SpaceX's Falcon 9 Is Breaking Reusability Record

The SpaceX has never stopped breaking its rocket-reuse record. It has done so again.

A Falcon 9 rocket launched 21 of the company's Starlink broadband satellites to orbit early this morning (15 February), rising off a pad at Florida's Cape Canaveral Space Force Station at 1:14 A.M. EST (0614 GMT).

It was the 26th liftoff for the rocket's first stage, breaking a reuse mark that SpaceX set just last month. Fifteen of those 26 missions have sent Starlink satellites skyward, according to a company mission description.

The booster came back to Earth as planned today, touching down on a platform in the Atlantic Ocean about eight minutes after liftoff.

"Falcon 9 lands on the A Shortfall of Gravitas droneship, completing the first 26th launch and landing of an orbital class rocket," SpaceX wrote in a post on X this morning that shared video of the descent and landing.

The Falcon 9's upper stage, meanwhile, deployed the 21 Starlink satelites, 13 of which have direct-to-cell capability, into low Earth orbit about 65 minutes after launch as planned.

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A Breakthrough In Solar Energy

A new tech startup company called SunHydrogen just demonstrated a working prototype of its product that promises a significant advancement in renewable energy.

SunHydrogen claims its unit can effectively turn water and sunlight into readily usable energy. The demonstration unit used nine modular solar panels in a square-meter array to produce hydrogen at a 10 percent ratio.

While other devices tend to use solar power to create an electrical current to separate hydrogen from water, SunHydrogen has been able to start the electrolysis process directly from the panels without needing an electrical conversion.

The company demonstrated the device working in freezing temperatures with overcast conditions in order to show its versatility. SunHydrogen is also angling to promote on-site production, so hydrogen needn't add to its environmental footprint due to transportation.

Hydrogen power has been a little contentious as a renewable power source.

It hinges on separating hydrogen from water, but doing so takes energy. If that energy comes from a dirty energy source, the resulting hydrogen isn't "green."

Hydrogen power is finding the most promise in aviation, where heavy batteries with limited power output make electric planes less practical. The possibility of producing green hydrogen at scale means more hope for lowered aviation pollution by switching off dirty energy.

As it stands, green hydrogen is still too expensive to produce.

With advancements in efficiency like this, green hydrogen may yet become economically viable. SunHydrogen isn't the only one banking on that progression. One startup has already landed a green hydrogen agreement with a major steel producer. So what's next for SunHydrogen?

"With this 1 m² demonstration under our belt, we can begin the site selection process for larger pilot demonstrations," said SunHydrogen Chief Scientific Officer Dr. Syed Mubeen. "Our next steps include continuously improving the technology, incorporating even more cost-effective materials without sacrificing efficiency, and scaling it to 25 m² and larger."

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New Vast Space Station Aims For 2026 Launch

New tech company Vast Space is taking big steps toward putting the first commercial space station in orbit.

The California-based startup recently completed a major testing milestone for the qualification vessel of its upcoming Haven-1 station, a benchmark Vast also used to reevaluate the launch date for the company's first flight-ready module.

"With the completion of our primary structure qualification test and a fully assembled team, we now have greater clarity on our build and launch schedule. As a result, we are updating our timeline," Vast said in a statement.

Haven-1 will ride a SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket to low-Earth orbit — a mission that was initially slated for this August. Now, Vast expects Haven-1 to launch no earlier than May 2026.

Even with the delay, it's still an "ambitious timeline," the company said. But Vast remains optimistic: "If all goes as planned, we will have designed, built, and launched the world’s first commercial space station in three years — a pace never before achieved in human spaceflight."

Vast began manufacturing the Haven-1 qualification article at its Long Beach headquarters in July 2024 and transported the module to the company's test stand in Mojave, California, last month. There, the module began a series of campaigns to qualify the module's structural integrity. Those campaigns are ongoing, but one passed recently was a significant hurdle for the module's continued development.

