By Jan Chodas Dr. Scott Bolton, Juno’s principal investigator from the Southwest Research Institute, and the Juno team had been working toward this milestone for several years. A mission of this length and complexity required careful planning and testing to increase its chances of success.
Don Cohen, Managing Editor In their frank analysis of the failure of the Wide-field Infrared Explorers primary mission (“WIRE: Learning from Failure”), Bryan Fafaul and Kerry Ellis explain that this project based on “insight, not oversight” didn’t have enough of either.
By Ed Hoffman The first International Astronautical Congress (IAC) held on the African continent was a potent reminder that nations seek the benefits of spaceflight for many different reasons.
By Alessandro Ercolani Since joining the European Space Agency, ESA, in 2000, I have developed my whole career at the Department of Ground Segment Engineering.
By Matthew Kohut Bryan O’Connor retired as chief of Safety and Mission Assurance on August 31, 2011, after serving nearly a decade as NASA’s top safety and mission assurance official.
By Paul Hertz NASA’s Science Mission Directorate (SMD) provides opportunities for scientists outside the agency to determine what science NASA should pursue in future missions. Several different programs, such as Discovery and Explorer, publish announcements of opportunity so ideas can be proposed, vetted, selected, and flown in the pursuit of groundbreaking scientific discovery.
By Dava Newman For the past dozen years, I have been working with colleagues and students here at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) and with collaborators in various disciplines from around the world to develop a new kind of spacesuit.
By Bob Chesson Most European Space Agency (ESA) projects are contracted to European industry on a firm fixed-price (FFP) basis. These FFP contracts and their statements of work transfer most of the project risks to the prime contractor, who then transfers as much risk as he can to subcontractors and equipment suppliers.
On August 1, 2010, almost the entire Earth-facing side of the sun erupted in activity from a C3-class solar flare, a solar tsunami, large-scale shaking of the solar corona, radio bursts, a coronal mass ejection, and more. This extreme ultraviolet snapshot from the Solar Dynamics Observatory (SDO) shows the sun’s northern hemisphere in mid-eruption. Different […]
