Maj. Gen. Stephen Purdy, head of Space Force acquisitions, said the first of several Tranche 1 launches is expected within the next month
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Discover how the U.S. Department of Defense could leverage advanced data and artificial intelligence to transform space-based defense through its Golden Dome initiative. Next-generation AI-powered systems, designed to integrate vast streams of […]
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Maj. Gen. Stephen Purdy discusses plans for multi-vendor approach as GSSAP replacement program advances
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A total of 139 employees at the US Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) have been suspended after signing a “declaration of dissent” accusing Donald Trump’s administration of “undermining” the agency’s mission. The letter, dated 1 July, stated that the signatories “stand together against the current administration’s focus on harmful deregulation, mischaracterization of previous EPA activities, and disregard for scientific expertise”.
Addressed to EPA administrator Lee Zeldin, the letter was signed by a total of more than 400 EPA workers, of whom 170 put their names to the document, with the rest choosing to remain anonymous. Zeldin suspended the employees on 3 July, with EPA officials telling them to provide contact information so the agency could be in touch with them while they are on leave.
Copied to leaders of the US Senate and House of Representatives, the letter was organized by the Stand Up For Science pressure group. The letter states that “EPA employees join in solidarity with employees across the Federal government in opposing this administration’s policies, including those that undermine the EPA mission of protecting human health and the environment.”
The document lists five “primary concerns”, including the scientific consensus being ignored to benefit polluters, and undermining public trust by EPA workers being distracted from protecting public health and the environment through objective science-based policy.
The letter adds that the EPA’s progress in the US’s most vulnerable communities is being reversed through the cancellation of environmental justice programmes, while budget cuts to the Office of Research and Development, which helps support the agency’s rules on environmental protection and human health, mean it cannot meet the EPA’s science needs. The letter also points to a culture of fear at the EPA, with staff being forced to choose between their livelihood and well-being.
In response to the letter, Zeldin said he had a “ZERO tolerance policy for agency bureaucrats unlawfully undermining, sabotaging and undercutting the agenda of this administration”. An EPA statement, sent to Physics World, notes that the letter “contains information that misleads the public about agency business”, adding that the letter’s signatories “represent a small fraction of the thousands of [agency] employees”. On 18 July Zeldin then announced a plan to eliminate the EPA’s Office of Research and Development, which could lead to more than 1000 agency scientists being sacked.
In late July, more than 280 NASA employees signed a similar declaration of dissent protesting against staff cuts at the agency as well as calling on the acting head of NASA not to make the budget cuts Trump proposed. Another example of the tension in US science took place in May when hundreds of staff from the National Science Foundation (NSF) gathered in front of NSF headquarters for a photo marking the agency’s 75th birthday. NSF officials, who had been criticized for seeking to cut the agency’s budget and staff, and slash the proportion of scientific grants’ costs allowed for ancillary expenses, refused to support the event with an official photographer.
Staff then used their own photographer, but they could only take a shot from a public space at the side of the building. In late June, the administration announced that the NSF will have to quit the building, which it has occupied since 2017. No new location for the headquarters has been announced, with NSF spokesperson Michelle Negrón declining to comment on the issue. The new tenant will be the Department of Housing and Urban Development.
The Department of Energy, meanwhile, has announced that it will hire three scientists who have expressed doubts about the scientific consensus on climate change – although details of the trio’s job descriptions remain unknown. They are Steven Koonin, a physicist at Stanford University’s Hoover Institution, along with atmospheric scientist John Christy, director of the Earth System Science Center at the University of Alabama in Huntsville, and Alabama meteorologist Roy Spencer.
The appointments come as the administration is taking steps to de-emphasize government research on climate and weather science. The proposed budget for financial year 2026 would close 10 labs belonging to the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA). The NOAA’s National Weather Service has already lost 600 of its 4200 employees this year, while NASA has announced that it will no longer host the National Climate Assessment website globalchange.gov.
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When lockdown hit, school lab technician Emanual Wallace started posting videos of home science experiments on social media. Now, as Big Manny, he’s got over three million followers on Instagram and TikTok; won TikTok’s Education Creator of the Year 2024; and has created videos with celebrities like Prince William and Brian Cox. Taking his science communication beyond social media, he’s been on CBBC’s Blue Peter and Horrible Science; has made TV appearances on shows like This Morning and BBC Breakfast; and has even given talks at Buckingham Palace and the Houses of Parliament.
