GoKawiil
Tech News
Pedro Duque, who became Spain's first astronaut and later led the country's science ministry, has been named an honorary member of IEEE. He now serves as president and chairman of the board of Spanish satellite company HispaSat, and accepted the honor via recorded remarks at an April 24 ceremony in New York he could not attend in person.
In a first-person account, former NASA astronaut Charlie Precourt describes commanding Space Shuttle Atlantis through its final descent after a 10-day mission delivering supplies and a new crew to the Russian Mir station. He details disengaging the autopilot near Mach 1 at 45,000 feet and relying on mission pilot Eileen Collins' scripted calls to guide the unpowered glider to a precise touchdown at Kennedy Space Center.
Scientists in China have developed a new aluminum-based material modeled on the microstructure of eggshells, aiming to better protect spacecraft from high-speed debris impacts. The work, published in the Journal of Applied Physics, builds on decades of research into how an egg's curved geometry gives it surprising rigidity despite its thinness and fragility.