May 26, 2025

What Sonic Detectives Listen for When Rockets Launch (Source: New York Times)
Launches used to be occasional spectacles, and not many people minded the noise. But the pace has quickened. SpaceX, the rocket company started by Elon Musk, now sends a Falcon 9 rocket to space at least once every few days from launchpads in Florida and California. Other companies, including Jeff Bezos’ Blue Origin, also have ambitions to send rockets to space at an accelerating pace.

And the noise is no longer just the roar of the rockets heading upward, but also the sonic booms of rocket boosters returning to Earth. That noise shakes windows and foundations and wakens sleeping people. How the sound waves travel — shifted by wind, bending and reflecting off layers of the atmosphere and the ground below — is complex. Rules and limits that were designed for airports and rock concerts may not suffice.

At a meeting of the Acoustical Society of America this month, a member of Dr. Gee’s team, reported that the uneven topography around the Vandenberg site seems to focus sound waves into certain areas. And the corridor where the booms were loudest changed between summer and winter. “During winter, we’re finding that it shifts up closer to Santa Barbara,” Dr. Gee said. Vandenberg has conducted rocket noise studies for years, and in 2024, it added Dr. Gee’s measurements there after complaints about the sonic booms. (5/26)

Trump’s “Golden Dome” Won’t Work—but It’ll Make Elon Musk Richer (Source: TNR)
Though the 60-year pursuit of an effective national missile defense system began with an ideological desire to replace arms-control agreements with a military shield, for decades, the primary driver has been the pursuit of lucrative contracts. Musk understands that there is a lot of money to be made in missile defense. The program has grown from a relatively modest $3 billion a year, back when Ronald Reagan first started talking it up during the 1980s, to over $30 billion a year for “missile defense and defeat programs” today.

Over $453 billion of that was spent in failed efforts launched by Reagan in 1983 to fulfill his fantasy of a shield that could “protect us from ballistic missiles just as a roof protects a family from rain.” All we have to show for the effort is 44 ground-based interceptors in Alaska and California that are so flawed that the Pentagon last year awarded Lockheed Martin an $18 billion contract to build a brand-new replacement system.

Trump claims that Reagan “didn’t have the technology,” but now we have “super technology” that will provide “close to 100 percent protection” against “hypersonic missiles, ballistic missiles, and advanced cruise missiles; all of them will be knocked out of the air.” Even better, said Trump, the whole thing will only cost $175 billion and be “fully operational before the end of my term.” (5/25)

Why Has Tamil Nadu Adopted a Space Sector Policy? (Source: The Hindu)
On April 17, the Tamil Nadu Cabinet, at a meeting chaired by Chief Minister M.K. Stalin in Chennai, approved the Space Industrial Policy, thereby following Karnataka and Gujarat in formulating a State-specific document to stimulate development and woo investments in the space sector, which encompasses satellite manufacturing, launch services, and satellite services. In 2023, the Union government came out with the Indian Space Policy 2023 to provide a framework to support the space ecosystem. (5/26)

What Government Programs Should Be Slashed? NASA Nears Top of List, Poll Finds (Source: Miami Herald)
So much for shooting for the moon. Most Americans are on board with slashing space exploration funding in order to rein in federal spending, according to new polling. In the latest Marquette Law School Poll, 63% of respondents said they would be willing to reduce spending on NASA and its space program to shrink the federal budget deficit.

Meanwhile, just 37% said they would not be willing to cut it. And just 5% said sending astronauts to Mars or back to the moon is a major priority, while 39% said this is important, but not a top concern. A majority, 56%, said it should not be a priority at all. The poll comes shortly after President Donald Trump proposed slashing NASA’s funding by $6 billion. (5/22)

Airbus Appoints New Technology Head in Research Shake-Up (Source: Reuters)
Airbus has appointed its top executive in South Asia to be its next head of technology in a shake-up of design and engineering as it studies options for a successor to its best-selling A320neo jetliner, an internal memo showed on Friday. Remi Maillard, currently head of Airbus India and South Asia, will lead Research & Technology across the European aerospace group as Head of Technology Airbus and will combine that role with leadership of engineering at the core commercial airplanes business. (5/23)

Cosmonaut Shkaplerov: Man to Land on Mars by End of 2030s (Source: TASS)
The landing of a man on Mars is planned by the end of the 2030s, cosmonaut, Hero of the Russian Federation Anton Shkaplerov told TASS, adding that the project is being implemented. "The first landing of a man on Mars is planned in the 2030s. I am more skeptical, of course, and I think that the idea will be implemented by the end of the 2030s, or the beginning of the 2040s, though the plan is there," he said. (5/25)

Former ISRO Engineers Launch Ahmedabad Startups (Source: Times of India)
Ahmedebad is emerging as a significant spacetech hub in India, fueled by startups founded by former ISRO engineers. These ventures, including SatLeo Labs and PierSight, have collectively raised $5.3 million, attracting substantial initial investments. Their innovations in thermal imaging, SAR technology, and satellite propulsion are poised to revolutionize space applications, supported by a conducing ecosystem and IN-SPACe. (5/26)

Magellan Data Provides New Insight Into Tectonic Processes on Venus (Source: NSF)
Over 30 years after its demise in the Venusian atmosphere, NASA’s Magellan mission recently provided new insight into tectonic processes on Venus. Scientists studied large, rounded geologic features called coronae by combining gravity measurements and topography data collected by Magellan throughout its mission. Not only does the new study shed light on Venus’ geology, but its methods also form a basis for analyzing the data collected by future missions to the planet. (5/25)

Chinese Commercial Company Lands Contract to Build Provincial Satellite Constellation (Source: Space News)
Chinese commercial satellite manufacturer MinoSpace has won a major contract to build a remote sensing satellite constellation for Sichuan Province, under a project approved by the country’s top economic planner. Beijing-based MinoSpace won the bid for the construction of a “space satellite constellation,” the National Public Resources Trading Platform (Sichuan Province) announced May 18, Chinese language Economic Observer reported.

