Voyager spacecraft are our greatest ambassadors into space. Now exploring beyond our solar system’s boundaries, both probes have enough fuel left over to continue transmitting scientific information until 2025. The Voyagers were designed to take advantage of an unlikely alignment among outer planets that enabled them to study two, four and eventually all their unique…
Spacecraft attitudes require sensors to track vehicle orientation, actuators to apply the torques necessary to steer it in its desired direction, and algorithms that use sensor measurements and desired attitudes as input to control these actuators based on guidance, navigation and control (GNC). This integrated field is known as guidance, navigation and control (GNC). Simulink…
Mark Watt works by day as a Spacecraft Guidance, Navigation and Control Systems Engineer on European Space Agency missions like LISA Pathfinder; but by night he’s created one of the most intuitively creative music applications ever: Spacecraft Granular Synth. Now available as a desktop VST, this instrument features MIDI/MPE support and live sampling for further…
NASA’s Double Asteroid Redirection Test (DART) spacecraft was successfully placed into interplanetary transfer orbit using SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket. This marks humanity’s inaugural test of planetary defense to see whether intentionally colliding into an asteroid can alter its path. Falcon 9 successfully launched Badr 8, an Arabsat communications satellite based in Saudi Arabia from Cape…
Galileo, named after Italian astronomer Galileo Galilei, taught us much about Jupiter and its moons. Launching into space with a Titan IV rocket, its speed increased when passing Venus and Earth; eventually reaching Jupiter in 1995. Galileo made numerous remarkable discoveries during its two years orbiting Jupiter, including lava flows on Io and evidence for…
On 14 July 2015, New Horizons made an epic journey through Pluto’s system and returned spectacular images showing an icy world with towering water-ice mountains and vast plains of frozen nitrogen. From concept to launch day – and multiple nearly cancelled attempts along the way – took a difficult 17 years. How does it work?…
NASA began exploring the Moon long before Neil Armstrong became the first human to set foot there, sending unmanned spacecraft missions that provided invaluable data about landing techniques and helped scientists understand its environment. These missions gave NASA vital knowledge about landing techniques while providing scientific understanding of what life might look like on the…
Space Craft Manufacturing of west-central Missouri creates custom trailers tailored specifically for weight and price constraints – almost anything is possible according to their website! Marsha and Wyatt Trautman originally focused their expertise in building large trailers for performing artists and circuses, but now cater to a wider clientele including retirees, those traveling on business…
Spacecraft missions involve journeys by uncrewed spacecraft or robots to explore distant planets, moons, or objects within our Solar System. For instance, NASA Galileo provided evidence of liquid water on Jupiter’s moon Europa before being sent careening into Saturn’s atmosphere to prevent it from landing there and potentially polluting any underground lakes that might support…
