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ALBUQUERQUE, N.M. — NASA’s VIPER rover, designed to map water on the moon, has reached another major milestone with help from Sandia National Laboratories and its one-of-a-kind testing capabilities.

“We’ve built a rover that is designed to go and prospect for water on the moon, but the vehicle must be certified for mission,” said Dave Petri, NASA VIPER system integration and test lead. “We need to be sure its structure is properly designed and built to survive the mission, including the launch environment.”

A team of engineers at Sandia National Laboratories have developed ways to rapidly evaluate new thermal protection materials for hypersonic vehicles. Their three-year research project combined 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.

A new kind of supercomputer has arrived at Sandia National Laboratories, and while it’s not the largest in the world, it may be one of the most unconventional.

Much is still unknown about how quantum computers behave and what they might one day help humans achieve. But a team at Sandia National Laboratories has developed a process to understand how to use quantum systems more efficiently — using the analogy of a simple jukebox.

The Global Burst Detection system, developed by Sandia and Los Alamos national laboratories, carries a suite of sensors and instruments capable of identifying signals from nuclear detonations and providing real-time information to the U.S. military and government. The final system in the current block of eight systems launched into space in May 2025. Meanwhile, the next series, scheduled for initial deployment in 2027, already has several units completed and ready to be integrated with host satellites.

A team at Sandia National Labs has developed what they belive is a better way to X-Ray, harnessing different metals and the colors of light they emit.

“It’s called colorized hyperspectral X-ray imaging with multi-metal targets, or CHXI MMT for short,” said project lead Edward Jimenez, an optical engineer. Jimenez has been working with materials scientist Noelle Collins and electronics engineer Courtney Sovinec to create X-rays of the future.

“With this new technology, we are essentially going from the old way, which is black and white, to a whole new colored world where we can better identify materials and defects of interest,

ALBUQUERQUE, N.M. — Sandia National Laboratories’ Mentor-Protégé Program and its leadership have once again been recognized by the Department of Energy for their success in helping small businesses grow.

Researchers at Sandia National Laboratories have announced a more efficient way to generate and send temporary security codes.

While heliostats are used in the day, a scientist may have found a way to use them at night.