Rocketeers take lead in $1 million race

Masten Space Systems' Xoie rocket prototype has apparently taken the lead in a nail-biting race for a million-dollar prize from NASA.

The Masten team's "try, try again" effort at California's Mojave Air and Space Port was aimed at winning the top prize in the Northrop Grumman Lunar Lander Challenge's Level 2 contest.

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Russian submarine fails to launch troubled missile: report

Russia's latest test of its next-generation Bulava missile was aborted when a submarine failed to carry out the launch, in a fresh setback for the project, the Interfax news agency reported Thursday.

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Harris to Supply US Army With Falcon-III PRC-117G Radios

Harris Corp recently received a basic purchasing agreement contract worth up to $419 million to supply the US Army with Falcon III AN/PRC-117G multiband tactical manpack radios, and vehicular power-amplifier adapter systems.

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Pinning down superconductivity to a single layer

Using precision techniques for making superconducting thin films layer-by-layer, physicists at the U.S. Department of Energy's (DOE) Brookhaven National Laboratory have identified a single layer responsible for one such material's ability to become superconducting, i.e., carry electrical current with no energy loss. The technique, described in the October 30, 2009, issue of Science, could be used to engineer ultrathin films with "tunable" superconductivity for higher-efficiency electronic devices.

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Intel Claims Memory Research Milestone

Intel (NSDQ: INTC) and Numonyx say they have achieved a research milestone in computer memory that could one day lead to a less expensive and higher-performing alternative to the technology used today.

The accomplishment stems from the work the two companies have been doing together on a type of non-volatile memory called phase-change memory, or PCM. The research partners say they have successfully stacked multiple layers of PCM arrays within a single 64 Mb die.

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Fermi Telescope Caps its 1st Year with a Glimpse of Space-Time

During its first year of operations, NASA's Fermi Gamma Ray Space Telescope mapped the extreme sky with unprecedented resolution and sensitivity. It captured more than one thousand discrete sources of gamma rays -- the highest-energy form of light. Capping these achievements was a measurement that provided rare experimental evidence about the very structure of space and time, unified as space-time in Einstein's theories.

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Raytheon Awarded More Than $100 Million For New Missile Defense System

Raytheon Company (NYSE: RTN) was awarded two contracts worth in excess of $100 million by Rafael Advanced Defense Systems Ltd. to design and develop the David's Sling Weapon System.

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Metamaterials Arrive in Cellphones

The quest to build more-powerful multiband mobile handsets has gotten a boost from a relatively new class of materials. Called metamaterials, they arespecifically engineered to have properties that do not occur naturally, such as the ability to bend light the wrong way. For manufacturers of mobile devices, recent advances in metamaterials promise a way to shrink size while still retaining multiband functionality.

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Yellow Jacket Fuses MASINT, IMINT, UAVs to Hunt IEDs

CenTauri Solutionshas been awarded by the U.S. Department of Defense to demonstrate an integrated UAV-based counter-IED technology. Known as “Yellow Jacket” the $11.7 million program is sponsored by the U.S. Air Force Research Laboratory, (AFRL) in Rome, New York. Such a capability could provide life saving services for military patrols and convoys, by scanning the roads and locations and identifing potential IED threats before the arrival of the forces.

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Northrop Grumman Announces Successful G/ATOR AESA System Tests

Northrop Grumman Corporation (NYSE:NOC) today announced a prototype partial array antenna representative of the U.S. Marine Corps Ground/Air Task Oriented Radar (G/ATOR) active electronic scanned array (AESA) has completed successful testing at a company antenna test range in Norwalk, Conn., where all planned test objectives were met. This provides a high degree of confidence that the first EDM fully populated array (currently under integration/test) will likewise be a success.

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NASA: Ares I-X rocket damaged in test flight

The booster rocket used in a test flight was badly dented when it fell into the Atlantic because of a deflated parachute, NASA said Thursday.

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Asteroid explosion was a whopper for Earth

A space rock explosion earlier this month over an island region of Indonesia is now being viewed as perhaps the biggest object to tangle with the Earth in more than a decade.

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Japanese Ship Conducts Successful BMD Test

A Japanese destroyer shot down a ballistic missile target during a seven-minute engagement off Hawaii on Tuesday night, becoming the third Japanese ship to demonstrate an engagement capability using the Aegis combat system.

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Google reveals complimentary GPS navigation for cell phones

Google revealed a free navigation scheme for mobile phones on Wednesday in a progress seen as a prospective challenge to the makers of GPS navigation devices. US telecommunications carrier Verizon Wireless and US handset manufacturer Motorola announced in the meantime that latest smartphone will be available on sale in the United States next week, the Droid, would be the foremost to attribute Google Maps Navigation.

