Science

HELSINKI — A crew of three astronauts including the first Chinese civilian astronaut has arrived at the Tiangong space station. A Long March 2F rocket carrying the Shenzhou-16 spacecraft lifted off from the Jiuquan Satellite Launch Center in the Gobi Desert at 9:31 p.m. Eastern May 29. Rendezvous and docking with a radial Tiangong docking

Robert P Crease pays tribute to the late Toichiro “Tom” Kinoshita, who played a key role in the development of quantum electrodynamics Deep thinker Toichiro Kinoshita (left) and Richard Feynman, friends and collaborators on a boat ride during a high-energy physics conference at the Scripps Institute in La Jolla, California, in 1961. (Photo by Clarice

HELSINKI — China’s human spaceflight agency has stated its goal to land astronauts on the moon before the end of the decade. “Recently, the moon landing phase of China’s crewed lunar exploration program has started. The main goal is to send Chinese astronauts to land on the moon for the first time by 2030,” Lin

WASHINGTON — The U.S. Air Force Research Laboratory awarded L3Harris Technologies a contract worth $80.8 million to conduct communications experiments using multiple commercial space internet services. Under a program called Defense Experimentation Using Commercial Space Internet (DEUCSI), AFRL is working with defense contractors and commercial satcom providers to figure out how to integrate commercial space

Making progress: this latest achievement in entanglement could lead to better quantum computers. (Courtesy: iStock/Devrimb) A protocol for entangling microwave and optical photons has been demonstrated by researchers in Austria. This has the potential to help to overcome one of the central issues in the formation of a quantum internet by allowing microwave frequency circuits

WASHINGTON — A software glitch kept a lunar lander from properly determining its altitude, leading to a crash on its landing attempt last month, Japanese company ispace announced May 26. The Tokyo-based company said its investigation into the failed landing of its HAKUTO-R M1 lander April 25 concluded that the onboard computer disregarded altitude information

WASHINGTON — NASA and Boeing said May 26 they are still working towards a July launch of the CST-100 Starliner on a crewed test flight despite “emerging issues” and concerns raised by a safety panel. In a statement issued just before the close of business ahead of a holiday weekend, the two organizations said they

Glaciers accumulate significant amounts of fallout radionuclides from nuclear accidents and weapons testing – sometimes in the highest radioactive concentrations ever found outside of nuclear exclusion zones and test sites. Michael Allen digs into the depths of this unexpected issue and the associated risks as glaciers melt Think of glaciers and images of vast, pristine

TAMPA, Fla. — SpaceX launched the Badr-8 TV broadcast and telecoms satellite May 27 for Saudi Arabia-based fleet operator Arabsat, equipped with a jamming-resistant optical communications payload demonstrator. The 4,500-kilogram satellite lifted off at 12:30 a.m. Eastern on a Falcon 9 from Cape Canaveral Space Force Station, Florida, and separated from the rocket in geosynchronous

WASHINGTON — BAE Systems won a $7 million contract from the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency to develop AI tools to automate the tracking of data collected by military satellites. The company on May 25 announced it will work with AI specialists OmniTeq and AIMdyn on the DARPA project, known as Oversight. DARPA also selected

Don’t try this at home: a 19th century depiction of Benjamin Franklin’s famous experiment. (Courtesy: Bequest of A. S. Colgate, 1962) Some of the most iconic images of the American polymath Benjamin Franklin show him doing a very silly thing — flying a kite in a thunderstorm. This is a reference to a famous experiment

WASHINGTON — The Space Development Agency is preparing to launch at least 13 satellites in late June, the agency’s director Derek Tournear said May 26. This will be SDA’s second launch of Tranche 0 satellites for its proliferated low Earth orbit constellation.  Tranche 0 is a 28-satellite demonstration constellation. The first 10 spacecraft — eight

WASHINGTON — The chair of a NASA safety panel urged the agency not to rush into a crewed test flight of Boeing’s CST-100 Starliner vehicle, calling for an independent “deep look” at technical issues with the spacecraft. Speaking at a May 25 public meeting of the Aerospace Safety Advisory Panel, Patricia Sanders, chair of the

In this episode of the Physics World Weekly podcast, the CERN physicist Jamie Boyd talks about the ForwArd Search ExpeRiment (FASER), which is located 480 m downstream from a particle collision point on the Large Hadron Collider (LHC) in Geneva. FASER is on the lookout for weekly-interacting particles that are created in LHC collisions and then

WASHINGTON — Northrop Grumman won a $45.5 million contract to launch a small weather satellite in 2025, the U.S. Space Force announced May 25. The company’s Minotaur 4 rocket will launch a payload called Electro-Optical Infrared (EO/IR) Weather System (EWS) prototype that will demonstrate commercial weather imaging technologies for military use. The launch contract was

ST LOUIS – Iceye unveiled a new imaging mode that distinguishes human-made from natural objects and highlights moving vehicles. For Dwell, the synthetic aperture radar imaging mode Iceye announced May 22 at the GEOINT Symposium here, satellites focus on an area for 25-seconds. Iceye’s traditional imagery is derived from 10-second views. Iceye developed Dwell to

Andrew Robinson reviews Curious Devices and Mighty Machines: Exploring Science Museums by Samuel J M M Alberti Museum-worthy An accelerating cavity from CERN’s Large Electron Positron collider, which was operational from 1989 to 1995. (Donation by CERN. Image © National Museums Scotland) “You owe me a new mobile,” grumbled Samuel J M M Alberti’s colleague

WASHINGTON — Two companies are preparing for a 2026 launch of what they believe will be the first commercial robotic Mars lander mission, the start of what the companies plan to be a regular series of such missions. Impulse Space and Relativity Space announced last July plans for the lander mission, with Impulse leading development