Hardware

ESA picked Kepler to prove optical relay works around a 10x ground station gap

A galaxy 5 billion light years away bent light from a supernova 9 billion years distant, magnify it 100x, and make it the most studied stellar explosion in cosmic history. Now astronomers need to watch the clock.

The US is building satellites that interpret sensor data and coordinate responses without waiting for ground control. Nobody has written the rules for what happens when they do.

Graphene-MXene nanofluid in a passive heat pipe dropped a solar panel temperature by 24C and boosted output by 15%, at a cost that keeps electricity competitive. Perovskites, tandem junctions, heterojunctions — three competing solar cell designs. The next unlock might not be in the cell at all, b...

Amazon paid 10.8B to 11.57B for Globalstar depending on valuation basis. The real acquisition is federally licensed L-band spectrum — the prerequisite for any direct-to-device satellite network in the US. Amazon had everything except the spectrum. Until now.

Radiative cooling physics caps orbital compute at roughly 10 kilowatts per spacecraft before thermal management becomes unsolvable. Phantom Space is betting it can build a vertically integrated business around that ceiling.

Amazon has 241 satellites in orbit and an FCC milestone due this summer that requires 1,616. The new antenna it unveiled today is not the bottleneck.

Imagine a ship with a net catching a falling rocket instead of rocket legs touching down. China's approach to reusable rockets just got visual.

The Space Force is paying Gravitics $60M to build a floating armory in orbit. The problem: the same platform that wins wars by deploying vehicles fast also becomes the first thing an adversary blows up.

TSMC holds 95% of the leading edge. That is the one fact the semiconductor industry would prefer you did not pull apart — because what it obscures about geography, demand, and who actually controls the factories is the more important story.

A USC team built a memory chip that survived 700C for 50+ hours — hotter than Venus, built by accident, and the test equipment gave out before the device did.