Incoming: did a wayward star switch-off the X-ray corona of a distant supermassive black hole? (Courtesy: NASA/JPL-Caltech) Over the course of just one year, the bright X-ray corona surrounding a supermassive black hole dipped dramatically in brightness, before steadily recovering its initial luminosity. The event was observed by an international team of astronomers, led by
Science
SAN FRANCISCO – Satellite propulsion startup Benchmark Space Systems announced an agreement Aug. 4 to provide non-toxic chemical propulsion for rideshare provider Spaceflight Inc.’s next-generation orbital transfer vehicle, Sherpa-NG. At the same time, Burlington, Vermont-based Benchmark revealed a permanent licensing partnership with Tesseract Space, a California propulsion startup. Under the terms of the deal, Vermont-based
WASHINGTON — Amazon Web Services has slowed the rollout of its ground station network to accommodate customer feedback about the best locations to place its antennas. AWS has built ground stations at six locations instead of the 12 that were expected by the end of last year. Shayn Hawthorne, general manager of AWS’s ground station
Empty space: fewer commercial flights mean poorer weather forecasts. (Courtesy: Shutterstock/Volodymyr-Goinyk) The grounding of commercial air flights during the COVID-19 pandemic has made weather forecasts less reliable. As well as affecting short-term forecasts, the reduction in aircraft weather observations has impacted longer-term forecasts and could handicap early warnings of extreme weather, warns Ying Chen, an
WASHINGTON — Virgin Galactic has pushed the beginning of commercial flights of its SpaceShipTwo suborbital vehicle to no earlier than the first quarter of 2021 while announcing plans to sell additional stock to raise money. The company, in its fiscal second quarter financial results released Aug. 3, said it expected to perform two more test
Download the digital edition of the Aug. 3 issue of SpaceNews magazine, provided compliments of Raytheon Space & Intelligence as part of our special coverage of this week’s free-to-attend 34th Annual Small Satellite Conference. Inside the Aug. 3 issue: Inflection point From launch failures to global pandemic, a small launch industry long buoyed by optimism
An electron tree. (Courtesy: NPL) 1. The image above shows an electron tree. But which piece of medical physics equipment was used to create this striking pattern?A. An MRI scanner B. A linear accelerator C. An infrared laser D. An X-ray CT system 2. Marie Curie’s laboratory notebooks are so radioactive that they must be stored in lead-lined boxes.
SAN FRANCISCO – Raytheon Intelligence & Space is designing a prototype weather satellite for the U.S. Space Force Space and Missile Systems Center that draws heavily on technology from the firm’s Visible Infrared Imaging Radiometer Suite (VIIRS) and Moderate Resolution Imaging Spectroradiometer. “We leveraged all our capabilities that we’ve matured over the years and our
WASHINGTON — The House of Representatives passed a spending bill July 31 that includes $22.6 billion for NASA, making no major changes to what appropriators had previously approved. On a 217–197 vote falling largely on party lines, the House approved a “minibus” spending bill that combined six separate bills, including the commerce, justice and science
Old school: a game of go played without quantum effects. (Courtesy: Goban1) A quantum-mechanical version of the ancient board game go has been demonstrated experimentally by physicists in China. Using entangled photons, the researchers placed go pieces (called stones) in quantum superpositions to vastly increase the complexity of the game. They foresee the technology serving
WASHINGTON — A SpaceX Crew Dragon spacecraft carrying two NASA astronauts on a test flight undocked from the International Space Station Aug. 1 ahead of a splashdown less than 24 hours later. The Crew Dragon spacecraft, named Endeavour by the crew of the Demo-2 mission, undocked from the station’s Harmony module at 7:35 p.m. Eastern
The moon is again the object of competition between major space powers. These powers aim — perhaps even in this decade — to establish a permanent human presence on the moon’s surface and in its orbit, and exploit lunar resources for economic benefit. This renewed competition for the moon is the basis for the rise
Fluttering gas: this image of the NGC 2899 planetary nebula was captured using the FORS instrument on ESO’s Very Large Telescope in northern Chile. (Courtesy: ESO) Move over Butterfly Nebula, there is a rival diaphanous object in the sky. Pictured above is the NGC 2899 nebula as seen by the ESO’s Very Large Telescope in
The Air Force said the Navigation Technology Satellite-3 has passed a critical design review. WASHINGTON — L3Harris will start building a navigation satellite for the U.S. Air Force scheduled to be launched to a geosynchronous orbit in 2022. The Air Force announced July 30 that the Navigation Technology Satellite-3 (NTS-3) on June 25 passed a
WASHINGTON — Small launch vehicle developer Astra says it’s ready for an orbital launch attempt as soon as Aug. 2, but warns that it’s “pretty unlikely” that launch will actually achieve orbit. Astra’s Rocket 3.1 vehicle is in final preparations for a launch from Pacific Spaceport Complex – Alaska on Kodiak Island. The company is
Safe distance: supernova SN 1987A as seen by the ESO Schmidt Telescope. Located 168,000 light-years away, the object could be seen with the unaided eye but posed no danger to Earth. (Courtesy: ESO) The explosion of a nearby star could have caused a mass extinction that occurred long ago on Earth. That is the conclusion
WASHINGTON — The first Proton launch of the year took place July 30 carrying two satellites for the Russian Satellite Communications Company. Proton lifted off at 5:25 p.m. Eastern from Russia’s Baikonur Cosmodrome in Kazakhstan on an 18-hour mission to deploy the geostationary satellites, Express-80 and Express-103, according to Roscosmos. The launch was originally scheduled
WASHINGTON — NASA’s most sophisticated Mars rover yet is on its way to the red planet after a successful launch July 30. A United Launch Alliance Atlas 5 rocket lifted off from Space Launch Complex 41 at Cape Canaveral Air Force Station at 7:50 a.m. Eastern. The liftoff took place on schedule with no issues