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...
February 2018
CubeSats changing the landscape for ‘app’ developers
... that can run on any nanosatellite regardless of the underlying hardware. It is also possible to hide the complexity of the spacecraft, for instance, via the low-level interfaces to the various on-board devices by providing high-level interfaces...
May 2018
Challenging the boundaries of materials science
... electrical and structural engineers work to avoid conventional hardware failures that may cause the loss of function of a spacecraft system or designs that are so costly to build that the project fails on economic grounds. Initial screening test...
July 2018
Using algae to support astronauts on deep space missions
... Earth from high mountain lakes to the frozen seas of the Arctic. This capacity for adaptation is necessary as spacecraft cabin environments are very different from Earth’s atmosphere, especially regarding partial pressure of carbon dioxide, airborne...
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...
