Aerospace & Defence

Thousands of processors, terabytes of data, and months of computing time have helped a group of researchers in Germany create some of the largest and highest resolution simulations ever made of galaxies like our Milky Way. Led by Dr Robert Grand of the Heidelberger Institut fuer Theoretische Studien, the work of the Auriga Project appears in the journal Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society.

AdaCore has announced that MASC (MHI Aerospace Systems Corporation), a member of the Mitsubishi Heavy Industries Group, has selected the QGen toolset to develop the software for the TQA (Throttle Quadrant Assembly) system.

  The School of Chinese Medicine (SCM) of Hong Kong Baptist University (HKBU) is conducting a space life science study on board China's first cargo spacecraft, Tianzhou-1, which was launched last month. HKBU is the only higher education institution from outside of Mainland to conduct a scientific research project onboard Tianzhou-1.

  In the icy bodies around our solar system, radiation emitted from rocky cores could break up water molecules and support hydrogen-eating microbes. To address this cosmic possibility, a University of Texas at San Antonio and Southwest Research Institute team modeled a natural water-cracking process called radiolysis.

Monash researchers have identified a concept - 'orphan memory' - which changes the current thinking around gravitational waves. The research, by the Monash Centre for Astrophysics, was published recently in Physical Review Letters. Einstein's theory of general relativity predicts that cataclysmic cosmic explosions stretch the fabric of spacetime. The stretching of spacetime is called 'gravitational waves.'

Developed by Aavid Thermalloy´s Italian Design Centre in conjunction with the European Space Agency, REXUS Pulsating Heatpipe System has been launched from the Esrange Space Centre in Kiruna, North Sweden. It´s one of two prototypes manufactured for the INWIP Project (Innovative Wickless Heat Pipe Systems) in order to study the behaviour of a Pulsating Heatpipe System in micro-gravity conditions.

Our Cold War history is now offering scientists a chance to better understand the complex space system that surrounds us. Space weather - which can include changes in Earth's magnetic environment - are usually triggered by the sun's activity, but recently declassified data on high-altitude nuclear explosion tests have provided a look at the mechansisms that set off perturbations in that magnetic system.

FADO is a new analysis tool developed by Instituto de Astrofísica e Ciências do Espaço (IA) astronomers Jean Michel Gomes and Polychronis Papaderos, which uses light emitted by both stars and ionised gas in a galaxy to reconstruct its formation history by means of genetic algorithms. This tool was presented in a recent article, accepted for publication in the journal Astronomy & Astrophysics.

European astronomers have found that an X-ray pulsar designated AX J1910.7+0917 has the slowest spin period among other objects in this class. The research team, led by Lara Sidoli of the National Institute for Astrophysics and Space Physics (INAF) in Milan, Italy, presented the new findings in a paper published on arXiv.org. X-ray pulsars are sources displaying strict periodic variations in X-ray intensity, consisting of a magnetised n...

Hi-rel connector and SMT board hardware manufacturer, Harwin, has announced that increased investment in its Salem, New Hampshire cable assembly facility is winning new business in the demanding and highly specialised space and avionics sector. At its US site, Harwin’s cabling capabilities include building to customer datasheet, prototyping, and electrical and mechanical testing of both cable and wire harnesses and coaxial cable assemblies.