• Galactic Energy successfully blasts its Ceres-1 rocket into space off a sea-based launch platform

    Chinese company Galactic Energy has successfully undertaken its second sea-based launch mission for the Ceres-1 carrier rocket. Yesterday, Ceres-1, a rocket manufactured and operated by Chinese company Galactic Energy, lifted off from a mobile sea platform off the coast of China’s eastern province of Shandong, successfully sending four satellites into a low orbit about 850km above the Earth. According to Galactic Energy, the satellites were built by Guodian Gaoke, a Beijing-based private satellite operator, for its Tianqi Network and will form part of a planned constellation of Iot data connectivity satellites. This is the second sea-based launch for Ceres-1. The first took place in September 2023, also off the coast of Shandong. To date, Galactic Energy has carried out 12 orbital launches…

  • New data reveals a spike in women aged 35-44 leaving engineering roles

    Based on new workforce data, Engineering UK is calling on organisations to review their recruitment and retention practices to ensure women aged 35-44 in engineering and technology roles remain in the profession. EngineeringUK, an independent organisation that promotes the contribution of engineers, engineering and technology in our society, has published new data on women in engineering as part of its annual review of the engineering workforce. To do this, it analysed the 2023 Labour Force Survey (LFS) data using an engineering footprint developed by EngineeringUK together with the Engineering Council and the Royal Academy of Engineering. The findings reveal that the percentage of women working in engineering and technology occupations dropped from 16.5% in 2022 to 15.7% in 2023, representing…

  • Cutting the carbon footprint of vehicles – lightweight is not always best

    It is often thought that cutting a vehicle’s carbon footprint means making structural components from the lightest possible materials. However, Stefan Lindner, lead technical manager, mobility and transport, BL Advanced Materials, at Outokumpu, a producer of stainless steel headquartered in Helsinki, Finland, says that is not necessarily the case as any evaluation must consider both the material’s production and the use phases. There are a select few materials automotive companies can use to make structural components for their vehicles. Carbon fibre is both light and strong, but not feasible for volume production vehicles. As a result, companies often turn to either standard carbon steel or aluminium. Due to its low density, aluminium is often regarded as the most suitable for building…

  • ESA launches EarthCARE on its mission to study clouds and aerosols in Earth's climate

    The EarthCARE satellite has successfully lifted off, aiming to provide crucial information on the complex interactions between clouds, aerosols and radiation in the Earth’s atmosphere. The European Space Agency’s (ESA’s) Earth Cloud Aerosol and Radiation Explorer (EarthCARE) satellite embarked on its journey into space onboard a Space X Falcon 9 rocket from the Vandenberg Space Force Base in California just after midnight (CEST) on 29 May. Ten minutes after launch, the satellite separated from the rocket, with the Hartebeesthoek ground station in South Africa receiving the all-important signal indicating that EarthCARE was safely in orbit around Earth. EarthCARE has been designed to examine the role clouds and aerosols play in reflecting incident solar radiation back out to space and…

  • Teardown: Apple Vision Pro

    The Vision Pro sees Apple finally entering the augmented reality (AR) sector years after rivals such as Google and Microsoft launched products that were not considered major successes. The device features futuristic eye tracking and gesture control features that have impressed reviewers, in addition to very high resolution micro-OLED displays that eliminate the ‘checkerboarding’ phenomenon that typically plagues cheaper alternatives. The amount of tech stuffed into the relatively small device is impressive, although a hefty price tag of $3,499 in the US will probably prevent it going mainstream until a cheaper refresh is announced. Regardless, Apple’s approach is an impressive demonstration of what current AR tech is capable of when concerns over cost are largely an afterthought. One…

  • ChargeUK calls on the next government to accelerate chargepoint roll-out

    ChargeUK has published a manifesto for the next government to ensure UK charging infrastructure provision stays ahead of demand. In its manifesto – Our Electric Future: ChargeUK’s manifesto for the next government – ChargeUK is calling on the next government to adopt measures that will accelerate the roll-out of vital charging infrastructure and ensure drivers of electric vehicles (EVs) have easy access to a high-quality charging solution. “Our manifesto details a comprehensive plan to support the UK’s transition to net zero, ensuring convenient, affordable and accessible charging for all drivers,” said Vicky Read, chief executive of ChargeUK. ChargeUK launched in April 2023 as the new trade association representing the companies involved in installing, operating and supporting chargepoint…

