Five NASA-supported payloads lifted off Wednesday aboard Blue Origin’s New Shepard rocket from the company’s launch site in West Texas as part of a suborbital flight demonstration that aims to gather data and test the platforms in space. NASA said Thursday it selected the payloads through the Flight Opportunities program that supports flight testing of […] More

A NASA spacecraft designed to gather information about the sun is scheduled to take off no earlier than Aug. 4 aboard the United Launch Alliance’s Delta IV Heavy rocket from Cape Canaveral Air Force Station in Florida. The Parker Solar Probe will determine how heat and energy move through the sun’s atmosphere by flying directly […] More

A solar probe Johns Hopkins University Applied Physics Laboratory designed and built for NASA has arrived at Lockheed Martin‘s Astrotech Space Operations facility in Florida to begin pre-launch tests and preparations. APL said Thursday the Parker Solar Probe is scheduled to lift off July 31 at the Kennedy Space Center to study the sun’s outer atmosphere over […] More

Chris Pehrson, vice president for Defense Department strategic development at General Atomics’ aeronautical systems business, will serve as a guest speaker at Technology Training Corp.-hosted Unmanned Aircraft Systems East for Defense and Government symposium that will kick off Saturday, Nov. 7, in Washington, D.C. Pehrson is one of the 24 guest presenters who will discuss emerging […] More

The Department of Homeland Security has partnered with a team of Battelle researchers in an effort to help explosive and canine experts determine capability gaps in the country’s network of explosives detection canine teams. The Regional Explosives Detection Dog Initiative, led by DHS’ advanced research project agency, aims to provide information on threat materials and tactics that can […] More

The Center for a New American Security has launched a new project that aims to analyze how the U.S. joint force should adapt to technological innovations of potential state and non-state adversaries. CNAS said Monday the Evolving the Future Force project is part of the center’s Defense Strategies and Assessments program and seeks to explore the […] More

NASA has selected Ball Aerospace & Technologies to design and develop a cryostat for a science mission that aims to measure emissions from the interstellar medium and study the life cycle of interstellar gas in the Milky Way. Ball Aerospace said Thursday it will build the cryostat to generate a temperature-controlled for detectors of the University of Arizona-led Galactic/Extragalactic Ultralong Duration Balloon […] More

The Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency has completed initial tests on a field-deployable system that combines technologies from the Southwest Research Institute and PyroGenesis Canada to neutralize chemical warfare agents. DARPA said Friday it tested SwRI’s soil-scrubbing technology alongside PyroGenesis’ Tactical Plasma Arc Chemical Warfare Agents Destruction System that works to collect and convert toxic CWA decomposition products into non-hazardous salts. The platform […] More

A Defense Science Board task force has published a report that describes ways to increase the capacity of U.S. undersea assets and manned platforms using unmanned systems. The report titled “Next-Generation Unmanned Undersea Systems” explores how unmanned systems could disrupt adversary strategies and perform operations that are on hold due to lack of assets, Johns Hopkins University Applied Physics Laboratory […] More

The Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency has selected National Instruments to provide software-defined radios for a channel emulation testbed DARPA will use in a collaborative machine-learning competition. NI said Tuesday its software-defined radios will aid various open source and tool flows such as GNU radio, RFNoC and LabVIEW system design software for the agency’s Colosseum testbed. Colosseum is designed to […] More

The Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency has conducted a demonstration to test a network of more than 100 mobile tools designed to detect radioactive materials as part of the SIGMA program. DARPA said Tuesday the pocket-sized detectors developed through the SIGMA program worked to detect the intensity and location of radiation sources during the one-month […] More

Laurence Grayer of Veterans Moving Forward, Gregory Nixon of Cerberus and Josh Petty of Booz Allen Hamilton have made Trending 40’s list of top corporate counsels in Washington, D.C. for 2016. The legal professionals will be honored during a ceremony that will be held Sept. 21 at Crystal City, Virginia. Other honorees include Mitre‘s Julie Bowen, AT&T‘s Rishi Chhatwal, PwC‘s Eliza Nagle, Northrop Grumman‘s Charlton Walker […] More