July 2014
In thrall to a star: understanding the Sun will help us understand our own climate and environment
The Earth is bathed in the rays of the Sun, marginally protected by a sliver of atmosphere and shielded by an invisible magnetic field. We are used to the daily migration of the Sun across the sky and its ...
December 2014
India joins the major league with the Mars Orbiter Mission
... Orbiter Mission spacecraft attached to the fourth stage of the PSLV-C25 rocket, awaiting closure of the heat shield With this triumph, which won international accolades, including one from Pakistan’s nuclear weapon scientist Abdul...
December 2014
Asteroid Redirect Mission: preparing for Mars in deep space
... adapter and fairing, and vehicle-to-space adapter. The flight will also test the entry heat shield and parachute systems. Orion will travel farther into space than any human spacecraft has gone...
December 2014
Terraforming Mars: from CFCs to Total Recall
...again a daunting task, although one might conceivably be able to block the solar wind by constructing a planet-sized shield at the L1 Lagrange point. (The Lagrange points are points of neutral gravitational stability. L1 is located between the planet...
December 2014
Necessity is the mother of invention
Since the October 1973 Yom Kippur War, and increasingly since the 1980s –including as recently as the summer of 2014 – the State of Israel has faced the problem of how to defend itself against a wide range of ballistic missiles of various ranges, ...
June 2015
Beagle 2: discovering the lost Mars lander
.../ drogue chute (still attached as intended) and the main parachute close by. The locations of the front heat shield and the airbags remain to be identified. The targets are within the expected landing area at a distance of around...
