For quantum computing to become fully realised, we’re going to have to make a few huge scientific leaps along the way – including finding a superconductor that can act in the same way as silicon does in today’s computing. A team of researchers thinks that search might now be over. Introducing the compound uranium ditelluride
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The self-declared daredevil and Flat Earther “Mad” Mike Hughes is preparing for another launch in his homemade, steam-powered rocket in the Californian desert. His final goal is to reach the edge of space, but how likely is he to succeed and see that the Earth is actually spherical? Hughes’ first rocket launch was in 2014,
Greenland is known for its glaciers, but in the past month, the island has shed ice and taken on fire. Scientists didn’t expect to see Greenland melt at this rate for another 50 years: By the last week of July, the melting had reached levels that climate models projected for 2070 in the most pessimistic
BEIJING (Reuters) – A Chinese government space agency successfully launched on Saturday its first rocket meant for commercial use, state television CCTV reported, as firms in the country compete to join a commercial satellite boom. Smart Dragon-1 rocket, which weighs 23 tonnes and was developed by a unit of China Aerospace Science and Technology Corp
An illustration of an active black hole, one that accretes matter and accelerates a portion of it outwards in two perpendicular jets. The normal matter undergoing an acceleration like this describes how quasars work extremely well. The matter that falls into a black hole, of any variety, will be responsible for additional growth in both
DALLAS — NASA’s Marshall Space Flight Center will manage the agency’s efforts to develop a lander needed to achieve the goal of landing astronauts on the moon by 2024, an announcement overshadowed by political wrangling about what center should be responsible. NASA Administrator Jim Bridenstine, speaking at Marshall and flanked by three House members from
Space tourism moved a step closer to reality Thursday as Virgin Galactic unveiled its new Mission Control at a spaceport in New Mexico and the schedule for final test flights before taking paying customers into the final frontier. Spaceport America, a taxpayer-funded facility in New Mexico’s remote Jornada del Muerto desert, received its license to
When scientists ran DNA analysis on a sediment core taken from the floor of the Arctic ocean back in 2010, they found something surprising. A previously unknown organism belonging to the strange domain of microbes called Archaea appeared to have genomic characteristics associated with a totally different domain – Eukaryota. They named their discovery Lokiarchaeota,
Specialists are eating the world. Tiger parents push their kids to get an early start and develop enough expertise to distinguish themselves for admissions committees from preschool through college. Academic departments push exquisite depth, seeking scholars to drill down and become world authorities in ever more narrow subjects. Corporate hiring managers seek candidates for roles
WASHINGTON — APT Satellite says it has received $21 million in insurance payments for the partial failure of the Apstar-6 communications satellite in May 2018. In a report to the Hong Kong stock exchange released Aug. 8, the operator said most of the indemnity payments relating to Apstar-6’s partial solar power loss have been collected.
Aeronautics is our tradition. For 60 years, we have advanced aeronautics, developed new technologies and researched aerodynamics. Our advancements have transformed the way you fly. We will continue to revolutionize flight. Congress passed the National Aeronautics and Space Act, on July 16 and President Eisenhower signed it into law on July 29, 1958. NASA opened
Elon Musk, CEO of SpaceX and Tesla, still wants to drop nuclear bombs on Mars to transform it into a livable planet for humans — as evidenced by his latest tweet on Friday morning. Nuke Mars! — Elon Musk (@elonmusk) August 16, 2019 Musk believes that by hitting Mars with nuclear weapons, the planet’s polar
NASA Administrator Jim Bridenstine speaks to media during a visit to NASA’s Michoud Assembly Facility where engineers are preparing to add the final section to the core stage of the rocket that will power NASA’s Artemis 1 lunar mission, in New Orleans, Louisiana, U.S., August 15, 2019. REUTERS/Jonathan Bachman WASHINGTON (Reuters) – NASA Administrator Jim
ULA launching another WGS satellite in 2017, a mission some experts say the future Space Force could someday perform with low-cost small satellites from Low Earth Orbit. Photo By: Courtesy of United Launch Alliance The late summer heat is almost unbearable in Logan, Utah. Yet we still come in waves of thousands this year, to
HELSINKI — India’s second lunar mission, Chandrayaan-2, is scheduled to enter lunar orbit Aug. 20 following a relatively circuitous journey to the moon. Back on Earth, India’s future space ambitions are also developing. The Chandrayaan-2 spacecraft entered lunar transfer trajectory Aug. 13 following five orbit maneuvers to raise its initial elliptical geocentric orbit after launch
It looks like we’ve bagged another win for gravitational wave astronomy. A new gravitational wave detection is the best candidate yet for a type of cosmic collision never seen – the elusive merger between a black hole and a neutron star. The event, called S190814bv, was detected by the LIGO and Virgo interferometers at 11
