UK Space Agency announced £2.9 million of new funding for a nuclear micro-reactor by Rolls-Royce. They want nuclear power to support a future Moon base for astronauts. This follows a £249,000 study funded by the UK Space Agency in 2022. Rolls-Royce plan to have a reactor ready to send to the Moon by 2029. Scientists …
The UK Atomic Energy Authority (‘UKAEA’) and First Light Fusion (‘First Light’) have today signed an agreement for the design and construction of a new purpose-built facility to house First Light’s Machine 4 at UKAEA’s Culham Campus in Oxfordshire. First Light is pursuing an “inertial confinement” approach to fusion. First Light’s method leverages the same …
Virgin Orbit’s 70-foot-long (21 meters) LauncherOne rocket upper stage failed in a launch of nine satellites. Virgin Orbit developed very similar technology to the Pegasus under wing launched rocket from Northrop Grumman. Carrying the rocket on the large plane was fine ane the first stage was fine and the second and final stage did its …
Reaction Engines today revealed the start of a new testing campaign to expand the performance envelope of their high-Mach enabling technology through the Foreign Comparative Testing (FCT) Program at the Department of Defense and supported by the Air Force Research Laboratory (AFRL). The FCT Program is administered by the Directorate of Defense Research and Engineering …
First Light used a large two-stage hyper-velocity gas gun to launch a projectile at a target, containing the fusion fuel and achieved fusion. The projectile reached a speed of 6.5 km per second before impact. First Light’s highly sophisticated target focuses this impact, with the fuel accelerated to over 70 km per second (151,000 mph) …
UK Prime Minister is out of the hospital and will recover at his country residence, Chequers. Brian WangBrian Wang is a Futurist Thought Leader and a popular Science blogger with 1 million readers per month. His blog Nextbigfuture.com is ranked #1 Science News Blog. It covers many disruptive technology and trends including Space, Robotics, Artificial …
Three weeks ago, Nextbigfuture covered the cancer treatment breakthrough made by researchers at the University of Cardiff. Now SciShow has a video that explains how this discovery was made and why it is so promising. The researchers took a range of killer t-cells from the body and tested them against cancer. One of the killer …
Now that the Tories have secured an 80-strong majority in parliament, Prime Minister Boris Johnson has a stronger negotiating hand to carve out an effective Brexit strategy
British parliament has voted in favor of Prime Minister Boris Johnson’s plan for the UK to leave the EU on 31 January. They voted 358 to 234 – a majority of 124 – in favor of the EU (Withdrawal Agreement) Bill, which now goes on to further scrutiny in Parliament. The bill bans an extension …
Prime Minister Boris Johnson’s Conservatives set to win an outright majority according to exit polls. This will mean Johnson can deliver on his promise for a Brexit by the end of 2020. The EU economy will shrink by $3 trillion. China (with Hong Kong and Macau) will become larger than the combined economies of EU …
