Ministers from ESA’s 20 member states and Canada today allocated €10 billion for ESA’s space activities and programmes for the years to come. Ministers secured investments for the detailed definition studies of the new launcher Ariane 6 and the continuation of the development of Ariane 5 ME adapted, with the goal to develop as many …
Google is indeed making plans to start its own wireless network, one that would compete directly with Verizon, AT&T, and T-Mobile. It is said the search giant has been in talks with satellite TV provider, Dish Network in recent weeks and both companies are looking to bring forth a new wireless network. Wall Street Journal …
Research firm Strategy Analytics says that shipments of Android tablets surged to a new high in the third quarter of 2012, accounting for 41% of all tablets shipped. Neil Mawston, Strategy Analytics’ executive director, says that there’s no one Android tablet responsible for the surge, which is more due to a large influx of devices from a wide variety …
NASA FISO presentation – This Way To Deep Space Electric Propulsion Human Missions to the Moon, Asteroids, and Mars (27 pages) New solar array technologies (e.g. ROSA, FAST, Ultraflex) could provide the power for a high-‐power SEP stage (with specific powers of 130-‐220 W/kg). Space Solar array technology has been doubling every four years. There …
Alan Bond from Reaction Engines presents a talk about the latest developments about Skylon and Project Troy. This was one of a series of talks from the UK Mars Society Conference 2012 and was held at the National Space Centre in Leicester on the 25th August. Skylon is a concept for a totally re-usable single-stage …
New Scientist – Drones are getting smaller and smarter, able to navigate and identify targets without GPS or human operators. Micro-aerial vehicles (MAVs) with uncanny navigation and real-time mapping capabilities could soon be zipping through indoor and outdoor spaces, running reconnaissance missions that others cannot. They would allow soldiers to look over hills, inside buildings …
Reaction Engines Ltd. , a UK based company, has successfully completed another series of tests of the key component for a new engine, SABRE, that will enable aircraft to fly anywhere on Earth in under 4 hours, or directly into space and back to deliver satellites and other cargo. The new technology is the heat …
Arxiv – New Dark Matter Detectors using DNA for Nanometer Tracking (13 pages) Weakly Interacting Massive Particles (WIMPs) may constitute most of the matter in the Universe. While there are intriguing results from DAMA/LIBRA, CoGeNT and CRESST-II, there is not yet a compelling detection of dark matter. The ability to detect the directionality of recoil …
Economist – Silicon photodetectors are inflexible, not particularly cheap, not that sensitive and absorb only 10-20% of the light that falls on to them. For years, therefore, engineers have been on the lookout for a cheap, bendable, sensitive photodetector. Such a device could have many novel applications—wearable electronics, for example. With a little clever engineering, …
Fraunhofer-Gesellschaft – Ultra-short laser pulses of outstanding high average püower are opening the doors to new applications in high throughput materials processing. Thanks to the short pulse duration, thermal damage of the material being processed is minimized. For years, ultra-short laser pulses have been used for the extremely precise and gentle processing of highly-sensitive materials. …
1. Centauri Dreams offers the first of a 3-part post on Proxima Centauri, the nearest known star. Are we likely to find planets there? Proxima Centauri (shown by the arrow) in relation to Centauri A and B. The latter appear as a single bright object at upper left. Credit: European Southern Observatory. 2. Simostronomy – …