Lifeboat Foundation

April’s space watch list includes a Chinese space station mission and the test flight of a new Russian rocket.

Andreas Mogensen was impressed by how smooth a landing it was.

The first European Space Agency (ESA) astronaut (and first non-American) to serve as a pilot on a U.S. commercial crew spacecraft, Mogensen and his SpaceX Crew-7 crewmates returned to Earth after a 197-day stay aboard the International Space Station (ISS) on March 12.

The moon is a harsh mistress.

“Music video by ELO;Electric Light Orchestra performing Ticket To The Moon. © 1981 Sony Music Entertainment”

Two SpaceX Falcon 9 rockets could take to the skies over Florida in back-to-back Saturday evening launches.

The static fire test comes less than two weeks after the last Starship mission, which saw the rocket reach orbital velocity for the first time before breaking up upon reentry to Earth’s atmosphere.

Gwynne Shotwell, SpaceX’s chief operating officer, said last week that the next launch attempt could take place in the “beginning part of May”, though no payload will be onboard.

The fourth major flight test of the fully stacked Starship rocket system will instead aim to resolve the issues that arose during the last mission.

Nvidia’s headquarters is now one of the most sought-after places to work. Spanning more than 1 million square feet combined, Nvidia’s space-ship-like buildings were designed with help from custom software powered by the AI chips that have made the company successful. WSJ gets a look inside. Photo: Nvidia.

An international team of researchers from Queen Mary University of London, the University of Oxford, Lancaster University, and the University of Waterloo have developed a new single-molecule transistor that uses quantum interference to control the flow of electrons. The transistor, which is described in a paper published in the Nature Nanotechnology (“Quantum interference enhances the performance of single-molecule transistors”), opens new possibilities for using quantum effects in electronic devices.

Transistor are the basic building blocks of modern electronics. They are used to amplify and switch electrical signals, and they are essential for everything from smartphones to spaceships. However, the traditional method of making transistors, which involves etching silicon into tiny channels, is reaching its limits.

As transistors get smaller, they become increasingly inefficient and susceptible to errors, as electrons can leak through the device even when it is supposed to be switched off, by a process known as quantum tunnelling. Researchers are exploring new types of switching mechanisms that can be used with different materials to remove this effect.

Odysseus, which was built by Houston-based company Intuitive Machines, powered down one week after landing as lunar night began for 14 days. Flight controllers ordered the spacecraft to snooze for three weeks, while the moon’s south pole faced away from the sun, but they hoped Odie would reawaken once sunlight hit its solar panels again.

“Intuitive Machines started listening for Odie’s wake-up signal on March 20, when we projected enough sunlight would potentially charge the lander’s power system and turn on its radio,” representatives of the company wrote on X, formerly called Twitter.

The company has faced two main issues related to communications and the spacecraft rotation rate — and it’s largely solved both those problems.