Using dry nitrogen, Vast pressurized the module on the test stand twice — the first for a duration of five hours, and the second for 48 hours. According to the company's data, Haven-1's pressure sensors showed an "indiscernible" leak rate, exceeding the vessel's requirements and falling within compliance for NASA's crew-rated spacecraft qualifications.

That last bit is important. Vast is hoping to win the bid for NASA's Commercial LEO Destination (CLD) contract in 2026, and wants to put itself ahead of the competition.

With the International Space Station (ISS) approaching retirement at the end of 2030, NASA has been eager for companies to get commercial space stations up and running. Indeed, nearly half a dozen other private contenders have voiced plans to construct their own LEO destinations — namely, Northrop Grumman, Axiom Space, Nanoracks and Sierra Space.

As those companies tread water while they gauge market demand or continue their station developments in the background, Vast says it's on track to get Haven-1 to orbit in record time, and has begun actively seeking out customers and scientists with research they want to fly to space.

In the weeks ahead, the test module will be submitted to simulated launch pressures using hydraulic actuators on the Mojave test stand, as well as undergo structural load tests while under pressure.

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Astronauts Ready For Super Bowl LIX?

On 9 February (Sunday), across the United States and around the world, Americans and American football fans will tune in to watch the top two teams in the National Football League (NFL) go head-to-head in the ultimate post-season game, and even astronauts living in space will have the chance to watch the action live.

Sunday evening, the American Football Conference (AFC) champions, the Kansas City Chiefs, will face off against the National Football Conference (NFC) champions, the Philadelphia Eagles, in Super Bowl LIX. Kickoff for the big matchup is scheduled for 6:30 P.M. ET (2330 GMT), with coverage provided by the Fox Broadcasting Company.

Many Americans will gather at watch parties and sports bars to cheer on their favorite team, contribute to the consumption of an estimated 1.4 billion chicken wings, and exercise general merriment for the occasion. And the watch parties don't have to be limited to Earth.

NASA will be providing a live uplink of the Super Bowl to the International Space Station (ISS), should the astronauts onboard "choose to stay up to watch it," a Johnson Space Center official told Space.com. For them, it will be extra late at night.

An astronaut's day aboard the ISS is not attuned to any time zone in the United States. The "international" in "International Space Station," means that astronauts of multiple nationalities are normally working aboard the space station together, and need to coordinate with mission control teams on opposite sides of the planet.

Another reason lies in the fact that the space station experiences a new sunrise every 45 minutes as it orbits the planet at 17,500 miles per hour (28,000 kilometers per hour), so basing you sleep cycle on what daylight peeps through the station's windows would obviously be chaos.

As such, the ISS operates on Coordinated Universal Time, UTC, also known as Greenwich Mean Time (GMT). This puts NASA astronauts aboard the station 5-6 hours ahead of mission control in Houston, Texas (depending on Daylight Savings Time). So, for any of NASA's astronaut cohort on orbit to watch the game, kickoff isn't actually until 11:30 P.M.

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There's Something Strange About This Super-Earth Planet

Scientists discovered a fascinating world in Milky Way.

They confirmed the existence of a rocky planet, called a "super-Earth," that's some six times as massive as Earth. While the world HD 20794 d is larger than our planetary home, it's relatively low-mass compared to the huge and inhospitable Jupiter-like gas giants out there. Importantly, it inhabits a compelling part of its solar system, a region called the habitable or "Goldilocks" zone, where liquid water could exist on a world's surface. (Earth, for example, orbits in this special area, where it's neither too hot, nor too cold.)

"For me, it was naturally a huge joy when we could confirm the planet's existence," Michael Cretignier, an exoplanet detection researcher at the University of Oxford who led the research, said in a statement.

Evidence for the initial detection, made in 2022, was thin: Cretignier needed more observations to conclusively prove HD 20794 d's existence. However, there's something unusual about this super-Earth.

Planets orbit their stars in elliptical, or oval, shapes, though these ovals tend to be almost circular (but still can't literally be called circles). Yet Cretignier notes HD 20794 d has a "peculiar orbit." It's highly elliptical, which means as the planet orbits its star, it moves from the inner edge to just beyond the outer edge of the habitable zone every year. This raises questions about its habitability, or likelihood that it harbors conditions that could support life as we know it.