The contract is worth 804 million yuan (around $111 million) and the constellation has been approved by the National Development and Reform Commission (NDRC), China’s top economic planning agency, signaling potential alignment with national satellite internet and remote sensing infrastructure goals. (5/26)

Microsoft AI Weather Forecast Faster, Cheaper, Truer (Source: Space Daily)
Microsoft has developed an artificial intelligence (AI) model that beats current forecasting methods in tracking air quality, weather patterns, and climate-addled tropical storms, according to findings published Wednesday. Dubbed Aurora, the new system -- which has not been commercialized -- generated 10-day weather forecasts and predicted hurricane trajectories more accurately and faster than traditional forecasting, and at lower costs, researchers reported in the journal Nature. (5/21)

Scientific Conferences are Leaving the US Amid Border Fears (Source: Nature)
Several academic and scientific conferences in the United States have been postponed, cancelled or moved elsewhere, as organizers respond to researchers’ growing fears over the country’s immigration crackdown.

Organizers of these meetings say that tougher rules around visas and border control — alongside other policies introduced by US President Donald Trump’s administration — are discouraging international scholars from attending events on US soil. In response, they are moving the conferences to countries such as Canada, in a bid to boost attendance. (5/22)

Strauss’ ‘Blue Danube’ Waltz is Launching Into Space to Mark His 200th Birthday (Source: AP)
Strauss’ “Blue Danube” is heading into space this month to mark the 200th anniversary of the waltz king’s birth. The classical piece will be beamed into the cosmos as it’s performed by the Vienna Symphony Orchestra. The celestial send-off on May 31 — livestreamed with free public screenings in Vienna, Madrid and New York — also will celebrate the European Space Agency’s founding 50 years ago. (5/25)

Scientists Stumped by Unexplained Motion in Titan’s Atmosphere (Source: The Debrief)
Scientists have detected mysterious, gyroscopic motion within the atmosphere of Saturn’s moon Titan that appears to be completely independent from its surface rotation. Scientists from the University of Bristol made the discovery while analyzing sensor data from the NASA-ESA Cassini-Huygens mission’s flyby of the Saturnian moon. The researchers say they cannot explain the mysterious motion, which seems connected to the moon’s seasons, each lasting several Earth years. (5/25)

Does Light Lose Energy as it Crosses the Universe? The Answer Involves Time Dilation (Source: LiveScience)
Picture yourself as an astronaut on board the International Space Station. You're orbiting at 17,000 miles per hour. Compared with someone on Earth, your wristwatch will tick 0.01 seconds slower over one year. That's an example of time dilation – time moving at different speeds under different conditions. If you're moving really fast, or close to a large gravitational field, your clock will tick more slowly than someone moving slower than you, or who is further from a large gravitational field. To say it succinctly, time is relative.

Now consider that light is inextricably connected to time. Picture sitting on a photon, a fundamental particle of light; here, you'd experience maximum time dilation. Everyone on Earth would clock you at the speed of light, but from your reference frame, time would completely stop. That's because the "clocks" measuring time are in two different places going vastly different speeds.

What's more, when you're traveling at or close to the speed of light, the distance between where you are and where you're going gets shorter. That is, space itself becomes more compact in the direction of motion – so the faster you can go, the shorter your journey has to be. In other words, for the photon, space gets squished. (5/25)

Everything Evaporates: From Neutron Stars to You, the Universe Is on a Clock (Source: SciTech Daily)
What if black holes weren’t the only things slowly vanishing from existence? Scientists have now shown that all dense cosmic bodies—from neutron stars to white dwarfs—might eventually evaporate via Hawking-like radiation. Even more shocking, the end of the universe could come far sooner than expected, “only” 1078 years from now, not the impossibly long 101100 years once predicted. In an ambitious blend of astrophysics, quantum theory, and math, this playful yet serious study also computes the eventual fates of the Moon—and even a human. Click here. (5/25)

China’s Effort to Build a Competitor to Starlink Is Off to a Bumpy Start (Source: WIRED)
More than 100 satellites have been launched from China since August—the first batches of two mega-constellations that are aiming to have about 28,000 satellites combined when they’re completed. The two Chinese projects are officially called Guowang and Qianfan. The former, which is also known as Xingwang or SatNet, is primarily focused on domestic telecommunications and national security use cases. The latter, which is also known as Spacesail or SSST, is more oriented toward providing service to foreign telecom companies.

So far, Qianfan has signed deals with Brazil, Malaysia, and Thailand and has said it’s eyeing dozens of other markets in Asia, Africa, and Latin America. The systems stand to benefit as Elon Musk’s deepening entanglements in US politics raises reputational and security risks for SpaceX globally.

But as Guowang and Qianfan launch their first batches of satellites, they are also running into troubles, including higher numbers of faulty satellites than SpaceX, bureaucratic hurdles, and limited rocket launch capacity. And if they don’t launch enough satellites into space soon, they could be asked by the International Telecommunication Union (ITU) to scale down the size of their planned constellations. Unlike Starlink, which publishes GPS information of its satellites in orbit, the Chinese companies have disclosed little about how their satellites are doing. Instead, researchers have relied on data collected by the US Space Force. (5/25)