Dr Eddie Moxey of the University of Surrey recently gave a speech at the IEE seminar on the Changing Face of Robotics. His speech concentrated on the use of robotics in space.

The talk reviewed the past, present and future of the two main strands of space robotics research and development On-Orbit Servicing (OOS) and Planetary Exploration.

Since the deployment of the Canadarm, on the Space Shuttle, OOS has steadily developed from a fascinating research topic into a po

These images, taken by the High Resolution Stereo Camera (HRSC) on board ESA’s Mars Express spacecraft, show Crater Hale in the Argyre basin of the southern hemisphere of Mars.

The images show an area close to the northern rim of the Argyre basin, located at latitude 36° South and longitude 324° East. The image was taken with a ground resolution of about 40 metres per pixel during Mars Express orbit 533 in June 2004.

Slight periodic colour and brightness variations in

NASA’s Chandra X-ray Observatory has obtained definitive evidence that a distant quasar formed less than a billion years after the big bang contains a fully-grown supermassive black hole generating energy at the rate of 20 trillion suns. The existence of such massive black holes at this early epoch of the Universe challenges theories of the formation of galaxies and supermassive black holes. The Marshall Center manages the Chandra program.

NASA’s Chandra X-ray Observatory has

A new computer programme that can help make intelligent judgements is set to advance the way we make decisions.

The software’s methodology, developed by a team led by Professor Jian-Bo Yang at The University of Manchester, could eventually be used in a wide range of fields, from measuring the excellence of an organisation to comparing the productivity of nations.

Professor Yang, head of the Decision Sciences and Operations Management group at Manchester Business School, e

An Elizabethtown College professor has developed an embedded sensor that functions in cement much like a thermometer in the Thanksgiving turkey.

“The thermometer indicates if the turkey is done by measuring its internal temperature,” said Nathaniel Hager III, an adjunct faculty member in Elizabethtown’s physics and engineering department. “The embedded sensor does the same thing in concrete by monitoring how quickly water involved in the curing process is chemically combining wit

University of Kent astronomers Professor Glenn White, Dr Stephen Serjeant, Dr Toshi Takagi and collaborators, will be presented with the £10,000 Daiwa Adrian Prize 2004 at a Royal Society ceremony in London on Thursday 25 November.

The team have been awarded the prize in recognition of their pioneering work on the Japan-Anglo-Dutch ASTRO-F satellite, a powerful new space telescope which will make a map of the sky in far-infrared light.

Daiwa Adrian Prizes are trienni

ESA’s Huygens probe, now orbiting Saturn on board the NASA/ESA/ASI Cassini spacecraft, is in good health and successfully passed its sixteenth ‘In-Flight Checkout’ on 23 November 2004.

This in-flight checkout procedure was the last one planned before separation of the Huygens probe from Cassini in December this year. The preliminary analysis of the real-time data received showed all events in the check-out procedure occurred as, and when, expected.

The procedure was carried out

Moscow engineers have invented and produced a ’black box’ the size of a meccano brick which is able to record and memorise all details of movement of the object carrying the device. In fact, the device does not do it during its entire life-cycle but only within the last 15 seconds. However, these last seconds in particular are often the most important ones.

This device has been invented, produced and is being tested by engineers of the Moscow CONUS Company, specialisi

A cutting-edge robotic scanner – the first in the UK and only the second in the world to be installed in a research library – is being used in an exciting initiative to create a vast digital library from original bound and printed historical documents.

The University of Southampton is using the unique precision-built equipment to scan rare parliamentary documents as part of a project that aims to put 300 years of history online. Southampton is leading a consortium of researc

Swift successfully launched today at 12:16 PM EST! Spacecraft separation occurred at about 80 minutes after launch as expected. Congratulations to the entire Swift team.

Gamma-ray bursts (GRBs) are the most powerful explosions the Universe has seen since the Big Bang. They occur approximately once per day and are brief, but intense, flashes of gamma radiation. They come from all different directions of the sky and last from a few milliseconds to a few hundred seconds. So far scient

A team at the University of Innsbruck, Austria has been successful in conducting electrons in metals along predetermined channels. This behaviour, observed for the first time in metals, provides important insights into the interactions of electrons – and on how the phenomenon of the current flow without any resistance loss, termed super-conductivity, can occur. Thereby this project aided by the Austrian Science Fund (FWF) combines fundamental research, at its best, with potential applications in

The Armagh Observatory’s ‘Human Orrery’ is the first large outdoor exhibit in the world to show accurately the elliptical orbits and changing relative positions of the planets and other solar system bodies with time. It has been constructed with the support of the Northern Ireland Department of Culture, Arts and Leisure (DCAL) and is the first major addition to the Observatory Grounds and Astropark for more than a decade. A ceremony to mark its construction will take place at the Observatory

Scientists have discovered that the air in the atmosphere around us is heavier (more dense) than they had previously thought. Knowing this will enable scientists to measure the mass of objects more accurately than ever before.

Writing in the Institute of Physics journal Metrologia, a team from the Korea Research Institute of Standards and Science (KRISS) and the International Bureau of Weights and Measures (BIPM) in France, report a new determination of the content of argon in a

It’s the scientific equivalent of having your cake and eating it too. A team of researchers from JILA, a joint institute of the Commerce Department’s National Institute of Standards and Technology and the University of Colorado at Boulder, has developed an efficient, low-cost way to measure the energy levels of atoms in a gas with extremely high accuracy, and simultaneously detect and control transitions between the levels as fast as they occur. The technique is expected to have practical applica

Most solids expand when heated, a familiar phenomenon with many practical implications. Among the rare exceptions to this rule, the compound zirconium tungstate stands out by virtue of the enormous temperature range over which it exhibits so-called “negative thermal expansion,” contracting as it heats up and expanding as it cools, and because it does so uniformly in all directions.

While engineers are already pursuing practical applications in areas ranging from electronics to

The Pleiades are one of the most famous and brightest stellar clusters in our Galaxy. One might imagine that the distance to such an important object would be well-known and no longer poses a problem for astrophysicists. For several years, however, determining the distance to the Pleiades has been a crucial and complicated problem.

For several decades, the distance to the Pleiades was determined by methods relying on our knowledge of stellar physics that was assumed to be rather