Science

SAN FRANCISCO – Orbite Corp., a Seattle startup founded by American entrepreneur Jason Andrews and French entrepreneur Nicolas Gaume, announced plans July 14 to establish a Spaceflight Gateway and Astronaut Training Complex offering luxury accommodations, dining and recreation for commercial astronauts, their friends and families. “It’s been clear during my two-plus decades in this industry

Dust plumes are a natural phenomenon, part of Earth’s nutrient cycle. They occur when high-velocity winds pick up tiny dry particles from the Earth’s surface and carry them long distances. Every summer, dust plumes from Africa’s Sahara desert travel across the Atlantic Ocean. They’re usually not this big, and they often sink into the ocean.

Lewis joined DoD in November 2019 after working at the Institute for Defense Analyses. WASHINGTON — Mark Lewis, director of defense research and engineering for modernization, will temporarily serve in the role of undersecretary of defense for research and engineering following the departure of Mike Griffin July 10. Lewis will be performing the duties of

Today, flowering plants (or angiosperms) make up around four-fifths of all the green plants on Earth, but for billions of years they weren’t around at all. Now biologists have been able to fully chart the rapid rise of angiosperms over the last 140 million years. A newly published ‘time tree’ of flowering plants shows in

Would you rather save 90 percent with a product discount, or 91.27 percent? New research suggests that our minds are wired to prefer nice, round numbers over irregular ones, even when the irregular option means a better deal overall. This taste for numerical aesthetics was revealed in a study involving 1,552 participants across six different

The center of our very own galaxy might be one of the Universe’s most mysterious places. Astronomers have to probe through thick dust to see what’s going on there. All that dust makes life difficult for astronomers who are trying to understand all the radiation in the center of the Milky Way, and what exactly

There’s a major change happening in the Arctic. Dark waters are blooming with algae, as sunlight floods spaces long obscured by sheets of ice. Over the past two decades, there’s been a 57 percent increase in phytoplankton in the Arctic ocean, an analysis by researchers from Stanford University has revealed. That’s outpaced scientist’s expectations, and

WASHINGTON — Program delays have forced Eumetsat to reserve a pair of Ariane 6 rockets for two European weather satellites originally anticipated to launch on Ariane 5 rockets.  Eumetsat had signed a contract with Arianespace in 2015 to launch two or three Meteosat Third Generation satellites on Ariane 5 rockets between 2019 and 2023. Of

Just as the Moon tugs at our planet’s seas, contributing to oceanic tidal waves, it also pulls at our atmosphere along with the Sun, creating waves in the sky. A new study now demonstrates how some types of ‘sky waves’ resonate around Earth, much like how sound waves resonate inside a bell. In the water,

Last year, scientists detected the most energetic gamma ray burst we’ve ever seen. A distant galaxy spat out a colossal flare in the range of a trillion electron volts (TeV), providing invaluable new insight into the physics of these incredibly energetic events. That was pretty amazing on its own – but now astrophysicists have used

Although we usually have a pretty good handle on all the different kinds of blips and blobs detected by our telescopes, it would be unwise to assume we’ve seen everything there is to see out there in the big, wide Universe. Case in point: a new kind of signal spotted by radio telescopes, which has

The annual mean global temperature is likely to be at least 1 degree Celsius above pre-industrial levels in each of the next five years, the World Meteorological Organization said Thursday. The WMO said there was a 20 percent chance that it will exceed 1.5 C above 1850 to 1900 average levels in at least one

Social media platforms like Facebook, Twitter and Instagram started out as a way to connect with friends, family and people of interest. But anyone on social media these days knows it’s increasingly a divisive landscape. Undoubtedly you’ve heard reports that hackers and even foreign governments are using social media to manipulate and attack you. You

Collins Aerospace, Raytheon and TAG have to develop devices that are smaller in size and have low power consumption than the ones currently used by the military. WASHINGTON — Collins Aerospace, Raytheon and Technology Advancement Group were awarded contracts to develop Global Positioning System handheld devices for the U.S. military. The U.S. Space Force’s Space

