October 2018
Funding the space frontier – a moment that changed the Universe
... shift now underway. It happened at 5:28 am EDT on 30 April 2001, hurtling through space at 17,100 mph, 250 miles above the Earth, the airlock hatch on the International Space Station (ISS) opened and a small, balding older man (who one commentator...
January 2019
Engineering six-hour solar eclipses with formation flying
... missions. ESA’s Automated Transfer Vehicle (ATV) has demonstrated centimetre-scale accuracy when docking with the International Space Station (ISS), while Sweden’s Prisma mission has demonstrated formation flying for brief periods, maintaining...
July 2019
Developing life support systems for human exploration missions beyond Earth
... Environmental Control and Life Support System (ECLSS) will be critical to the survival and well-being of crews. The equipment developed for the International Space Station has proved that it is suitable for more challenging exploration missions but...
January 2020
Commercialising space exploration and development
... that builds research and manufacturing systems into compact smart containers, called CubeLabs, installed in hubs on the International Space Station (ISS). We want to see the market develop and so, as much as possible, we try not to patent. However...
July 2020
Key technologies for space exploration
...scientists to study plant growth in a microgravity environment. This system, the Biomass Production System (BPS), deployed onboard the Space Shuttle and then the International Space Station, provided more data than ever previously collected. This led...
August 2020
Scorpion – a study of the possible
... only operational transport systems being the 1960s Soyuz and the Chinese variant of it. The American systems under development are all variations on the 1960s capsule theme. While the International Space Station (ISS) is larger and more capable than...
