The interdisciplinary research consortium PRELIFE has been awarded an NWA grant by the Dutch Research Council (NWO) to investigate the origin of life on Earth and in the universe, one of science’s greatest unsolved puzzles. The consortium will receive €6.7 million to explore this question and comprises scientists from sixteen universities and research institutes across […]
Planetary scientists have long believed that the organic macromolecules that make the Earth suitable for life come from chondrites. But until now, the question has been how these chondrites -aggregated pebbles mainly known as meteorites- acquired the macromolecules. An international team of researchers from, among others, the University of Bern and TU Delft has found […]
Lecturer Sebastiaan de Vet of our Planetary Exploration group has received a Comenius Teaching Fellowship for his proposal to start developing a ‘Planetary Analogue Rock Collection’ (PARC) for use in courses of the Planetary Exploration MSc profile. By allowing students to work with terrestrial rocks and minerals that also occur on other planetary bodies, as […]
Measurements from the Cassini satellite indicate an underground ocean of water and ammonia in Saturn’s moon Titan. Scientists from NASA and TU Delft have made a new analysis of precise measurements of the satellite’s velocity as it flew past Titan. The speed is affected by small changes in the moon’s oblateness. It was then deduced […]
How can we detect if a planet or moon has the potential to harbour life? A new expertise network funded with 690 kEuro by the Netherlands Space Office will allow a consortium of Dutch researchers to find out during the next five years. The involvement of various researchers of the Planetary Exploration group illustrates the […]
The European Research Council (ERC) has announced the ERC Starting Grants for young researchers. One of them is joining the Planetary Exploration group at TU Delft: Edgar Steenstra to study volcanic processes on Venus. The European grant of € 2,228,075 for a five-year research programme is intended to enable Steenstra to build his own teams […]
August is the best month in the year for viewing meteors. The Perseid meteor shower will peak during the weekend of 12-13 august, with little interference from the moon. Where can you find the best viewing spot? Sebastiaan de Vet tried to find out by creating a new map. The amount of visible meteors depends […]
Last week, Nick Oberg appeared in newspaper NRC with an article about his study of the formation of moons, particularly those of Jupiter. On 5 June, he successfully defended his PhD thesis and obtained the distinction cum laude. “My thesis is mainly about the formation of Jupiter’s icy moons. They contain oceans of liquid water and are […]
Bright fireballs streaking across the Dutch skies suggest that every two years on average a new meteorite is dropped in the Netherlands. Finding them back is notoriously difficult and TU Delft researcher Sebastiaan de Vet now plans on searching for them using drones. What better way to use the aerial vantage point of a drone […]
How dark are the starry skies above the campus in Delft? To find out researcher Sebastiaan de Vet and technicians installed a sky quality sensor at the Rooftop Laboratory of the Faculty of Aerospace Engineering. It is part of the national network ‘Was het donker’ (“Was it dark?”), which measures the sky brightness across the […]
A grand odyssey of exploration is about to begin. Humankind’s next bold mission to the outer solar system. ESA’s Jupiter Icy Moons Explorer (Juice), is poised to explore giant planet Jupiter and its largest moons. After years of preparations, Juice will be launched into space on April 13 from Europe’s Spaceport in French Guiana. The […]
What can planetary science on the bone dry Mars teach us? What happened to its atmosphere? And, are there possible fall-back options for humankind on Earth? In context of the National Climateweek, we spoke with Sebastiaan de Vet, planetary scientist at TU Delft. “If we look at planets and see how on planetary scale climate […]
The coordination of the Dutch branch of the allsky fireball camera network ‘FRIPON’ has been handed over from ESA-ESTEC to the TU Delft. In a formal event ESA-scientist Detlef Koschny handed over the network to its new coordinator Sebastiaan de Vet of the section Astrodynamics & Space Missions. Scientific purpose FRIPON (Fireball Recovery and InterPlanetary Observation […]
In preparation for the upcoming research visitation, the Faculty of Aerospace Engineering had a video made for each department in which you pay a virtual visit to – almost all of their – labs at the faculty. But: the videos will be used for many more purposes: think of recruiting or ‘onboarding’ new employees and […]
Whether they look down at earth, to the side at our solar system, or up into deep space, satellites are ingenious packages, jam-packed with technology, that help in answering all kinds of scientific questions. Right at this cutting edge of science and technology, the new Leiden-Delft-Erasmus minor Space Missions is for any science student with […]
Sebastiaan de Vet and Stephanie Cazaux have made a new, virtual teaching collection of digital 3D models of meteorites and impact rocks: the ‘Delft Meteorite Lab.’ The first part of the collection is already online: photorealistic models of meteorites, impact rocks and other objects that were created using photogrammetry, where images were used to reconstruct […]