ALBUQUERQUE, N.M. — Two Sandia National Laboratories employees will soon join the American Institute of Aeronautics and Astronautics class of 2024 as associate fellows. “This distinguished group of professionals has made significant and lasting contributions to the aerospace profession,” said AIAA President and Sandia Deputy Laboratories Director Laura McGill. “They exemplify expertise and dedication to […]
Category Archives: Space / Astronomy
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Increasing national security with satellites that team together
September 14, 2023 – 9:04 am
ALBUQUERQUE, N.M. — Imagine a satellite observing ships on the ocean. As it takes pictures of each ship, an algorithm decides what kind of vessel it is. But one sneaky sailor paints a pattern on the deck that confuses the satellite, so it can’t decide what it’s looking at. How can the satellite work around […]
Testing new technology and research on orbit
August 28, 2023 – 5:00 am
ALBUQUERQUE, N.M. — Industry can develop new computer chips and other potential satellite payload components more quickly than national labs can test and integrate them into satellites that must meet strict security and space-readiness standards. This can create a lag in using the latest technology for national security space systems. A Sandia National Laboratories team […]
Sandia researchers receive two EO Lawrence Awards
July 14, 2022 – 5:00 am
ALBUQUERQUE, N.M. — Sandia National Laboratories pulsed-power physicist Daniel Sinars and quantum information scientist Andrew Landahl have each received 2021 Ernest Orlando Lawrence Awards, the U.S. Department of Energy’s highest scientific mid-career honor. Sinars won in the category “National Security and Nonproliferation;” Landahl in “Computer, Information and Knowledge Sciences.” Susan Seestrom, associate laboratories director for […]
Build-a-satellite program could fast track national security space missions
June 8, 2022 – 5:00 am
ALBUQUERQUE, N.M. — Satellites equipped with remote sensing technology execute many critical national security missions, from detecting explosions to tracking sea ice, but until now it could take a team years to move from a concept to a deployable space system. Valhalla, a Python-based performance modeling framework developed at Sandia National Laboratories, uses high-performance computing […]
Powering the moon: Sandia researchers design microgrid for future lunar base
May 11, 2022 – 5:00 am
ALBUQUERQUE, N.M. — Sandia National Laboratories is well-known for designing reliable and resilient microgrids for military bases and vital city services. Now, Sandia researchers are working with NASA to design one for the moon. This is not the first time Sandia has partnered with NASA to power equipment on the moon. In fact, Sandia provided […]
Seashell-inspired Sandia shield protects materials in hostile environments
May 3, 2022 – 11:26 am
ALBUQUERQUE, N.M. — Word of an extraordinarily inexpensive material, lightweight enough to protect satellites against debris in the cold of outer space, cohesive enough to strengthen the walls of pressurized vessels experiencing average conditions on Earth and yet heat-resistant enough at 1,500 degrees Celsius or 2,732 degrees Fahrenheit to shield instruments against flying debris, raises […]
Black engineer awards distinguish Sandia Labs
February 28, 2022 – 5:00 am
ALBUQUERQUE, N.M. — Ten Sandia National Laboratories engineers received Black Engineer of the Year Awards this year, including Most Promising Scientist in Government, Research Leadership, Science Spectrum Trailblazers and Modern-Day Technology Leaders. Honorees include Sandia mechanical, electrical, civil, aerospace and aeronautical engineers who excel in their respective fields. From the abstract to the technical, each […]
Powerful Sandia machine-learning model shows diamond melting at high pressure
January 26, 2022 – 5:00 am
ALBUQUERQUE, N.M. — A Sandia National Laboratories supercomputer simulation model called SNAP that rapidly predicts the behavior of billions of interacting atoms has captured the melting of diamond when compressed by extreme pressures and temperatures. At several million atmospheres, the rigid carbon lattice of the hardest known substance on Earth is shown in SNAP (Spectral […]
Look who’s turning 25
September 2, 2021 – 5:00 am
ALBUQUERQUE, N.M. — Sandia National Laboratories is celebrating 25 years of research conducted at its Z Pulsed Power Facility — a gymnasium-sized accelerator commonly referred to as Z or the Z machine. Due to COVID-19 restrictions, only a limited number of former leaders of the pulsed power program at Sandia will gather Friday to share […]
Setting gold and platinum standards where few have gone before
June 24, 2021 – 5:00 am
ALBUQUERQUE, N.M. — Like two superheroes finally joining forces, Sandia National Laboratories’ Z machine — generator of the world’s most powerful electrical pulses — and Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory’s National Ignition Facility — the planet’s most energetic laser source — in a series of 10 experiments have detailed the responses of gold and platinum at […]
Largest aerospace society names Sandia researcher ‘Engineer of the Year’
June 1, 2021 – 5:00 am
ALBUQUERQUE, NM — Humberto “Tito” Silva III, a Sandia National Laboratories researcher, has been named Engineer of the Year by the world’s largest aerospace technical society, the American Institute of Aeronautics and Astronautics. Selected by a committee of his peers, Silva was cited for improving failure-rate predictions of aerospace flight systems as they reenter Earth’s […]
Super-Earth atmospheres probed at Sandia’s Z machine
February 9, 2021 – 5:00 am
ALBUQUERQUE, N.M. — The huge forces generated by the Z machine at Sandia National Laboratories are being used to replicate the gravitational pressures on so-called “super-Earths” to determine which might maintain atmospheres that could support life. Astronomers believe that super-Earths — collections of rocks up to eight times larger than Earth — exist in the […]
Record neutron numbers at Sandia Labs’ Z machine fusion experiments
October 27, 2020 – 5:00 am
ALBUQUERQUE, N.M.— A relatively new method to control nuclear fusion that combines a massive jolt of electricity with strong magnetic fields and a powerful laser beam has achieved its own record output of neutrons — a key standard by which fusion efforts are judged — at Sandia National Laboratories’ Z pulsed power facility, the most […]
Sandia establishes collaborative research facility for low-temperature plasmas
December 20, 2019 – 5:00 am
ALBUQUERQUE, N.M. — Sandia National Laboratories is setting up a collaborative facility to help researchers worldwide study low-temperature plasmas, the most pervasive state of matter in the universe. The 5-year, $5.5 million project, called the Sandia Low Temperature Plasma Research Facility, is sponsored by the Department of Energy’s Office of Science. Participants will be selected […]