Marek Denko/Noemotion There’s no planned mission to send a lander to Europa, but this artist’s rendition gives a sense of what one such lander might look like, including the new antenna design necessary for staying in touch with Earth. Europa, one of Jupiter’s Galilean moons, has twice as much liquid water as Earth’s oceans, if […]
StoryTK Alphabet’s enthusiasm for balloons deflated earlier this year, when it announced that its high-altitude Internet company, Loon, could not become commercially viable. But while the stratosphere might not be a great place to put a cellphone tower, it could be the sweet spot for cameras, argue a host of high-tech startups. The market for […]
With the Biden administration’s 2022 defense budget coming in at US $753 billion, it’s easy to get diverted by the megaton-sized sum that the United States plans to spend on modernizing its nuclear forces over the coming decades. But a bigger question about the future of nuclear deterrence arguably looms—namely, how might intercontinental ballistic missiles (ICBMs) affect national […]
We search the stars for signs of intelligent life. What if the stars were looking back, wondering the same thing about us? Austrian astrophysicist Lisa Kaltenegger has an idea of what that might mean, or at least where that perspective might be coming from: 2,034 stars, seven with known and confirmed exoplanents, either are, have been, […]
On the morning of 17 June, China launched the first astronauts to its Tianhe space station module, with a Long March 2F rocket sending the crewed Shenzhou-12 spacecraft into orbit. Overlooked from this major success, however, was that downrange from its Gobi Desert launch site, empty rocket stages fell to ground. As getting to orbit […]
If getting flying cars to work has been a challenge, electric flying cars are an even tougher nut to crack, due to the weight of the batteries required and how quickly they must be able to pump out energy. But a new twist on lithium-ion batteries may help them become reality. Electric vertical takeoff and […]
How do you pack food for a trip to Mars? This is not a trick question. As astronauts and space scientists gear up for longer missions and spaceflights—just the journey to and from Mars takes about six months—they will need an adequate supply of food, for which they need refrigeration. The problems: Earthly refrigerators don’t […]
The era of just tossing rockets willy nilly into space and then littering orbit, the ocean, and the occasional backyard with their remains may finally be drawing to a close. This week, Relativity Space is announcing the Terran R, a 65 meter tall entirely 3D-printed two stage launch vehicle capable of delivering 20,000 kg into […]
Look, I know that the Perseverance rover has brought some flashy stuff to Mars. It’s got lasers, it’s got a big robot arm, it’s got a little robot arm, and it even launched a helicopter. That’s all great, but tucked up inside of Perseverance is another instrument about the size of a car battery that […]
Ever since humans started launching rockets into space, the amount of junk flying around Earth has been growing, to the point where debris has damaged satellites or forced the space station to shift its orbit. Now researchers in Australia want to use lasers to track the wayward particles, and even shove them out of the […]