NASA has revealed a glimpse of its next X-plane, known as the X-70 Fractal.
Or at least what it thinks the X-70 will look like once built. The agency released a short statement on Wednesday (Nov. 4) announcing the X-plane, or experimental plane, declaring it to be a highly maneuverable test bed with a "rapidly reconfigurable flight-control technology," allowing NASA to swap both external and internal components on-the-fly. This modular architecture will allow NASA to "explore aircraft maneuverability in ways never before demonstrated in crewed flight," according to the agency's statement.
The announcement was made alongside an AI-generated image showing two canted vertical tail fins emerging from swirling smoke. Little can be gleaned from the image about what final form the X-70 might take, but the tail fins are somewhat reminiscent of the Lockheed Martin F-22 Raptor or Boeing F/A-18 Super Hornet.
"The X-70 Fractal gives NASA a crewed, high-performance platform to test advanced flight-control, maneuverability, and other cutting-edge technologies in real flight," NASA Administrator Jared Isaacman said in the statement. The NASA chief called the aircraft "just one part of this new beginning for aeronautics" and said that the agency expects the X-70 to make its first flight within two years.
"This is why people come to NASA: to build, to learn, and most importantly, to fly," Isaacman added.
NASA's statement fleshes out a few details about the X-70's capabilities. According to the agency, Fractal will fly at a cruise speed of Mach .75, about the same as a Boeing 737 Classic. The X-70 will be able to reach altitudes of up to 45,000 feet (13.7 kilometers), and will have a range exceeding 1,726 miles (2,777 kilometers, or 1,500 nautical miles).
The X-70 Fractal will also be able to carry around 2,000 pounds (900 kg) of experimental payloads both internally and externally, which will allow for a "wide range of research and flight-testing opportunities," NASA said in the statement.
NASA adds it will have a takeoff weight of 10,000 pounds (4,535 kilograms), around the same weight as the Scaled Composites- and Northrop Grumman-developed Model 437 Vanguard experimental aircraft. In fact, the two aircraft share a similar silhouette — at least in the AI image of the X-70 Fractal NASA has released so far.
Scaled Composites' Model 437 Vanguard experimental aircraft (top); NASA's render of its upcoming X-70 Fractal (bottom). (Image credit: Northrop Grumman/NASA)
The agency's most recent X-plane, the X-59, has been flying for over a year. That jet features a radical long-nosed geometry without a forward windscreen; pilots fly by way of an augmented reality screen that combines views from sensors and a forward-facing camera.
That geometry dampens the shockwaves coming off of the X-59 when it flies faster than the sound barrier, allowing it to fly at speeds over Mach 1 without the thunderous sonic booms that typically accompany supersonic flight.
There are numerous experimental aircraft being developed by private companies, such as Boom Supersonic's X-1 jet, which, like the X-59, aims to develop technologies that lessen the auditory impact of sonic booms on the ground.
In terms of other government X-plane projects, Boeing is working on the F-47, a next-generation stealth fighter for use by the U.S. military, and DARPA, the Pentagon's research agency, has an X-plane project of its own known as CRANE.
Tesla unveiled its highly anticipated new Roadster last night (Oct. 16) with a spectacular stunt, using SpaceX thrusters to make the vehicle "fly."
"This is not necessarily a safety-optimized car, OK?" Elon Musk, who runs both companies, said during the livestreamed reveal, which was held at SpaceX's rocket-testing facility in McGregor, Texas. "But it takes the the fun meter to 11 out of 10."
Tesla's next-gen, thruster-equipped Roadster launches itself over other vehicles during an unveiling event on Oct. 15, 2026. (Image credit: Tesla)
Tesla first announced the next-gen Roadster in 2017, saying at the time that it would be released in 2020. In 2018, Musk announced that the new car would incorporate some SpaceX tech.
"SpaceX option package for new Tesla Roadster will include ~10 small rocket thrusters arranged seamlessly around car. These rocket engines dramatically improve acceleration, top speed, braking & cornering. Maybe they will even allow a Tesla to fly…" he wrote on Twitter in June of that year. (In 2022, Musk bought Twitter, which he subsequently renamed X.)
So last night's demonstration didn't come entirely out of left field — but it was still eye-popping. The show began with the Roadster driving up a ramp that quickly became a vertical wall and then an overhanging ledge. The Roadster clung to the surface, hanging upside-down from the ledge like a gecko on a ceiling thanks to a special fan suction system on its chassis.
