08 May 2020
China's prototype spacecraft lands successfully on Earth
... main contractor for the country’s space programs, the unnamed space capsule is the successor to China's Shenzhou spacecraft; the country’s workhorse transport vehicle for its crewed space program. It can carry up to six astronauts, or three...
02 January 2019
NASA's New Horizons spacecraft makes history...again!
...100-watt light bulbs to perform its mission, NASA’s New Horizons spacecraft makes history, again, by getting within 3,500 kilometres (2,200 miles...and after picking up the radio message sent by the spacecraft to one of NASA’s big antennas, in Madrid, ...
March 2016
Rosetta – Starting from Scratch
...instrumentation - such as cryogenically cooled amplifiers and maser clocks - needed to establish and maintain a radio link with a spacecraft over several hundreds of millions km distance. When Manfred first told me of his idea to build ESA’s own deep...
August 2017
On-orbit assembly will deliver major benefits in coming decade
... Agency’s (DARPA) Orbital Express in 2007. The mission involved a surrogate next generation satellite and a prototype servicing spacecraft. The satellites docked several times, and the prototype servicer refuelled the satellite and exchanged modules...
February 2020
Investigation of the Coriolis effect in rotating space platforms
...several passengers on board would be both impractical and most likely infeasible from the engineering perspective. Spacecraft design Is a rotating spacecraft feasible? What would be the Coriolis effect experienced in such a vessel? How big should the...
June 2015
European lab in the sky: OP-SAT and new potential for ESA spacecraft
... or data-gathering mission. Also, you have to reckon with people’s ‘comfort zones’. The profession – and craft – of spacecraft operations requires perfect execution every time. No one wants to risk a mission due to buggy software. Unforgiving Space...
