Space probes as a research area encompasses the design, deployment, and scientific utilization of uncrewed spacecraft sent beyond Earth orbit to investigate planetary bodies, small Solar System objects, and the heliosphere, and increasingly to perform astrophysical observations from deep space. Research focuses on mission architecture, autonomous navigation and operations, radiation-hardened avionics, long-duration power systems (e.g., RTGs, advanced solar arrays), high-gain communications, and in situ and remote-sensing payloads optimized for extreme environments. The field integrates planetary science, space plasma physics, and instrumentation, emphasizing data acquisition strategies, sample return capabilities, and technology maturation for future interplanetary and interstellar exploration.
When NASA's Europa Clipper reaches its destination in 2030, the spacecraft will prepare to aim an array of powerful science instruments toward Jupiter's moon Europa during 49 flybys, looking for signs that the ocean beneath ...
Space Exploration
Nov 20, 2024
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48
Back in 2007, I talked with Rob Manning, engineer extraordinaire at the Jet Propulsion Laboratory, and he told me something shocking. Even though he had successfully led the entry, descent, and landing (EDL) teams for three ...
Space Exploration
Nov 18, 2024
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94
Pluto may have been downgraded from full-planet status, but that doesn't mean it doesn't hold a special place in scientist's hearts. There are practical and sentimental reasons for that—Pluto has tantalizing mysteries to ...
Space Exploration
Nov 14, 2024
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112
The twin spacecraft of NASA's TRACERS (Tandem Reconnection and Cusp Electrodynamics Reconnaissance Satellites) mission were recently completed, in preparation for launch in 2025.
Planetary Sciences
Nov 13, 2024
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28
A town in the Austrian Alps might not seem like the most conducive place to come up with daring space missions. But, for the last 40 years, students and professors have been gathering to do just that in Alpbach, just north ...
Planetary Sciences
Nov 12, 2024
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When NASA's Voyager 2 spacecraft flew by Uranus in 1986, it provided scientists' first—and, so far, only—close glimpse of this strange, sideways-rotating outer planet. Alongside the discovery of new moons and rings, baffling ...
Planetary Sciences
Nov 11, 2024
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133
As ESA's Hera mission for planetary defense departed its homeworld, it looked back to Earth to show the moon orbiting around it. In this sequence of images the terrestrial disk gradually shrinks as the spacecraft recedes ...
Space Exploration
Nov 5, 2024
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40
NASA's Voyager mission launched in the 1970s. Today, it's making history as it conducts new science. But how are two spacecraft from the '70s not just surviving, but thriving farther out in space than any other spacecraft ...
Space Exploration
Nov 5, 2024
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119
On Wednesday, Nov. 6, 2024, NASA's Parker Solar Probe will complete its final Venus gravity assist maneuver, passing within 233 miles (376 km) of Venus's surface. The flyby will adjust Parker's trajectory into its final orbital ...
Astronomy
Nov 4, 2024
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106
The European Space Agency has given the go-ahead for initial work on a mission to visit an asteroid called (99942) Apophis. If approved at a key meeting next year, the robotic spacecraft, known as the Rapid Apophis Mission ...
Space Exploration
Nov 4, 2024
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