Tucson AZ (SPX) Oct 25, 2021
Hot Jupiters - giant gas planets that race around their host stars in extremely tight orbits - have become a little bit less mysterious thanks to a new study combining theoretical modeling with observations by the Hubble Space Telescope. While previous studies mostly focused on individual worlds classified as "hot Jupiters" due to their superficial similarity to the gas giant in our own so

Wright-Patterson OH (SPX) Oct 25, 2021
The Air Force Materiel Command declared Initial Operational Capability for its support to the U.S. Space Force on Oct. 1, 2021. The IOC milestone means AFMC is well on its way to fully supporting the Space Force as its Servicing Major Command for Space Force-assigned Airmen. The USAF and USSF took a series of steps over the past year in the designation of AFMC as Servicing MAJCOM for the U

Kirtland AFB NM (SPX) Oct 25, 2021
Fifty scientists from Department of Defense laboratories, industry and research universities met virtually September 22 - 23, to discuss the initial findings from the Air Force Research Laboratory's Demonstration and Science Experiments (DSX) spacecraft that completed a 23-month mission in May 2021. The Air Force Research Laboratory's Space Vehicles Directorate located on Kirtland AFB, hos

Kirtland AFB NM (SPX) Oct 25, 2021
The Air Force Research Laboratory has partnered with ThermAvant Technologies and Maxar Technologies to develop and deploy the next generation of spacecraft thermal control technology. The groundbreaking technology, Oscillating Heat Pipes (OHPs), provides lightweight and highly efficient temperature control on higher power yet smaller spacecraft. The OHP was recently launched in the second

Washington DC (Sputnik) Oct 25, 2021
Earlier this week, Western media alleged that China had carried out a missile test in the summer involving a nuclear-capable hypersonic glide vehicle. Beijing dismissed the claims, saying its test involved reusable rocket technology. On Thursday, the Financial Times reported that the PRC had carried out not one, but two hypersonic missile tests. Republican Senator Lindsey Graham has sugges

Moscow (Sputnik) Oct 25, 2021
Last month, the Pentagon successfully tested an air-breathing hypersonic weapon capable of moving five times faster than the speed of sound. The US Navy and Army tested hypersonic weapon component prototypes on Wednesday, the Pentagon said. All three tests were successful, it added. The US Navy has confirmed that it conducted a weapons test with the Army that demonstrated advan

Boston MA (SPX) Oct 26, 2021
Most elements lighter than iron are forged in the cores of stars. A star's white-hot center fuels the fusion of protons, squeezing them together to build progressively heavier elements. But beyond iron, scientists have puzzled over what could give rise to gold, platinum, and the rest of the universe's heavy elements, whose formation requires more energy than a star can muster. A new study

San Francisco CA (SPX) Oct 26, 2021
An intriguing candidate signal picked up last year by the Breakthrough Listen project has been subjected to intensive analysis that suggests it is unlikely to originate from the Proxima Centauri system. Instead, it appears to be an artifact of Earth-based interference from human technologies, the Breakthrough Initiatives announced Monday. Two research papers, published in Nature Astronomy, discu

Nashville TN (SPX) Oct 26, 2021
Karan Jani, research assistant professor of physics and astronomy, co-chaired the first international workshop focused on gravitational wave detection on the moon. The workshop builds on Jani's recent studies that make the case for building a crewed, lunar-based observatory. "We are at the dawn of a new space age, with the moon at the center of our campaign for the next several years," Jan

Hilo HI (SPX) Oct 26, 2021
The University of Hawaii Institute for Astronomy (IfA) received a $15 million NASA grant to continue its world-leading efforts to discover Near-Earth Objects (NEOs) and Potentially Hazardous Asteroids (PHAs). IfA's Panoramic Survey Telescope and Rapid Response System (Pan-STARRS) atop Haleakala currently finds nearly as many NEOs and PHAs as the rest of the world's observatories combined,