Keeping an eye on the sky
The SOHBRIT observatory works through the night to collect images of satellites, helping researchers understand where they are in Earth’s increasingly crowded orbit.
Fixing FLOPS
Mathematician Samuel Pollard takes on floating-point operations per second, the 40-year-old foundation of all computers.
Sandia gets Galileo to Jupiter
In 1989, the nation called on Sandia to supply radiation-hardened memory and processor chips for Galileo's trip to Jupiter.
How scientists support planetary defense by reconstructing a fireball’s path using sound waves
A researcher duo is exploring how to reconstruct a fireball's path using only infrasound and seismic data, rather than relying solely on optical data that can be difficult to capture.
Sandia recreates flightlike heat to support NASA’s Dragonfly mission to Titan
At Sandia’s National Solar Thermal Test Facility, engineers helped NASA qualify Dragonfly’s heat shield thermal protection system and expanded a capability that supports the nuclear deterrence mission.
Out of tragedy, a safer space
In 2003, the nation called on Sandia to determine what caused the space shuttle Columbia to disintegrate over Texas and Louisiana upon its reentry to the Earth's atmosphere.
NASA’s VIPER mission gets vital help from Sandia
The Labs’ one-of-a-kind Superfuge lends its might to test items at forces up to 300 times Earth’s gravity.
It is rocket science: New heat shields, faster
Engineers combine computer modeling, laboratory experiments and flight testing to better understand how heat shields behave under extreme temperatures and pressures, and to predict their performance much faster than before.
Space-based nuclear detonation detection mission endures
The final Global Burst Detection system in a series launches. The team begins preparing the next series as part of a mission that has lasted more than 60 years.
Asteroid hunting using heliostats?
A Sandia scientist puts the Labs’ field of mirrors to work on the nightshift to detect near-Earth objects.