Science

Sweet: using a sugar solution, Gary Zabow transferred gold letters onto a human hair. The result is shown in false colour in this black and white microscope image. (Courtesy: G Zabow/NIST) Refined sugar may be bad for our teeth and waistlines, but a researcher at NIST in the US has used the calorific foodstuff to

Together for the first time. She’s a longtime SLS critic who served a decade in senior NASA roles under Clinton and Obama. He’s a Republican ex-congressman who ran NASA for three years under Trump. Both are bullish on commercial space. You won’t want to miss SpaceNews’ first year-end luncheon since 2019. We will also get a look ahead

WASHINGTON — A brand new SpaceX Falcon 9 successfully launched a new cargo Dragon spacecraft Nov. 26, carrying supplies, experiments and new solar arrays for the International Space Station. The Falcon 9 lifted off from the Kennedy Space Center’s Launch Complex 39A at 2:20 p.m. Eastern. The rocket’s upper stage deployed the Dragon spacecraft into

An artist’s impression of the star Betelgeuse going supernova. (Courtesy: European Southern Observatory/L. Calçada) Massive stars in their “red supergiant” phase become around 100 times fainter in the visible part of the electromagnetic spectrum in the last few months before they collapse and explode as a supernova. This is the finding of researchers from Liverpool

WASHINGTON — NASA’s Orion spacecraft entered a high-altitude orbit around the moon Nov. 25 in the latest major step in the Artemis 1 uncrewed test flight. The Orion spacecraft fired the main engine in its European Service Module at 4:52 p.m. Eastern for 88 seconds. The maneuver changed the velocity of the spacecraft by about

WASHINGTON — NASA has selected Rocket Lab to launch the remaining four cubesats of a constellation to monitor tropical weather systems after the first two were lost in an Astra launch failure. NASA announced Nov. 23 that it awarded a task order to Rocket Lab through the agency’s Venture-class Acquisition of Dedicated and Rideshare (VADR)

Festive cheer: Santa Claus measuring Bell’s inequality. (Courtesy: www.physics-in-advent.org) For most Christians, Sunday the 27th of November marks the first day of Advent – which runs until Christmas Eve. Although many traditions have been linked to Advent through the ages, one that has endured into the 21st century is the Advent calendar. Today, this is

TAMPA, Fla. — Echostar said Nov. 22 that Maxar Technologies is providing compensation for production issues that have delayed the launch of its Jupiter 3 satellite to at least the first half of 2023. The satellite operator said Maxar is “providing relief on future payments” under an amended contract, which also “expands EchoStar’s recourse” if

TAMPA, Fla. — SpaceX overcame a bleak weather forecast to launch a satellite Nov. 22 that expands Eutelsat further into fast-growing markets for providing broadband to planes and ships. A Falcon 9 carrying the Eutelsat 10B satellite lifted off 9:47 p.m. Eastern from Cape Canaveral Space Force Station, Florida, during a window that had been

Underground storage: illustration of the geological strata at the Illinois Basin Decatur Project in the US. (Courtesy: N Bondarenko, Y Podladchikov & R Makhnenko/Science Advances) Mitigating and reversing the effects of climate change is the most important scientific challenge facing humanity. Carbon sequestration describes a range of technologies with the potential to reduce the concentration

PARIS — The European Space Agency has selected its first new astronauts in more than a decade, although long-term flight opportunities for the agency’s astronaut corps remain uncertain. At an event here immediately after a briefing on the agency’s new three-year budget Nov. 23, ESA announced a class of 17 people it selected as a

PARIS — European Space Agency member states have provided the agency with 16.9 billion euros ($17.5 billion) for the next three years, a significant increase over 2019 but more than 1.5 billion euros below what the agency sought. At a Nov. 23 briefing concluding the two-day ministerial conference here, ESA Director General Josef Aschbacher announced

The new clock’s frequency instability is less than 4×10-19. (Courtesy: J Pan) Physicists have transferred time and frequency information over a distance of more than 100 km in free space, far exceeding the previous record. The technique, which makes it possible to synchronize and monitor optical clocks in environments where optical-fibre-based connections are impractical, could

PARIS — An agreement among three European countries could help secure near-term funding for launch vehicle development but have a bigger effect in the long term on how future projects are financed. The governments of France, Germany and Italy announced Nov. 22 they signed an agreement on “the future of launcher exploitation in Europe” intended,

The satellite communications industry is on a mission to virtualize every possible piece of ground infrastructure to catch up with the age of cloud-based networks. Converting hardware into software installed and managed remotely via third-party data centers would give satellite operators more flexibility over their networks and speed up how quickly they can respond to

(Courtesy: Lucie Hüser et al/Journal of Optical Microsystems) By combining experiments with calculations and simulations, researchers in Germany have gained new insights into why placing transparent microspheres on a sample improves the resolution of an interferometry-based microscopy technique. By examining how light interacts with the microspheres, Lucie Hüser and colleagues at the University of Kassel

Riding on the shoulders of the Apollo generation, the Artemis missions will pave the way for humans to return to the moon, begin human exploration of Mars, and someday for humanity to reach the edges of our solar system and beyond. While the exploration of deep space is critical to advancing our understanding of so many unanswered questions about

The new procurement would be the follow-on to the $94 million Launch Manifest Systems Integration contract that Parsons Corp. won in 2019 WASHINGTON — The U.S. Space Systems Command has started market research for its next procurement of payload integration services, according to a request for information published Nov. 18. The Space Force is trying