Mars Exploration Program Analysis Group, Bruce Banerdt, principal investigator for the InSight mission at NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory,