Science

WASHINGTON — U.S. and Indian officials agreed this week to expand civil space cooperation, including training Indian astronauts and flying payloads on commercial lunar landers. In meetings this week in Washington, held with little public fanfare, the United States and India agreed to expanded cooperation in civil space and laid the groundwork for potential new

New spin on noise: a better understanding of the interactions between NV centres and surface spins could be used to build better quantum devices. (Courtesy: Shutterstock/Inna Bigun/vector) The performance of some quantum technologies could be boosted by exploiting interactions between nitrogen-vacancy (NV) centres and defects on the surface of diamond – according to research done

WASHINGTON — The White House on Feb. 3 announced the appointment of new members to President Biden’s National Security Telecommunications Advisory Committee.  Among the newly selected members of the NSTAC are Johnathon Caldwell, vice president of military space at Lockheed Martin, and Mark Dankberg, chairman and CEO of telecommunications satellite operator Viasat. The NSTAC, chaired

TAMPA, Fla. — Ovzon said Feb. 3 the launch of its first satellite has been pushed out by at least another five months after manufacturing delays forced it to swap out Arianespace for SpaceX. The Swedish broadband provider had hoped to piggyback Ovzon 3 on one of Arianespace’s last few Ariane 5 rockets between December

Weather report: a rodent meteorologist. (Courtesy: Cephas/CC BY-SA 3.0) If you are reading this in the US or Canada, your will be aware that yesterday was Groundhog Day. And depending on your rodent of choice, you can look forward to either a long or short winter. For readers outside of North America, a brief explanation.

WASHINGTON — NASA and Astrobotic have changed the landing site for the company’s first lunar lander mission shortly before its scheduled launch, moving the mission to a location of greater scientific interest. NASA announced Feb. 2 the Astrobotic’s Peregrine mission, flying payloads for the agency’s Commercial Lunar Payload Services (CLPS) program and other customers, will

HELSINKI — China is to construct new ground station facilities to its Zhongshan research base in Antarctica to support satellite data acquisition.  Official space industry newspaper China Space News reported Feb. 2 that a subsidiary of the China Aerospace Science and Industry Corporation (CASIC), a giant state-owned defense and space contractor, won a bid to

This episode of the Physics World Weekly podcast features the laser specialist Tara Fortier, who works with some of the world’s best atomic clocks. Based at the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) in Boulder, Colorado, she explains how atomic clocks work and why it is important for scientists to be able to compare

TAMPA, Fla. — Remote communications provider Galaxy Broadband said Feb. 1 it is buying capacity from OneWeb for $50 million in a multi-year deal to offer low Earth orbit broadband services to more sites across Canada. The agreement enables Galaxy to expand into the northern territory of Nunavut — a sparsely populated region of northern

SEOUL, South Korea — South Korea has selected Arianespace’s Vega C rocket to launch a multipurpose imaging satellite, KOMPSAT-6, that has remained grounded due to sanctions imposed on Russia for invading Ukraine. South Korea’s vice minister for science, Oh Tae-seog, announced Feb. 1 that Vega-C was selected for the launch following international bidding.  In December,

Shining light: The main linac at the European X-ray Free-Electron Laser in Hamburg, Germany (courtesy: D Nölle/DESY). The UK has officially launched the start of design work for a next-generation X-ray free-electron laser (XFEL) facility. Over 150 researchers met at the Royal Society on Monday to discuss plans for the UK-based XFEL that, if given

WASHINGTON — Axiom Space says the customers for its upcoming private astronaut missions to the International Space Station are dominated by governments rather than individuals. In a call with reporters Jan. 30, Axiom Space executives said they were “pretty heavy into training” the crew for the Ax-2, the company’s second mission to the station, tentatively

Saltzman: ‘Personnel have to be trained. We have to have operational concepts, we have to have tactics that are validated’ WASHINGTON — Threats to U.S. satellites are becoming more complex and unpredictable, which will require new ways of training and preparing for a possible conflict, Gen. B. Chance Saltzman, U.S. chief of space operations, said

The European Space Agency (ESA) recently made history by selecting John McFall – an amputee, Paralympic sprinter and medical scientist – among its latest cohort of astronauts. McFall’s inclusion is part of an ESA parastronaut feasibility project for making human spaceflight accessible to people with physical disabilities. In the latest episode of the Physics World Stories

SAN FRANCISCO — LeoLabs announced the commissioning Jan. 30 of its West Australian Space Radar to improve tracking of satellites and debris in low-Earth orbit. LeoLabs tracks more than 20,000 space objects with 10 phased array radars at sites in Alaska, Australia, the Azores archipelago, New Zealand, Texas and Costa Rica. The two individual radars that comprise LeoLabs’ West

TAMPA, Fla. — Inmarsat’s latest geostationary telecoms satellite has arrived at its Florida launch site after a three-day journey from Airbus’ testing facilities in France. An Airbus Beluga plane carrying the 5,500-kilogram Inmarsat-6 F2 (I-6 F2) satellite landed at the Kennedy Space Center on Jan. 27, Airbus Space Systems spokesperson Jeremy Close said, following refueling

The “topology-selective Brillouin scattering” effect in chiral photonic crystal fibre. (Courtesy: Science Advances 8, abq6064 (2022) DOI: 10.1126/sciadv.abq6064) Ordinarily, light transmits the same in both directions: if I can see you, you can see me. Now, however, researchers have created a device that uses travelling sound waves to break this symmetry, thereby reducing unwanted optical

WASHINGTON — NASA officials met last week to review its overall exploration architecture, although it was unclear exactly what they agreed to and when they will make it public. Agency leaders met at the Kennedy Space Center for what NASA calls the Architecture Concept Review, a meeting linked to the development of 63 objectives for