European Space Agency Sample Analogue Curation Facility

I recently visited the European Space Agency (ESA) at the Harwell campus in Oxfordshire with Katherine Joy, Romain Tartèse, and fellow PhD student Gunter Just. Harwell is the site of the European Centre for Space Applications and Telecommunications (ECSAT), ESA’s … Continue reading →

The Moon as a Potential Resource

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The Moon is likely the next destination for human exploration of the Solar System. There will be a need to sustain humans for a long-duration on its surface, and many people are raising some interesting questions about what resources the … Continue reading →

Goodbye Rosetta

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Yesterday we bid a fond farewell to the European Space Agency‘s (ESA’s) Rosetta mission, after 12 and a half year hurtling 7.9 billion km through space. The Rosetta spacecraft launched in March 2004, on a 10 year journey to Comet … Continue reading →

New paper: A robotic mission concept to return samples from the Schrödinger basin.

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It has been over 40 years since man last stood on the Moon and returned lunar samples to Earth.  The 12 brave astronauts returned 382 kg of samples (with an extra 0.326 kg from Russian Luna missions), analysis of which … Continue reading →

What have we learnt from lunar exploration?

There is a new interactive way to explore the Moon! The European Space Agency (ESA) have gathered a range of lunar scientists and exploration experts from across Europe to talk about what we know about the Moon from exploring with robotic … Continue reading →

Looking forward to the BepiColumbo mission to Mercury

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Mercury, the planet closest to the Sun, is a small rocky body that is only 0.45 times bigger than the Moon. We knew very little about Mercury until NASA’s Mariner 10 mission carried out three fly-by observations between 1974-1975, which … Continue reading →

Weekly News Round-Up 29.03.13

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Hello readers, hope you all had a fun and exciting week. We sure did!! Yesterday we got our brand spanking new mass spectrometer to play with. I know a few of our bloggers are well up for testing its powers. … Continue reading →

Weekly News Round-Up 22.03.13

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Howdy readers!! now as the usually team for the weekly round up are busy in Houston, I’m going to continue the awesome work they’ve been doing… I hope 🙂 Houston Voyager has ‘left’ the Solar System!! Voyager-1 spacecraft (NASA) was … Continue reading →

Weekly News Round-Up 31.01.13

This week has been outstandingly busy here in the lab. We have been busy putting new parts on one of our spectrometers, shooting gold tubing with lasers (to hopefully work out a method of measuring the Hayabusa samples we are … Continue reading →

Hold up on Mars exploration delays sample return mission

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In February our bloggers were at LPSC reporting on the Decadal Survey that sets out NASA’s planetary exploration priorities for the next decade. Top of the list was a Mars rover and a Mars sample return mission. Achieving this depends on a partnership between … Continue reading →