Orbiter.ch Space News

Dark Matter Core Defies Explanation in NASA Hubble Image

2012-03-02T10:04:00.000-08:00

NASA - Hubble Space Telescope patch.

March 2, 2012

Astronomers using data from NASA's Hubble Telescope have observed what appears to be a clump of dark matter left behind from a wreck between massive clusters of galaxies. The result could challenge current theories about dark matter that predict galaxies should be anchored to the invisible substance even during the shock of a collision.

Abell 520 is a gigantic merger of galaxy clusters located 2.4 billion light-years away. Dark matter is not visible, although its presence and distribution is found indirectly through its effects. Dark matter can act like a magnifying glass, bending and distorting light from galaxies and clusters behind it. Astronomers can use this effect, called gravitational lensing, to infer the presence of dark matter in massive galaxy clusters.

This technique revealed the dark matter in Abell 520 had collected into a "dark core," containing far fewer galaxies than would be expected if the dark matter and galaxies were anchored together. Most of the galaxies apparently have sailed far away from the collision.
"This result is a puzzle," said astronomer James Jee of the University of California in Davis, lead author of paper about the results available online in The Astrophysical Journal. "Dark matter is not behaving as predicted, and it's not obviously clear what is going on. It is difficult to explain this Hubble observation with the current theories of galaxy formation and dark matter."

Initial detections of dark matter in the cluster, made in 2007, were so unusual that astronomers shrugged them off as unreal, because of poor data. New results from NASA's Hubble Space Telescope confirm that dark matter and galaxies separated in Abell 520.

One way to study the overall properties of dark matter is by analyzing collisions between galaxy clusters, the largest structures in the universe. When galaxy clusters crash, astronomers expect galaxies to tag along with the dark matter, like a dog on a leash. Clouds of hot, X-ray emitting intergalactic gas, however, plow into one another, slow down, and lag behind the impact.

That theory was supported by visible-light and X-ray observations of a colossal collision between two galaxy clusters called the Bullet Cluster. The galactic grouping has become an example of how dark matter should behave.

Merging Galaxy Cluster Abell 520

Studies of Abell 520 showed that dark matter's behavior may not be so simple. Using the original observations, astronomers found the system's core was rich in dark matter and hot gas, but contained no luminous galaxies, which normally would be seen in the same location as the dark matter. NASA's Chandra X-ray Observatory was used to detect the hot gas. Astronomers used the Canada-France-Hawaii Telescope and Subaru Telescope atop Mauna Kea to infer the location of dark matter by measuring the gravitationally lensed light from more distant background galaxies.

The astronomers then turned to the Hubble's Wide Field Planetary Camera 2, which can detect subtle distortions in the images of background galaxies and use this information to map dark matter. To astronomers' surprise, the Hubble observations helped confirm the 2007 findings.

"We know of maybe six examples of high-speed galaxy cluster collisions where the dark matter has been mapped," Jee said. "But the Bullet Cluster and Abell 520 are the two that show the clearest evidence of recent mergers, and they are inconsistent with each other. No single theory explains the different behavior of dark matter in those two collisions. We need more examples."

The team proposed numerous explanations for the findings, but each is unsettling for astronomers. In one scenario, which would have staggering implications, some dark matter may be what astronomers call "sticky." Like two snowballs smashing together, normal matter slams together during a collision and slows down. However, dark matter blobs are thought to pass through each other during an encounter without slowing down. This scenario proposes that some dark matter interacts with itself and stays behind during an encounter.

Another possible explanation for the discrepancy is that Abell 520 has resulted from a more complicated interaction than the Bullet Cluster encounter. Abell 520 may have formed from a collision between three galaxy clusters, instead of just two colliding systems in the case of the Bullet Cluster.

Hubble Space Telescope

A third possibility is that the core contained many galaxies, but they were too dim to be seen, even by Hubble. Those galaxies would have to have formed dramatically fewer stars than other normal galaxies. Armed with the Hubble data, the group will try to create a computer simulation to reconstruct the collision and see if it yields some answers to dark matter's weird behavior.

The Hubble Space Telescope is a project of international cooperation between NASA and the European Space Agency. NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Md., manages the telescope. The Space Telescope Science Institute (STScI) in Baltimore, Md., conducts Hubble science operations. STScI is operated by the Association of Universities for Research in Astronomy, Inc., in Washington, D.C.

For more information about Hubble visit: http://www.nasa.gov/hubble

ESA Hubble website: http://www.spacetelescope.org/

For images and more information about Abell 520's dark core, visit: http://hubblesite.org/news/2012/10

For more information about dark matter, visit: http://go.nasa.gov/dJzOp1

Images, Text, Credits: NASA, ESA, CFHT, CXO, M.J. Jee (University of California, Davis), and A. Mahdavi (San Francisco State University).

Greetings, Orbiter.ch

Spitzer Telescope Finds Hidden Jet

2012-03-01T13:32:00.000-08:00

NASA - SPITZER Space Telescope logo.

March 1, 2012

NASA's Spitzer Space Telescope took this image of a baby star sprouting two identical jets (green lines emanating from fuzzy star). The jet on the right had been seen before in visible-light views, but the jet at left -- the identical twin to the first jet -- could only be seen in detail with Spitzer's infrared detectors. The left jet was hidden behind a dark cloud, which Spitzer can see through.

The twin jets, in a system called Herbig-Haro 34, are made of identical knots of gas and dust, ejected one after another from the area around the star. By studying the spacing of these knots, and knowing the speed of the jets from previous studies, astronomers were able to determine that the jet to the right of the star punches its material out 4.5 years later than the counter-jet.

The new data also reveal that the area from which the jets originate is contained within a sphere around the star, with a radius of 3 astronomical units. An astronomical unit is the distance between Earth and the sun. Previous studies estimated that the maximum size of this jet-making zone was 10 times larger.

The wispy material is gas and dust. Arc-shaped bow shocks can be seen at the ends of the twin jets. The shocks consist of compressed material in front of the jets.

The Herbig-Haro 34 jets are located at approximately 1,400 light-years away in the Orion constellation.

Fore more information about Spitzer Space Telescope, visit: http://www.nasa.gov/mission_pages/spitzer/main/index.html

Image, Text, Credit: NASA / JPL-Caltech.

Greetings, Orbiter.ch

Happy birthday, Envisat

2012-03-01T13:18:00.000-08:00

ESA - ENVISAT Mission logo's.

1 March 2012

Happy birthday, Envisat!

In the early hours of 1 March 2002, the largest Earth observation satellite ever built soared into orbit from ESA’s launch base in Kourou, French Guiana. For a decade, Envisat has been keeping watch over our planet.

The eight-tonne satellite has doubled its planned five-year lifetime, circling Earth more than 50 000 times.

With ten sophisticated optical and radar sensors, the satellite is continuously observing and monitoring Earth’s land, atmosphere, oceans and ice caps. An estimated 2000 scientific publications have been based on this information.

Envisat’s largest instrument is the Advanced Synthetic Aperture Radar, which can be used day or night because it sees through clouds and darkness. This is particularly useful over polar regions, which are prone to long periods of bad weather and extended darkness.

Arctic ice

Last summer, the radar monitored record-low sea ice cover in the Arctic.

The Medium Resolution Imaging Spectrometer – or MERIS – captures images of ocean colour and land cover.

MERIS images are used to produce high-resolution global land-cover maps under the GlobCover project. These maps are useful for modelling the extent and effects of climate change, conserving biodiversity and managing natural resources.

Nitrogen dioxide over Europe

Envisat’s MIPAS, Sciamachy and GOMOS suite of sensors is able to see the holes in the thinning ozone layer and the plumes of pollutants hanging over major industrial cities or burning forests.

They can simultaneously observe the atmosphere in ways the human eye cannot, producing detailed horizontal and vertical cross-sections of a series of chemical components.

Working like a thermometer in the sky, Envisat’s Advanced Along-Track Scanning Radiometer measures thermal-infrared radiation to take the temperature of Earth’s land and sea surfaces. The ATSR World Fire Atlas is one useful product.

Global hot spots

Other instruments include the Radar Altimeter, which measures surface topography to an accuracy of a few centimetres, revealing the changes in sea-surface height over time.

Envisat provides crucial Earth observation data not only to scientists, but also to many operational services such as sea ice mapping or oil spill monitoring.

High engineering and scientific skills keep the mission going – Envisat owes its decade of success to over ten years of teamwork.

With an increased demand from scientific users for Envisat products, the mission gradually increased the flow of data within the first five years. Ground facilities have improved over the years to speed the delivery of data and their quality.

Envisat soars into orbit

In 2004, the mission’s first scientific results were presented at the Envisat Symposium in Salzburg, Austria. With about 1000 participants, it marked the establishment of Envisat as one of the major tools available to Earth scientists.

Three years later, another symposium dedicated to Envisat included the first global measurements of greenhouse gases, demonstrating the fast-growing concentration of carbon dioxide and the seasonal variation of methane.

MERIS: plankton blooms

In 2010, the satellite’s orbit was changed to allow Envisat to continue operating for at least another three years.

This is ensuring the continuity of crucial Earth-observation data until the next generation of satellites – the Sentinels – are fully operational in 2013.

The Sentinel missions are being developed as part of Europe’s Global Monitoring for Environment and Security (GMES) programme.

For more Envisat achievements, visit Envisat’s tenth-birthday minisite: http://www.esa.int/Envisat

Related links:

ATSR World Fire Atlas: http://due.esrin.esa.int/wfa/

GMES: http://www.esa.int/esaLP/LPgmes.html

Envisat operations: http://www.esa.int/SPECIALS/Operations/SEMOZY8L6VE_0.html

Images, Video, Text, Credits: ESA / CNES / Arianespace / S. Corvaja / DMI / NIC / University of Heidelberg.

