Science

WASHINGTON — The outgoing chair of the House space subcommittee says she would be interested in taking a position in the incoming Biden administration involving space, including at NASA. Rep. Kendra Horn (D-Okla.) chairs the House Science Committee’s space subcommittee in the current Congress and also serves on the House Armed Services Committee, but lost

SAN FRANCISCO – Orbit Fab, a startup preparing to establish fuel depots in space, announced an agreement Nov. 17 with Spaceflight Inc. to send its first microsatellite into orbit in 2021. Under the agreement, Orbit Fab’s first operational fuel depot, Tanker 001 Tenzing, will launch aboard a SpaceX Falcon 9 as early as June 2021. Tanker

The twisted spirals made in this work exhibit interesting, tuneable superconductive properties. Courtesy: S Jin Researchers have found a way to grow layers of two-dimensional (2D) materials with predictable interlayer twists, dispensing with the need to stack and twist separately-grown layers by hand. The new technique uses curved growth surfaces and could provide a significant

On Oct. 15, the Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) released the much-anticipated update to its rules for rocket safety, which streamline launch and reentry licensing. These clarified rules provide a solid foundation for the commercial rocket launch industry — ensuring that launch companies can understand and follow the rules while keeping critical national infrastructure and American

On Nov. 15, the world watched with admiration as SpaceX’s Crew Dragon capsule launched atop a Falcon 9 rocket from Florida’s historic Kennedy Space Center carrying a four-person crew. The occasion marked an important milestone — the first orbital FAA-licensed human spaceflight launch. This achievement demonstrates America’s leadership in a new era of space exploration

Firing synapse: artistic conception of a graphene-based memristor. (Courtesy: Jennifer M McCann/Penn State) A graphene-based memory resistor (memristor) that can exist in many different states has been designed and demonstrated by Thomas Schranghamer, Aaryan Oberoi and Saptarshi Das at Pennsylvania State University in the US. Using simulations and experiments, the team showed how the device

WASHINGTON — A SpaceX Crew Dragon spacecraft carrying four American and Japanese astronauts is on its way to the International Space Station after a successful Falcon 9 launch Nov. 15. The Falcon 9 lifted off from the Kennedy Space Center’s Launch Complex 39A at 7:27 p.m. Eastern. The Crew Dragon spacecraft, named “Resilience” by its

Lamborn held a “Space Force Workforce Development Roundtable” event Nov. 12 at the U.S. Air Force Academy. WASHINGTON — The U.S. Space Force and the space industry have a growing need for expertise in the science and technology fields and should develop a plan to fill that demand, said Rep. Doug Lamborn (R-Colo.). Different organizations

Maj. Gen. Matthew Glavy will be dual-hatted as the commander of Marine Corps Forces Cyberspace Command and Marine Corps Forces Space Command. WASHINGTON — The United States Marine Corps activated a new unit called Marine Corps Forces Space Command as a subordinate organization to U.S. Space Command, the service announced Nov. 13. The new organization

WASHINGTON — The first launch of Rocket Lab’s Electron rocket from a site in the United States won’t take place until 2021 because of problems with the flight termination system NASA requires the rocket to use. Rocket Lab had planned to conduct the first launch from its Launch Complex (LC) 2 at Wallops Island, Virginia,

Lasting legacy: Masatoshi Koshiba was instrumental in the construction of the Kamiokande neutrino experiment in central Japan. (Courtesy: CERN/Patrice Loïez) The Japanese physicist Masatoshi Koshiba, who shared 2002 Nobel prize for the detection of cosmic neutrinos, died on 12 November aged 94. One of the founders of neutrino astronomy, Koshiba’s most famous work involved detecting

Updated 7 p.m. Eastern with briefing comments. WASHINGTON — NASA has postponed the launch of its first operational commercial crew mission by a day, citing weather conditions that delayed the arrival of the droneship used for the recovery of the Falcon 9 first stage. NASA said Nov. 13 that it was pushing back the Crew-1

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