Navigating when GPS goes dark

Words like "tough" or "rugged" are rarely associated with a quantum inertial sensor. The remarkable scientific instrument can measure motion a thousand times more accurately than the devices that help navigate today's missiles, ...

Developing strategies for high-quality crystal growth

Transition metal dichalcogenides (TMDCs) are a class of materials with physical properties that make them ideally suited for use in flexible optoelectronic applications, such as light detectors, light-emitting diodes and ...

What part of a space rock survives all the way to the ground?

When a small asteroid enters Earth's atmosphere from space, its surface is brutally heated, causing melting and fragmenting. Therefore, why the rocks near the surface survive to the ground as meteorites has been somewhat ...

Image: Pure gold pin for space testing

Although this pure gold pin is not much bigger than the tip of a pencil, it is the "pulsing heart" of ESA's Low Earth Orbit Facility, LEOX. Part of the Agency's Materials and Electrical Components Laboratory, based at ESA's ...

Video: Does space trash ever naturally break down?

Remember when Elon Musk launched a car into space? That car's not just peacefully drifting through a vacuum—it's hurtling around the sun at 63,592 miles per hour, being bombarded by solar radiation. It might be in pieces, ...

A primary standard for measuring vacuum

A novel, quantum-based vacuum gauge system invented by researchers at the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) has passed its first test to be a true primary standard—that is, intrinsically accurate without ...

Scientists identify a possible source for Charon's red cap

Southwest Research Institute scientists combined data from NASA's New Horizons mission with novel laboratory experiments and exospheric modeling to reveal the likely composition of the red cap on Pluto's moon Charon and how ...

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