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Why Do Reflecting Telescopes on Earth Use Lasers?
The Problem: A Turbulent Sky Astronomers have always battled the same adversary: Earth’s atmosphere. As light from distant stars passes through layers of air with different temperatures and densities, it bends unpredictably. The result is a blurred or distorted image — the same shimmering effect you see when heat waves rise from a road in…
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Starship Soars: Flight 11 Triumphs and V3 Sets Sights on the Stars
In the grand theater of space exploration, where rockets roar like impatient dragons and the stars wink with quiet approval, SpaceX’s Starship Flight 11 took center stage on October 13, 2025, and delivered a performance worthy of an encore. After a year that saw the Version 2 prototypes endure their share of dramatic explosions—three mid-flight…
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The Universe in Silico: Euclid’s Flagship 2 Simulation and the Philosophy of Cosmic Models
Mapping the Immeasurable In late 2025, the Euclid Consortium — the international group responsible for managing the European Space Agency’s Euclid space telescope — announced the release of the most extensive simulation of the universe ever produced. Called Flagship 2, it is not merely a technical achievement but a landmark in our species’ attempt to…
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From Apollo’s 20-Watt Radio to Modern Milliwatt Signals: The Evolution of Space Communication
The Apollo Moon missions of the late 1960s relied on a 20-watt S-band transmitter to send voice, telemetry, and even television from the Moon to Earth. In stark contrast, many modern communication systems – from tiny CubeSat spacecraft to Internet-of-Things devices – can make do with transmit powers thousands of times lower, sometimes mere milliwatts…
