Thursday, August 13, 2026

Defense News: Ondas Selected to Develop Israel’s Next-Generation Tactical Attack Drones

 

Ondas Selected to Develop Israel’s Next-Generation Tactical Attack Drones

Multi-million-dollar “Digital Bat” program will focus on low-cost attack drones designed for rapid deployment and scalable production

By Mandi Kogosowski, israeldefense.co.il,  12/08/2026

                                        Illustration image: Daniel Reche via pexels.com

Ondas has been awarded a multi-million-dollar tender by Israel’s Ministry of Defense to develop and produce a new generation of tactical attack drones. The program, known as “Digital Bat,” is intended to provide frontline combat units with a low-cost unmanned strike capability that can be deployed at scale.

The Defense Ministry has not disclosed the value of the award, the number of drones planned or the system’s technical specifications.

According to Ondas, the program will cover the complete tactical capability, including the aerial platform, autonomous functions, mission integration, system engineering, production readiness and compatibility with broader command-and-control environments.

The company said the drones are being developed to address the Defense Ministry’s evolving operational requirements and the growing use of unmanned and autonomous systems at the tactical level.

“This strategic award represents an important validation of the defense technology platform we are building at Ondas and our growing ability to serve as a prime contractor for complex, next-generation defense programs,” said Eric Brock, Chairman and CEO of Ondas.

Brock also pointed to a broader shift toward cheaper unmanned systems that can be fielded in larger numbers. “We are seeing a fundamental shift in defense priorities toward affordable autonomous systems that can be produced and deployed at a significant scale,” he said.

Ondas said the Digital Bat program reflects some of the same priorities behind the U.S. Drone Dominance Program, a $1.1 billion initiative focused on rapidly fielding low-cost unmanned systems, including one-way attack drones. The company described the two programs as separate, while highlighting their shared emphasis on affordability, scale and rapid deployment.

The tactical drones are intended to give frontline units an aerial capability that can be deployed quickly and adapted to changing operational conditions. According to Ondas, they could complement longer-range one-way attack and precision-strike systems by providing commanders with additional options for different ranges and mission requirements.

“Tactical forces increasingly require aerial systems that can be deployed rapidly, integrated directly into operational workflows and adapted as missions and threats evolve,” said Oshri Lugassy, Co-CEO of Ondas Autonomous Systems.

Lugassy said the company’s work on Digital Bat will extend beyond the aircraft itself, covering “the platform, autonomy, mission software, system integration, production infrastructure and operational support” required to move the system from development toward field deployment.

The award expands Ondas’ defense activities across four areas: air defense and counter-UAS, aerial intelligence, aerial attack and unmanned ground systems. The company said its AI-powered command and mission-management software is intended to connect these systems with sensors, operational units and command environments.

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'Very Unexpected': NASA Rover Zapped a Rock on Mars And Found a Gemstone Surprise

www.sciencealert.com/very-unexpected-nasa-rover-zapped-a-rock-on-mars-and-found-a-gemstone-surprise



Rocks normal for Mars contained a gemstone mineral scientists didn't expect to find. (Ollila et al., Geophys. Res. Lett., 2026


When NASA's Perseverance rover used its laser to tease apart some pale rocks lying around in Jezero Crater in 2025, scientists did not expect anything out of the ordinary.

Little did they know what was in store.

The rocks contained something never before found on Mars – a mineral that, here on Earth, can constitute literal treasure.

The mineral was corundum, the crystalline material that forms rubies and sapphires. And there was even a whiff of chromium, which gives rubies their distinctive reddish-pinkish hues.

"Very unexpectedly," wrote a team led by geochemist Ann Ollila of Los Alamos National Laboratory in a conference abstract, "SuperCam's TRL analysis of three plagioclase-rich float rocks in the crater rim were found to exhibit clear signatures of chromium-bearing corundum."

Now, the researchers have published their full analysis in Geophysical Research Letters – and performed laboratory comparisons that revealed striking similarities between the Martian signal and those of precious gems on Earth.


                    Corundum was found in three separate rocks. (Ollila et al., Geophys. Res. Lett., 2026)


t's the first time corundum has been identified in a Martian setting, and the discovery is remarkable not because the minerals are ones we consider valuable, but because the conditions in which they typically form aren't easily explained on Mars.

"Its formation generally requires bulk compositions enriched in aluminum and depleted in silicon and typically forms at either high temperatures or in association with tectonic processes," Ollila and her colleagues write in their paper.

"Hence, its detection in Martian rocks is surprising."

Mars doesn't lack in the heat department, or at least, it didn't in the past. Its surface is riddled with volcanic features, and Jezero Crater contains a wealth of igneous material.

No, the problem here lies in the chemistry.

Corundum is the crystalline form of aluminum oxide, and its formation usually requires a lot of aluminum and not much silicon – because if there are silicate minerals around, they'll bogart all the aluminum to form aluminum-silicate rocks such as plagioclase feldspar.

You've probably already spotted the corundum conundrum. All three corundum detections made by Perseverance were in chunks of rock dominated by plagioclase. That's one dilly of a pickle – not least because the rocks were found in different locations along the crater rim.


                      Natural-color mosaics of all three rocks. (Ollila et al., Geophys. Res. Lett., 2026)


It's not that plagioclase and corundum can't coexist. It's that the conditions for their coexistence are tricky to come by on Mars.

The three rocks – named Hampden River, Coffee Cove, and Smiths Harbour – were pale plagioclase-rich chunks, and all three were what are known as float rocks. Those are chunks of rock sitting on the ground that are no longer attached to the bedrock they formed in, meaning they may have been transported from elsewhere. 

