This November, ESA’s Mars Express spacecraft carried out a series of experimental communication tests with the Chinese (CNSA) Zhurong Mars rover. Mars Express successfully caught data sent up ‘in the blind’ by the rover and…
Salvinia secret: how do they maintain an air-mattress…
Several plants and animals have evolved surfaces with long-term air-retainability to prevent wetting and submersion. One example is Salvinia, a plant floating on water. The secret “how do they maintain an air-mattress” has been unraveled by…
NASA Rover Collects First Mars Rock Sample
NASA’s Perseverance rover collects the first sample of Martian rock, a core from Jezero Crater slightly thicker than a pencil. Mission controllers at NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL) in Southern California received data that confirmed…
OSCAR-QUBE successfully integrated into the ISS
ESA The student team behind experiment OSCAR-QUBE are celebrating after hardware was integrated into the International Space Station’s ICECubes facility by ESA astronaut Thomas Pesquet, on September 3, 2021. According to ESA, the OSCAR-QUBE experiment uses diamond-based quantum…
Oscar-Qube
Oscar-Qube, short for Optical Sensors based on CARbon materials: QUantum Belgium, is an experiment developed by a group of students from the University of Hasselt, Belgium. According to ESA, Oscar-Qube’s mission is to create a…