Science

WASHINGTON — With its first 23 satellites in orbit, the U.S. Space Development Agency in the coming months will begin the demonstration phase of a data network in space designed to support military operations.   SpaceX on Sept. 2 launched SDA’s second batch of satellites. The agency now has 19 communications satellites and four missile-tracking spacecraft

WASHINGTON — The European Space Agency plans to set a target launch period for the first Ariane 6 in October, with the hopes that vehicle can finally take flight “not too late” into 2024. At a Sept. 4 briefing, officials from ESA and other partners on the Ariane 6 said they should be able to

Lurking for decades: researchers have discovered Pines’ demon, a collection of electrons in a metal that behaves like a massless wave. It is illustrated here as an artist’s impression. (Courtesy: The Grainger College of Engineering/University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign) For nearly seven decades, a plasmon known as Pines’ demon has remained a purely hypothetical feature of

HELSINKI — Emerging trends in how China is utilizing and operating its Tiangong space station could impact how the country’s space program is viewed internationally. “The People’s Liberation Army’s (PLA’s) intention to allow civilian astronauts and nonstate-owned enterprise (SOE) companies to participate in the Chinese Space Station (CSS) are two trends that will probably change

WASHINGTON — Lunar lander developer Intuitive Machines announced Aug. 31 it raised $20 million through a sale of stock as the company gears up for its first mission. The Houston-based company said in a Securities and Exchange Commission filing that it sold approximately 4.7 million shares to an unnamed institutional investor at $4.25 per share.

Physicists at Stevens Institute of Technology used Christiaan Huygens’ 350-year-old theorem, which explains the workings of pendulums and planets, to reveal new properties of light waves. (Courtesy: Stevens Institute of Technology) Physicists at Stevens Institute of Technology in New Jersey, US have found a new and surprising link between the wave properties of light and

LONDON — Globalstar has contracted SpaceX to launch Apple-backed satellites in 2025 to replenish its low Earth orbit (LEO) connectivity constellation. The operator said in an Aug. 30 regulatory filing it will pay a total $64 million to launch the first set of satellites ordered last year from MDA, which is using Rocket Lab to

WASHINGTON — A SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket lifted off Sept. 2 at 7:25 a.m. Pacific from Launch Complex 4 East at Vandenberg Space Force Base, California, carrying 13 U.S. military satellites.  The mission to low Earth orbit was the second launch of the Space Development Agency’s Tranche 0 mesh network of military communications and missile

How it happens: illustration of an antiferromagnetic CrSBr mirror-less cavity that allows the formation of exciton–polaritons. (Courtesy: Florian Dirnberger/City College of New York) An international team of researchers has shown that hybrid light-matter quasiparticles can enhance magneto-optical effects in layered crystals. This research has strong implications for the development of magneto-optic devices, such as sensors

WASHINGTON — Space Tango, a Kentucky-based startup that conducts research and science experiments on the International Space Station, on Sept. 1 announced the appointment of S. Sita Sonty as its new chief executive officer. Sonty succeeds co-founder Twyman Clements, who will remain with the company as president. Clements said Sonty will help the company grow

SAN FRANCISCO – Ball Aerospace, Northrop Grumman, Orbital Micro Systems and Spire Global won contracts, announced Aug. 31, to design microwave sounders for the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration. Under the contracts awarded by NASA on behalf of NOAA, the four companies will conduct studies and design sounders for the Near-Earth Orbit Network, or NEON,

Perfect cables: superconducting wires destined for the LHC at CERN (Courtesy: Berkeley Lab) Quiz question: how many kilometres of new superconducting cables are being made in California for the next generation of focussing magnets at the Large Hadron Collider (LHC) at CERN in Geneva? If your answer is “more than 2220 km”, you are correct

WASHINGTON — A pension fund has filed suit against the board of directors of Amazon, claiming they “acted in bad faith” in approving launch contracts for the Project Kuiper broadband constellation that awarded billions of dollars to Blue Origin, the company founded by Amazon’s Jeff Bezos. The suit, a public version of which was filed

WASHINGTON — QinetiQ US, a defense contractor based in Lorton, Virginia, was awarded a $224 million contract to provide systems engineering and technical support to the Space Development Agency.  SDA is an agency under the U.S. Space Force. It is building a mesh network in low Earth orbit — called the Proliferated Warfighter Space Architecture

Today, it can seem that we are adrift in a swirling sea of claims and counterclaims designed to prod and provoke. So, how can a person make sense of this barrage of information? According to the this week’s guest, a good grasp of some fundamental mathematical principles can make a huge difference when it comes

SAN FRANCISCO — Australian startup Spiral Blue is inviting developers and researchers to run custom code on its SE-1 space-based computer. After deploying its own machine-learning algorithms on SE-1, Spiral Blue issued a call Aug. 31 to people interested in sending code to space. Applications for the initiative, called Your Code in Space, can be

WASHINGTON —  Firefly Aerospace and Millennium Space Systems announced Aug. 30 that they are standing by waiting for orders from the U.S. Space Force to prepare to launch a satellite on short notice. The companies were selected last year to conduct a demonstration of a rapid-response space mission to low Earth orbit known as Victus

A University of Washington-led team has discovered that, by stacking a sheet of graphene onto bulk graphite at a small twist angle (top), “exotic” properties present at the graphene-graphite interface (yellow) can bleed down into the graphite itself. Courtesy: Ellis Thompson When two sheets of graphene are placed on top of each other and slightly