June 2015
The day Philae landed: how a rough touchdown still made history at the Rosetta Mission
... at one: the touchdown signal, harpoon firing, commanding the thruster, switching off the flywheel, changing unit modes, normal telemetry, scientific data. One question occurred immediately: did the harpoons actually fire? They were...
June 2015
Ultimate sunbather: NASA and ESA collaborate on Solar Orbiter
... and thermal model in the clean room at the test facility in Germany. Careful thruster placement and operating modes in orbit are incorporated into the design to avoid contamination by unspent fuel and all materials used in the...
October 2015
Copernicus, ESA’s most ambitious Earth Observation programme
.... Shortly after the launch of ERS-2 in 1995, ESA operated the two satellites in the first ‘tandem’ mission mode, which lasted for nine months. Beyond the sheer increase in revisiting the same site, this tandem...
October 2016
Unlocking the potential of annular ion engines
... ion optics which the AIE approach affords, could all but eliminate the anticipated first-failure mode of the ion thrusters, yielding ~10x increases in life time. This capability could be leveraged in several ways - by execution...
January 2017
Blueprint for NASA’s journey to Mars
... that maintains contact with the surface, pushing towards the surface as necessary, to keep in contact while in walking mode. During the EVAs, one crew member would remain in Orion. Multiple EVAs would be possible during the...
March 2017
Rosetta – outstanding climax to pioneering mission
...! Close flyby. In the night following the wake-up, the team configured the spacecraft to its normal flight mode and looked at the few telemetry indications we had from the long hibernation period. It turned out that...
