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...
August 2018
Flying to the stars
...uploaded’ humans. In the target star system, large solar panels would unfold for powering the payload. Radiators on ...only be possible for a humanity that has command over its solar system resources. To circumvent this, we could significantly alter our...
January 2019
Materials make the space mission
... defects, changing the electrical properties of the device and leading to circuit failure. This is particularly crucial for solar panels where displacement damage effects gradually reduce their power output. Radiation can also modify the intrinsic...
26 June 2019
LightSail 2 gets ready to make its debut in space
...the project themselves. The Society’s first prototype of a solar sail in 2005, the Cosmos-1 project, unfortunately never ...members, in preparation for the unfurling of the dual-sided solar sails, approximately 2 weeks after launch day commenced. Both...
