January 2017
New oceans beckon for solar sail technology
... cause a spacecraft of mass (M) to accelerate with acceleration A, F = MxA, an equation familiar to introductory physics students everywhere. While the force exerted by sunlight is extremely small, it’s relatively constant, resulting in a slow but...
May 2018
Publish or perish: the astronomer’s dilemma
... world. The interviewees were four faculty members, two post docs, one PhD and two Master’s students. The study (https://arxiv.org/abs/1801.08033) was complemented by an analysis of annual reports and evaluation...
July 2018
The rise of interplanetary CubeSats
... Robert Twiggs (Stanford) who were looking to improve hands-on experience and skills for science and engineering students. It defines standardised masses and volumes for small spacecraft, in addition to specifying how to safely integrate the...
April 2020
Evolutionary lessons for an interplanetary future
...forever changing our understanding of the natural world and our place in it. Visiting Galapagos as an undergraduate student to conduct field research on marine iguanas convinced me to pursue a career as an evolutionary biologist. While I didn’t fully...
08 June 2016
Long standing initial mass function problem solved
A graduate student at the University of Michigan, along with his supervisor, have for the first time used a method known as ...
28 September 2016
Yorkshire mines to help shed light on life on Mars
In preparation for searching for life on Mars, a PhD student is testing a powerful spectrometer that will be used on the ExoMars mission by exploring similar environments on Earth - and where ...
