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Category: military – Page 103

It feels a bit like a headline ripped from the plotline of the 2013 flick “Gravity” — NASA astronauts suddenly find themselves having to worry more about the threat of space debris whipping around Earth at over 17,000 miles per hour.

Just two weeks after the current crew of the International Space Station had to take emergency shelter in the Russian Soyuz and SpaceX Crew Dragon capsules that are docked to the ISS, NASA has now postponed a planned spacewalk because of the threat.

One source of the increased threat is Russia’s recent anti-satellite missile test that created hundreds, if not thousands, of new pieces of debris in low-earth orbit. On November 15 it was reported that Russia blasted one of its own defunct satellites to smithereens, a move that drew global condemnation.

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SpaceX’s newest drone ship is on its way out into the Atlantic Ocean for a Starlink mission that will break the company’s record for annual launch cadence.

Somewhat confusing known as Starlink Shell 4 Launch 3 or Starlink 4–3, the batch of 53 laser-linked V1.5 satellites is scheduled to fly before Starlink 4–2 for unknown reasons and at the same time as Starlink 2–3 is scheduled to fly before Starlink 2–2 on the West Coast. Regardless of the seemingly unstable launch order, perhaps related to the recent introduction of Starlink’s new V1.5 satellite design, drone ship A Shortfall of Gravitas’ (ASOG) November 27th Port Canaveral confirms that SpaceX is more or less on track to launch Starlink 4–3 no earlier than (NET) 6:20 pm EST (23:20 UTC) on Wednesday, December 1st.

In a bit of a return to stride after launching 20 times in the first six months but only three times in the entire third quarter of 2021, Starlink 4–3 is currently the first of four or even five SpaceX launches scheduled in the last month of the year. Nevertheless, if Starlink 4–3 is successful, it will also set SpaceX up to cross a milestone unprecedented in the history of satellite launches.

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Substantially extending the strike range of fighter jets.

Boeing’s unmanned air tanker MQ-25 Stingray is currently completing ground tests at the Naval Station Norfolk in Virginia in preparation for a carrier demonstration, the U.S. Navy confirmed in a press release.

Unveiled over three years ago, the MQ-25 or T1 tanker is designed to refuel naval fighter aircraft mid-air. Although mid-air refueling is common practice for the U.S. military, this is the first attempt with an unmanned drone. The MQ-25 has been making rapid strides since its unveiling and has successfully completed a refueling attempt of the F-35C aircraft in September this year.

The drone tanker is now moving a step closer to deployment. According to the press release, the U.S. Navy and Boeing are moving through ground tests currently and aiming for a carrier demonstration in December. As part of the tests, the team recently completed deck handling where the engines on the aircraft were up and running and the taxiing was handled by controllers on the deck.

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Continue reading “Boeing’s MQ-25 Has Taken One Step Closer to Aircraft Carrier Tests” | >

China has tested a weapon that was previously thought impossible, according to a new report.

The hypersonic weapon test saw the country fire a missile from another spacecraft that was already flying at least five times the speed of sound, the report claimed. Such technology was previously thought impossible and US experts are unsure how China was able to actually conduct the test, it said.

Though the test happened in July, and was reported closer to the time, the nature of the breakthrough was first revealed in a new report from the Financial Times. The paper reported that experts have been poring through data in an attempt to understand how China was able to build the technology – as well as what exactly the missile was intended to do.

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And it could halve the transit time to Mars.

Pulsar Fusion Ltd., a nuclear fusion company based in the United Kingdom, has recently designed and successfully tested its first launch-capable, high-power chemical rocket engine.

From launching people and payloads into space, this engine could have numerous applications, but the company’s ultimate goal is to develop a hyper-speed propulsion engine using nuclear fusion technologies for interplanetary travel, with the first prototype expected in 2025.

And when this dream comes into fruition, it could cut the journey time to Mars in half.

Continue reading “A UK Rocket Company Wants to Put Nuclear Fusion Power in Orbit by 2027” | >

The vehicle was able to fire off its own missile over the South China Sea while travelling at five times the speed of sound.

China tested a hypersonic vehicle in July that was able to fire off its own missile over the South China Sea while travelling at five times the speed of sound, in a physics-defying display of technology that no other country has demonstrated, according to a new report.

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Including ‘cloud, AI, and machine learning-enabled automation’.

The US National Security Technology Accelerator (NSTXL) announced on Thursday that it has chosen Microsoft to build advanced chips for the military.

“Historically, the security requirements associated with developing microelectronics have limited the U.S. Department of Defense’s (DoD) ability to leverage the latest innovations,” wrote in a blog Tom Keane, Corporate Vice President, Azure Global, Microsoft Azure.

“Through a recent DoD-sponsored project, Rapid Assured Microelectronics Prototypes (RAMP) using Advanced Commercial Capabilities, the goal is to leverage commercial best practices to help accelerate the development process and bring reliable, secure state-of-the-art microelectronic design and manufacturing to national security and defense applications.”

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Continue reading “It’s Official. Microsoft Will Build Advanced Chips for the US Military” | >

Scientists have been experimenting with the creation of nuclear energy for decades and have used nuclear fission — the process of breaking atoms apart — to power everything from devasting atomic bombs to clean nuclear energy.

However, this kind of nuclear energy is different from cosmic inspired nuclear fusion in one significant way: it’s not self-sustaining. Creating enough energy on Earth to power this kind of reaction has been just out of reach for decades.

But that could soon be changing. First reported in August 2021, nuclear scientists from the National Ignition Facility (NIF) at Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory have come closer than ever before to prove that self-sustaining nuclear fusion — or fusion ignition — is really possible.

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Get ready for the ‘White Bat’.

What’s the best way to counter gossip? Coming out with the truth. That seems to be the idea behind a new video released by the U.S. Air Force’s Profession of Arms Center of Excellence (PACE).

The video that was released earlier this month recounts the ways intelligence gathering, surveillance, and reconnaissance (ISR) have improved over the decades. The U.S. has moved far ahead from the days when balloons were sent up in the air to understand what was happening behind enemy lines. Adversaries of the U.S. are now a world away and the military still has the ability to “find the unfindable.”

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