"I mean, this car really sucks, OK?" Musk said, channeling his inner stand-up comedian. "This car could suck the chrome off a trailer hitch. It could suck a tennis ball through a hose pipe."
The suction feature is not just a novelty, he added: It will help the Roadster stay connected to the ground during high-speed turns, allowing drivers to corner incredibly well.
The next-gen Roadster comes in for a thruster-aided landing during its unveiling event. (Image credit: Tesla)
And the sucking was just an opening act. The Tesla soon launched itself from its position beneath the ramp's nearly horizontal ledge, executed a barrel roll in midair, and landed softly, all thanks to its SpaceX cold-gas thrusters.
"A friend of mine, Peter Thiel, once said that the future promised us flying cars, but instead we got 140 characters," Musk said after the Roadster touched down. "Well, not anymore."
The car has main thrusters in the rear, he explained, as well as attitude-control thrusters that control its orientation.
"So it can basically fly like a rocket, and it could do rolls," Musk said. "It could do, like, crazy gymnastics — whatever you want, really."
The Roadster has a total of 10 thrusters, which are fed by 600 liters — about 250 kilograms (550 pounds) — of compressed air, Tesla Engineering Vice President Lars Moravy said during last night's event. That air is housed in carbon fiber overwrapped pressure vessels, which fill "every usable void in the car," Tesla said via X last night.
The Tesla team put those thrusters to work multiple times during the presentation, at one point launching the Roadster over a line of six vehicles, including a Tesla semi-truck cab.
Nobody was behind the wheel during these stunts — nobody with a pulse, anyway. The driver's seat was occupied by a mannequin clad in a black-and-white SpaceX spacesuit.
This was a nod to "Starman," the dummy behind the wheel of Musk's cherry-red first-gen Roadster, which launched into orbit around the sun in February 2018 on the first-ever flight of SpaceX's Falcon Heavy rocket.
Starman and his Roadster are still in space, by the way, and will be for a while. Modeling work suggests the duo will keep orbiting our star for millions of years before ultimately slamming into either Earth or Venus.
SpaceX's Starman mannequin sits inside Elon Musk's red Tesla Roadster with Earth in the background, shortly after the initial launch of SpaceX’s Falcon Heavy rocket on Feb. 6, 2018. (Image credit: SpaceX)
Last night's Roadster demo was something of a tease, for the car is not yet in showrooms. Musk said Tesla aims to begin producing it in 2028.
And don't expect to see the "flying" version on the road then, or anytime; it's hard to imagine regulators certifying that vehicle for everyday use. It will likely be a status symbol for a few wealthy and connected folks, locked away in spacious and well-appointed garages.
Indeed, you can't put down on a deposit for the "Rocket" version of the new Roadster on Tesla's website; purchase of that vehicle is by invite only.
Two other Roadster versions are for sale — "Performance" and "Thrust." Tesla's website describes the Performance variant as "road ready," with "active aero and a multi-mode suction system." Thrust, by contrast, is "race ready." It has active aero and suction "plus acceleration thrusters."
It costs $50,000 to reserve a Performance vehicle and $250,000 to reserve a Thrust. Tesla has not yet revealed the total cost of any of the new Roadster variants.
NASA has begun replacing references to artificial intelligence with "super intelligence" following an executive order from President Donald Trump, which directs government agencies not to acknowledge the terminology change in their external communications.
An internal NASA document obtained by Space.com lays out plans to update the agency's websites, publications, organizational titles and digital infrastructure with a four-phase "super intelligence" implementation schedule extending into December. And the changes go beyond NASA's public-facing communications, with at least one planned technical update described as "a breaking change" expected to disrupt existing software integrations.
The terminology shift arrives as NASA continues expanding its use of AI across missions and research programs, from autonomous Mars rover navigation to models capable of analyzing enormous amounts of scientific data. The technologies themselves aren't changing, but NASA's effort to implement the nomenclature introduces new obstacles for scientific communication and the agency's digital infrastructure.
Trump's executive order (EO), called "Inaugurating the Era of Super Intelligence," was signed on Sept. 29. It directs federal agencies to replace any mention of "artificial intelligence" and "AI" with "super intelligence" and "SI" in all official government communications. The White House argues that AI has advanced beyond simple automation or imitations of human intelligence, and that language befitting "a new era of Super Intelligence" is needed to better reflect the technology's emerging capabilities.
