June 2015
European lab in the sky: OP-SAT and new potential for ESA spacecraft
In 1994, a top-of-the-range consumer PC had a piddling 33-MHz processor and a tiny 250-MByte hard drive, the first Sony PlayStation was launched and Tom Hanks starred in Forrest Gump. 1994 was also the year that European spacecraft designers adopted...
June 2019
The challenge of planetary protection
... samples and the trailing edge of an atypical flu season a coincidence? Has there been sufficient scrutiny of the lab’s activities by public authorities and do we really know that the extraterrestrial material brought to Earth is not dangerous? This...
July 2019
Stepping into space with STEAM
... a new golden age of space and this time around it will not simply be those presently sitting in research labs, government agencies and corporate board meetings who will be pioneers in the revolution. The new pioneers, the...
October 2019
Skyrora – building on British space heritage
... private launch vehicle market is currently dominated by a few big names like SpaceX, Virgin Galactic and Rocket Lab but with more than 10,000 smallsats predicted to be launched worldwide over the next 10 years new players...
June 2022
Patent protection for space manufacturing
... in space with the launch of its first spacecraft on a Falcon 9 rideshare mission planned for early 2023. Rocket Lab is to build and jointly operate multiple Photon Spacecraft for Varda, supporting its 120 kg manufacturing and re-entry...
04 March 2019
Does life grow like this elsewhere in the cosmos?
... to kick-start life, on our planet at least? After recreating an environment similar to that of Earth’s primordial ocean in the lab, scientists say yes, it is possible for the right building blocks of life to get a head start around these...
