February 2023
How to grow plants in a spacecraft
... major hazards appear during long spaceflights: space radiation, isolation and confinement, distance from Earth, low gravity, and the hostile and closed environment of a spacecraft. Living plants and freshly grown food could play...
28 September 2022
Firms pioneer embryo conception mission for ‘space mice'
... sperm and oocytes,” said Dr Edelbroek. “A series of ARTIS missions in the coming years will enable research on partial gravity effects on embryo development and help us move towards the ultimate goal of human reproduction and childbirth in space...
October 2017
Exploring Jupiter’s icy moons
...spacecraft is then transferred from Callisto to Ganymede in two steps: the first step uses Callisto and Ganymede gravity assists to reduce the velocity with respect to Ganymede. Further velocity leveraging is obtained in a second step via a so-called...
December 2014
The vanity of machines
I was here – Rosetta’s self-portrait as it passes Mars, one of four planetary gravity assists needed to boost the spacecraft onto the trajectory to meet its target, comet 67P/Churyumov–Gerasimenko
August 2016
Big or small - aerospace innovates through constraints
... Triana but nicknamed Goresat, was under development to take real time images from L1 (a point where the gravity of Earth and Sun is balanced) in a mission that the vice-president hoped would better depict our planet...
June 2017
Bepi-Colombo will unveil Mercury’s secrets
... Sun thus making conditions difficult for biological life to develop and persist. Nonetheless, despite its modest gravity, Mercury also has an atmosphere, albeit very tenuous, which is constantly replenished in a way yet to be clarified, and its...
