© Danielle Parhizkaran/The Boston Globe, via Getty Images
ROMA – La chiusura dello Stretto di Hormuz ha costretto il settore marittimo a riorganizzare i flussi logistici verso i Paesi del Golfo. I porti di Gedda, sul Mar Rosso, e Sohar, in Oman, sono diventati i principali snodi alternativi: le merci provenienti da Europa e Asia vengono sbarcate in questi scali e poi trasferite via terra o tramite servizi feeder verso le destinazioni finali. La soluzione garantisce la continuità degli approvvigionamenti, ma comporta costi più elevati, tempi di trasporto più lunghi, maggiori rischi di congestione e costi assicurativi maggiorati dai “war risk”.
Stefano Messina, presidente di Assarmatori, ha affrontato questi temi in un’intervista rilasciata a margine, poco prima dell’inizio dell’Annual Meeting dell’Associazione di Assarmatori, svoltosi ieri mattina a Roma presso il Grand Hotel Parco dei Principi.
Presidente Messina, chiusura di Hormuz: dal punto di vista logistico quale è il quadro?
«Tutto si concentra sulla costa occidentale dell’Arabia Saudita a Sohar, in Oman, dove attualmente il porto funziona benissimo. Ovviamente tende a congestionarsi perché qui la merce affluisce per essere trasferita via terra con i camion a Gedda».
«I prezzi dei camion sono arrivati a 4-5.000 dollari al giorno, rispetto a una tariffa normale di circa 2.000 dollari» – spiega Messina – «Un container standard sulla linea Genova-Dubai: i nostri clienti lo sanno bene, il nolo marittimo era 900-1.000 dollari. Oggi e, negli ultimi tre mesi, ne costa 6-7.000, ma di questi circa 5.000 sono il costo del camion.
Però la merce va, se la gente compra, questo dimostra che alla fine, salvo eccezioni di merci che cubano molto e hanno un valore economico basso, il sistema regge».
I vettori marittimi globali stanno infatti applicando noli sensibilmente più elevati ai clienti finali per coprire la complessità delle catene di trasporto, i sovrapprezzi assicurativi e l’impiego di servizi intermodali alternativi. In molti casi, tuttavia, la componente più onerosa non è il trasporto marittimo bensì quello terrestre: il costo dei camion impiegati per attraversare la Penisola Arabica è aumentato fino a rappresentare la quota prevalente del costo complessivo della spedizione. Nonostante ciò, l’incremento si riflette sul nolo complessivo fatturato al cliente, con conseguente aumento del costo finale delle merci importate nel Golfo.
«Se ho una merce povera che occupa un container il nolo di 5.000 dollari incide molto. Ma nella stragrande maggioranza dei casi, il costo del nolo su materie prime come: caffè, cacao e prodotti alimentari incide in misura minima. La pasta al sugo, ad esempio, subisce un’incidenza di pochi millesimi al chilo. Quindi un aumento di 2-3.000 dollari su una merce che vale mezzo milione o un milione di dollari ha un impatto limitato».
L’aumento delle materie prime negli ultimi due anni, il mercato non continuerà a mantenere alte le tariffe anche dopo lo sblocco?
«Da armatore di linea lo spero molto per il mio conto economico e per i flussi di cassa. Però anche per i suoi fornitori, per esempio i camionisti. Però dopo i camion non dovranno più fare mille chilometri tra una destinazione e l’altra perché la nave tornerà ad andare direttamente a Dubai. Credo che nel giro di qualche mese la situazione possa normalizzarsi».
Il tema della sicurezza della navigazione e dello sminamento, sarà determinante per la normalizzazione della situazione?
«Da un mese stiamo parlando con la Marina Militare, oggi l’intervento dell’ammiraglio Berutti Bergotto sarà molto interessante. Esiste già una pipeline operativa: le navi “Rimini” e “Crotone” della Marina Militare sono già a Gibuti e prevedono di partecipare a una missione di sminamento».
Per un possibile pedaggio di Hormuz, quale è la sua opinione?
«Secondo me è un po’ prematuro parlarne, però non credo. Sembra che l’ufficializzazione dell’accordo non arriverà prima di venerdì, questo rappresenta già un elemento di difficoltà. Non prevedo che l’Iran voglia introdurre condizioni particolarmente aggressive. Nel momento in cui si raggiunge un accordo internazionale di pace, sarebbe difficile immaginare una condizione che vada contro la libertà di navigazione.
Oggi è difficile dirlo, ma credo che nel giro di due o tre settimane lo capiremo».
Presidente, sul tema delle assicurazioni: secondo una teoria interessante, i Lloyd’s di Londra avrebbero di fatto contribuito alla chiusura del traffico nello Stretto di Hormuz?
«No, il traffico lo hanno chiuso soprattutto gli armatori. La gran parte degli armatori non se l’è sentita di entrare nello Stretto di Hormuz, nonostante ci fosse una domanda elevatissima. Le assicurazioni è vero sono aumentate, tuttavia, se un armatore decide di andare e dispone di un nolo che copre ampiamente il costo assicurativo, può comunque farlo. Sono però operazioni molto rischiose e tipiche di operatori molto aggressivi.
Non stiamo parlando di operatori italiani, probabilmente neppure europei, ma di soggetti che operano soprattutto in Estremo Oriente o in Paesi dove la deregolamentazione è molto più spinta rispetto all’Unione Europea.
Quindi il tema delle assicurazioni è ancora oggi presente, da un lato, con l’aumento dei premi assicurativi, anche noi armatori abbiamo cercato di recuperare questo costo extra, il cosiddetto “war risk”».
Gli extra “war risk” assicurativi sono solo nell’area di Hormuz?
«Non è solo dentro Hormuz, ad esempio a Gedda, in Arabia Saudita, sul lato occidentale del Mar Rosso non c’è una guerra in corso, eppure paghiamo un extra war risk. Lo stesso vale per Sohar, in Oman, che è fuori da Hormuz, paghiamo comunque un sovrapprezzo per il rischio e, quando possibile, lo ribaltiamo sul cliente distribuendolo sui singoli contratti.
Il Mar Rosso oggi è relativamente tranquillo, c’è sempre la missione Aspides, noi europei continuiamo a transitare con la scorta. Esiste un sistema molto monitorato e l’Unione Europea, con gli italiani in prima linea, svolge un ruolo importante, la Marina Militare dispone ormai da anni di una presenza stabile nell’area».
Questi passaggi si ripetono con frequenza ormai?
«Si, recentemente abbiamo svolto anche esercitazioni con alcune compagnie italiane impegnate nel traffico internazionale. Sono stati implementati numerosi miglioramenti operativi e procedure condivise con gli equipaggi, perché questi sono passaggi che si ripetono continuamente.
Southbound: cioè in discesa da Suez verso il Mar Rosso e Bab el-Mandeb.
Northbound: si arriva dall’India o dall’Estremo Oriente, per entrare da Bab el-Mandeb e si risalire verso nord.
Ormai esistono veri e propri convogli organizzati per questi transiti».
Annual Meeting Assarmatori 2026 – Gli articoli di Corriere marittimo:
Leggi: Messina, Assarmatori: «L’Europa ci danneggia – L’ETS per il trasporto marittimo è un errore»
Leggi: A Nova Marine Carriers il 25% di Calata Orlando Livorno
Leggi: Assarmatori, Catani (GNV): “ETS, introdurre correttivi per garantire competitività alla logistica europea”
Leggi: Messina (Assarmatori): «Hormuz, pedaggio prematuro. Pressione su noli e war risk, ma il sistema regge»
L'articolo Messina (Assarmatori): «Hormuz, pedaggio prematuro. Pressione su noli e war risk, ma il sistema regge» proviene da Corriere Marittimo.
The industrial automation giant has fixed security holes in Logix, CompactLogix, Flex, RSLinx, and FactoryTalk products.
The post Rockwell Automation Patches Vulnerabilities in ICS Controllers and Software appeared first on SecurityWeek.
As a House committee debated President Donald Trump’s signature domestic policy bill last year, Republican backers repeatedly emphasized that its changes to the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program, also known as food stamps, wouldn’t affect vulnerable people.
SNAP reforms would “restore integrity” to the program and ensure it works for the “most vulnerable among us, including children,” said Rep. Glenn “GT” Thompson, a Pennsylvania Republican and chair of the House Agriculture Committee.
Passing the bill would be a “historic accomplishment” that will ensure “those in need can continue to receive the assistance they need,” said Rep. John Rose, a Republican from Tennessee.
And Rep. Dusty Johnson, a South Dakota Republican, said the bill would focus resources on the “neediest” Americans. “If you are a pregnant woman, your benefits are unaffected. If you have young children at home, your benefits are unaffected by this bill. If you are disabled, your benefits are unaffected by this bill.”
But nearly a year after the measure was signed into law, the number of children receiving food assistance has plummeted by at least 776,000, according to a ProPublica analysis. At least 12 states break down program participation by age, and of the 1,670,011 people who are no longer receiving benefits in those states, 776,134, or 46%, were children.
Another analysis reached the same conclusion: Just last month, the nonpartisan Center on Budget and Policy Priorities found there were 700,000 fewer children receiving food assistance.
Arizona has seen the nation’s largest percentage decline in SNAP participants; 205,223 children are no longer receiving the benefit since July 2025, a 55% drop. Louisiana had the second largest percent decline among children, 22%.
The U.S. Department of Agriculture, which oversees SNAP, hasn’t detailed the impact on children aided by the program, but initial figures show that compared to February 2025, 4.3 million fewer people received SNAP nationwide in February 2026, leaving 37.8 million participants.
Although children weren’t the intended targets of the legislation’s changes, they’re increasingly “collateral damage,” said Katie Bergh, a senior policy analyst at the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities.
If states are trying to comply with the law’s changes to SNAP, they’re likely not focusing on making the program accessible, Bergh said. Other experts said that people may be pushed off the program because of increased paperwork requirements to remain eligible.
States are required to impose work requirements for most adult recipients, while preparing for two major cost shifts. In October, states will begin covering 75% of the program’s administrative costs. States have been paying 50% of those costs.
In addition, states will have to pay a larger share of SNAP benefits starting in October 2027, based on their error rate. Error rates reflect overpayments or underpayments of SNAP benefits. While sometimes characterized as fraud, such errors are usually the fault of the state agency or the SNAP recipient, according to USDA, which describes them as “largely unintentional.”
If a state agency is facing staffing shortages and struggling to comply with new regulations, it will be harder for low-income families to access the benefits, Bergh said. “Families are falling through the cracks.”
In Massachusetts, for example, the share of SNAP applicants who called an assistance line and couldn’t reach a worker rose from 61% in November to nearly 81% in March, according to the Department of Transitional Assistance, which administers SNAP in the state. The state agency did not respond to a request for comment.
A USDA spokesperson did not address ProPublica’s questions about the number of children who have lost access to SNAP. “There is no shortage of resources for the most vulnerable among us, including children,” the spokesperson said.
The three members of the House Agriculture Committee who defended last year’s bill before its passage — Rose, Thompson and Johnson — did not respond to ProPublica’s questions about their statements now that many children no longer receive SNAP benefits.
Rep. Jim McGovern, a Massachusetts Democrat, asked Secretary of Agriculture Brooke Rollins about her recent comments that it was “good news” that millions of people no longer receive SNAP. If more than 700,000 children have been dropped in the 12 states that report those figures, “that number’s going to be into the millions” when other states are included, he said.
Rollins responded, “The 700,000 number of children is not correct,” contending that most people who were kicked off SNAP were “fraudulent.”
“That is not a nonpartisan group that gave you that number,” she said. (ProPublica independently verified the figures reported by the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities.)
McGovern said he has talked to people who have lost food assistance. “These are people who actually need and rely on this food assistance to provide basic nutrition for their families,” he said.
Pressure to lower error rates “creates a temptation for the states to bump off working families,” said Parke Wilde, a food economist at Tufts University. Working families may have more volatile incomes, making it harder for state agencies to assess benefits accurately.
“When they say we want to preserve SNAP for those with the greatest need, they’re sort of acknowledging that they want the scale of the SNAP program to be smaller,” he said.
Mariana Chilton, an expert in child hunger at University of Massachusetts, Amherst, said a smaller program won’t save money in the long run. Research shows that children who receive SNAP benefits are healthier, have better academic outcomes, use hospitals less often and have better mental health as teenagers.
She called the situation a “public health crisis” in the making. “When children are not healthy, this affects children today and it affects them throughout their lifetimes,” she said, likening hunger during early childhood to a brain injury.
As Arizona’s SNAP participation drops, nonprofits are feeling the effects. St. Mary’s Food Bank, the largest in the state, has seen a 15% increase in need this year, which translates into 300,000 more visits from people in search of food, said Milt Liu, the chief executive officer.
“It’s important for everyone to realize that policies have implications for people on the edge, and we’re seeing that in our line every day,” he said.
On a recent morning, Ana Alvarez waited in a line of vehicles at a St. Mary’s food bank in Phoenix. Alvarez, a single mother of five who works at a restaurant, started coming to St. Mary’s after she lost her SNAP benefits in September.
She reapplied for SNAP with the Arizona Department of Economic Security in December, but the application is still pending. The department did not respond to questions about its backlog.
She clips coupons and has cut out trips to the zoo and restaurants with her children. The slow season at the restaurant where she works is about to hit. And as summer temperatures rise, Alvarez wonders how she will afford her electric bill, her rent and her car payment.
At least once a week she contacts the agency about her application. The last time she called, a worker told her what others have in the past: She will have to keep waiting.
The post More Than 770,000 Children Are No Longer Receiving SNAP Benefits After Trump Changes Federal Food Program appeared first on ProPublica.
© Kaiti Sullivan for The New York Times
4 min read
One well-done gas giant, coming right up! That’s the latest from researchers analyzing NASA’s James Webb Space Telescope’s observations of HD 80606 b, an exoplanet four times the mass of Jupiter with an extremely elliptical orbit that sweeps close by its Sun-like star. The research team is presenting their study and preliminary findings Tuesday at the 248th meeting of the American Astronomical Society in Pasadena, California.
“Hot Jupiters are already considered some of the most extreme exoplanets we know of, but even among that population, HD 80606 b is one of the most extreme,” said Tiffany Kataria, the study’s principal investigator at NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Southern California. “We typically think of hot Jupiters as hot gas giants sitting right next to their stars, but this planet’s highly eccentric orbit creates a completely different beast.”
