Aerospace & Defence

  The aerospace industry is of the most technically challenging industries in the world. There are growing pressures to look at new manufacturing methods to reduce production times and increase efficiency. One of the determining factors in the production chain is the choice of the right CAM solution.

  Engineering and manufacturing company that specialises in aerospace and defence programmes, Varley has announced the initial delivery of the new H-60 Bridge Tool Kits to the US Army, Army National Guard, and US Coast Guard.

Imagine you're on your way to Mars, and you lose a crucial tool during a spacewalk. Not to worry, you'll simply re-enter your spacecraft and use some microorganisms to convert your urine and exhaled carbon dioxide (CO2) into chemicals to make a new one. That's one of the ultimate goals of scientists who are developing ways to make long space trips feasible. The researchers are presenting their results at the 254th National Meeting & Expo...

  The fuselage, wing, flaps as well as the horizontal and vertical tail of the latest generation of aircraft are produced out of CFRP aluminium stacks. For the assembly of aircraft, innumerable bores including countersinking are drilled in these components for the rivet connections. In most cases drill feed units are used for machining.

Cosmic radiation is considered the main health hazard to human spaceflight and space exploration of the Moon, Mars and beyond, which is why ESA has made cosmic radiation a focus of its research programme. Radiation poses a risk to the human body in the form of cancer, central nervous system disorders, cardiovascular problems and tissue degeneration.

The Unit Telescope 4 (Yepun) of ESO’s Very Large Telescope (VLT) has now been transformed into a fully adaptive telescope. After more than a decade of planning, construction and testing, the new Adaptive Optics Facility (AOF) has seen first light with the instrument MUSE, capturing amazingly sharp views of planetary nebulae and galaxies. The coupling of the AOF and MUSE forms one of the most advanced and powerful technological systems ever ...

Daniel Whitmire, a retired astrophysicist who teaches mathematics at the University of Arkansas, once thought the cosmic silence indicated we as a species lagged far behind. "I taught astronomy for 37 years," said Whitmire. "I used to tell my students that by statistics, we have to be the dumbest guys in the galaxy. After all we have only been technological for about 100 years while other civilizations could be more technologically advanced ...

'At Play in the Cosmos', an educational video game developed at the University of Wisconsin–Madison, is the winner of the Third Annual Mashable + Games for Change People’s Choice Award. The educational resource for introductory college astronomy received the highest number of online votes among the 11 games nominated in the category. Gear Learning, part of the School of Education’s Wisconsin Center for Education Research, d...

Since it was first observed little more than a thousand years ago, the Crab Nebula has been studied by generations of astronomers. Yet new observations by researchers at KTH show this “cosmic lighthouse” has yet to give up all of its secrets. The researchers' observations of polarised X-rays from the Crab Nebula and Pulsar, published in Scientific Reports, may help explain sudden flares in the Crab’s X-ray intensity, as wel...

In our hunt for Earth-like planets and extraterrestrial life, we’ve found thousands of exoplanets orbiting stars other than our sun. The caveat is that most of these planets have been detected using indirect methods. Similar to how a person can’t look at anything too close to the sun, current telescopes can’t observe potential Earth-like planets because they are too close to the stars they orbit, which are about 10 billion times...