Cheers, Orbiter.ch

Fledgling stars flicker in the heart of Orion

2012-02-29T17:30:00.000-08:00

ESA Herschel Mission patch / NASA - SPITZER Space Telescope patch.

29 February 2012

Astronomers using ESA’s Herschel and NASA’s Spitzer space telescopes have detected surprisingly rapid changes in the brightness of embryonic stars within the well-known Orion Nebula.

Images from Herschel’s far-infrared instrument and two of Spitzer’s instruments working at shorter wavelengths give us a more detailed picture of stars growing in the heart of one of the most famous objects in the night sky.

The Orion Nebula is 1350 light years from Earth, and appears prominently in the winter skies for European observers.

Sometimes referred to as the Sword of Orion, the nebula lies below the three stars that form the belt of Orion the Hunter, one of the most easily recognised constellations.

It is one of the few nebulas visible to the naked eye and is a popular target for amateur astronomers.

Baby stars in Orion Nebula

The nebula contains the nearest site of massive star formation, with intense ultraviolet light from hot young stars causing gas and dust in the region to glow.

Inside that dust – hidden at visible wavelengths – is a host of even younger stars, still growing in their earliest phase of evolution.

This new combined far- and mid-infrared image cuts through the obscuring dust and reveals these embryonic stars.

A star forms when a dense cloud of gas and dust coalesces and then collapses under its own gravity, creating a central warm protostar surrounded by a swirling disc and a larger envelope.

Much of this material will spiral in and collect on to the star over hundreds of thousands of years, before nuclear fusion is triggered at the core and it becomes a fully-fledged star.

Some of the remnant gas and dust in the disc may go on to form a planetary system – as happened with our Solar System.

ESA's Hershel

A team of astronomers led by Nicolas Billot of the Institut de Radioastronomie Millimétrique, in Granada, Spain used Herschel to image the Orion Nebula region once a week for six weeks in the late winter and spring last year.

Herchel’s PACS Photodetector Array Camera and Spectrometer detected cold dust particles in discs around the youngest protostars at far-infrared wavelengths.

This was combined with archival Spitzer images taken at shorter, mid-infrared wavelengths, which show older, hotter objects.

Astronomers were surprised to see the brightness of the young objects varying by more than 20% over just these few weeks, since the accretion process should take years or even centuries. They now have to explain why this is happening.

One possibility is that lumpy filaments of gas are funnelling from the outer disc towards central regions near the star, temporarily warming the inner disc and leading it to brighten.

Another scenario is that cold material is piling up at the inner edge and casting shadows on the outer disc, causing it to darken temporarily.

NASA's SPITZER

In either case, it is clear that the gestation of baby stars is anything but a smooth, uniform process.

“Yet again, Herschel observations surprise us and provide more interesting insights in to what happens during the very earliest phases of stars and planet formation,” comments Göran Pilbratt, ESA’s Herschel Project Scientist.

It is only through the unprecedented far-infrared sensitivity and resolution of the Herschel space observatory, combined with the shorter-wavelength data from Spitzer, that astronomers are able to witness and fully discover the physical processes of star birth.

Related links:

Herschel: ESA's giant infrared observatory: http://www.esa.int/SPECIALS/Herschel/index.html

More on Herschel First Results:

Herschel overview: http://www.esa.int/SPECIALS/Herschel/index.html

Notes to editors: http://www.esa.int/esaSC/SEMTP7KPO8G_index_0.html

Online Showcase of Herschel Images OSHI: http://oshi.esa.int/

Herschel in depth: http://sci.esa.int/science-e/www/area/index.cfm?fareaid=16

Herschel first science results in depth: http://sci.esa.int/science-e/www/object/index.cfm?fobjectid=46985

Herschel Science Centre: http://herschel.esac.esa.int/

Images, Text, Credits: ESA / Markus Bauer / Institut de Radioastronomie Millimétrique / Nicolas Billot / PACS / NASA / JPL-Caltech / IRAM.

Greetings, Orbiter.ch

Beside a Giant

2012-02-28T15:59:00.000-08:00

NASA / ESA - Cassini-Huygens Mission patch.

Feb. 28, 2012

Saturn's largest moon, Titan, looks small here, pictured to the right of the gas giant in this Cassini spacecraft view.

Titan (3,200 miles, or 5,150 kilometers across) is in the upper right. Saturn's rings appear across the top of the image, and they cast a series of shadows onto the planet across the middle of the image.

The moon Prometheus (53 miles, or 86 kilometers across) appears as a tiny white speck above the rings in the far upper right of the image. The shadow cast by Prometheus can be seen as a small black speck on the planet on the far left of the image, between the shadows cast by the main rings and the thin F ring. The shadow of the moon Pandora also can be seen on the planet south of the shadows of all the rings, below the center of the image towards the right side of the planet. Pandora is not shown here.

This view looks toward the southern, unilluminated side of the rings from about 1 degree below the ringplane.

The image was taken with the Cassini spacecraft wide-angle camera on Jan. 5, 2012 using a spectral filter sensitive to wavelengths of near-infrared light centered at 752 nanometers. The view was acquired at a distance of approximately 426,000 miles (685,000 kilometers) from Saturn and at a Sun-Saturn-spacecraft, or phase, angle of 20 degrees. Image scale is 23 miles (37 kilometers) per pixel on Saturn. The Cassini-Huygens mission is a cooperative project of NASA, the European Space Agency and the Italian Space Agency. The Jet Propulsion Laboratory, a division of the California Institute of Technology in Pasadena, manages the mission for NASA's Science Mission Directorate, Washington, D.C. The Cassini orbiter and its two onboard cameras were designed, developed and assembled at JPL. The imaging operations center is based at the Space Science Institute in Boulder, Colo.

For more information about Cassini Mission, visit:

NASA - Cassini: http://www.nasa.gov/mission_pages/cassini/main/index.html

ESA - Cassini-Huygens: http://www.esa.int/esaMI/Cassini-Huygens/

Image, Text, Credit: NASA / JPL-Caltech / Space Science Institute.

Greetings, Orbiter.ch

André’s PromISSe mission extended on Space Station

2012-02-28T15:43:00.000-08:00

ESA - PromISSe Mission patch.

28 February 2012

ESA astronaut André Kuipers will stay on the International Space Station for more than a month longer than originally planned. In addition to his normal routine he will spend some of the extra time conducting scientific experiments.

The Station partners have agreed that this expedition will be prolonged following a delay in the launch of the next Soyuz crew ferry.

Soyuz docked to Station

Routine testing revealed problems in the original Soyuz spacecraft, requiring that it be replaced. The new date for André and his crewmates to return to Earth is 1 July – he will now stay on the Space Station for over six months.

The extra time André has in space does not mean he will have time for extra work because the science and maintenance activities continue regardless of which astronaut is available to do the job.

Owing to the delay, the Space Station will operate with only three crewmembers for a longer period than originally planned.

Science experiments

Space food

André has already completed some of his experiments. He was the tenth astronaut to follow the special SOLO diet to understand why astronauts lose bone density in space.

For five days, André ate only a third of the salt found in a normal diet. The results may offer insights into how bones age on Earth and could be used to combat diseases such as osteoporosis.

André completed the DSC experiment in the European-built Microgravity Science Glovebox, looking at temperature changes in mixtures of different fluids.

The results of this experiment will contribute to improving computer models used in oil drilling.

André recently shared a picture from the Space Station wearing what looked like a bathing cap. Worn for the Neurospat experiment, it is actually a complex network of electrodes for measuring his brain waves.

André records his brain waves

A total of 64 electrodes were carefully and precisely placed on André’s head by colleague Don Pettit. The goal is to understand if the brain processes some tasks differently in space.

André has also finished the Roald2 biology experiment on human immune cells. Astronauts’ immune systems work less effectively in space and scientists are trying to find out why.

Immune cells taken from volunteers on Earth were chemically frozen on the Space Station at specific intervals. By looking closely at the cells once they return to Earth, scientists hope to gain insight into the workings of the human immune system.

There are many scientific experiments still to finish. Maintenance work waits for no one so André and his crewmates will be busy keeping the Space Station running smoothly.

In the highly unlikely possibility that André has time to spare, the scientists on Earth have a set of ‘back-pocket’ activities available that could be conducted at short notice should the opportunity arise.

Related links:

ESA PromISSe Mission: http://www.esa.int/SPECIALS/PromISSe/index.html#a

ISS Expedition 30 (NASA): http://www.nasa.gov/mission_pages/station/expeditions/expedition30/index.html

ISS Expedition 31 (NASA): http://www.nasa.gov/mission_pages/station/expeditions/expedition31/index.html

Roscosmos (Russia): http://roscosmos.ru/main.php

Ruimteschip Aarde: http://www.ruimteschipaarde.nl/

Images, Text, Credits: ESA / NASA.

Best regards, Orbiter.ch

Preview of a Forthcoming Supernova

2012-02-24T14:33:00.000-08:00

NASA - Hubble Space Telescope patch.

Feb. 24, 2012

Feb. 24, 2012

NASA's Hubble Telescope captured an image of Eta Carinae. This image consists of ultraviolet and visible light images from the High Resolution Channel of Hubble's Advanced Camera for Surveys. The field of view is approximately 30 arcseconds across.

The larger of the two stars in the Eta Carinae system is a huge and unstable star that is nearing the end of its life, and the event that the 19th century astronomers observed was a stellar near-death experience. Scientists call these outbursts supernova impostor events, because they appear similar to supernovae but stop just short of destroying their star.

