space mission

ChemCam laser sets its sights on first Martian target
08/17/2012 - 12:58

Members of the Mars Science Laboratory Curiosity rover ChemCam team have received the first photos from the instrument’s remote micro imager. The successful capture of ChemCam’s first 10 photos sets the stage for the first test bursts of the instrument’s rock-zapping laser in the near future.

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Curiosity gets to the bottom of Mars
08/03/2012 - 16:27

It weighs 900 kilograms, has ten scientific instruments on board and is the most powerful laboratory ever sent to our neighbouring planet: the Curiosity rover. It will herald a new era of Mars research. The team working on Mars Science Laboratory, as the US space agency NASA’s mission is officially known, includes scientists from the Max Planck Institute for Solar System Research in Katlenburg-Lindau/Lower Saxony. In addition to searching for organic compounds in the Martian soil, they are particularly interested in the composition and nature of the rock.

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Slapshot to deep space: UAHuntsville scientists developing pulsed nuclear fusion system for distant missions
05/03/2012 - 11:14

The ticket to Mars and beyond may be a series of nuclear slapshots that use magnetic pulses to slam nuclei into each other inside hockey pucks made of a special, lightweight salt. A physics team from The University of Alabama in Huntsville's Department of Mechanical and Aerospace Engineering soon will take delivery of a specialized system to see if they can "Z-pinch" a tiny bit of that salt into the heart of a star.

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ERS satellite missions complete after 20 years
09/12/2011 - 12:25

After a final thruster firing last week to deplete its remaining fuel, ESA's venerable ERS-2 observation satellite has been safely taken out of service. Ground controllers also ensured the space environment was protected for future missions.
 

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Initial results from NASA's Kepler mission
03/12/2011 - 21:59

Astronomers at the University of Sydney are using data from NASA's Kepler Mission to learn more about the future fate of the Sun. After 300 days of intense investigation since the Kepler spacecraft launched in 2009, the scientific team behind Kepler is announcing the first results from the mission on 5 January 2010

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