The research was recently published in the peer-reviewed journal Astronomy & Astrophysics. The exoplanet team harnessed two decades of light observations captured by the HARPS and ESPRESSO (Echelle SPectrograph for Rocky Exoplanet and Stable Spectroscopic Observations) instruments, located in the profoundly dark and dry Chilean mountains. These sensitive instruments detect minute gravitational effects an exoplanet has on its star. You can think of these effects as faint, almost imperceptible wobbles.

Although HD 20794 d still remains largely mysterious, it's possible that future exoplanet missions — such as NASA's Habitable Worlds Observatory — a space telescope that would look for signs of life in the atmospheres of other worlds — will be able to closely investigate this intriguing super-Earth.

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Cold War Secrets Slowly Unveiled

Many are not aware of this or chose not to be concerned about it, but a few are aware that throughout the Cold War's iciest decades, the top-secret Parcae project, shrouded in secrecy for over 30 years, provided the U.S. with unmatched capabilities in electronic eavesdropping.

This covert operation was essential in upholding the principle of mutual assured destruction (MAD) and preventing geopolitical tensions from escalating into nuclear warfare.

By the early 1970s, the Soviet Navy's expansion, marked by the deployment of formidable Kirov class nuclear-powered cruisers, significantly shifted the global naval power dynamic. The U.S. found itself urgently needing to bridge a critical surveillance gap. Lee M. Hammarstrom, an electrical engineer deeply involved in Cold War technology, highlights the period's challenges, noting, "We were under MAD at this time, so if the Soviets had a way to negate our strikes, they might have considered striking first."

Despite existing efforts like the ELINT (electronic intelligence) satellite program Poppy, which could detect and locate Soviet radar emissions, the U.S. intelligence community struggled with slow data processing that could take weeks to interpret. In 1971, extensive naval drills exposed further vulnerabilities in the U.S.'s satellite intelligence systems, necessitating robust and rapid response mechanisms.

This was when Parcae was conceived. The most advanced orbiting electronic intelligence system to date, it was poised to fill this critical void in U.S. global maritime surveillance.

Drawing on a series of reports and comprehensive interviews by IEEE Spectrum, this article explores how Parcae provided the United States with unprecedented ocean surveillance capabilities, countering the growing Soviet maritime threat.

For decades, the existence of the Parcae satellites was one of the U.S. government's most closely guarded secrets, concealed even from those within much of the military establishment. It wasn't until July 2023 that the National Reconnaissance Office (NRO) acknowledged the existence of these satellites with a sparse one-page document.

This revelation came during the centennial celebration of the U.S. Naval Research Laboratory (NRL) in Washington, D.C., the birthplace of the Parcae project. Since its inception in 1961, the NRO has been at the helm of the United States spy satellite operations, overseeing several programs, including photoreconnaissance, communications interception, and signals intelligence.

Over the years, hints of the Parcae program seeped into public knowledge through diligent journalism and even comments from a Russian military advisor. These disclosures highlighted U.S. engineers' intense pressure and creativity during the Cold War, driven by the era's high stakes and pervasive paranoia to develop groundbreaking national security technologies.

Parcae stood on the shoulders of its predecessors in the U.S. Navy's satellite ELINT programs, initiated by the NRO. The first in this lineage was the GRAB satellite, launched in 1960 as the world's inaugural spy satellite under the guise of the Galactic Radiation and Background experiment, a dual-purpose mission concealing its covert operations behind a legitimate scientific facade.

GRAB's primary mission, cloaked in secrecy until 1998, involved monitoring Soviet radar emissions, which provided the NSA and the Strategic Air Command with crucial intelligence for strategic planning, although with significant delays in data processing.

Following GRAB, the Poppy program, introduced in 1962 and continuing until 1977, advanced the capabilities of satellite intelligence with multiple satellites that could approximately locate the source of emissions.

This program marked a significant evolution in intelligence gathering, setting the stage for rapid data relay directly to ground stations, bypassing earlier cumbersome recording processes. This innovation hinted at the potential for near-instantaneous intelligence delivery, setting ambitious new expectations for what would eventually be realized with Parcae.

