NASA

WASHINGTON — Orbex, now projecting a 2025 first launch of its small launch vehicle, plans to focus on the small end of the market even as competitors shift to larger rockets. In an interview during the Farnborough International Airshow in July, Phil Chambers, chief executive of the United Kingdom-based company, said the company was making progress on both its Prime small rocket and launch site at Sutherland Spaceport in northern Scotland. “We expect the spaceport to be ready in early spring of next year,” he said. Vehicle subsystems are going through critical design reviews, with some flight hardware under construction. “We are shooting for a 2025 launch,” he said, but declined to be more specific about a launch date other than to say that the company wanted to avoid...

Awards Ceremony at Space Center Houston honored student entrepreneurs with scholarships and patent assistance to support their innovations HOUSTON, TX (April 27, 2024) – The Conrad Foundation announced the winners of the 2023-2024 Conrad Challenge, one of the world’s most highly regarded global STEM innovation and entrepreneurship competitions for high school students. At the Challenge’s Innovation Summit hosted by Space Center Houston in Houston, Texas, four student teams were recognized with the Challenge’s top honor of Pete Conrad Scholar, along with four Power Pitch winners in the categories of Aerospace & Aviation, Cyber-Technology & Security, Energy & Environment, and Health & Nutrition. Each member of the winning team receives scholarships, grants, patent...

Artificial intelligence (AI) has led Abel Lawrence Peirson to all kinds of interesting places. He’s used AI techniques to examine brain activity in flies and other neuroscience applications. With the help of AI, he’s even trained a neural network to create internet memes, displaying phrases on images in a way that looks like a human made them to be funny — at least some of the time. Credit: Abel Lawrence Peirson Now, Peirson, a doctoral student at Stanford University, is using his AI skills to help solve some the universe’s mysteries through NASA’s Imaging X-Ray Polarimetry Explorer (IXPE) mission. It’s a spacecraft that looks at the polarization of X-rays from extreme objects like supernova remnants, neutron stars, and black holes. Polarization describes how the X-ray light is oriented...

ALTObservations from both NASA’s James Webb and Hubble space telescopes created this colorful image of galaxy cluster MACS0416. The colors of different galaxies indicate distances, with bluer galaxies being closer and redder galaxies being more distant or dusty. Some galaxies appear as streaks due to gravitational lensing — a warping effect caused by large masses gravitationally bending the space that light travels through.While Taylor’s Eras Tour explores decades of music, our universe’s eras set the stage for life to exist today. By unraveling cosmic history, scientists can investigate how it happened, from the universe’s origin and evolution to its possible fate.ALTThis infographic outlines the history of the universe.0 SECONDS | In the beginning, the universe debuted extremely small, h...

LOGAN, Utah — German startup Dcubed raised 4.4 million euros ($4.8 million) in a Series A funding round. With the investment, announced Aug. 5, Dcubed will expand production, demonstrate in-space manufacturing and open a U.S. office, Thomas Sinn, DCubed CEO and founder, told SpaceNews at the Small Satellite Conference here. Dcubed’s Westminster, Colorado, office will serve as a sales and distribution hub to support U.S. customers, who make up more than half of the firm’s client base, said Andria Fortier, Dcubed U.S. managing director. To demonstrate in-space manufacturing, Dcubed is buying SpaceX rideshare launches. “We want to launch at least twice next year with an in-space demonstrator and at least once in 2026,” Sinn said. For the first mission, Dcubed is w...