🛰️ Science Recon Console

by Kat Troche of the Astronomical Society of the Pacific September 2025 marks ten years since the first direct detection of gravitational waves as predicted by Albert Einstein’s 1916 theory of General Relativity. These invisible ripples in space were first directly detected by the Laser Interferometer Gravitational-Wave Observatory (LIGO). Traveling at the speed of light […]

NASA and Blue Origin are reopening media accreditation for the launch of the agency’s ESCAPADE (Escape and Plasma Acceleration and Dynamics Explorers) mission. The twin ESCAPADE spacecraft will study the solar wind’s interaction with Mars, providing insight into the planet’s real-time response to space weather and how solar activity drives atmospheric escape. This will be […]

NASA, along with leaders from global space agencies and government representatives worldwide, convened on Monday to further the implementation of the Artemis Accords — practical principles designed to guide the responsible exploration of the Moon, Mars, and beyond. The meeting was held during the 76th International Astronautical Congress (IAC) taking place in Sydney. In opening […]

A supermoon, and meteor showers from the Draconids and Orionids A supermoon takes over the sky, the Draconid meteor shower peeks through, and the Orionid meteor shower shines bright. Skywatching Highlights Transcript What’s Up for October? A Supermoon takes over, the Draconid meteor shower peeks through, and the Orionid meteors sparkle across the night sky. […]

Since we all have a relationship with the Sun, it is important to learn about how it impacts our lives. NASA’s Heliophysics Education Activation Team (HEAT) teaches people of all ages about the Sun, covering everything from how to safely view an eclipse to how to mitigate the effects of geomagnetic storms.

At the International Astronautical Congress (IAC) taking place in Sydney this week, representatives from the United States and Australia gathered to sign a framework agreement that strengthens collaboration in aeronautics and space exploration between the two nations. Acting NASA Administrator Sean Duffy and Australian Space Agency Head Enrico Palermo signed the agreement Tuesday on behalf […]

Headquarters Centers

2025 Space Policy Institute 10.21.2025 MSBR Space Business Roundtable 10.15.2025 76th International Astronautical Congress_IAC 9-29-25 2025 Von Braun Memorial Dinner 10.29.25 Space Foundation Reception 9.16.25 Evening with the Stars 9.10.25 MSBR Rooftop Reception 9.8.25 AIAA Dinner 8.18.25 STScI Event 7.29.25 MSBR Lunch 7.16.25 Rocket Lab Event 7.16.25 MSBR Lunch Reception 6.18.25 2025 Paris Airshow 6.13-19.25 […]

The (Proto) Planet:  WISPIT 2b  The Discovery:  Researchers have discovered a young protoplanet called WISPIT 2b embedded in a ring-shaped gap in a disk encircling a young star. While theorists have thought that planets likely exist in these gaps (and possibly even create them), this is the first time that it has actually been observed. […]

During its close flyby of Jupiter’s moon Io on December 30, 2023, NASA’s Juno spacecraft captured some of the most detailed imagery ever of Io’s volcanic surface. In this image, taken by the JunoCam instrument from about 930 miles (1,500 kilometers) above the moon, Io’s night side [left lobe] is illuminated by “Jupitershine,” which is […]

First National Security Space Launch aboard Vulcan rocket delivers USSF-106 spacecraft directly to GEO

Launch Heads Installed //
Cape Canaveral Space Force Station, Fla. 
The new Vulcan Launch Platform (VLP) includes four launch heads that securely hold the Vulcan rocket prior to launch. Once the engines start, the launch heads release the rocket for liftoff. All four launch heads are installed.

SLC-3 Tank Installation //
Vandenberg Space Force Base, Calif. 
Modifications are actively underway at Space Launch Complex (SLC)-3 in Vandenberg to support Vulcan launches, and the pad is now more than 76% complete. Updates include new fuel tanks, expanded environmental control systems and a new fixed launch platform.

Roof Structurally Complete //
Cape Canaveral Space Force Station, Fla.
To accommodate the height of the Vulcan rocket, the team is increasing the height of the VIF-A by raising the roof 45’. The structural portion of the new roof is now complete.

Onsite OVI Cell //
Cape Canaveral Space Force Station, Fla. 
Renovations to the Amazon Vertical Integration Facility (VIF-A) incorporate an offline vertical integration (OVI) cell. This onsite cell allows the team to process the Centaur V upperstage concurrently with the Vulcan booster prior to stacking. 

