HELSINKI — A Chinese private launch company carried out a first low-altitude vertical takeoff, vertical land test late July. Deep Blue Aerospace fired up the Nebula-M VTVL test stage at a facility at Tongchuan, Shaanxi Province, reaching a height of almost 10 meters before briefly hovering and landing safely, the company announced Aug. 2. The
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ORLANDO — NASA Administrator Bill Nelson says he remains confident that Congress will provide NASA with additional funding so it can select a second lunar lander developer but declined to comment on Blue Origin’s proposal to lower its costs to enable a contract. Speaking at a press conference at the Kennedy Space Center July 29
Weathered rock: columnar basalt at Cape Stolbchaty in Russia. The volcanic rock could be used to soak-up carbon dioxide from the atmosphere. (Courtesy: Ekaterina Vasyagina/CC BY-SA 4.0) Sprinkling powered basalt over natural ecosystems would remove vast amounts of carbon dioxide from the Earth’s atmosphere while also improving soils. That’s the finding of a new study
WASHINGTON — The Senate confirmed the White House’s nominee to be chief financial officer of NASA July 30, rounding out the senior leadership positions at the agency. The Senate, on a voice vote late in the day, confirmed Margaret Vo Schaus to be the agency’s CFO. The White House nominated her for the position April
RSA won an SBIR contract funded by the Space Force to design a spacecraft with a solar-thermal propulsion system. WASHINGTON — A startup under contract to the U.S. Space Force is investigating the use of solar-powered vehicles for operations in deep space beyond Earth orbit. As the Space Force plans possible missions in cislunar space
Neutron clustering measurements at the Walthousen Reactor Critical Facility at Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute in Schenectady, NY. Credit: Los Alamos National Laboratory The first ever live “snapshot” of an operating nuclear reactor has revealed a surprise: the neutrons in the reactor tend to cluster rather than spreading evenly. The observations, which were made by researchers in
ORLANDO — An Ariane 5 successfully launched two commercial communications satellites July 30 in the first flight of the rocket in nearly a year, and the first of two missions before it launches a NASA space telescope. The Ariane 5 lifted off at 5 p.m. Eastern time from the spaceport in Kourou, French Guiana. The
ORLANDO — The U.S. Government Accountability Office denied protests July 30 that Blue Origin and Dynetics filed of NASA’s award of a single lunar lander contract to SpaceX. In a statement, the GAO said that NASA did not violate procurement law when it decided to make a single Human Landing System (HLS) award to SpaceX
[embedded content] Fancy doing a PhD in physics while training for the Olympics? I can’t imagine how much hard work and commitment is involved, but the Irish runner Louise Shanahan knows. She is doing a PhD in atomic, mesoscopic and optical physics and competed today in the 800 m race in Tokyo. Sadly, Shanahan was
ORLANDO — A Russian module that docked to the International Space Station July 29 started firing its thrusters hours later, briefly knocking the station out of its normal attitude and forcing NASA to delay a commercial crew test flight that was scheduled to launch July 30. The Multipurpose Laboratory Module (MLM), or Nauka, docked with
Over the past 25 years Plumb served in various positions at the White House, the Pentagon and the U.S. Senate WASHINGTON — President Biden has nominated John Plumb to be assistant secretary of defense for space policy, a White House spokesman said July 29. Plumb currently is the chief of government relations at the Aerospace
WASHINGTON — Rocket Lab returned its Electron rocket to flight July 29 with the successful launch of an experimental satellite for the U.S. Space Force. The Electron lifted off from the company’s Launch Complex 1 in New Zealand at 2 a.m. Eastern. The rocket’s two stages performed normally and, after a coast phase, the vehicle’s
TAMPA, Fla. — Scottish startup R3-IoT is expanding to North America after raising early funds for connecting sensors and devices with satellite-enabled solutions. The $4.3 million seed funding led by venture capital firm Space Capital puts R3-IoT on track to launch commercial services in November. R3-IoT’s gateways link up with nearby sensors and devices, using
Join the audience for a live webinar at 3 p.m. BST/10 a.m. EDT on 18 August 2021 to explore the Augustyn Research Group’s investigation of the mechanistic understanding of water-mediated ion intercalation in transition metal oxides Want to take part in this webinar? Understanding host–guest interactions of layered inorganic solids ushered in the modern era
WASHINGTON — Isar Aerospace, a German small launch vehicle company, has raised an additional $75 million that will allow the company to expand its manufacturing and launch capabilities. The company announced July 29 that it added $75 million to a Series B round it raised in December 2020. The new funding brings the size of
Lawmakers are concerned about the infrastructure at Cape Canaveral and Vandenberg Space Force Base WASHINGTON — The House Armed Services Committee’s subcommittee on strategic forces in its markup of the 2022 National Defense Authorization Act raises concerns about the state of the U.S. space launch infrastructure and questions DoD’s procurement of commercial space data. The
New materials strategy produces the lowest thermal conductivity reported in an inorganic material. Courtesy: University of Liverpool A new inorganic material with the lowest thermal conductivity ever reported could be a boon to technologies that convert waste heat into power. The material, which conducts heat almost as poorly as air, was designed and synthesized in