WASHINGTON (Reuters) – Genetic research that reconstructed the past population dynamics of the cave bear, a prominent prehistoric denizen of Europe, implicates Homo sapiens rather than climate cooling in the Ice Age extinction of these brawny plant-loving beasts. The skull of an extinct cave bear from the Natural History Museum in Belgrade, Serbia, is seen
People generally fall into three camps when it comes to the idea of a “digital detox”: those who can do it and feel refreshed afterward, those who try it and come back more stressed than ever, and those who would never even consider it. But a new study from researchers in both marketing and information systems
OSP-4 is designed to accommodate payloads greater than 400 lbs. The Air Force projects it will procure about 20 missions over nine years. WASHINGTON — The Air Force Space and Missile Systems Center’s Launch Enterprise is requesting industry bids for the Orbital Services Program-4. Proposals are due Aug. 29. OSP-4 is managed by the Rocket
Asteroids – rocky bodies floating in the space – don’t evoke a particularly positive feeling. Remember one of them hitting the earth and wiping out the dinosaurs? Well, it appears that another huge asteroid might be on a collision course with our planet and might wreak havoc due to its sheer size. Named 1998 OR2,
Carbon can be arranged in a number of configurations. When each of its atoms is bonded to three other carbon atoms, it’s relatively soft graphite. Add just one more bond and it becomes one of the hardest minerals known, diamond. Chuck 60 carbon atoms together in a soccerball shape and boom, buckyballs. But a ring
Climate deniers are often featured by the mainstream media as a way to ‘balance’ their reporting, and yet for most of this century, climate coverage has been neither fair nor balanced. Since the early 2000s, scientific dispute over the reality of human-caused climate change has virtually come to an end. But you wouldn’t necessarily know
Data from thousands of surface monitoring stations worldwide, including ocean buoys in the Pacific and land-based thermometers dotting the continents, show that July 2019 was the warmest month on Earth since at least 1850. Berkeley Earth, an independent climate monitoring and research organization, released data Thursday showing last month beat August 2016 for the title
In July, the French daily newspaper Le Monde reported that the 0.6-mile (1 kilometre) solar road was a fiasco. In December 2016, when the trial road was unveiled, the French Ministry of the Environment called it “unprecedented”. French officials said the road, made of photovoltaic panels, would generate electricity to power streetlights in Tourouvre, a
WASHINGTON (Reuters) – The head of NASA is set to announce plans on Friday to name the U.S. space agency’s Marshall Space Flight Center in Alabama as headquarters for its human lunar lander program, signaling progress in its drive to put astronauts back on the moon by 2024, three people familiar with the plan said.
Virgin Galactic’s Gaia lounge at its new spaceport Virgin Galactic 2019 Richard Branson’s Virgin Galactic unveiled the interiors of its new New Mexico spaceport Thursday, giving the public a glimpse of how the first $250,000-ticket tourists will spend their time before boarding suborbital space flights next year. “We’re on the home stretch now,” said Virgin
SPACEPORT AMERICA, N.M. — As Virgin Galactic prepares to finish the test program for its SpaceShipTwo suborbital vehicle, the company says the New Mexico spaceport it will operate from is ready. At an Aug. 15 media event at Spaceport America, located in the New Mexico desert north of the city of Las Cruces, executives showed
A careful inspection of super-deep diamonds has revealed what geologists have long suspected: Hiding somewhere in our planet’s interior, there exists a vast reservoir of primordial magma, undisturbed for more than 4 billion years. The location, the size and the contents of this ancient reservoir are still up for debate, but thanks to these diamonds,
An unprecedented up close, inside look in high-definition of space shuttle Atlantis as it was readied for “towback” from Kennedy’s Shuttle Landing Facility runway to Orbiter Processing Facility-1 following its May 26 landing on STS-132. After every shuttle landing, about 150 trained workers assist the crew out and prepare the shuttle for towing atop a
WASHINGTON (Reuters) – Jupiter, the solar system’s largest planet, may have been smacked head-on by an embryonic planet 10 times Earth’s mass not long after being formed, a monumental crash with apparent lasting effects on the Jovian core, scientists said on Thursday. The collision between a young Jupiter and a massive still-forming protoplanet in the
Bottles of Poland Spring water on a shelf in New York. Credit: Tom Starkweather/Bloomberg News BLOOMBERG NEWS Instagram doesn’t have to be a waste of time. Beyond enriching your life with landscapes and other eye candy, it can help you figure out what can and can’t be recycled. Recycling contamination is a big deal because
WASHINGTON — Lacuna Space CEO Rob Spurrett says he’s well aware his 3-year-old startup is part of a cresting wave of Internet of Things ventures seeking to deploy constellations of cubesats to connect a world awash in smart devices. At least 16 companies are targeting the IoT market with smallsats, according to NSR analyst Alan
