WASHINGTON — NASA’s Mars 2020 spacecraft is operating “perfectly” ahead of its Feb. 18 landing on Mars that will be a key milestone for the agency’s future Mars exploration plans. The spacecraft is scheduled to land the rover Perseverance on the surface of Jezero Crater on Mars at about 3:55 p.m. Eastern Feb. 18. That
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We could be on the cusp of the greatest single expansion of our known chemical universe in history. That’s thanks to a new accelerator in Michigan is going to double the number of known isotopes. This short video introduces the $750m Facility for Rare Isotope Beams (FRIB), which will come online at Michigan State University in
Northrop Grumman’s CEO Kathy Warden said GBSD is fueling the growth of the company’s space business. WASHINGTON — Northrop Grumman’s design of a new intercontinental ballistic missile for the U.S. Air Force passed its first review, the company announced Feb. 16. The review took place in November, two months after the Air Force awarded Northrop
WASHINGTON — SpaceX launched another set of Falcon 9 satellites Feb. 15, but suffered a rare failed landing of the rocket’s first stage during the mission. The Falcon 9 lifted off from Space Launch Complex 40 at Cape Canaveral Space Force Station at 10:59 p.m. Eastern, after unfavorable weather conditions caused a one-day delay. The
Parity violation pioneer: Chien-Shiung Wu is featured on a US stamp. (Courtesy: USPS) The US Postal Service (USPS) has issued a commemorative stamp honouring the Chinese-American physicist Chien-Shiung Wu. The 1957 Nobel Prize for Physics was shared by Chen Ning Yang and Tsung-Dao Lee “for their penetrating investigation of the so-called parity laws which has
Jim McClelland: “I give a lot of credit to the cubesat guys.” WASHINGTON — Technological advances in small satellites are helping improve spacecraft designs and pushing the industry to take more risks, Jim McClelland, vice president of mission architecture at Maxar Technologies, said Feb. 10 at the SmallSat Symposium. “It’s been a very exciting transformation
SAN FRANCISCO – Intelsat SA announced a reorganization plan Feb. 12 to reduce the Luxembourg-based communications satellite fleet operator’s debt from nearly $15 billion to $7 billion. Creditors responsible for approximately $3.8 billion of Intelsat’s debt have approved Intelsat’s plan and the company is seeking approval from additional creditors, according to a Plan of Reorganization
A new generation of CMOS image sensors now rivals the performance of state-of-the-art photon detectors for optical telescopes, while also operating at higher speeds and over a wider dynamic range Into the light: CMOS image sensors can now rival the performance of state-of-the-art light detectors for ground-based optical telescopes. (Courtesy: ESO/C Malin (christophmalin.com)) Ground-based astronomy
York Space Systems chairman Charles Beams disagrees with ULA CEO’s Tory Bruno’s assessment of the state of the launch industry There has been a flurry of speculation recently that too much investment is being poured into risky launch ventures, creating a speculative bubble in the launch services sector. Critics, government consultants, and even some military
WASHINGTON — Lynk will start testing cellular connectivity services with its first small satellite in the near future as it plans to begin commercial service early next year. During a panel discussion at the SmallSat Symposium Feb. 11, Margo Deckard, co-founder and chief operating officer of Lynk, said tests it performed last year demonstrated its
After conversion of a standard clinical linac, it can deliver a FLASH beam with a dose rate 3000 times higher than used for conventional radiation treatment. (Courtesy: Brian Pogue) Researchers from Dartmouth have developed a method to convert a standard clinical linear accelerator (linac) used for radiation therapy to deliver a FLASH-capable, ultrahigh-dose rate (UHDR)
WASHINGTON — NASA needs to pursue “aggressive” development of space nuclear propulsion technologies if the agency wants to use them for human missions to Mars in the next two decades, a report by a National Academies committee concluded. A Feb. 12 study by the National Academies, sponsored by NASA, said both nuclear thermal propulsion (NTP)
By Allison Kubo Hutchison You are enjoying a sunny beach day, showing off a new swimsuit. You take a dip in the water, you feel something brush your foot. You look down and it’s a trilobite. Your first panicked thought: Do trilobites bite? Other than the fact that trilobite went extinct 252 million years ago,
“We’ve been doing space operations for years under the Air Force. But as a service we now have to advocate for new resources,” said Lt. Gen. B. Chance Saltzman. WASHINGTON — The Space Force is by far the smallest branch of the U.S. military and will have to “punch above its weight” to get its
Demonstrating optical crosslinks is a top priority for SDA and DARPA as any future military network has to be able to move huge amounts of data. WASHINGTON — The Pentagon’s space agency this year will launch a series of experiments — including satellites with laser links and missile-tracking sensors — as is prepares to begin
HawkEye 360 CEO John Serafini: Government contracts help startups raise private funds needed to pay for the space and ground infrastructure. WASHINGTON — About 270 of the 620 remote sensing satellites in orbit are privately owned with about 200 of these belong to U.S. companies, according to the Aerospace Corp. Only about 50 are owned
In this episode of the Physics World Weekly podcast we meet physicist Jennifer Rieser who has just moved from the Georgia Institute of Technology to Emory University, where she studies how snakes use tiny structures on their undersides to help propel themselves. Rieser talks about her recent research that suggests that microscopic pits on the