Launch Head Installation //
Cape Canaveral Space Force Station, Fla. 
The new Vulcan Launch Platform (VLP) includes four launch heads that securely hold the Vulcan rocket prior to launch. Once the engines start, the launch heads release the rocket for liftoff. This photo is of one of the launch heads during installation on the VLP.

SLC-3 Tank Installation //
Vandenberg Space Force Base, Calif. 
New fuel support tanks have been installed at Space Launch Complex (SLC)-3 to support Vulcan modifications. In addition to the large tank for liquefied natural gas (LNG) propellant, the two smaller tanks are repurposed Atlas intercontinental ballistic missile (ICBM) tanks. One tank will be used for LNG thermal management and the other to control LNG bleed-off.

Both Vulcan Launch Platforms in VIF-A //
Cape Canaveral Space Force Station, Fla. 
The VIF-A includes a site designated for environmental protection of a launch platform awaiting processing for future missions. Storing the launch platform within the VIF-A until it’s ready for processing saves the team time by mitigating the risks of environmental exposure.  

VLP-A Logo Installed //
Cape Canaveral Space Force Station, Fla. 
Construction of the Amazon Vulcan Launch Platform (VLP-A) continues with the installation of the ULA logo. The VLP-A is a new launch platform tailored to support Amazon launches.

New Support Vans Arrive //
Cape Canaveral Space Force Station, Fla. 
Two new support vans have arrived at VIF-A. The payload support van (PVan) houses ground equipment such as the electrical and communication interfaces between the spacecraft systems and the launch pad throughout the countdown. The ground van (GVan) supports the launch vehicle with a dedicated set of control electronics. The two vans have been designed to support specific mission configurations and will be seen leading the convoy as the Vulcan rocket rolls from VIF-A to the launch pad.

Atlas V precisely delivers second batch of operational broadband satellites for
Amazon’s Project Kuiper constellation

Atlas V precisely delivers the first grouping of operational broadband satellites for Amazon’s Project Kuiper constellation.

United Launch Alliance (ULA) is readying the formidable Atlas V 551 rocket to deliver the first satellites into space for Amazon’s Project Kuiper, an advanced low Earth orbit (LEO) constellation that will bring fast, reliable internet to customers and communities around the world.

Liftoff of the Kuiper 1 mission will occur from Space Launch Complex (SLC)-41 at Cape Canaveral Space Force Station, Florida, on Wednesday, April 9. A three-hour launch window opens at 6 p.m. EDT (2200 UTC).

United Launch Alliance (ULA) delivered the flight-ready Interim Cryogenic Propulsion Stage-2 (ICPS-2) to the Kennedy Space Center on March 9 to fulfill our contribution to the Artemis II launch in NASA's lunar exploration program.

The ICPS-2 was manufactured by ULA in collaboration with Boeing to serve as the upper stage to the Space Launch System (SLS) mega rocket, which will launch an international crew of four astronauts around the Moon on the Artemis II mission.

ULA built the stage at the rocket factory in Decatur, Alabama, then shipped ICPS-2 to Cape Canaveral Space Force Station in Florida for final testing and check out activities.

With that work now completed, ICPS-2 was moved from ULA's Delta Operations Center high bay to NASA's Multi-Payload Processing Facility (MPPF) at Kennedy Space Center. Standing more than 45 feet tall and secured in its Vertical Transport Fixture, the ICPS rode aboard an Elevating Platform Transporter that provided hydraulic leveling and precision positioning capabilities along the route.

Technicians at the MPPF will load hydrazine in the ICPS-2's attitude control system to make in-flight maneuvers and prep the stage for its forthcoming transfer to the Vehicle Assembly Building (VAB) to undergo stacking operations.

The ICPS is based on the five-meter-diameter version of ULA's Delta Cryogenic Second Stage (DCSS) that flew for two decades on the Delta IV rocket with 100 percent mission success. ICPS-1 performance for the Artemis I mission was nominal, delivering the push needed to send Orion out of Earth orbit to travel around the Moon in 2022.

ICPS features a slightly larger liquid hydrogen tank as compared to the Delta IV second stage, as well as electrical and mechanical interfaces specific to attaching and supporting the Orion spacecraft, and a second hydrazine bottle for additional attitude control propellant.

The ICPS for Artemis II also includes an Emergency Detection System (EDS) and other hardware changes specific to astronaut safety.

The stage feeds liquid hydrogen and liquid oxygen to the RL10C-2 main engine to produce 24,750 pounds (110.1 kilo-Newtons) of highly efficient thrust.

ICPS-2 also carries an approach target that the Artemis II astronauts will use to maneuver Orion in close proximity to the stage shortly after launch as part of a manual piloting evaluation test. Learn more about the test.

