technical updates

Arctic sea ice may move in unexpected ways because individual ice floes are constantly colliding and transferring energy. Researchers found that this simple process can explain several long-standing mysteries about how quickly the ice moves and spreads. from Latest Science News -- ScienceDaily https://ift.tt/Td9BpOr

Detective work by a team of space-weather experts has discovered the truth about a historical event that had been thought to be the first-ever case of technological disruption by geomagnetic activity from the sun, but has now been shown to have taken place seven years later. From it being too hot or too wet to leaves on the track or cows on the line, there's a fine tradition of what the British public consider to be flimsy excuses for delays on the trains. Yet an 1871 edition of the journal Nature describes a very different event that caused a train departing Exeter, in Devon on the south-west coast of the U.K., to be delayed by 16 minutes: a solar storm that flooded the railway signals' electrical telegraph network with current. "The Exeter train delay is a fascinating story because it sits right at the point where emerging technologies first began to encounter the realities of the...

The U.S. military must be ready to engage the enemy farther from home than ever before, according to its highest-ranking officer. "Today's modern battlefield operates from the seabed to cislunar space ," Gen. Dan Caine, the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, said Wednesday (Sept. 16) during a keynote address at the Air & Space Forces Association's Air, Space & Cyber Conference in National Harbor, Maryland. Cislunar space extends from Earth all the way out to the orbit of the moon and includes the lunar surface. For several years now, military officials have been stressing the strategic importance of this huge region, which could get quite a bit busier in the next decade or so. Gen. Dan Caine, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, speaks at the Air & Space Forces Association’s Air, Space & Cyber Conference in National Harbor, Maryland, on Sept. 16, 2026. (...

The winners of the first-ever Neil Armstrong Space Prize just got their hardware. Those awardees — the people who developed and mastered the famous landing capability of SpaceX's Falcon 9 rocket — were announced in April. But they didn't actually receive the prize until Tuesday night (Sept. 15), when it was bestowed during a ceremony at the Cosmos Club in Washington, D.C. And it was richly deserved, according to Purdue University, which created the international award and named it after perhaps its most famous alumnus. (Purdue is known as the "cradle of astronauts," because 30 of its graduates have flown in space or been selected as NASA astronaut candidates.) " Neil Armstrong 's achievement rested on extraordinary engineering, teamwork and the courage to attempt what had never been done before," Mark Lundstrom, the John A. Edwardson Dean of the College of Enginee...

As the newest heavy hitter in orbital observatories continues the journey to its final destination, NASA has begun the process of switching the spacecraft on. The Nancy Grace Roman Space Telescope launched on Aug. 30, and is on a three-month long trek to Lagrange point two (L2). L2 is a relatively idle orbital sweet spot almost a million miles from Earth that will allow Roman to remain on the planet's night side and keep the bright sun to its back. It's an optimal location for the telescope to operate its two primary instruments , the Wide Field Instrument (WFI) and its Coronagraph Instrument . Neither are ready to begin collecting science, and will undergo another month or so of calibrations and tests before Roman can begin its mission, but initial downlinks from the telescope indicate nominal readings on its components as NASA teams continue its commissioning. "This is a huge m...

The U.S. Space Force is opening up about its operation of orbital weapons, but not much beyond admitting that they exist. During a "State of the Space Force" address at the Air & Space Forces Association’s Air, Space & Cyber Conference in National Harbor, Maryland, on Tuesday (Sept. 15), Chief of Space Operations Gen. Douglas Schiess stated unequivocally that the Space Force uses active space -based weaponry to support United States national defense. “Let me be crystal clear: Today, Guardians operate on-orbit weapons that can defend the joint force against space-enabled attacks,” Schiess said, referring to the official name for Space Force personnel. Space is central to national security infrastructure and warfighting efforts, and serves a critical role in how the military communicates, navigates, conducts operations and tracks threats globally. It’s become an increasingly co...