Although 19th century astronomers did not have telescopes powerful enough to see the 1843 outburst in detail, its effects can be studied today. The huge clouds of matter thrown out a century and a half ago, known as the Homunculus Nebula, have been a regular target for Hubble since its launch in 1990. This image, taken with the Advanced Camera for Surveys High Resolution Channel, is the most detailed yet, and shows how the material from the star was not thrown out in a uniform manner, but forms a huge dumbbell shape.

Eta Carinae is one of the closest stars to Earth that is likely to explode in a supernova in the relatively near future (though in astronomical timescales the "near future" could still be a million years away). When it does, expect an impressive view from Earth, far brighter still than its last outburst: SN 2006gy, the brightest supernova ever observed, came from a star of the same type, though from a galaxy over 200 million light-years away.

NASA Hubble site: http://hubblesite.org/

ESA Hubble site: http://www.spacetelescope.org/

Image, Text, Credit: ESA / NASA.

Greetings, Orbiter.ch

A new generation of meteorological satellites

2012-02-24T14:20:00.000-08:00

ESA logo.

24 February 2012

Europe’s next fleet of meteorological satellites is set to debut in 2017, following today’s signing of the development contract. While Meteosat Third Generation will ensure full continuity with the current Meteosat satellite family, it will also introduce significant improvements.

At an event held today at ESA’s headquarters in Paris, the contract between ESA and Thales Alenia Space for developing the new Meteosat Third Generation (MTG) family of satellites was signed.

Following on from Meteosat Second Generation, MTG is a cooperative venture between Eumetsat and ESA, and will ensure continuity of high-resolution meteorological data to beyond 2037.

Meteosat Third Generation

The cooperation on meteorological missions between Eumetsat and ESA is a success story that started with the first Meteosat satellite in 1977 and continues today with Meteosat Second Generation and the polar-orbiting MetOp series.

The new series will comprise six satellites: four MTG-I imaging and two MTG-S sounding satellites.

The first two prototype satellites are scheduled for launch in late 2017 and mid-2019, respectively. Both satellites will be positioned in geostationary orbit above the equator at a longitude between 10ºE and 10ºW.

In addition to the advanced imaging capabilities offered by the Flexible Combined Imager, the satellites will offer an all-new infrared sounding capability and imaging of global lightning that will provide early warning of severe storms.

MTG-S will also carry the Sentinel-4 payload for the Global Monitoring for Environment and Security (GMES) programme. This advanced payload will analyse atmospheric chemistry and identify concentrations of trace gases like ozone and nitrogen dioxide.

The MTG mission will also provide continued support to global search and rescue monitoring, as well as supporting the Advanced Data Collection System.

MTG-I

At Friday’s event, ESA Director General Jean Jacques Dordain highlighted that Europe can today – and now well into the future – offer state-of-the-art meteorological global monitoring thanks to the 25-year collaboration between ESA and Eumetsat.

Mr Dordain recalled the launch of Meteosat-1 35 years ago, and praised the commitment of ESA, Eumetsat and all industrial partners to continuing the Meteosat legacy.

ESA’s Director of Earth Observation Programmes, Volker Liebig, looked ahead to the significant improvements in performance from the new satellites.

In these difficult economic times, Prof. Liebig stressed, the programme offers many opportunities for European industrial companies to win substantial and high-technology contracts. The MTG contract has an industrial value of over €1.25 billion.

Speeches were also made by Eumetsat Director General Alain Ratier and Thales Alenia Space CEO Reynald Seznec.

The contract between ESA and Thales Alenia Space was signed by Mr. Liebig and Mr Seznec.

Thales Alenia Space leads the industrial consortium that now building the MTG family. Along with being the prime contractor, Thales Alenia Space is responsible for the MTG-I imaging satellite, including the primary payload, the Flexible Combined Imager.

Bremen-based OHB is responsible for the MTG-S satellites and provision of the common satellite platforms, supported by Astrium GmbH as the System Architect.

The state-of-the-art Infrared Sounding Instrument, to be flown on MTG-S, will be developed by Kayser Threde.

Related links:

Thales Alenia Space: http://www.thalesgroup.com/

OHB-System AG: http://www.ohb-system.de/main-company.html

Kayser Threde: http://www.kayser-threde.de/en/

EADS-Astrium: http://www.astrium.eads.net/

Eumetsat: http://www.eumetsat.int/

GMES: http://www.gmes.info/

Images, Text, Credits: ESA / P. Carril.

Cheers, Orbiter.ch

Aiming for an Open Window

2012-02-23T17:48:00.000-08:00

NASA logo.

02.23.12

Why does NASA sometimes schedule a rocket launch for the middle of the night, or aim for a liftoff time when weather is notoriously unlikely to cooperate?

The simplicity of the question belies the complexity of the answer. The best time to start a mission is based on a blend of factors: the flight's target and goals, the needs of the spacecraft, the type of rocket, and the desired trajectory, which refers to the path the vehicle and spacecraft must take to successfully start the mission. Not only do these variables influence the preferred launch time -- the ideal time of departure -- but the overall length of the launch window, which can vary from one second to several hours.

Image above: A Delta II arcs across the sky carrying NASA's Suomi NPP spacecraft. Image credit: NASA/Bill Ingalls.

The dynamics change from mission to mission, and determining the launch window is an important part of the overall flight design.

"The interesting thing about our job is each mission is almost completely different from any other mission," said Eric Haddox, the lead flight design engineer in NASA's Launch Services Program (LSP), based at Kennedy Space Center in Florida.

Haddox leads the team of agency and contractor personnel overseeing and integrating the trajectory design efforts of the spacecraft team and launch service contractor for each LSP mission. Once the spacecraft team identifies its needs, a rocket is selected, and the work of hammering out the best launch window and trajectory begins. Ultimately, the launch window and preferred liftoff time are set by the launch service contractor.

Image above: Artist's concept of the Mars Science Laboratory spacecraft approaching the Red Planet. Image credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech.

"We help everybody understand the requirements of the spacecraft and what the capabilities are of the launch vehicle, and try to mesh the two," Haddox explained.

The most significant deciding factors in when to launch are where the spacecraft is headed, and what its solar needs are. Earth-observing spacecraft, for example, may be sent into low-Earth orbit. Some payloads must arrive at a specific point at a precise time, perhaps to rendezvous with another object or join a constellation of satellites already in place. Missions to the moon or a planet involve aiming for a moving object a long distance away.

For example, NASA's Mars Science Laboratory spacecraft began its eight-month journey to the Red Planet on Nov. 26, 2011 with a launch aboard a United Launch Alliance (ULA) Atlas V rocket from Cape Canaveral Air Force Station in Florida. After the initial push from the powerful Atlas V booster, the Centaur upper stage then sent the spacecraft away from Earth on a specific track to place the laboratory, with its car-sized Curiosity rover, inside Mars' Gale Crater on Aug. 6, 2012. Due to the location of Mars relative to Earth, the prime planetary launch opportunity for the Red Planet occurs only once every 26 months.

Additionally, spacecraft often have solar requirements: they may need sunlight to perform the science necessary to meet the mission's objectives, or they may need to avoid the sun's light in order to look deeper into the dark, distant reaches of space.

Image above: As the sun rises at Cape Canaveral Air Force Station, Fla., clouds backdrop the Atlas V set to launch NASA's Juno spacecraft. Image credit: NASA/Kenny Allen.

Such precision was needed for NASA's Suomi National Polar-orbiting Partnership (NPP) spacecraft, which launched Oct. 28, 2011 aboard a ULA Delta II rocket from Vandenberg Air Force Base in California. The Earth-observing satellite circles at an altitude of 512 miles, sweeping from pole to pole 14 times each day as the planet turns on its axis. A very limited launch window was required so that the spacecraft would cross the ascending node at exactly 1:30 p.m. local time and scan Earth's surface twice each day, always at the same local time.

All of these variables influence a flight's trajectory and launch time. A low-Earth mission with specific timing needs must lift off at the right time to slip into the same orbit as its target; a planetary mission typically has to launch when the trajectory will take it away from Earth and out on the correct course.

According to Haddox, aiming for a specific target -- another planet, a rendezvous point, or even a specific location in Earth orbit where the solar conditions will be just right -- is a bit like skeet shooting.

"You've got this object that's going to go flying out into the air and you've got to shoot it," said Haddox. "You have to be able to judge how far away your target is and how fast it's moving, and make sure you reach the same point at the same time."

But Haddox also emphasized that Earth is rotating on its axis while it orbits the sun, making the launch pad a moving platform. With so many moving players, launch windows and trajectories must be carefully choreographed.

Of course, weather or technical problems can interfere with the team's best plans. Launch windows are intended to absorb small delays while still offering plenty of chances to lift off on a given day. However, launching at a time other than the preferred time could reduce the rocket's performance, potentially limiting the payload mass.

"To launch at any time other than that optimal time, you're going to have to alter the trajectory, steer the rocket to get back to that point," Haddox said. "So that's where it becomes a trade of, 'Okay, if my window were a half hour long, how much performance would I need to fly at any time within a half hour? Or, if my window were an hour long, how much performance would I be able to get out of the rocket to fly at any time within that one hour?'"

Likewise, if a spacecraft has to use any of its onboard propellant to make up for any difference in the trajectory, that could impact the entire mission.

"The more propellant they have, the longer they can do maneuvers or adjust things" during the flight, Haddox explained. "It basically equates to how long they can stay in orbit and do their science."

These potential give-and-take situations are carefully considered during flight planning. Mission managers must find a way to balance the sacrifices while maximizing the chance of getting off the ground.

