Cosmic Log
Warming oceans and an infectious wasting disease have combined to devastate what was once an abundant type of sea stars along the West Coast, scientists say in a newly published study.
The study, published today by the open-access journal Science Advances, provides fresh evidence for the climate-related decline of multiple species of sea stars, a class of marine invertebrates popularly known as starfish.
The managers of Israel’s first mission to the moon say their lunar lander has passed a crucial set of tests in preparation for February’s launch on a SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket, with an assist from a Seattle space company.
SpaceIL’s lander — which has been dubbed Beresheet, the Hebrew word for “In the Beginning” — is scheduled for liftoff from Cape Canaveral Air Force Station in Florida no earlier than Feb. 18.
Mission success would make Israel the fourth nation to execute a soft landing on the moon, following in the footsteps of the United States, Russia and China.
Spaceflight, the launch logistics subsidiary of Seattle-based Spaceflight Industries, brokered Beresheet’s inclusion as a secondary payload on a mission that will send Indonesia’s PSN-6 telecommunications satellite, also known as Nusantara Satu, toward geostationary orbit.
Team Zeva’s entry in the Boeing-backed $2 million GoFly Prize competition looks like a flying saucer that’s built for one — but there’s method behind the science-fiction madness.
“That’s typically the comment that it draws: ‘It looks like a flying saucer,’ ” the leader of the Tacoma, Wash.-based team, Stephen Tibbitts, told GeekWire. “What drove us to the shape is, we knew we wanted to maximize our wing area in the space allotted.”
The GoFly Prize was established in 2017 to encourage innovation in the development of personal air vehicles. The rules state that teams must design one-person flying machines that are capable of making vertical or near-vertical takeoffs and taking 20-mile area trips, all without refueling or recharging.
The machines can be jetpacks, or flying motorcycles, or giant quadcopters, but all of the hardware has to fit within an 8.5-foot-wide sphere. In Team Zeva’s view, a flying saucer makes the most use of that volume.
Kirkland, Wash.-based Echodyne, a radar-focused startup backed by Microsoft co-founder Bill Gates, is seeking the Federal Communications Commission’s expedited approval to have its drone-detecting radar system used in an experiment planned during the NFL’s Super Bowl in Atlanta.
The request, made in an application to the FCC, came to light today in a report published by The Guardian.
The experiment would reportedly compare Echodyne’s low-cost, miniaturized radar platform against other detection systems in the “no-drone zone” that the Federal Aviation Administration has set up for Sunday’s Super Bowl football contest between the New England Patriots and the Los Angeles Rams
One of the legacies left behind by Microsoft co-founder Paul Allen, the Microsoft co-founder who passed away last October, is a drone development program aimed at providing aerial intelligence for Africa’s anti-poaching efforts.
The program takes a share of the spotlight in a behind-the-scenes report about Allen’s philanthropic operation at Vulcan Inc., published last week by Inside Philanthropy.
Vulcan has been working for years on a surveillance program for elephants and other African species, including the use of autonomous aerial vehicles to patrol protected areas. Allen’s team sought a regulatory exemption from the Federal Aviation Administration three years ago to test drones such as the DJI Phantom 3and the UASUSA Tempest for conservation purposes.
The in-house drone program has advanced significantly since then. Inside Philanthropy reports Vulcan is adapting off-the-shelf equipment to create affordable drones that are optimized for anti-poaching surveillance.
A year after making a $900,000 mistake, Swarm Technologies is raking in $25 million in a funding round aimed at getting a constellation of sandwich-sized satellites up and running for the Internet of Things.
Getting the constellation in orbit could open up a big frontier for tiny satellites within the next year and a half.
“We’re just excited to get launched and get our network up there and start offering global, affordable internet,” said Swarm CEO Sara Spangelo, a veteran of NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory and Alphabet’s X “moonshot factory.”
The satellites, known as SpaceBEEs, are so small that the Federal Communications Commission turned down the Silicon Valley startup’s application for a launch license last January. The mission went ahead anyway — largely because Seattle-based Spaceflight, the company that was taking care of the logistics for liftoff aboard an Indian PSLV rocket, didn’t know Swarm’s application had been rejected.
Last month, Swarm agreed to pay the FCC’s hefty fine, submit to closer oversight for the next three years and draw up a detailed plan for compliance with the agency’s rules. “It’s probably sufficient to say we take all compliance issues very seriously,” Spangelo told GeekWire.
Civic leaders and space executives tossed shovels of dirt today to celebrate the groundbreaking for a $200 million rocket engine factory to be built in Alabama by Blue Origin, the space venture founded by Amazon billionaire Jeff Bezos.
“It’s a great day here in Rocket City, and it will be that way for years to come,” Blue Origin CEO Bob Smith declared during the ceremony at Cummings Research Park in Huntsville, Ala.
Smith told the assembled crowd, “Blue Origin is all in on Alabama.”
The 200,000-square-foot facility is to open in March 2020 and manufacture BE-4 rocket engines for Blue Origin’s orbital-class New Glenn rocket as well as for United Launch Alliance’s next-generation, semi-reusable Vulcan rocket. ULA’s rocket production facility is located nearby in Decatur, Ala.
NASA’s New Horizons probe has already shown that its icy target, more than 4 billion miles away on the solar system’s edge, looks like a cosmic snowman — but a higher-resolution version of the picture reveals the snowman to have an eerie pair of “eyes” set in what looks to be a deep depression.
The 19-mile-long object — which is known by its official designation, 2014 MU69, or by its informal nickname, Ultima Thule — consists of what looks like two balls of ice and rock stuck together. Scientists suspect that there are many similar objects, known as contact binaries, in the broad ring of icy material known as the Kuiper Belt.
New Horizons zoomed past 2014 MU69 back on New Year’s Day, snapping hundreds of pictures as it passed. Since then, the piano-sized probe has been transmitting data at a slow, deliberate speed of roughly 1,000 bits per second.
The first pictures were fuzzy, but now New Horizons is raising the resolution. The picture released today is based on imagery that was acquired by the Multicolor Visible Imaging Camera, part of the probe’s Ralph instrument suite, from a distance of 4,200 miles.
Boeing executives today added an extra twist to what was expected to be a cut-and-dried ceremony to hand over its first KC-46 tanker aircraft to the U.S. Air Force.
Leanne Caret, president and CEO of Boeing Defense, Space and Security, sprung the surprise in front of the hundreds of employees, Air Force personnel and VIPs gathered at the company’s assembly plant in Everett, Wash., where the heavily modified 767 jets have taken shape.
“I am delighted to be with you all today to celebrate the delivery of the first KC-46 tanker from Boeing to the United States Air Force,” she said. “Wait a minute! I’m sorry, I have made a mistake. I think I had that wrong. I believe I am delivering two KC-46 aircraft to the United States Air Force! Two!”
Caret announced that officials from Boeing and the Air Force signed the acceptance forms for a second KC-46, following up on the paperwork that was approved earlier this month for the first jet.
Virgin Galactic’s billionaire founder, Richard Branson, today took the wraps off a partnership with Under Armour to create the spacesuit and the footwear that he could well be wearing on a SpaceShipTwo suborbital space trip within a few months.
Under Armour will also create a performance training program for Virgin Galactic’s hundreds of customers — including the opportunity to train at Under Armour’s lab in Portland, Ore.
The actual apparel design and other details will have to wait for a future reveal. But Branson, ever the optimist, suggested that the kickoff for Virgin Galactic’s commercial space operation at Spaceport America in New Mexico is coming soon.