November 2018
BepiColombo – a mission to explore Mercury
...can help scientists understand how Earth was formed, how it evolved, and how it interacts with the Sun. Therefore, in order to understand Mercury, BepiColombo will address a comprehensive set of scientific questions in order to gain further knowledge...
March 2015
Dawn of ion propulsion
...to lower levels now that Dawn is much farther from the Sun, the spacecraft will have accumulated about 5.5 years of total... of paper Three years ago, the spacecraft’s path around the sun was exactly the same as Vesta’s. Achieving that perfect match was...
19 May 2021
Scientists unexpectedly find heavy metal vapour in comets throughout our Solar System, and beyond
... in the cores of comets are metals. These are not usually seen, especially not far from the Sun, as solid metals don’t usually “sublimate” (become gaseous) at low temperatures. However, in a new study by a Belgian team using...
August 2017
Big science from small spacecraft
... to explore in our Solar System with smaller spacecraft? The Sun is an obvious target, since we can cost-effectively send ..., including its interaction with the solar wind. Observing our Sun The Sun is a massive, roiling, dynamic object at the centre ...
26 November 2021
A closer Moon could have helped the early habitability of our planet
... that not long after the formation of the Earth, our young sun was only pumping out around 70 percent of the solar radiation ...history and a low output of the Sun is known as the faint Sun paradox or faint Sun problem. This issue was raised by ...
February 2016
Nuclear Flashlamps in Space
...is a notionally spherical cloud of small bodies that orbit the Sun within interstellar space, at distances of a large fraction of a... by humanity are puny compared to a star Both the Sun and the nuclear explosion emit radiation over a broad wavelength ...
