WASHINGTON — NASA has selected for development a space science mission that will study how space weather interacts with Earth’s atmosphere.
NASA announced June 18 that the Dynamic Atmosphere-Ionosphere Explorer, or DAPHNE, mission will proceed into the next phase of development, with a launch planned for no earlier than 2029.
DAPHNE was one of three concepts selected by NASA for study in 2024 for a mission concept called Dynamical Neutral Atmosphere-Ionosphere Coupling, or DYNAMIC, that was recommended by the heliophysics decadal survey in 2013 to examine the coupling between regions of the atmosphere and space weather.
When a meteoroid strikes, it generates a wave of energy that moves faster than the speed of sound. When all that energy propagates through material in seconds or less before being quickly cooled and resolidified by a secondary wave, it produces glass.
Planetary Science Institute Senior Scientist Shawn Wright was looking for such glassy material while doing field work among the basaltic volcanic rock of Lonar crater in the Deccan region of India, when he found something unexpected.
“Some glassy samples were fluffy and light, like popcorn,” he said. “It had a really low density, it was airy, and it crumbled in my fingers. It looked different than all the other samples I’d seen and collected, so I aimed to find out what it was by trying to figure out what it used to be.”
High above our heads, a silent battle is unfolding within Earth’s magnetic shield. For decades, scientists have tracked “killer electrons”—ultrafast particles capable of piercing satellite armor and endangering astronauts as they zip through the Van Allen radiation belts. While we knew these dangerous particles eventually leak out of the belts and into the atmosphere, the primary mechanism “cleaning” the highest-energy electrons has remained a persistent mystery of space weather.
Now, a study published in Geophysical Research Letters has uncovered the culprit by diving into three years of NASA’s Van Allen Probes data. Led by Lixian Yang and a team of researchers, the study identifies a hidden population of chorus waves that defies standard physics models.
Unlike typical space waves that are mostly magnetic, these highly oblique quasi-electrostatic (HOQE) waves possess an electric field so powerful it dominates their character. This unique electric punch allows them to knock electrons with energies up to 2 MeV out of orbit and into the atmosphere, scattering them with a force far more potent than any previous model predicted.
(SRI) was represented at the 69th Session of the United Nations Committee on the Peaceful Uses of Outer Space (UN COPUOS) in Vienna, Austria, by Bernard Foing, Dr. Gülin Dede, Werner Grandl, and Enes Beşli. The SRI delegation contributed to the session’s dialogue through two technical presentations: one delivered by Werner Grandl, “The Legacy of Gerard K. O’Neill and the Urgency to Start Experimentation on Simulated Gravity,” and another by Dr. Gülin Dede titled “Sustainability Beyond Earth: The Case for an 18th Sustainable Development Goal.” Throughout the session, the delegation engaged in productive discussions with international stakeholders and explored potential avenues for collaboration in support of SRI’s vision for a sustainable and inclusive space future. The delegation also attended the side event “Delivering Water Diplomacy through Space,” jointly co-organised by the European Space Policy Institute and Slovenia.
SRI further observed the “Space4Industry, UNOOSA/UNIDO Signing Ceremony,” co-organised by UNOOSA and UNIDO, as well as the “Space4Resilience Initiative, From Data to Decision: AI-Driven 3D Digital Twin Technologies for Disaster Infrastructure Resilience and Sustainable Industrial Development,” co-organized by UN-SPIDER and Japan.
SRI supports the utilization of space technologies in addressing global challenges, advancing sustainable industry, and strengthening international cooperation.
Necessary for quantum system development is an environment in which the fragile nature of quantum bits (qubits) is stabilized and the thermal noise (fluctuations in current/voltage) inherent in superconducting electronics is dampened. That environment requires cryogenic temperatures, those ranging from 5 to 10 millikelvins, colder than the extreme temperatures encountered in space. Dilution refrigerators create this needed cryogenic condition.
Dilution refrigerators used for quantum R&D need a wiring system that can operate in cryogenic temperatures, maintain a power-efficient direct current, and support high-speed data transmission. Researchers at MIT Lincoln Laboratory have prototyped flexible, ribbon-like, low-frequency (LF) cables that not only meet these demands, but also are compatible with commercial circuit-board manufacturing processes. Maybell Quantum, a Colorado-based company supplying hardware for developing quantum systems, licensed the design for these cables and is adapting them for use in their dilution refrigerators.
Google DeepMind just dropped a massive paper called From AGI to ASI, and the message is bigger than another AI release. The paper argues that AGI may not be the finish line everyone is waiting for. It may be the moment the real race begins. Once human-level AI can be copied, sped up, connected into agent teams, and used to build better AI, the jump after AGI could matter even more than AGI itself.
🚨 Why It Matters. This is bigger than another AI paper. Google DeepMind is already talking about what happens after AGI. If human-level AI can be copied, sped up, connected, and used to build better AI, then intelligence itself could become an industrial process.
An international team led by astronomers at the University of Sydney has uncovered the clearest evidence yet for the origin of an unusual class of cosmic signals. In doing so, they have identified a rare stellar system that is providing scientists with a natural laboratory to study extreme physics.
Using CSIRO’s ASKAP radio telescope, the team discovered a small, dense star, called a white dwarf, shredding material from its larger, but less dense, companion star.
As this material spirals in, it produces powerful bursts of radio waves and X-rays in a cycle that repeats every 1.4 hours.