But he’s not stopped there. Wallace has also recently published a second book in his Science is Lit series, Awesome Electricity and Mad Magnets, which is filled with physics experiments that children can do at home. He talks to Sarah Tesh about becoming the new face of science communication, and where he hopes this whirlwind journey will go next.
I’ve always been really curious. Ever since I was young, I had a lot of questions. I would, for example, open up my toys just so I could see what was inside and how they worked. Then when I was in year 8 I had a science teacher called Mr Carter, and in every lesson he was doing experiments, like exciting Bunsen burner ones. I would say that’s what ignited my passion for science. And naturally, I just gravitated towards science because it answered all the questions that I had.
When I was about 11 the show that I used to love was How it’s Made? And there’s a science creator called Nile Red – he creates chemistry videos, and he inspired me a lot. I used to watch him when I was growing up and then I actually got to meet him as well. He’s from Canada so when he came over, he came to my house and we did some experiments. To be inspired by him and then to do experiments with him, that was brilliant. I also used to watch a lot of Brian Cox when I was younger, and David Attenborough – I still watch Attenborough’s shows now.
Well, my bachelor’s and master’s degrees are in biomedical science, and my aspiration was to become a biomedical scientist working in a hospital lab, analysing patient samples. When I came out of university, I thought that working as a science technician at a school would be a great stepping stone to working as a biomedical scientist because I needed to gain some experience within a lab setting. So, the school lab was my entry point, then I was going to go into a hospital lab, and then work as a biomedical scientist.
But my plans have changed a bit now. To become a registered biomedical scientist you need to do nine months in a hospital lab, and at the moment, I’m not sure if I can afford to take nine months off from my work doing content creation. I do still want to do it, but maybe in the future, who knows.
When I was working in schools, it was around the time of lockdown. There were school closures, so students were missing out on a lot of science – and science is a subject where to gain a full understanding, you can’t just read the textbook. You need to actually do the experiments so you can see the reactions in front of you, because then you’ll be more likely to retain the information.
I started to notice that students were struggling because of all the science that they had missed out on. They were doing a lot of Google classrooms and Zoom lessons, but it just wasn’t having the full impact. That’s when I took it upon myself to create science demonstration videos to help students catch up with everything they’d missed. Then the videos started to take off.
I would say right now there’s probably three main types of videos that I make. The first includes experiments that pertain to the national curriculum – the experiments that might come up in, say, the GCSE exams. I focus on those because that’s what’s going to be most beneficial to young people.
Secondly, I just do fun experiments. I might blow up some fruit or use fire or blow up a hydrogen balloon. Just something fun and visually engaging, something to get people excited and show them the power of science.
And then the third type of video that I make is where I’m trying to promote a certain message. For example, I did a video where I opened up a lithium battery, put it into water and we got an explosion, because I wanted to show people the dangers of not disposing of batteries correctly. I did another one where I showed people the effects of vaping on the lungs, and one where I melted down a knife and I turned it into a heart to persuade people to put down their knives and spread love instead.
Well, I would say that my audience is quite broad. I get all ages watching my videos on social media, while my books are focused towards primary school children, aged 8 to 12 years. But I’ve noticed that those children’s parents are also interested in the experiments, and they might be in their 30s. So it’s quite a wide age range, and I try to cater for everyone.
I’d say that chemistry is definitely the easiest and most exciting because I can work with all the different elements and show how they react and interact with each other. I find that biology can sometimes be a bit tricky to demonstrate because, for example, a lot of biology involves the human body – things like organ systems, the circulatory system and the nervous system are all inside the body, while cells are so small we can’t really see them. But there’s a lot that I can do with physics because there’s forces, electricity, sound and light. So I would say chemistry is the easiest, then physics, and then biology is the hardest.
I would say my favourite physics experiment is the one with the Van de Graff generator. I love that one – how the static electricity makes your hair stand up and then you get a little electric shock, and you can see the little electric sparks.
On an average day, I’m doing content creation. I will research some ideas, find some potential experiments that I might want to try. Then after that I will look at buying the chemicals and equipment that I need. From there, I’ll probably do some filming, which I normally just do in my garden. Straight after, I will edit all the clips together, add the voiceover, and put out the content on social media. One video can easily take the whole day – say about six or seven hours – especially if the experiment doesn’t go as planned and I need to tweak the method or pop out and get extra supplies.
