May 2020
Space astronomy at the limits of technology
... manager Joseph Hunt declaring the spacecraft decommissioned and the its mission concluded in mission control at the Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, California, on 30 January 2020. My first Great Observatory was the Hubble Space Telescope (HST...
March 2021
Messier 82’s starburst magnetic highway
... why the gas and dust (as illustrated here) have a more cone-shaped morphology than the familiar jet-like form resulting from the supermassive black hole accretion in the hearts of other active galaxies. These...
April 2021
Space wars - how they start and how to end them
... to ramming speed to take out a satellite, if it has on-board radar or optical systems to track a target and fine manoeuvring jets for impact accuracy. Even a small laser on a satellite can damage sensitive optical components such as Earth-oriented...
February 2022
FPGA computing reaches new heights
... example in experiments to understand the effects of radiation on electronic devices. Its major space customers have included NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL), for which Alpha Data has provided modified COTS design services for firmware...
March 2022
Space travel and environmental sustainability
... Covid-19 depressed international travel, some 4.4 billion air travellers accounted for the burning of 285 million tonnes of jet fuel, averaging around 65 kg per person. But how fuel-intensive is a flight to orbit in comparison with a typical air...
October 2023
The multidisciplinary world of space habitation design
... behaviour of fabrics and the dressed body in a weightless environment e.g., by diverting from close-fitting suits akin to early jet-age flight suits to a more non-functional but aesthetics-oriented design. Eytan Tepper et al research the governance...
