Aerospace: research by the Politecnico di Milano protagonist of the launch of the NASA DART impactor

Divert the trajectory of an asteroid on a collision course with the Earth, by means of a controlled impact at full speed with a space probe. This was the challenge of the DART mission (Double Asteroid Redirection Test) by NASA, successfully completed on 26 September 2022, in which Politecnico was directly involved as part of Read More

ESA: Meet Carole Mundell, new Director of Science

Carole Mundell is the new Director of Science, succeeding the current director Günther Hasinger. Professor Mundell is an internationally renowned scientist with extensive experience in inclusive leadership, operational management, strategy and international science policy development. She joined ESA from the University of Bath where she held the Hiroko Sherwin Chair in Extragalactic Astronomy, was founding Read More

Hubble captures movie of DART asteroid impact debris

The NASA/ESA Hubble Space Telescope captured a series of photos of rapid changes to the asteroid Dimorphos when it was deliberately hit by a 545-kilogram spacecraft on 26 September 2022. The primary objective of the NASA mission, called DART (Double Asteroid Redirection Test), was to test our ability to alter the asteroid’s trajectory as it Read More

Atom-scale scan of space materials

Internal research fellow Johanna Wessing performing X-ray photoelectron spectroscopy of the topmost skin of a candidate material for space. This powerful technique enables the analysis of surface structures and composition to a depth of just a few  nanometres – a nanometre being a billionth of a metre, or, typically, a few dozen individual atoms. Exposure Read More

NASA, SpaceX Look to March 2 for Next Available Crew-6 Launch Attempt

NASA and SpaceX scrubbed Monday’s launch attempt of the agency’s SpaceX Crew-6 mission to the International Space Station due to a ground systems issue. Mission teams decided to stand down to investigate an issue preventing data from confirming a full load of the ignition source for the Falcon 9 first stage Merlin engines, triethylaluminum triethylboron (or Read More

The Executive Director of the SESAR Deployment Manager and her team visit ENAIRE’s General Director

...and see, on-site, the improvements made in the Madrid Control Centre Complex and in the centralized systems With European CEF funds - Mariagrazia La Piscopia held a meeting with ENAIRE's General Director with the aim of fostering their existing partnership -ENAIRE is one of the members of the SESAR Deployment Manager - During her visit Read More

ENAIRE will invest 9.5 million euros to transfer and virtualise air traffic control systems supported by Voice over IP

• The actions will be carried out at the Air Control Centres in Madrid, Barcelona and its Centre for Experimentation and Development • These systems are used to manage air traffic, for simulations and operational training environments for controllers and pseudo-pilots, as well as for new communications architectures • In addition, the Board of Directors Read More

ESA – Seeing triple

This observation from the NASA/ESA/CSA James Webb Space Telescope features the massive galaxy cluster RX J2129. Due to Gravitational lensing, this observation contains three different images of the same supernova-hosting galaxy, which you can see in closer detail here. Gravitational lensing occurs when a massive celestial body causes a sufficient curvature of spacetime to bend Read More

ENAIRE began to implement the AMBAR Project at the Adolfo Suárez Madrid-Barajas Airport

• This means more efficient air operations, improved service quality and reduced fuel consumption and emissions • It makes operations possible using independent approaches to the existing parallel runways • The acoustic impact in relation to the current scenario in the vicinity of the Airport is unchanged • The project satisfies the regulatory requirements of Read More