Even when the launch and mission teams have chosen the best launch window, they face an additional challenge from the U.S. Air Force: collision avoidance, also called COLA. The U.S. Air Force's 45th Space Wing controls the Eastern Range surrounding Cape Canaveral Air Force Station in Florida; the 30th Space Wing operates the Western Range, including Vandenberg Air Force Base. The range determines whether any orbiting spacecraft or debris could strike the vehicle during its climb to space, and cut out portions of the launch window that are too risky.

Collision avoidance can get tricky, because even though the trajectory has been carefully planned, real-time factors result in some uncertainty. For example, during the trajectory design process, the team assumes certain propellant temperatures. But if the temperatures are slightly different on launch day, that will affect the propellant, which in turn alters the efficiency of the rocket's engines or solid rocket motors.

"The navigation system on the rocket is going to do what it needs to do to get the spacecraft where it needs to be, but it's not going to be the same trajectory you looked at before," said Haddox. "When you've got things that are moving seven to eight kilometers a second, half a second can result in a big distance."

"So it just makes things a lot harder to predict," he added.

On launch day, Haddox and other members of the flight design team are involved in the countdown. Even in the final hours before liftoff, they continue to fine-tune the trajectory analysis based on real-time data collected from weather balloons, ensuring the safety of the rocket and spacecraft as the window opens for another successful mission.

For more information about NASA, visit: http://www.nasa.gov/

Images (mentioned), Text, Credit; NASA's John F. Kennedy Space Center / Anna Heiney.

Greetings, Orbiter.ch

NASA Satellite Finds Earth's Clouds are Getting Lower

2012-02-23T09:35:00.000-08:00

NASA - EOS TERRA Mission patch.

Feb. 23, 2012

This image of clouds over the southern Indian Ocean was acquired on July 23, 2007 by one of the backward (northward)-viewing cameras of the Multi-angle Imaging SpectroRadiometer (MISR) instrument on NASA’s polar-orbiting Terra spacecraft. Image credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech.

Earth's clouds got a little lower -- about one percent on average -- during the first decade of this century, finds a new NASA-funded university study based on NASA satellite data. The results have potential implications for future global climate.

Scientists at the University of Auckland in New Zealand analyzed the first 10 years of global cloud-top height measurements (from March 2000 to February 2010) from the Multi-angle Imaging SpectroRadiometer (MISR) instrument on NASA's Terra spacecraft. The study, published recently in the journal Geophysical Research Letters, revealed an overall trend of decreasing cloud height. Global average cloud height declined by around one percent over the decade, or by around 100 to 130 feet (30 to 40 meters). Most of the reduction was due to fewer clouds occurring at very high altitudes.

Data from NASA's MISR instrument on NASA's Terra spacecraft show that global average cloud height declined by about 1 percent over the decade from 2000 to 2010, or around 100 to 130 feet (30 to 40 meters). Image credit: University of Auckland/NASA JPL-Caltech.

Lead researcher Roger Davies said that while the record is too short to be definitive, it provides a hint that something quite important might be going on. Longer-term monitoring will be required to determine the significance of the observation for global temperatures.

A consistent reduction in cloud height would allow Earth to cool to space more efficiently, reducing the surface temperature of the planet and potentially slowing the effects of global warming. This may represent a "negative feedback" mechanism – a change caused by global warming that works to counteract it. "We don't know exactly what causes the cloud heights to lower," says Davies. "But it must be due to a change in the circulation patterns that give rise to cloud formation at high altitude."

NASA's Terra spacecraft is scheduled to continue gathering data through the remainder of this decade. Scientists will continue to monitor the MISR data closely to see if this trend continues.

For more information, visit: http://www.auckland.ac.nz/uoa/home/news/template/news_item.jsp?cid=466683

Patterns that relate changes in cloud-top height with El Niño/ La Niña indicators. Image credit: University of Auckland/NASA JPL-Caltech.

MISR, built and managed by NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory, Pasadena, Calif., is one of five instruments on NASA's Terra spacecraft, launched in December 1999. The instrument uses nine cameras at different angles to produce a stereo image of clouds around the globe, allowing measurement of their altitude and movement. For more on MISR, visit: http://www-misr.jpl.nasa.gov/ . For more on Terra, visit: http://terra.nasa.gov/

Another NASA mission that studies clouds is NASA's CloudSat, also built by JPL and launched in 2006. CloudSat is the first satellite that uses an advanced radar to "slice" through clouds to see their vertical structure, providing a completely new observational capability from space. CloudSat's primary goal is to furnish data needed to evaluate and improve the way clouds are represented in global models, thereby contributing to better predictions of clouds and thus to their poorly understood role in climate change and the cloud-climate feedback. For information on NASA's CloudSat mission, visit: http://cloudsat.atmos.colostate.edu/ and http://www.nasa.gov/cloudsat

Images (mentioned), Text, Credit: NASA / JPL / Alan Buis.

Best regards, Orbiter.ch

The non-LHC experiments in 2012

2012-02-23T04:50:00.000-08:00

CERN - European Organization for Nuclear Research logo.

Feb. 23, 2012

There is more to CERN than the Large Hadron Collider (LHC). A thousand or so physicists on site research topics from antimatter to astronomy in the non-LHC experiments.

View inside the chamber used by CLOUD, one of the many non-LHC experiments at CERN. Image: CERN

This year the ALPHA, ASACUSA, and ATRAP experiments will compare the properties of antiatoms with their matter counterparts, and AEgIS will try to measure the gravitational constant g using antihydrogen. The CLOUD experiment seeks to understand the influence of cosmic rays on cloud formation, while ACE is researching the use of antiproton beams in cancer therapy.

ISOLDE continues to produce radioisotopes for over 50 experiments, and the nTOF facility provides neutron beams for research fields from astronomy to radioactivity. The CAST and OSQAR experiments are hot on the tail of "axions" and "chameleons", some of the many hypothetical and exotic particles proposed by theorists to explain the nature of dark matter.

These are just a few of the many non-LHC experiments looking forward to a productive 2012 at CERN.

Find out more:

Non-LHC experiments: http://public.web.cern.ch/public/en/Research/OtherExp-en.html

Quantum diaries: The hidden face of CERN: http://www.quantumdiaries.org/2012/02/15/the-hidden-face-of-cern/

Faster than light neutrinos

The results of the experiment Opera that had shaken the scientific world by measuring end of September of neutrinos at a speed faster than light would in fact due to a bad connection, ensures Wednesday the journal "Science" on its website.

"A bad connection between a computer and a GPS is probably the cause of the error," says the American magazine, citing authoritative sources.

Opera experiment

In late September, the Opera experience experts had said he saw neutrinos through the facilities of CERN in Geneva about 6 km / s faster than light.

Note:

CERN, the European Organization for Nuclear Research, is one of the world’s largest and most respected centres for scientific research. Its business is fundamental physics, finding out what the Universe is made of and how it works. At CERN, the world’s largest and most complex scientific instruments are used to study the basic constituents of matter — the fundamental particles. By studying what happens when these particles collide, physicists learn about the laws of Nature.

The instruments used at CERN are particle accelerators and detectors. Accelerators boost beams of particles to high energies before they are made to collide with each other or with stationary targets. Detectors observe and record the results of these collisions.

Founded in 1954, the CERN Laboratory sits astride the Franco–Swiss border near Geneva. It was one of Europe’s first joint ventures and now has 20 Member States.

More information about the CERN, visit: http://public.web.cern.ch/public/Welcome.html

Images, Text, Credit: CERN.

Greetings, Orbiter.ch

NASA'S Spitzer Finds Solid Buckyballs in Space

2012-02-22T12:11:00.000-08:00

NASA - SPITZER Space Telescope patch.

Feb. 22, 2012

Astronomers using data from NASA's Spitzer Space Telescope have, for the first time, discovered buckyballs in a solid form in space. Prior to this discovery, the microscopic carbon spheres had been found only in gas form.

NASA's Spitzer Space Telescope has at last found buckyballs in space, as illustrated by this artist's conception showing the carbon balls coming out from the type of object where they were discovered. Image credit: NASA / JPL-Caltech.

Formally named buckminsterfullerene, buckyballs are named after their resemblance to the late architect Buckminster Fuller's geodesic domes. They are made up of 60 carbon molecules arranged into a hollow sphere, like a soccer ball. Their unusual structure makes them ideal candidates for electrical and chemical applications on Earth, including superconducting materials, medicines, water purification and armor.

In the latest discovery, scientists using Spitzer detected tiny specks of matter, or particles, consisting of stacked buckyballs. They found them around a pair of stars called "XX Ophiuchi," 6,500 light-years from Earth.

"These buckyballs are stacked together to form a solid, like oranges in a crate," said Nye Evans of Keele University in England, lead author of a paper appearing in the Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society. "The particles we detected are miniscule, far smaller than the width of a hair, but each one would contain stacks of millions of buckyballs."

Buckyballs were detected definitively in space for the first time by Spitzer in 2010. Spitzer later identified the molecules in a host of different cosmic environments. It even found them in staggering quantities, the equivalent in mass to 15 Earth moons, in a nearby galaxy called the Small Magellanic Cloud.

In all of those cases, the molecules were in the form of gas. The recent discovery of buckyballs particles means that large quantities of these molecules must be present in some stellar environments in order to link up and form solid particles. The research team was able to identify the solid form of buckyballs in the Spitzer data because they emit light in a unique way that differs from the gaseous form.

"This exciting result suggests that buckyballs are even more widespread in space than the earlier Spitzer results showed," said Mike Werner, project scientist for Spitzer at NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, Calif. "They may be an important form of carbon, an essential building block for life, throughout the cosmos."