As the planet plunges close to its star, Webb shows its temperature skyrockets by 1,100 degrees Fahrenheit. Previous studies have shown that radical temperature swings can cause an exoplanet’s chemistry and clouds to change in real time. According to the research team, the dynamic conditions of HD 80606 b make the planet an ideal target to observe these changes with Webb’s powerful instruments.
“Observing a planet like HD 80606 b is actually very efficient because its unusual orbit, with the corresponding swings in temperature and chemical composition, allow us to gather data under varying conditions in just hours and apply those findings to other hot Jupiters or more conventional exoplanets,” said Laura C. Mayorga, co-investigator on the study and an exoplanet astronomer at the Johns Hopkins Applied Physics Laboratory in Laurel, Maryland.
Measurements of temperature and chemical composition were done with spectroscopy, a technique scientists use to break light into its component colors to reveal information about the composition, temperature, motion, and physical properties of objects in space. The team used Webb’s MIRI (Mid-Infrared Instrument) for an extended observation of HD 80606 b before, during, and after its periastron, or closest pass by its star. During periastron, the planet also passed behind the star from Webb’s perspective in what’s known as a secondary eclipse. The observation was years in the planning, as scheduling the time to catch the planet at this point was complex given its extremely elliptical 111-day orbit, and Webb’s own restrictions on where it can look during specific times of the year, based on Earth’s position in orbit around the Sun.
Researchers say they have only begun to peel back the layers of an incredibly rich dataset, but they can clearly see a dramatic shift in the exoplanet’s temperature. “Webb has shown that the planet’s increase in temperature was even more extreme than we anticipated based on Spitzer data,” said Kataria.
In fact, the planet had already been dubbed the “roasted exoplanet” and even got its own poster in NASA’s popular series. NASA’s now-retired Spitzer Space Telescope laid the groundwork of infrared observations of HD 80606 b, showing that more detailed spectroscopic data from Webb would be especially compelling.
“Spitzer did amazing work on this exoplanet, and now Webb is building on that legacy by enabling us to drill down to distinguish specific chemical signatures like methane and carbon dioxide, which is just amazing progress,” said Ryan Challener, co-author and research associate at the Cornell Center for Astrophysics and Planetary Science. “There’s so much to learn from this one dataset here — we really are just getting started deciphering what Webb has to tell us.”
The James Webb Space Telescope is the world’s premier space science observatory. Webb is solving mysteries in our solar system, looking beyond to distant worlds around other stars, and probing the mysterious structures and origins of our universe and our place in it. Webb is an international program led by NASA with its partners, ESA (European Space Agency) and CSA (Canadian Space Agency).
For more information on Webb, visit:
The following sections contain links to download this article’s images and videos in all available resolutions followed by related information links, media contacts, and if available, research paper and Spanish translation links.
Este Artículo en Español – “Telescopio Webb de la NASA Detecta un Exoplaneto Asandose”
Read: Webb’s Impact on Exoplanet Research
Watch: How to Study Exoplanets: Webb and Challenges
Explore: Eyes on Exoplanets
Print: The Roasted Exoplanet Poster
More Webb: News | Images | Science | Home Page
Laura Betz
NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center
Greenbelt, Maryland
laura.e.betz@nasa.gov
Leah Ramsay
Space Telescope Science Institute
Baltimore, Maryland
Hannah Braun
Space Telescope Science Institute
Baltimore, Maryland
© Arlette Bashizi for The New York Times
© Arlette Bashizi for The New York Times
Researchers using two of humanity’s most powerful observatories — NASA’s James Webb and Hubble Space Telescopes — have definitively shown that Terzan 5 is not a globular star cluster as it was once classified, offering new insight into how galaxies like our own form and evolve over time. A globular star cluster typically has only one ancient star population. New data not only confirms the existence of two distinct populations of stars in Terzan 5, but also provides evidence for two more recent rounds of star formation. Although located within the crowded bulge of our Milky Way, our galaxy’s central, spherical region of older stars, Terzan 5 was massive enough to maintain its separate identity while lighter weight systems spread out and mixed to form the bulge billions of years ago. It’s like a lump in an otherwise well-mixed cake batter.
“Webb’s new near-infrared observations, cross-referenced with Hubble’s archival observations, have given us a much clearer picture of the history of Terzan 5,” said Giorgia Zullo, who led the research and is a PhD student at the University of Bologna in Italy.
These results were presented at a press conference Tuesday at the 248th meeting of the American Astronomical Society in Pasadena, and were published in Astronomy & Astrophysics.
Discovered in 1968 by astronomer Azop Terzan, Terzan 5 resembles a globular cluster in many ways. However, in 2009 this system was discovered to harbor two distinct populations of stars. In 2016 Hubble provided the first estimate of their ages, showing that one formed roughly 12 billion years ago — as the Milky Way itself was assembling — and the other about 5 billion years ago, just before Earth started forming. This pointed to a more complex history than a typical globular cluster.
Studying Terzan 5 is complicated by its location in a region of our galaxy crowded with stars and heavily obscured by dust. This is where Webb stepped in. Its infrared view allowed the research team to peer through the dust and catalog many more stars, and fainter stars, than previous work. By measuring star colors and brightnesses, astronomers can classify them into populations of different ages and chemistries.
Webb was able to measure these key properties for every star within the field of view in the sky — both stars within Terzan 5 and unrelated foreground stars. To isolate the stars of Terzan 5, the team relied on the power and longevity of Hubble. The 12-year separation allowed the team to measure very small movements of individual stars, known as proper motions, to determine which stars belong to Terzan 5 and which are part of the Milky Way bulge.
By combining data from both Webb and Hubble, the researchers found strong evidence for two more stellar populations, one that formed 3.8 billion years ago and another only 2.5 billion years ago. They also were able to determine the ages of the previously known stellar populations with unprecedented precision, finding that they formed 12.5 billion and 4.7 billion years ago.
With the previously known two generations of stars, astronomers could not rule out the possibility that Terzan 5 interacted with another object, like a globular cluster or a giant molecular cloud, becoming enriched with new gas and dust that set off a second round of star formation. With four stellar generations, those explanations are ruled out.
Measurements of the stellar composition of Terzan 5 populations made at the W. M. Keck Observatory and European Southern Observatory’s Very Large Telescope also point toward very distinct populations. “Along with the ages of these populations, the cluster preserves a fossil record of progressive enrichment of heavy elements by supernovae,” said co-author R. Michael Rich, a research astronomer at the University of California, Los Angeles.
Terzan 5 formed multiple generations of stars because it was able to retain the necessary raw materials. There is evidence of powerful supernova explosions in Terzan 5 that forged heavier elements that were swept up by subsequent generations of stars. In lighter weight systems, the force of the explosions themselves could have ejected the resulting elements as well as sweeping out leftover gas and dust. The progenitor of Terzan 5 had enough mass to retain those stars’ ejections, allowing new generations of stars to form over billions of years.
The results show that Terzan 5 is most likely the remnant of a much more massive stellar system that initially formed 12.5 billion years ago. Terzan 5 is extraordinary because it survived — and never merged or fully “mixed in” with the Milky Way’s bulge. “For some reason, this peculiar clump of stars formed separately from the bulge and was not destroyed as the bulge itself formed,” said Francesco R. Ferraro, a professor at the University of Bologna and principal investigator of the Webb observations. “Terzan 5 is what we now call a bulge fossil fragment because it resembles the primordial clumps that contributed to the formation of the bulge.”
To date, there’s one other known cosmic object like Terzan 5. Liller 1 was the second to be reclassified from a globular star cluster to a bulge fossil fragment. It also contains multiple generations of stars. There may be more objects like it. Between 40 to 50 additional globular clusters that orbit within the bulge will be examined by Ferraro’s team to determine if their stellar populations are all the same, like globular clusters, or have several generations, like bulge fossil fragments.
Ultimately, this research may improve what we know about how the central bulges of galaxies form over hundreds of millions of years. “Based on observations and in-depth simulations, we think that galaxies in the early universe had huge disks of gas that fragmented into clumps and formed stars. These clumps migrated to the center of the galaxies, and many merged to form their bulges,” said Barbara Lanzoni, a co-author and associate professor at the University of Bologna. For example, Webb has turned up several examples of “clumpy” galaxies that were actively forming when the universe was only a few hundred million years old, like the clumps in the Firefly Sparkle galaxy. “Terzan 5 may provide direct evidence that can help explain how bulges formed in galaxies throughout the universe,” Lanzoni said.
The James Webb Space Telescope is the world’s premier space science observatory. Webb is solving mysteries in our solar system, looking beyond to distant worlds around other stars, and probing the mysterious structures and origins of our universe and our place in it. Webb is an international program led by NASA with its partners, ESA (European Space Agency) and CSA (Canadian Space Agency).
The Hubble Space Telescope has been operating for over three decades and continues to make ground-breaking discoveries that shape our fundamental understanding of the universe. Hubble is a project of international cooperation between NASA and ESA (European Space Agency). NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Maryland, manages the telescope and mission operations. Lockheed Martin Space, based in Denver, also supports mission operations at Goddard. The Space Telescope Science Institute in Baltimore, which is operated by the Association of Universities for Research in Astronomy, conducts Hubble science operations for NASA.
To learn more about Webb, visit:
To learn more about Hubble, visit:
https://science.nasa.gov/hubble
The following sections contain links to download this article’s images and videos in all available resolutions followed by related information links, media contacts, and if available, research paper and Spanish translation links.
New observations from Webb combined with multiple observations from Hubble prove that Terzan 5 is a self-contained, self-enriching stellar system that contains up to four distinct star populations. It orbits within our Milky Way galaxy’s central bulge.
This image of bulge fossil fragment Terzan 5 was captured by the James Webb and Hubble space telescopes. Webb’s data are from its NIRCam (Near-Infrared Camera) and Hubble’s from its Advanced Camera for Surveys (ACS). The image shows a scale bar, compass arrows, and co…
Zoom in to Terzan 5, a star cluster that lies within the crowded central region of our Milky Way galaxy known as the bulge. The scene starts with a ground-based image of our Milky Way bulge and zooms in on and circles Terzan 5, ending with the composite image of the star system f…
Read more: Hubble’s star clusters
Explore more: ViewSpace | Forms of light: the Cluster Omega Centauri
Watch: Globular Clusters, Stellar Pockets
Watch: Sorting the Stars in Omega Centauri
Webb: News | Images | Science | Home Page
Hubble: News | Images | Science | Home Page
Laura Betz
NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center
Greenbelt, Maryland
laura.e.betz@nasa.gov
Christine Pulliam
Space Telescope Science Institute
Baltimore, Maryland
Claire Blome
Space Telescope Science Institute
Baltimore, Maryland
Astronauts aboard the International Space Station have switched on NASA’s newly upgraded Cold Atom Lab, a one-of-a-kind facility designed to improve how scientists explore the fundamental workings of matter and develop new quantum technologies. By leveraging the unique environment of microgravity in space, the lab can accomplish cutting-edge science impossible to do anywhere else.
Quantum science is the study of matter at the smallest scales, like atoms, electrons, and single particles of light. While it’s easy to imagine atoms as billiard balls bouncing off one another, they also exhibit wave-like behavior, can exist simultaneously in two places at once, and may even pass through one another.
About the size of a minifridge and operated from Earth, the Cold Atom Lab chills atoms to temperatures below minus 459 degrees Fahrenheit (minus 237 degrees Celsius). At this extreme cold, just above absolute zero, atoms form a large quantum object called a Bose‑Einstein condensate, or BEC, a collection of matter waves that is a fifth state of matter beyond solids, liquids, gases, and plasma. This object follows the rules of quantum mechanics despite being much larger than subatomic particles, and the microgravity of low Earth orbit helps make the waves even larger.
“At the coldest temperatures, matter behaves drastically different from anything we have experienced,” said Jason Williams, project scientist for Cold Atom Lab at NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Southern California, which built the facility. “The wavelike nature of matter dominates, and ultracold matter can behave in ways that are not only unexpected, but that also enable extremely precise measurements of time, gravity, and motion. The lab has lots of tools — especially with this latest upgrade — to let us probe the nature of the universe.”
The project supports five international teams studying fundamental physics. It also tests the space-readiness of quantum tools that could support future Earth science and space exploration missions.
The heart of the Cold Atom Lab is a complex set of instruments called its science module. An upgraded module launched on April 11 as part of a Commercial Resupply Services mission to the space station, enabling new kinds of experiments.
For each experiment, a strip of rubidium or potassium metal is heated to as high as 750 F (400 C) — hot enough to form a gas within the facility’s vacuum chamber. Lasers tuned to specific frequencies are then fired at the gas, draining the energy from these atoms, and cooling them by slowing them down. Once this gas has completed the laser-cooling stage, a magnetic trap captures and holds the gas in place. Through a series of complex techniques, the laboratory reduces an atom cloud’s energy further, bringing it close to a standstill and maximizing its time in microgravity.
While facilities for studying ultracold gases exist on Earth, the Cold Atom Lab can study quantum gases in microgravity for longer periods of time and at even lower temperatures. Conducting these experiments in low gravity allows scientists to study larger quantum waves that also interact for longer times with gravity. To harness these benefits, the Cold Atom Lab essentially shrinks an atom physics lab, typically the size of an entire room filled with lasers and tabletop mirrors, to fit within an experiment rack aboard the space station.
“As the first project to create Bose-Einstein condensates in orbit, we’re demonstrating that we can make quantum technology work reliably in space,” said Ethan Elliott, deputy project scientist for Cold Atom Lab at JPL. “In the previous century, there was a quantum revolution that led to lasers, cellphones, and MRIs for medical imaging. We’re performing quantum 2.0 — direct manipulation of large quantum states — and we hope for similar gains in quantum tech by advancing this science in orbit.”
The latest upgrade is the fourth since the Cold Atom Lab arrived at the space station in 2018. Key improvements include a newly designed magnetic trap that changes the shape of the quantum gas clouds, allowing scientists to test different properties related to their atoms. The upgrade also features redesigned metal strips that act as sources for those gas clouds.
“It’s the closest thing we have to controlling the boundary of the quantum world,” said Kamal Oudrhiri, project manager of Cold Atom Lab at JPL, referring to those low temperatures. “This new upgrade pushes that boundary even further.”
The upgrade, Oudrhiri added, “demonstrates NASA’s ability to maintain U.S. leadership in space-based quantum technologies while maturing future quantum instruments, such as matter-wave interferometers for fundamental physics missions, positioning, navigation, timing, and gravity sensing of Earth, the Moon, and beyond.”
