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...
November 2025
Extra-terrestrial Skyring: managing space debris with an artificial planetary ring
...implies either the use of solar sails or some form of ion drive powered by solar panels. The spacecraft would be...would open the opportunity to construct a more grander space architecture. Solar sails could be used to lift objects to a higher graveyard...
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...
March 2016
Rosetta – Starting from Scratch
... done many of the things that we were attempting: flying a solar-powered spacecraft at 800 million km from the Sun, hibernating a spacecraft...two shifts in ESOC and Torino. Rosetta large solar panels deployment test In the meantime, the simulation ...
November 2016
Turning the Solar System into our backyard
... response to the presented challenges including powering Earth-orbiting satellites through beamed energy from in-situ manufactured solar panels on the surface of the Moon and the creation of an Earth observation and data analytics platform to support...
