Why do satellites fail? Although it may seem like a simple question, the answer is sometimes elusive. When a spacecraft like the European Space Agency’s Olympus communication satellite in 1993 or the Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency’s Midori II in 2002 just stops working, it has not always been possible to determine exactly what went wrong. Micrometeoroid impacts, space debris collisions, and radiation-induced electronics [...]
Post Tagged with: “research”
False Alarm Aboard Station, Science and Emergency Training for Crew
Source: NASA Early Wednesday, a fire alarm was annunciated in the International Space Station’s Destiny Laboratory triggered by the MERLIN 2 freezer. It was a false alarm. Flight Engineer Chris Hadfield inspected the freezer facility and found no issues. Payload controllers at the Payload Operations Center in Huntsville, Ala. powered off the freezer for a time to review data. Crew [...]
Preparing for Life on the Moon
In 2010, Alicia Framis, winner of the 1997 Prix de Rome and 2003 Venice Biennale representative for the Netherlands, decided that it was about time humans started preparing for life on the Moon. She founded the Moon Life Project as “a stimulus for artists, architects and designers to create futuristic, radical, political but humane concepts for an extreme lunar environment.” Since [...]
ESSC Criticizes ESA Ministerial Outcomes
The European Space Sciences Committee (ESSC) has released a statement containing recommendations on the outcomes of the ESA council meeting at ministerial level held in Naples on 26-27 November 2012. The European Space Sciences Committee is an independent committee comprising 24 members from 13 European countries. Committee members are drawn from experts active in all fields of space research. The [...]
S.H.E.E. Brings Space Architecture to Earth: Pan-European Consortium Launches an Innovative Project
A consortium of seven European companies and academic institutions has been awarded a 2 million Euro financial grant from the 7th European Framework Program. Responding to a call for proposals entitled “Space,” the team aims to develop a fully autonomous self-deployable habitat that could be used for further research in space architecture as well as a convenient housing for scientists [...]
Superconducting Magnets to Protect Spacecraft from Radiation
While on Earth, the planet protects us from space radiation and cosmic rays with its magnetic field. NASA scientists are now working on an analogous approach to protect spacecraft from space radiation outside of Earth’s protective envelope. NASA along with its partners is exploring the possibility of using superconducting magnets to generate magnetic fields around space probes and habitats to [...]
ESA’s FlySafe to Make Flying Safer
Bird strike, when an airplane flies into one or more birds mid-flight, has been a significant threat to flight safety for a long time. According to the US Federal Aviation Administration, bird strikes have killed more than 231 people and destroyed over 220 aircraft worldwide since 1988. A famous case of bird strike took place in 2009 when a US [...]
Sleep Issues Could Affect Future Mars Mission
A study based on Mars500 data revealed that the crew experienced increasing lethargy over the course of the mission, resulting in hypokinesis connected to sleep disturbances. “The success of interplanetary human spaceflight will depend on many factors,” said biomedical and psychiatric researchers from the US and Russia who published the findings in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, “including the behavioral activity [...]
JAXA Schedules New Asteroid Sampling Mission for 2014
The Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency (JAXA) is preparing a new asteroid mission following the success of Hayabusa1, the first round-trip asteroid mission that retrieved samples of the asteroid Itokawa in 2005. “We hope to find the key of the creation of the solar system and the birth of life,” said Professor HiItoshi Kuninaka, head of the team developing Hayabusa2. The new [...]
Flexure to Put NASA Thermal Insulation Technology to Work
By Maria Fischer Space’s environmental effects on spacecraft and their components challenge scientists to design and develop materials to cope with, among other things, the extreme thermal environment. The most challenging environment is that around the cryogenic tanks of launch vehicles. Over the past decade NASA has patented two thermal insulation materials which might change the way things are done [...]
