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Into the belly of the rover: VIPER’s final science instrument installed

A team of engineers is preparing to integrate TRIDENT—short for The Regolith Ice Drill for Exploring New Terrain—into the belly of NASA’s first robotic moon rover, VIPER (Volatiles Investigating Polar Exploration Rover).

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Image: Spiral galaxy NGC 4254’s dazzling swirls

NGC 4254, a spiral galaxy, is resplendent in orange and blue in this Jan. 29, 2024, image from the James Webb Space Telescope. This is one of 19 nearby spiral galaxies recently imaged by the telescope as part of the long-standing Physics at High Angular resolution in Nearby GalaxieS (PHANGS) program supported by more than […]

Discovery of unexpected ultramassive galaxies may not rewrite cosmology, but still leaves questions

Ever since the James Webb Space Telescope (JWST) captured its first glimpse of the early universe, astronomers have been surprised by the presence of what appear to be more “ultramassive” galaxies than expected. Based on the most widely accepted cosmological model, they should not have been able to evolve until much later in the history […]

Vera Rubin’s keen eye on our solar system will inspire future missions

When the interstellar object (ISO) ‘Oumuamua appeared in our solar system in 2017, it generated a ton of interest. The urge to learn more about it was fierce, but unfortunately, there was no way to really do so. It came and went, and we were left to ponder what it was made of and where […]

NASA solar sail technology passes crucial deployment test

In his youth, NASA technologist Les Johnson was riveted by the 1974 novel “The Mote in God’s Eye,” by Jerry Pournelle and Larry Niven, in which an alien spacecraft propelled by solar sails visits humanity. Today, Johnson and a NASA team are preparing to test a similar technology.

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Team assessing SHERLOC instrument on NASA’s Perseverance rover

Engineers are working to stabilize a dust cover on one of the science instrument’s cameras.

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BWC: Ohio officer shot trying to rescue hostage held at gunpoint

A female hostage was also shot; the suspect surrendered and was arrested by Ontario Police Department officers after an hours-long standoff

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How NASA uses simple technology to track lunar missions

NASA is using a simple but effective technology called Laser Retroreflective Arrays (LRAs) to determine the locations of lunar landers more accurately. They will be attached to most of the landers from United States companies as part of NASA’s Commercial Lunar Payload Service (CLPS) initiative. LRAs are inexpensive, small, and lightweight, allowing future lunar orbiters […]

Hiding in the crowd: The search for missing young stars

Hundreds of thousands of stars are contained in this picture, an infrared image of Sagittarius C, a region near the center of the Milky Way. Taken with ESO’s Very Large Telescope (VLT) in the Chilean Atacama Desert, this image is helping astronomers unlock a stellar puzzle.

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Measuring distances in the universe with fast radio bursts

Now and then there is a bright radio flash somewhere in the sky. It can last anywhere from a few milliseconds to a few seconds. They appear somewhat at random, and we still aren’t sure what they are. We call them fast radio bursts (FRBs). Right now the leading theory is that they are caused […]

‘Disappointing’: Man gets house arrest, probation for sword attack on Ohio police

“In my personal opinion, the impact on the community and the officers, probation just wasn’t enough.” Maj. Brian Johns of the Dayton Police Department said

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Texas deputy killed in vehicle crash

Deputy Rondald Bates had served with the Harris County Sheriff’s Office for 31 years

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US prestige at stake as Texas company launches for the moon

Another month, another Moonshot: An American spaceship attempting a lunar landing is to launch early Wednesday, the second private-led effort this year after the first ended in failure.

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Terahertz spatiotemporal wave synthesis in random systems

A research team has developed a new technique that enables precise spatiotemporal control of terahertz waves as they pass through disordered materials.

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Researchers solve a foundational problem in transmitting quantum information

Future quantum electronics will differ substantially from conventional electronics. Whereas memory in the latter is stored as binary digits, the former is stored as qubits, which can take many forms, such as entrapped electrons in nanostructures known as quantum dots. However, challenges in transmitting this information to anything further than the adjacent quantum dot have […]