This article was originally published in the Bristol Post and written by Ashley Dove-Jay.   Later this month, China is to launch XPNAV-1, the X-ray Pulsar Navigation satellite. This pioneering spacecraft will be used to build and map out a revolutionary deep-space navigation system, pulsar navigation. Think of what they’re building as GPS, but […]

  This article was originally published in the Bristol Post and written by Ashley Dove-Jay.   Last week, Elon Musk walked onto the stage of the world’s most prestigious annual space conference, the International Astronautical Congress, and delivered the keynote lecture. Over a period of an hour, he laid out the mission architecture, roadmap, spacecraft, […]

  This article was originally published in the Bristol Post and written by Ashley Dove-Jay.   This month, China is launching the Quantum Science Satellite (QSS). This spacecraft will be marked as a cornerstone in the ushering of a new era of communications technology; quantum communications. The key distinguisher with quantum communications is that the […]

  This article was originally published in the Bristol Post and written by Ashley Dove-Jay.   Rocket engineering is hard. Typically, one in twenty rockets fail. Why? Because roughly 95% of a rocket at take-off, in terms of its weight, is fuel. The other 5% is the rocket itself and whatever it is launching into […]

  This article was originally published in the Bristol Post and written by Ashley Dove-Jay.   For space exploration, a lot of fascinating things have happened in the last few weeks. After delivering its Dragon spacecraft to the International Space Station, for the first time SpaceX retro-boost landed, on a ship out at sea, the […]