Science

HELSINKI — Leading Chinese launch startup Galactic Energy has secured $154 million in funding for the development of its reusable Pallas-1 rocket. Galactic Energy announced the 1.1 billion yuan C and C+ funding rounds Dec. 18. The funding will go towards research and development of reusable launch vehicle technology for the Pallas-1 medium-lift rocket and

WASHINGTON — The U.S. Senate on Dec. 19 voted to confirm eleven senior officers to become four-star generals and admirals, including two Space Force leaders, Gen. Michael Guetlein and Gen. Stephen Whiting. The Senate vote came as the chamber delayed the holiday recess to work on a number of issues.  The confirmations of Guetlein and

WASHINGTON — The White House is releasing a policy framework to accompany its proposal to provide oversight of novel commercial space activities. The framework, to be announced at a Dec. 20 meeting of the National Space Council, is intended to accompany a separate legislative proposal for mission authorization it released Nov. 15. That proposal would

WASHINGTON — The European Space Agency says the first launch of the Ariane 6 remains on track for the middle of 2024 despite an aborted test of the rocket’s upper stage. In a Dec. 19 statement, ESA said it successfully completed a test of an Ariane 6 prototype called combined test loading, or CTLO3, at

Once upon a time, we thought that our actions were too insignificant to impact something as large as the natural environment — that it wouldn’t be possible for fishermen to exhaust a fishery, that groundwater was so plentiful that conservation was unnecessary, and that the sky was big enough that the odds of two human-created

WASHINGTON — Defense contractor L3Harris announced Dec. 20 it has received approval from the Space Development Agency to move into production on 16 satellites designed to detect and monitor hypersonic missiles aimed at the U.S. or its allies.  L3Harris said its satellites cleared a critical design review and a production readiness review.  The Space Development Agency

TAMPA, Fla. — Karim Michel Sabbagh has left megaconstellation startup E-Space to lead Space42, a proposed combination of regional satellite operator Yahsat and geospatial intelligence provider Bayanat valued at around $4 billion. Sabbagh, a former CEO of SES who joined Florida-based E-Space last year to oversee strategy in Europe and the Middle East, would be

SAN FRANCISCO — A delegation from the French Space Agency CNES visited Colorado and Texas last week to expand ties between French and American aerospace companies. The officials, who jokingly refer to themselves as France’s NewSpace Musketeers, plan to establish virtual hubs in Denver and Houston for Connect by CNES, a government initiative to spur

Ian Randall reviews Communications Breakdown: SF Stories about the Future of Connection edited by Jonathan Strahan Modern apocalypse Communications Breakdown is a science-fiction anthology that imagines the future of connection – and what happens when such technology goes wrong. (Courtesy: iStock/BitsAndSplits) “A sight never to be forgotten.” “Heaven became illuminated.” “Nothing could exceed the grandeur

Social media platforms can be toxic environments at times, and tensions can spill over in the real world, as with the storming of the Capitol Building in Washington DC following the last US presidential election. Nowadays, heated polarization seems to emerge everywhere online and connects with our identities – from the music you love, to

A new frequency comb setup can capture the moment-by-moment details of carbon dioxide gas escaping from a nozzle at supersonic speeds in an air-filled chamber, followed by rapid oscillations of gas due to complex aerodynamics within the chamber. The data plot shows the absorbance of light (vertical) over time (horizontal left to right) across a

Green credentials: the UN Climate Change Conference, COP28, took place between 30 November and 12 December in Dubai, United Arab Emirates. (courtesy: Ministry of Environment – Rwanda) The UN’s COP28 conference in Dubai is over. Government delegations have shaken hands, packed up and flown home. Journalists, lobbyists and campaigners have filed their last report, eaten

Careful selection: removing 10% of the oranges on the surface of this display could cause an citrus avalanche. (Courtesy: Sir James/CC BY 3.0) Over the past few years I have spent more time in my native Canada, where I do enjoy a visit to the supermarket (Fortinos is my favourite). Like in many countries outside

Stable skyrmions: First-principles calculations of the skyrmion-stabilizing Dzyaloshinskii–Moriya interaction in pristine (bottom) and oxidized (top) Fe3GaTe2-x enabled the team to understand why the skyrmions that form (right) are so robust. (Courtesy: H Chang) Researchers in China have produced a phenomenon known as the giant skyrmion topological Hall effect in a two-dimensional material using only a

Researchers from MIT and Northeastern University developed a liquid crystal elastomer fibre that can change its shape in response to thermal stimuli. The fibre, which is fully compatible with existing textile manufacturing machinery, could be used to make morphing textiles, like a jacket that becomes more insulating to keep the wearer warm when temperatures drop.

(a) Droplets sliding down (l-r) a single fibre, a bundle of two fibres and a bundle of three fibres. A liquid film appears behind each droplet. (b) Horizontal cuts of each system, showing dry fibres in front of the droplet (orange), the droplet cross section (light blue), and the liquid film of thickness δ left

Simple setup: The iodine vapour cells used in Vector Atomic’s portable optical atomic clock. (Courtesy: Vector Atomic) Atoms are the world’s most precise timekeepers – so much so that the second is defined as exactly 9 192 631 770 ticks of a caesium-based atomic clock. Commercially-available versions of these atomically precise clocks underpin GPS, navigation,

Quiet conductor: scanning electron microscope image of a long nanowire made of the strange metal. The scale bar at the bottom right is 10 micron long. (Courtesy Liyang Chen/Natelson research group/Rice University) Noise measurements suggest that a “strange metal” does not conduct electricity via discrete charge carriers, according to researchers in the US and Austria.