Science

WASHINGTON — Impulse Space, a startup specializing in in-space transportation services, has secured a $34.5 million contract to support two U.S. military space missions set for 2026, the Defense Department announced Oct. 3.  The deal, awarded under a Small Business Innovation Research (SBIR) Phase 3 agreement, is funded by the U.S. Space Force and the

The presence of a partially-molten layer between the Moon‘s rocky mantle and solid metal core is looking more likely following a study on its changing shape and gravity. Researchers from the NASA Goddard Space Flight Center and the University of Arizona analyzed new data describing the Moon’s rigidity under the gravitational influence of Earth and

WASHINGTON — NASA has selected proposals for X-ray and far-infrared space telescopes for additional study as part of a new line of astrophysics missions. NASA announced Oct. 3 that it selected two proposals for further assessment as part of a new line of missions the agency is calling Probe Explorers. Each proposal will receive $5

Johannes Vermeer’s “Girl With a Pearl Earring” is one of the world’s most popular paintings – and now scientists believe they know why, by measuring how the brain reacts when the work is viewed. The Mauritshuis museum in The Hague, which houses the 17th century masterpiece, commissioned neuroscientists to measure brain output when viewing the

The Sun has started spooky season with a bang, letting loose on October 1 with a colossal flare and coronal mass ejection headed right for Earth. The flare clocked in at X7.1 – the second most powerful flare of the current solar cycle, and one of the most powerful solar flares ever measured, sitting within

Hurricane Helene’s flooding has subsided, but health risks are growing in hard-hit regions of the North Carolina mountains, where many people lost access to power and clean water. More than 150 deaths across the Southeast had been attributed to Hurricane Helene within days of the late September 2024 storm, according to The Associated Press, and

WASHINGTON — United Launch Alliance is ready for a second test flight of its Vulcan Centaur rocket as it gears up for a sharp increase in launch activity next year. ULA announced Oct. 2 that it was in final preparations for the Cert-2 launch of Vulcan Centaur, scheduled for a three-hour window that opens at

Sir John Franklin’s Northwest Passage expedition is a moment of history that piques a great deal of interest and imagination today. The sailors who died trying to escape the Arctic after their ships Terror and Erebus became frozen and icebound in 1846 are a testament to human endurance – and desperation. The bones of James

In the outer reaches of our Solar System, 5.7 billion kilometres from the Sun, lies the dwarf planet Pluto. Smaller than Australia, it is an icy world of mountains, glaciers and craters where the average temperature is –232°C. Five moons orbit Pluto – Styx, Nix, Kerberos, Hydra and Charon. Of these, Charon is the largest.

On Feb. 3, 2023, a train carrying chemicals jumped the tracks in East Palestine, Ohio, rupturing railcars filled with hazardous materials and fueling chemical fires at the foothills of the Appalachian Mountains. The disaster drew global attention as the governors of Ohio and Pennsylvania urged evacuations for a mile around the site. Flames and smoke

Building 30 at NASA Johnson Space Center in Houston, Texas, is hallowed ground to people who are part of the civil space industry. At approximately 3:18 p.m. on July 20, 1969, a room full of expectant engineers exhaled a collective sigh of relief when Apollo 11 astronaut Neil Armstrong, uttered the eight famous words: “Houston,

The development of “superhuman” strength and power has long been admired in many cultures across the world. This may reflect the importance of these physical fitness characteristics in many facets of our lives from pre-history to today: hunting and gathering, the construction of large buildings and monuments, war, and more recently, sport. Potentially, the current

In January 2023, a new comet was discovered. Comets are found regularly, but astronomers quickly realised this one, called C/2023 A3 (Tsuchinshan-ATLAS), had the potential to be quite bright. Some hyperbolic reports have suggested it might be the “comet of the century“, but any astronomer will tell you the brightness of comets is notoriously hard

In the arms race over sportswear technology, an advanced form of footwear has recently disrupted the racing scene, giving short and long distance runners a distinct advantage. New research shows that so-called ‘super spikes‘ on soles can also increase running speeds across middle distances by as much as 3.1 percent. The international team of scientists

HELSINKI — China’s human spaceflight agency has revealed the exterior design of the spacesuit for the country’s future crewed lunar landing missions. The China Manned Space Agency (CMSA) unveiled the extravehicular lunar suit Sept. 28 in Chongqing, southwest China. CMSA is also soliciting suggestions for a name for the suit. The suit is being developed