Managed by Caltech in Pasadena, JPL designed, built, and operates the Cold Atom Lab, which is sponsored by the Biological and Physical Sciences division of NASA’s Science Mission Directorate at the agency’s headquarters in Washington. The division pioneers scientific discovery and enables exploration by using space environments to conduct investigations that are not possible on Earth. Studying biological and physical phenomena under extreme conditions allows researchers to advance the fundamental scientific knowledge required to go farther and stay longer in space, while also benefiting life on Earth.
To learn more about Cold Atom Lab, visit:
https://nasa.gov/cold-atom-laboratory/
Andrew Good
Jet Propulsion Laboratory, Pasadena, Calif.
818-393-2433
andrew.c.good@jpl.nasa.gov
2026-039
Astronauts aboard the International Space Station have switched on NASA’s newly upgraded Cold Atom Lab, a one-of-a-kind facility designed to improve how scientists explore the fundamental workings of matter and develop new quantum technologies. By leveraging the unique environment of microgravity in space, the lab can accomplish cutting-edge science impossible to do anywhere else.
Quantum science is the study of matter at the smallest scales, like atoms, electrons, and single particles of light. While it’s easy to imagine atoms as billiard balls bouncing off one another, they also exhibit wave-like behavior, can exist simultaneously in two places at once, and may even pass through one another.
About the size of a minifridge and operated from Earth, the Cold Atom Lab chills atoms to temperatures below minus 459 degrees Fahrenheit (minus 237 degrees Celsius). At this extreme cold, just above absolute zero, atoms form a large quantum object called a Bose‑Einstein condensate, or BEC, a collection of matter waves that is a fifth state of matter beyond solids, liquids, gases, and plasma. This object follows the rules of quantum mechanics despite being much larger than subatomic particles, and the microgravity of low Earth orbit helps make the waves even larger.
“At the coldest temperatures, matter behaves drastically different from anything we have experienced,” said Jason Williams, project scientist for Cold Atom Lab at NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Southern California, which built the facility. “The wavelike nature of matter dominates, and ultracold matter can behave in ways that are not only unexpected, but that also enable extremely precise measurements of time, gravity, and motion. The lab has lots of tools — especially with this latest upgrade — to let us probe the nature of the universe.”
The project supports five international teams studying fundamental physics. It also tests the space-readiness of quantum tools that could support future Earth science and space exploration missions.
The heart of the Cold Atom Lab is a complex set of instruments called its science module. An upgraded module launched on April 11 as part of a Commercial Resupply Services mission to the space station, enabling new kinds of experiments.
For each experiment, a strip of rubidium or potassium metal is heated to as high as 750 F (400 C) — hot enough to form a gas within the facility’s vacuum chamber. Lasers tuned to specific frequencies are then fired at the gas, draining the energy from these atoms, and cooling them by slowing them down. Once this gas has completed the laser-cooling stage, a magnetic trap captures and holds the gas in place. Through a series of complex techniques, the laboratory reduces an atom cloud’s energy further, bringing it close to a standstill and maximizing its time in microgravity.
While facilities for studying ultracold gases exist on Earth, the Cold Atom Lab can study quantum gases in microgravity for longer periods of time and at even lower temperatures. Conducting these experiments in low gravity allows scientists to study larger quantum waves that also interact for longer times with gravity. To harness these benefits, the Cold Atom Lab essentially shrinks an atom physics lab, typically the size of an entire room filled with lasers and tabletop mirrors, to fit within an experiment rack aboard the space station.
“As the first project to create Bose-Einstein condensates in orbit, we’re demonstrating that we can make quantum technology work reliably in space,” said Ethan Elliott, deputy project scientist for Cold Atom Lab at JPL. “In the previous century, there was a quantum revolution that led to lasers, cellphones, and MRIs for medical imaging. We’re performing quantum 2.0 — direct manipulation of large quantum states — and we hope for similar gains in quantum tech by advancing this science in orbit.”
The latest upgrade is the fourth since the Cold Atom Lab arrived at the space station in 2018. Key improvements include a newly designed magnetic trap that changes the shape of the quantum gas clouds, allowing scientists to test different properties related to their atoms. The upgrade also features redesigned metal strips that act as sources for those gas clouds.
“It’s the closest thing we have to controlling the boundary of the quantum world,” said Kamal Oudrhiri, project manager of Cold Atom Lab at JPL, referring to those low temperatures. “This new upgrade pushes that boundary even further.”
The upgrade, Oudrhiri added, “demonstrates NASA’s ability to maintain U.S. leadership in space-based quantum technologies while maturing future quantum instruments, such as matter-wave interferometers for fundamental physics missions, positioning, navigation, timing, and gravity sensing of Earth, the Moon, and beyond.”
Managed by Caltech in Pasadena, JPL designed, built, and operates the Cold Atom Lab, which is sponsored by the Biological and Physical Sciences division of NASA’s Science Mission Directorate at the agency’s headquarters in Washington. The division pioneers scientific discovery and enables exploration by using space environments to conduct investigations that are not possible on Earth. Studying biological and physical phenomena under extreme conditions allows researchers to advance the fundamental scientific knowledge required to go farther and stay longer in space, while also benefiting life on Earth.
To learn more about Cold Atom Lab, visit:
https://nasa.gov/cold-atom-laboratory/
Andrew Good
Jet Propulsion Laboratory, Pasadena, Calif.
818-393-2433
andrew.c.good@jpl.nasa.gov
2026-039
Astronauts aboard the International Space Station have switched on NASA’s newly upgraded Cold Atom Lab, a one-of-a-kind facility designed to improve how scientists explore the fundamental workings of matter and develop new quantum technologies. By leveraging the unique environment of microgravity in space, the lab can accomplish cutting-edge science impossible to do anywhere else.
Quantum science is the study of matter at the smallest scales, like atoms, electrons, and single particles of light. While it’s easy to imagine atoms as billiard balls bouncing off one another, they also exhibit wave-like behavior, can exist simultaneously in two places at once, and may even pass through one another.
About the size of a minifridge and operated from Earth, the Cold Atom Lab chills atoms to temperatures below minus 459 degrees Fahrenheit (minus 237 degrees Celsius). At this extreme cold, just above absolute zero, atoms form a large quantum object called a Bose‑Einstein condensate, or BEC, a collection of matter waves that is a fifth state of matter beyond solids, liquids, gases, and plasma. This object follows the rules of quantum mechanics despite being much larger than subatomic particles, and the microgravity of low Earth orbit helps make the waves even larger.
“At the coldest temperatures, matter behaves drastically different from anything we have experienced,” said Jason Williams, project scientist for Cold Atom Lab at NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Southern California, which built the facility. “The wavelike nature of matter dominates, and ultracold matter can behave in ways that are not only unexpected, but that also enable extremely precise measurements of time, gravity, and motion. The lab has lots of tools — especially with this latest upgrade — to let us probe the nature of the universe.”
The project supports five international teams studying fundamental physics. It also tests the space-readiness of quantum tools that could support future Earth science and space exploration missions.
The heart of the Cold Atom Lab is a complex set of instruments called its science module. An upgraded module launched on April 11 as part of a Commercial Resupply Services mission to the space station, enabling new kinds of experiments.
For each experiment, a strip of rubidium or potassium metal is heated to as high as 750 F (400 C) — hot enough to form a gas within the facility’s vacuum chamber. Lasers tuned to specific frequencies are then fired at the gas, draining the energy from these atoms, and cooling them by slowing them down. Once this gas has completed the laser-cooling stage, a magnetic trap captures and holds the gas in place. Through a series of complex techniques, the laboratory reduces an atom cloud’s energy further, bringing it close to a standstill and maximizing its time in microgravity.
While facilities for studying ultracold gases exist on Earth, the Cold Atom Lab can study quantum gases in microgravity for longer periods of time and at even lower temperatures. Conducting these experiments in low gravity allows scientists to study larger quantum waves that also interact for longer times with gravity. To harness these benefits, the Cold Atom Lab essentially shrinks an atom physics lab, typically the size of an entire room filled with lasers and tabletop mirrors, to fit within an experiment rack aboard the space station.
“As the first project to create Bose-Einstein condensates in orbit, we’re demonstrating that we can make quantum technology work reliably in space,” said Ethan Elliott, deputy project scientist for Cold Atom Lab at JPL. “In the previous century, there was a quantum revolution that led to lasers, cellphones, and MRIs for medical imaging. We’re performing quantum 2.0 — direct manipulation of large quantum states — and we hope for similar gains in quantum tech by advancing this science in orbit.”
The latest upgrade is the fourth since the Cold Atom Lab arrived at the space station in 2018. Key improvements include a newly designed magnetic trap that changes the shape of the quantum gas clouds, allowing scientists to test different properties related to their atoms. The upgrade also features redesigned metal strips that act as sources for those gas clouds.
“It’s the closest thing we have to controlling the boundary of the quantum world,” said Kamal Oudrhiri, project manager of Cold Atom Lab at JPL, referring to those low temperatures. “This new upgrade pushes that boundary even further.”
The upgrade, Oudrhiri added, “demonstrates NASA’s ability to maintain U.S. leadership in space-based quantum technologies while maturing future quantum instruments, such as matter-wave interferometers for fundamental physics missions, positioning, navigation, timing, and gravity sensing of Earth, the Moon, and beyond.”
Managed by Caltech in Pasadena, JPL designed, built, and operates the Cold Atom Lab, which is sponsored by the Biological and Physical Sciences division of NASA’s Science Mission Directorate at the agency’s headquarters in Washington. The division pioneers scientific discovery and enables exploration by using space environments to conduct investigations that are not possible on Earth. Studying biological and physical phenomena under extreme conditions allows researchers to advance the fundamental scientific knowledge required to go farther and stay longer in space, while also benefiting life on Earth.
To learn more about Cold Atom Lab, visit:
https://nasa.gov/cold-atom-laboratory/
Andrew Good
Jet Propulsion Laboratory, Pasadena, Calif.
818-393-2433
andrew.c.good@jpl.nasa.gov
2026-039
Riceviamo e pubblichiamo il contributo del prof. avv Stefano Zuanrelli in merito all’accordo Usa – Iran e la possibilità di transito per le navi mercantili nello stretto di Hormuz.
«Nelle indiscrezioni che si susseguono in merito all’accordo che sarebbe stato raggiunto tra USA e Iran» – scive l’avv. Zunarelli – «circa la possibilità per le navi mercantili di transitare nuovamente per lo stretto di Hormuz, non è ancora chiaro se verrà esclusa l’assoggettabilità di detto attraversamento al pagamento di qualche tipo di pedaggio (come afferma il presidente USA) o se la questione rimane tuttora aperta (come affermano fonti vicine al governo iraniano.
Il regime della navigazione negli “stretti usati per la navigazione internazionale” (tra cui rientra indiscutibilmente lo stretto di Hormuz) è stabilito dalla UNCLOS – Convenzione delle Nazioni Unite sul Diritto del Mare del 1982 (nota anche come Convenzione di Montego Bay). Tale convenzione non è stata ratificata né dagli Stati Uniti né dall’Iran, ma è comunque e quindi universalmente applicabile.
In base alla UNCLOS – Convenzione delle Nazioni Unite sul Diritto del Mare del 1982 (cui è attribuita natura di codificazione del diritto internazionale marittimo consuetudinario) negli stretti usati per la navigazione internazionale viene in ogni caso riconosciuto il diritto di passaggio in transito (art. 38 co. 2).
L’Iran contesta che la disciplina sul diritto di passaggio di transito negli stretti usati per la navigazione internazionale sia applicabile, in quanto la stessa sarebbe stata introdotta per la prima volta dall’UNCLOS (che l’Iran non ha ratificato) che non si configurerebbe, quindi, per questa parte, come l’enunciazione di un principio di diritto internazionale marittimo consuetudinario. L’Iran non contesta, tuttavia, che alle navi mercantili (e da guerra) di tutti gli stati debba essere riconosciuto nello stretto di Hormuz il diritto di passaggio inoffensivo, come tale qualificandosi il passaggio “che non arreca pregiudizio alla pace, al buon ordine e alla sicurezza dello Stato costiero” (art. 19).
Il diritto di passaggio inoffensivo ha un contenuto più ristretto del diritto di passaggio in transito, soprattutto per i sommergibili e gli altri veicoli subacquei, che sono tenuti a navigare in superficie (art. 20). Anche per le navi mercantili, poi, il diritto di passaggio inoffensivo può subire limitazioni da parte dello Stato costiero, il quale può “può emanare leggi e regolamenti in merito a una serie di materie, tra cui la sicurezza della navigazione e la regolamentazione del traffico marittimo.
Con specifico riferimento al tema, oggi oggetto di discussione, della possibilità di imporre pedaggi alle navi straniere (o addirittura solo a quelle di alcuni stati), si prevede che “nessuna tassa può essere imposta alle navi straniere per il solo motivo del loro passaggio attraverso il mare territoriale”, puntualizzandosi, poi, che “le tasse possono essere imposte a una nave straniera che passi attraverso il mare territoriale, a solo titolo di pagamento per specifici servizi resi alla nave stessa. Tali tasse sono imposte senza discriminazione” (art. 26).
Né vale l’assimilazione, che pure è stata prospettata, con quanto già avviene nei canali di Suez e di Panama. In questi ultimi casi, infatti, si tratta non di “stretti” (cioè bracci di mare – naturali – che collegano tra loro spazi ugualmente marini, come nel caso dello stretto di Hormuz) ma di “canali”, cioè di vie d’acqua che sono state realizzate mediante l’opera dell’uomo. Sul piano squisitamente giuridico, poi, mentre gli stretti rientrano tra gli “spazi marini” (cui si applicano, a seconda dei casi, i principi della libertà di navigazione o del diritto di passaggio di transito o inoffensivo) i “canali” sono qualificati come acque interne, e quindi soggette alla piena sovranità dello stato nel cui territorio rientrano, che può liberamente stabilire le condizioni per il loro attraversamento».
Conclude Zunarelli: «In definitiva, in base al diritto del mare (pattizio e consuetudinario) vigente solo a fronte della fornitura di specifici servizi finalizzati a garantire la sicurezza della navigazione lo stato costiero può richiedere il pagamento di un corrispettivo».
L'articolo Zunarelli: «Hormuz, per il transito delle navi non è legittimo imporre un pedaggio» proviene da Corriere Marittimo.