Buckyballs have been found on Earth in various forms. They form as a gas from burning candles and exist as solids in certain types of rock, such as the mineral shungite found in Russia, and fulgurite, a glassy rock from Colorado that forms when lightning strikes the ground. In a test tube, the solids take on the form of dark, brown "goo."

These data from NASA's Spitzer Space Telescope show the signatures of buckyballs in space. Image credit: NASA / JPL-Caltech / University of Western Ontario.

"The window Spitzer provides into the infrared universe has revealed beautiful structure on a cosmic scale," said Bill Danchi, Spitzer program scientist at NASA Headquarters in Washington. "In yet another surprise discovery from the mission, we're lucky enough to see elegant structure at one of the smallest scales, teaching us about the internal architecture of existence."

NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL) in Pasadena, Calif., manages the Spitzer Space Telescope mission for NASA's Science Mission Directorate in Washington. Science operations are conducted at the Spitzer Science Center at the California Institute of Technology in Pasadena. Caltech manages JPL for NASA.

For information about previous Spitzer discoveries of buckyballs, visit: http://www.nasa.gov/mission_pages/spitzer/news/spitzer20100722.html and http://www.nasa.gov/mission_pages/spitzer/news/spitzer20101027.html

For more information about Spitzer, visit: http://www.nasa.gov/spitzer

Images (mentioned), Video, Text, Credit: NASA / J.D. Harrington / JPL / Alan Buis.

Greetings, Orbiter.ch

NASA's Chandra Finds Fastest Wind from Stellar-Mass Black Hole

2012-02-21T11:12:00.000-08:00

NASA - Chandra X-ray Observatory patch.

Feb. 21, 2012

Image above: Artist impression of binary system containing stellar-mass black hole IGR J17091. (NASA/CXC/M.Weiss).

Astronomers using NASA's Chandra X-ray Observatory have clocked the fastest wind yet discovered blowing off a disk around a stellar-mass black hole. This result has important implications for understanding how this type of black hole behaves.

The record-breaking wind is moving about 20 million mph, or about 3 percent of the speed of light. This is nearly 10 times faster than had ever been seen from a stellar-mass black hole.

Stellar-mass black holes are born when extremely massive stars collapse. They typically weigh between five and 10 times the mass of the sun. The stellar-mass black hole powering this super wind is known as IGR J17091-3624, or IGR J17091 for short.

"This is like the cosmic equivalent of winds from a category five hurricane," said Ashley King from the University of Michigan, lead author of the study published in the Feb. 20 issue of The Astrophysical Journal Letters. "We weren't expecting to see such powerful winds from a black hole like this."

The wind speed in IGR J17091 matches some of the fastest winds generated by supermassive black holes, objects millions or billions of times more massive.

"It's a surprise this small black hole is able to muster the wind speeds we typically only see in the giant black holes," said co-author Jon M. Miller, also from the University of Michigan. "In other words, this black hole is performing well above its weight class."

Another unanticipated finding is that the wind, which comes from a disk of gas surrounding the black hole, may be carrying away more material than the black hole is capturing.

"Contrary to the popular perception of black holes pulling in all of the material that gets close, we estimate up to 95 percent of the matter in the disk around IGR J17091 is expelled by the wind," King said.

Unlike winds from hurricanes on Earth, the wind from IGR J17091 is blowing in many different directions. This pattern also distinguishes it from a jet, where material flows in highly focused beams perpendicular to the disk, often at nearly the speed of light.

Simultaneous observations made with the National Radio Astronomy Observatory's Expanded Very Large Array showed a radio jet from the black hole was not present when the ultra-fast wind was seen, although a radio jet is seen at other times. This agrees with observations of other stellar-mass black holes, providing further evidence the production of winds can stifle jets.

Chandra X-ray Observatory

The high speed for the wind was estimated from a spectrum made by Chandra in 2011. Ions emit and absorb distinct features in spectra, which allow scientists to monitor them and their behavior. A Chandra spectrum of iron ions made two months earlier showed no evidence of the high-speed wind, meaning the wind likely turns on and off over time.

Astronomers believe that magnetic fields in the disks of black holes are responsible for producing both winds and jets. The geometry of the magnetic fields and rate at which material falls towards the black hole must influence whether jets or winds are produced.

IGR J17091 is a binary system in which a sun-like star orbits the black hole. It is found in the bulge of the Milky Way galaxy, about 28,000 light years away from Earth.

NASA's Marshall Space Flight Center in Huntsville, Ala., manages the Chandra program for NASA's Science Mission Directorate in Washington. The Smithsonian Astrophysical Observatory controls Chandra's science and flight operations from Cambridge, Mass.

For more information about Chandra, visit: http://www.nasa.gov/chandra

For an additional interactive image, podcast and video on the finding, visit: http://chandra.si.edu

Image, Text, Credits: Illustration: NASA / CXC / M.Weiss.

Best regards, Orbiter.ch

Hubble Reveals a New Class of Extrasolar Planet

2012-02-21T09:16:00.000-08:00

ESA - Hubble Space Telescope logo.

21 February 2012

Observations by the NASA/ESA Hubble Space Telescope have come up with a new class of planet, a waterworld enshrouded by a thick, steamy atmosphere. It’s smaller than Uranus but larger than Earth.

An international team of astronomers led by Zachory Berta of the Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics (CfA) made the observations of the planet GJ 1214b.

“GJ 1214b is like no planet we know of,” Berta said. “A huge fraction of its mass is made up of water.”

The ground-based MEarth Project, led by CfA’s David Charbonneau, discovered GJ 1214b in 2009. This super-Earth is about 2.7 times Earth’s diameter and weighs almost seven times as much. It orbits a red-dwarf star every 38 hours at a distance of 2 million kilometres, giving it an estimated temperature of 230 degrees Celsius.

In 2010, CfA scientist Jacob Bean and colleagues reported that they had measured the atmosphere of GJ 1214b, finding it likely that it was composed mainly of water. However, their observations could also be explained by the presence of a planet-enshrouding haze in GJ 1214b’s atmosphere.

Berta and his co-authors, who include Derek Homeier of ENS Lyon, France, used Hubble’s Wide Field Camera 3 (WFC3) to study GJ 1214b when it crossed in front of its host star. During such a transit, the star’s light is filtered through the planet’s atmosphere, giving clues to the mix of gases.

“We’re using Hubble to measure the infrared colour of sunset on this world,” Berta explained.

Hazes are more transparent to infrared light than to visible light, so the Hubble observations help to tell the difference between a steamy and a hazy atmosphere.

They found the spectrum of GJ 1214b to be featureless over a wide range of wavelengths, or colours. The atmospheric model most consistent with the Hubble data is a dense atmosphere of water vapour.

“The Hubble measurements really tip the balance in favour of a steamy atmosphere,” Berta said.

Since the planet’s mass and size are known, astronomers can calculate the density, of only about 2 grams per cubic centimetre. Water has a density of 1 gram per cubic centimetre, while Earth’s average density is 5.5 grams per cubic centimetre. This suggests that GJ 1214b has much more water than Earth does, and much less rock.

As a result, the internal structure of GJ 1214b would be extraordinarily different from that of our world.

“The high temperatures and high pressures would form exotic materials like ‘hot ice’ or ‘superfluid water’, substances that are completely alien to our everyday experience,” Berta said.

Theorists expect that GJ 1214b formed further out from its star, where water ice was plentiful, and migrated inward early in the system’s history. In the process, it would have passed through the star’s habitable zone, where surface temperatures would be similar to Earth’s. How long it lingered there is unknown.

Hubble in orbit

GJ 1214b is located in the constellation of Ophiuchus (The Serpent Bearer), and just 40 light-years from Earth. Therefore, it’s a prime candidate for study by the NASA/ESA/CSA James Webb Space Telescope, planned for launch later this decade.

A paper reporting these results has been accepted for publication in the Astrophysical Journal and is available online.

Notes:

The Hubble Space Telescope is a project of international cooperation between ESA and NASA.

The international team of astronomers in this study consists of Z. K. Berta (Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astronomy, USA), D. Charbonneau (Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astronomy, USA), J.-M. Desert (Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astronomy, USA), E. M.-R. Kempton (University of California, Santa Cruz, USA), P. R. McCullough (Space Telescope Science Institute, USA and Smithsonian Astronomical Observatory, USA), C. J. Burke (SETI Institute/NASA Ames Research Center), J. J. Fortney (University of California, Santa Cruz, USA), J. Irwin (Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astronomy, USA), P. Nutzman (University of California, Santa Cruz, USA), D. Homeier (CRAL Lyon/ENS Lyon, France and Georg-August University of Göttingen, Germany)

The calibration of the WFC3 slitless spectroscopy modes was undertaken by the Space Telescope European Co-ordinating Facility as part of ESA's contribution to the Hubble Space Telescope project.

Links:

    Research paper: http://www.spacetelescope.org/static/archives/releases/science_papers/heic1204.pdf

    NASA release: http://hubblesite.org/news/2012/13

    Images of Hubble: http://www.spacetelescope.org/images/archive/category/spacecraft/

Images, Credit: NASA / ESA / D. Aguilar (Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics) / Text: Zachory Berta / Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics / Derek Homeier / Centre de Recherche Astrophysique de Lyon and Georg-August University of Göttingen / Oli Usher / Hubble-ESA / David Aguilar / Christine Pulliam / Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics Cambridge, USA.

Greetings, Orbiter.ch

LHC to run at 4 TeV per beam in 2012

2012-02-21T05:42:00.000-08:00

CERN - European Organization for Nuclear Research logo.

