Science

TAMPA, Fla. — The first Astranis-built satellite won’t be able to provide commercial broadband over Alaska for local telco Pacific Dataport because it can’t keep solar arrays pointed at the sun, the Californian manufacturer’s CEO John Gedmark said July 20.  Despite the failure of both solar array drive assemblies on Arcturus, used to position solar

Key metrics: A study find that peer reviewers can often judge the originality, rigour and significance of new work consistently — at least in theoretical physics (courtesy: Shutterstock/Nixx-Photography) Theoretical physicists do a good job when peer reviewing scientific papers, but tend to be more impressed by the significance of new research rather than the rigour

WASHINGTON — A NASA procurement document provides details about the plans of several companies that received unfunded Space Act Agreements for commercial space capabilities in June, as well as those who failed to make the cut. NASA selected seven companies June 15 for its Collaborations for Commercial Space Capabilities-2 (CCSC-2) initiative. Those companies will have

HELSINKI — Chinese startup Galactic Energy sent two satellites into orbit early Saturday with the company’s sixth consecutive successful launch. A Ceres-1 four-stage solid rocket lifted off using a transporter erector launcher at the Jiuquan Satellite Launch Center in the Gobi Desert at 1:07 a.m. Eastern, July 22. Two satellites were aboard the flight codenamed

Field trip: (a) a researcher observes giant water striders in Vietnam’s Pu Mat National Park; (b) an insect on the water; (c) an illustration of the size of a giant water strider. (Courtesy: Woojoo Kim, Jungmoon H, Piotr Grzegorz Jablonski) I grew up in the Canadian province of Ontario, so I spent a lot of

TAMPA, Fla. — Amazon announced plans July 21 to build a satellite processing facility at NASA’s Kennedy Space Center, Florida, as it prepares to start launching 3,200 commercial Project Kuiper broadband satellites next year. The 31,000-square-meter facility Amazon expects to complete in 2024 at Kennedy’s runway-equipped Launch and Landing Facility will perform final preparations of

CLEVELAND — Three months after rolling out the first phase of its architecture for human exploration of the moon and Mars, NASA is heading into a second phase that will focus on Mars. NASA released its first architecture definition document in April for its overall “Moon to Mars” campaign of human exploration. That 150-page document

Our guest in this episode of the Physics World Weekly podcast is Emily Grubert, who is a civil engineer and environmental sociologist at the University of Notre Dame in the US. In a wide ranging interview, she chats about her research, which focuses on justice and deep decarbonization. Much of Gubert’s work explores how we

WASHINGTON — The Space Force is using a software platform developed by Anduril Industries to integrate data from a decades-old network of space surveillance sensors.  DoD announced July 12 that Anduril won an $8 million contract extension to field its mesh networking software at Space Surveillance Network sites through December 2024. The software autonomously analyzes

WASHINGTON — The European Space Agency is in the final stages of performing an “assisted reentry” of an Earth science spacecraft, an effort that will attempt to bring the satellite down over the ocean in a little more than a week. A series of maneuvers will lower the perigee of the Aeolus spacecraft to enable

Hydrogen and helium: An artist’s impression of the two-faced white dwarf star. (Courtesy: K Miller, Caltech/IPAC) A rapidly rotating white dwarf star that contains two opposing hemispheres – one covered by hydrogen and the other by helium – has astronomers scratching their heads over how it got that way. The star, nicknamed “Janus” after the

WASHINGTON — The U.S. Space Force last week announced plans to increase the number of providers in the national security launch program. Officials said July 19 the decision was driven by a projected growth in demand for satellite launches and concerns about a shortage of heavy-lift rockets later this decade. “The manifest is growing. So

CLEVELAND — The potential failure of a Viasat broadband satellite could result in a massive claim and a “huge hit” for the space insurance sector, one insurer warns. Viasat announced July 12 that it had encountered an “unexpected event” during the deployment of the large reflector on its ViaSat-3 Americas satellite after its April 30

Bright idea: researchers in China have found a new way to accelerate electrons using pulses of light. (Courtesy: iStock/7io) A laser wakefield accelerator (LWFA) that guides its laser beams along curved channels while accelerating electrons has been created by Jie Zhang and colleagues at Shanghai Jiao Tong University in China. The new technique could be

TAMPA, Fla. — Telesat is preparing to resume demonstrations for its delayed low Earth orbit broadband constellation after Rocket Lab successfully launched the Canadian operator’s latest prototype satellite. The 30-kilogram LEO 3 spacecraft deployed solar arrays and passed initial health checks after launching July 17 on an Electron along with six smaller satellites, according to

TAMPA, Fla. — Young space companies made more acquisitions than their older peers over the last 12 months, according to analysis from British investment firm Seraphim Space. Satellite maker York Space Systems, launcher Firefly Aerospace, defense contractor Anduril, and other “NewSpace” ventures formed the bulk of the 28 mergers and acquisitions (M&A) Seraphim tracked over

Time machine: detailed near-infrared images of galaxies that existed when the universe was only 900 million years old. The images were taken by the JWST as part of a study of reionization in the early universe. Courtesy: NASA, ESA, CSA, Simon Lilly (ETH Zurich), Daichi Kashino (Nagoya University), Jorryt Matthee (ETH Zurich), Christina Eilers (MIT),