Aerospace & Defence

A NASA technologist has teamed with the inventor of a nanotechnology that could transform the way space scientists build spectrometers, the all-important device used by virtually all scientific disciplines to measure the properties of light emanating from astronomical objects, including Earth itself.

The search for planets beyond our solar system is about to gain some new recruits. Today, a team that includes MIT and is led by the Carnegie Institution for Science has released the largest collection of observations made with a technique called radial velocity, to be used for hunting exoplanets. The huge dataset, taken over two decades by the W.M. Keck Observatory in Hawaii, is now available to the public, along with an open-source softwar...

Nearly one year ago today, the LIGO Collaboration announced the detection of gravitational waves, once again confirming Einstein's theory of General Relativity. This important discovery by the Advanced Laser Interferometer Gravitational-Wave Observatory (aLIGO) has spurred great interest in improving these advanced optical detectors. The mission of gravitational wave scientists worldwide is to make gravitational wave detection a routine occurrenc...

The European Union activated its Galileo satellite navigation system in December 2016. The EU is dedicated to setting this system apart from other navigation systems such as GPS – the US counterpart of Galileo. Researchers from the Department of Electrical Engineering at KU Leuven have now risen to this challenge as well: they designed authentication features that will make it even more difficult to send out false Galileo signals.

Astronomers at The University of Texas at Austin have developed a technique to discover the faintest galaxies yet seen in the early universe —10 times fainter than any previously seen. These galaxies will help astronomers probe a little-understood, but important period in cosmic history. Their new technique helps probe the time a billion years after the Big Bang, when the early, dark universe was flooded with light from the first galaxies.

Iridium Communications has announced that it has contracted with SpaceX for an eighth Falcon 9 launch. Along for the ride are the twin-satellites of the NASA/GFZ Gravity Recovery and Climate Experiment Follow-On (GRACE-FO) mission, which will be deployed into a separate low-Earth orbit, marking the first rideshare deal for Iridium.

  Sightings of a rare breed of superluminous supernovae—stellar explosions that shine 10 to 100 times brighter than normal—are perplexing astronomers. First spotted only in last decade, scientists are confounded by the extraordinary brightness of these events and their explosion mechanisms.

Cutting-edge software has been developed to help astrophysicists see distant galaxies as never before. With the next generation of space missions set for launch, the project will enable European scientists to take full advantage of the latest data. Astronomers are really cosmic time travellers; distant galaxies are so far away that their light takes billions of years to reach us. Discovering these stellar systems means being able to look at ...

Trillions of neutrinos, or ghost particles, are passing through us every second. While scientists know this fact, they don't know what role neutrinos play in the universe because they are devilishly hard to measure. New measurements of neutrino oscillations, observed at the IceCube Neutrino Observatory at the South Pole, have shed light on outstanding questions regarding fundamental properties of neutrinos.

As satellite communications (Satcoms) moves ever upwards in terms of frequency, so systems tend to move down the scale when it comes to weight and size. Whilst Naval platforms, such as ships, retain their overall size, reducing the above the water mass leads to increased stability. Whilst airborne platform have always sought the lightest components, in-vehicle and man-pack communications systems are the latest users of lightweight components, wri...