The underwater caves along Mexico’s Yucatán Peninsula contain within them a sprawling labyrinth of archaeological relics perhaps unlike anywhere else on Earth. Preserved in a vast network of flooded caverns, these inundated cenotes hold a treasure trove of Maya secrets – but as a new discovery shows, you can also find ancient artefacts dating back to

In July of 2015, Breakthrough Initiatives announced that it was embarking on a ten-year initiative to conduct the largest Search for Extraterrestrial Intelligence (SETI) to date. This initiative was aptly named Breakthrough Listen, which combines state-of-the-art software and data obtained by premier observatories around the world to look for signs of extraterrestrial technological activity (aka. technosignatures). In recent

Maj. Gen. Chance Saltzman wil serve as acting staff director of the Office of the Chief of Space Operations. WASHINGTON — The U.S. Space Force Pentagon headquarters will have a leaner staff structure than traditional military service headquarters and some senior staff posts will be assigned to civilians, according to a draft proposal. The Space

While bats live nearly all over the world, only some parts of our planet are blessed with flying foxes. So it’s no wonder that a recent photo of a huge fruit bat in the Philippines has gone viral on social media. “Remember when I told y’all about the Philippines having human-sized bats? Yeah, this was

There’s a new exotic subatomic particle on the atom smasher. Physicists working with CERN’s Large Hadron Collider beauty (LHCb) collaboration have found a new form of the elusive four-quark particle called a tetraquark that they have never seen before. The newly identified particle is made up of four quarks of the same flavour and is

Imagine being completely blind but still being able to see. Does that sound impossible? Well, it happens. A few years ago, a man (let’s call him Barry) suffered two strokes in quick succession. As a result, Barry was completely blind, and he walked with a stick. One day, some psychologists placed Barry in a corridor

Finding a potentially habitable exoplanet isn’t as easy as you might think. Orbiting at a temperate distance from the host star is just the first step. Size and composition also play a role – as does the level of flare activity in the star. And all of that doesn’t mean much if the system is

Earth’s oceans are simmering with the heat trapped by increasing amounts of greenhouse gases. But one patch of water in the North Atlantic is stubbornly resisting the trend, and actually dropping in temperature. This ‘cold blob‘ has been a subject of interest for climatologists ever since it was first spotted back in 2015. Unfortunately, the

DevOps plus ‘work from anywhere’ is the real endgame for satellite operators The space industry as we know it was born in the glory days of the Space Age, the 1960s. The collaboration between astronauts on the surface of the moon and Mission Control engineers in Houston was the most “remote” work ever accomplished to

Whale sharks, the majestic creatures that also happen to be the world’s largest fish, are far more gentle than the name suggests. They swim lazily around tropical waters, filter-feeding on plankton. Now, biologists have discovered the enigmatic giants have a curious trick up their sleeve – teeth-like scales adorning their eyeballs. It appears to be

If you studied algebra in high school (or you’re learning it right now), there’s a good chance you’re familiar with the quadratic formula. If not, it’s possible you repressed it. By this point, billions of us have had to learn, memorise, and implement this unwieldy algorithm in order to solve quadratic equations, but according to

We love flyover videos from other worlds. These stunning videos, created from imagery gathered by orbiting spacecraft, can give us a sense of what it would be like to fly in an airplane on another planet. This latest flyover video from the European Space Agency’s Mars Express spacecraft, provides a stunning view of one of

The coronavirus isn’t the only thing plaguing East Africa. Amid a global pandemic, people in this region of the world are also contending with another “extremely serious” threat to their lives and livelihoods: locusts. After one of the wettest years on record, these voracious insects have been gathering forces since 2019, as weather conditions allowed

A US Navy ship downed a flying drone with a “solid state laser” in the Pacific Ocean, the service branch announced on Friday. The USS Portland (LPD-27), a San Antonio-class amphibious transport dock ship, deployed its Technology Maturation Laser Weapon System Demonstrator (LWSD) against an unmanned aerial vehicle (UAV) last week during a demonstration, the

WASHINGTON — NASA plans to issue multiple contracts in the coming months for smallsat launch services in the second phase of a program intended to support the emerging small launch vehicle industry. NASA’s Launch Services Program released a draft request for proposals July 1 for its proposed Venture Class Launch Service (VCLS) Demonstration 2 procurement.