Despite introducing the new name, the order retains the federal government's existing definition of artificial intelligence, which broadly covers machine-based learning systems capable of making predictions, recommendations or decisions. That means technologies already classified as AI can now be designated "super intelligence" without demonstrating any additional capabilities.
To follow suit, NASA's Office of Communications (OCOMM) and Office of the Chief Information Officer (OCIO) distributed an internal implementation schedule that outlines the span of work that the agency's multiple comms teams now have ahead of them.
"Effective immediately, we must use "super intelligence" and "SI" in all in-scope content/publications," the document says, bolding the key terms.
It covers both internal and external communications and instructs NASA employees to use "super intelligence" and "SI" in all new "presentations, exhibits, printed materials, media interviews, or other collateral or content for external audiences."
Internally, the policy applies to all official employee communications, NASA style guides, intra-agency websites and IT systems referenced in public-facing communications or official materials. And NASA's instructions echo Trump's directive forgoing any kind of transitional language.
"NASA is … adopting the terminology ‘Super Intelligence’ as the agency continues to expand the use of these rapidly advancing technologies across its missions," agency officials told Space.com in an emailed statement. "NASA is already applying SI to advance mission planning, autonomous systems, scientific research, and the analysis of complex datasets."
Orders from the top
NASA's Mars rover Perserverance team began using a vision-based artificial intelligence system to plan safe driving routes on Mars without a human controller in December 2025. (Image credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech/MSSS)
Agency leadership has generally been aligned with the current administration's agenda, adjusting NASA's priorities to meet the president's goals when needed. NASA Administrator Jared Isaacman has helped lead that charge since his appointment to the position in December 2025; he has been a champion of Trump's human spaceflight-heavy vision for the agency since his first day. That should come as no surprise; NASA is, after all, part of the executive branch, and the agency is obliged to abide by executive orders.
But Isaacman's relationship with Trump is, perhaps, more visible than that of past NASA chiefs. The duo have shared several jovial public interactions, including an unexpected phone call from Trump during a press conference celebrating the launch of NASA's Roman Space Telescope on Aug. 30. One month later, Isaacman attended a White House luncheon with more than a dozen AI tech executives, on the same day that Trump signed his super intelligence EO.
While he's not an AI company executive, Isaacman is a member of the tech-billionaire community. Before beginning his tenure at NASA, Isaacman founded and served as CEO for Shift4 Payments, a payment processing company. He used some of that fortune to charter a pair of private astronaut launches with SpaceX — Inspiration4 and Polaris Dawn, which were the first-ever all-civilian orbital spaceflight and the flight that featured the first-ever private spacewalk, respectively.
"I was honored to have an opportunity to join that luncheon," Isaacman said when asked his opinion of AI during a post-launch press conference for the SpaceX Crew-13 astronaut mission on Oct. 1. By that point, he had already added the SI nomenclature to his lexicon. "I made clear when it was my turn to speak … I am the space guy here [not an 'AI' guy]," he added as a caveat, before saying that the "potential super intelligence has … [can] change the course of civilizations."
Isaacman's embrace of the new lingo may be partially behind NASA's own accelerated efforts to bring the agency's comms in line with the administration's. One NASA employee told Space.com, "We are getting a lot of pressure from the administrator himself to act on this."
Internal difficulties
Beyond just substituting one term for the other, NASA personnel have been told not to acknowledge the previous nomenclature at all, including short-term phrases such as "SI, also/formerly known as AI."
The changes extend to related terms such as "generative AI" becoming "generative SI," with NASA's guidance directing agency messaging away from "automation." They'll now put an emphasis on how today's technologies "amplify human ingenuity and unlock new forms of creativity," the NASA document says, quoting Trump's order.
The use of the term "SI," and the direction not to use "AI," applies across all NASA's centers and mission directorates, including contractors and personnel at NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL) in Southern California, which is run by Caltech.
Specific technical citations, like "machine learning," "large language models" and "chatbot," remain acceptable, but the new terminology may run the risk of carrying different meanings in different contexts.
Technical exceptions aside, some at NASA responsible for implementing the changes think it may present more obstacles than expected. "There's concern that there's going to be a lot of confusion in the scientific community and in the general population," a NASA employee knowledgeable of the plan told Space.com, under the condition of anonymity.
In recordings of an internal NASA communications meeting obtained by Space.com, employees echoed the same concerns to their direct management and voiced some frustration over their inability to relay to the public that the changes are being made in the first place.
