Aerospace

by Jim McMahon Astronomers have confirmed more than 5,000 exoplanets orbiting distant stars. There are a few aspects that are needed to characterize an exoplanet. One is the size of the planet, and the other is the mass of the planet. Space-based missions, such as the Transiting Exoplanet Survey Satellite (TESS) launched in 2018, find…

From Southwest Research Institute Southwest Research Institute’s Space Science and Engineering Division, with 465 employees in three states, has been restructured to create two new technical divisions. Dr. James L. Burch, vice president of the Space Science Division, will become Senior Vice President leading SwRI’s new Space Sector organization, encompassing all three divisions. Dr. Robin…

Los Alamos National Laboratory (LANL) has a rich history of designing and deploying space systems. Over 30% of all U.S. space systems have the Laboratory’s fingerprint on them. Terra Spotlight ensures that the Laboratory’s history of scientific excellence in space will continue. Terra Spotlight opens exciting frontiers in remote sensing and our understanding of changes…

 From Sandia National Laboratory Sandia National Laboratories is well-known for designing reliable and resilient microgrids for military bases and vital city services. Now, Sandia researchers are working with NASA to design one for the moon. This is not the first time Sandia has partnered with NASA to power equipment on the moon. In fact, Sandia…

The R&D World Index (RDWI) for the week ending February 18, 2022, closed at 5,075.11 for the 25 companies in the RDWI. The Index was down -2.18% (or 113.00 basis points) from the week ending February 11, 2022. The stock of nine RDWI members gained value from 0.96% (Novartis) to 6.14% (Cisco). The stock of…

The Traffic Flow Impact (TFI) Tool, from MIT Lincoln Laboratory and the Federal Aviation Administration, is a unique tool that provides air traffic control managers with a display of airspace capacity predictions and potentially achievable and sustainable traffic flow rates by using a revolutionary approach to integrate multiple weather forecasts. TFI uses a novel machine-learning…

The R&D World Index (RDWI) for the week ending January 28, 2022, closed at 5,280.68 for the 25 companies in the RDWI. The Index was up 1.39% (or 72.41 basis points) from the week ending January 21, 2022. The stock of 12 RDWI members gained value from 0.34% (AstraZeneca) to 4.88% (Apple Computer). The stock…

From UC Riverside: A UC Riverside astronomer and a group of eagle-eyed citizen scientists have discovered a giant gas planet hidden from view by typical stargazing tools. The planet, TOI-2180 b, has the same diameter as Jupiter, but is nearly three times more massive. Researchers also believe it contains 105 times the mass of Earth…

By Jules Bernstein The James Webb Space Telescope, the most complex and expensive space laboratory ever created, is less than two weeks away from its ultimate destination a million miles from Earth. Once it arrives, it will send information about parts of space and time never seen before. It will also send previously unattainable information…

The R&D World Index (RDWI) for the week ending December 31, 2021, closed at 5,629.50 for the 25 companies in the RDWI. The Index was down -0.39% (or -22.32 basis points) from the week ending December 24, 2021. The stock of 21 RDWI members gained value from 0.11% (Alibaba) to 3.02% (General Motors). The stock…

From Southwest Research Institute NASA has selected the CubeSat Imaging X-Ray Solar Spectrometer (CubIXSS), led by Southwest Research Institute, to measure the elemental composition of hot, multimillion-degree plasmas in the Sun’s corona – its outermost atmosphere. The nanosatellite is expected to be launched in 2024 as a secondary payload on another satellite launch. CubIXSS will…

Materials and mechanical scientists are using machine learning to rapidly vet combinations of elements that could be used in next-generation environmental barrier coatings needed to protect vehicles traveling in the extreme conditions of aerospace and space environments. The project, led by researchers at Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute, is supported by the National Science Foundation. Environmental barrier…

When the world’s most powerful telescope launches into space this year, scientists will learn whether Earth-sized planets in our ‘solar neighborhood’ have a key prerequisite for life — an atmosphere. These planets orbit an M-dwarf, the smallest and most common type of star in the galaxy. Scientists do not currently know how common it is…

A Southwest Research Institute (SwRI) experiment was performed aboard Blue Origin’s New Shepard suborbital rocket today, which launched from Van Horn, Texas. Five variations of the tapered liquid acquisition device (LAD), which is designed to safely deliver liquid propellant to a rocket engine from fuel tanks, were aboard the rocket to evaluate their performance in…

By Brian Huchel, Purdue University Imagine an aircraft flying 2,800 miles across the United States in only 15 minutes. A state-of the-art building ready for construction at Purdue University will provide the facilities to explore that idea through advanced hypersonic research. The planned 65,000-ft2 Hypersonic Applied Research Facility (HARF) will house two cutting-edge wind tunnels,…

by University of Bristol Would planes be better if they were more like birds? Engineers from the University of Bristol and the Royal Veterinary College have been studying our feathered friends to answer this very question, the answer to which will be revealed at the Royal Society Summer Science 2021. The team from the University’s…

Thousands of images of Earth and space have been taken by a compact space imaging payload developed by Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory (LLNL) researchers and its collaborator Tyvak Nano-Satellite Systems. Known as GEOStare2, the payload has two space telescopes that together have taken more than 4,500 pictures for space domain awareness, astronomy and Earth observations…

By Kayla Wiles   For astronauts to go on long missions to the moon or Mars, they need a refrigerator. But today’s fridges aren’t designed to work in zero gravity – or upside down if oriented that way when a spacecraft lands on another planet. A team of engineers from Purdue University, Air Squared, and…

By John Toon, Georgia Institute of Technology Many parcel delivery drones of the future are expected to handle packages weighing five pounds or less, a restriction that would allow small, standardized UAVs to handle a large percentage of the deliveries now done by ground vehicles. But will that relegate heavier packages to slower delivery by…

For low-cost small satellites to tackle emerging commercial, scientific and national security missions they need to be capable of maneuvering while still being compatible with rideshare. To responsibly manage our ever more crowded orbit zones into the future, all satellites will soon be required to de-orbit at end-of-life and avoid collisions with space debris at…

By Kayla Wiles In 2018, passengers onboard a flight to Australia experienced a terrifying 10-second nosedive when a vortex trailing their plane crossed into the wake of another flight. The collision of these vortices, the airline suspected, created violent turbulence that led to a free fall. To help design aircraft that can better maneuver in…

OrganiCam, from Los Alamos National Laboratory, is a lightweight, portable payload that is radiation-hardened and robust for space applications, opening exciting frontiers in space exploration and the search for signs of life beyond the Earth. OrganiCam will be a reconnaissance instrument for organics on other bodies of the solar system. These include ocean worlds, caves…

Low-Earth-orbit (LEO) satellites generate huge amounts of data daily and getting this data back to Earth in a timely, error-free manner is currently challenging and costly. MIT Lincoln Laboratory’s TeraByte InfraRed Delivery (TBIRD) technology revolutionizes what is possible in this area. TBIRD technology enables dramatic increases in the achievable data volume delivered from LEO to…

Southwest Research Institute has received a four-year, $7,239,342 contract from the U.S. Department of Defense’s Defense Advanced Research Project Agency (DARPA) to develop air taxi technology to test the design capabilities of artificial intelligence-augmented design systems. The project is part of DARPA’s Symbiotic Design for Cyber Physical Systems program. Air taxis are short-range electric aircraft…

Dartmouth Engineering Professor Zi Chen has received a $400,000 grant from the National Science Foundation (NSF), in partnership with the Center for the Advancement of Science in Space (CASIS), to lead a three-year research project on the International Space Station (ISS). Chen’s proposal was one of just three selected from institutions across the country as…