Launching its first mission in 1976 and completing the last two decades later, the Parcae project marked a significant evolution in satellite signals intelligence. Over its operational lifetime, the program was known by several cryptic aliases like White Cloud and Classic Wizard, with its official decommissioning in May 2008.

The early missions utilized the Atlas F rocket to deploy three satellites into precise orbital formations essential for tracking and geolocation, later transitioning to the more powerful Titan IV-A rocket. This strategic placement was made possible by innovative engineering, including a satellite dispenser developed by an NRL team led by Peter Wilhelm, a pivotal figure who oversaw the creation of over 100 satellites during his tenure.

A key technological advancement in Parcae was implementing a gravity-gradient stabilization boom. This device, featuring a long retractable arm with a weight at the end, allowed for precise control of the satellite's orientation, ensuring continuous earthward alignment of its antennae.

The satellites operated in triads, reflecting their namesake, the three fates of Roman mythology. They utilized highly precise, synchronized clocks to detect and triangulate Soviet naval emissions, significantly enhancing the U.S. Navy's maritime surveillance capabilities.

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A Massive Hidden Fortress Discovered In Caucasus Mountains

Way back in 2018, a group of researchers walked to the mountainous Bronze Age fortress in the South Caucasus mountains. They had no idea that the ruins they could see were just the tip of the iceberg. However, after taking to the skies and utilizing 11,000 drone-shot images to map the structure, they realized that the 3,000-year-old Dmanisis Gora was likely the largest fortress of its kind in the region.

These researchers discovered a fortified promontory between two deep gorges in the Caucasus Mountains, which serves as a boundary between Europe and Asia.

The site had both and inner and outer fortress wall, and the remains of ancient stone structures visible to the researchers. But it was all too large to map on foot, so researchers form Cranfield University turned to technology for help.

"That was what sparked the idea of using a drone to assess the site from the air," Nathaniel Erb-Satullo, senior lecturer in architectural science at the Cranfield Forensic Institute, said in a statement. "The drone took nearly 11,000 pictures which were knitted together using advanced software to produce high-resolution digital elevation models and orthophotos—composite pictures that show every point as if you were looking straight down."

The team shared the findings in a study published in the journal Antiquity, and highlighted how stitching the data together created "accurate maps of all the fortification walls, graves, field systems, and other stone structures within the outer settlement." The site turned out to be more than 40 times larger than originally thought, and featured an over-half-a-mile-long fortification wall.

"The exceptional size of Dmanisis Gora helps add new dimensions to population aggregation models in Eurasia and beyond," the authors wrote in the study.

Comparing the new photos with 50-year-old Cold War-era spy satellite images of the region, which were declassified in 2013, the Cranfield team was able to assess the entire ancient settlement, and see how it had and hadn’t changed.

"The use of drones has allowed us to understand the significance of the site and document it in a way that simply wouldn’t be possible on the ground," Erb-Satullo said. "Dmanisis Gora isn’t just a significant find for the Southern Caucasus region but has a broader significance for the diversity in the structure of large-scale settlements and their formation processes."

According to the researchers, the two fortified walls functioned together for protection. They were both made with rough boulders and mortar, creating six-foot-thick shields against outside forces.

"If the occupation of the inner fortress and outer settlement were roughly contemporary, as we suggest," the authors wrote in the study, "this settlement would be one of the largest known in the South Caucasus Late Bronze and Iron Age."

The team believes that Dmanisis Gora continued to expand over time, as mobile pastoral groups joined the settlement. But part of the population may have been seasonal. Relatively few artifacts were found within the outer wall, which indicated that it was likely a less densely populated space. That, in turn, meant that the fortress may have only been used in certain times of the year. The team hopes to study the site further to understand functions of specific areas, and learn about everything from population density and intensity to livestock movements and agricultural practices.

Work is already underway at the site to pull out what the researchers claim are "tens of thousands" of pottery shards, animal bones, and other artifacts that go deeper than the stone walls.

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