Part 3 of 12 Parts
Sixteen research projects drawn from NASA, the space industry and academia will receive grants from the NASA Innovative Advanced Concepts (NIAC) program in order to study the feasibility of their concepts. Here are more of the projects:
Part 2 of 12 Parts (Please read Part 1 first)
Sixteen research projects drawn from NASA, the space industry and academia will receive grants from the NASA Innovative Advanced Concepts (NIAC) program in order to study the feasibility of their concepts. Here are more of the projects.
Part 1 of 12 Parts
Part 2 of 2 Parts (Please read Part 1 first)
Solar thermal propulsion has two particular areas of application. Earth-orbit transfers and scientific interplanetary missions.
Part 2 of 2 Parts (Please read Part 1 first)
Parabolic reflectors are an obvious choice for use in space applications because they either pick up or send information in a specific direction. However, their bowl-shape makes it inconvenient to store in a launch vehicle with limited room. This is an even bigger problem when many antennas need to be launched on the same vehicle.
Part 1 of 2 Parts
It seems that the ancient Japanese paper folding art of origami is finding uses in the space industry. I recently posted an article about using origami techniques to make foldable fuel tanks. Now engineers are using it to make foldable antennas.
I have posted about a number of different propulsion systems for spacecraft. Currently it can take years to carry out missions to the outer solar system. Now there is a new concept being explored that would use the mechanism behind solar flares to speed up the exploration of space.
The European Space Agency (ESA) has partnered with Kayser Italia to offer the Kubik facility on the International Space Station (ISS) to commercial customers. Kayser Italia is a Small Medium Enterprise (SME) private independent aerospace system engineering company.
Sumitomo Forestry is part of the Sumitomo Group of Japan which was founded over four hundred years ago. They have joined with Kyoto University to work on developing wooden materials that are highly resistance to damage from temperatures changes and sunlight found in space. They intend to be the first to build satellites out of wood with a target date of 2023.