Something weird can happen to the ears of people who hang out in the icy cold of the ocean’s embrace. Small spurs of bone start growing in the ear canals, triggered by the irritation the cold temperatures cause on the inner ear. It’s a condition seen a lot in surfers, so it’s known as surfer’s
While a team of researchers from the US Geological Survey (USGS) was analysing rainwater samples for nitrogen pollution, they found something they weren’t expecting – plastic. In a new report, aptly titled “It is raining plastic”, the team explain that plastics were identified in over 90 percent of the rainwater samples they took at eight different
TB is a major killer disease. Innovative research is now delivering shorter and safer drug treatments. Friends for International TB Relief, Vietnam (with permission) Last year, at the UN High Level Meeting on Tuberculosis, I spoke about the need to “science the shit out of TB.” Without innovation and ambition, we will continue to use
To receive FIRST UP Satcom, a weekly SpaceNews newsletter for satellite and telecom professionals, sign up here. TOP STORIES Australian farmers are celebrating the start of less restrictive satellite internet from the country’s twin Sky Muster broadband satellites. NBN, operator of the Ka-band satellites, announced Sky Muster Plus Aug. 11, providing an option for homes and business
To prepare for the next mission to Mars in 2020, NASA has taken to the lava fields of Iceland to get its new robotic space explorer ready for the job. With its black basalt sand, wind-swept dunes and craggy peaks, the Lambahraun lava field at the foot of Iceland’s second biggest glacier, Langjokull, was chosen
Ah, New Zealand. The ancient home of enormous parrots. And, apparently, penguins that would tower menacingly over them. Researchers have found the remains of a beast that would have stood nearly as tall as a human, one of the biggest penguins to ever waddle the Earth. Paleontologists have named the penguin Crossvallia waiparensis, and it
Jupiter’s core is a bizarre mix of solid rocks mixed with a diffuse bubble of hydrogen gas. And the story of how it got that way has long eluded explanation. But now scientists think they’re on to something, suggesting that the gas giant absorbed another protoplanet during a head-on collision some 4.5 billion years ago
This is what happens when a star turns itself inside out in less than a second. NASA/CXC/SAO It’s one thing to say that supernova explosions are bright. Is another thing completely to understand what that actually means. So let’s go on a little adventure. Supernovas are the deaths of the most massive stars in the
LAS CRUCES, N.M. — Sierra Nevada Corp. announced Aug. 14 that it will use United Launch Alliance’s Vulcan launch vehicle for sending Dream Chaser cargo spacecraft to the International Space Station starting in late 2021. In a joint announcement at SNC Space Systems offices in suburban Denver, the companies announced that SNC had selected Vulcan
Around 54 million years ago, in the early Eocene, there lived a tiny crane fly. It may not have been a particularly remarkable crane fly while it was alive, but after it died, geological processes turned it into something magnificent: a fossil so brilliantly preserved, we can make out the individual cells of its compound
NASA’s Orion spacecraft launched successfully atop a United Launch Alliance Delta IV Heavy rocket Dec. 5 at 7:05 a.m. EST from Space Launch Complex 37 at Cape Canaveral Air Force Station in Florida. Orion’s Exploration Flight Test-1 (EFT-1), is the first flight test for NASA’s new deep space capsule and is a critical step on
Dr. Sonia Batten, an oceanographer at the Marine Biological Association, first suspected pink salmon were causing problems in the North Pacific when she noticed a ‘see-saw’ effect between populations of pink salmon and the tiny shrimp-like animals they feed on; pink salmon are abundant in odd-numbered years, while their zooplankton shrimp-snacks are abundant in even-numbered years. Catch of pink salmon
SAN FRANCISCO – Spire Global announced an agreement Aug. 13 to share data and develop new products alongside Concirrus, a London-based insurance analytics company. “The insurance sector is a data-based industry at its core and Spire can add deep intrinsic value to existing forecasting and modeling capabilities,” Peter Platzer, Spire Global CEO, told SpaceNews by
There are few things more special than watching a shooting star streak across the sky on a warm summer evening. Viewers across the United States will have a chance Sunday night into the pre-dawn hours on Monday, as well as Monday night into early Tuesday morning, when a dozen meteors per hour and possibly up
Human semen, If you separated it out, would on average hold a 50/50 mix of sex chromosomes – half of the sperm bearing the Y chromosome, and half the X chromosome. Despite all the myths about choosing the sex of your baby through superstitious rituals, there’s not a lot we can do about changing those odds. And
After reports emerged that contractors had reviewed voice recordings for Apple’s Siri, Amazon’s Alexa and Google’s Assistant, all three companies moved to change their policies. Although customers theoretically have the final word over their digital assistants, they’re not given the option of blocking the recordings outright. The companies say the data is collected and reviewed
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