"We're not even supposed to use AI as a term ... it's being talked about like Voldemort or Macbeth, with people calling it 'the technology that must not be named,'" the NASA employee said.
"Super intelligence and artificial intelligence — they have two different meanings. They both are already separate things," one meeting participant said. "As a science communicator … I feel like it's our responsibility to raise our hand and say, 'Hey, this is going to confuse people. This doesn't make sense.'"
To Isaacman's credit, those worries may have a chance of being heard by him and NASA's top brass, thanks to a management culture that seems to encourage concerns at any level being brought up the ladder without reprisal.
One meeting leader references "the idea box," an anonymous online system that allows employees to submit feedback directly to agency leadership, and reminded participants that "using the tools that we have at our disposal to make those concerns heard at the top level will not hurt."
In contrast, during the transition at the start of Trump's second term last year, before Isaacman was appointed to NASA's top seat, things at some NASA centers did not always feel as open when it came to voicing concerns to management. At the time, NASA was operating under interim leadership, first by former Kennedy Space Center Director Janet Petro, from January to July 2025, then by Transportation Secretary Sean Duffy from July to December.
In a statement to Space.com, NASA officials said the agency "is taking a coordinated approach to incorporating this direction across agency communications and digital resources while maintaining the functionality and accessibility of its systems and services."
"The agency will continue to communicate its research, findings, and technological advancements accurately and transparently,” the statement said.
NASA already ahead of the game
While artificial intelligence encompasses a broad range of technologies, super intelligence has traditionally referred to a far more advanced, and often hypothetical (and sometimes sci-fi-level), capability that surpasses the limits of human cognition.
Beyond NASA, AI has entered into the space industry's ongoing realm of conversation in recent years, with several companies exploring the possibility of data centers in low Earth orbit (LEO). SpaceX is already operating the world's largest satellite network — there are currently more than 11,000 of the company's Starlink satellites in LEO, providing internet connectivity around the globe — and has proposed a constellation of up to 1 million satellites functioning as "orbital compute" for CEO Elon Musk's AI endeavors.
The Surya model from NASA and IBM processes high-resolution images from NASA's Solar Dynamics Observatory. (Image credit: NASA/SDO/IBM)
NASA has also put AI to work analyzing massive amounts of data. Surya, an AI-powered foundation model introduced by NASA and IBM last year, was trained on nine years of NASA heliophysics data to help improve space weather and solar activity forecasting. A more recent lunar collaboration between NASA and IBM was introduced last month to help researchers investigate the surface of the moon for potential deposits of water ice, and AI is central to NASA's plan for processing the massive amounts of data expected once Roman is operational.
"Foundation models" like Surya fall under the acceptable precise-language usage that NASA still considers best practice when communicating with scientific audiences, according to the agency's internal guidance. However, separate instructions for scientific publications and research documents are still being developed internally, leaving some uncertainty over how NASA researchers will reconcile the new terminology with established language used by universities, international space agencies and other scientific institutions that may not adhere to Trump's EO.
According to the agency's internal plan, a determination for scientific publications and research documents will be issued by NASA's Scientific and Technical Information, Science Mission Directorate and Chief Science Data Officer teams, along with separate guidance for official agency policy documents, both of which are listed on a page titled "Forthcoming Guidance."
Implementation
Retroactively, certain already published web pages, including applicable evergreen content in active use, will be marked for update or given an added disclaimer with an archival notice. Titles, descriptions and other metadata for older videos and podcasts may also be revised to reflect the new terminology, while the original recordings, transcripts and captions will remain unchanged. NASA's page for Perseverance's AI-guided trek across Mars' surface, for instance, is now titled, "Mapping Perseverance’s Route With SI," but "AI" is still present in the page's URL — for the time being, at least.
Soon, that URL will redirect to a new one, with "SI" in its place. NASA's internal plan divides its implementation into four phases, with proposed deadlines stretching from Oct. 9 through Dec. 23.
"Every agency is doing it at their own pace," one NASA employee told Space.com. "You'll see some places have not implemented the change yet, and others, like NASA, are pushing it forward sooner rather than later."
Internal NASA slide for Super Intelligence implementation (image approximation). (Image credit: Space.com recreation of an internal NASA presentation)
Phase One, which went into effect Oct. 9, included NASA's primary AI-related websites and agency personnel titles, such as that of Kevin Murphy. He is now "acting chief data and super intelligence officer," not "acting chief data and artificial intelligence officer."