© Haiyun Jiang/The New York Times
© Erin Schaff/The New York Times
di Sandro Moiso
Amitav Acharya, Storia e futuro dell’ordine mondiale. Perché la civiltà globale sopravvivrà al declino dell’Occidente, con una prefazione di Franco Cardini, Fazi Editore, Roma 2026, pp. 552, euro 24.
L’America sta morendo: è solo un’idea sopravvissuta alla sua utilità. (The Handmaid’s Tale, stagione 5, episodio 8 – 2022)
Non vi può essere dubbio alcuno sul fatto che oggi ci si trovi, a livello planetario, in un’età di transizione, ovvero di passaggio da una globalizzazione che avrebbe dovuto rappresentare il coronamento dell’imperio politico, militare e economico dell’Occidente, sia estremo (Stati Uniti) che mediano (Europa e addentellati extra-europei) secondo la definizione che ne dà Franco Cardini, sul mercato e sulla ripartizione dei beni e delle risorse a livello mondiale ad una ripartizione di ricchezze e ruoli che vede tra i protagonisti anche altre realtà politiche, nazionali ed economiche non propriamente includibili nei valori e nelle forme da questi assunti in un Ovest che, pur mantenendo la sua posizione di riferimento orientativo sul piano geografico, è andato nel tempo sempre più restringendosi.
Un momento storico che se da un lato suscita le peggiori paure e forme di aggressività all’interno di formazioni sociali ed economiche un tempo soddisfatte dalla loro posizione di predominio, dall’altro agita le speranze non solo dei governi e delle classi dirigenti, ma anche dei popoli e delle classi sociali meno abbienti che si riconoscono negli interessi dei nuovi “competitor” scesi nel circo delle relazioni di potere internazionali. Nuovi protagonisti di giochi gladiatori di cui le varie forme di conflitto andate sviluppandosi sempre più rapidamente e su scala sempre più vasta negli ultimi anni sono la diretta emanazione. Indipendentemente dalle considerazioni su chi abbia aggredito l’altro o viceversa.
Per affrontare questo tema, che da tempo il presidente cinese Xi riassume nella “trappola di Tucidide”, facendo riferimento al rischi che l’attuale percorso di confronto economico, politico e sempre più frequentemente militare possa dare vita d una nuova guerra del Peloponneso su scala globale, in cui il ruolo di Sparta e Atene, l’una in decadenza e l’altra in ascesa, potrebbe essere rivestito dagli Stati Uniti e dalla Cina, Amitav Acharya, Distinguished Professor alla American University di Washington, D.C. ed ex presidente della International Studies Association, prova a tracciare un percorso, attraverso 5000 anni di storia, che delinea come tale passaggio di consegne, ma soprattutto di mantenimento di una pace e di un ordine internazionale, non abbia mai costituito soltanto una prerogativa della storia e degli imperi nati a Occidente. Come egli stesso afferma nella introduzione a Storia e futuro dell’ordine mondiale:
Un concetto comune ai singoli Stati e agli ordini mondiali nel corso dei secoli si riassume nell’espressione «caos versus ordine». Tale retorica ha rappresentato la principale giustificazione per il costituirsi dell’autorità politica che a sua volta deriva dal bisogno di uno Stato e di un capo forti e dal desiderio di uno Stato di conquistare o comunque controllare gli altri.
Così i faraoni egizi legittimavano la propria autorità presentandosi come forza di ma’at (ordine o armonia) che trionfava su isfet (caos o violenza). Negli antichi racconti sumeri, gli dei stessi ristabilivano l’ordine cosmico punendo i terrestri “chiassosi” e violenti e mandando loro inondazioni, malattie e morte. L’ideologia dell’Impero achemenide di Persia, fondato da Ciro il Grande, poggiava sulla dualità zoroastriana tra asha (ordine cosmico) e druj (caos e disordine). Uno dei miti cardine della civiltà indù contrappone i Deva (le forze divine dell’ordine) agli Asura (le forze demoniache del caos e dell’oscurità) in un’eterna lotta per la luce e la tranquillità. Pur evolutasi separatamente dal sistema di credenze indoeuropeo, la civiltà cinese, guidata dagli ideali confuciani e taoisti, ha estremizzato il bisogno di armonia sociale, equilibrio e stabilità per far fronte al disordine, e l’impatto di tale logica permane ancora oggi.
Pur non configurandosi strettamente come dualismo tra caos e stabilità, l’islam distingue tra Dãr al-Islam (casa o territorio dell’islam), strutturata su principi e modalità di governo islamici, e Dãr al-harb ( casa o territorio della guerra), la cui mancanza di principi islamici e di sicurezza per i musulmani autorizza a farne un bersaglio di aggressione e assimilazione. Gengis Khan e i suoi successori invocavano l’”eterno Cielo blu” (tengri), il concetto mongolo di Cielo, per legittimare la propria autorità di governo, che consisteva nell’imporre l’ordine sul caos.
In un continente sperduto e lontano, i governanti dell’impero Inca giustificavano la propria espansione spiegando ai loro vicini che la sottomissione avrebbe portato loro non solo stabilità, ma anche prosperità e giustizia. Più a nord, i sovrani aztechi sfruttavano il timore del caos e il bisogno di ordine, procurato dal dio del sole Huitzilopochtli, per giustificare il domino interno e le conquiste all’estero1
L’autore collabora con «The Washington Post», «Financial Times», «Foreign Affairs», CNN, BBC e Al Jazeera e ha vissuto e lavorato in India, Singapore, Canada, Regno Unito, Cina e Stati Uniti, mentre tra i suoi libri più noti va considerato The End of American World Order (2014), una sorta di preludio all’opera attuale uscita negli Stati Uniti nel 2025. Amitav Acharya è tra i maggiori studiosi di relazioni internazionali e da sempre cerca di farsi promotore di un approccio globale alle discipline storiche, in grado di mettere in discussione le narrazioni eurocentriche ancora oggi troppo diffuse.
A ricordarcelo è lo storico Franco Cardini che, nella sua Prefazione all’edizione italiana del testo in questione, sottolinea come abbia impressionato molti, nel dicembre 2025:
leggere nella traccia dei programmi per l’insegnamento della storia proposta dal Ministero dell’Istruzione della Repubblica Italiana, l’eco appena attutita dalla prudenza, ma netta nella sostanza, del pregiudizio inveterato secondo il quale “soltanto l’Occidente” conosce (o quantomeno “ha compreso”) la storia. Il che, peraltro, riguarderebbe non tutto l’Occidente, bensì quello “moderno”, successivo alla grande rivoluzione quattro-cinquecentesca che ha posto fine a un mondo fondato su un equilibrio tra tra civiltà che si ignoravano reciprocamente, ma tra le quali pure sussisteva una qualche comunicazione o contaminazione, come si verifica in un qualunque sistema di compartimenti stagni imperfettamente concepiti e realizzati2.
Una storia, quindi che non solo nasce con l’invenzione della scrittura, modalità narrata da secoli e già di per sé escludente per una infinità di società “altre” che della scrittura hanno potuto fare a meno, ma addirittura dalla reinvenzione occidentale del mondo. Possibilmente a sua immagina e somiglianza. Un’autentica, anche se solo pretesa, rifondazione del mondo che sembra assumere una funzione divina ancor prima che divinatoria nel concedere patenti di civiltà, o meno, ai popoli degli altri continenti.
Una rifondazione del mondo che si è avvalsa tanto delle figure di Cristo, Platone e Aristotele quanto di quelle di Cristoforo Colombo, Vasco da Gama e Ferdinando Magellano per fornire una lettura in cui i primi tre avrebbero, secoli addietro, fondato i valori etici e morali del mondo occidentale figlio della cultura greca e i secondi rappresentato gli scopritori, se non addirittura gli inventori, di un mondo che non avrebbe altrimenti avuto coscienza di sé. Così, come afferma ancora Cardini:
Approdo di tale processo – per quanto non sempre lucidamente inteso […]- è stato il razzismo genocida, del quale costituisce esempio e modello principale la storia degli Stati Uniti d’America, con le sue esperienze non casuali né episodiche, ancorché fatalmente […] entrambe imperfette, di genocidio perpetrato sia contro i native americans – basti il “caso” del nobilissimo popolo cheyenne, ingannato, combattuto e deportato fin dal 1830 dal Minnessota per mezzo di una sequenza di promesse non mantenute, di patti non osservati e di micidiali marce forzate, fino alla carneficina di Washita River del 1868 – sia contro le genti africane vittime dello slave trade3.
Ma, oggi, l’Occidente appare in declino e l’assertività del suo ordine e delle sue ipotesi e illusioni economiche, filosofiche, politiche e sociali viene sempre più messa in discussione non soltanto dai fatti (guerre, crisi economiche ricorrenti, instabilità politica e ascesa di nuove grandi potenze, come la Cina o l’India), ma anche da un’ondata di nuovi studi prodotti sia nelle sue università che in quelle dei paesi un tempo dipendenti dalle sue scelte.
I post-colonial studies, che sempre più spesso e con grande abbondanza di interventi e di ricerche rimettono in discussione il mondo e una storia narrata troppo spesso, se non sempre fino ad ora, a partire da quella dell’Occidente. Cosa che insieme alle contraddizioni ormai esplose e ad un ordine in via di implosione, fa temere a molti l’avvento di un’era di caos globale.
Ma è stata soltanto una men che pia illusione ritenere che l’Occidente potesse detenere all’infinito il monopolio dell’architettura politica che rende possibile la cooperazione e la pace tra le nazioni. Per questo motivo, ripercorrendo cinquemila anni di vicende umane, Amitav Acharya, mostra che un ordine mondiale esisteva ben prima dell’ascesa occidentale. Così, come si è già visto più sopra, passando dalla Sumeria e dall’Egitto all’India e fino alla Mesoamerica, passando per i califfati medievali, gli imperi eurasiatici e l’Africa, sembrano emergere valori politici, interdipendenze economiche e norme di condotta tra Stati affermatisi in diverse epoche e aree del pianeta.
Rivelando come l’ordine non coincida obbligatoriamente con il dominio di un solo polo. Da qui la tesi centrale del libro: anche se l’Occidente arretrerà, l’ordine potrebbe perdurare ancora a lungo. Il declino occidentale non preannuncerebbe la fine della civiltà globale, ma la possibilità di aprire la strada a più centri di potere e a un assetto più equo, in cui il “resto” del mondo abbia maggiore voce e responsabilità.
Così, invece di cedere ai timori apocalittici sulla fine della civiltà, Acharya invita l’Occidente a imparare dal passato e a cooperare con le nuove potenze per forgiare un ordine condiviso, capace di affrontare sfide comuni – guerre, sicurezza energetica, disuguaglianze – senza ricadere nelle contrapposizioni tra blocchi. Nel tentativo di andare oltre le interpretazioni geopolitiche convenzionali, Storia e futuro dell’ordine mondiale cerca di offrire una differente prospettiva storica per comprendere il presente e orientarsi nel mondo che viene. Rassicurando, in tal modo, sia le élite intellettuali che le borghesie delle potenze emergenti, oltre che di quelle declinanti, sulla possibile continuità del mantenimento, senza scosse troppo violente, degli attuali rapporti di produzione, di scambio e di valorizzazione.
«Fin qui tutto bene, come diceva l’uomo che cadeva dal trentesimo piano di un palazzo una volta giunto al ventesimo»4, ma anche se è sacrosanto e necessario smontare pezzo a pezzo l’autentica narrazione tossica su cui si è basata la giustificazione del predominio occidentale e del cosiddetto “fardello dell’uomo bianco”, che tanto ha contribuito ad avvelenare anche i principi del socialismo a cavallo tra XIX e XX secolo e poi ancora successivamente, è anche vero che la narrazione della storia per imperi, civiltà e popoli, siano essi asiatici, mesoamericani o africani, di religione mussulmana o altra ancora, rischia di riproporre gli stessi errori, le stesse illusioni e confermare i rapporti d classe già contenuti in ciò che, solo in apparenza, si vorrebbe cancellare definitivamente. Considerato che la continuità della pace dovrebbe basarsi sul mantenimento della pace sociale tra le classi, il cui sovvertimento rappresenta l’unico vero disordine e caos temuto dalle classi possidenti detentrici del potere e degli strumenti repressivi dello Stato.
Un ordine multipolare, pur essendo oggi inviso ai detentori dell’impero americano, non è di per sé garanzia di maggiore democrazia ed uguaglianza per la maggioranza dell’umanità e soprattutto delle classi lavoratrici. Mentre invece l’insistita richiesta del suo avvento da parte di molti stati interessati (BRICS, Turchia, stati del Golfo, Iran etc.) sembra preludere ad un più serrato confronto, anche e forse soprattutto militare, non soltanto con la Vecchia Europa e gli Stati Uniti, ma anche tra i vari protagonisti della rinnovata scena politica internazionale.
In cui un apparente moto di rivolta anti o post-coloniale può nascondere il tentativo di coinvolger negli interessi del capitale nazionale o di quello transnazionale le moltitudini degli oppressi. Così, pur apprezzando sinceramente l’enorme sforzo condotto da Amitav Acharya per ricostruire una storia millenaria di rapporti politici diversi e più complessi tra stati, regni e imperi del passato (Egitto, Sumeria, Persia, Cina, Kanato mongolo, India come già detto più sopra), occorre cogliere come oggi una grande quantità di studi post-coloniali sia prodotta proprio da studiosi originari del Sub-continente indiano, in cui il nazionalismo del premier Modi e del suo partito dimostra come non solo non vi siano grandi interessi comuni tra proletariato e borghesia di quella vasta area prossima ormai ai due miliardi abitanti che, grazie anche al frutto avvelenato lasciato in dono dal colonialismo inglese nel 1947 con la ripartizione tra India (induista) e Pakistan (mussulmano), rischia di dover affrontare conflitti spietati per il controllo della regione oggi e, domani, con la Cina per il controllo del mercato mondiale.
Troppo spesso, infatti, le strade per l’Inferno sono lastricate di buone intenzioni (almeno apparentemente). Considerato che gli imperi, i regni e gli stati sono sempre e solo la manifestazione del dominio di classe da parte di una ristretta élite, sia questa economica, militare, religiosa o peggio ancora etnica, sulla maggioranza della popolazione e dei meno abbienti. Uomini o donne che siano.
