October 2015
Taking AIM with ESA: proposing the first visit to a binary asteroid system
... mass of 800kg – less than a third of Rosetta’s launch mass. Measuring 1.8 x 2.0 x 2.1m across with solar arrays stowed, the spacecraft design is a simple one with fixed solar arrays, a fixed high-gain antenna and a bipropellant propulsion system...
August 2016
Rosetta overcomes major setback
... as a failure by the fault detection and recovery logic. Also the whole swing-by scenario had to be re-designed to establish a spacecraft configuration that would minimise power consumption whilst in the shadow. It was not an easy task but we had...
October 2017
Exploring Jupiter’s icy moons
... life?’ The JUICE payload consists of 10 state-of-the-art instruments plus one experiment that uses the spacecraft telecommunication system with ground-based telescopes. This payload, summarised in Table 1, is capable of addressing all of the mission...
October 2018
Radiation study paves way for safe deep space exploration
...amplified as missions get longer, especially when humans go to Mars in coming decades. The next time a human-rated spacecraft departs LEO en route to the Moon, it will carry a payload specifically focused on protecting astronauts from space radiation...
January 2019
Materials make the space mission
... well as those included in approved data sources, including ESA and NASA databases. The first challenges for spacecraft materials actually start on Earth. High mechanical loads on structural materials, electronic components and propulsion systems are...
04 December 2017
After 37 years, Voyager 1 fires up dormant thrusters
... thrusters fire in tiny pulses, or "puffs," lasting mere milliseconds and Voyager uses them to subtly orient the spacecraft so that its antenna points back towards us so that it can communicate with Earth. With correctly functioning thrusters...
