April 2021
Satellite servicing comes of age
... the inky blackness of space. One of these satellites is nearly 20 years old and after a long, productive lifetime beaming television signals to millions of customers, it has run out of fuel and is drifting in orbit. The other, a brand new...
06 October 2015
Facebook, Eutelsat to beam Internet from space to Africa
.... Facebook and Eutelsat have agreed to pay $95 million for a five-year lease on the satellite’s Ka-band spot-beam capacity, with a possible extension for two further years, Space News reported. The satellite is scheduled for...
August 2018
Flying to the stars
...reaction, so-called ‘pions’, are channelled via a magnetic nozzle to generate thrust. This antimatter propulsion concept is called ‘beamed core’ antimatter propulsion. The exhaust velocity of the pions would be about 100,000 km/s. However, the thrust...
October 2016
Unlocking the potential of annular ion engines
... a sub-scale AIE discharge chamber (40 cm outside dia.) was designed, fabricated, and tested under conditions simulating beam extraction. Highly-uniform (within 10% of the mean) azimuthal and radial discharge plasma were observed at all conditions...
August 2020
Interstellar aspirations
...requires an array telescope with multiple, electronically pointed phased-array beams in order for it to be accomplished in the next..., focused on the light sail, would use its directed energy beam for up to ten minutes to accelerate it to 60,000 km/sec...
September 2020
Tackling space debris - a global priority
...and uses some means of momentum exchange (e.g. ion or laser beams) to gradually change the target debris’ orbit. One major ...proximity manoeuvres by the remover/servicer spacecraft. Ion-beam shepherd The guidelines have not always been followed ...
