12 April 2019
Beresheet spacecraft crash lands on the Moon
...and China, to become the fourth country to land a spacecraft on the Moon. Although unlike its contemporaries, with the ...grey regolith were thwarted. "We had a failure in the spacecraft; we unfortunately have not managed to land successfully," Opher ...
13 December 2019
Starliner spacecraft could fly as early as next week
... 25 through 28 December. The status of flight hardware, software and the space station’s readiness to receive the Starliner spacecraft, were all approved during the full day of briefings and discussion, which was attended by dozens of representatives...
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...
