April 2017
Urgent action needed to keep satellites safe in orbit
... a complex system involving numerous subsystems that have finite lifetimes due to mechanical wearing (e.g. Sun-tracking solar panel bearings, momentum wheels, etc.), limited propulsion resources (gas jets or similar), and carefully engineered thermal...
23 August 2016
NASA Makes Contact with STEREO-B Spacecraft
.... Credit: NASA STEREO-A and STEREO-B spacecraft (Solar and Terrestrial Relations Observatory Spacecraft) were launched in ... which in turn would have caused problems with its power-generating solar panels. It is yet unclear if STEREO-B will be able to ...
22 September 2017
OSIRIS-REx makes closest Earth approach today
... be selected from the 500, 000 known asteroids out in the Solar System. Benny is carbon-rich (where the b comes from in ...from Cape Canaveral, Florida, OSIRIS-Rex has already unfolded its solar panels in the first step of its mission. After its gravity...
14 January 2019
New steam-powered asteroid hopper that could run 'forever'
...each object to make it work. It can for instance deploy solar panels to get enough energy for mining and make steam, or for ...warm while they carried out their mission objectives. With a Solar System doomed to be littered by defunct robots no longer ...
April 2017
Sky-fi dawn of the space internet era
...the sky Facebook’s proposed drones would be powered electrically, using solar panels to remain aloft for long periods of time. This concept... some countries and latitudes. Facebook’s Aguila solar powered aircraft. Drones have high bandwidth capacity...
April 2021
Satellite servicing comes of age
...see a communications satellite decades after launch. Would the solar panels have suffered damage? Would the insulation blankets be torn...MEV-1 and IS-901 cast shadows on each other’s solar arrays, which is not encountered in standard operations outside...