Phase Two will expand the overhaul to heavily visited pages on nasa.gov and science.nasa.gov, and rename the website for JPL's Artificial Intelligence Group, ai.jpl.nasa.gov, to redirect visitors to an address reflecting the new SI terminology. The second phase's completion was initially set for implementation by Oct. 30. Sources familiar with the agency's progress, however, said that timeline was accelerated and the changes made ready to go live starting today (Oct. 16), two weeks ahead of schedule, according to a NASA employee.
Phase Three is marked for implementation by Nov. 30. It includes additional high-traffic NASA websites and the renaming of its URL for Ask Sage, a generative AI platform used by federal agencies. NASA's internal plan describes the change as a "breaking change for APIs and other integrations," meaning existing software connections may need to be updated.
According to NASA officials, "any necessary technical changes will be evaluated and implemented through established agency processes."
Finally, Phase Four, targeted for Dec. 23, will scoop up NASA's remaining, lower-traffic websites, as well as internal IT systems and tools. NASA's guidance notes that Trump's EO doesn't designate a deadline for affected agencies, and that, without accompanying direction from the Office of Personnel Management, its framework ultimately represents the authors' recommendations "in light of competing OMB (Office of Management and Budget) and agency leadership priorities."
Editors note: This story was updated at 10:10 a.m. EDT (1410 GMT) on Oct. 16 to include Statments from NASA sent after publication.
The U.S. military must be ready to engage the enemy farther from home than ever before, according to its highest-ranking officer.
"Today's modern battlefield operates from the seabed to cislunar space," Gen. Dan Caine, the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, said Wednesday (Sept. 16) during a keynote address at the Air & Space Forces Association's Air, Space & Cyber Conference in National Harbor, Maryland.
Cislunar space extends from Earth all the way out to the orbit of the moon and includes the lunar surface. For several years now, military officials have been stressing the strategic importance of this huge region, which could get quite a bit busier in the next decade or so.
Gen. Dan Caine, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, speaks at the Air & Space Forces Association’s Air, Space & Cyber Conference in National Harbor, Maryland, on Sept. 16, 2026. (Image credit: Craig Hudson, for Air & Space Forces Association)
For example, both the United States and China plan to build bases near the moon's south pole, which is thought to harbor large amounts of water ice. Winning this new moon race is critical, U.S. officials have stressed, because whoever does so will be able to establish norms of behavior on and around Earth's nearest neighbor.
China has already demonstrated impressive capabilities in the lunar sphere. In 2019, the nation's robotic Chang'e 4 mission pulled off the first-ever soft landing on the moon's mysterious far side. In 2024, Chang'e 6 returned far-side samples to Earth — another first.
Caine didn't cite such missions or even mention China by name. And he provided no details about what conflict on the cislunar battlefield might look like (though presumably it would be entirely robotic, with satellites seeking to take out adversary craft via jamming or blinding).
But he invoked the cislunar battlefield twice and noted that U.S. military branches cannot assume continued dominance of their various domains.
"Future conflicts will demand that we operate without the assumptions of uncontested access, secure rare areas or uninterrupted or uncontested sustainment," Caine said. "Our task, my friends, is to adapt right now, so the joint force is prepared to fight, endure and win in global contested environments, from the seabed to cislunar space."
The United States' long-held advantage in the final frontier will be key to securing such victories, he added.
"We must continue to ensure that the United States of America can strike anywhere on the globe at the time and place of our choosing, and sustain that force," Caine said. "Our United States Space Force must provide unrivaled space superiority and sustain the associated networks, domain awareness [and] data advantage that the joint force needs to win in space, both now and in the future."
We now know that part of the Space Force's strategy for maintaining that crucial superiority is the operation of weapons in Earth orbit. The branch's chief, Gen. Douglas Schiess, admitted as much during an address at the same conference on Tuesday (Sept. 15).
"Let me be crystal clear: Today, guardians operate on-orbit weapons that can defend the joint force against space-enabled attacks,” Schiess said during his speech. ("Guardian" is the official name for a member of the Space Force, just as members of the U.S. Navy are called sailors and members of the Army are soldiers.)
Schiess provided few details about these weapons but, later in the speech, implied that they are electromagnetic rather than kinetic in nature. That is, they're probably designed to knock out key systems of adversary satellites rather than destroy the entire spacecraft (which would create a cloud of potentially troublesome debris).
