The European Space Agency’s (ESA) Earth Return Orbiter – the first spacecraft that will rendezvous and capture an object in space, to bring the first Mars samples back to Earth – has passed a key milestone. The agency says the critical design review for the spacecraft’s platform has been completed, with the involvement of European industry partners and NASA. The ...

Ash Madni shares his thoughts on industry figure Jack Pekarik, a Master Inventor at GlobalFoundries, who he describes as “a true scholar, a gentleman and a SiGe genius”. As designers, our interface to a foundry occurs via a third party, so many of us don’t get to meet the brains behind silicon processing. Most of us have to settle with ...

According to the latest report by the Space Foundation, the global space economy in 2023 is valued at $570 billion, an increase of 7.4% from 2022’s total of $531 billion. The US-based nonprofit organisation says – in its Space Report Q2 – that the growth is consistent with the industry’s five-year compound annual growth rate of 7.3%, with the space ...

There’s seriously detailed microcontroller content in this book – Microcontroller Exploits – which documents a variety of microchip hacking techniques. It is as an advanced guide to hardware hacking. In other words it will be relevant for engineers wanting to get their hands dirty with the innards of devices. It’s not for beginners, or the mildly curious. For example, it ...

The most popular stories on the site cover Quinas funding for UltraRAM, GlobalWafers subsidy, maritime satellite comms, the US employing FDPR, and a projected 16% y-o-y growth in the semiconductor market.

We're talking Quadric’s Chimera QC GPNPUs, UltraRAM moving closer to market, a chip-scale trapped-ion quantum logic IC, and AI tools for unmanned combat planes...

Jaxa is teaming with a Japanese company, iQPS, for on-orbit demonstrations that will estimate satellite orbital positions in real-time to centimeter-level accuracy. The Japanese space agency, has announced the joint research agreement as part of its Small Technology Innovation Satellite Research and Development Program. It will be partnering with iQPS (Institute for Q-shu Pioneers of Space) to enable a high-performance ...

The University of Leicester is celebrating its progress towards developing a usable space battery employing radioisotope power technologies. Specifically, it highlights that its Radioisotope Thermoelectric Generator (RTG) has successfully completed its extreme vibration test campaign, proving the resilience that would be required for a rocket launch. Space battery The Space Nuclear Power group – a team at the University of ...

Another one for our Digital Life category. According to new research, the top twenty countries in 2024 for broadband speed can be put in order. And, Iceland leads the way… The country offers the fastest broadband in the world, with an average speed of 279.55 Mbps. To put that in context, you could download a 5GB movie in just two ...

The maritime satellite communication market saw significant growth in 2023, according to ‘Prospects for Maritime Satellite Communications’, with Starlink boosting take-up of satellite comms for ships. Produced by the space consulting and market intelligence firm Novaspace – the result of a merger between Euroconsult and SpaceTec Partners – the release expects the market share of Non-Geostationary Orbit (NGSO) solutions as ...