A. Acharya, Introduzione a Storia e futuro dell’ordine mondiale, Fazi Editore, Roma 2026, pp. 18-19. ↩
F. Cardini, Prefazione a A. Acharya, Storia e futuro dell’ordine mondiale, op.cit., p. XIV ↩
F. Cardini, op. cit., pp. XIV-XV ↩
La citazione è tratta da La haine (L’odio), film realizzato da Mathieu Kassovitz nel 1995, vincitore del premio per la miglior regia al Festival del cinema di Cannes e prima, serratissima narrazione dello scontro nelle banlieue parigine tra i giovani di seconda o terza generazione e il potere, la violenza e il razzismo dello stato francese. Si veda in proposito: G. Toni, P. Lago, Spazi contesi. Cinema e banlieue: L’odio, I miserabili, Athena, Milieu Edizioni, 2024. ↩
4 min read
NASA’s experimental X-59 aircraft marked a major milestone Friday, June 5, when it flew faster than the speed of sound for the first time, setting the stage for demonstrating its quiet supersonic capabilities later this year.
NASA test pilot Jim “Clue” Less took off and landed at Edwards Air Force Base in California, reaching a top speed of approximately Mach 1.1 (713 mph) and altitude of 43,400 feet. The X-59’s flight began at 11:08 a.m. PDT and lasted 81 minutes, with the team focusing on flying qualities at both subsonic and then supersonic speeds.
jared isaacman
NASA Administrator
”X-59 is getting ready for its quiet supersonic debut. Since the aircraft’s first flight on Oct. 28, 2025, the team has made tremendous progress, flying 16 times in the last 90 days and getting into a steady test rhythm. In the coming days, we expect to take the next step and push to Mach 1.4,” said NASA Administrator Jared Isaacman “I’m grateful to the NASA team and Lockheed Martin Skunk Works for their help getting us to this point, and I hope this is the first of many collaborations as we rebuild NASA’s X-plane portfolio.”
The X-59 is designed to fly at supersonic speeds while creating only a quiet thump instead of a loud sonic boom. For this flight, a NASA F‑15 chase plane flew nearby to monitor the X‑59. The loud sonic booms from the F-15 obscured any sound made by the X-59.
“The X-59’s first supersonic flight is a testament to America’s enduring leadership in science, engineering, and aerospace innovation,” said Michael Kratsios, Assistant to the President for Science and Technology and Director of the Office of Science and Technology Policy. “This achievement comes as the Trump Administration continues work to unleash supersonic flight and enable American ingenuity.”
This first supersonic flight is a significant milestone, but an event even more critical to the mission is upcoming. In just days, the aircraft is expected to make its first “mission conditions” flight, reaching a cruising speed of Mach 1.4 (925 mph) and altitude of approximately 55,000 feet. The X-59 also will be accompanied by a chase plane for this flight.
This speed and altitude are the base conditions for the X-59 when it will eventually fly over several U.S. communities enabling NASA to gather data about how people may perceive its quiet thump. NASA will share this data with U.S. and international regulators to help establish new data-driven noise standards to enable a future viable market for supersonic commercial flight over land.
For the last several months, the X-59 has been participating in an ongoing series of flights where the plane has been flying at a wide range of speeds and altitudes – a process known as envelope expansion. These tests are the first phase of the X-59’s flight testing. They are focused on performance and involve chase plane monitoring. When the aircraft completes this phase it will enter another, focused on its sound profile in order to verify its quiet thump capability.
The X-59 is the centerpiece of NASA’s Quesst mission, which aims to demonstrate quiet supersonic flight and help enable commercial supersonic flight over land worldwide. These advancements will help travelers reach their preferred destinations faster, spending less time in the air.
Through Quesst’s development of the X-59, NASA also will deliver design tools and technology for quiet supersonic airliners that will achieve the high speeds desired by commercial operators without disturbing people on the ground. NASA will validate design tools through ground and flight testing, providing U.S. aircraft manufacturers the ability to explore new quiet supersonic concepts, and provide them with confidence that their resulting designs will meet quiet flight requirements.
Democratic lawmakers in North Carolina introduced a trio of constitutional amendments this week aimed at protecting traditional powers of the state’s governor and reforming oversight of its court system.
The effort was prompted in part by ProPublica’s reporting, including an investigation that found that over nearly a decade, Republican lawmakers had pushed through law after law shrinking the powers of North Carolina’s governor, always a Democrat during that time.
At a press conference on Wednesday, the bills’ sponsors readily acknowledged that the initiatives are unlikely to pass, at least in the current legislative session: Republicans hold majorities in North Carolina’s House and Senate.
But in proposing the measures as changes to the state constitution, the group of eight Democrats said their goal was to make them less vulnerable to the persistent partisan warfare that has engulfed the narrowly divided swing state.
Republicans “won’t always be in the majority,” said Rep. Phil Rubin, the primary sponsor of one bill. “And when they’re not, they’re going to suddenly think these are great rules. So let’s do them now.”
Republican leaders in the House, Senate and court system did not respond to requests for comment on the bills.
Experts have long maintained that Republican power grabs have thwarted the will of North Carolina voters, removing the Democratic governor’s control or partial control over numerous boards, entities and executive prerogatives and leaving him the nation’s weakest. (Republican officials have defended the shifts, pointing out that voters also elected a GOP legislative majority.)
Rubin’s measure would bar the legislature from stripping away additional gubernatorial powers, as well as block majority leaders from what he called “government by ambush” — springing major legislation on the minority and public without notice.
“ProPublica’s reporting shows the perils of not having this law,” Rubin said. Voters should have “the opportunity to secure their constitution, demand absolute transparency in lawmaking and ensure that people, not backroom deals, have the final say.”
The two other constitutional amendments unveiled this week target aspects of the judicial system.
The first, authored by House Rep. Marcia Morey, would make disciplinary hearings and sanctions by the courts’ internal watchdog, the Judicial Standards Commission, public.
GOP rules currently cloak the commission’s work in secrecy. Behind closed doors, ProPublica revealed, the majority-Republican state Supreme Court quashed the commission’s recommendations that two Republican judges who’d admitted to committing egregious conduct violations be publicly reprimanded. (Spokespeople for the North Carolina Supreme Court and the Judicial Standards Commission declined to comment or respond to a detailed list of questions about the matter.)
Morey’s bill would also change who appoints the commission’s members, a step she called critical to preventing the “weaponization” of its work.
Currently, Republican legislative leaders and Paul Newby, the state’s conservative chief justice, appoint a majority of the commission’s members. As ProPublica has reported, in 2023 Newby encouraged the commission to investigate a Black Democratic justice who’d criticized his decision to effectively shut down a racial equity commission. (Newby, as well as spokespeople for the court and the Judicial Standards Commission, declined to comment for the story.)
Morey’s measure would divide commission appointments equally among the chief justice, the governor and the North Carolina State Bar. “Who makes decisions about discipline and who appoints the decision-makers,” she said, are critical to making the system “fair and effective.”
The second bill, sponsored by Rep. Deb Butler, would disqualify state Supreme Court justices from hearing cases in which family members are parties. Justice Phil Berger Jr. has caused controversy by ruling in multiple cases in which his father, the leader of the state Senate, is a defendant in his legislative capacity. (Berger referred recusal requests on these cases to the Republican majority on the Supreme Court, which ruled he could participate.)
Butler’s measure would also compel justices to disclose more information about large stock transactions, outside sources of income and sponsored travel. A ProPublica investigation found Newby didn’t disclose a trip to a luxurious Hawaiian resort, paid for by a conservative judicial education program. Newby and court spokespeople did not respond to requests for comment about his decision not to disclose the trip.
Butler described her bill as an effort to restore public trust. “People deserve complete confidence in the integrity of their court,” she said.
In the unlikely event that the bills pass, the public would then have the chance to vote on them in November. If not, the sponsors said, they’d revive them in the next session, by which time even some Republican strategists think that a blue wave may have flipped the North Carolina House.
“We’re committed to following through on these bills to ensure fairness and impartiality in our courts and legislature,” Morey said. “This should be the norm, not the partisan bias we have now.”
The post North Carolina Democrats Propose Changes to Block GOP Power Transfers and Secrecy appeared first on ProPublica.
If Eric Murphy loses his primary election on June 9, he believes he already knows one reason why.
Last year, the North Dakota state representative, a Republican, tried to expand the window of pregnancy in which women could access abortion. The state legislature had banned it for almost everyone from the moment of conception.
Tied up in court, the ban hadn’t yet gone into effect. But Murphy wanted to lock in a less restrictive law, making abortion accessible up to 15 weeks and even later for women whose doctors deemed it a medical necessity.
To convince his fellow legislators, he read out loud from two ProPublica stories about women in Texas who died without lifesaving care. “Physicians felt compelled to follow the law,” he said in a hearing, “and both women died so that an inane law could be followed.”
A conservative colleague had warned him not to file the bill, Murphy told ProPublica, recalling the man’s words: “I can no longer protect you from who’s going to come after you.”
There was some truth to that sentiment.
At least four Republican state lawmakers who challenged severe abortion restrictions lost support from anti-abortion groups and key party allies and went on to lose primary elections, ProPublica found.
The blueprint in those races was remarkably similar. Opponents either embraced stricter abortion policies or avoided the issue altogether. Anti-abortion organizations campaigned against the incumbents, party endorsements shifted to their opponents and activists worked to turn out voters in low-participation primary elections.
In some of the races ProPublica examined, lawmakers who replaced abortion-ban reformers went on to support even stricter abortion legislation. In South Carolina, for instance, two new senators supported a bill to eliminate almost all exceptions to the state’s abortion ban. One provision of the bill would send women convicted of illegally terminating their pregnancies to jail.
Murphy is one of at least two Republican state lawmakers now facing a contested primary after trying to modify their states’ abortion restrictions. Richard Briggs, a state senator from Tennessee, is also fighting to keep his seat. In 2019, Briggs voted for the state’s so-called trigger law — a ban that would snap into place if the federal right to abortion was ever overturned.
But he had second thoughts after that actually happened. A cardiothoracic surgeon, Briggs realized the newly activated law didn’t provide adequate protections for patients having medical complications. “As a medical doctor, I drew the line,” he said in an interview. He introduced bills for a clearer medical exception and protection for doctors who intervened in cases where a fatal fetal anomaly risked the mother’s health.
The latter bill failed and now serves as ammunition for the challenger vying for his seat in the state’s Aug. 6 primary. “My opponent consistently works to weaken Tennessee’s pro life laws,” Kent Morrell says on his campaign website, noting that Tennessee Right to Life had revoked its endorsement of Briggs.
Murphy, who teaches biomedical sciences at the University of North Dakota’s medical school, ultimately did not succeed at reforming the state’s ban. His bill failed 87-6, and the state Supreme Court later reinstated the original ban, which forbids abortion from conception, with exceptions for rape and incest up to six weeks and to save the life of the mother.
The first time Murphy ran for election, his county’s Republican Party had endorsed him. Not this time. Instead, the party endorsed his two challengers, including Jill Chandler, the executive director of a “crisis pregnancy center” who believes abortion should be banned from conception.
She told ProPublica she happened to be present in the committee room when Murphy made the case for his bill. “To know that he was an endorsed Republican candidate from my district and one that I had voted for because of that endorsement was eye-opening,” she said. “I remember thinking, ‘This can never happen again.’”
It was not the first time either Briggs or Murphy had taken positions that aggravated members of their parties in legislatures that have taken sharp turns to the right. Murphy voted against book bans and private school vouchers. Briggs had urged the public to get COVID-19 shots and has said that medical expertise should trump politics in decisions that involve public health.
Briggs expressed confidence in his election chances; he feels that voters agree with the decisions he’s made and noted that his Republican colleague, Sen. Becky Duncan Massey, survived a primary challenge over her support for abortion-ban exceptions.
Murphy believes the “silent majority” supports the intent of his abortion bill, but primary races historically have low turnout. It could come down to a handful of votes, he said.
“I might lose an election over this,” Murphy said, “but would I rather win an election by not doing the right thing?”
Mary DuBuisson, a former state Republican representative in a suburb outside of New Orleans, considers herself passionately “pro-life.” Like Briggs, she voted for her state’s near-total abortion ban in 2019. Three years later, just before Louisiana’s trigger law was implemented, it came before the legislature again.
Recognizing that women would now have to live under the restriction, DuBuisson wanted to make sure victims of rape and incest could terminate their pregnancies. When her colleagues refused to include those exceptions, she became the only Republican to vote against the ban.
A year later, she caused a stir when she sponsored a bill that would have allowed women whose pregnancies were not viable to end them. “To force a woman to carry to term with zero chance of survival is heartless and cruel,” she said at the time.
She didn’t feel it would be controversial. Other Republican women in the House told her she was doing the right thing. But when it was time to vote, another female Republican state lawmaker made a motion that ultimately succeeded at killing the bill in committee. “I mean, I just couldn’t understand,” she said of all her colleagues. “What if this was you, your daughter or granddaughter?”
When she came up for reelection, her primary opponent latched onto her record. Brian Glorioso was an attorney she had handily defeated in 2018. He called her proposed legislation a leftist attempt to circumvent the state’s abortion ban and said any “pro-abortion” doctor would falsely deem a pregnancy nonviable in records just to perform the procedure.
She beat him in the Oct. 14, 2023, primary by 384 votes — not enough to avoid a runoff.
Then, he got some extra support.
On Oct. 16, Louisiana Right to Life told its followers this runoff was key. Glorioso was expected to have a 100% “pro-life” voting record, while DuBuisson’s was 77%.
On Oct. 27, the state’s new governor-elect, Republican Jeff Landry, endorsed him, citing issues other than abortion; he wouldn’t tell ProPublica whether DuBuisson’s record on it played a role. But Landry, who had defended the state’s ban as attorney general, made clear during his campaign that he was “an unwavering defender of life, especially in the face of adversity,” citing his 100% rating from a national anti-abortion group.
“I think it partially cost me my election,” DuBuisson said of her attempts to reform the ban.
History repeated itself the following year, this time in South Carolina.
Three state senators — all Republicans who consider themselves “pro-life” — worked across party lines to defeat an abortion bill that essentially banned the procedure from conception and eliminated rape and incest exceptions. At the time, the state allowed abortion up to 20 weeks.
Sens. Sandy Senn and Penry Gustafson spoke out against limitations on abortion access for victims of rape and incest. Sen. Katrina Shealy, who had the longest tenure for a woman in the state legislature, pushed for making abortion accessible up to 12 weeks and later for exceptions in cases involving rape, incest and fatal fetal anomalies. Ultimately, a six-week window with rape, incest and fatal fetal exceptions became law.
