November 2016
Rosetta - an eventful cruise phase
...5 September 2008, at a distance of 800 km and a relative velocity of 8.6 km/s. Again we had to design completely new ...tool, to reduce the inaccuracy of our knowledge of the relative position between Rosetta and the asteroid: by taking pictures ...
January 2017
Elon Musk and Mars - looking for a snowball effect
.... The disadvantage with this approach, of course, is the relatively long timescale, and the greater risk of an economic downturn...The disadvantage with this approach, of course, is the relatively long timescale, and the greater risk of an economic ...
January 2017
Blueprint for NASA’s journey to Mars
... orbit. A HEO orbit is chosen based on its relatively low departure delta velocity and the ability to support crew...vehicles. The mission is designed to limit the return velocity relative to Earth’s atmosphere to be consistent with Orion’s capabilities...
February 2017
Protecting our space interests
...outer space. Objects orbiting in LEO travel at 7-8 km/second and two such objects would present a very high relative velocity, in the order of 10-16 km/s, which means any spacecraft with some degree of manoeuvrability could be used as a weapon simply...
March 2017
Rosetta – outstanding climax to pioneering mission
... to determine the position and velocity of the spacecraft relative to the surface - also developed for the first time... the ‘head” of the duck-shaped nucleus. A nice, relatively flat and sunny area, where the chances of landing success were...
August 2017
Big science from small spacecraft
... Sotin. It targets very high priority science - measuring the relative abundances of neon, argon, helium, krypton and other ‘noble...delay-tolerant networking; autonomous operations; terrain relative navigation; radiation-tolerant avionics; and multi-...
