Science

WASHINGTON — The United Arab Emirates doubled the size of its astronaut corps April 10 with the selection of two new astronauts, including the first woman, who will train at NASA starting later this year. The UAE government announced it picked Nora AlMatrooshi and Mohammad AlMulla from a pool of 4,305 applicants to join the

Ionic progress: artistic conception of a quantum computer. (Courtesy: iStock/Devrimb) A quantum charged coupled device – a type of trapped-ion quantum computer first proposed 20 years ago – has finally been fully realized by researchers at Honeywell in the US. Other researchers in the field believe the design, which offers notable advantages over other quantum computing

Global Trends 2040 predicts governments will routinely conduct on-orbit servicing, assembly and manufacturing activities WASHINGTON — The Office of the Director of National Intelligence in a new report released April 8 projects that by 2040 China will be the most significant rival to the United States in space, competing on commercial, civil and military fronts.

WASHINGTON — A Soyuz spacecraft carrying two Russian cosmonauts and one American astronaut arrived at the International Space Station April 9, a few hours after its launch from Kazakhstan. A Soyuz-2.1a rocket lifted off from the Baikonur Cosmodrome at 3:42 a.m. Eastern, placing the Soyuz MS-18 spacecraft into orbit. That spacecraft docked with the station’s

An optomechanical accelerometer that uses light to measure acceleration. Credit: F Zhou/NIST An accelerometer that uses laser light instead of just mechanical strain can register changes as small as tens of billionths of the acceleration due to Earth’s gravity, making it far more sensitive than commercial devices. With further improvements, the developers of the new

WASHINGTON — NASA announced April 10 it was postponing the first flight attempt of the Ingenuity helicopter on Mars by at least three days after detecting a problem during a final pre-flight test. In a brief statement, NASA said that the command sequence for an April 9 test of the vehicle’s rotors, where they would

General Atomics’ Christina Back: Nuclear thermal propulsion “will enable spacecraft to travel immense distances quickly” WASHINGTON — The Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency awarded a $22 million contract to General Atomics to design a small nuclear reactor for space propulsion, the agency announced April 9. General Atomics, based in San Diego, California, was selected for

Sweet water: deuterium oxide tastes sweet to humans. (Courtesy: Roger McLassus/CC BY-SA 3.0) Have you ever wondered what heavy water tastes like? Indeed, you may be tempted to taste deuterium oxide and find out for yourself. That is what the chemistry Nobel laureate Harold Urey and a colleague did in 1935, reporting that the taste

Boeing HorizonX Ventures backed El Segundo, California-based Morf3D in 2018 and again in 2019 SEOUL, South Korea — Japanese camera maker Nikon has acquired a controlling stake in U.S. startup Morf3D, an aerospace supplier that has produced 3D-printed metallic flight hardware for Boeing satellites and helicopters. The deal gives Tokyo-based Nikon a foothold in the

WASHINGTON — The White House released a first look at its budget proposal for fiscal year 2022 that includes an increase in funding for NASA, particularly Earth science and space technology programs. The 58-page budget document, released April 9, outlines the Biden administration discretionary spending priorities. It provides only high-level details, though, with a full

By Allison Kubo New research published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences shows that in the last 1.1 Ma the Greenland Ice sheet melted at least once and reformed. The team found fossilized plants buried under 1 million years of snow based on the Camp Century Ice Core. The long core samples

This episode of the Physics World Weekly podcast looks at how new technologies can improve our health and how we perceive our surroundings. First up is Kostas Kostarelos of the UK’s University of Manchester, who talks about the exciting role that graphene can play in the development of medical devices that connect to the brain

WASHINGTON — The new chief executive of OneWeb says the company is still pursuing some kind of navigation capability for its broadband satellite constellation, although a full-fledged service may have to wait until a second-generation system. Neil Masterson, a former executive with Thomson Reuters who was named chief executive of OneWeb when it emerged from

Lieu: “Space is one of those areas where the U.S. is simply going to have to invest more because our competitors are gaining in space.” WASHINGTON — Congressman Ted Lieu (D-Calif.) hailed the April 8 announcement that Los Angeles Air Force Base will be the permanent home of the U.S. Space Force procurement command.  “I’m

Randomness is key to many applications, including cryptography. (Courtesy: Shutterstock/Maksim Kabakou) Researchers at Japan’s Nippon Telegraph and Telephone Corporation (NTT) have built a quantum random number generator (QRNG) that delivers random bits periodically with high speed and is robust against noise that would otherwise compromise the bits’ security. Where previous QRNGs needed to run for

ULA is still betting on long-endurance upper stages and believes the technology has a bright future.  WASHINGTON — When United Launch Alliance started to develop its new Vulcan rocket, it envisioned using a new upper stage called ACES, short for advanced cryogenic evolved stage. ULA’s president and CEO Tory Bruno described it in 2018 as

The key is developing a 10-ton lander The triumphant landing of the Perseverance rover has inspired all Americans, and indeed much of the world. President Biden should follow it up by launching the program to send humans to Mars. While robotic rovers are wonderful, they cannot resolve the fundamental scientific questions that Mars poses to

By: Hannah Pell On 29 March 2021, the Biden administration announced another ambitious clean energy goal: deploy 30 gigawatts of offshore wind by 2030. According to the Office of Energy Efficiency and Renewable Energy, the U.S. offshore wind capacity was 28,521 megawatts (or 28.5 gigawatts) in 2019. Deploying an additional 30 gigawatts over a decade