02 August 2017
First iodine fuelled thrusters pass critical design tests
... the industry, Busek’s impressive portfolio of thruster products includes the Hall Thruster used on the TacSat-2 satellite, ammonia micro-resistojet, RF ion thruster, green monopropellant thruster and electrospray thrusters that were used on the LISA...
13 December 2017
Bright spots suggest Ceres is surprisingly active
... surface. The upsurge of briny water driven to the surface by a small amount of gas such as water vapour, methane or ammonia – in the the way champagne gushes out of its bottle when the cork is removed – boiled off due...
20 August 2018
Galaxy should be teeming with water-worlds say researchers
... over a quarter of the molecular compounds that make up the water-worlds are molecules such as water (H2O), ammonia (NH3) and methane (CH4), along with a small amount of gas. "We have looked at how mass relates to radius...
04 March 2019
Does life grow like this elsewhere in the cosmos?
..., that build on one another to form proteins. To start the building process though, amino acids also need ammonia and pyruvate. Pyruvate is a very versatile biological molecule that is critical in cellular respiration and is needed in no fewer than...
10 August 2020
Salty dwarf planet Ceres could be hiding an ocean
... and an upsurge of briny water was driven to the surface by a small amount of gas such as water vapour, methane or ammonia. Fast forward a few years and the theory has now expanded. In a series of seven papers published this...
19 May 2021
Scientists unexpectedly find heavy metal vapour in comets throughout our Solar System, and beyond
... over from when the planets formed – such as carbon dioxide (CO2), carbon monoxide (CO), methane (CH4), and ammonia (NH3). Even when close to the Sun, these gases do not change much in composition because the bulk...