Float rocks are interesting targets for study because they can tell us about the broader geology of Mars without the rover having to travel to a different area. One by one – in March, April, and July of 2025 – Perseverance examined each rock using time-resolved luminescence (TRL) spectroscopy. It uses a laser to excite atoms within minerals, then measures the characteristic light they emit as they subside to their normal state.

When Perseverance performed this analysis on all three of the plagioclase samples, the resulting spectra returned the distinctive signature of chromium-bearing corundum. 

So, disappointingly, no sparkling rubies scattered across the surface of Mars like a careless dragon had spilled a hoard – but the spectral evidence for tiny grains of chromium-bearing corundum trapped inside three separate plagioclase chunks.

Still, when the researchers compared those spectra to commensurate spectra from ruby, sapphire, and diaspore on Earth, things got interesting.


                              Ruby on Earth gets its brilliant hue from trace amounts of chromium                                                                (StrangerThanKindness/Wikimedia Commons/CC BY-SA 3.0)


 All three Martian rocks had two prominent luminescence peaks at wavelengths of 692.7 and 694.1 nanometers – the characteristic kind of peaks produced in corundum when chromium atoms replace some aluminum atoms, as they do in ruby.

And in Smiths Harbour – the one sample for which this was measured – the glow lingered for about 3 milliseconds, squarely in the range measured for terrestrial corundum.

So are there rubies on Mars? Well, maybe. But the more interesting question is: How does Mars make something that behaves like rubies?

And the answer might be staring us in the face: Jezero Crater itself.

There are several ways the corundum could have formed, including through magma or interactions between rock and hot fluids. But Ollila and her colleagues favor another possibility – the colossal impact that gouged Jezero Crater out of the Martian surface billions of years ago.

Large impacts subject rocks to tremendous heat and pressure, producing conditions similar to those that create metamorphic minerals deep within Earth's crust. Corundum has even been found in impact-altered rocks on Earth and the Moon.

The clues are circumstantial, but compelling.

The corundum on Mars occurs in tiny grains; the rocks were found on the rim of Jezero Crater; and they were sitting close to rocks interpreted as impact breccias – chunks of rock formed in an impact. 

The researchers even think fluids interacting with the rocks may have helped create the aluminum-rich, silicon-poor chemistry that would have facilitated corundum's formation; there is evidence for past hydrothermal activity in Jezero, too.

Other explanations cannot be ruled out, and there's only so much we can do here from Earth when the minerals are half a Solar System away.

Finding the outcrop from which the float rocks originated would help. Better still would be getting a piece of it back to Earth.

That's a strong case for reviving the Mars sample return mission that has fallen by the wayside.

"If a core sample were obtained from this outcrop and returned to Earth," they write, "vastly more analyses could be conducted to conclusively determine how this corundum formed, which would provide a more complete understanding of Martian history."

The findings have been detailed in Geophysical Research Letters


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Wednesday, August 12, 2026

U.K. physics cuts may force iconic 1950s telescope to close

www.science.org/content/article/u-k-physics-cuts-may-force-iconic-1950s-telescope-close


Jodrell Bank Observatory is one of several projects to lose funding following a review by the cash-strapped Science and Technology Facilities Council




The famed Jodrell Bank Observatory and its 69-year-old Lovell Telescope in Cheshire, England, appear set to close in 2 years following funding cuts announced by the Science and Technology Facilities Council yesterday. 

In response to a flat budget and rising costs from international subscriptions and facility operations, the agency is eliminating its £2.8 million annual contribution to e-MERLIN, the United Kingdom’s network of seven radio telescopes, including Lovell. 

The observatory is a UNESCO World Heritage Site, known for its breakthrough detections of bright radio objects such as quasars and for tracking early U.S. and Soviet probes to the Moon, Venus, and Mars. 

More than two dozen other existing projects will also have their funding reduced after their current grant period expires, including XLZD, an international consortium searching for dark matter with underground detectors; the BiSON solar monitoring network; and the Next-Generation Transit Survey, a robotic observatory looking for exoplanets. Some, like e-MERLIN, will lose funding entirely. Scientists and researchers’ unions have pledged to fight the cuts.

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Tuesday, August 11, 2026

Total solar eclipse Aug. 12, 2026 live updates

www.space.com/news/live/total-solar-eclipse-aug-12-2026-live-updates-1-day-until-totality-what-you-need-to-know



Follow live coverage of the total solar eclipse 2026 as the count down to eclipse day with the latest news, expert insight and updates before bringing you live reports from Greenland and Spain.


On Aug. 12, 2026, Europe will experience its first total solar eclipse since 1999, as the moon's shadow sweeps across Greenland, Iceland, northern Spain and the Balearic Islands.

Along the narrow path of totality, day will briefly turn to twilight as the moon completely covers the sun, revealing its elusive outer atmosphere — the corona. Meanwhile, millions more skywatchers across much of Europe, as well as parts of northeastern United States and eastern Canada, will witness a partial solar eclipse as the moon appears to take a bite out of the sun.

Live reporting from the path of totality

We'll be following the eclipse from two locations along the path of totality.

Space.Com Skywatching editor Daisy Dobrijevic is currently aboard HX Expeditions' MS Spitsbergen exploring Greenland's dramatic coast. She'll be aiming to witness totality from Scoresby Sund, the world's largest and longest fjord system. Dobrijevic is hoping for more eclipse luck than last time, when unfortunately, totality was a total bust, but not for the reason you may think.

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