April 2019
Protecting our lunar legacy
... be from the former GLXP team SpaceIL from Israel, which was launched and deployed from a SpaceX Falcon on 21 February 2019 with an anticipated landing on the lunar surface some weeks later after a series of manoeuvres en route...
April 2019
Scanning the skies for exoplanets
... telescopes while we wait, but this can be very difficult for Neptune-sized planets,” added Armstrong. A SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket sends NASA’s TESS into space in April 2016. Best of the rest TESS’s first reported discovery...
September 2019
A new era in planetary defence missions
... flight of the NEXT-C engine. DART is scheduled to launch in the summer of 2021. DART will launch aboard a SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket from Vandenberg Air Force Base, California. The mission is being developed and led for NASA...
October 2019
Space-based cybersecurity challenges for NATO
... system (QUARTZ), opening a new dimension in cryptography. Liftoff of the NATO military alliance’s GovSat-1 satellite aboard SpaceX’s Falcon 9 rocket on 31 January 2019. Reliance on private sector assets in space has grown greatly in recent years...
February 2020
Investigation of the Coriolis effect in rotating space platforms
... 2, we obtain a rotation velocity of Ωr=0.26 rad/s. To launch this vessel at the approximate launch price (US$1600/kg) of Falcon Heavy (US$1600/kg), we require a budget of US$8.70 billion. Taking the maximum payload capacity of 63.2 tonnes we would...
February 2020
Climate change and spaceports – a difficult balance
... rocket fuels, as on the US Space Shuttle and upcoming Space Launch System (SLS). The engines of the SpaceX Falcon F9 (pictured) use RP-1 and liquid oxygen, whereas the cleanest are those powered by liquid hydrogen fuel, which...