It's no surprise the U.S. possesses and employs such technology; the newsworthy bit is that a top official said it so openly. The nation's chief rivals in the space domain, China and Russia, possess advanced counterspace technologies as well. For example, both have destroyed defunct satellites with missiles and conducted close approaches of spacecraft with "inspector" vehicles.
Nearby Earth, an iconic series of orbiting U.S. government satellites called Landsat have collectively been charting minerals and climate change for more than 50 years.
What if we can do the same thing in space? A new NASA early-stage project, whimsically named "Interworld Slingshot Resource Surveys", aims to bring "Landsat-style mineral intelligence" to other worlds, including the moon. NASA is aiming to put a moon base on the lunar surface in the 2030s that would be staffed by astronauts, as the U.S. tries to secure access to helium-3 and other minerals on the surface ahead of China. Being able to scout for minerals ahead of landing and setting up a base would be a huge boon for the United States' lunar ambitions.
The newly funded concept — which doesn't appear to have an official nickname or acronym, so we will call it "Slingshot" for short — isn't meant to address that big task all at once, but to be a Phase 1 study for a far-future Discovery-class (large) mission. The spacecraft could fly from world to world, scanning destinations such as the moon, an asteroid near Earth, or a target like the Mars moon Phobos, said principal investigator Pablo Sobron, a research scientist at the SETI (Search for Extraterrestrial Intelligence) Institute, in a statement.
"The thing most likely to stop space mining may be that we cannot afford to prove there is anything worth mining," Sobron said. "Land in the wrong place and you can lose an entire exploration program or a company, and nobody has enough money to keep sending spacecraft and hoping for the best."
The overall aim is to not only prove a spacecraft could make it that far, but also to see if Raman spectroscopy — which is commonly used close up to look for minerals or water by NASA's Perseverance mission on Mars, for example — could work from orbit or a flyby. The technique uses reflected light from a laser popped at a target to see the molecular structure of a mineral, which in turn reveals the mineral's composition.
"The main challenge for Interworld Slingshot Resource Surveys is the distance involved," SETI stated. "Raman scattering is very faint and hard to detect. The project team says that only about one photon in 10 trillion is Raman-scattered. Sobron's earlier long-distance Raman tests reached about 120 meters [393 feet]. This study is looking at whether useful measurements can be made from much farther away, around 30 to 50 kilometers [19 to 31 miles]."
The NASA-funded Interworld Slingshot Resource Surveys study is exploring whether a small spacecraft could survey the moon, a near-Earth asteroid and Phobos during a single mission using a single remote-sensing instrument. (Image credit: Pablo Sobron)
Slingshot received a Phase 1 grant from the NASA Innovative Advanced Concepts (NIAC) program, which aims to prove out conceptual ideas into something that could be nudged into further development.
NIAC has funded dozens of grants over the years, but illustrating the difficulty of and long development cycles to bring things into space, not much has made it out of the atmosphere yet. A notable NIAC success story was SNAPPY, the Solar Neutrino Astro-Particle Physics CubeSat, which reached space earlier this year aboard SpaceX.
Slingshot will use the Phase 1 funding to study photons (particles of light) to be used and detected by the spectrometer, along with lasers, pointing, and spacecraft propulsion and orbits. The concept received up to $175,000 over nine months and next in line would be trying to receive more lucrative Phase 2 NIAC funding over two years.
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At the von Karman Institute for Fluid Dynamics, researchers are testing the capsule heat shield for the Draco mission. (Image credit: ESA)
Sometimes, to accomplish your mission, you have to start a few fires.
What is it?
At the von Karman Institute for Fluid Dynamics (VKI) in Belgium, researchers put a heat shield to the test, blasting it with scorching-hot flames to see how it would handle the intense temperatures it would experience when reentering Earth's atmosphere.
The heat shield is for Draco, a European Space Agency mission that is literally designed to go up in flames. Draco stands for the Destructive Reentry Assessment Container Object. The mission will send a satellite to space and back to collect data on the scorching experience of reentering Earth's atmosphere.
"Our biggest design challenge lies in meeting two contrasting requirements: having Draco disintegrate normally during reentry just like any average satellite, yet also recording the event and storing its data in a capsule that stays intact throughout, until the data can be transmitted safely," Draco project manager Stijn Lemmens said in a statement.
Why is it incredible?
