May 2022
China’s international collaboration in space: an evolving approach from the Middle Kingdom
China’s space achievements have been well-documented: three space stations, multiple lunar missions including a sample return, plans for a Lunar Research Base and a number of Mars missions, to name but a few. In parallel, China has ...
June 2019
The challenge of planetary protection
... tortured surface of Saturn’s moon Enceladus and its fascinating ongoing geological activity is a prime target for future sample-return missions. Future plans To ensure safe and productive human exploration of Mars, we need to know more about how...
February 2019
Simulating lunar and martian regolith in the laboratory
... from almost 50 years of lunar regolith research following the Apollo and Luna sample return missions. Over 382 kg of lunar surface materials were returned through these missions from nine locations across the lunar nearside, including some...
January 2021
Evolution of volatiles on the Moon
...the robotic Luna sample-return missions of the former Soviet Union) were sent. We do not yet have samples of this ...the robotic precursor missions that will precede it, will eventually return samples of these materials to Earth, where they can be ...
November 2019
PROSPECTing for lunar polar volatiles
... water in some mineral phases, and also the sample returned by the Soviet Luna-24 mission was reported to ... thermal hardware and harness are not shown. Apart from analyses of returned samples, the main source of information on lunar water (in the form...
01 November 2019
Can Artemis deliver the payload it seeks from the Moon?
... asked for; “Orion does not have specific storage to match the HLS [Human Landing System] sample return volume. Sample return mass to Earth via Orion might require mission-by-mission decisions on storage within Orion and possible considerations...
