Science

WASHINGTON — NASA announced July 9 two new directives regarding planetary protection for missions to the moon and Mars that implement recommendations of an independent review board last year. The two directives, announced by NASA Administrator Jim Bridenstine during a “Moon Dialogs” webinar, are part of an effort by NASA to modernize guidelines that are

The Joint AAPM | COMP Virtual Meeting hopes to recreate all the benefits of a live event with a virtual conference and exhibition. (Courtesy: iStock/metamorworks) In any normal year, the American Association for Physicists in Medicine (AAPM) would be preparing to welcome around 4000 attendees to its annual meeting and exhibit, which in 2020 was

Loft Orbital is working under a contract from SSCI, which received a DARPA contract to fly a demonstration of the Blackjack Pit Boss mission system. WASHINGTON — Loft Orbital’s YAM-3 satellite — scheduled to fly on a SpaceX Falcon 9 rideshare mission — will carry a Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency experiment for the Blackjack

DoD said this agreement is to “ensure the continued viability of space surveillance capability” in the U.S. industrial base. WASHINGTON — The Defense Department announced on July 10 it has awarded LeoLabs, a provider of space surveillance data services, a $15 million contract funded under the Defense Production Act to shore up domestic industries financially

[embedded content] As well as floating balloons and making your voice sound funny, helium plays a crucial role in science and medicine – thanks to its cryogenic properties. Although the second most abundant element in the universe, helium is rare on Earth because it is much lighter than air. Helium is produced deep underground by

WASHINGTON — Program delays have forced Eumetsat to reserve a pair of Ariane 6 rockets for two European weather satellites originally anticipated to launch on Ariane 5 rockets.  Eumetsat had signed a contract with Arianespace in 2015 to launch two or three Meteosat Third Generation satellites on Ariane 5 rockets between 2019 and 2023. Of

HELSINKI — Launch of a new Chinese Kuaizhou-11 commercial solid rocket ended in failure Friday resulting in the loss of two satellites. The Kuaizhou-11 lifted off at 12:17 a.m. Eastern from a transporter erector launcher at the Jiuquan Satellite Launch Center, northwest China. Video footage of the launch taken from a delayed stream indicates the

Manipulating atoms into quantum entangled states is hard enough, but then proving that you have achieved that entanglement is harder still. But that is the goal of an experiment at the Institute for Quantum Optics and Quantum Information (IQOQI) in Vienna, as explained in this interview with physicist Michael Keller – recorded before the COVID-19

WASHINGTON — The first satellite for a Chinese company planning a global system of geostationary satellites launched July 9 on a Long March 3B rocket.  Apstar-6D, a high-throughput satellite with a total capacity of 50 gigabits per second, launched at 8:11 a.m. Eastern from China’s Xichang Satellite Launch Center in Sichuan China. China Great Wall

By Leah Poffenberger Everyday life is full of choices: Coffee or tea? Apples or oranges? iPhone or Android? We also have to tackle more serious questions, like who to vote for in an election. Especially for the important choices in our lives, these decisions don’t happen in a vacuum: We’re usually getting a lot of

Collins Aerospace, Raytheon and TAG have to develop devices that are smaller in size and have low power consumption than the ones currently used by the military. WASHINGTON — Collins Aerospace, Raytheon and Technology Advancement Group were awarded contracts to develop Global Positioning System handheld devices for the U.S. military. The U.S. Space Force’s Space

The inaugural Bell Burnell fellowships have been awarded to (clockwise from top left) Katarina Mamic, Kiri Newson, Joanna Sakowska and Tracy Garratt. (Courtesy: Institute of Physics) Four female physics students have been awarded a new fellowship that seeks to promote diversity in physics. The Bell Burnell Graduate Scholarship Fund, awarded by the Institute of Physics

The Descartes Labs’ platform uses machine learning and artificial intelligence to fuse and analyze data from space and aerial sources WASHINGTON — Geospatial analytics company Descartes Labs has been awarded a $1.5 million contract to help the U.S. Air Force draw intelligence from imagery and other data collected by satellites and by autonomous aerial vehicles,

Maj. Gen. Chance Saltzman wil serve as acting staff director of the Office of the Chief of Space Operations. WASHINGTON — The U.S. Space Force Pentagon headquarters will have a leaner staff structure than traditional military service headquarters and some senior staff posts will be assigned to civilians, according to a draft proposal. The Space

Making waves: artist’s impression of gravitational waves being broadcast by a pair of black holes. (Courtesy: LIGO/T Pyle) Rather than the kilometre-length observatories of today, future gravitational-wave detectors could be just a few metres long. That is the goal of physicists in the UK and the Netherlands, who have put forward a design for a

WASHINGTON — NASA announced July 7 that it has completed two major reviews that stemmed from Boeing’s flawed commercial crew test flight last December as the agency and company prepare for a second test flight later this year. NASA said that an independent review team (IRT), jointly organized by NASA and Boeing to investigate the

WASHINGTON — A potential return to operations of satellite megaconstellation company OneWeb is a new source of worry for astronomers who previously had been focused on the effect SpaceX’s Starlink satellites will have on their observations. OneWeb, which filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy in March, announced July 3 that the British government and Indian telecom

Cryogenics is a core enabling technology at the European Spallation Source, a next-generation neutron-science facility under construction in Sweden. Joe McEntee talks to John G Weisend II, group leader for specialized technical services at ESS, about the secrets of success at ultralow temperatures Big science: an aerial view over the ESS construction site in Lund,