For decades, we have sent satellites, telescopes, landers, rovers and even humans to space. And we know that the missions that return to Earth are in for a rough ride home.
When reentering through Earth's atmosphere, a spacecraft will experience extreme temperatures. And while some are designed to withstand the heat, others are meant to burn up.
But there has yet to be a spacecraft whose purpose is to be destroyed by Earth's atmosphere so we can study it. That's where Draco comes in. The mission will collect valuable data to help us better understand exactly how satellites burn up in our atmosphere.
While sending a satellite into orbit around Earth was once a novelty, today there are so many objects in orbit that companies are working to ensure that their probes can successfully burn up in our atmosphere so that they do not become dangerous space junk, orbiting until they collide with another object.
With Draco, researchers hope to better understand the process so that, when we want to send a satellite to its doom, we know what to expect.
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One Plan: was $531 now $67 Save 87% on Surfshark One, making it just $67 for 28 months. That works out at $2.39 a month, a steal for everything Surfshark One offers. On top of being able to stream your favorite shows anywhere, you get protection from hackers, advert and pop-up blocking, antivirus and much, much more. View Deal
Have you ever been traveling and sat down to watch your favorite show, only to discover it's geo-blocked because you're away from home? That's where Surfshark VPN's Surfshark One service comes in.
Whatever streaming service you're with, it enables you to alter your apparent location, letting you watch Star Trek, Silo, For All Mankind and a host of other sci-fi series anywhere. And, since this is a high-speed VPN, you don't have to worry about your show turning into a blocky mess.
Aside from unlocking geo-blocks, Surfshark One offers a raft of safety measures to keep you safe online, whether you're streaming, browsing, chatting or so on.
It includes an ad and pop-up blocker, anti-malware measures, data leak alerts, antivirus, scam protection and more. Even better, that's across unlimited devices so you can protect your whole household, whether they're home or away. And if you're not satisfied, Surfshark offers a 30-day money-back guarantee.
Key features: Stream anywhere, advert and pop-up blocking, malware and virus protection, credit card and personal data breach alerts.
Price history: Even factoring in previous Surfshark offers, this is the biggest Surfshark One discount we've seen in a couple of years.
✅ Buy it if: You want to stream your favorite shows wherever you are, and browse the internet safely, without viruses, adverts, or and pop-ups.
❌ Don't buy it if: You already have a VPN service, though if you can switch this is a superb offer.
We test and review VPN services in the context of legal recreational uses. For example: 1. Accessing a service from another country (subject to the terms and conditions of that service). 2. Protecting your online security and strengthening your online privacy when abroad. We do not support or condone the illegal or malicious use of VPN services. Consuming pirated content that is paid-for is neither endorsed nor approved by Future Publishing.
NASA is giving a financial boost to nearly 20 technology investigations to help fuel the incubation of tomorrow's spaceflight research capabilities.
The NASA Innovative Advanced Concepts (NIAC) program has selected 18 projects for this year's Phase I awards, which will each split a total of $3.2 million in development funding. NIAC is designed to bolster technology breakthroughs that NASA could use on future space missions.
This year's awards include an array of mission concepts and research proposals NASA views as having "transformative potential," according to a July 29 announcement of winners. Among them are ideas for hardening spacecraft to explore and withstand the harsh conditions of Venus, radioisotope-heated lunar spacesuits and using space dust to partially block out the sun to reduce solar radiation.
The selected projects aren't actual NASA missions, but serve as a sampling of technologies the agency sees as potentially contributing to projects like establishing a moon base as part of the Artemis program.
"Achieving that will require more than incremental technological advancement. It means we need great leaps," Greg Stover, director of the Advanced Research and Technology division in NASA's Research and Technology Mission Directorate, said in the awards announcement. "These awards are the kinds of innovation the world needs NASA to help foster."
Each of the 18 award winners will receive up to $175,000 to complete a nine-month investigation of their proposals to determine their feasibility and determine the next steps in maturing their technologies.
Graphic depiction of the LUX concept. (Image credit: Stone Aerospace, Inc.)
As NASA's plans for long-term lunar habitation evolve, underground dwellings that are naturally shielded from the harsh solar radiation are a serious consideration for habitation spaces. One of the NIAC winning ideas includes the Lunar Underground eXplorer (LUX), from Gilly Elor, at Texas-based Stone Aerospace, Inc. LUX would send hovering robots to map the potentially miles-long lava tubes beneath the moon's Mare Tranquilitatitis. These drones, obscured from sunlight in the depths of these lunar labyrinths, would each be tethered by an extra lightweight fiber-optic cable spooled out from a lander or rover on the moon's surface, which would shoot the line with a laser to supply the cave-diving probe's power and communications link.