Yeah, I’ve got a lot of equipment. And some of it is restricted too, like there’s some heavily regulated substances. I had to apply for a licence to obtain certain chemicals because they can be used to make explosives, so I had to get clearance.
I’ve got two main goals at the moment. One of them is bringing science to a live audience. Most people, they just see my content online, but I feel like if they see it in person and they see the experiments live, it could have an even bigger impact. I could excite even more people with science and get them interested. So that’s one thing that I’m focusing on at the moment, getting some live science events going.
I also want to do some longer-form videos because my current ones are quite short – they’re normally about a minute long. I realize that everyone learns in different ways. Some people like those short, bite-sized videos because they can gain a lot of information in a short space of time. But some people like a bit more detail – they like a more lengthy video where you flesh out scientific concepts. So that’s something that I would like to do in the form of a TV science show where I can present the science in more detail.
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Part 1 of this free report explores how SpaceX upended traditional launch markets by scaling reusability, slashing costs and normalizing frequent access to orbit. With more launches in 2024 than the rest of the world combined, the company has become a cornerstone of both commercial innovation and national security.
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AST SpaceMobile is seeking regulatory approval to provide direct-to-smartphone satellite connectivity for first responders in the United States, after reaching a deal to use the public safety spectrum AT&T operates.
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A joint Earth science mission by the United States and India is set for launch next week despite lingering concerns about technical issues on recent Indian missions.
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Researchers in Australia say that they have created the first CMOS chip that can control the operation of multiple spin qubits at ultralow temperatures. Through an advanced approach to generating the voltage pulses needed to control the qubits, a team led by David Reilly at the University of Sydney showed that control circuits can be integrated with qubits in a heterogeneous chip architecture. The design is a promising step towards a scalable platform for quantum computing.
Before practical quantum computers can become a reality, scientists and engineers must work out how to integrate large numbers (potentially millions) of qubits together – while preserving the quantum information as it is processed and exchanged. This is currently very difficult because the quantum nature of qubits (called coherence) tends to be destroyed rapidly by heat and other environmental noise.
One potential candidate for integration are the silicon spin qubits, which have advantages that include their tiny size, their relatively long coherence times, and their compatibility with large-scale electronic control circuits.
To operate effectively, however, these systems need to be cooled to ultralow temperatures. “A decade or more ago we realized that developing cryogenic electronics would be essential to scaling-up quantum computers,” Reilly explains. “It has taken many design iterations and prototype chips to develop an approach to custom silicon that operates at 100 mK using only a few microwatts of power.”
When integrating multiple spin qubits onto the same platform, each of them must be controlled and measured individually using integrated electronic circuits. These control systems not only generate heat, but also introduce electrical noise – both of which are especially destructive to quantum logic gates based on entanglement between pairs of qubits.
Recently, researchers have addressed this challenge by separating the hot, noisy control circuits from the delicate qubits they control. However, when the two systems are separated, long cables are needed to connect each qubit individually to the control system. This creates a dense network of interconnects that would prove extremely difficult and costly to scale up to connect millions of qubits.
For over a decade, Reilly’s team have worked towards a solution to this control problem. Now, they have shown that the voltage pulses needed to control spin qubits can be generated directly on a CMOS chip by moving small amounts of charge between closely spaced capacitors. This is effective at ultralow temperatures, allowing the on-board control of qubits.
“We control spin qubits using a tightly integrated CMOS chiplet, addressing the interconnect bottleneck challenge that arises when the control is not integrated with qubits,” Reilly explains. “Via careful design, we show that the qubits hardly notice the switching of 100,000 transistors right next door.“
The result is a two-part chip architecture that, in principle, could host millions of silicon spin qubits. As a benchmark, Reilly’s created two-qubit entangling gates on their chip. When they cooled their chip to the millikelvin temperatures required by the qubits, its control circuits carried out the operation just as flawlessly as previous systems with separated control circuits.
While the architecture is still some way from integrating millions of qubits onto the same chip, the team believes that this goal is a step closer.
“This work now opens a path to scaling up spin qubits since control systems can now be tightly integrated,” Reilly says. “The complexity of the control platform has previously been a major barrier to reaching the scale where these machines can be used to solve interesting real-world problems.”
The research is described in Nature.
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The head of NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center is resigning while hundreds of current and former agency employees voice their concerns about the direction of NASA under the new administration.
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