Feb. 21, 2012

CERN was announced (Geneva, 13 February 2012) that the LHC will run with a beam energy of 4 TeV this year, 0.5 TeV higher than in 2010 and 2011. This decision was taken by CERN management following the annual performance workshop held in Chamonix last week and a report delivered today by the external CERN Machine Advisory Committee (CMAC). It is accompanied by a strategy to optimise LHC running to deliver the maximum possible amount of data in 2012 before the LHC goes into a long shutdown to prepare for higher energy running. The data target for 2012 is 15 inverse femtobarns for ATLAS and CMS, three times higher than in 2011. Bunch spacing in the LHC will remain at 50 nanoseconds.

LHC - CERN

“When we started operating the LHC for physics in 2010, we chose the lowest safe beam energy consistent with the physics we wanted to do,” said CERN’s Director for Accelerators and Technology, Steve Myers. “Two good years of operational experience with beam and many additional measurements made during 2011 give us the confidence to safely move up a notch, and thereby extend the physics reach of the experiments before we go into the LHC’s first long shutdown.”

The LHC’s excellent performance in 2010 and 2011 has brought tantalising hints of new physics, notably narrowing the range of masses available to the Higgs particle to a window of just 16 GeV. Within this window, both the ATLAS and CMS experiments have seen hints that a Higgs might exist in the mass range 124-126 GeV. However, to turn those hints into a discovery, or to rule out the Standard Model Higgs particle altogether, requires one more year’s worth of data. The LHC is scheduled to enter a long technical stop at the end of this year to prepare for running at its full design energy of around 7 TeV per beam.

CERN News - LHC to run at 4 TeV per beam in 2012

“By the time the LHC goes into its first long stop at the end of this year, we will either know that a Higgs particle exists or have ruled out the existence of a Standard Model Higgs,” said CERN’s Research Director, Sergio Bertolucci. “Either would be a major advance in our exploration of nature, bringing us closer to understanding how the fundamental particles acquire their mass, and marking the beginning of a new chapter in particle physics."

The schedule announced today foresees beams back in the LHC next month, and running through to November. There will then be a long technical stop of around 20 months, with the LHC restarting close to its full design energy late in 2014 and operating for physics at the new high energy in early 2015.

Note:

CERN, the European Organization for Nuclear Research, is one of the world’s largest and most respected centres for scientific research. Its business is fundamental physics, finding out what the Universe is made of and how it works. At CERN, the world’s largest and most complex scientific instruments are used to study the basic constituents of matter — the fundamental particles. By studying what happens when these particles collide, physicists learn about the laws of Nature.

The instruments used at CERN are particle accelerators and detectors. Accelerators boost beams of particles to high energies before they are made to collide with each other or with stationary targets. Detectors observe and record the results of these collisions.

Founded in 1954, the CERN Laboratory sits astride the Franco–Swiss border near Geneva. It was one of Europe’s first joint ventures and now has 20 Member States.

More information:

    CERN video news: http://cdsweb.cern.ch/record/1423359

    ATLAS: http://atlas.ch/

    CMS: http://cms.web.cern.ch/

    LHCb: http://lhcb-public.web.cern.ch/lhcb-public/

    ALICE: http://aliceinfo.cern.ch/Public/Welcome.html

Follow CERN at:

    http://www.cern.ch
    http://twitter.com/cern/
    http://www.youtube.com/user/CERNTV
    http://www.quantumdiaries.org/

Image, Video, Text, Credit: CERN.

Cheers, Orbiter.ch

NASA Spacecraft Reveals Recent Geological Activity on the Moon

2012-02-20T15:38:00.000-08:00

NASA - Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter (LRO) patch.

02.20.12

New images from NASA's Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter (LRO) spacecraft show the moon's crust is being stretched, forming minute valleys in a few small areas on the lunar surface. Scientists propose this geologic activity occurred less than 50 million years ago, which is considered recent compared to the moon's age of more than 4.5 billion years.

A team of researchers analyzing high-resolution images obtained by the Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter Camera (LROC) show small, narrow trenches typically much longer than they are wide. This indicates the lunar crust is being pulled apart at these locations. These linear valleys, known as graben, form when the moon's crust stretches, breaks and drops down along two bounding faults. A handful of these graben systems have been found across the lunar surface.

Video above: Dr. Thomas Watters discusses the lunar graben and what they reveal about how the moon evolved. (Credit: NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center, Dan Gallagher).

"We think the moon is in a general state of global contraction because of cooling of a still hot interior," said Thomas Watters of the Center for Earth and Planetary Studies at the Smithsonian's National Air and Space Museum in Washington, and lead author of a paper on this research appearing in the March issue of the journal Nature Geoscience. "The graben tell us forces acting to shrink the moon were overcome in places by forces acting to pull it apart. This means the contractional forces shrinking the moon cannot be large, or the small graben might never form."

The weak contraction suggests that the moon, unlike the terrestrial planets, did not completely melt in the very early stages of its evolution. Rather, observations support an alternative view that only the moon's exterior initially melted forming an ocean of molten rock.

This shows the largest of the newly detected graben found in highlands of the lunar farside. The broadest graben is about 500 meters (1,640 feet) wide and topography derived from Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter Camera (LROC) Narrow Angle Camera (NAC) stereo images indicates they are almost 20 meters (almost 66 feet) deep. (Credit: NASA/Goddard/Arizona State University/Smithsonian Institution).

In August 2010, the team used LROC images to identify physical signs of contraction on the lunar surface, in the form of lobe-shaped cliffs known as lobate scarps. The scarps are evidence the moon shrank globally in the geologically recent past and might still be shrinking today. The team saw these scarps widely distributed across the moon and concluded it was shrinking as the interior slowly cooled.

Based on the size of the scarps, it is estimated that the distance between the moon's center and its surface shank by approximately 300 feet. The graben were an unexpected discovery and the images provide contradictory evidence that the regions of the lunar crust are also being pulled apart.

"This pulling apart tells us the moon is still active," said Richard Vondrak, LRO Project Scientist at NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Md. "LRO gives us a detailed look at that process."

Graben are troughs formed when the lunar crust was stretched and pulled apart. This stretching causes the near-surface materials to break along two parallel normal faults, the terrain in between the twin faults drops down forming a valley. (Credit: Arizona State University/Smithsonian Institution).

As the LRO mission progresses and coverage increases, scientists will have a better picture of how common these young graben are and what other types of tectonic features are nearby. The graben systems the team finds may help scientists refine the state of stress in the lunar crust.

"It was a big surprise when I spotted graben in the far side highlands," said co-author Mark Robinson of the School of Earth and Space Exploration at Arizona State University, principal investigator of LROC. "I immediately targeted the area for high-resolution stereo images so we could create a three-dimensional view of the graben. It's exciting when you discover something totally unexpected and only about half the lunar surface has been imaged in high resolution. There is much more of the moon to be explored."

The research was funded by the LRO mission, currently under NASA's Science Mission Directorate at NASA Headquarters in Washington. LRO is managed by NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Md.

For more information about LRO Mission, visit: http://www.nasa.gov/mission_pages/LRO/main/index.html and http://lro.gsfc.nasa.gov/

Images (mentioned), Video (mentioned), Text, Credit: NASA / Dwayne Brown.

Greetings, Orbiter.ch

The experiment "RIM-PAMELA" continues

2012-02-20T05:24:00.000-08:00

Roscosmos patch.

02/20/2012

Since 2006, the spacecraft (SC) "Resource DK1", developed and manufactured in accordance with the Federal Space Program of Russia commissioned by the Federal Space Agency, holds a joint Russian-Italian experiment "RIM-PAMELA."

The experiment was conducted in order to space research aimed at finding and studying antimatter (antiprotons, positrons), nuclear and electronic components in the primary cosmic radiation. Carrying out the experiment, the scientists plan will help to solve some fundamental problems in cosmology (the origin of the universe).

With the help of a magnetic spectrometer, "PAMELA", designed and created by scientists from Russia and Italy, and continue to be made precise measurements of charged particles and antiparticles in cosmic radiation. To date, obtained and published several scientific world-class results.

Scientific instrumentation of "PAMELA"

An increase with increasing energy flux ratio of high-energy cosmic positrons to electrons, which required a substantial revision of ideas about the generation and propagation of such particles in the Galaxy (Nature v.458., P.607-609, 2009).

Interpretation of experimental results devoted nearly a thousand scientific papers in various scientific journals. The most interesting and important from the standpoint of the fundamental problems of the nature of dark matter, is to explain the annihilation and decay of dark matter particles. In practice this is the first experimental result on the problem of the existence of dark matter particles.

The growth of the flux ratio of positrons to electrons in the literature is called "anomalous PAMELA" and included the American Physical Society in the list of 10 outstanding world of physical results for 2008, along with the launch of the LHC in Geneva.

For the first time measured the flux of cosmic antiprotons in the energy range from fifty to two hundred thousand million electron-volts, which allowed, in particular, to analyze the different theoretical models of the nature and properties of dark matter particles (Physical Review Letter v.105., R.121101, 2010) .

As a result of measuring the energy spectra of protons and helium nuclei in cosmic rays was first shown that the energy spectra of protons and helium nuclei are different due to different mechanisms of particle acceleration and, therefore, the advantage of flow of helium nuclei at extremely high energies (Science v.332 № 6025, p. 69-72, 2011).

The experiment is also open to the near-Earth space are captured by the geomagnetic field of high-energy antiprotons, formed by the collapse of albedo antineutrons. This result has as a fundamental value that is associated with the theory of Earth's radiation belt, as well as practical importance to create the model Earth's radiation belt (Astrophysical Journal Letters v. 737, p. 1-19, 2011).

The results of experimental studies "RIM-PAMELA" repeatedly reported at scientific conferences and published in Russian scientific journals, particularly in the scientific journal "Proceedings of the Academy of Sciences", "Bulletin of the Academy of Sciences," "Letters to the Journal of Experimental and Theoretical Physics", "Uspekhi Fizicheskikh Science ", etc.

