Science

WASHINGTON — The U.S. Department of Commerce announced long-awaited changes to export control rules for space technologies, a move aimed at bolstering American competitiveness in the global space industry. The new regulations will make it easier for U.S. companies to sell satellites, launch vehicles, and other space-related technologies to close allies, including the United Kingdom,

One of the most famous facades in all the world has been concealing a deep secret. Underneath the iconic and intricately carved Treasury building at the center of the renowned archaeological site Petra, excavators have stumbled upon a long-lost crypt holding 12 skeletons. One of the buried individuals was found clutching the top of a

Until now, only a small fraction of meteorites that land on Earth had been firmly linked back to their parent body out in space – but a set of new studies has just given us compelling origin stories for more than 90 percent of meteorites today. Past analyses of meteorites striking our planet today suggest

WASHINGTON – Airbus’ defense and space division announced plans to cut up to 2,500 positions by mid-2026, citing a “continued complex business environment, especially in the space systems segment,” the company said Oct. 16. The workforce reduction comes as Europe’s aerospace giant faces mounting financial challenges in its space programs, with executives emphasizing the need

Millions of scientific papers are published globally every year. These papers in science, technology, engineering, mathematics and medicine present discoveries that range from the mundane to the profound. Since 1900, the number of published scientific articles has doubled about every 10 to 15 years; since 1980, about 8 percent to 9 percent annually. This acceleration

The X-37B Orbital Test Vehicle (OTV) has been shrouded in mystery since its maiden flight in 2011. Designed by Boeing and operated by the US Space Force (USSF), this remotely operated, reusable space plane is designed to operate in Low-Earth Orbit (LEO), 240 to 800 kilometers (150 to 500 miles) above the Earth, and test

From soaring coastal redwoods to dinosaur-era Wollemi pines and firs that make the perfect Christmas trees, even our most revered woody plants are in an awful lot of trouble. But it turns out that losing some species won’t just endanger local forests; it will threaten entire ecosystems, research shows. In 2021, a global assessment titled

Google on Monday signed a deal to get electricity from small nuclear reactors to help power artificial intelligence. The agreement to buy energy from reactors built by Kairos Power came just weeks after word that Three Mile Island, the site of America’s worst nuclear accident, will restart operations to provide energy to Microsoft. “We believe

WASHINGTON — The U.S. Army has wrapped up a one-year pilot project exploring outsourcing satellite communications services to private companies, but the long-term future of such arrangements remains unclear. Under the pilot, the Army selected satellite operators Intelsat and SES to provide “satcom as a managed service,” a model where the provider handles all satellite

Around a neighboring star just 635 light-years away, astronomers have found even more evidence of a moon absolutely livid with volcanoes. There is a giant cloud of sodium consistent with volcanic activity, orbiting an exoplanet named WASP-49b, orbiting in turn a yellow dwarf star named WASP-49. And how do we know that the sodium is

The Sunshine State is bracing for more severe weather in the wake of Hurricane Helene. Hurricane Milton rapidly intensified to a Category 5 storm on Monday, leading Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis to declare a state of emergency for 51 counties along Florida’s western shores. Several counties, including Charlotte, Hillsborough, and Manatee, have mandatory evacuation orders,

The rapid development of artificial intelligence (AI) has brought both benefits and risk. One concerning trend is the misuse of voice cloning. In seconds, scammers can clone a voice and trick people into thinking a friend or a family member urgently needs money. News outlets, including CNN, warn these types of scams have the potential

Updated 9:45 a.m. Eastern with Starship landing. MILAN — SpaceX launched its fifth Starship vehicle Oct. 13, successfully making an unprecedented “catch” of its Super Heavy booster back at the launch site. The Starship/Super Heavy vehicle lifted off from the company’s Starbase site at Boca Chica, Texas, at 8:25 a.m. Eastern on a mission called

Our gleaming blue marble of a planet is a treasure that shimmers and sparkles in the darkness of space. Most of humanity will never get a first-person view of this magnificent sight. But the rare few that experience the wonder of extraterrestrial travel have documented their journeys in detail, giving us a breathtaking, beautiful glimpse

