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Category: satellites

One Giant Leap: Researchers Demonstrate Programmable Quantum Photonic Processor in Orbit

Researchers have operated a programmable quantum photonic processor in orbit, demonstrating a light-based computing capability that could eventually help satellites analyze data before sending it to Earth.

The experiment used two photons traveling through a circuit with six optical paths aboard a spacecraft about 317 miles above Earth. Researchers programmed different circuit settings and observed two-photon quantum interference, a behavior needed for several approaches to photonic quantum computing.

Rather than demonstrating quantum advantage over classical systems, the study, posted to the preprint server arXiv, answers a basic question for quantum computing in space. The study addresses whether a compact system could generate, manipulate and detect quantum light after launch, despite radiation, temperature changes and equipment degradation.

Quantum computer boldly goes where no quantum computer has gone before: Space

There’s big news from the quantum world. A quantum computer has been used in space for the first time. The device was aboard a spacecraft in low Earth orbit and demonstrated technology that could eventually help solve a problem that has been bugging satellites for years.

The issue is that when orbiting satellites send their raw data back down to Earth, bottlenecks and bandwidth limits slow everything down. One way to overcome this would be to process the raw data in situ before sending it.

So a team of physicists led by Philip Walther at the University of Vienna came up with a way that could eventually do just that. Their solution was to build a quantum photonic processor that uses individual light particles, or photons, to perform complex operations using compact optical hardware.

A tiny stellar system may be a ‘satellite of a satellite’

Astronomers using data from the Euclid space telescope have discovered an exceptionally faint stellar system near the Fornax dwarf galaxy. Called Fornax-7, it appears to contain only about 170 times the mass of the sun in stars. The discovery paper was posted to the arXiv preprint server on Sept. 13.

The lambda cold dark matter model of the universe predicts that dark matter halos of any mass should host their own smaller subhalos. This is well established for galaxies with masses similar to the Milky Way’s, which have many dwarf satellites, but it has never been confirmed for hosts much less massive than the Milky Way.

The current record-holder is the Large Magellanic Cloud (LMC), which has candidate ultra-faint companions. Finding a satellite around something as small as the Fornax dwarf spheroidal galaxy (Fornax dSph), roughly 100 times less massive than the LMC, would extend “the observed hierarchical formation of satellite systems nearly two orders of magnitude below the LMC,” researchers write in the paper.

[4K] Watch the FIRST Orbital Starship Mission!!!

SpaceX is targeting Starship Flight 14 NET Monday, September 28, 2026 at 7:15 a.m. CT (12:15 UTC). This will be the FIRST orbital launch attempt of Starship with Ship 41 and Booster 21, carrying the first operational batch of 26 Starlink V3 satellites on a roughly 10-hour mission of about six orbits at around 275 km before a Pacific Ocean splashdown. Booster 21 will splash down in the Gulf after boostback, making this a major step from prior suborbital tests toward sustained orbit, payload ops, and eventual full reuse.

Want to know why Starship’s V3 Booster only has 3 grid fins instead of 4? Watch this!! — • The Genius Reason Why SpaceX Deleted A Gri…

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Weighing 600 million buildings to help construct a more efficient future

A new study helps show how builders and city planners can minimize the materials needed to accommodate the planet’s future population.

“How we plan cities today will shape their material demand for decades,” said Jinchao Song, the first author of the new study and a U-M research fellow with the School for Environment and Sustainability, or SEAS. “Using materials more efficiently can help cities accommodate future population growth while reducing the emissions associated with construction. If we use less material, we will have less energy consumption and carbon emissions.”

In the study, published in the journal Nature Cities, Song and colleagues combined high-resolution satellite imagery and other geospatial data with building material information to calculate the weight of 606 million buildings around the world. Working with experts from China, Denmark and the Netherlands, she then analyzed how economic conditions, population density and characteristics of the built environment, including urban form, were associated with material-use efficiency across cities.

NASA Just Proved Satellites Can Navigate Without GPS

NASA has demonstrated a new way for satellites to navigate without GPS by using the objects around them as landmarks in space.

NASA’s Starling mission has reached another milestone in spacecraft autonomy with a new system that can determine a satellite’s position by using other objects in space as reference points rather than depending on a traditional navigation network.

The FALCON (Fast Autonomous Lost-in-space Catalog-based Optical Navigation) technology demonstration represents another step toward spacecraft that can operate with greater independence. As NASA prepares for more missions beyond Earth’s orbit, systems such as FALCON could support lunar satellite swarms, distributed science missions, and future human exploration.

A Cosmic Catastrophe May Have Turned Neptune’s Ancient Moons Inside Out

Neptune’s tiny moons may be ancient wreckage, preserving material exposed when a catastrophic event shattered much larger icy worlds.

In 1989, Voyager 2 discovered six previously unknown moons around Neptune. Five of them are tiny satellites that travel just beyond the planet’s main rings. Their small size and great distance from Earth have made them especially difficult to study in detail.

Now, NASA’s James Webb Space Telescope (JWST) has given scientists a much closer look. A Caltech-led team examined Neptune’s rings along with three of its moons, Larissa, Galatea, and Proteus, and found that their composition appears unlike that of other known bodies in the outer solar system.

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