Science

HELSINKI — China launched the classified Shiyan-6 (02) satellite into orbit Saturday, following launch of a new Gaofen ‘multi mode’ Earth observation satellite two days earlier. A Long March 2D carried the Shiyan-6 (02) experimental remote sensing satellite from Jiuquan at 7:45 p.m. Eastern Saturday. The China Aerospace Science and Technology Corp. (CASC) announced success

Testing time: Nanorepair UV being applied to limestone samples from Cadiz (Courtesy: Javier Becerra) From the Egyptian pyramids to The Pentagon in Washington DC, limestone has long been one of the most popular materials for ornate buildings and monuments. But this rock’s aesthetic qualities and workability come at a price – it can be vulnerable

Three months after the coronavirus pandemic upended American society, there are signs of recovery. States are rolling back some of their restrictions on businesses and public gatherings, hoping to undo the economic damage they caused even amid concerns that the pandemic is far from over. NASA is also taking the first initial steps back to

WASHINGTON — The British government and Indian mobile network operator Bharti Global placed the winning bid to acquire OneWeb, a broadband megaconstellation startup that filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy protection in March after running out of funding, OneWeb said July 3.  OneWeb said it has secured $1 billion in new funding — $500 million from

[embedded content] N95 masks are much more than a simple screen filter and use lots of interesting physics – including van der Waals forces – to stop you from breathing in nasty virus particles. The above video does a superb job of explaining how the masks work and also touches on efforts to make them

If DARPA exercises all options, the contract has a potential value of $99.4 million. WASHINGTON — Blue Canyon Technologies is producing four satellite buses for the Blackjack program under a $14.1 million contract awarded last month by the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency. The contract has options for DARPA to buy up to 20 satellites

WASHINGTON — NASA plans to issue multiple contracts in the coming months for smallsat launch services in the second phase of a program intended to support the emerging small launch vehicle industry. NASA’s Launch Services Program released a draft request for proposals July 1 for its proposed Venture Class Launch Service (VCLS) Demonstration 2 procurement.

One night in late April, my husband happened to look out the window and noticed, passing over our valley in southwest Montana, a string of around 30 mysterious lights—too fast to be aircraft and apparently too numerous to be satellites. The next day, a string of emails lit up a local listserv. People who’d observed

In this episode of the Physics World Weekly podcast the philosopher of science Bob Crease chats about how physicists react when they have discovered something new – the topic of his latest column in Physics World: “The feelings you get when you discover something new”. Murder and the interpretations of quantum mechanics feature highly in

WASHINGTON — Airbus Defence and Space on July 2 announced that it will build a geostationary communications satellite for Optus that will provide coverage over Australia and the surrounding region.  Airbus will build the satellite, called Optus-11, on its new OneSat platform, designed with a reconfigurable payload that can steer and reassign beams for different

3 Groundbreaking Experiments Happening Aboard the ISS Right Now https://www.nasa.gov/image-feature/christina-koch-activates-the-new-biofabrication-facility NASA astronaut Christina Koch activates the BioFabrication Facility aboard the ISS in August 2019. Credit: NASA Astronauts often leave Earth with plenty of fanfare, but spacecraft bound for the International Space Station (ISS) also routinely carry components for on-orbit experimentation, known as payloads. These systems

SAN FRANCISCO – The Southwest Research Institute won a $15.6 million contract to design and build the Solar Wind Plasma Sensor for the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration’s Space Weather Follow On (SWFO) Lagrange 1 satellite. NOAA announced the cost plus, fixed-fee contract July 1, which it awarded through NASA. Under the contract, the Southwest

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WASHINGTON — The European Space Agency on July 1 awarded 2.5 billion euros in development contracts for six new Earth-observation missions under the Copernicus remote-sensing satellite program. According to the German space agency DLR, some 800 million euros ($901 million) of those contracts will go to companies in Germany.  Funding for the six so-called High-Priority

WASHINGTON — Amazon Web Services is increasing its effort to sell cloud services to the space industry through the formation of a dedicated business segment called “Aerospace and Satellite Solutions.”  “AWS is committed to supporting our customers’ missions, even those outside the Earth’s atmosphere,” Teresa Carlson, vice president of worldwide public sector at AWS, said

For certain fields of physics, it can be tough to explain how the research has a direct benefit to society. That is never the case with medical physics – a career where you can apply a technical skillset to directly improve people’s everyday lives. In this episode of the Physics World Stories podcast, Andrew Glester

WASHINGTON — Hughes Network Systems and Inmarsat are asking the U.S. Federal Communications Commission to amend its C-band auction rules to avoid giving Intelsat and SES an unfair competitive advantage in other spectrum bands and neighboring markets.  In a letter to the FCC released June 29, the companies warned that competitors, particularly Intelsat and SES,

SAN FRANCISCO – German launch services provider Exolaunch announced contracts June 29 to integrate NanoAvionics cubesats on SpaceX’s rideshare missions. Under the agreements, Exolaunch is procuring the launch, handling integration and deploying in orbit two six-unit cubesats built by NanoAvionics, a Lithuanian nanosatellite manufacturer. The first NanoAvionics cubesat covered by the new contract is scheduled to