Copernical Team
New automatic control technique uses spacecraft solar panels to reach desired orbit at Mars
A satellite on a science mission to Mars aims for a low-altitude orbit, but the lower the orbit, the more propellant is required to enter orbit when arriving from Earth. To save propellant, a technique called aerobraking uses a small propulsive maneuver for orbit insertion to enter a large orbit; the satellite then makes many passes through the upper atmosphere, using drag on the solar panels to reduce the size of the orbit a little bit each pass until the orbit is the desired size for science operations.
Watch: Matthias Maurer in-flight call to World Economic Forum
Join ESA astronaut Matthias Maurer on Thursday, 20 January, in a live call from the International Space Station, from 14:00 GMT/15:00 CET, talking with prominent experts and industry leaders, to explore how space research can improve life on our planet.
Wanted: recycling methods to keep astronauts alive
It took a crop of potatoes to keep Matt Damon alive on the red planet in The Martian. And in future, real life astronauts on the Moon and Mars will have to be gardeners, farmers and expert recyclers as well as explorers. Do you have promising ideas that might help them to get by in space on next to no resources?
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Crash test dummy Access to the 'SpaceDataHighway'
The 'Columbus Ka-Band Terminal' (ColKa) has commenced service. "The volume of scientific data generated by the experiments on the International Space Station (ISS) is continuously increasing. ColKa gives the Columbus laboratory on the ISS its own direct access to the SpaceDataHighway. The high-speed satellite link will significantly accelerate 'data traffic' to Europe.
Many scientists will New AI navigation prevents crashes
What do you call a broken satellite? Today, it's a multimillion-dollar piece of dangerous space junk. But a new collision-avoidance system developed by students at the University of Cincinnati is getting engineers closer to developing robots that can fix broken satellites or spacecraft in orbit.
UC College of Engineering and Applied Science doctoral students Daegyun Choi and Anirudh Chhabr NASA satellite servicing technologies licensed by Northrop Grumman
Northrop Grumman recently signed agreements to license three technologies from NASA related to satellite servicing.
Two of the technologies were developed by NASA for the On-orbit Servicing, Assembly, and Manufacturing 1 (OSAM-1) mission. OSAM-1 is a first-of-its-kind mission that will grapple a US government-owned satellite, Landsat 7, to refuel it and to demonstrate the capability to pot Carnegie Mellon-led team to develop robotics to service satellites and build structures
There are 6,500 satellites in orbit, but only about half of them are functional. Once a satellite breaks down or runs out of fuel, it is essentially useless. Repairs, maintenance and upgrades are nearly impossible in orbit.
It's launch once, use once. But as satellites have become more robust, their operators often find that fleets outlast their projected lifespans and need new technology, New spheres of knowledge on the origin of life
The shape of a cell affects its physical and chemical properties. Different cell types have developed different shapes to enable effective functioning. But what shape were the very first cells, as life began to evolve?
Primitive cells are thought to have been spherical, but experimental evidence supporting this belief remains elusive. Now, however, researchers from the University of Tsukub New study sheds light on origins of life on Earth
Addressing one of the most profoundly unanswered questions in biology, a Rutgers-led team has discovered the structures of proteins that may be responsible for the origins of life in the primordial soup of ancient Earth.
The researchers explored how primitive life may have originated on our planet from simple, non-living materials. They asked what properties define life as we know it and c