People, it is the secret sauce behind United Launch Alliance (ULA). It takes a team of skilled people working together to create a culture of discipline and rigor to place critical national assets into space with bullseye accuracy every time.

With launch sites in Florida and California and the design center in Colorado, ULA is entrusted with important missions to deliver into space using a stable of rockets. But it's the team working tirelessly that make those rockets perform with exacting precision, no matter if the payload is designed for national security, scientific or commercial purposes.

During Engineers Week, we take the opportunity to salute all our teammates across the country who give so much of their time, sweat and energy to making every launch a success.

"Passion will only get you so far, discipline will get you over the finish line," said Jesse D., a ULA structural engineer.

"Take a moment to reflect on everything you have accomplished from time to time. Appreciate how far you have come and where you are going," added Chase L., a ULA senior systems engineer.

Tyler D., an early career engineer at Cape Canaveral working on the Centaur program, already has sage advice: "Engineers get paid to be right. You might be able to pass in school by getting a 90% or even as low as 70% right. When you're sitting on console or out in the field doing a job, it's not acceptable to be 70% sure of what you're doing, you need to be 100% prepared. So do what you need to be prepared and get the help you need to be successful."

At ULA, like elsewhere, our team is comprised of all different ages and experience levels. Steve H., a 38-year aerospace veteran and ULA launch director, says: "Learn all you can. If you see something that needs to be done or improved - bring it forward. Volunteer to do it. Don't assume others know about it or wait for it to be assigned. Be proactive. Engineers solve problems."

"Talk to and start learning from older engineers," Tyler D. recommends. "Engineering school does not teach the profession of being an engineer but just teaches you the background knowledge and flirts with teaching the design process. So many engineers in the real-world work in parts of the design process that school just doesn't teach."

If you are an aspiring engineer, still in school and dreaming about starting a career in the launch business, an internship could be the spark that ignites an exciting future. ULA's summer intern program offers paid engineering positions designed to provide students with real-world work experience.

"My physics teacher in high school told us when we were preparing for exams, 'Don't do it until you get it right; do it until you never get it wrong.' This changed my mindset on not only schoolwork, but even the work I do now," said Noor A., a ULA trajectory engineer.

"Always ask the question. There are only two possible outcomes -- you'll learn something you didn't know before, or you're bringing up something no one has thought of and needs to be addressed," said Marc B., a ULA electrical engineer.

Balancing life outside of work is also a critical point our engineers stress.

“Life is a marathon not a sprint. Take the time to have some fun, go on a vacation and try new things,” said Max F., a ULA structural dynamics engineer.

Jiaqi Cai and Zhengguang Lu independently discovered that electrons can become fractions of themselves.

MIT researchers developed a model that explains lithium intercalation rates in lithium-ion batteries.

The findings may offer a new way to help heal tissue damage from radiation or chemotherapy treatment.

Sentences that are highly dissimilar from anything we’ve seen before are more likely to be remembered accurately.

MIT researchers employed a novel application of tools and analysis to show that astrocytes ensure neural information processing by maintaining ambient levels of the neurotransmitter chemical GABA.

The major public-private partnership is expected to strengthen MIT research and US leadership in astronomy and engineering.

MIT researchers traced chemical fossils in ancient rocks to the ancestors of modern-day demosponges.

As an object moves across your field of view, the brain seamlessly hands off visual processing from one hemisphere to the other like cell phone towers or relay racers do, a new MIT study shows.

MIT is a global community whose international engagement bestows benefits well beyond the Cambridge campus.

A new device concept opens the door to compact, high-performance transistors with built-in memory.

Physicists plan to test idea in the lab

The post Radioactive BEC could form a ‘superradiant neutrino laser’ appeared first on Physics World.

New work could help improve quantum machine learning and quantum error correction

The post Bayes’ rule goes quantum appeared first on Physics World.

Matin Durrani counts down the five most significant physics Nobels since 2000

The post The top five physics Nobel prizes of the 21st century revealed appeared first on Physics World.

A look at some of the more unconventional applications of radiation therapy reported at the ASTRO 2025 meeting

The post ASTRO 2025: expanding the rules of radiation therapy appeared first on Physics World.

It’s a mug’s game, but we always have a go

The post Quantum information or metamaterials: our predictions for this year’s Nobel Prize for Physics appeared first on Physics World.

The societies call on the US Congress to safeguard the integrity of the peer-review process

The post US scientific societies blast Trump administration’s plan to politicize grants appeared first on Physics World.

