January 2019
Saving humanity – is space up to the job?
... species, was caused by a 10 km-wide asteroid smashing into the coast of Mexico along the Caribbean Sea. This hypersonic collision created a cloud of debris that blotted out the Sun perhaps for years and led to the...
October 2019
Space-based cybersecurity challenges for NATO
... made in the areas of strategic conventional weapon systems – for example, the development of advanced cruise missiles and hypersonic glide vehicles – it is essential for NATO and its allies to be able to rely upon space-based systems for...
October 2020
Superconductors - key to unlocking high power space missions
... Atmospheric re-entry shielding Atmospheric re-entry is among the harshest environments a spacecraft can encounter. Travelling at hypersonic velocities, the interaction of the spacecraft with atmospheric particles generates extremely high heat fluxes...
May 2022
The Space Industry in 2022
... increase in their FY23 budget to $24.5 billion, reflecting the urgency to launch and defend satellites that can detect a hypersonic missile, track a moving truck and assure US nuclear command and control. At the same time this year...
June 2022
In-orbit servicing and the future of the space industry
... notice. However, if this same pieces of debris were spinning one metre above the surface of our planet at hypersonic speed and approaching from every direction, every human being, not to mention everything we have built over...
April 2025
Catapult to orbit - will David finally defeat Goliath?
... of such guns is the speed of the gas, so this stage serves to accelerate the projectile to high supersonic/low hypersonic speeds (about one fifth of orbital velocity). The vehicle transitions to a long, evacuated tunnel with many inward...