Amid the Statehouse showdown, they were nicknamed the “Sister Senators.” All lost their county GOP’s endorsement to their male opponents.
But the bigger repercussions came from anti-abortion groups that mobilized a multifront grassroots campaign against them. Students for Life Action announced that it generated “37,000 pieces of mail, almost 130,000 personal text messages, more than 51,000 phone calls and thousands of doors knocked” to unseat the trio.
“All three of them got voted out — every single one of them lost because of that decision,” said Dr. Matthew Clark, the executive director of Personhood South Carolina, which believes abortion shouldn’t exist at all and that women who have them should be prosecuted for murder.
Clark, an allergist and Presbyterian pastor, said his group’s desired legislation has a better chance to advance now that the Sister Senators have been replaced.
Matt Leber, who beat Senn, previously co-sponsored a bill as a member of the state House that would make abortion a crime equivalent to homicide. It failed to advance, and Leber withdrew his name as a co-sponsor amid a controversy surrounding it in 2023.
This legislative session, Leber and Carlisle Kennedy, who beat Shealy, supported a bill that carries misdemeanor criminal penalties for women seeking abortions, with jail time up to two years. Senate Bill 1095 passed with supermajority support out of a committee Leber sits on.
The bill died before the session, but watchers of abortion restrictions noticed it got further than any other similarly repressive legislation ever has.
The outcomes do not neatly match public polling. Surveys in states such as South Carolina and Louisiana have found that many Republican voters support at least some exceptions to abortion bans, including in cases of rape or threats to a woman’s health.
But primary elections often draw only a small share of eligible voters, giving outsized influence to highly engaged activists and organized interest groups.
DuBuisson’s runoff drew about one-third of registered voters. Participation in the South Carolina primaries was lower still. Some races were decided on tiny margins; Senn lost hers by 33 votes.
The North Dakota GOP has moved further to the right on abortion in recent years, even as polling suggested the state’s restrictions were losing support from Republican voters. At its 2026 convention, the party passed a resolution rejecting any policies that “normalize” abortion.
North Dakota is one of the few states with a multimember system, where two representatives and one senator govern together in the same district. District 43, which Murphy currently represents, is one of the only purple districts in an otherwise deeply red state. It includes part of Grand Forks, a growing college town home to the University of North Dakota.
Murphy’s fellow representative, Democrat Zac Ista, told ProPublica he hadn’t been able to make a dent in this legislature. He announced he wouldn’t be seeking reelection, opening up an opportunity for a Republican takeover of the district.
Ista said the lack of support rallying around Murphy is due to his position on abortion, as well as culture-war legislation he refused to support. “I think it’s illustrative of that schism, where at this district level, Republicans are really trying to sort of press the most extreme conservative opinions,” Ista said.
Richard Glynn, the GOP county chair in Murphy’s district, had previously supported Murphy’s abortion bill. In written testimony, Glynn shared his experience hearing about young women performing illegal abortions when he was a freshman at the University of South Dakota in 1966. Four young women who were in sororities died from using metal hangers to terminate their pregnancies, he wrote.
“These deaths were viewed as preventable if these girls could have received competent care. Unfortunately, North Dakota is going down the same path with limited access to obstetric care that negatively impacts the health of the woman,” his letter said.
When reached by phone, Glynn said delegates in the county voted and Murphy had the least amount of votes, which is why he did not receive the county’s endorsement.
Glynn declined to answer more questions before hanging up on a reporter.
One of Murphy’s opponents, Mike Holmes, has drawn a lot of excitement — and an endorsement from Gov. Kelly Armstrong — for his expertise in energy technology and industrial development. The governor said Holmes understands “what it takes to keep North Dakota’s economy strong.” Holmes has been silent on abortion and didn’t respond to ProPublica’s requests for an interview.
Chandler, who touted her “respect for life” in a campaign mailer, is favored among anti-abortion groups. “It’s a pretty stark contrast,” said Bridget Turbide, executive director of North Dakota Right to Life, who called Murphy’s proposal “the most extreme pro-choice bill we’ve ever seen.”
Citizens Alliance of North Dakota, a conservative group that opposes abortion among other causes, paid for a mailer calling Chandler a “champion of family values.” The same group marked Murphy in “bad standing” in an online roster of legislators, questioning his alignment with North Dakota values.
Murphy’s third colleague who also represents District 43, Republican State Sen. Jeff Barta, campaigned alongside him in 2022 as part of a unified Republican ticket when the primary election was uncontested.
Asked about the upcoming race and the candidates, Barta pointed to Murphy’s proposal that would have expanded abortion access in North Dakota.
“Last session, he introduced House Bill 1488, which created a little divide there,” Barta said.
Barta said Murphy has also broken with the party on other issues.
“That probably opened the door for the third candidate to run,” Barta added. Had that not happened, Murphy would have made it to the general election without having to defend his spot on the ballot.
Before the Supreme Court overturned Roe v. Wade in 2022, lawmakers taking such nuanced stands on abortion bans may not have risked a career death sentence, said abortion historian and law professor Mary Ziegler.
“The kind of incrementalism that Eric Murphy seems to be doing is something from a bygone era, where people were more pragmatic in the movement and not punished for it,” she said.
The post These Republican Lawmakers Challenged Abortion Bans. Then They Faced Backlash. appeared first on ProPublica.
6 min read
NASA’s X-59 quiet supersonic research aircraft is preparing for some of its most significant flights yet. The X-plane is about to begin a new block of test flights that will include its first time flying faster than the speed of sound and other mission-critical objectives.
“What comes next is the first time this one-of-a-kind aircraft will fly supersonic,” said Cathy Bahm, project manager for NASA’s Low Boom Flight Demonstrator. “We are starting toward the mission conditions test point that X-59 was designed for.”
After months of flights, the X-59 team reviewed their progress in late May and now look toward the aircraft’s next series of flight tests, including higher altitudes and faster speeds. This will give engineers a look at how the X-59 handles under required operational conditions for NASA’s Quesst mission to eventually gather data on quiet supersonic flight.
The team expects the X-59 to fly supersonic – over 630 mph – for the first time at approximately 43,000 feet altitude during a series of test flights in early June, a major milestone for the aircraft. After that, it will conduct a “mission conditions” flight, where it will hit Mach 1.4 (925 mph) at approximately 55,000 feet. That speed and altitude are important because they’re NASA’s performance targets for the X-59 to eventually fly over U.S. communities to demonstrate quiet supersonic flight and collect feedback data about the aircraft’s quiet sonic “thump” from the public.
While the X-59 is designed to fly at supersonic speeds without producing a loud sonic boom, these early flights are not yet intended to demonstrate its quiet supersonic capabilities. The X-59 will be accompanied by a traditional supersonic chase plane, so any quiet thump it produces in the current phase of testing will be obscured by louder, traditional sonic booms from the chase. In supersonic flights this summer, the chase aircraft will also be outfitted with a specialized shock-sensing probe to take initial measurements of the X-59’s shock waves.
The X-59’s first block of flights successfully met several test goals, generating data for its team to analyze. After making its first flight in October 2025, it entered a scheduled period of maintenance before returning to the skies in March 2026. It has since completed 14 additional flights, marking milestones including:
Data collected during the X-59’s first block of test flights helped teams better assess critical systems, including fuel, hydraulics, environmental controls, and the eXternal Vision System, which is the aircraft’s unique series of cameras that feed into a monitor that allows the pilot to see forward instead of using a traditional windshield. Teams monitored how the aircraft behaved during takeoff, landing, and throughout flight. Strain gauges installed throughout the X-59 collected detailed information on the forces it experienced, and how its structure responded to them.
During the X-59’s upcoming flights, pilots will run through test points while engineers watch the aircraft’s performance — but now in supersonic flight conditions.
“Flying at supersonic speeds is a major milestone for the X-59 team,” Bahm said. “Every step of envelope expansion brings us closer to demonstrating the quiet supersonic capability that is at the heart of the Quesst mission. Completing the first mission-conditions flight is especially meaningful – it’s the moment where we begin validating the aircraft in the environment it was designed for.”
In addition to reaching mission condition during this block of flight tests, the X-59 will also achieve its maximum speed of Mach 1.6 (1,218 mph) and altitude of 60,000 feet.
But just because the aircraft can go that fast doesn’t mean it always will fly supersonic. Testing will continue, including a mix of subsonic and lower-altitude flights so the team can continue monitoring it in varied conditions.
“These flights not only deepen our confidence in the X-59’s performance – they mark our progression toward the future phases of the mission that will ultimately help shape the future of supersonic travel,” Bahm said.
All flights so far and in the upcoming test block are part of Phase 1 of the X-59’s Quesst mission, focused on proving the performance and airworthiness of the aircraft. Some of those flights will include early deployment of equipment, including a probe mounted to one of NASA’s F-15 research aircraft that can measure the X-59’s unique shock wave signature.
Data gathered during those early probing flights will allow engineers to prepare for a new stage of work set to begin later this year: Quesst Phase 2, when teams will begin to measure the aircraft’s supersonic flight signature to verify that it’s producing a quiet supersonic thump, as designed.
“Aviation pioneer Otto Lilienthal said, ‘To design a flying machine is nothing. To build one is something. But to fly is everything.’ The 15 X-59 flights we’ve accomplished since March have been everything to this team and the mission,” Bahm said. “Every flight has pushed the boundaries of what’s possible, steadily expanding the envelope and strengthening our confidence in the aircraft.”
But, she said, rather than focusing on past progress, the team is already looking ahead.
“As we look ahead to the upcoming flights, we’re poised to open the envelope even further – moving boldly toward the mission test point this aircraft was built to achieve,” Bahm said. “Flying supersonic and reaching these milestones isn’t just progress; it’s the realization of years of perseverance, innovation, and teamwork. Each step brings us closer to Phase 2, and to the future of commercial supersonic flight.”
4 min read
From high‑speed research flights to high‑altitude science campaigns, NASA depends on aircraft that perform at their best and the ground crews who keep them mission ready.
At NASA’s Armstrong Flight Research Center in Edwards, California, specially trained maintenance crews are essential to keeping the agency’s aircraft flying safely and reliably.
This year, NASA added two F-15s and a Pilatus PC-12 to its fleet at Armstrong. These aircraft – alongside platforms such as the high-altitude ER-2s and NASA’s newest X-plane, the X-59 – reflect a wide range of capabilities. The maintenance staff is responsible for keeping each one mission ready.
“That’s the beauty of our Armstrong maintenance teams. They adapt to any type of change,” said Jose “Manny” Rodriguez, NASA Armstrong Gulfstream G-IV crew chief. “One day you could have an instrument being loaded, and the next day it may be aircraft reconfiguration, all while other aircraft systems may need fixing. They adapt and they overcome any situation.”
Each aircraft supports a specific mission, whether it’s conducting science research, serving as a support or chase aircraft, or assisting NASA rocket launches. The aircraft fly at different speeds, carry specialized hardware, and require maintenance crews to stay agile with fast-paced changes.
To ensure NASA can make aeronautics and science advancements safely, the crews work continuously, checking on the ejection seats, filling the tanks with fuel, and changing out brakes, wheels, wiring, and hardware constantly, all of which can degrade with each flight.
On any given day, an aircraft may be flight-ready for a mission, undergoing scheduled maintenance or modifications, or down for longer-term care.
There are typically multiple NASA Armstrong aircraft in the air in one day. Currently, the center’s C-20A is flying in Peru and Panama, the X-59 is often flying twice per day with a chase plane, and the center’s ER-2 is flying in Colorado, supporting the Geological Earth Mapping Experiment (GEMx). All this work is happening at the same time, and Armstrong’s skilled maintenance staff is prepping and fixing aircraft as needed along the way.
The team includes mechanics with both military and civilian backgrounds, and the job involves a lot of on-the-job training.
Maintenance crews are composed of:
After the maintenance crew ensures the aircraft is in the best condition possible, the team tows it out to the flightline, and it becomes ready for operations. The NASA pilot assigned to the mission will walk around the aircraft with the assigned crew chief for a final safety check before flight.
“There is a crew chief assigned to every aircraft,” Rodriguez said. “The crew chief is responsible for the integrity of that aircraft, and at the end of the day, his signature and the pilot’s together are what constitutes that the aircraft is safe for flight.”
Maintenance crews track each flight to help ensure it completes the mission without returning early. If an aircraft does return to base early, the maintenance team stands ready. When it lands, the crew is right there again, helping the research team complete the mission and fixing whatever is needed to stay nimble and ready for the next flight.
“It’s difficult at times to work with different airplanes from both the civilian and military sides, but it’s very rewarding to see that we have the capability and the expertise to keep these aircraft flying,” Rodriguez said.
Editor’s Note: This advisory was updated May 22, 2026 to include a retirement.
NASA announced Friday an agencywide realignment to increase mission focus and move out on the National Space Policy. These changes position the agency to better deliver on the nation’s highest‑priority objectives with speed and efficiency.
During the Ignition event in late March, NASA Administrator Jared Isaacman and agency leaders outlined the most pressing objectives to deliver on the next chapter of American leadership in space. President Trump’s Executive Order Ensuring American Space Superiority, otherwise known as the National Space Policy, directed NASA to focus talent and resources on objectives including accelerating the Artemis program, establishing a Moon Base, developing a nuclear space reactor, igniting the orbital economy, and expanding missions of science and discovery.
To support the agency’s ambitious short- and long-term goals, NASA is taking action to increase specialization at centers and integrate mission directorates, elevating delivery of technically excellent work. Some of these actions include:
“This initiative reflects NASA’s extreme focus on executing the mission in direct support of the National Space Policy. We are focusing resources on the most pressing objectives only NASA is capable of undertaking and liberating the workforce from unnecessary bureaucracy and obstacles that impede progress. We aim to rebuild competencies and instill a culture that attracts the best and brightest capable of pursuing the most demanding engineering challenges and moving safely and urgently,” said Isaacman. “There will be no reduction in force, no program cancellations, no closures, but we will achieve cost savings through more efficient execution and taking an active role in delivering the outcomes the world has been waiting for from NASA. This is how we deliver on the mission, meet the moment, and continue to make history on behalf of the American people.”
Mission directorate realignment is as follows:
Additional leadership roles, in alphabetical order, include:
Leadership at unlisted centers remains unchanged.