In this podcast we also make predictions for this year’s physics award

The post The curious history of Nobel prizes: from lighthouses to gravitational waves appeared first on Physics World.

Gustaf Dalén is nowhere near as famous as his contemporaries, but does that make him undeserving of the prize? Margaret Harris investigates

The post Nobel prizes you’ve never heard of: how a Swedish inventor was honoured for a technology that nearly killed him appeared first on Physics World.

New system does not need to drift to avoid turbulence

The post Kirigami-inspired parachute falls on target appeared first on Physics World.

Gabriel Lippmann received the Nobel Prize for Physics in 1908 for a new method of colour photography that was never commercially successful. Margaret Harris finds out why

The post Nobel prizes you’ve never heard of: how an obscure version of colour photography beat quantum theory to the most prestigious prize in physics appeared first on Physics World.

Agriculture consumes a vast amount of water, and some countries are under more stress than others. Instacrops pivoted to AI to help farmers cut water use by 30%.

OpenAI may be reversing course on how it approaches copyright and intellectual property in its new video app Sora.

The event planning startup, which has raised over $27M from a16z and others, fixed the bug after TechCrunch found that Partiful was not removing granular location data from users' profile photos.

California's Department of Insurance has been warning Tesla to fix its claims process since 2022, but consumer complaints have skyrocketed anyways.

Amazon founder Jeff Bezos made a rare public appearance at Italian Tech Week in Turin on Friday and used the opportunity to predict that millions of people will be living in space “in the next couple of decades,” the Financial Times reports. Speaking with John Elkann, a scion of Italy’s Agnelli dynasty, Bezos, who also […]

OpenAI is acquiring the CEO of Roi, an AI financial companion. Roi will sunset its service as its talent heads to OpenAI, ostensibly to help boost revenue in consumer apps.

Former Databricks AI chief is raising $1 billion to build an Nvidia rival through a novel approach.

OpenAI's third developer conference is around the corner, and it's shaping up to be the company's biggest yet.

If your Memories exceed the new limit, you will need to either export them or sign up for one of Snapchat's new Memories Storage plans in order to preserve them.

The company is seemingly experimenting with a new user interface that would shift the app from having a chatbot-style look and feel to one offering a scrollable feed with suggested prompts accompanied by eye-catching photos.

On 6 October the shadow of Titan, Saturn’s giant moon, can be seen crossing Saturn’s creamy cloud tops.

There’s a ‘new’ star in the constellation of Centaurus. A nova dramatically appeared on 22 September, discovered by John Seach of Grafton, Australia.

by Astronomy Now Editor, Stuart Clark We are pleased to announce that our new Astronomy Now app is live! Since taking ownership of the magazine in July, creating an enhanced digital experience has been a high priority for our new Astronomy Now team. Today we’re in a position to share an early version of the new digital platform, complete with the last 12 back issues and more – including this month’s issue! And we’re inviting all of you to try it for free until 16 October.   How to access the Astronomy Now App All you need to do is open a browser and navigate to astronomynowdigital.com. You will then be prompted for an email address, and you will gain entry. The new platform is optimised for both web browsing and mobile usage. When using it on your computer, you can simply read the magazine, turning the pages as you would the physical copy. From a mobile device, you also have the option of entering ‘article view’, which shows you each article in a form that is much easier to read on your phone or tablet. Mobile users also have the option of listening to the articles being read to

Astronomers have seen tentative evidence for an atmosphere on TRAPPIST-1e, a rocky planet 40 light years away.

The announcement, on 18 August, follows a year of uncertainty after Queen’s University Canada declared that the lease to the current operators of the science centre, Science Projects, would not be renewed after December 2026.

Get ready for a clash of the titans when Venus and Jupiter, the two brightest planets in our Solar System, come together for a dazzling event visible across the length and breadth of the UK in the early hours of Tuesday morning.

August means the Perseids: the annual shooting star spectacular reaches its peak to wow meteor enthusiasts with abundant bright events, writes Astronomy Now's Night Sky manager Mark Armstrong.

Planets without stars may not be so lonely after all. New research led by astronomers at the University of St Andrews suggests that free-floating giant planets—those adrift in interstellar space—can host their own miniature planetary systems.

His Majesty The King has approved Professor Michele Dougherty as the new Astronomer Royal. Professor Dougherty will be the sixteenth person and the first woman to hold this role since its creation 350 years ago.

We have some exciting company news we’d like to share with you… Today we’re starting a new chapter in the Astronomy Now story, as we relaunch under new management (plot twist ahead!).