October 2015
Copernicus, ESA’s most ambitious Earth Observation programme
...for Envisat data. So far there are about 6500 Envisat User projects. Earth Explorer Missions The Earth Explorers are research missions designed to address key scientific challenges identified by the science community, while demonstrating breakthrough...
March 2016
Captivating hearts and minds
... and more potential for reaching out to the general public and engaging them with the space exploration mission brand. 1 Marcu, S.D., & Laird, R. J. M. (2015). Rosetta and Philae: Captivating the Hearts and Minds of a Global Audience, 66th...
June 2017
Automated or human-operated systems?
... and imagination. System reliability is essential to the success of a mission but the external environment is a source of continuous discovery and surprises – otherwise why would we call it ‘exploration? – and to cope with this the system requires...
July 2018
The rise of interplanetary CubeSats
... less than 50 m/s delta-v to perform minor course corrections as it is dropped off on a flyby trajectory to Mars. Science and exploration missions are possible with flybys, as in the recent Deep Horizons flyby of Pluto. However, in the inner solar...
June 2019
The challenge of planetary protection
... made recommendations on the Phobos/Deimos sample return categorisation regarding the International JAXA-led Martian Moons eXploration mission (MMX). This is an ambitious project that will travel to Mars and survey the red planet’s two moons...
July 2019
A reluctant American hero
... new awareness of the environmental issues for Earth from the late 1960s, stemming from the Apollo exploration missions. Seeing Earth from the Moon in the Apollo 11 photos was a powerful message and Apollo 8’s Bill Anders...
