Science

By: Hannah Pell The Starting Line As I write this, twenty cars are sitting at the starting line of the Formula One (F1) 70th Anniversary Grand Prix at Silverstone based in the UK. The drivers have just finished their formation lap, and the $10 million engines are idling at roughly 5000 rpm (for comparison, the

HELSINKI — China launched an experimental reusable spacecraft Friday following months of low-key preparations at the Jiuquan Satellite Launch Center. A Long March 2F launch vehicle delivered the spacecraft into orbit following launch at an unspecified time.  Chinese state media Xinhua reported mission success just under three hours after the opening of the launch window

Freezing test. Credit: Nguyen Ba Duc Researchers in Vietnam have developed a transparent nanostructure with anti-icing properties that could keep objects such as aircraft wings and wind turbines ice-free in cold, damp conditions. The material, which is inspired by the structure of moth eyes, consists of a quartz substrate coated with a monolayer of nano-sized

New CSIS report looks at three key governance issues: orbital debris mitigation, rendezvous and proximity operations, and insurance requirements WASHINGTON — Commercial and government activities in space keep growing and yet nations are making little progress in establishing rules and norms of behavior, says the Center for Strategic and International Studies in a new report

WASHINGTON — European launch provider Arianespace conducted a successful return-to-flight mission of Vega, its light-lift rocket, on Sept. 2, completing the vehicle’s first launch in 14 months.  Vega lifted off from the Guiana Space Center in Kourou, French Guiana, at 9:51 p.m. Eastern, carrying 53 satellites to low Earth orbit in the debut of Arianespace’s

Biggest yet: illustration of the gravitational waves given off by the pair of black holes just before they merged. (Courtesy: MIT) Gravitational waves from the most massive merger of two black holes ever seen have been detected by the LIGO–Virgo observatories. Dubbed GW190521, the event was spotted in May 2019 and involves the creation of

WASHINGTON — Newcomer satellite operator MonacoSat is close to ordering its second geostationary communications satellite, and could complete the process by year’s end, its chief executive said Tuesday.  “You cannot stop with one satellite, so now we are developing the new satellite,” Ilhami Aygün, CEO of MonacoSat, said during a Sept. 1 webinar for the

New research by the University of Oregon and partners at the United States Geologic Survey reveals the landscape dotted with 2835 volcanoes from Northern California to the border of Washington. This area is a center for volcanic activity due to the subducting Juan De Fuca plate which produces melt that rises up through the crust

The 2,400 Air Force space operators who are transferring to the Space Force are spread across 175 locations around the world WASHINGTON — The U.S. Space Force in the coming weeks will add more than 2,400 new members who agreed to leave the Air Force and volunteered to join the space service. With restrictions on

Three in one: photograph of a blue whirl flame. (Courtesy: University of Maryland) “Blue whirls” are small, spinning flames that were first spotted in 2016. Now computer simulations suggest that this soot-free mode of combustion involves three different flames. Joseph Chung, Xiao Zhang, Carolyn Kaplan and Elaine Oran at the University of Maryland came to this

DoD report: China intends to pursue ASAT weapons despite its rhetoric against the militarization of space. WASHINGTON — China is progressing with the development of missiles and electronic weapons that could target satellites in low and high orbits, the Pentagon says in a new report released Sept. 1. China already has operational ground-based missiles that

Lockheed Martin received a $187.5 million contract and York Space Systems a $94 million contract for the Space Development Agency’s Transport Layer Tranche 0. WASHINGTON — The Pentagon’s space agency on Aug. 31 announced the first major contract awards for a network of satellites in low Earth orbit that will talk to each other and

Deep qubits: practical quantum computers based on superconducting technologies may have to be located underground to protect against decoherence by ionizing radiation. (Courtesy: iStock/Devrimb) Such is their sensitivity to environmental noise, quantum computers might in future be shielded by thick layers of lead and even operated deep underground. So say physicists in the US, who

ULA statement: “Initial indications were with a ground system, and we are working to confirm the exact cause.” WASHINGTON — United Launch Alliance has not yet confirmed exactly what caused a dramatic abort of a Delta 4 Heavy launch just three seconds before liftoff on Aug. 29. “We are in the middle of conducting a

Neutrino events from a supernova were first captured in 1987, when a star in the Large Magellanic Cloud exploded, seen here in a wide-field image from Hubble. Credits: NASA/STScI By Korena Di Roma Howley For a particle with no charge and nearly no mass, the neutrino gets a lot of scientific press—and it’s no wonder

WASHINGTON — Rocket Lab successfully launched a radar imaging satellite for Capella Space Aug. 30 in the first flight of its Electron rocket since a failure nearly two months earlier. The Electron lifted off from the company’s Launch Complex 1 in New Zealand at 11:05 p.m. Eastern. It deployed its payload, the Sequoia radar imaging

Electrical current in graphene shows fluid-like flow. Courtesy: Walsworth and Yacoby research groups, Harvard and University of Maryland A team led by researchers from Harvard University and the University of Maryland in the US has used defects in diamond to map the magnetic field generated by electrical currents in graphene. Their experiments reveal that currents

Congress in the 2020 National Defense Authorization Act requires an annual update on the $150 million Space C2 program. WASHINGTON — Space-monitoring software apps used by U.S. military are now being updated every 90 days, says a new report delivered to Congress Aug. 21. The apps are developed under a program known as Space C2,