Washington DC (SPX) Aug 11, 2023
Each year, NASA scientists, engineers, and developers create software packages to manage space missions, test spacecraft, and analyze the petabytes of data produced by agency research satellites. As the agency innovates for the benefit of humanity, many of these programs are now downloadable and free of charge through NASA's Software Catalog. The 2023-2024 Software Catalog contains more th

Edwards AFB CA (SPX) Aug 17, 2023
With operations based out of Tampa, Florida, the ALOFT field campaign logged approximately 60 hours of flight time across Central America and the Caribbean. The team used NASA Armstrong's ER-2 aircraft to fly near thunderclouds as tall as 18 kilometers (10 miles) in altitude in order to measure gamma-ray glows and flashes produced by the electric fields of thunderclouds. ALOFT is short for

London (AFP) Aug 17, 2023
British military equipment maker BAE Systems announced on Thursday that it had agreed to buy US company Ball Aerospace from the Ball Corporation for about $5.55 billion. BAE said it hoped to complete the acquisition of the aerospace firm in the first half of 2024, with an anticipated tax credit taking the "underlying economic consideration for the business" to $4.8 billion. The proposed

Berlin, Germany (SPX) Aug 11, 2023
At present, there are only estimates of how much forest biomass exists worldwide. However, its extent is crucial in order to accurately assess global warming. This information could be used to predict the consequences of climate change and to take appropriate countermeasures. Researchers at the German Aerospace Center (Deutsches Zentrum fur Luft- und Raumfahrt; DLR) are working on technologies t

Washington DC (SPX) Aug 11, 2023
A 390-million-year-old moss called Takakia lives in some of Earth's most remote places, including the icy cliffs of the Tibetan Plateau. In a decade-long project, a team of scientists climbed some of the tallest peaks in the world to find Takakia, sequence its DNA for the first time, and study how climate change is impacting the moss. Their results, publishing in Cell on August 9, show that Taka

Boston MA (SPX) Aug 15, 2023
When you picture MIT doctoral students taking small PhD courses together, you probably don't imagine them going on class field trips. But it does happen, sometimes, and one of those trips changed Andy Sun's career. Today, Sun is a faculty member at the MIT Sloan School of Management and a leading global expert on integrating renewable energy into the electric grid. Back in 2007, Sun was an

Rome NY (AFRL) Aug 15, 2023
The Air Force Research Laboratory's, or AFRL, new Extreme Computing Facility at the Information Directorate in Rome, New York, is a vital component to national defense research, and AFRL is using the most cutting-edge Quantum Computing technology available to protect the nation and deliver game-changing technologies to the warfighter. AFRL's Information Directorate welcomed U.S. Senate Maj

Columbus OH (SPX) Aug 17, 2023
In a new study, researchers have taken an important step toward understanding how exploding stars can help reveal how neutrinos, mysterious subatomic particles, secretly interact with themselves. One of the less well-understood elementary particles, neutrinos rarely interact with normal matter, and instead travel invisibly through it at almost the speed of light. These ghostly particles ou

Week in images: 14-18 August 2023

Discover our week through the lens

Huginn - piloting the Dragon

Huginn