Science

WASHINGTON — True Anomaly, a startup based in Denver, will install Redwire’s navigation and sensing cameras on two inspector satellites it plans to launch next year. True Anomaly developed a small satellite named Jackal, designed to chase down uncooperative objects and take pictures up close.  The first two are scheduled to launch to low Earth

All in one: A photo of the photonic integrated circuit. The chip was fabricated in layers, with the laser on top and the waveguides at the bottom. (Courtesy: Chao Xiang) Researchers in the US have integrated ultralow-noise lasers and photonic waveguides onto a single chip for the first time. This long-sought-after achievement could make it

LOGAN, Utah — A quartet of cubesats launched in May to monitor the development of tropical storm systems is working just in time to support monitoring of the Atlantic hurricane season. Four cubesats for NASA’s Time-Resolved Observations of Precipitation structure and storm Intensity with a Constellation of Smallsats (TROPICS) mission launched on a pair of

In recent weeks the astrophysics community has been buzzing following the discovery that the universe appears to be filled with a background hum of gravitational waves. Using radio telescopes in the Africa, Asia, Australia, Europe and the US, several teams have noted the same thing: that gravitational waves leave a faint fingerprint in the signals

WASHINGTON — Lockheed Martin, a company that for decades has built schoolbus-sized spacecraft for the U.S. government, opened a new facility to assemble small satellites, which are now in higher demand.  Lockheed Martin’s 20,000-square-foot factory is located at the company’s Waterton campus near Denver, Colorado. It has six parallel assembly lines and capacity to manufacture

TAMPA, Fla. — LeoStella announced details about its largest spacecraft yet Aug. 6 with plans to deliver its first two 500-kilogram-class satellites to a commercial radar constellation customer next summer. The company’s LS300 satellite bus can reach the length of a small yacht at 10 meters across and has more than double the mass of

In the lab: the experimental thermocell at the University of Tokyo. (Courtesy: Teppei Yamada) A new “thermocell” that generates a voltage by exploiting temperature-related phase transitions in a pair of electrodes has been unveiled by researchers in Japan. Teppei Yamada at the University of Tokyo and colleagues hope that their new technology could lead to

SEATTLE — Astra Space announced Aug. 4 it has laid off a quarter of its workforce and reassigned others from launch vehicle to satellite propulsion development as its cash reserves dwindle. In a series of statements, the company said it was making a “strategic reallocation of its workforce,” moving 50 engineers from development of its

HELSINKI — India will make its second moon landing attempt in 18 days’ time after its Chandrayaan-3 spacecraft arrived in lunar orbit Saturday. Chandrayaan-3 began a roughly 30-minute burn around 9:30 a.m. Eastern, seeing the spacecraft enter an elliptical lunar orbit, the Indian Space Research Organization (ISRO) stated via social media. “MOX, ISTRAC, this is

Touching the sky: HAWC near the peak of the extinct Sierra Negra volcano What are the highest energy photons (gamma rays) emitted by the Sun? Our star is powered by nuclear fusion and these reactions release energy on the order of megaelectronvolts, so naïvely, I would have thought that was the energy limit. It turns

TAMPA, Fla. — Globalstar, the operator behind Apple’s satellite-enabled SOS app, posted a 50% year-on-year jump in quarterly sales Aug. 3 amid promising growth in its business for connecting remote Internet of Things (IoT) devices. Nearly half the $55 million Globalstar made in the three months ended June 30 came from wholesale capacity service revenues

SEATTLE — NASA has selected Axiom Space to carry out the fourth in a series of private astronaut missions to the International Space Station in 2024. NASA announced Aug. 3 it selected the Houston-based company for the mission, currently scheduled for no earlier than August 2024. The four-person mission, flying on a SpaceX Crew Dragon

Nina Heinig is a materials researcher who manages the Waterloo Advanced Technology Laboratory (WATLab), which is a multidisciplinary materials characterization and fabrication research centre in Waterloo, Canada. She tells Hamish Johnston about WATLab’s instruments and services and how they are used by researchers in a wide range of fields Multidisciplinary characterization Nina Heinig at WATLab

TAMPA, Fla. — SES needs to conduct extra tests before launching its next pair of O3b mPower satellites, the operator said Aug. 3, to investigate a glitch that is sporadically tripping off power modules on its first four in medium Earth orbit. Newly appointed CEO Ruy Pinto said the issue is limited to some of

SEATTLE — Northrop Grumman is planning upgrades to its Cygnus cargo vehicle, such as increased payload capacity, to support both the International Space Station and future commercial space stations. In presentations at the International Space Station Research and Development Conference Aug. 2, company representatives outlined efforts to enhance the capabilities of the decade-old spacecraft to

A visualization of spatial modulations in the superconducting pairing potential of UTe2, a recently-discovered topological superconductor. (Courtesy: Nature 618, 921–927 (2023). https://doi.org/10.1038/s41586-023-05919-7) Researchers in the US, UK and Ireland have identified a new crystalline superconducting state in uranium ditelluride (UTe2). The existence of this state challenges the conventional picture of superconductivity and could have implications

WASHINGTON — The Intelligence Advanced Research Projects Activity selected four vendors to develop technologies and new approaches for tracking small debris objects in space. A-Tech, Advanced Space, SRI International, and West Virginia University Research Corporation won four-year contracts of undisclosed value for the Space Debris Identification and Tracking (SINTRA) program. The four vendors were selected

WASHINGTON — Innovative Rocket Technologies, known as iRocket, has signed an agreement with the Air Force Research Laboratory to jointly develop and test rocket propulsion hardware.  The New York-based startup, founded in 2018, develops rocket engines and plans to build a small launch vehicle. iRocket signed a four-year cooperative research and development agreement, or CRADA,