Science

The Atlas 5 for the first time flew with three GEM 63 solid rocket boosters made by Northrop Grumman. WASHINGTON — A National Reconnaissance Office satellite flew to orbit Nov. 13 aboard a United Launch Alliance Atlas 5 rocket. The rocket lifted off at 5:32 p.m. Eastern from Space Launch Complex-41 at Cape Canaveral Air

Just outside the town of Oracle, Arizona, nestled between the seemingly endless plains of the Sonaran desert and the cactus-pocked foothills of Mount Lemmon, stands an enormous glass ziggurat: Biosphere 2. Built in the late ‘80s at the behest of an oil tycoon, the structure was intended to be a small-scale model of a self-contained

Examples of patients with large vessel occlusions correctly predicted by the deep-learning model. Top row: CT angiography slices; middle row: maximal intensity projection images; bottom row: heatmaps showing the most discriminative regions, which strongly correlate with occlusion location. (Courtesy: RSNA) Strokes are life-threatening medical emergencies where urgent treatment is essential. They occur when part of

WASHINGTON — Rideshare launch service provider Spaceflight Inc. announced a new version of its Sherpa tug Nov. 12 equipped with electric propulsion that can send smallsats to high orbits or cislunar space. Spaceflight announced the first flight of its Sherpa-LTE orbital transfer vehicle (OTV) will take place in mid-2021. The vehicle is based on the

WASHINGTON — The Senate Appropriations Committee questioned why it will take the U.S. Space Force 12 years to acquire new jam-resistant communications satellites to replace the existing Advanced Extremely High Frequency (AEHF) spacecraft made by Lockheed Martin. The program in question is the Evolved Strategic Satellite Communications system known as ESS. The Space and Missile

This episode of the Physics World Weekly podcast features an interview with Carol Marsh, who was recently honoured by the UK’s Queen Elizabeth II for her work on diversity and inclusion. Edinburgh-based Marsh talks about her role as deputy head of electronics engineering at the aerospace and defence company Leonardo and about her efforts to

WASHINGTON — The initial elements of NASA’s lunar Gateway are facing cost overruns and delays primarily because NASA has changed the requirements of the program since awarding contracts last year. A Nov. 10 report by NASA’s Office of Inspector General (OIG) concluded that delays to the program, created by changes NASA made to its plans

WASHINGTON — The Export-Import Bank of the United States is evaluating nearly $2 billion in applications to finance space industry sales as it seeks to return to a field that has changed significantly over the last few years. The Ex-Im Bank had been a major source of financing for commercial satellites and launches prior to

WASHINGTON — A Senate appropriations bill would provide NASA with only a small fraction of the funding it requested for lunar lander development, putting any chance of returning humans to the moon by 2024 in jeopardy. Senate appropriators released a set of fiscal year 2021 spending bills Nov. 10, including the commerce, justice and science

SAN FRANCISCO – Radar satellite operators continue to see the long-term promise of commercial markets and near-term demand from government customers, according to panelists speaking Nov. 10 at the virtual World Satellite Business Week conference. “We do still believe in the commercial market but it’s not as mature as we would have hoped,” said Payam

Chilling out: radiative cooling could boost solar cell performance. (Courtesy: Shutterstock/ermess) Cheap and simple radiative cooling technologies can significantly increase the performance and lifespan of concentrated photovoltaic systems, according to researchers in the US. They found that a simple radiative cooling structure can increase the voltage produced by the solar cells by around 25%. It

WASHINGTON — Executives of major launch companies said they doubted there was sufficient demand for more than a few small launch vehicle developers, citing their own efforts to provide rideshare launch services for smallsats. During a panel discussion at Euroconsult’s World Satellite Business Week Virtual Edition conference Nov. 9, Tory Bruno, chief executive and president

Raymond says the Space Force will work closely with the civilian space community and the commercial space industry. WASHINGTON — Gen. John “Jay” Raymond, chief of space operations of the U.S. Space Force, on Nov. 9 released a vision document that lays out long-term priorities and goals he intends to pursue during his time in

Nobel laureates Gérard Mourou, Stefan Hell and Theodore Hänsch have warned in an open letter to the European Commission that cuts to photonics would be disastrous for Europe’s technological goals and damage its competitiveness. (Courtesy:Shutterstock/seahorsetwo) Three Nobel-prize-winning physicists claim that the European Commission is planning to “drastically cut” funding for photonics in its next €100bn

NASA’s Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter captured this composite image of Earth in October 2015 while orbiting 134 kilometers above the moon’s farside crater Compton. Credit: NASA/Goddard/Arizona State University Exploitation of the space domain is driving profound changes in U.S. national security and economic strategy. As military and economic activity expands beyond GEO, so too will the

WASHINGTON — A key senator says she will continue to push for passage during a lame-duck session of a NASA authorization bill that supports the Artemis lunar exploration program, but not necessarily the agency’s goal of return humans to the moon by 2024. In a talk Nov. 6 at a conference organized by the University

100 not out: the Institute of Physics celebrates its centenary When the Institute of Physics (IOP), which publishes Physics World, was founded in 1920, it was to serve as a voice for the fledgling physics community in the UK. Before then, physics had mostly been conducted by a tiny band of elite researchers at a