Science

With less than a month to go in this election cycle, the public is awash in big issues, COVID and healthcare to national defense and economic recovery.  Lest we forget, an issue also on the ballot is space – with national unity, security, and economic implications in tow. America’s future is intimately tied to our

Pressure-temperature (P-T) phase diagram of a NaYbSe2 single crystal. Courtesy: Run-Ze Yu Researchers in China report that they have observed both superconductivity and an insulator-to-metal transition in sodium ytterbium (III) selenide (NaYbSe2) simply by applying pressure to it. This inorganic substance, which is also a quantum spin liquid (QSL) candidate, could therefore become a new

Telesat will adapt two Airbus Arrow spacecraft for the Blackjack program WASHINGTON — Telesat announced Oct. 14 it has won a $18.3 million contract from the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency to produce two satellite buses for the Blackjack low-Earth orbit constellation. The two satellites will be a “highly modified version” of the Airbus Arrow

The $2 million contract is to “assess the feasibility and long term viability of a ‘weather data as a service business model.” WASHINGTON — SpaceX is looking at ways it could provide weather data to the U.S. military. The company is working under a $2 million six-month study contract from the U.S. Space Force’s Space

© AuntMinnieEurope.com The French Society of Radiology (SFR) and the country’s national centre for space exploration (CNES) have signed a partnership, details of which were streamed live at the Journées Francophones de Radiologie (JFR) congress on 4 October. The aim is to develop imaging solutions to be sent on space flights and to collaborate on

WASHINGTON — SpaceX, Hughes Network Systems and Viasat are eligible to compete for a share of the $20.4 billion in broadband subsidies the FCC plans to dole out under the Rural Digital Opportunity Fund (RDOF) starting later this month. The Federal Communications Commission on Oct. 13 released a list  of  “qualified bidders” for the RDOF

WASHINGTON — Blue Origin’s New Shepard suborbital vehicle made its first flight in 10 months Oct. 13, carrying a dozen payloads for NASA and other customers to the edge of space and back. The vehicle lifted off from the company’s West Texas test site on a mission designated NS-13 at 9:36 a.m. Eastern. The vehicle

By: Hannah Pell On September 22, 2020, NASA and the U. S. Space Command announced that they were tracking an unidentified piece of space debris that appeared to be hurtling toward the International Space Station (ISS). It was predicted to pass by within only a few kilometers, dangerously too close to chance, at 5:21 p.m.

The phases of hydrogen. Courtesy: Source: I F Silvera/Harvard University At pressures of millions of atmospheres, hydrogen – normally an excellent insulator thanks to the tightly-bound electrons in the H2 molecule – becomes an electrical conductor. Its exact transition point is, however, the subject of much debate, with the results of several recent experiments seemingly

Astrobiologist David Grinspoon is a senior scientist at the Planetary Science Institute and an expert on surface-atmospheric interactions on terrestrial planets, such as Venus. Credit: Courtesy of David Grinspoon Over the years, space missions to hellish Venus have been few and far between. But the idea of intensely studying that nearby cloud-veiled globe has just

WASHINGTON — The head of Russia’s space agency said that the lunar Gateway, part of NASA’s Artemis lunar exploration program, is too “U.S.-centric” for it to participate in, even though the Gateway leverages the existing International Space Station partnership. During a panel featuring the heads of seven space agencies at the International Astronautical Congress Oct.

Snowy scene: the location in Vermont where the distribution of microfibres in snow was measured. (Courtesy: Rachael Miller) I grew up in Canada, which has two things in abundance: electric clothes dryers and snow. So, I was immediately drawn to a paper in PLOS ONE by Kirsten Kapp and Rachael Miller that quantifies the number

COMPANY PROFILE: ENPULSION Today we present ENPULSION, an Austrian company developing cutting edge thruster solutions for small and medium satellites. Founded in 2016, it has delivered more than 130 thrusters and 50 of them are already propelling satellites of various size in space. How did the company achieve that? Milestones: 2017 – ENPULSION is founded.

Maj. Gen. Kim Crider said space “will become the next front of the cyber conflict” WASHINGTON — As many as 1,000 enlisted personnel and 130 officers currently in Air Force cyber security jobs will be asked to join the U.S. Space Force, a senior official said Oct. 8. The selected airmen from cyber security career

Upper limit: a US Navy F/A-18 travelling near the speed of sound in air. The white halo comprises water droplets that have condensed from the air because of the sudden drop in pressure behind the shock cone around the aircraft . (Courtesy: John Gay/US Navy) The upper limit on the speed of sound in solids

WASHINGTON — NASA is delaying the launch of the first operational SpaceX commercial crew mission to the first half of November to provide more time to review a problem during a recent Falcon 9 launch attempt. NASA announced Oct. 10 the Crew-1 mission, which was scheduled to launch on a Falcon 9 in the early

How NASA’s InVEST program is yielding big dividends for future Earth-observing missions For the last several years at the Small Satellite Conference, the American Institute of Aeronautics and Astronautics (AIAA) has held a “Small Satellite Mission of the Year” competition. An AIAA committee gathers nominations for smallsats that have launched in the last year and

The INFN Gran Sasso National Laboratory (LNGS). Courtesy: INFN-LNGS Our everyday experience shows that the macroscopic world is different from the quantum one. Unlike quantum particles, the objects in our daily existence do not, for example, exist in a superposition of different states. Traditionally, physicists explain the transition between the two worlds by saying that