April 2020
Is space poised to take another giant leap?
...hinting at the presence of such deposits. But it took Chandrayaan-1 to prove it, in 2008, by smashing a probe into the crater’s floor, releasing a plume of debris. Careful analysis over the following years eventually revealed that India’s first ...
July 2020
Lego’s replica space programme
... surface’, which could otherwise have been designed as a single piece of accurately moulded plastic. However, as one builds a crater in typical Lego pixelated-style, one realises that these sets should be regarded as 3D plastic puzzles rather than...
May 2021
In-situ propellant design for Mars ascent vehicles
...has the most active volcanic mountains and the largest impact craters among the planets in our solar system, which makes... it among the most scientifically interesting. The impact craters are thought to have formed about four billion years ago...
February 2022
Building space-qualified detector chips
...-2A satellite image, captured on 4 February 2016, showing the Gosses Bluff crater in the Northern Territory of Australia, around 200 km west of Alice Springs. The crater, visible in the left-centre of the image is about 22 km in diameter. It was...
04 August 2015
Pluto, Charon, Lovecraft, Tolkien and other geek culture staples we should use on new worlds
...New Horizons mission – we must go about naming all of those craters and chasms and dark spots on them. Some first class nerd...and Tolkien’s books both represent are different worlds) Terminator (A crater named T-800. You know you want that. Don’t deny)...
23 December 2015
First new 'ground truth' in 40 years as Chinese rover Yuto presents analysis of moon rocks
... about the moon’s make-up, Chang’e-3 touched down on a smooth flood basalt plain, next to the Zi Wei crater, a fresh impact crater that had conveniently excavated material from below the regolith. This site was chosen as the...