    E+T Magazine
    E+T Magazine

  • New floating offshore wind survey reveals the major hurdles and risks facing the sector

    Findings from a new floating offshore wind survey have highlighted how a lack of technology standardisation, port investment and manufacturing capability are major hurdles in unlocking the future of floating wind. Westwood Global Energy Group, an energy market research and consultancy firm, has unveiled the findings from its floating offshore wind survey, which it developed in partnership with Norwegian Offshore Wind and World Forum Offshore Wind. The survey gathered insights from 184 stakeholders in the floating offshore wind industry. Floating offshore wind has experienced a boom in recent years. While conventional offshore wind turbines are fixed to the seabed, floating wind turbines are deployed on top of floating structures secured to the seabed with mooring lines and anchors. These…

  • easyJet opens new AI-equipped control centre in Luton to better manage flights

    easyJet’s new integrated control centre (ICC) near Luton Airport will manage the safe and efficient operation of 2,000 mostly European flights a day. Airline travel is heading for a very busy summer. According to Airports Council International (ACI), global passenger traffic in 2024 is predicted to surpass the 2019 level for the first time since Covid-19, reaching 9.7 billion passengers. In anticipation of this growing passenger number, easyJet, a British multinational low-cost airline group headquartered at Luton Airport, has opened its new ICC to manage its daily flight programme. “We are really pleased to have our new operations control centre up and running in time for the summer season ramp-up, providing our operational team with a modern and bespoke facility from which to manage…

  • The Path Towards Industrial Energy Efficiency with Electric Motors

    Paramount to achieving net-zero targets is optimizing existing facilities and processes to reach higher energy efficiency. Considering that 45% of electrical energy is converted today into motion by electrical motors, research estimates that the world’s electricity consumption could be reduced by 10% with high efficiency motion solutions. That is why energy efficiency improvement of applications driven by electrical motors are relevant and need to be identified and realized to reach carbon neutrality. Energy efficiency improvements have been already for many years a driver to reduce energy cost. To achieve it, industrial operators now have a pathway that they can follow: 1. Make better decisions with an energy efficiency audit 2. Implement the key energy efficiency solutions identified…

    E+T Magazine
    E+T Magazine

  • Openreach adds 517 UK locations to its latest full fibre broadband upgrade plans

    Openreach has published updated plans to build ultrafast, ultra-reliable full fibre broadband to 517 more locations across the UK, including some of the most isolated parts of the UK. The UK network operator and BT subsidiary intends to make gigabit-capable technology available to 25 million homes and businesses by the end of 2026, including 6.2 million in rural areas. In this £15bn project, Openreach will upgrade the UK’s broadband infrastructure while retiring most of its old copper landlines. These plans support the UK government’s ambition of rolling out a faster, more reliable full fibre, ‘gigabit-capable’ broadband to more than 85% of the country, including hard-to-reach areas that would otherwise miss out. Full fibre is capable of delivering speeds of up to 1,000Mbps (or 1Gbps…

    E+T Magazine
    E+T Magazine

  • Hard-to-reach areas could derail plan to increase 4G coverage to 95% of UK landmass

    Efforts to increase 4G coverage to 95% of the UK’s landmass by the end of 2025 may not be sustainable and are at risk of being missed, MPs on the Public Accounts Committee (PAC) have said. While the rate of infrastructure roll-out has been at the pace necessary to reach the target, the remaining locations will be harder to reach and connect compared to the work that has been done thus far. In 2020, the four major operators – EE, O2, Three and Vodafone – signed a £1bn deal to expand rural mobile network coverage by sharing their infrastructure to help boost coverage in hard-to-reach areas. But the PAC warned that the Shared Rural Network programme was facing cost pressures as the price of delivering new masts has been higher than expected. It is also unclear who will be responsible for…

    E+T Magazine
    E+T Magazine

  • Next government must prioritise grid connections and storage to meet net zero targets, warn MPs

    A new report by the Environmental Audit Committee (EAC) has found that slow grid connections and a lack of clear plans for energy storage must be fixed in order for the UK to meet its net zero goals by 2035. The EAC – a cross-party parliamentary committee responsible for scrutinising the UK government’s environmental policy across all departments – has published a new report called Enabling sustainable electrification of the UK economy. The report highlights the government’s commitment to decarbonising Great Britain’s electricity grid fully by 2035. This will mean increasing capacity by 250% in little over a decade and, as such, is one of the most ambitious undertakings by any peacetime government. To support this increase in renewable energy projects, there is an urgent need to revamp…

