Science

WASHINGTON — Virgin Orbit successfully placed a set of payloads for the U.S. Space Force into orbit early July 2 in the company’s first nighttime launch. Virgin Orbit’s Boeing 747 aircraft, Cosmic Girl, took off from Mojave Air and Space Port in California at 1:49 a.m. Eastern. The aircraft flew to its drop zone over

The past, present and future of high-energy physics come under the spotlight in the July 2022 special issue of Physics World magazine. Tracks to the past: the discovery of the Higgs boson was announced a decade ago on 4 July 2012 (Courtesy: CERN) It’s rare in physics to be able to say “I was there”

SAN FRANCISCO –Agile Space Industries is preparing to consolidate propulsion design, manufacturing and production this summer in a new 1,860-square-meter facility in Durango, Colorado. “The goal is to move all of our design, manufacturing and production processes under one roof,” Bryce Dabbs, Agile Vice President of Business Development and Strategic Finance, told SpaceNews. “In addition

HELSINKI — The Chinese Academy Sciences is preparing to select a new batch of space missions from proposals to study Earth, the Sun and solar system, and the deeper universe as part of a “New Horizons Program.” Concepts proposed in recent years have been down selected to a list of 13 candidate missions in four

In this episode of the Physics World Weekly podcast we explore how climate change is affecting human and natural systems with Noah Diffenbaugh, who leads the Climate and Earth System Dynamics Group at Stanford University in California. Diffenbaugh is editor-in-chief of the new journal Environmental Research: Climate, which is published by IOP Publishing (which also

TALLINN, Estonia — Chinese state-owned and commercial companies are developing capabilities to launch liquid propellant rockets from sea platforms to boost the country’s launch options. China has already demonstrated the ability to launch the Long March 11 solid rocket from sea platforms. These have been facilitated by a new spaceport near Haiyang in the eastern

BALTIMORE — With commissioning of the James Webb Space Telescope nearly complete, project officials and NASA leadership promise the telescope’s first images will stun scientists and the public alike. During a media event at the Space Telescope Science Institute (STScI) here June 29, project managers and scientists said the telescope is already collecting “early release

A bendable organic LED with a natural mica backing releases a strong, candlelight-like glow. (Courtesy: Andy Chen and Ambrose Chen) A new bendable organic light-emitting diode (OLED) that produces warm, candle-like light with hardly any emissions at blue wavelengths might find a place in flexible lighting and smart displays that can be used at night

Acquisition executive Frank Calvelli said he would be open to a different model than the current two-vendor approach WASHINGTON — The Space Force launch procurement command in Los Angeles later this year will send to the Pentagon a proposed strategy for selecting national security launch services providers for the next round of contracts expected to

WASHINGTON — The successful launch of a NASA lunar cubesat mission was the culmination of two and a half years of work at Rocket Lab that, the company’s chief executive says, could enable “ridiculously low cost” planetary missions. Rocket Lab’s Electron launched NASA’s Cislunar Autonomous Positioning System Technology Operations and Navigation Experiment (CAPSTONE) cubesat and

(Courtesy: iStock/MF3d) As temperatures fall below freezing, lithium-ion batteries cannot hold as much charge, so they do not recharge very well. Researchers from China’s Jiaotong University say they have now overcome this problem by replacing the traditional graphite anode in these devices with a “bumpy” carbon-based material. The new structure maintains its rechargeable storage capacity

TAMPA, Fla. — Arianespace is looking to move Ovzon’s first satellite to another Ariane 5 after Eutelsat switched to a dedicated mission to launch sooner. Arianespace had been preparing to launch the Swedish broadband service provider’s Ovzon-3 satellite with Eutelsat’s Konnect VHTS satellite. Both satellites destined for geostationary orbit (GEO) have suffered pandemic-related production delays.

TAMPA, Fla. — Telesat has applied for a U.K. license to connect broadband terminals with Lightspeed satellites it plans to start deploying in 2025 to low Earth orbit. The Canadian operator’s application says the first of 198 Lightspeed satellites will be launched in the third quarter of 2025, British telecoms regulator Ofcom said June 24. 

How it works: A schematic of the experiment, showing (from left to right) the photon source, fibre-based loops of different sizes with programmable parameters, and a demultiplexer that sends the outputs to different photon-number-resolving (PNR) detectors. (Courtesy: Xanadu) Researchers at Xanadu, a Canadian company specializing in photonic quantum computing, claim to have achieved quantum computational

WASHINGTON — House appropriators partially restored funding for a planetary defense mission as part of a spending bill while also raising concerns about NASA’s closure of an airborne observatory and plans to return samples from Mars. The House Appropriations Committee released June 27 the report accompanying its commerce, justice and science (CJS) spending bill for

WASHINGTON — The two companies NASA selected earlier this month to develop spacesuits for the International Space Station and Artemis lunar missions were the only companies to bid on the project, according to agency procurement documents. NASA announced June 1 it awarded contracts to teams led by Axiom Space and Collins Aerospace to develop new

Listening in: Mark Sheinin (left) and Dorian Chan test their camera system using guitars. (Courtesy: Carnegie Mellon University) A conventional microphone contains a diaphragm that vibrates in the presence of sounds waves. These mechanical vibrations are then converted into an electrical signal. In a condenser mic, for example, the diaphragm acts as one plate of

WASHINGTON — NASA’s Psyche asteroid mission will not launch this year as previously planned after the agency concluded there was not enough time to complete testing of the spacecraft’s software before its launch window closes. In a briefing held June 24 on just a few hours’ notice, agency officials said the mission did not have