Science

WASHINGTON — The U.S. Space Force in its 2024 budget allocated $59 million to buy satellite communications services from SES’ new broadband constellation in medium Earth orbit known as O3b mPower. The purchase was made under a NATO contracting vehicle established last year for countries to acquire commercial satcom services. Both the U.S. and Luxembourg

WASHINGTON — Astra Space won a task order worth $11.5 million to launch experimental payloads for the Defense Department’s Space Test Program. Astra, a small satellite launch company based in Alameda, California, was awarded the contract under the U.S. Space Force’s Orbital Services Program OSP-4, the Space Systems Command announced April 21. The OSP-4 program

Tongtong Zhu is founder and chief executive of UK start-up Porotech, which makes micro-scale light-emitting diodes for full-colour displays. He talks to Margaret Harris about the technology’s development, the role of material defects, and the transition from academia to industry Academia to industry Tongtong Zhu was doing research in materials science at the University of

TAMPA, Fla. — Inmarsat has restored maritime and aviation safety capabilities on its I-4 F1 satellite over Asia Pacific but is still trying to recover services for L-band phones that have been down for nearly a week. All services on the spacecraft have been restored following the outage except for its Global Satellite Phone Service

DENVER — A Swedish astronaut may fly to the International Space Station on a commercial mission within the next year under an agreement signed this week. The letter of intent, signed by the Swedish National Space Agency, European Space Agency and Axiom Space, would allow an ESA astronaut, most likely from Sweden, to go to

The original: Woolsthorpe Manor is seen in the background of this photo of what is believed to be the apple tree that inspired Isaac Newton. (Courtesy: Bs0u10e01/CC BY-SA 4.0) Do you fancy getting your hands on a descendant of the very tree that inspired Sir Isaac Newton to come up with his theory of gravity?

TAMPA, Fla. — The Federal Communications Commission adopted new rules April 20 governing how fixed-satellite service operators in non-geostationary orbit (NGSO) share spectrum amid an unprecedented flood of proposed constellations. In the first item taken up by the regulator’s recently established Space Bureau, the rules clarify how operators awarded licenses in different FCC application processing

One year ago on the space industry’s largest stage – Space Symposium – the leaders of two dozen space companies pledged to support Space Workforce 2030, a new, collaborative effort to advance diversity, equity and inclusion in our industry over the long-term. This effort was born of the recognition that our success at this pivotal

Wonder material: ball-and-stick illustration of a single sheet of graphene. (Courtesy: Shutterstock/billdayone) After amazing us with its incredible strength, flexibility and thermal conductivity, graphene has now chalked up another remarkable property with its magnetoresistance. Researchers in Singapore and the UK have shown that, in near-pristine monolayer graphene, the room-temperature magnetoresistance can be orders of magnitude

COLORADO SPRINGS — Firefly Aerospace says its future medium rocket it is developing with Northrop Grumman will be ready to compete in the next round of U.S. national security launch contracts. The medium-lift rocket, projected to launch in 2025, is being designed to “support the requirements of the U.S. Space Force NSSL Phase 3,” Firefly

COLORADO SPRINGS — Investment activity is picking up again for young space companies as growth-stage capital returns following market uncertainty in 2022, according to investors on an April 18 Space Symposium panel. The “space industry is thriving at the moment,” Seraphim Space CEO Mark Boggett said, pointing to the venture capital firm’s research showing a

In the loop: PhD student Monika Monika takes a closer look at the negative-temperature experimental setup in Jena. (Courtesy: Ira Winkler/University Jena) Researchers in Germany and the US have created photon gases that can exist at “negative temperatures” while undergoing basic thermodynamic processes – including expansion and compression. The research could lead to the development

COLORADO SPRINGS — The head of the U.S. Space Force launch program office, Maj. Gen. Stephen Purdy, said he has been briefed by United Launch Alliance on an anomaly experienced last month during testing of the Centaur upper stage of ULA’s new rocket Vulcan Centaur. But he said it’s too early to predict what long-term

COLORADO SPRINGS — A drop in space company valuations could open the door to more transactions in the industry, according to an April 17 Space Symposium panel on the outlook for deals, as long as they can navigate increasing regulatory scrutiny. “There were a lot of deals that we haven’t participated in over the last

Deep underground: an access shaft for the Large Hadron Collider could be used to host a 100 m prototype atom interferometer (courtesy: arXiv:2304.00614) The CERN particle-physics laboratory near Geneva could be an ideal location for a next-generation atom interferometer. That is according to an international collaboration of researchers who say that the experiment could be

COLORADO SPRINGS — Amazon Web Services said April 18 it picked 14 U.S. and European startups to join its third annual space accelerator program kicking off in May to boost ventures with solutions for improving space sustainability. The four-week program provides technical and business support for early-stage space companies looking to develop their businesses using

COLORADO SPRINGS — Efforts to streamline and accelerate space licensing procedures to keep up with rapid innovation are bearing fruit, according to a Space Symposium panel of regulators.  The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration now takes just 15 days to issue a commercial remote sensing license, said Glenn Tallia, the regulator’s chief legal counsel for

V883 Orionis: artist’s impression of the protoplanetary disc around the star. (Courtesy: ESO/L Calçada) A study of a young star and its protoplanetary disc has provided important insights into the origins of the water on Earth. Researchers have determined the isotopic make up of the water in the disc and found it to be similar