Nanyang Technological University, Singapore (NTU Singapore) has successfully launched a satellite carrying pioneering perovskite solar cells developed locally for testing in space, together with artificial intelligence (AI) capabilities designed to analyse images directly in orbit. The CRIMSON-1 satellite will gather real-world performance data on lightweight perovskite solar cells in the harsh environment of space, while also testing technologies that could help future spacecraft analyse raw data before beaming it back to Earth.

CRIMSON-1 is NTU’s 14th satellite launched into space and it is among the first projects supported by the National Space Agency of Singapore (NSAS) under Singapore’s Space Access Programme (SAP) as part of the national Space Technology Development Programme.

The programme gives Singapore researchers and companies opportunities to test technologies such as advanced materials, solar cells and edge computing systems in orbit, build flight heritage and shorten the path from laboratory development to space validation. The satellite is also supported by the Infocomm Media Development Authority (IMDA), which secured satellite spectrum and orbital resources from the International Telecommunication Union for its operation.

 

CRIMSON-1 was launched aboard a SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket on the Transporter-18 rideshare mission from Vandenberg Space Force Base in California, United States, on 1 October.

A commentary published in LabMed Discovery discusses a CRISPR-assisted nanodroplet platform for rapid, species-level and multiplexed identification of mycobacteria, highlighting how molecular recognition, signal encoding and spatial organization may provide a broader framework for multiplex molecular diagnostics.

A joint research team from Saitama University and Astemo, Ltd. has developed a cloud-based evaluation platform that traces data processing across AUTOSAR Adaptive Platform and ROS 2, two software platforms increasingly used together in autonomous-driving development. By combining the CART tracing framework with Autoware and the CARLA simulator, the platform reconstructed the evaluated path from sensor-data reception to control-command output with 100% topology coverage while maintaining low tracing overhead.

Researchers have developed a quasi-solid thermogalvanic gel that uses lignosulfonate derived from papermaking waste as a redox-active component for low-grade heat harvesting. Published in the Journal of Bioresources and Bioproducts, the study combines lignosulfonate, ammonium persulfate, potassium hydroxide and poly(vinyl alcohol) to construct a flexible gel with a Seebeck coefficient of 4.3 mV/K and an output power density of 976 μW/(m²·K²). The material also exploits the photothermal properties of lignin to convert sunlight into a temperature gradient and generate electricity, providing a combined approach to waste valorization and photo-thermo-electric energy conversion.

Researchers from the University of Osaka and collaborating institutions accelerated protons to nearly half the speed of light using a long-pulse laser and ultrathin graphene. A moving electric field carried the protons to high energies, and artificial intelligence helped detect rare high-energy particles among millions of detector images. This technique could pave the way for future AI-driven autonomous laser experiment systems.

A small capsule could change how we study the microbiome of the small intestine. A team, led by researchers at the University of Tokyo, has created a pill-shaped device designed to take samples from the small intestine using a tiny extendable brush. Still in the early stages of development, they have demonstrated that the device could be magnetically controlled to move through extracted pig intestines and sweep useful samples from the intestinal surface. In the future, this type of device could provide a more comfortable and complementary option to current endoscopic procedures.

University of Maryland assistant professor Avik Dutt and colleagues harness ideas from topological photonics—a field that leverages concepts from topology, the mathematics of shapes and their properties, to design unusual and robust ways of controlling light. Their work, detailed in a paper published by Nature Communications, marks the first demonstration of these ideas on this emerging fiber-based platform.