The United States skipped a step in the space race. Before NASA sent the first astronauts to the moon in 1969, it sent robotic scouts to crash into the lunar surface, land on it, and map it from orbit. The last three Apollo missions included lunar rovers driven by the astronauts. But in those rushed […]
The early forays to the moon employed throwaway technologies, designed to function during the two-week period of lunar daylight, then to perish in the freeze of the equally long night. But to sustain a colony, everything must be made to survive deathly extremes. During daytime, lunar temperatures can reach 120 °C at the equator. At […]
The first reported use of a hypersonic weapon in combat was on 18 March 2022, when a Russian Kinzhal missile destroyed an alleged underground weapons depot of the Ukrainian armed forces in Deliatyn. Another such attack came the next day, then more in April and May, and still more eight months later. The largest salvo […]
In May 2022, DARPA announced a program to develop a brand new X-Plane. Called Liberty Lifter, the X-Plane is a massive cargo seaplane that leverages ground effect to fly long distances efficiently by skimming over the surface of the sea. DARPA is of course well known for having lots of crazy ideas, only some of […]
Three days before astronauts left on Apollo 8, the first-ever flight around the moon, NASA’s safety chief, Jerome Lederer, gave a speech that was at once reassuring and chilling. Yes, he said, America’s moon program was safe and well-planned—but even so, “Apollo 8 has 5,600,000 parts and one and one half million systems, subsystems, and […]
The technical challenge of missile defense has been compared with that of hitting a bullet with a bullet. Then there is the still tougher economic challenge of using an expensive interceptor to kill a cheaper target—like hitting a lead bullet with a golden one. Maybe trouble and money could be saved by shooting down such […]
Update 4 Nov. 2:45 p.m. EDT: Rocket Lab says its launch was successful, but booster recovery was not. It says it lost telemetry signals from the descending first stage during reentry. “As standard procedure, we pull the helicopter from the recovery zone if this happens,” a company spokesperson said. “If at first you don’t succeed….” […]
“Build something that will absolutely, positively work.” This was the mandate from NASA for designing and building the James Webb Space Telescope—at 6.5 meters wide the largest space telescope in history. Last December, JWST launched famously and successfully to its observing station out beyond the moon. And now according to NASA, as soon as next […]
As the world tries to recover from the COVID-19 pandemic, the aerospace and defense industries are predicted to grow from US $416 billion to $551 billion by 2030, according to Mordor Intelligence. The growth means increased development of aviation, space, and other systems that are crucial to the industries. The use of technical standards can […]
This article is part of our exclusive IEEE Journal Watch series in partnership with IEEE Xplore. Self-assembling and self-reconfiguring robots depicted in films like Transformers are becoming closer to reality, thanks to a team of researchers at MIT’s Computer Science and Artificial Intelligence Laboratory (CSAIL). Scientists at CSAIL have created what they call ElectroVoxels, modular […]