WASHINGTON — NASA has certified SpaceX’s Falcon 9 to launch the agency’s most important science missions, giving the agency new options that could result in lower costs. SpaceX said that the NASA Launch Services Program (LSP) awarded its Category 3 certification for the company’s Falcon 9 rocket. That certification allows NASA to use the Falcon
An extraordinary account of the impact space weather had on military operations in Vietnam in 1972 was found buried in the US Navy archives, according to a newly published article in Space Weather. On August 4, 1972, the crew of a US Task Force 77 aircraft flying near a naval minefield in the waters off
Professor Janice Limson, Director of the Biotechnology Innovation Centre at Rhodes University.Unicef Longer-lasting and more cost-effective ways of testing for pregnancy and whether HIV treatments are working effectively, as well as checking for the top two strains of malaria, are being tested by scientists at a South African university. These could ultimately help save lives
FILE PHOTO: Fine-art handler Tom Richardson poses with a motorised wheelchair belonging to British theoretical physicist Stephen Hawking ahead of an auction of items from Hawkings’ personal estate at Christie’s in London, Britain October 30, 2018. REUTERS/Toby Melville/File Photo LONDON (Reuters) – A motorized wheelchair used by the late British physicist Stephen Hawking sold at
According to some alarming tabloid headlines, three giant asteroids are skimming by Earth this weekend – one as long as a blue whale! Here’s what’s really going on: there are a number of asteroids about to zip through Earth’s general neighbourhood, according to a NASA asteroid watch website. But we’re not in any danger whatsoever
Who were the first Americans? While we have some rough ideas, the answer to this question has long been up for debate. Now, comparisons between two extraordinary sets of ancient American remains has added rich detail to the spread of ancient human populations through the New World more than 13,000 years ago. And it shows
At first glance, you might miss it. But among Central Park’s usual waterfowl crowd, there appears to be a new addition. And people are flocking to see him. A single, male Mandarin duck flaunts his multi-coloured feathers as he swims out among a posse of mallards and wood ducks. He’s not a local, and it’s
The best scientists are the ones that ask lots of questions, even when they may seem absurd to the rest of us – like, how many mosquitoes can you squeeze into just one cubic centimetre? The answer may seem like a meaningless pursuit, but there’s actually a point – it could help us in our
Deanna Ryals, chief partnership officer at the Air Force Space and Missile Systems Center, said a Space Development Agency could be a valuable addition to the military space enterprise. LONDON — The Air Force Space and Missile Systems Center, responsible for buying 90 percent of the military’s space systems, is being reorganized to meet new
Share to facebook Share to twitter Share to linkedin A home burns as the Camp Fire rages through Paradise, Calif., on Thursday, Nov. 8, 2018. Tens of thousands of people fled a fast-moving wildfire Thursday in Northern California, some clutching babies and pets as they abandoned vehicles and struck out on foot ahead of the
The sky above Earth is never completely dark. Even at night a soft glow emanates from the rim of the upper atmosphere. It’s always there, right above us, but it’s tricky to see from Earth. Lucky for us, an astronaut on board the International Space Station has captured the spectacular effect from space. The photograph
LONDON — Building and launching spacecraft sometimes gets so much attention that the ground segment — user terminals, command and control systems and network operations —isn’t always ready even after a satellite is in space. Leaders in U.S. military space programs said they are prioritizing the ground segment half of their missions to avoid more
A full moon shining down on Washington DC back in 2014NASA/Joel Kowsky You know, I really enjoy writing about the Moon. It’s so underrated; hanging there in the sky, for everyone to see, we really do take this volcanic, electric wonderland for granted. In the minds of many, it’s merely a monument to a historic
Of all our planet’s continents, we know the least about the icy landmass of Antarctica. Now, scientists have used satellite imagery to peer into Earth’s tectonics, revealing the hidden structures of Antarctica as part of their work. Due to its remote location and abundance of ice, charting the geological characteristics of Antarctica is tricky, but
LONDON, (Reuters) – Scientists in Britain expressed concern on Thursday after at least 17 delegates from Africa and Asia wanting to attend a health conference in London were denied visas. Ebola virus discoverer Peter Piot addresses a news conference at the United Nations after an informal consultation at the World Health Organization (WHO) in Geneva
To receive FIRST UP Satcom, a weekly SpaceNews newsletter for satellite and telecom professionals, sign up here. TOP STORIES Last night’s Soyuz launch completed not one, but two constellations. The Arianespace launch of Eumetsat’s Metop-C satellite completed the agency’s polar fleet of three satellites and carried a ship-tracking sensor for Collecte Localisation Satellites (CLS), a subsidiary of
