December 2014
India joins the major league with the Mars Orbiter Mission
... test had failed, an alternative method (Plan B) would have been activated, which meant using only the spacecraft’s eight 22 Newton thrusters. However, as ISRO chairman Koppillil Radhakrishnan put it, this would merely have been a “salvaging...
August 2016
International cooperation drives Germany’s space ambitions
...asteroid Ryugu (formerly 1999 JU3) in 2018 to support the search for a suitable place for the main spacecraft to acquire a sample that will be returned to Earth. In addition to exploring asteroids, DLR is also participating in various missions to the...
October 2017
Cassini observations open up Saturn’s atmosphere
...-dawn sky over Cape Canaveral, Florida. It was the beginning of an unprecedented journey of discovery, as the Cassini-Huygens spacecraft left the confines of Earth bound for the ringed giant, Saturn. This sophisticated interplanetary explorer went...
March 2018
Plumes on Europa - tasting an extra-terrestrial ocean
...+) from an active plume should be detectable with the on-board particle detector instruments. Testing a model of the JUICE spacecraft 16 m antenna system in September 2017. Europa’s ocean The presence of water on Europa has been known about for...
June 2018
Cosmic communications and the anthropology of outer space
... “we have no clue.” Each of the two Voyager spacecraft launched in 1977 carries a 12-inch gold-plated phonograph ...’ of the solar system taken by Voyager 1 (pictured right). The spacecraft acquired a total of 60 frames for a mosaic of the solar system...
April 2019
Space launch industry analysis
... has become a tricky activity. Not only have the numbers of launches increased, so also has the number of spacecraft carried – and dramatically. Even US Space Command reports that it is struggling with the identification of new satellites given...
