Science

WASHINGTON — Mynaric’s laser communications terminals passed key ground tests required to be deployed on Space Development Agency satellites, the company announced Sept. 28. The company’s CONDOR Mk3 terminal was selected by Northrop Grumman, one of several manufacturers under contract to produce satellites for the Space Development Agency. SDA, an agency under the U.S. Space

WASHINGTON — The Federal Aviation Administration announced Sept. 26 it had closed the mishap investigation into a failed launch by Blue Origin’s New Shepard vehicle more than a year ago, but said the vehicle is not yet cleared to resume flights. The FAA said in a statement that is closed the investigation into the New

Going down: ALPHA-g’s barrel scintillator being assembled at CERN. (Courtesy: CERN) Antimatter does not “fall up”, but rather responds to the gravitational pull of the Earth in much the same way as normal matter. That is the conclusion of physicists working on the ALPHA-g experiment at CERN, who have made the first direct observation of

WASHINGTON — A Soyuz capsule landed in Kazakhstan Sept. 27, returning two Russians and one American from the International Space Station after more than a year in orbit. The Soyuz MS-23 spacecraft landed in its designated landing zone in Kazakhstan at 7:17 a.m. Eastern. The spacecraft had undocked from the station’s Prichal module at 3:54

WASHINGTON — The U.S. Space Force Victus Nox mission that Firefly Aerospace launched Sept. 14 set a new record for how quickly a national security payload can be put on orbit, officials said Sept. 26.  The payload, a Millennium Space small satellite, was operational 37 hours after launch. Leading up to the launch, the companies

Pink treatment: Dyed DNA vaccine coated on a microneedle array by efficient electrospray deposition. (Courtesy: Sarah H Park/Rutgers School of Engineering) A new and highly accurate electrospray technique could be used to create coatings of biomaterials and bioactive compounds for medical applications such as vaccinations. The technique, which was developed by researchers at Rutgers University

In 1963, Boeing heritage company Hughes Space and Communications launched into orbit a 78-pound satellite called Syncom that could receive signals from Earth and send those signals back down to different spots around the globe. That first communications satellite was built in the same El Segundo, California, facility where the Nash Rambler was built in

A research collaboration between Element Six and the AWS Center for Quantum Networking is harnessing the unique photonic and quantum properties of synthetic diamond to fashion the building blocks of long-distance quantum networks Quantum fabrication Element Six is applying its patented technology and know-how in PECVD fabrication to produce, at scale, quantum grades of single-crystal

KAHULUI, Hawaii — Bob Smith, chief executive of Blue Origin, will resign from the company in December and be replaced by Dave Limp, the Amazon executive who had been overseeing development of its Project Kuiper constellation. In an email to employees Sept. 25, Smith announced that he would step down as CEO effective Dec. 4

WAILEA, Hawaii — A NASA spacecraft is on course to return samples from an asteroid to Earth in less than two days as teams prepare for a variety of both technical and fiscal contingencies. At a Sept. 22 briefing, officials with the Origins, Spectral Interpretation, Resource Identification, and Security-Regolith Explorer, or OSIRIS-REx, mission said everything

A shadowy harbour: Because the Sun strikes the Moon at such a low angle at its poles, sunlight never reaches the floors of some deep craters. These permanently shadowed regions trap volatile chemicals such as water ice, but the latest study shows they formed more recently than was previously thought, so current estimates of water

KIHEI, Hawaii — A capsule from a NASA spacecraft landed in the Utah desert Sept. 24, completing a seven-year mission to return samples from a near Earth asteroid. The sample return capsule from the Origins, Spectral Interpretation, Resource Identification, and Security-Regolith Explorer, or OSIRIS-REx, spacecraft touched down in the Utah Test and Training Range at

WASHINGTON — Boeing expects to get a contract in the coming months to build a new communications satellite for the U.S. military, funded by a $442 million congressional earmark.  The satellite, to be named WGS-12, will be the 12th of the Wideband Global Satcom geostationary constellation that provides communications services to the United States and

Worrying trend: the percentage of people with a disability in UK physics is lower when compared to the chemical and biological sciences (courtesy: iStock/gmast3r) The percentage of people with a disability in UK physics has halved in recent years, according to an analysis by the Lightyear Foundation – a charity that helps children with disabilities to

WASHINGTON — The U.S. Space Force for the second time has taken ownership of a retired National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration weather satellite to fill gaps in coverage for the U.S. military.  NOAA’s Geostationary Operational Environmental Satellite known as GOES-15, originally activated in 2011, was transferred to the Space Force to extend weather coverage of

WAIMEA, Hawaii — After a slow start, the Commerce Department says it is making progress on establishing a civil space traffic coordination system that will rely on both commercial and government data. During a panel discussion at the AMOS Conference here Sept. 21, Richard DalBello, director of the Office of Space Commerce, emphasized the progress

[embedded content] Although it seems like a mundane material, the rich and varied behaviour of sand has long fascinated physicists – from the creation and motion of mighty dunes to the patterns of tiny ripples that appear on beaches. Now, researchers at Lehigh University in the US have put a new magnetic twist on the