"Resurs-DK"

If you continue to experiment, "RIM-PAMELA" on board "Resurs DK1" supposed to detect solar flares during the growth of the solar activity cycle, the 24th, in order to study particle acceleration in the Sun and solar terrestrial relations, as well as to measure the energy spectra of light and streams medium nuclei in the galactic cosmic radiation.

23 and January 27 scientific instruments: a magnetic spectrometer, "PAMELA", and a scintillation spectrometer, "Arina", mounted on the spacecraft "Resurs DK1", recorded solar proton events from the most powerful solar flares.

January 23 at 03:59 UT (about 8:00 am Moscow time) observed the eruption of a large sunspot in 1402, accompanied by a solar flare class M9. Shortly thereafter, protons with energies of several hundred MeV were registered devices "Pamela" and "Arina" orbit on Earth.

January 27 at 18:37 UT the same active region on the sun caused a more powerful flash unit class X2. The active region was at that moment at the edge of the sun and therefore the shock wave was not directed toward the Earth. However, increased flows of high-energy particles detected on the satellite "Resurs DK1" was several times stronger.

We are currently processing the data to obtain information about the composition and energy spectra of solar particles, these unique events.

Original text in Russian: http://www.federalspace.ru/main.php?id=2&nid=18705

Images, Text, Credit: Press Service of the Russian Space Agency (Roscosmos PAO) / Translation: Orbiter.ch.

Best regards, Orbiter.ch

Shkaplerov Anton and Oleg Kononenko took to the outer surface of the ISS

2012-02-16T19:14:00.000-08:00

ISS - International Space Station patch.

17/02/2012

February 16 at 18 h 31 min. Moscow at the International Space Station cosmonauts Shkaplerov Anton and Oleg Kononenko went into space and began the routine work of the Russian program.

The yield realized from the docking bay, "Pierce" in suits "Orlan-MK." To perform all assigned work for about six hours.

Cosmonauts Shkaplerov Anton and Oleg Kononenko spacewalk

During this time, the Russian cosmonauts must complete the transfer of cargo boom with docking module on the module MIM2, an experiment "Test" in the working chamber service module, as well as when there is sufficient time to complete install additional panels on the operating section of the service module, struts on the optional remote job service module and the power of exposure (experiment "Endurance") on the module MIM2.

For Anton Shkaplerova the first spacewalk. His colleague Oleg Kononenko has twice worked in the open space total of 12 hours and 15 minutes.

ISS Russian Spacewalk Coverage February 16, 2012

Hatch docking module "Pirs" closed - spacewalk successfully completed

Having worked in the open space 6 hours 15 minutes and flight engineers of the International Space Station (ISS), Russian Space Agency astronauts Shkaplerov Anton and Oleg Kononenko returned to the International Space Station.

During the exit (36th out of the Russian segment of ISS) in the EVA astronauts carried out the transfer of cargo boom GStM-1 with the docking module "Pirs" (SB-1) and install it on a small research unit "Search" to mount the module " Search "block exposure of samples to experiment," Endurance "and within the space experiment" Test "took samples from the surface of the working chamber service module" Zvezda ".

For Anton Shkaplerova this exit was the first, while his colleague Oleg Kononenko, third spacewalk.

The ISS crew continues to work 30/31 long expedition in the Commander Daniel Burbank (NASA), flight engineers Anton Shkaplerova (Roscosmos), Anatoly Ivanishin (Roscosmos), Oleg Kononenko (Roscosmos), Andre Cowper (ESA) and Donald Pettit (NASA .)

Images, Video, Text, Credits: Press Service of the Russian Space Agency (Roscosmos PAO) / Energia / NASA / Translation: Orbiter.ch.

Greetings, Orbiter.ch

Hubble Finds Relic of a Shredded Galaxy

2012-02-15T10:08:00.000-08:00

ESA - Hubble Space Telescope logo.

15 February 2012

Star cluster surrounds wayward black hole in cannibal galaxy ESO 243-49 (unlabelled)

Astronomers using the NASA/ESA Hubble Space Telescope have found a cluster of young blue stars surrounding a mid-sized black hole called HLX-1. The discovery suggests that the black hole formed in the core of a now-disintegrated dwarf galaxy. The findings have important implications for understanding the evolution of supermassive black holes and galaxies.

Astronomers know how massive stars collapse to form small black holes a few times the mass of the Sun. However, it is not clear how supermassive black holes, which can have masses of millions or even billions of times the Sun's, form in the cores of galaxies. One idea is that supermassive black holes may build up through the merger of small and mid-sized black holes, a view supported by a new study using Hubble.

Star cluster surrounds wayward black hole in cannibal galaxy ESO 243-49 (labelled)

Sean Farrell of the Sydney Institute for Astronomy in Australia and the University of Leicester, UK, discovered a middleweight black hole in 2009 using the European Space Agency’s XMM-Newton X-ray space telescope.

Black holes can be spotted using X-rays because of radiation coming from matter heating up as it swirls around and falls into the black hole. This phenomenon is known to astronomers as an accretion disc.

Known as HLX-1 (Hyper-Luminous X-ray source 1), this black hole weighs in around 20 000 times the mass of the Sun and lies towards the edge of galaxy ESO 243-49, which is 290 million light-years from Earth.

Now, Farrell’s team has studied HLX-1 in ultraviolet, visible and infrared light using Hubble, and simultaneously in X-rays using the NASA/STFC/ASI Swift satellite.

“For a unique source we needed a unique telescope,” explains Mathieu Servillat, second author of the study. “Hubble provided such precision in its images that it helped us understand the origin and environment of this intermediate-mass black hole.”

Because HLX-1 is around 290 million light-years away, it is too far for Hubble to measure the individual stars around the black hole. However, a great deal can be deduced from the light that comes from it. Hubble’s images of the region show an excess of red light, which cannot be explained by emissions from the accretion disc alone. This light, the team concludes, is evidence of a cluster of hot stars surrounding the black hole as the brightness and colour of the light is similar to that from star clusters in nearby galaxies.

“What we can definitely say with our Hubble data,” says Farrell, “is that we require both emission from an accretion disc and emission from a stellar population to explain the colours we see.”

The existence of a star cluster around the black hole in turn gives clues about where the intermediate mass black hole may have come from, and why it lies in its present location in ESO 243-49.

“The fact that there’s a very young cluster of stars indicates that the intermediate-mass black hole may have originated as the central black hole in a very low-mass dwarf galaxy,” Farrell explains. “The dwarf galaxy was then swallowed by the more massive galaxy.”

As the dwarf galaxy was ripped apart, the black hole with some of its surrounding material would have survived.

The future of the black hole is uncertain at this stage. It depends on its trajectory, which is currently unknown. It’s possible that the black hole may spiral into the centre of ESO 243-49 and merge with the supermassive black hole there. Alternatively, the black hole could settle into a stable orbit around the galaxy. Either way, it’s likely to fade away in X-rays as it depletes its supply of gas.

The team has more observations planned this year to track the history of the interaction between the two galaxies.

NASA / ESA Hubble Space Telescope in orbit

The new findings are being published on 15 February in the Astrophysical Journal.

Notes:

The Hubble Space Telescope is a project of international cooperation between ESA and NASA.

The international team of astronomers in this study consists of S. A. Farrell (Sydney Institute of Astronomy, Australia, and University of Leicester, UK), M. Servillat (Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astronomy, USA), J. Pforr (University of Portsmouth, UK), T.J. Maccarone (University of Southampton, UK), C. Knigge (University of Southampton, UK), O. Godet (Universty of Toulouse, France, and CNRS IRAP, France), C. Maraston (University of Portsmouth, UK), N.A. Webb (University of Toulouse, France, and CNRS IRAP, France), D. Barret (University of Toulouse, France, and CNRS IRAP, France), A. Gosling (University of Oxford, UK), R. Belmont (University of Toulouse, France, and CNRS IRAP, France), K. Wiersema (University of Leicester, UK).

These results are reported in a paper entitled “A young stellar population around the intermediate mass black hole ESO 243-49 HLX-1”, published in the Astrophysical Journal on 15 February.

Links:

Images of Hubble: http://www.spacetelescope.org/images/archive/category/spacecraft/

Science paper: http://www.spacetelescope.org/static/archives/releases/science_papers/heic1203.pdf

Images, Text, Credit: NASA, ESA, and S. Farrell (University of Sydney, Australia and University of Leicester, UK).

Cheers, Orbiter.ch

Rhea Before Titan

2012-02-15T09:53:00.000-08:00

NASA / ESA - Cassini Mission to Saturn patch.

Feb. 15, 2012

Craters appear well defined on icy Rhea in front of the hazy orb of the much larger moon Titan in this Cassini spacecraft view of these two Saturn moons.

Lit terrain seen here is on the leading hemispheres of Rhea and Titan. North on the moons is up and rotated 13 degrees to the left. The limb, or edge of the visible disk, of Rhea is slightly overexposed in this view.

The image was taken in visible green light with the Cassini spacecraft narrow-angle camera on Dec. 10, 2011. The view was acquired at a distance of approximately 1.2 million miles (2 million kilometers) from Titan and at a Sun-Titan-spacecraft, or phase, angle of 109 degrees. The view was acquired at a distance of approximately 810,000 miles (1.3 million kilometers) from Rhea and at a Sun-Rhea-spacecraft, or phase, angle of 109 degrees. Image scale is 8 miles (12 kilometers) per pixel on Titan and 5 miles (8 kilometers) per pixel on Rhea.