We all know that corvids (ravens and crows) are no bird brains. Earlier this year, they stunned scientists with their ability to tear paper into a tool to obtain food. Now another bird has followed suit: Goffin’s cockatoos (Cacatua goffiniana) have shown that they can tear cardboard into the shape of a tool to get
Ozone-depleting substances are continuing to decrease more than three decades after a major international agreement phased out their production, according to a recently released UN-backed report. We’ll need to wait a few decades before raising the ‘Mission Accomplished’ banner. Knowing it’ll take unprecedented levels of social change to combat global warming, the report even provides
According to historical accounts, the ancient Gauls of Europe 2,000 years ago had a grisly means of commemorating their most prestigious kills: they would embalm the severed heads of these foes, and keep them. Now, for the first time, science has proven that the Gauls did indeed embalm severed heads. The Gauls were fearsome warriors,
Black holes, while fascinating, are hardly a new discovery – but a black hole spinning at one of the highest speeds ever, according to the Hindustan Times, is a completely different story – especially when there have only ever been four others like it. In 2016, India’s first dedicated astronomy satellite, the AstroSat, spotted a
If you’ve ever thought your poo is just a bunch of dead cells, think again. Most of it is alive, teeming with billions of microbes. Here’s what studies in healthy adults reveal makes up our poo. Water Our faeces is largely (75 percent) made up of water, although this differs from person to person. Vegetarians
WASHINGTON — SpaceX Chief Executive Elon Musk said Nov. 7 that his company will attempt an orbital flight of a reusable version of a Falcon 9 upper stage by the middle of next year to test technologies for the company’s next-generation launch vehicle. In a series of tweets, Musk announced a “mod,” or modification, to
Demis Hassabis, chief executive officer and co-founder of DeepMind Technologies Ltd. Photographer: Simon Dawson/Bloomberg Demis Hassabis, the CEO of Google DeepMind, has revealed how tough life was while running his previous company, Elixir Studios, in a candid podcast with entrepreneur Rohan Silva and BBC journalist Kamal Ahmed. Hassabis, a genius who raced through school and had to defer
A beautiful young woman has a headache or is stressed out. When you process your day-to-day experiences and turn them into memories your brain could easily get overwhelmed by the sheer volume of incoming data. To counter this, your brain is wired to identify and forget distracting, irrelevant memories that could compete with more important
WASHINGTON — DARPA has identified eight sites in the United States that it plans to use for a commercial launch competition, a selection that addresses one of the major concerns of potential competitors. DARPA announced Nov. 6 that it selected locations from Alaska to Florida that will serve as potential launch sites for its DARPA
Share to facebook Share to twitter Share to linkedin Teotihuacan, translated from the Aztec language as “birthplace of the gods”, or “place where gods were born”, was an important religious and cultural center during the Aztec empire. However, the oldest monuments in the city predate the Aztec empire by at least 300 years. Panoramic view
There was a huge amount of excitement when the Higgs boson was first spotted back in 2012 – a discovery that bagged the Nobel Prize for Physics in 2013. The particle completed the so-called standard model, our current best theory of understanding nature at the level of particles. Now scientists at the Large Hadron Collider
WASHINGTON — A startup company with plans to develop orbiting propellant depots will fly an experiment to the International Space Station next month to demonstrate some of its key technologies. San Francisco-based Orbit Fab is working with the Center for the Advancement of Science in Space, which operates the national lab portion of the ISS,
Humanity’s artistic heritage just got a new historical milestone. In a cave wall deep in the forests of the isle of Borneo, archaeologists have just confirmed that a depiction of some sort of cow is the world’s oldest known figurative piece of art. It dates back to between 40,000 and 52,000 years ago, during the
The official definition of shark finning is “removing the fins from a shark while still on the fishing vessel and dumping the rest of the shark overboard.” Not only is the practice of shark finning incredibly wasteful (less than 10% of the weight of a shark is used) but it is extremely cruel as they
Thanks to the way research is conducted, our perception of human psychology is based largely on subjects who are largely western, educated, industrialised, rich, and democratic. Which is a little… WEIRD. UC Santa Barbara anthropologist Michael Gurven argues this has to change, and has turned to an isolated indigenous population in the Bolivian Amazon to
Roughly one billion light-years from Earth, a giant elliptical galaxy has been found to be an enthusiastic recycler – albeit not of plastic bottles. The supermassive black hole at its core is blasting cold molecular gas, which is then falling into the black hole, and feeding the cycle anew. Such a phenomenon is known as