Countless parents across the country recently dropped their kids off at college for the first time. This transition can stir a whirlwind of feelings: the heartache of parting, sadness over a permanently changed family dynamic, the uncertainty of what lies ahead – but also the pride of seeing your child move toward independence. Some might

The reason we call dark matter dark isn’t because it’s some shadowy material. It’s because dark matter doesn’t interact with light. The difference is subtle, but important. Regular matter can be dark because it absorbs light. It’s why, for example, we can see the shadow of molecular clouds against the scattered stars of the Milky

TAMPA, Fla. — California-based Xona Space Systems is expanding to Canada ahead of deploying the first in a proposed constellation of small navigation satellites in low Earth orbit (LEO) next year. The five-year-old venture said Sept. 27 it has opened its first international office in Montréal, Québec, as it prepares to deploy a commercial positioning,

In Jamestown, Virginia – the first permanent English settlement in America – there’s a distinctive black tombstone thought to mark the resting place of a knight. Now, researchers think they’ve figured out where the stone came from. While the stone marker is described as “marble” in historical documents, at the time this term was often

When a massive star explodes as a supernova, it does more than release an extraordinary amount of energy. Supernovae explosions are responsible for creating some of the heavy elements, including iron, which is blasted out into space by the explosion. On Earth, there are two accumulations of the iron isotope Fe60 in seafloor sediments that

GOLDEN, Colorado — The increased amount of space hardware flying through cislunar space and around the moon is, among experts, a growing worry. Even one fragmentation event can have calamitous and far-reaching consequences for future lunar exploration, which drives the need for appropriate debris characterization tools.  That’s the view of two Purdue University researchers who

The Vikings seem to have gone to the ends of the Earth in their search for precious ivory – quite literally. The Norse were trading walrus tusks in medieval Europe that have now been traced to the very top of Greenland – well beyond the reach traditionally associated with this seafaring civilization. A genetic analysis

Tiny, ancient black holes could whizz through our Solar System as often as once a decade, according to a new study. We could spot them by watching for a wobble in the orbit of Mars – and that could help uncover dark matter. Primordial black holes (PBHs) are hypothetical objects that may have been born

TAMPA, Fla. — The Federal Communications Commission voted Sept. 26 to open up more spectrum to Starlink and other non-geostationary satellite (NGSO) operators to improve broadband speeds in the United States. The regulator unanimously voted to give NGSO operators access to frequencies in the 17.3-17.7 gigahertz band for satellite communications provided to fixed points on Earth,

Many of us will have expired foodstuffs sitting forgotten in the back of our fridges and cupboards, but nothing is going to come close to the nearly 3,600-year-old cheese samples discovered clinging to mummified bodies in northwest China. The human remains were recovered from some of hundreds of coffins found in the Xiaohe Cemetery in

The hunt is on for a second Earth, somewhere out there in the Milky Way galaxy, but a newly discovered world is not quite the thing. It comes in at around 1.9 times the mass of Earth, orbiting its star at around twice Earth’s distance from the Sun… but that star is a white dwarf,

Dominated by carbon-rich swamps and forests proliferating across Earth’s rocky surface, the Carboniferous period saw a boost in atmospheric oxygen and vast quantities of carbon dioxide trapped in what eventually became Earth’s coal deposits. Terrestrial plant and animal life flourished amid these changes. But we’ve long been missing the earliest part of that picture, with

Long after Earth’s oceans have vaporized and all its plant and animal life has turned to dust under the Sun’s slow expansion, a tiny disc of silica could continue to represent a landmark moment in human evolutionary history. Researchers at the University of Southampton in the UK have once again demonstrated the incredible storage capabilities

Without refocused federal and private funding, we risk losing our leadership in orbit. With the close of the Cold War, the West plowed headlong into 30 years marked by one tech-fueled boom after another. As if by right, the United States and its allies began to take for granted America’s technological supremacy and the seemingly inevitable expansion

In the desert of southern Peru, a mystery has been unfolding over decades. Hundreds of years ago, the people who lived nearby carved the ground with giant lines to create pictures and symbols that can only be fully appreciated from the sky. These are the Nazca glyphs, mysterious designs whose purpose has baffled archaeologists ever