This week, I’ll tell you news about a phenomenon that I don’t understand and I doubt if anyone I know understands.

It is not about the virus or protest or removal of statues.

It is about some satellite data transmission that the Chinese have recently admitted that they are working on. It is supposed to be a way to encrypt messages that can’t be read by anyone else. This is called quantum entanglement.

I found some information in the June 15, 2020 edition of the New York Times.

The Chinese have a team of 24 scientists working on this concept. I am sure that we have a team working on it too at NASA. Albert Einstein called it spooky action at a distance.

Quantum entanglement is rather difficult to explain. This is on a subatomic basis, if there are two entangled particles that are spinning, if one spin is changed, the one will respond by spinning the other way. It happens if the particles are a few feet apart or a million light years apart. Of course, I don’t know how they could check it at that distance.

It has been demonstrated with photons, subatomic particles and molecules that are quite massive. They even have done it with small diamonds.

This transmission of information is much faster than the speed of light which no one thought could be done.

A scientist suggested that the information is transmitted at least 10,000 times faster than the speed of light. That is spooky, as Einstein said.

Now how are the Chinese utilizing this concept to send coded messages, I don’t have a clue. But no matter where they are, they can send data and information that can’t be intercepted as in radio transmissions.

Also, they would not have to have receiving stations all over the world to keep constant contact with their satellites. They would need only one.

Now back to earth and reality.

Elon Musk is at it again, he is building a floating spaceport that will be massive enough to launch rockets to the moon, Mars and hypersonic planes to travel around the world. This will be the main port for SpaceX Starship launches.

NASA is busy working with European Space Agency to build another Mars rover. It will be capable of returning samples of Mars rocks that will be dug up by the Perseverance rover that will be drilling into the surface to get the samples. It will not be scheduled to depart until 2026. It will be called “Fetch” and will be like a four-wheeled dune buggy. It is designed to travel several hundred feet per day. If it happens, that will be quite a feat, one rover to find the other one and pick up rocks that the first rover has dug up.

The engineers have a lot of faith that all this can be accomplished when the first rover has not even been launched.

Another item of space news, NASA has approved SpaceX to reuse the Dragon crew capsule and the first stage rocket that they had retrieved.

Don Lee, a pilot flying out of Lawrence County Airport since 1970, has been in charge of equipment and grounds maintenance for the last several years. He can be reached at eelnod22@gmail.com.