Science

The White House said the National Security Council from now on will issue “national security memorandums” to replace the former administration’s space policy directives. WASHINGTON — The Biden administration is giving the White House National Security Council oversight responsibilities for space policy, giving credence to speculation that the National Space Council will be discontinued.  The

Kilauea summit lava lake at a depth of 515 ft (156 m) taken 8 a.m. Dec. 23. USGS photo by H. Dietterich By Allison Kubo Hutchison On December 20, 2020, at about 9:30 PM, Halema’uma’u Crater, the traditional home of the goddess Pele, hosted the first eruption of the Kilauea volcano since going silent in

[embedded content] Metallurgy, steam power and the integrated circuit are just a few of the many technologies that have had a profound effect on humanity. Will quantum computing soon join this list? Some people think so and they are warning that we should begin thinking about the ethical implications of a technology that could solve

SAN FRANCISCO – Viasat’s business strategy will evolve as low Earth orbit satellite constellations and the U.S. Federal Communications Commission’s Rural Digital Opportunities Fund provide consumers with additional options for broadband service. “We have a lot of maneuvering room,” Mark Dankberg, Viasat executive chairman, said Feb. 4 during an earnings call. “Our plans for service

WASHINGTON — NASA has selected Firefly Aerospace to deliver a set of 10 research payloads to the moon in 2023, the latest award in its Commercial Lunar Payload Services (CLPS) program. The agency said it awarded Firefly the CLPS Task Order 19D for sending 10 payloads to Mare Crisium, a basin on the moon’s near

Do quantum effects such as entanglement and coherence play a role in consciousness? In this episode of the Physics World Weekly podcast, Betony Adams of the Center for Quantum Technology at South Africa’s University of KwaZulu-Natal talks about recent developments in the burgeoning and contentious field of quantum biophysics. Also in this week’s podcast is

WASHINGTON — Eleven Democratic members of the U.S. Senate have asked President Joe Biden to maintain “robust funding” of NASA’s Human Landing System (HLS) program given uncertainties about how the agency will proceed with that effort. The Feb. 3 letter argued that development of the human lunar landers should continue as “an essential step” for

WASHINGTON — NASA has established a new position of senior climate adviser within the agency, the first sign of a long-expected new emphasis on climate science within the agency under the Biden administration. The position, announced Feb. 3, will be held on an interim basis by Gavin Schmidt, a climate scientist at NASA’s Goddard Institute

The European Synchrotron Radiation Facility’s first online User Meeting will allow attendees from all over the world to explore the technical and scientific capabilities of the new Extremely Brilliant Source Shining light: the Extremely Brilliant Source, or ESRF-EBS, boosts the brilliance and coherence of the X-ray beams at the facility by around a factor of

As deputy secretary, Kathleen Hicks would have major responsibilities for budget and financial management. WASHINGTON — President Biden’s nominee for deputy defense secretary Kathleen Hicks said in congressional testimony that space acquisition programs should leverage commercial innovation and ensure the United States can counter China’s technological advances.  Hicks sat in front of the Senate Armed

ViaSat’s seven-year contract is for the development of “prototype space systems.” WASHINGTON — ViaSat, a provider of satellite communications and wireless networking technology, received a $50.8 million contract from the Air Force Research Laboratory to develop a broad range of space systems.  The Defense Department announced the contract Feb. 2. The contract was first announced Nov.

All about a new quantum-enabled brain-imaging technique, plus nuclear fuels 10 years after Fukushima and how to create thousands of rare isotopes Testing times: all about a new quantum-enabled MEG scanning technique In most types of medical imaging, the name of the game is to find out about the internal structure of the body, looking

SAN FRANCISCO – MDA is designing the follow-on to Radarsat-2, the C-band Synthetic Aperture Radar (SAR) satellite the Canadian firm built through a public-private partnership with the Canadian government. “We are announcing today that we are well into our project to design and develop our next generation of radar-based Earth observation capabilities to ensure that

By Cristian Cernov and Tatiana Erukhimova With support from the American Physics Society, we started Real Physics Live. Since then, our 14 person team composed of Texas A&M undergrads, grads, and one faculty member has produced over 20 high-quality videos, which you can view at our website: realphysicslive.com   Needless to say, Real Physics Live

WASHINGTON — An entrepreneur has purchased a SpaceX Crew Dragon mission slated for launch late this year that will include three other people as part of a project that is a mix of charity and commerce. SpaceX announced Feb. 1 that Jared Isaacman, the founder and chief executive of online payment processing company Shift4 Payments,

Stripes, curved fibres, dot arrays and some exotic stripe-dot hybrids on the surface of a frozen liquid metal. Courtesy: K Kalantar-Zadeh Highly ordered nanopatterns spontaneously form on the surface of alloys as the metal solidifies. This process, which is very different from those that occur in the materials’ bulk, could make it possible to create

WASHINGTON — Virgin Galactic announced Feb. 1 that the company will launch its SpaceShipTwo suborbital spaceplane in mid-February, two months after a technical problem aborted an earlier launch attempt. In a statement, Virgin Galactic said the window for its next SpaceShipTwo flight will open Feb. 13 at Spaceport America in New Mexico. The exact date