Tag Archives: Lander

While today was supposed to be a triumphant one for the European Space Agency (ESA), with the Schiaparelli lander set to touch down on Mars' surface, it's turned out to be anything but. The ESA lost contact with the lander a minute after its parachute opened, around one kilometre up …

The European Space Agency, NASA and scientists and fans of space travel the world over are bidding farewell to the Rosetta space probe today. 12 years on from its launch from Earth's surface, the comet orbiting space probe will finally come to rest – quite spectacularly – on the surface …

With all the excitement of Space X's recoverable launch attempts and the Philae lander telling us all about comets, we're almost spoilt when it comes to exciting advances in space. However it doesn't stop there, as in March next year, NASA is launching its InSight lander to Mars, where it …

The intrepid pair of exploratory spacecraft, Rosetta and Philae, made history last year when they enabled the first landing on a comet. Although it was a somewhat bumpy touchdown and we haven't heard much from Philae lately, it turns out we did learn a lot about the comet in the …

It's been seven long months since anyone has heard from the Philae lander, which was touched down on a comet, hundreds of millions of miles from earth, in a descent that was fraught with nail biting triumphs. After 60 hours though, its batteries ran dry, as it had managed to land in …

With just a few short hours of battery life left on the Philae lander craft that recently touched down on comet 67P, the European Space Agency (ESA) has announced that it's begun drilling into the surface of the interplanetary body. The plan is to try and retrieve some material from …

Remember Rosetta? The little probe that left Earth back in 2004 and spent a near decade taking a jaunt through space so that it could finally enter orbit around the 67P/Churyumov–Gerasimenko comet? Back in August this year it did just that and many watched it happen live. If that's something you …

Update: It's done it. Rosetta has reached the comet! The Rosetta Probe was launched into the cosmos over a decade ago back in March 2004, with plans to have it rendezvous with a comet, begin orbiting it – essentially sticking to it like the moon does with the Earth – and eventually …

NASA's Morpheus moon lander, which runs on a much cleaner, methane/oxygen mix, has gone through another test flight at the Kennnedy Space Centre and performed brilliantly, making use of its vertical take off and landing (VTOL) system for both ascent and descent. Most impressively of course, it did this in …

Rosetta, the European Space Agency's comet probe and lander craft, has awoken after almost three years of hibernation and ten years of space travel and is now set to spend the next two years on an approach with the 67P/Churyumov-Gerasimenko comet in order to test its surface and structure to learn …