April 2024
The promise of solar energy for sustainable development and space exploration
... the solution in the future, technology and costs permitting. A deployable solar panel and power transmitter structure is lowered over the main body of Caltech’s Space Solar Power Demonstrator in preparation for its launch to orbit on 3 January 2023...
07 February 2020
ESA's Solar Orbiter mission set to launch on 10 February
...is counting down the hours to the launch of their Solar Orbiter mission. Scheduled for launch Monday 10 February 04:03 ... when the spacecraft is programmed to ‘wake up’ and its solar panels and instrument booms are deployed. The boom, which measures ...
November 2019
The economic promise of space
...space solar power. Collecting solar power on Earth has many drawbacks and despite all the promising innovation in solar panels and...technological feasibility of, and the growing economic case for, Solar Power Satellites (SPS). Recent studies by NASA, ...
May 2020
Developing a commercial market for small sample return
... return vehicle returning from the Moon. The illustration shows it’s high power configuration, with extra deployable solar panels and additional manoeuvering thrusters. Enabling technologies Several key technologies have emerged over the past decade...
06 March 2019
Growing food from thin air to feed astronauts
...be sourced from whatever means necessary. If your off the grid, then solar panels, be they on a spaceship or hoisted on a pole in the... Sounds like a win-win situation. “The method of Solar Foods for producing protein arose from a desire to produce ...
October 2015
Taking AIM with ESA: proposing the first visit to a binary asteroid system
...to perform soundings right through the asteroid – and a solar panel to survive several weeks on the Didymoon surface. The... but also in the formation and ongoing history of the Solar System, potentially even in creating the preconditions for life on...