  • Clever ball control - new tech at the Euros

    Uefa has planted sensors in the ball for this summer’s European Championships to help match officials with offside and handball decisions. But will this technology solve two of football’s most contentious on-field problems? Every week, wherever football is televised or watched, it’s the same story. Was that handball? Was that goal offside? Was that referee biased or just inept? The speed of the game and the complex movements and interactions on the field make it difficult for referees to make precise, accurate offside and handball calls. Human error is inevitable, but an incorrect decision can turn a game and even cost a team the match. Goal line technology and video assistant referees (VARs) may save us from a repeat of some of yesteryear’s most memorable mistakes: Frank Lampard’s shot…

  • UK’s intercity battery train trial gets underway

    A battery intercity train trial will demonstrate how battery retrofit technology can help decarbonise our railways. A collaboration between TransPennine Express, Angel Trains and Hitachi Rail has seen the first UK trial of a battery replacing a diesel engine on an intercity train. The train – a TransPennine Nova 1 (five-carriage intercity class 802) – has been retrofitted with a single battery unit, capable of generating a peak power of more than 700kW. Despite its impressive energy and power density, the battery will deliver the same levels of high-speed acceleration and performance, while being no heavier than the diesel engine it replaces. According to Hitachi Rail, not only will the train reduce emissions and fuel costs by as much as 30%, it will also improve air quality and reduce…

  • Ambitious targets needed to end ocean plastic pollution by the end of the century, says study

    New research has revealed that plastic pollution must be reduced by more than 5% every year to meet UN targets; however, even on reaching those targets microplastics will still persist in our oceans beyond 2100. Plastics are circulating in all of the Earth’s oceans. Rather than biodegrade, they simply break down into tinier and tinier pieces, producing microplastics, which measure less than 5mm long. According to US environmental advocacy group Ocean Conservancy, 11 million metric tons of plastics enter our oceans every year. This is in addition to the estimated 200 million metric tons that are already there. Rather than washing up on beaches, some of the greatest concentrations of plastic are miles from land, such as the Great Pacific Garbage Patch. It has an estimated surface area of…

  • Zero emission cement hailed a ‘breakthrough for the construction industry’

    Engineers at the University of Cambridge have developed a process for producing recycled cement that has zero emissions and can be rapidly scaled. Concrete is the most widely used manufactured material on earth. It has quite literally created the foundations of our built environment, but it comes with a massive environmental cost. The production of cement, the key ingredient of concrete, generates around 2.5 billion tonnes of CO2 every year – about 8% of the global total. Finding a scalable, cost-effective way of reducing these emissions while still meeting global demand for concrete poses a huge challenge. However, researchers at the University of Cambridge think they have cracked it with a recycling method that uses the electrically-powered arc furnaces used for steel recycling to…

  • BT delays plan to switch off copper landlines by over a year

    BT has delayed its plan to switch customers from physical, copper-based landlines to internet-based services because of concerns about the way it could impact vulnerable customers. BT originally planned to complete the national switchover by the end of 2025 but has now pushed this back to the end of January 2027. Many vulnerable people, including the elderly and those with disabilities, rely on personal alarms, known as telecare, to offer remote support. The devices are particularly in use in rural and isolated areas. But the move away from the traditional copper network towards a digital system using fibre-optic cables could impact their ability to function correctly. It’s estimated that nearly two million people in the UK use the devices. BT’s current plan is to connect 25 million premises…

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    E+T Magazine

  • ESA plans commercial space shuttle service to low Earth orbit by 2030

    The European Space Agency (ESA) has selected two firms to develop a commercial service capable of transporting cargo to and from the International Space Station (ISS) in low Earth orbit by 2030. The Exploration Company, which is based in Germany, and French firm Thales Alenia Space will each receive €25m (£21m) to help develop their ideas, which they will be expected to demonstrate “ideally” by 2028 and no later than 2030. Europe currently relies on international partners to bring its cargo and crew to space, providing in exchange key contributions to international space projects, such as the Columbus laboratory on the ISS, or the European Service Modules that power the Orion vehicles for Artemis missions. This competition to build a cargo service is designed to strengthen European industry…

  • The UK is running out of options for a ‘just and fair’ offshore energy transition, says report

