July 2019
Science and sensation in microgravity
... can float freely in the aircraft cabin for 20 to 23 seconds. Weightlessness training flights began in 1959 when Project Mercury astronauts including Alan Shepard, practiced aboard a C-131 Samaritan and bestowed it with the name “Vomit Comet...
September 2019
A new era in planetary defence missions
... and is a Fellow of the Meteoritical Society. On NASA’s MESSENGER mission, she served as the Instrument Scientist for the Mercury Dual Imaging System (MDIS) and the Chair of the Geology Discipline Group. Currently, she is the Deputy...
February 2020
Europe’s role in space standardisation
... module. We are also working with JAXA, the Japanese Space Agency, and last year launched BepiColombo to Mercury. Whenever worldwide agencies collaborate on a common mission (for example, the International Space Station with its many...
October 2020
Space 2069 - back to the Moon, to Mars and beyond
... belongs to the centuries to come, and to different people. Looking inward towards the Sun, we cannot live on Venus or Mercury. For humans, Earth marks the inner boundary of our reach into the solar system. Artist’s graphic...
January 2021
Evolution of volatiles on the Moon
... the accretion of protoplanets creating an epoch of giant impacts, which may have blown away most of the crust of Mercury, or resulted in flipping the rotational axis of Venus, or created the lowlands of Mars in the northern hemisphere. The leading...
October 2021
Space in the movies – lessons for spacefarers
... might one day see it. Plan 9 From Outer Space, released in 1959, is an unintentionally comical and flawed attempt by mercurial director Ed Wood to portray a warning against human militarism in space. Dubbed ‘the worst film ever made’ in 1980...