For more, please visit:
https://www.nasa.gov/nasa-leadership
-end-
Bethany Stevens / Camille Gallo
Headquarters, Washington
202-358-1600
bethany.c.stevens@nasa.gov / camille.m.gallo@nasa.gov
A South Dakota State University team took first place at NASA’s fifth annual Gateways to Blue Skies Competition, which challenged student teams to address a critical element of U.S. aviation: aircraft maintenance.
This year’s competition, RepAir: Advancing Aircraft Maintenance, asked teams of postsecondary students to develop innovative systems and practices that could advance commercial aircraft maintenance and repair operations by 2035. The competition, sponsored by NASA’s University Innovation project within the agency’s Aeronautics Research Mission Directorate, supported the agency’s objectives of fostering innovative research and strengthening the future aviation workforce.
“This year’s finalists proposed novel ideas to equip companies and their workers with innovative technologies to help keep our nation’s planes airworthy. This is especially critical in a time where flight safety is more commonly in the spotlight and where workforce shortages lead to challenges and opportunities in aviation,” said Steven Holz, associate project manager for NASA’s University Innovation Project and judging panel chair for Gateways to Blue Skies. “Our panel of industry and subject matter experts were excited about the possibilities these concepts could bring, as well as shared insights needed for these teams to push forward for real-world implementation.”
The winning project, WINGMAN, proposed augmented reality safety glasses equipped with voice-controlled manuals, automatic documentation, and photo recognition that could assist aircraft mechanics during routine daily servicing and minor repairs. The glasses would function as the mechanic’s “wingman,” enabling hands-free access to the information and reporting mechanisms required for line inspections.
The WINGMAN team presented their research along with seven finalists at the 2026 Gateways to Blue Skies Forum held May 18 and 19 at NASA’s Langley Research Center in Hampton, Virginia. The forum was judged by subject matter experts from NASA, the Federal Aviation Administration, and industry, including representatives from Southwest Airlines and American Airlines. Students at the forum had the opportunity to network with NASA and industry experts, tour the center, and gain insight into potential careers. The event was livestreamed, and the presentations were recorded.
The winning team members will have the opportunity to intern at one of NASA’s four aeronautics research centers during the 2026-27 academic year, including NASA Langley, NASA’s Glenn Research Center in Cleveland, NASA’s Ames Research Center in California’s Silicon Valley, and NASA’s Armstrong Flight Research Center in Edwards, California.
“It was super exciting to participate in Gateways to Blue Skies, especially with the really interesting concepts this year,” said Owen Diede, WINGMAN team lead. “We couldn’t have done it without the feedback and support from our faculty advisor, Dr. Todd Letcher, as well as our design review committee, Dr. Ruyi Lian and Dr. Cody Christensen. This was a fantastic opportunity to learn and grow, and we are incredibly thankful for the experience.”
Other recognitions included:
The commercial aviation industry is a crucial component of the U.S. economy, yet it faces significant challenges due to a shortage of qualified maintenance workers and increasing demands to keep aircraft running for longer. NASA is dedicated to working with commercial, academic, and government partners to advance the capabilities and performance of U.S. aviation.
The Gateways to Blue Skies Challenge is part of the Transformative Aeronautics Concepts Program in NASA’s Aeronautics Research Mission Directorate. The NASA Tournament Lab, part of the Prizes, Challenges, and Crowdsourcing Program in the Space Technology Mission Directorate, manages the challenge through the National Institute of Aerospace on behalf of NASA.
For more information about NASA’s Aeronautics Research Mission Directorate, visit:
3 min read
NASA’s home for experimental flight is welcoming more flyers to its already high-performing fleet as it continues to support science and aeronautics test missions – continuing the legacy of pioneers like Neil Armstrong.
NASA’s Armstrong Flight Research Center in Edwards, California, added multiple aircraft this year: two F-15s supersonic jets, a Pilatus PC-12 utility plane, and a T-34 turboprop trainer, which the center will use to support the agency’s advancement of aerospace research.
Throughout the center’s history, pilots have flown everything from large aircraft like the 747 Shuttle Carrier Aircraft and rocket-powered airplanes like the X-15 to high-speed repurposed fighter jets like the F-18. And after almost 80 years, flight research is still going strong in the desert today.
“Armstrong has a rich history of flight research, but it’s the multidimensional skills of the people we have here, and the knowledge they’ve built to handle very unique aircraft maintenance and modifications, that stands out,” said Darren Cole, capabilities manager for the Flight Demonstrations and Capabilities project at NASA Armstrong.
Darren Cole
Capabilities Manager at NASA Armstrong
The center plays a pivotal role in worldwide airborne science missions, flying scientists and equipment from NASA, other government agencies, industry, and academia to collect measurements such as air pollution levels, glacier melt trends, and wildland fire mapping.
Scientists can manage experiments in real time aboard flying laboratories like the NASA ER-2, to collect important data with the help of Armstrong’s pilots and airborne science team.
“We all come together to make the science happen,” said Matt Berry, airborne research platforms branch chief at NASA Armstrong. “It is the agility of the Armstrong team that allows us to collaborate with scientists, get their equipment onboard, and to fly them to areas where they need to collect data.”
The center sits on Rogers Dry Lake, a 44-square-mile slat flat area used for aviation research and test operations. Rogers and the adjacent Rosamond Dry Lake have seen everything from space shuttle landings to emergency test flight recoveries. The Rogers lakebed continues to serve as an important piece of Armstrong’s test missions.
For NASA Armstrong, it all started with the first attempt by a human to fly faster than the speed of sound in the Bell X-1. In 1946, 13 employees from NASA’s predecessor agency, the National Advisory Committee for Aeronautics (NACA), arrived at what was then known as Muroc Army Airfield to prepare for the X-1 tests. A year later, NACA’s Muroc Flight Test Unit was established as a permanent facility at the airfield.
The center has gone by several names over the years, most recently changing from NASA’s Dryden Flight Research Center to NASA Armstrong in 2014. But its legacy has never shifted: The Bell X-1E, the last of the X-1 series of aircraft, now sits in front of NASA Armstrong, welcoming the newest test pilots, engineers, scientists, explorers, and dreamers. And they’re using the aircraft of today to break new barriers.
“I don’t think there is another place in the world with a more diverse fleet of aircraft. We have everything from a low-altitude powered glider to ER-2s, which are flying at high altitudes, and a multitude of aircraft in between,” Cole said.
From sourcing rare components to machining custom parts in-house, NASA Armstrong’s teams transform these aircraft into research workhorses. The center continues its crucial role in leading aeronautics testing, Earth science research, and supporting government and industry partners.
6 min read
A team of Cornell University students are turning heads within industry and the federal government with the results of their research into creating a national air transportation management system in which thousands of drones could safely operate together.
NASA is sponsoring their work through the University Student Research Challenge (USRC), which provides grants to college students interested in helping the agency realize its aeronautical research goals.
“Looking at new traffic management systems for drones is not new,” said Mehrnaz Sabet, a doctoral student in the field of information science who serves as principal investigator on the grant and leads the Cornell team. “In fact, NASA has led that effort for years.”
Now, through USRC, NASA is giving Sabet and her team the chance to offer up innovative approaches to drone safety by managing their movements in the air, taking advantage of their young minds and fresh ideas.
The ultimate benefit of Cornell’s research in this area is the full realization of advanced air mobility, an area of industry focus that includes everything from urban flying taxis, more robust disaster response aircraft, and hot fresh pizza delivered right to your door.
The work also underscores the value NASA places on maturing cutting-edge technologies and helping to develop its future workforce through initiatives like USRC.
“Sabet and her team have demonstrated versatile skills involving software, algorithms, hardware, sensors development, laboratory tests, simulations, and actual flight tests – a rare combination,” said Parimal Koperdekar, acting director of NASA’s Airspace Operations and Safety Program.
Currently, drone operators must file plans that fully describes the intended flight path of the drone with a traffic management service. Those plans are checked with others to ensure there will be no collisions – what Sabet calls strategic deconfliction.
The challenge is that today’s air traffic management system is limited in its ability to handle the growing number of aircraft taking to the sky. Adding thousands of drones to the mix during the coming years risks over burdening the system, Sabet said.
What is needed in the air is essentially what we have on the ground – where millions of people drive on a road every day, she said.
As a driver you might know your whole “trajectory,” or the path you’d follow to reach your destination. But you would never coordinate your plan with every other driver on the road before you leave. Instead, traffic laws and infrastructure such as stop lights and traffic signs allow you to deconflict with other cars as you go.
Drone operators will still have to file flight plans saying where they intend to go, but the idea is to incorporate that car-like flexibility into drone operating systems, allowing them to be adaptable during their journeys.
“We need to ensure all these different types of drones can tactically deconflict with each other so that it is safe for them to operate like cars do on the ground. And that missing piece – tactical deconfliction – is at the center of our project,” Sabet said.
The key to the Cornell team’s research is the notion of integrating a simulated world with the real one to test and demonstrate how drones can learn to adapt to potentially hazardous conditions and make necessary corrections in their flight path on their own.
Knowing they could not go out and fly 100 drones at the same time to test their ideas for tactical deconfliction, the students decided to create an entirely virtual urban world to evaluate different high-volume traffic models, separation algorithms, and related data.
“Our first year of the project went into adapting and scaling that simulation engine and it all went very well,” Sabet said. “But we didn’t want to stick to a simulation. We wanted to see how the simulation translated to the real world, which mattered more.”
Still hampered by the limitations of how many drones they could operate and where they could fly – not many and basically in the middle of nowhere – they sought the best of both worlds, real and imagined.
“What we wound up doing was to embed the simulation into a real drone, so the drone thought it was flying in a dense urban environment although it was actually flying out in an open field where there wasn’t a real city in sight,” Sabet said.
drone flight test
This allowed the team to try out different traffic management tools and evaluate how drones might coordinate course corrections and avoid collisions with each other.
During the past year, they’ve taken the idea further by flying two real drones in the real world, each running the real-time simulation on board, allowing them to coordinate and “see” both simulated traffic and each other within the integrated test environment.
“We would then intentionally put them on a direct collision course to stress-test the detect and avoid and coordination models and see how well they react and coordinate the drone’s maneuvers to avoid hitting each other,” Sabet said.
Their success struck a chord with NASA experts in Unmanned Aircraft Systems Traffic Management (UTM).
“What’s impressive is that Cornell’s study included over 10,000 runs involving more than one million trajectories, and over 200,000 hours of experimentation to understand how multi-agent decentralized coordination would safely take place,” Kopardekar said.
Industry and the Federal Aviation Administration have also responded positively to this research and its potential. The team was asked to use its infrastructure and technology to virtually recreate an incident in 2025 in which a pair of drones collided with a stationary crane in Arizona. The team also showed how the accident could have been prevented.
The team was also asked to simulate recent, real-world fires in California to showcase how drones could better coordinate their movements both to provide situational awareness for public safety officials on the ground and to stay clear of fire-suppressing air tankers.
And according to the Cornell team, the FAA is interested in applying the project’s mix of virtual and real-world testing to evaluate drone operations under increasing levels of operational complexity.
“This kind of mixed-reality type of operational complexity enables them to test drone operations in a way that was not possible before,” Sabet said.
Thanks to NASA’s support through USRC, the Cornell team will continue to expand their capabilities and manage increasingly complex advanced air mobility operations.
“Our goal is to build the foundational systems that enable safe, large-scale autonomy in the skies,” Sabet said.
USRC is an opportunity within NASA’s Transformative Aeronautics Concepts Program under the agency’s Aeronautics Research Mission Directorate.
Jim Banke is a veteran aviation and aerospace communicator with more than 40 years of experience as a writer, producer, consultant, and project manager based at Cape Canaveral, Florida. He is part of NASA Aeronautics' Strategic Communications Team and is Managing Editor for the Aeronautics topic on nasa.gov. In 2007 he was recognized with a Distinguished Public Service Medal, NASA's highest honor for a non-government employee.
3 min read
NASA and Boeing have completed wind tunnel testing to study an innovative advanced aircraft design intended to improve aerodynamic efficiency.
A truss-braced wing configuration, involving a long, thin wing with aerodynamically shaped structural supports, has the potential to reduce fuel and operational costs for future airliners, which is why NASA has collaborated with Boeing to advance the design.
But this kind of wing would be much more than a simple tweak to existing designs – for an aircraft the size of a passenger jet, it would be a revolutionary redesign, requiring extensive study from NASA and Boeing.
The most recent round of testing used a complex wind tunnel model to collect data on how air flows around a truss-braced wing model and the forces that would be exerted on such a wing in flight.
The test used a semispan model – essentially half an aircraft mounted on a wind tunnel floor. The model has features built in to simulate the mechanisms that increase the amount of lift a wing produces. By adjusting the model’s slats, flaps, and other moving control surfaces, the team can configure it to the low speed, high-lift settings of takeoff and landing conditions.
The model is part of a collaboration to test what’s known as Boeing’s Subsonic Ultra Green Aircraft Research (SUGAR) concept.
In December, teams completed testing of the model wind tunnel operated by the company QinetiQ in Farnborough, England. This large wind tunnel uses pressurized conditions to predict airplane behavior in takeoff and landing conditions.
The large size of the tunnel gives the model fidelity to better predict the behavior of a plane in flight. This capability allowed the team to confidently assess aerodynamic performance.
NASA and Boeing research teams analyzed data in real time to ensure the model performed as expected. Researchers are still reviewing the full results, but the test has already added valuable information to a growing body of research aimed at reducing fuel use in future aircraft designs.
The testing was just the latest stop for this research. NASA and Boeing have tested the concept at multiple NASA facilities to collect data as they work to build a comprehensive understanding of this advanced airframe concept.
This collaboration serves as an example of how NASA serves as an incubator for breakthrough technology with profound commercial applications. The transonic truss-braced wing concept originated from NASA aeronautics-supported research and NASA and Boeing engineers have worked together, test-by-test, to move this wing design from an idea to a practical reality.
The work began in NASA’s Advanced Air Vehicles Program and continues as part of the Subsonic Flight Demonstrator project under the Integrated Aviation Systems Program in the agency’s Aeronautics Research Mission Directorate.
4 min read
There’s no sign reading “home sweet home” in the hangar where the X‑59 now sits, but the sentiment is unmistakable among those tending to the quiet supersonic aircraft.