You don’t have to look far to see what climate change is doing to the planet. The word “unprecedented” is everywhere this year. We are seeing unprecedented rapidly intensifying tropical storms such as Hurricane Helene in the eastern United States and Super Typhoon Yagi in Vietnam. Unprecedented fires in Canada have destroyed towns. Unprecedented drought

The 2024 Nobel Prize in chemistry recognized Demis Hassabis, John Jumper and David Baker for using machine learning to tackle one of biology’s biggest challenges: predicting the 3D shape of proteins and designing them from scratch. This year’s award stood out because it honored research that originated at a tech company: DeepMind, an AI research

WASHINGTON — The Federal Aviation Administration will allow SpaceX to resume Falcon 9 flights after an upper stage anomaly nearly two weeks ago as the company awaits approval for its next Starship launch. In a statement late Oct. 11, the FAA said it cleared launches of the Falcon 9 that, with one exception, had been

Near-Earth asteroid Bennu has taught us a lot about the nature of asteroids and the history of our planet, and it’s not done yet. A new study of Bennu tracking data gives us fresh clues on a potential fifth fundamental force in the Universe. If in fact it does exist, the fifth force of nature

As Hurricane Milton roared ashore near Sarasota, Florida, tens of thousands of people were in evacuation shelters. Hundreds of thousands more had fled coastal regions ahead of the storm, crowding highways headed north and south as their counties issued evacuation orders. But not everyone left, despite dire warnings about a hurricane that had been one

Imagine three people huddled in a circle so when one speaks, only one other hears. Scientists have created a device that works like that, ensuring sound waves ripple in one direction only. The device, developed by scientists at ETH Zurich and the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology Lausanne, is made up of a disk-shaped cavity

WASHINGTON — The United Arab Emirates will launch a mission to visit several asteroids later this decade on a Japanese H3 rocket. The UAE Space Agency (UAESA) announced Oct. 10 it selected Mitsubishi Heavy Industries to launch its Emirates Mission to the Asteroid Belt (EMA) on an H3 rocket in the first quarter of 2028.

A massive ball of plasma and accompanying magnetic field ejected from the Sun is expected to strike Earth on Thursday morning, potentially triggering auroras as far south as Alabama, according to US forecasters. It comes as the Sun approaches – or is possibly at – the peak of its 11-year cycle, when activity is heightened.

After an unseasonably quiet August, the Atlantic hurricane season is ramping up. Hurricane Milton, now a Category 4, is forecast to land over Florida Wednesday night as the state is still cleaning up the damage from Hurricane Helene, which hit less than two weeks prior. These back-to-back storms aren’t the end of what we may

If your jaw dropped as you watched the latest AI-generated video, your bank balance was saved from criminals by a fraud detection system, or your day was made a little easier because you were able to dictate a text message on the run, you have many scientists, mathematicians and engineers to thank. But two names

WASHINGTON — A startup led by a founder of a financial services company is taking a new approach to space-based solar power intended to be more scalable and affordable than previous concepts. Aetherflux announced Oct. 9 plans to develop and ultimately deploy a constellation of satellites in low Earth orbit that will collect solar power

The inner workings of our brain’s ‘sewage system’ are finally coming to light after years of speculation. Deep within the crevices of five human brains, scientists have, for the very first time, imaged the dynamic intricacies of a underlying plumbing network – previously seen in mice and only hypothesized in our own species. The findings

There are worlds out there far stranger than those we might dream up – and a real oddball we’ve been studying in puzzlement for years just got even odder. Its name is WASP-107b, an exoplanet orbiting a star just 200 light-years away, and it caught humanity’s attention for its unusual composition. WASP-107b is 96 percent

Hurricane Milton went from barely hurricane strength to a dangerous Category 5 storm in less than 24 hours as it headed across the Gulf of Mexico toward Florida. As its wind speed increased, Milton became one of the most rapidly intensifying storms on record. And with 180 mph sustained winds on Oct. 7, 2024, and

SAN FRANCISCO – As a group, NASA’s low-cost science missions have improved significantly. “There were lessons learned over the years that helped,” said Charles Norton, NASA Jet Propulsion Laboratory deputy chief technologist. “In the beginning there were a lot of failures. The community bootstrapped itself to become successful.” In fact, low-cost, risk-tolerant Class-D small satellite