The UK now has it's own shiny new space agency, and they're about to hold their first conference. There were already several space conferences in the UK each year, but now the UKSA is hosting this one some people expect it will absorb some of the others ( Read more... )

Back when I was 17, I went through the process of applying for university courses. I knew I wanted to study Physics with a specialization in a space related field, but at the time it wasn't really clear to me what the difference between "astrophysics" and "space science/technology" was. Somebody, and I confess I have sadly forgotten who, explained ( Read more... )

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The ESA spacecraft Rosetta is about 200,000km away from the asteroid Lutetia right now. In a few hours, it will be flying past at a distance of just 3,000km at an amazing 54,000km per hour - that's 15km every second. Already the powerful OSIRIS cameras are starting to make out surface features of the 100km wide asteroid, and both Orbiter and Lander ( Read more... )

It's been a very busy time since my last post, both in my personal life and in the space industry - the Japanese have been having some particularly exciting successes I've been meaning to write about, and the launch of SpaceX's Falcon has quite amazing implications, but I haven't gotten around to any writing about any of this ( Read more... )

Comets have been known to man since ancient times (at least since Aristotle, around 350BC) and we are currently aware of the existence of some three and a half thousand of them, yet they remain the most elusive and least understood bodies in our solar system.

Almost half of the comets we know about today are what we call Kreutz Sungrazers believed ( Read more... )

I confess I had somehow completely overlooked the name given to the intended future Chinese space station: "Tiangong" translates as "The Heavenly Palace" and to my mind it's the best name given to anything launched by man. I hope it goes well, though I wish they'd be a little bit less secretive about it all ( Read more... )

I wish the space industry would be a little bit more sensible with its naming schemes. ESA have announced that the second ATV (to be launched next year) will be named after Johannes Kepler (the first was named for Jules Verne). That's a perfectly good name, except for the fact NASA are preparing to launch the Kepler spacecraft as we speak. It's ( Read more... )

It's not often I receive an email I feel inclined to make public, but this one certainly fits the bill.
Jan. 28, 2009 ( Read more... )

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