New research highlights image improvements using charge-injection devices
Saturday, 16 January 2021 05:41The night sky is speckled with the light from hundreds of billions of stars within our galaxy. The brightest few thousand of these celestial bodies captivate the human eye and imagination. For astronomers seeking to detect undiscovered stars and, potentially, the planets around them, however, this brightness can be problematic as it may overwhelm the light coming from fainter, nearby objects.
SecAF selects Huntsville, Alabama, as preferred location to host USSPACECOM
Saturday, 16 January 2021 05:41The Secretary of the Air Force, on behalf of the Office of Secretary of Defense, selected Redstone Arsenal, Huntsville, Alabama, as the preferred location for the U.S. Space Command Headquarters. The Department of the Air Force conducted both virtual and on-site visits to assess which of six candidate locations would be best suited to host the U.S. Space Command Headquarters based on facto
North Korea shows off new submarine-launched missile
Saturday, 16 January 2021 05:41Nuclear-armed North Korea unveiled a new submarine-launched ballistic missile at a military parade in Pyongyang, state media reported Friday, in a show of strength days before Joe Biden's inauguration as US president. The display came after the five-yearly congress of the ruling Workers' Party, where leader Kim Jong Un decried the US as his country's "foremost principal enemy". A grinnin
The climate events of 2020 show how excess heat is expressed on Earth
Saturday, 16 January 2021 05:41By most accounts, 2020 has been a rough year for the planet. It was the warmest year on record, just barely exceeding the record set in 2016 by less than a tenth of a degree according to NASA's analysis. Massive wildfires scorched Australia, Siberia, and the United States' west coast - and many of the fires were still burning during the busiest Atlantic hurricane season on record. "This ye
Researchers develop new one-step process for creating self-assembled metamaterials
Saturday, 16 January 2021 05:41A team led by University of Minnesota Twin Cities researchers has discovered a groundbreaking one-step process for creating materials with unique properties, called metamaterials. Their results show the realistic possibility of designing similar self-assembled structures with the potential of creating "built-to-order" nanostructures for wide application in electronics and optical devices.
Using light to revolutionize artificial intelligence
Saturday, 16 January 2021 05:41An international team of researchers, including Professor Roberto Morandotti of the Institut national de la recherche scientifique (INRS), just introduced a new photonic processor that could revolutionize artificial intelligence, as reported by the prestigious journal Nature. Artificial neural networks, layers of interconnected artificial neurons, are of great interest for machine learning
Green Run hotfire test ends early
Friday, 15 January 2021 23:18Updated 11:30 p.m. Eastern after post-test briefing.
BAY ST. LOUIS, Miss. — NASA performed a hotfire test of the core stage of the Space Launch System Jan. 16, but the stage’s four main engines shut down a little more than a minute into a test designed to last eight minutes.
Policy directive on GPS issued in closing days of Trump administration
Friday, 15 January 2021 19:01WASHINGTON — The Trump administration on Jan. 15 issued a policy memo focused on the United States’ dependence on the Global Positioning System and the need to prepare for a day when GPS might not be available.
FCC C-band auction raised nearly $81 billion so far
Friday, 15 January 2021 00:59SAN FRANCISCO – The U.S. Federal Communication Commission’s C-band auction of 280 megahertz of C-band has raised nearly $81 billion and it’s not quite over.
Still to come is the assignment phase, where companies awarded spectrum blocks bid for frequency-specific licenses.
NASA ceases efforts to deploy Mars InSight heat flow probe
Friday, 15 January 2021 00:45WASHINGTON — After nearly two years of struggles, NASA has abandoned efforts to deploy a heat flow probe on its InSight lander into the surface of Mars.
In a Jan. 14 statement, NASA said that a final effort to hammer the “mole” into the surface of Mars Jan.
Six-wavelength spectroscopy can offer new details of surface of Venus
Thursday, 14 January 2021 19:40A trio of papers provide new insight into the composition and evolution of the surface of Venus, hidden beneath its caustic, high temperature atmosphere. Utilizing imaging from orbit using multiple wavelengths—six-band spectroscopy proposed as part of the VERITAS and EnVision missions—scientists can map the iron content of the Venusian surface and construct the first-ever geologic map.
"Previous missions have only imaged one wavelength, and used 30-year-old topographic data to correct the spectra. Moreover, they were based on theoretical ideas about what Venus spectra look like, at very high temperatures. So the prior data have all been fairly qualitative," said M. Darby Dyar, a Senior Scientist at the Planetary Science Institute and author on three recent papers on the topic.
These papers are based on new data from the Planetary Spectroscopy Laboratory at German Aerospace Center Institute of Planetary Research in Berlin, where Dyar works with a team including Jörn Helbert, first author of "Deriving iron contents from past and future Venus surface spectra with new high-temperature laboratory emissivity data" that appears today in Science Advances.
Foust Forward | “Pro-space” lawmakers on wrong side of history after Capitol riot
Thursday, 14 January 2021 19:34After further review, Space Force confirms selection of NSTXL to manage industry consortium
Thursday, 14 January 2021 18:25WASHINGTON — National Security Technology Accelerator (NSTXL) on Jan. 15 received a contract to manage the U.S. Space Force’s Space Enterprise Consortium for the next 10 years.
The Space and Missile Systems Center intended to award the contract Dec.
Week in images: 11 - 15 January 2021
Thursday, 14 January 2021 14:20Week in images: 11 - 15 January 2021
Discover our week through the lens
Mars is still an active world—here's a landslide in Nili Fossae
Thursday, 14 January 2021 14:05Since the 1960s and '70s, scientists have come to view Mars as something of a "dead planet." As the first close-up images from orbit and the surface came in, previous speculation about canals, water and a Martian civilization were dispelled. Subsequent studies also revealed that the geological activity that created features like the Tharsis Mons region (especially Olympus Mons) and Valles Marineris had ceased long ago.
However, in the past few decades, robotic missions have found ample evidence that Mars is still an active place. A recent indication was an image taken by the Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter (MRO), which showed relatively fresh landslides in a crater near Nili Fossae. This area is part of the Syrtis Major region and is located just north of the Jezero Crater (where the Perseverance rover will be landing in six weeks).
The landslide was captured as a part of a larger image acquired by the MRO's Context Camera (CTX) on September 21, 2018.