You step off the plane, having travelled across the world to the opposite hemisphere. The seasons are all backwards, and when you look up at the full Moon, you realise it’s not even the right way up! Not only is this incredibly weird (mostly because, how did we not realise this before?), but this curious
The first components of the International Space Station (ISS) launched into space more than 20 years ago, and it’s been continuously occupied for 18. Right now, it’s the only operational space station in orbit – but that’s about to change. China just unveiled a life-size replica of the core module of the country’s new space
It’s a mystery that scientists have been trying to solve for nearly a century. How did the world’s smallest flightless bird end up on a remote island in the middle of the South Atlantic? The Inaccessible Island rail (Atlantisia rogersi) is a tiny, flightless bird – 15 to 17 centimetres long – that is only
With an underwater jet pack, a black wet suit and a tiny briefcase laden with wires, Rui Matsumoto looked like a spy on a sabotage mission. In truth, the scientist was on a different sort of assignment in the Galápagos Islands, though the stakes were equally high. Matsumoto had come to perform sonograms on the
WASHINGTON — A Soyuz rocket successfully launched a European weather satellite Nov. 6, completing a constellation of polar-orbiting satellites and providing additional reassurance about the reliability of the Soyuz. The Soyuz ST-B rocket lifted off from the Guiana Space Center in French Guiana on schedule at 7:47 p.m. Eastern. The Metop-C satellite on the rocket
It’s a big Universe, that’s for sure, which means we might not necessarily cross paths with any other lifeforms that might be out there. But if we want to attract the attention of any galactic neighbours, apparently we could use laser technology we already have right now. Today’s lasers could be repurposed to act as
LONDON — The French Ministry of Defence will add a third satellite to its next-generation geostationary constellation, an official said Nov. 6. Col. Laurent Jannin, the head of French satcom programs at the French arms-procurement agency, DGA, said Nov. 6 that connectivity demands from drones and military aircraft drove the need for an additional satellite
How do military pilots aim guided weapons through clouds? originally appeared on Quora: the place to gain and share knowledge, empowering people to learn from others and better understand the world. Answer by Tim Morgan, commercial pilot, on Quora: How do military pilots aim guided weapons through clouds? It depends on how the weapon is
“We thus find that, while the inorganic world has been in a state of continual though very gradual change, the species of the organic world have also been slowly changing in form and in the localities they inhabit; and the records of these changes and these migrations are everywhere to be found, in the actual
FILE PHOTO: General view of the centre stage of Web Summit, Europe’s biggest tech conference, in Lisbon, Portugal, November 5, 2018. REUTERS/Pedro Nunes/File Photo LISBON (Reuters) – Portugal plans to build an international launch pad for small satellites in the Azores and has agreed with China to set up a joint research center to make
Earth is too big to fit into an X-ray or MRI scanner, so a group of physicists in Spain found a fascinating new way to peer inside - they used the subatomic particles constantly streaming through the planet. The team scanned the interior of Earth using neutrinos – and even used them to conduct an entirely
LOS ANGELES — Two former competitors in the Google Lunar X Prize are continuing to pursue commercial lunar landers that could launch as soon as late 2019. In separate presentations at the International Moon Village Workshop & Symposium here Nov. 5, representatives of PTScientists and Team Indus said they are working on versions of landers
Any species reaching for the stars is bound to have its fingertips singed. Probably more than once. One of NASA’s latest posts on the Astronomy Picture of the Day website is an iconic reminder of the mishaps in our spacefaring history. “A flying saucer from outer space crash-landed in the Utah desert after being tracked
BEIJING (Reuters) – U.S. billionaire philanthropist Bill Gates unveiled on Tuesday in Beijing a futuristic toilet that doesn’t need water or sewers and uses chemicals to turn human waste into fertilizer. Microsoft founder Bill Gates speaks during an interview at the fringes of the Reinvented Toilet Expo showcasing sewerless sanitation technology in Beijing, China November
The natural world is a strange and wonderful place. But sometimes biologists come across something that is just… odd. Really, really odd. Case in point: this peculiar arachnid photographed by natural scientist Andreas Kay in Ecuador’s Amazon rainforest in July 2017. By all appearances, it looks like it has the tiny head of a black
Hanging about in space can do pretty strange things to the human body, which is poorly adapted to life without gravity. It can create a slew of health problems, keeping clean is a huge hassle, and doing a wee is majorly awkward. But is it true, as a Snapple cap asserts, that you can’t burp?
- « Previous Page
- 1
- 2
- 3
- 4
- 5
- …
- 40
- Next Page »