Graphic depiction of the LUX concept. (Image credit: Stone Aerospace, Inc.)
Another NIAC winner aims to map the continents of Earth-like exoplanets orbiting nearby stars. Today, we can determine the size and makeup of exoplanets, but discerning their physical features isn't something that's been attempted on a large scale.
Paul Stankus, from Brookhaven Science Associates in New York, proposes designing a new type of "nulling interferometer," which uses data from different telescopes to cancel out a star's light, via a technique called "dynamic hierarchical nulling." His idea would merge data from a pair of "nuller" space telescopes positioned about 60 miles (100 kilometers) apart to achieve a resolution fine enough to detect the contrast of surface features on exoplanets 10 billion times dimmer than their star.
Another award-winning concept comes from Michael Rubenstein and Northwestern University. They propose exploring Saturn's rings by throwing thousands of "femtosats" (small satellite probes weighing less than 100 grams) into the gas giant's orbit.
According to the project's page on NASA's website, "Conducting in-situ surveys of Saturn's rings with a single flagship mission, such as Cassini, would carry an unacceptably high risk of mission failure due to particle collisions." Instead, the femtosat fleet proposal suggests flying 10,000 spacecraft into Saturn's rings, knowing a significant portion could be lost. "The distributed nature of the proposed mission means it can accept a risk that could destroy many of [the] femtosats in the constellation, making in-situ survey of the ring possible."
"Every innovation, every leap in technology, starts with a seed of an idea," Phillip Williams, NIAC's acting program executive, said in NASA's statement. "The NIAC program allows NASA to germinate those seeds and determine if there's something that could be grown to benefit future space missions and our nation's aerospace economy."
Is it a rocket car? Tearing across the Utah desert at over 400 mph (644 kph), a hydrogen-powered car has set a new land speed record.
Wing Commander Andy Green, a retired British Royal Air Force fighter pilot, just set a new world land speed record at the Bonneville Salt Flats in the JCB Hydromax vehicle. On two different runs on Aug. 11, the car went 400.623 mph (644.740 kph) and then 412.135 mph (663.267 kph), which averages out to 406.320 mph (653.909 kph).
That's the fastest that any car with a hydrogen internal combustion engine has traveled. "It was an amazing experience," Green told Space.com on Aug. 12 about his record-breaking drives.
"Anything above about 350 miles an hour [563 kph], we'd have gone away really pleased," he added. "It is performing better. It was more reliable than we expected, and it has blown away the hydrogen record. It's in every way a real thrill for all of us yesterday to see that happen."
Green is no stranger to breaking records. In 1997, he drove a jet-powered car 763.035 mph (1,227.985 kph, or Mach 1.02), setting a new land speed record while also becoming the first person to break the sound barrier on land.
About 20 years ago, Green also set the land speed record for a diesel-powered vehicle, going over 350 mph (563 kph). Until now, the fastest hydrogen-powered vehicle didn't come close to that, topping out at 303 mph (488 kph). But this new record shows the promising capability of hydrogen-powered engines on land.
The hydrogen engine doesn't produce carbon dioxide like a traditional gasoline or diesel engine does. And while it's not the most traditional car engine on Earth, hydrogen has powered some rocket engines for decades. For example, NASA's Space Launch System (SLS) launcher, which has two successful Artemis moon mission liftoffs under its belt, burns liquid hydrogen and liquid oxygen. (The SLS core stage employs RS-25 engines, which also powered NASA's now-retired space shuttle.)
The JCB Hydromax isn't exactly a rocket on wheels, but it does demonstrate an incredible technological feat. And the "rocket car" probably has more in common with an actual rocket than we might think. For example, while it's not as fast as a rocket, pushing a vehicle to its limits requires many of the same preparations.
"There is a countdown and a checklist," Green told Space.com. "And several times we've had to stop the countdown, reheat something, adjust something, restart the countdown and launch it off the start line."
However, despite its speed, hydrogen-powered engine and countdown clock, this "rocket car" isn't going to space anytime soon.
"These are built for the construction industry," Green said about the engines. "They normally kick out 74 horsepower," he added, so they put "two of them in a race car to show how tough, how adaptable [and] how capable they are."
