July 2021
Nitrous oxide – a green propellant for commercial space exploration
... to withstand heat inside the decomposition chamber. At first, the feasibility of the N2O decomposition catalyst pack was demonstrated with non-choked flow in 1999, followed by choked-flow decomposition in 2003. The application of the catalyst turned...
13 August 2018
NASA to partner with six US companies to develop space exploration technologies
...$10 million “Stand-Alone Sensor for High Precision Planetary Landing” The project will culminate in a lunar technology demonstration mission, advancing a low-cost, reliable, high-performance, stand-alone Terrain Relative Navigation (TRN) sensor suite...
June 2014
The hypersonic grail: advances at DARPA, AFRL and beyond
.... Both programmes have completed exploratory concept phases with preliminary design phases to follow. And both flight demonstrations are planned for later this decade. The maturation of hypersonics technology is inspiring countries and organisations...
December 2014
Asteroid Redirect Mission: preparing for Mars in deep space
... candidate EVA activities for important aspects such as worksite stabilisation and sampling. Recent testing included the demonstration of two-handed tasks and pneumatic chiselling. Vital stepping stone ARM sampling and containment operations would...
March 2015
Small is the new big: why micro-satellites require new laws
... and successful exit strategies still need to be proven. Although this last critical aspect has recently been demonstrated by SkyBox Imaging, the creation of new markets is still not obvious. Resolution: The level of details of an image needs...
April 2019
Cleaning up space
...capability to find and capture debris. The demonstrations include search, inspection, rendezvous and both ... European Commission) fully funded the RemoveDebris mission, a demonstration of ADR capture technologies consisting of a consortium of European...