    A new report by Robert Gordon University (RGU) in Aberdeen has revealed that the UK and Scotland will fail to achieve a “just and fair” transition by 2030 unless there is urgent alignment across the political spectrum to sustain the size of the workforce and supply chain. The UK has committed to achieving net zero by 2050. While this destination is clear, the report – Delivering our energy future: pathways to a “just and fair” transition – has found that the current pathways in order to reach this goal are far from “just and fair”. This “just and fair” transition coined by the UN is defined as “ensuring that no one is left behind or pushed behind in the transition to low-carbon and environmentally sustainable economies and societies”. In its report, the RGU analysed over 6,560 pathways…

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    E+T Magazine

  • Rolls-Royce’s nuclear power vision is a step closer with launch of new manufacturing facility

    Rolls-Royce SMR is partnering with the University of Sheffield to launch a new facility to manufacture and test prototype modules for its small modular reactor (SMR) nuclear power plants. The Rolls-Royce SMR Module Development Facility, which will be based in the University of Sheffield AMRC Factory 2050, will produce working prototypes of individual modules that will be assembled into Rolls-Royce SMR power plants. The initial phase, worth £2.7m, of this £15m deal with the University of Sheffield will see Rolls-Royce produce three prototype modules by the end of this year. Rolls-Royce SMR is offering a different approach to delivering new nuclear power that is easier to scale and more affordable than building larger nuclear power plants. It’s an approach that aims to deliver an entirely…

  • Introducing Power Blade®︎: The Intelligent Power Solution Redefining Defense Applications

    AirBorn's Power Blade is a 6U power supply offering the highest overall VPX power density and efficiency available today. As a commercial-off-the-shelf (COTS) product, it meets VPX and VITA 62 open architecture and performance requirements. Notably, it delivers nearly twice the output of traditional 6U power supplies with a remarkable efficiency of 95%. This enables customers to support the higher power levels required in modern defense applications without increasing the size of their power supply units. Moreover, the Power Blade boasts conducted EMI emissions well below VPX requirements. This unique feature offers significant cost and space savings compared to alternative solutions on the market. The Power Blade VPX power supply is an intelligent power solution that meets and exceeds…

    E+T Magazine
    E+T Magazine

  • Extreme rainfall last winter was made 10 times more likely by climate change, says study

    A new study by World Weather Attribution (WWA) has found that the total rainfall experienced during autumn and winter 2023/24 was made 10 times more likely and was 20% wetter due to human-induced climate change. This past winter, it felt as if we were experiencing relentless rainfall and stormy weather. Roads were regularly flooded, houses were damaged and farmers’ fields lay underwater for much of the season. According to the British Red Cross, storms and flooding caused weather-related home insurance claims in the UK to rise by more than a third, reaching a record-breaking £573m worth of claims. Data now shows that October 2023 to March 2024 was indeed the second-wettest October-March period on record for the UK since records began in 1836, and the third-wettest for Ireland, with records…

  • Government gives green light for major nuclear power plant in Wylfa, North Wales

    The UK government has announced that Wylfa is its preferred site for the UK’s third mega-nuclear power station and will now launch talks with global energy firms to explore its construction. A gigawatt-scale nuclear energy plant in Wylfa – an island off the coast of north Wales – has been in the works for a number of years with the project stuck in limbo since 2019, when Hitachi abandoned the project. The site was already home to a nuclear power station that operated for over 40 years until decommissioning began in 2015. The government is now considering replacing this plant by building two evolutionary power reactors (EPRs), which are based on a pressurised water design. While there are a number of other potential sites that could host civil nuclear projects, following today’s announcement…

  • UKAEA renews engineering framework agreement to boost fusion energy’s commercial future

    The UK Atomic Energy Authority (UKAEA) has renewed its four-year £9m Engineering Design Services Framework with nine companies. Following the successful delivery of various engineering and design desk-based projects, the UKAEA will work closely with these companies for another four years in its mission to develop commercial fusion energy, while also helping to grow the UK economy by ensuring industry is fully involved. The nine companies are Assystem, AtkinsRealis, Demcon, Eadon, Frazer Nash, IDOM, Jacobs, M5tec and Optima. “This framework has enabled UKAEA to work collaboratively and with maximum efficiency with the fusion supply chain,” said Colette Broadwith, strategic procurement business partner for UKAEA. “By renewing it for another four years, UKAEA can continue to leverage the…

    E+T Magazine
    E+T Magazine

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