Today, ESA opened its Global Space Markets Challenge. This competition is intended to be a springboard into international markets for small promising space-based companies in Europe, specialised in upstream and downstream activities.

It might be counter-intuitive, but designing satellites to better fall apart is one of the key strategies to combat space debris. Developed by ESA’s Clean Space initiative, the approach is called ‘Design for Demise’ and involves making sure that derelict satellites will break up and burn up fully as they reenter the atmosphere.

Boston MA (SPX) May 04, 2021
Understanding how light waves oscillate in time as they interact with materials is essential to understanding light-driven energy transfer in materials, such as solar cells or plants. Due to the fantastically high speeds at which light waves oscillate, however, scientists have yet to develop a compact device with enough time resolution to directly capture them. Now, a team led by MIT resea

Golden CO (SPX) May 07, 2021
Researchers at the U.S. Department of Energy's National Renewable Energy Laboratory (NREL) developed a breakthrough in energy-efficient phototransistors. Such devices could eventually help computers process visual information more like the human brain and be used as sensors in things like self-driving vehicles. The structures rely on a new type of semiconductor - metal-halide perovskites -

Wright-Patterson AFB, OH (SPX) May 07, 2021
The Skyborg leadership team conducted a two-hours and ten minute flight test April 29 of the Skyborg autonomy core system (ACS) aboard a Kratos UTAP-22 tactical unmanned vehicle at Tyndall AFB, Florida. Termed Milestone 1 of the Autonomous Attritable Aircraft Experimentation (AAAx) campaign, the ACS performed a series of foundational behaviors necessary to characterize safe system operatio

Washington (AFP) May 8, 2021
NASA's Perseverance rover has for the first time captured the low-pitched whirring of the Ingenuity helicopter's blades as it flies through the rarefied Martian atmosphere. The space agency on Friday released new footage shot by the six-wheeled robot of its rotorcraft companion making its fourth flight on April 30 - this time accompanied by an audio track. The nearly three-minute-long v

Washington DC (UPI) May 7, 2021
A B-52 bomber conducted a successful test of the simulated hypersonic kill chain, using a hypersonic weapon to neutralize a target, the U.S. Air Force said. The test was a "successful simulated hypersonic kill chain employment from sensor to shooter and back," during the Northern Edge 21 exercises in Alaska, an Air Force statement said on Thursday. As the B-52 traveled from Barks

Pasadena CA (JPL) May 07, 2021
How much water sloshes around in Earth's lakes, rivers, and oceans? And how does that figure change over time? The upcoming Surface Water and Ocean Topography (SWOT) mission plans to find out. Targeting a late-2022 launch date, this SUV-size satellite will measure the height of Earth's water. SWOT will help researchers understand and track the volume and location of water - a finite resource - a

Washington DC (Sputnik) May 07, 2021
The 2020 National Defense Authorization Act (NDAA) called on the US Department of Defense to provide the US Congress with recommendations for a potential Space Force Reserve element. Presently, members of the National Guard are conducting space missions in seven US states and the territory of Guam. Gen. Daniel Hokanson, chief of the US National Guard Bureau, revealed on Tuesday that he bel

Washington DC (UPI) May 7, 2021
Two space companies that are protesting NASA's $2.9 billion lunar contract award to SpaceX allege the deal would make future moon landings more risky, while the claims leave the timetable for a crewed mission in limbo. The companies that are protesting the award, Jeff Bezos' Blue Origin and space tech firm Dynetics, have filed formal complaints with the Government Accountability Office,