Located at NASA’s Armstrong Flight Research Center in Edwards, California, the X-59 hangar was built in 1968 but looks like new thanks to a full renovation and modernization. While the X-59 was being assembled in Palmdale, California, workers at NASA Armstrong gutted the hangar, adding new electrical wiring, a fire suppression system, office space, air conditioning, and other safety features.
“The whole team is incredibly proud of what we’ve accomplished in preparing this new home for the X-59,” said Bryan Watters, the NASA project manager at Armstrong who led the renovation effort. “The fact we could take a 1960s hangar and modernize it for use by a 2020’s X-plane is very special.”
The X-59 is the centerpiece of NASA’s Quesst mission to enable a new era of commercial supersonic air travel over land by reducing the sound of typically loud sonic booms to a much quieter sonic thump.
When NASA test pilot Nils Larson successfully took the X-59 into the air for the first time on Oct. 28, 2025, he flew from the Lockheed Martin Skunk Works assembly site in Palmdale to nearby NASA Armstrong, from where test flights have continued to make progress.
From the beginning of the program, knowing the X-59 would eventually need a new residence at NASA Armstrong, Quesst managers were on the hunt for somewhere to house the quiet supersonic demonstrator.
Like anyone looking for the ideal place to call home, the team made sure there would be enough space for the airplane and all its support equipment. But with the experimental jet measuring at just under 100 feet long and 30 feet wide, there were few options.
“We had to find a hangar that was long enough so that part of the X-59 wouldn’t hang outside, exposed to the elements,” Watters said.
Building 4826, as the hangar is officially designated, turned out to be the choice spot. “It was basically stripped down and gutted so that essentially it was just structural steel with siding. From that state it was rebuilt,” Watters said.
The feature they are perhaps most proud of is the hangar’s new floor. Covering more than 32,000 square feet, it is coated with epoxy that prevents any spills from seeping into the concrete.
From the hangar’s office windows, the view of the hangar floor can include the F-15 research jets that will be used as chase planes to support X-59 flights in the coming months. The renovation faced challenges along the way, chief among them being supply chain issues stemming from the COVID-19 pandemic. But there were some incredible, unforgettable moments too.
past and present
With X-59 now flying regularly and comfortably settled into its new digs, the Quesst team is gauging its performance on the way to quiet supersonic flight.
“This is truly a great time for Quesst and the X-59,” said Cathy Bahm, NASA’s project manager for the Low Boom Flight Demonstrator. “It’s also still a little surreal to be able to just walk down from your office and see the airplane in our hangar.”
For more than a year, the hangar refurbishment team worked through every detail of the X-59’s new home to make sure it would be safe and sound. But actually seeing the aircraft occupy that space is an adjustment for them, too.
“We’ve looked at X-59 models on our desk for years and then, you know, there’s the real thing right in front of us, in a hangar that we renovated,” Watters said.
A real thing in the hangar – and streaking across the California desert sky. The X-59’s transition from an idea into a working aircraft is a testament to the teams that help build out every aspect of its infrastructure.
NASA’s X-59 is supported under the agency’s Aeronautics Research Mission Directorate.
Jim Banke is a veteran aviation and aerospace communicator with more than 40 years of experience as a writer, producer, consultant, and project manager based at Cape Canaveral, Florida. He is part of NASA Aeronautics' Strategic Communications Team and is Managing Editor for the Aeronautics topic on nasa.gov. In 2007 he was recognized with a Distinguished Public Service Medal, NASA's highest honor for a non-government employee.
8 min read
For 10 years, a NASA initiative has helped the agency produce breakthrough aeronautical innovations while fostering the aviation workforce of tomorrow – and the University Leadership Initiative (ULI) is still flying high, making awards with the potential to change 21st century air travel.
Through ULI, NASA has supported more than 1,100 students at 100 schools, allowing them to pursue advancements in top priority areas for U.S. aviation, including high-speed flight, advanced air mobility, future airspace management and safety, and electrified propulsion.
Many of those students have used their ULI experience as a springboard to careers in aviation. And many of their ideas — such as designing more efficient wings or building supersonic aircraft that can change shape in flight — are either being investigated further by industry or the technologies adopted outright.
As it celebrates a decade of success, NASA’s ULI team is looking forward to leveraging student innovations with new awards in 2026 and beyond.
“Through ULI we’re building the workforce of the future and fostering the skill sets we so desperately need to compete globally,” said John Cavolowsky, director of NASA’s Transformative Aeronautics Concepts Program at NASA Headquarters in Washington.
john cavolowsky
Director, Transformative Aeronautics Concepts Program
What makes ULI unique from other NASA research projects, and especially appealing to universities, is that it provides the opportunity for university students and faculty to propose what research to conduct.
Usually, NASA determines the research it needs and then does the work itself or through partnerships and contracts. But with ULI, the agency shares its goals and universities consider how they can best help realize them.
“There are no better ways in my mind to help develop that talent within the students than to engage them in identifying big problems and then give them the resources they need to use their creativity to solve them,” Cavolowsky said.
NASA’s relationship with academia and reliance on its research proficiency is written into NASA’s DNA going back to the days of the National Advisory Committee for Aeronautics, from which NASA was formed in 1958.
“For more than a century we have leaned on the brilliance and the capabilities of universities to help us think,” Cavolowsky said. “With ULI we can ensure they continue to bring their fresh ideas and young energy to the work we do at NASA Aeronautics.”
ULI evolved from an earlier project called Leading Edge Aeronautics Research for NASA (LEARN). NASA selected five LEARN teams in 2015 to pursue truly outside of the box ideas that showed promise but needed additional study.
One of those teams, for example, sought to take a cue from migrating flocks of birds by asking if airliners could save fuel by cruising in a giant ‘V’ formation. The numbers were intriguing and simple flight tests proved the concept, although the idea never made it to practice.
Slightly retooled but keeping the innovative spirit of LEARN, ULI was officially announced in 2016 and a year later NASA selected five teams of university professors and students to contribute solutions to the biggest aeronautical challenges of the 21st century.
A decade later, NASA has made a total of $220 million in awards to 33 teams over eight rounds of solicitations
One of the earliest selected ULI teams was led by James Coder, who at the time was an aerospace engineering professor at the University of Tennessee in Knoxville. His team worked on technology that would smooth the airflow around a wing to make it more efficient.
Technically known as slotted natural laminar flow (SNLF) wings, Coder has called the idea a potential game changer for commercial airliners. The more efficient wing would mean less drag on an airplane, which in turn could help airlines save money on fuel.
Coder credits ULI for not only helping to prove the technology’s effectiveness – with the aid of wind tunnel testing at NASA’s Ames Research Center in California – but for providing students with an experience they couldn’t get elsewhere.
“After 10 years industry remains interested in the SNLF technology and I am optimistic for good reason about its future,” Coder said. “And project alumni have gone on to do many wonderful things and leverage what they did and learned through the ULI.”
With ULI experience prominent on their resumes, several of the students on Coder’s team wound up with jobs in industry – such as Boeing and Lockheed Martin – and government labs. One is currently a NASA Pathways intern working on his PhD.
Now at Pennsylvania State University, Coder remains a strong advocate for ULI.
“It goes above and beyond simple workforce development,” he said. “We recognized early on the value-add of ULI is the students themselves. While we could have just trained students en masse, we wanted to put them in the front seat of technical leadership on the project. I think this was a very successful strategy that benefited the project and the students as they embarked on their careers.”
Forrest Carpenter is another example of a student whose ULI support led to work after graduation – in this case at NASA.
“Working on the ULI project was an incredible experience, one I will always be thankful for and will remember fondly,” Carpenter said. “I think the project challenged me to be something more than ‘just an engineer;’ really helping my professional development and giving me a clearer focus on my passion.”
As a student at Texas A&M, he was part of a team selected by NASA in 2017 to research a novel idea in which a supersonic aircraft could alter its shape to fly more efficiently based on the atmospheric conditions in real time. Dimitris Lagoudas, now the university’s interim department head for aerospace engineering, led the team.
A laser shooting out ahead of the aircraft would take measurements of the oncoming air and then the aircraft’s computer would command patches of shape memory alloys and other mechanisms to morph the aircraft’s outer shape.
One possible application of the technology could be in contributing to the reduction of the loudness of a sonic boom, expanding on the science behind NASA’s X-59 quiet supersonic technology demonstrator that seeks to reduce the sonic boom to a sonic thump.
“My main research role on the team was performing Computational Fluid Dynamics simulations of the various geometries we were looking at, including a pre-production version of X-59,” Carpenter said.
His work on the idea continues. A follow-on NASA project, GoSWIFT, will flight test the core technologies Carpenter and his ULI team worked on at Texas A&M. Only this time, Carpenter is the co-lead for the tests, which are targeted to take place at NASA’s Armstrong Flight Research Center in California in the near future.
Carpenter’s enthusiasm for his work and gratitude for how ULI led to his career with NASA resonates with many other ULI alumni.
“The number of students impacted, and how they were impacted, by a long-term project like ULI is huge,” Carpenter said. “NASA’s involvement in this kind of activity can only strengthen the research done in this country and to help inspire and develop the next generation of our workforce.”
ULI is supported by the Transformative Aeronautics Concepts Program within NASA’s Aeronautics Research Mission Directorate, which publishes ULI solicitations and other opportunities to collaborate with the agency’s aeronautical innovators.
Jim Banke is a veteran aviation and aerospace communicator with more than 40 years of experience as a writer, producer, consultant, and project manager based at Cape Canaveral, Florida. He is part of NASA Aeronautics' Strategic Communications Team and is Managing Editor for the Aeronautics topic on nasa.gov. In 2007 he was recognized with a Distinguished Public Service Medal, NASA's highest honor for a non-government employee.
PyTorch Foundation to foster an ecosystem of vendor-neutral projects alongside founding members AMD, AWS, Google Cloud, Meta, Microsoft Azure, and NVIDIA
DUBLIN – September 12, 2022 – The Linux Foundation, a global nonprofit organization enabling innovation through open source, today announced PyTorch is moving to the Linux Foundation from Meta where it will live under the newly-formed PyTorch Foundation. Since its release in 2016, over 2400 contributors and 18,0000 organizations have adopted the PyTorch machine learning framework for use in academic research and production environments. The Linux Foundation will work with project maintainers, its developer community, and initial founding members of PyTorch to support the ecosystem at its new home.
Projects like PyTorch—that have the potential to become a foundational platform for critical technology—benefit from a neutral home. As part of the Linux Foundation, PyTorch and its community will benefit from many programs and support infrastructure like training and certification programs, research, and local to global events. Working inside and alongside the Linux Foundation, PyTorch will have access to the LFX collaboration portal—enabling mentorships and helping the PyTorch community identify future leaders, find potential hires, and observe shared project dynamics.
“Growth around AI/ML and Deep Learning has been nothing short of extraordinary—and the community embrace of PyTorch has led to it becoming one of the five-fastest growing open source software projects in the world,” said Jim Zemlin, executive director for the Linux Foundation. “Bringing PyTorch to the Linux Foundation where its global community will continue to thrive is a true honor. We are grateful to the team at Meta—where PyTorch was incubated and grown into a massive ecosystem—for trusting the Linux Foundation with this crucial effort.”
“Some AI news: we’re moving PyTorch, the open source AI framework led by Meta researchers, to become a project governed under the Linux Foundation. PyTorch has become one of the leading AI platforms with more than 150,000 projects on GitHub built on the framework. The new PyTorch Foundation board will include many of the AI leaders who’ve helped get the community where it is today, including Meta and our partners at AMD, Amazon, Google, Microsoft, and NVIDIA. I’m excited to keep building the PyTorch community and advancing AI research,” said Mark Zuckerberg, Founder & CEO, Meta.
The Linux Foundation has named Dr. Ibrahim Haddad, its Vice President of Strategic Programs, as the Executive Director of the PyTorch Foundation. The PyTorch Foundation will support a strong member ecosystem with a diverse governing board including founding members: AMD, Amazon Web Services (AWS), Google Cloud, Meta, Microsoft Azure and NVIDIA. The project will promote continued advancement of the PyTorch ecosystem through its thriving maintainer and contributor communities. The PyTorch Foundation will ensure the transparency and governance required of such critical open source projects, while also continuing to support its unprecedented growth.
Member Quotes
AMD
“Open software is critical to advancing HPC, AI and ML research, and we’re ready to bring our experience with open software platforms and innovation to the PyTorch Foundation,” said Brad McCredie, corporate vice president, Data Center and Accelerated Processing, AMD. “AMD Instinct accelerators and ROCm software power important HPC and ML sites around the world, from exascale supercomputers at research labs to major cloud deployments showcasing the convergence of HPC and AI/ML. Together with other foundation members, we will support the acceleration of science and research that can make a dramatic impact on the world.”
Amazon Web Services
“AWS is committed to democratizing data science and machine learning, and PyTorch is a foundational open source tool that furthers that goal,” said Brian Granger, senior principal technologist at AWS. “The creation of the PyTorch Foundation is a significant step forward for the PyTorch community. Working alongside The Linux Foundation and other foundation members, we will continue to help build and grow PyTorch to deliver more value to our customers and the PyTorch community at large.”
Google Cloud
“At Google Cloud we’re committed to meeting our customers where they are in their digital transformation journey and that means ensuring they have the power of choice,” said Andrew Moore, vice president and general manager of Google Cloud AI and industry solutions. “We’re participating in the PyTorch Foundation to further demonstrate our commitment of choice in ML development. We look forward to working closely on its mission to drive adoption of AI tooling by building an ecosystem of open source projects with PyTorch along with our continued investment in JAX and Tensorflow.”
Microsoft Azure
“We’re honored to participate in the PyTorch Foundation and partner with industry leaders to make open source innovation with PyTorch accessible to everyone,” Eric Boyd, CVP, AI Platform, Microsoft, said. “Over the years, Microsoft has invested heavily to create an optimized environment for our customers to create, train and deploy their PyTorch workloads on Azure. Microsoft products and services run on trust, and we’re committed to continuing to deliver innovation that fosters a healthy open source ecosystem that developers love to use. We look forward to helping the global AI community evolve, expand and thrive by providing technical direction based on our latest AI technologies and research.”
NVIDIA
“PyTorch was developed from the beginning as an open source framework with first-class support on NVIDIA Accelerated Computing”, said Ian Buck, General Manager and Vice President of Accelerated Computing at NVIDIA. “NVIDIA is excited to be an originating member of the PyTorch Foundation to encourage community adoption and to ensure using PyTorch on the NVIDIA AI platform delivers excellent performance with the best experience possible.”
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