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Scientists Discover Gene that 'Cancer-Proofs' Rodent's Cells

Despite a 30-year lifespan that gives ample time for cells to grow cancerous, a small rodent species called a naked mole rat has never been found with tumors of any kind—and now biologists at the University of Rochester think they know why.

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Old Trick Threatens the Newest Weapons

Despite a six-year effort to build trusted computer chips for military systems, the Pentagon now manufactures in secure facilities run by American companies only about 2 percent of the more than $3.5 billion of integrated circuits bought annually for use in military gear.

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Russia Develops Spaceship with Nuclear Engine

The Russian Federal Space Agency Roscosmos has developed a design for a piloted spacecraft powered by a nuclear engine, the head of the agency said on Wednesday.

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Next-generation microcapsules deliver 'chemicals on demand'

Scientists in California are reporting development of a new generation of the microcapsules used in carbon-free copy paper, in which capsules burst and release ink with pressure from a pen. The new microcapsules burst when exposed to light, releasing their contents in ways that could have wide-ranging commercial uses from home and personal care to medicine.

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Raytheon Moves Ahead in Competition for Next Gen Jammer Program

Having completed an initial technology maturation study in July, Raytheon Company (NYSE: RTN) has entered the subsequent phase of the competition for the U.S. Navy's Next Generation Jammer program.

The study described new technological approaches to provide 21st century jamming capabilities for current and future threats in the airborne electronic-attack arena. The next-generation jammer is intended to replace the ALQ-99 jamming pods on the EA-18G Growler aircraft, providing a solid basis for 30 more years of airborne electronic-attack capability.

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Test Results Promising that Navy Hornet Can Fly on 'Green Fuel'

The Navy is one step closer to flying the "Green Hornet." Members of the NAVAIR Fuels team recently made a small, but very vital step toward changing the source of jet fuel the U.S. Navy uses. The team tested an F404 F/A-18 engine to determine if it could run on a jet fuel (JP-5) derived from a weed.

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Google Closes the Loop on Music Search

Google Wednesday announced a widely anticipated addition to its popular search engine that reduces the number of steps one has to take between hearing about a piece of music and actually hearing it, thanks to partnerships with a bevy of music services: imeem, Lala, iLike, Pandora and Rhapsody.

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Self-driving technology on a roll

A new EU-funded project envisions future vehicles having the ability to drive themselves in long convoys on motorways.

The SARTRE (Safe Road Trains for the Environment) project, which will be led by engineering consultancy Ricardo UK, will develop technology that allows vehicles to control acceleration, braking and steering, and drive as part of a 'road train' of similarly controlled vehicles.

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Raytheon Awarded $81.1 Million for Airborne Low Frequency Sonar

Raytheon Company (NYSE: RTN) has received an $81.1 million U.S. Navy contract for the AN/AQS-22 Airborne Low Frequency Sonar (ALFS), the primary undersea warfare sensor for the Navy's MH-60R multi-mission helicopter.

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Air Force Uses Airborne Lasers to Create High-Speed Data Links

Manned Air Force jets and drones could soon send high quality video and audio by using ultra-high bandwidth lasers, transmitting critical battlefield data faster than ever. The Air Force Office of Scientific Research has conducted experiments that transmit data without interference across almost 22 miles, both in the air and on the ground.

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Light Peak Technology

Light Peak is the code-name for a new high-speed optical cable technology designed to connect your electronic devices to each other. Light Peak delivers high bandwidth starting at 10Gb/s with the potential ability to scale to 100Gb/s over the next decade.

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Mantis Shrimp's Eyes Hold Key to New Optics

Scientists have discovered the mechanism behind the eyes of the only animal that can detect a certain kind of polarized light: the mantis shrimp, native to Australia's Great Barrier Reef.

Optical devices can manipulate the polarization of light for research and for commercial products like CD and DVD players and digital cameras. However, these devices can't manipulate light nearly as well as the mantis shrimp can.

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NASA launches test rocket on second try

A one-of-a-kind NASA rocket soared into the Florida sky Wednesday in a brief but critical test flight of a new booster slated to launch astronauts into space and, eventually, toward the moon.

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'Father of Su-27' Simonov: F-15 hater

Mikhail Petrovich Simonov, designer of the iconic Su-27 Flanker, realized after the 1977 first flight that the T-10 prototype was a dog, a fact he explained to the aviation minister in Moscow.

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LockMart's New HELLFIRE II Missile Design Up And Away

Lockheed Martin's new multi-functional AGM-114R HELLFIRE II missile scored a direct hit during its first proof-of-principle (POP) flight test recently at Eglin Air Force Base, FL.

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Mounted laser weapon passes two key tests

A laser weapon mounted on a vehicle that is set to enter U.S. Army service in a few years passed two key tests at the Boeing Co.'s review sites, the company announced.

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