18 February 2021
Success for NASA as Perseverance lands on Mars
... on Mars, plus the challenges of covid. What an accomplishment.” Perservance’s descent to the planet was monitored by both NASA’s Deep Space Network and it’s two orbiters; the Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter (MRO) and the Mars Atmospheric and Volatile...
March 2017
Planetary nebulae may hold clue in search of helium-3
..., the Arecibo antenna, the Green Bank Telescope, and only just recently, the Deep Space Station 63 antenna from the Madrid Deep Space Communications Complex. All have met with limited success, except with this latter array...
November 2016
Rosetta - an eventful cruise phase
... thrusters branch. It was now time to prepare the long deep space hibernation phase - this phase had always been our nightmare On...unsolved. It was now time to prepare the long deep space hibernation phase. This phase had always been our nightmare:...
October 2015
Taking AIM with ESA: proposing the first visit to a binary asteroid system
... should the need arise. ESA envisages AIM first and foremost as a technology demonstration mission. It will trial deep-space optical communications techniques, inter-satellite communications between AIM, its CubeSats and a micro lander, and proximity...
August 2018
Measuring the pulse of Mars
... lead on the MarCO mission at JPL. “One adaptation to deep space that MarCO is equipped with is a reflectarray high-gain antenna....the duo indicating that the first-ever CubeSats heading to deep space are alive and well. A rendition of the formation...
March 2018
Mapping the dark universe
...) and 25.5-27.0 GHz (K-band) frequency bands for downlink, which are different from the frequencies used for deep space missions to avoid interference. The spacecraft is autonomous for 72 hours of nominal operations and has very stringent pointing...
