Manufacturing

As of May 2021, there are about 4,300 active artificial satellites currently orbit Earth. We rely so much on satellites for so many things in our lives, and we count on them to be durable and reliable. When satellites don’t work properly, they can severely impact our lives. That’s why …

Vehicles propelled by rocket engines are commonly called rockets. Rocket vehicles carry their own oxidizer, unlike most combustion engines, so rocket engines can be used in a vacuum to propel spacecraft and ballistic missiles. Compared to other types of jet engines, rocket engines are the lightest and have the highest …

In 2018, The American Society of Mechanical Engineers (ASME)  named the Pratt & Whitney single crystal turbine blade an historic mechanical engineering landmark. These blades, which can be found in many modern, high-performance gas turbines (a.k.a. jet engines)—including the ones powering the F-22 Raptor, and larger electricity-producing turbines—are grown from a …

The COVID-19 pandemic, while demonstrating the nation’s vulnerabilities to biothreats, has also shown the fragility of the supply chain. The United States relies on foreign suppliers for a number of critical components including commodity chemicals, rare earth elements and active pharmaceutical ingredients, she said. Ensuring a resilient domestic supply chain …

The Department of Defense (DOD) acquires goods and services from contractors, federal arsenals, and shipyards to support military operations. The acquisition is a broad term that applies to more than just the purchase of an item or service; the acquisition process encompasses the design, engineering, construction, testing, deployment, sustainment, and …

We live in an increasingly interconnected world, one in which mobile communications provide a significant element of this interconnectivity. This increasing demand for high speed, low latency networks supporting mobile connectivity is leading the definition of 5th generation mobile networks. These next generation networks are driven not only by changing …

Two out of three missions to the red planet have failed. One reason there have been so many losses is that there have been so many attempts. “Mars is a favorite target,” says Dr. Firouz Naderi, manager of the Mars Program Office at the Jet Propulsion Laboratory. To get there, …

As the Global warming is melting the Arctic ice, and opening up new shipping trade routes and real estate, intense resource competition over an estimated $1 trillion untapped reserves of oil, natural gas and minerals has started. Human activities have grown in the Arctic by almost 400 percent in the …