Aerospace & Defence

As with most scientific advancements, a stroke of brilliant genius usually revolutionises status quo and opens doors for new discoveries. Something similar happened to Keith Gendreau, an astrophysicist at NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Centre in Maryland. NASA was thinking of using X-rays on its proposed Black Hole Imager. 

HiRel, an Infineon Technologies company, has launched its first radiation hardened MOSFETs based on the proprietary N-channel R9 technology platform. Compared to previous technologies, the company claims that it is offering size, weight and power improvements. This is significant in systems such as high-throughput satellites, where the cost-per-bit-ratio can be significantly reduced. 

  After spending months in space, quietly orbiting the Earth, the next-generation geosynchronous satellite has broken its silence and sent back its first images. On Jan. 23, the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) released the GOES-16 “first light” true-colour images of Earth in high resolution.

IBS scientists clarify that toroidal magnets can also look for axions, one of the particle candidates for the mysterious dark matter. Scientists at the Center for Axion and Precision Physics Research (CAPP), within the Institute for Basic Science (IBS) optimised some of the characteristics of the magnet to hunt for one possible component of dark matter called axion.

Researchers have discovered minerals from 43 meteorites that landed on Earth 470 million years ago. More than half of the mineral grains are from meteorites completely unknown or very rare in today’s meteorite flow. These findings mean that we will probably need to revise our current understanding of the history and development of the solar system.

Researchers at Uppsala University plan to manufacture a type of coronagraph for the VLT, the Very Large Telescope in Chile. The coronagraph is a key component of the telescope which will be used to search for planets in the neighbouring star system Alpha Centauri. The Uppsala researchers’ participation is a result of the European Southern Observatory (ESO) signing a deal with Breakthrough Initiatives for adapting the instrument of the ...

An online course led by Sweden’s history-making astronaut Christer Fuglesang is offering students the chance to learn from a personal perspective on space travel, and earn a certificate. Human Spaceflight: An Introduction is a massive open online course (MOOC) from KTH Royal Institute of Technology. The five-week programme begins on Monday January 23; free enrolment via edX is open to students and professionals worldwide.

In two studies, international teams of astronomers suggest that recent images from NASA's Chandra X-ray Observatory of two pulsars—Geminga and B0355+54—may help shine a light on the distinctive emission signatures of pulsars, as well as their often perplexing geometry. Pulsars are a type of neutron star that are born in supernova explosions when massive stars collapse.

EU-funded scientists have helped to confirm the existence of Earth-like exoplanets and issued weather reports from planets 1 000 light years away. It is worth remembering every now and again just how special our home planet truly is. Thanks to its solid outer crust and its propitious position at a distance from the sun where liquid water can exist, it is – and as far as we know uniquely - capable of supporting life.

TT Electronics has announced that its sensors will be used in the NASA mission to the planet Mars in 2020. The robustness of the company’s Hall-effect sensors enables them to withstand the harsh environments found on Mars. The Hall-effect sensors from TT Electronics are key components in NASA’s new Mars 2020 Rover that will be landing on the surface of the red planet in 2021.