Lifeboat Foundation

Boeing Starliner flights to the ISS cost NASA more than twice what they pay SpaceX to ferry astronauts.

NASA confirmed Wednesday that it has awarded five additional crew transportation missions to SpaceX, and its Crew Dragon vehicle, to ferry astronauts to the International Space Station. This brings to 14 the total number of crewed missions that SpaceX is contracted to fly for NASA through 2030.

As previously reported by Ars, these are likely the final flights NASA needs to keep the space station fully occupied into the year 2030. While there are no international agreements yet signed, NASA has signaled that it would like to continue flying the orbiting laboratory until 2030, by which time one or more US commercial space stations should be operational in low Earth orbit.

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In its bid to achieve net zero carbon emissions by 2050, the U.K. is banking heavily on wind-generated power. To this effect, it commissioned the Hornsea One project, which was the largest offshore wind farm in the world at the time of achieving fully operational status in 2020. Two years later, the Hornsea 2 project is fully operational and has claimed the bragging rights for being the largest offshore wind farm in the world.

Most of us grow up familiar with the prevailing law that limits how quickly information can travel through empty space: the speed of light, which tops out at 300,000 kilometers (186,000 miles) per second.

While photons themselves are unlikely to ever break this speed limit, there are features of light which don’t play by the same rules.

Manipulating them won’t hasten our ability to travel to the stars, but they could help us clear the way to a whole new class of laser technology.

Neutrophils controlled by optical tweezers pave the way for the creation of microrobots that deliver drugs to precise locations in the body.

WASHINGTON — The Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency said it selected teams to help develop an on-orbit satellite communications translator within just eight days of releasing a formal solicitation. Now, the Pentagon agency charged with making investments in transformational technology wants to apply that quick approach to other programs.

DARPA announced last month that 11 teams would participate in Phase 1 its Space-Based Adaptive Communications Node program, dubbed Space-BACN, an in-space terminal designed to help government and commercial satellites communicate.

The capability is increasing in relevance as companies such as SpaceX and organizations including the Space Development Agency launch large constellations of satellites to low Earth orbit, within 1,000 kilometers of the planet’s surface. Awardees range from universities to commercial companies, some of which have never worked with the U.S. Department of Defense. DARPA didn’t announce the total value of the agreements.

In the last three or four years, he said, “we’ve gone through three different versions of our dismounted gear. So we’re able to quickly pivot to the next technology and not necessarily go down long-term production of the same solution when the technology is iterating and the threat is iterating.”

The Army is reinvigorating its networks, sensors, EW arsenal and related tools following decades of counterterrorism operations — a period when troops engaged with forces sporting less-advanced gear and communications were less at risk.

The U.S. is now preparing for potential fights against China and Russia, two world powers that spend significantly on military science and technology. The targeting of networks and other battlefield systems seen in the Russia-Ukraine war is only adding to the sense of urgency.

Inbound foreign investments in key sectors are reviewed by the Committee on Foreign Investment in the United States (CFIUS). However, screening of outbound investments – a so-called “reverse CFIUS” – would be new, and could significantly impact industries ranging from aerospace and defense to fintech to pharmaceuticals.

How did we get here?

The last several years have witnessed an accelerated national security pivot from the twenty-year global war on terror to strategic competition with major state adversaries. Unclassified assessments of the U.S. national security posture reveal significant threats in domains ranging from artificial intelligence to hypersonic weapons to energy, many of which have been exacerbated by the theft of U.S. technology. The legislation proposing a “reverse CFIUS” review would seek to counter these threats by adding new controls to the flow of U.S. capital and intellectual property abroad.

WASHINGTON — The U.S. Space Force is moving forward with plans to transform the way it manages major launch ranges after briefing industry this month on a forthcoming operations and maintenance contract.

Ranges in Florida and California have seen huge growth in both the rate at which customers are launching satellites and the number of companies certifying new rockets to fly those missions. The Space Force estimates that within the next few years the ranges it manages at Cape Canaveral Space Force Station and Kennedy Space Center could host as many as 300 launches annually, up from 31 launches last year and 67 planned for 2022.

The surge in activity requires a new way of operating, service officials say, and it’s why the Space Force is planning to award a contract in 2024 to support range operations, maintenance, sustainment integration and other efforts. In briefing slides from the Aug. 11 industry day, which more than 100 companies attended, the service says it will solicit proposals next May for the five-year contract. No value for the contract was given.

NOMARS took a clean-sheet approach to ship design, holding firmly to the requirement that there will never be a human on board the vessel while it is at sea – including during underway replenishment (UNREP) events. By eliminating all constraints and requirements associated with humans, NOMARS opened up the design space to novel ship configurations and capabilities that could never be considered for crewed vessels.

NOMARS is also pushing the boundaries on ship reliability. Because there is no crew on board to perform maintenance, NOMARS required new approaches for power generation, propulsion, machinery line-up and control schemes to ensure continuous functionality throughout a long mission in all weather, temperature and sea states.

“NOMARS plans to demonstrate a next-generation completely unmanned ship that will enable entirely new concepts of operations,” said Gregory Avicola, program manager in DARPA’s Tactical Technology Office. “We will enable methods of deploying and maintaining very large fleets of unmanned surface vessels that can serve as partners, across the globe, for the larger crewed combatants of the U.S. Navy.”