For more information about Cassini Mission, visit: http://www.nasa.gov/mission_pages/cassini/main/index.html and http://www.esa.int/esaMI/Cassini-Huygens/

Image, Text, Credit: NASA / JPL-Caltech / Space Science Institute.

Greetings, Orbiter.ch

Cleaning up Earth's orbit: A Swiss satellite tackles space debris

2012-02-15T06:53:00.000-08:00

Space Junk.

Feb. 15, 2012

CleanSpace One - a Swiss satellite to tackle space junk

The proliferation of debris orbiting the Earth – primarily jettisoned rocket and satellite components – is an increasingly pressing problem for spacecraft, and it can generate huge costs. To combat this scourge, the Swiss Space Center at EPFL is announcing today the launch of CleanSpace One, a project to develop and build the first installment of a family of satellites specially designed to clean up space debris.

The Earth’s orbit is full of all kinds of floating debris; a growing crowd of abandoned satellites, spent rocket stages, bits of broken spacecraft, and fragments from collisions are rocketing around the planet at breathtaking speeds. NASA keeps close tabs on at least 16,000 of these objects that are larger than 10 cm in diameter. When an operational spacecraft such as a satellite collides with one of them, serious, costly damage can result; often the satellite is complete destroyed. And the collision itself then generates thousands more fragments, further exacerbating the problem.

CleanSpace One approach SwissCube satellite

“It has become essential to be aware of the existence of this debris and the risks that are run by its proliferation,” says Claude Nicollier, astronaut and EPFL professor. To move beyond mere rhetoric and take immediate action to get this stuff out of orbit, the Swiss Space Center at EPFL is launching CleanSpace One, a project to build the first prototype in a family of “de-orbiting” satellites.

The project developers have chosen a symbolic target for the initial CleanSpace One launch: either Switzerland’s first orbiting object, the Swisscube picosatellite which was put in orbit in 2009, or its cousin TIsat, launched in July 2010.

One satellite, three technological hurdles

The cleanup satellite has three major challenges to overcome, each of which will necessitate the development of new technology that could, in turn, be used down the road in other applications.

CleanSpace One approach SwissCube satellite

After its launch, the cleanup satellite will have to adjust its trajectory in order to match its target’s orbital plane. To do this, it could use a new kind of ultra-compact motor designed for space applications that is being developed in EPFL laboratories. When it gets within range of its target, which will be traveling at 28,000 km/h at an altitude of 630-750 km, CleanSpace One will grab and stabilize it – a mission that’s extremely dicey at these high speeds, particularly if the satellite is rotating. To accomplish the task, scientists are planning to develop a gripping mechanism inspired from a plant or animal example. Finally, once it’s coupled with the satellite, CleanSpace One will “de-orbit” the unwanted satellite by heading back into the Earth’s atmosphere, where the two satellites will burn upon re-entry.

Although its first model is destined to be destroyed, the CleanSpace One adventure will not be a one-shot deal. “We want to offer and sell a whole family of ready-made systems, designed as sustainably as possible, that are able to de-orbit several different kinds of satellites,” explains Swiss Space Center Director Volker Gass. “Space agencies are increasingly finding it necessary to take into consideration and prepare for the elimination of the stuff they’re sending into space. We want to be the pioneers in this area.”

CleanSpace One capture SwissCube satellite

The design and construction of CleanSpace One, as well as its maiden space voyage, will cost about 10 million Swiss francs. Depending on the funding and industrial partners, this first orbital rendez-vous could take place within three to five years.

About space debris

16,000 objects larger than 10 cm in diameter and hundreds of millions of smaller particles are ripping around the Earth at speeds of several kilometers per second. From the beginning of the Space Age, Earth’s periphery has been increasingly encumbered by all kinds of debris, primarily concentrated in Low Earth Orbit (less than 2000 km in altitude, where the International Space Station is orbiting) or Geostationary Orbit (35,786 km in altitude). Many of these objects are spent rocket stages or satellites that have broken up in orbit. If they collide with another orbiting object, say a functioning satellite, they can cause massive damage, or even destroy it. This is what happened on February 10, 2009, when the U.S. satellite Iridium-33 exploded upon impact with the abandoned Russian satellite Cosmos-2251. The financial consequences of these collisions are enormous, particularly for insurance companies involved in the space sector; a sum currently estimated at $20 billion to insure existing satellites.

CleanSpace One process

Cases such as this one are bound to increase in number. Even in the immensity of outer space, the increasing density of human-generated waste is becoming a problem. It’s expanding exponentially, because each collision generates in turn several thousand more fragments, which, although smaller, are no less dangerous than a large, abandoned satellite. NASA, which tracks 16,000 of these objects, can only monitor the largest ones (greater than 10 cm in diameter) – but at these incredible speeds even a simple paint chip can seriously damage a solar panel or the window on a shuttle. To avoid the largest objects before they get critically close, the International Space Station must constantly alter its orbit. It managed to do this again just recently, on January 29, 2012.

Last year the Swiss Re insurance company published a study showing that every year, there is a nearly one in 10,000 chance that a 10 m2 satellite traveling in a sun-synchronous (600-1,000 km) orbit will collide with a piece of space debris larger than 1 cm.

Related links:

Swiss Space Center: http://space.epfl.ch/

EPFL: http://www.epfl.ch/

Images, Video, Text, Credit: EPFL / Emmanuel Barraud / Mediacom.

Best regards, Orbiter.ch

Launched from Baikonur space rocket "Proton-M" & communications spacecraft SES-4 (formerly NSS-14) satellite

2012-02-14T16:14:00.000-08:00

ILS / Roscosmos - SES-4 (formerly NSS-14) Mission poster.

14.02.2012

February 14 at 23.36.37 GMT on launch pad area 200 Baikonur launch took place of a space rocket "Proton-M" with the upper block (RB), "the Briz-M", designed for launching into orbit communications spacecraft SES-4 (formerly NSS-14) satellite.

We had a successful liftoff about 11 minutes ago of the ILS Proton M Breeze M rocket, which is carrying the SES-4 satellite on-board. The three stages of the Proton vehicle have performed as planned, and it is up to the Breeze M upper stage to complete the mission. The upper stage has begun its first burn, which is scheduled to last around 4 minutes.

Proton-M & SES-4 (formerly NSS-14) launch

February 14, 2012 2:58 pm (GMT)
We have received confirmation of completion of the first burn. The vehicle is now scheduled to be out of range for about an hour, after which we will hear confirmation of the second burn.

February 14, 2012 4:14 pm (GMT)
As the Breeze M upper stage of our Proton M rocket continues its climb into space with the SES-4 satellite on-board, we have received confirmation that the 2nd burn of the upper stage occurred and shut down as scheduled.

SES-4 (formerly NSS-14) communications satellite

The next events are scheduled for about 2 hours from now. The Breeze M upper stage will ignite for a 3rd time and burn for approximately 11 minutes; after that the additional propellant tank will be jettisoned and the the Breeze M will ignite and burn for a 4th time. All this will happen in a span of almost 20 minutes while the vehicle is again out of range of a ground station. We should reacquire the vehicle shortly after the 4th burn is complete.

Office of the spacecraft from the upper stage is scheduled for 08.48 GMT on February 15.

Mission control website: http://www.ilslaunch.com/mission-control/mission-ses-4

Images, Video, Text, Credit: Press Service of the Russian Space Agency (Roscosmos PAO) / ILS.

Best regards, Orbiter.ch

Oldest Recorded Supernova

2012-02-13T16:54:00.000-08:00

NASA - Spitzer Mission patch / NASA - Chandra X-ray Observatory patch / ESA - XMM-Newton Mission patch / NASA - WISE Mission patch.

Feb. 13, 2012

This image combines data from four space telescopes to create a multi-wavelength view of all that remains of RCW 86, the oldest documented example of a supernova. Chinese astronomers witnessed the event in 185 A.D., documenting a mysterious "guest star" that remained in the sky for eight months. X-ray images from NASA's Chandra X-ray Observatory and the European Space Agency's XMM-Newton Observatory were combined to form the blue and green colors in the image. The X-rays show the interstellar gas that has been heated to millions of degrees by the passage of the shock wave from the supernova.

Infrared data from NASA's Spitzer Space Telescope and WISE, Wide-Field Infrared Survey Explorer, shown in yellow and red, reveal dust radiating at a temperature of several hundred degrees below zero, warm by comparison to normal dust in our Milky Way galaxy.

By studying the X-ray and infrared data, astronomers were able to determine that the cause of the explosion was a Type Ia supernova, in which an otherwise-stable white dwarf, or dead star, was pushed beyond the brink of stability when a companion star dumped material onto it. Furthermore, scientists used the data to solve another mystery surrounding the remnant -- how it got to be so large in such a short amount of time. By blowing away wind prior to exploding, the white dwarf was able to clear out a huge "cavity," a region of very low-density surrounding the system. The explosion into this cavity was able to expand much faster than it otherwise would have.

This is the first time that this type of cavity has been seen around a white dwarf system prior to explosion. Scientists say the results may have significant implications for theories of white-dwarf binary systems and Type Ia supernovae.

RCW 86 is approximately 8,000 light-years away. At about 85 light-years in diameter, it occupies a region of the sky in the southern constellation of Circinus that is slightly larger than the full moon. This image was compiled in October 2011.

For more informations about all telescope mentioned in this article, visit:

http://www.spitzer.caltech.edu/

http://www.nasa.gov/mission_pages/spitzer/main/index.html

http://chandra.si.edu/

http://www.nasa.gov/mission_pages/chandra/main/index.html

http://xmm.esac.esa.int/

http://sci.esa.int/science-e/www/area/index.cfm?fareaid=23

http://www.jpl.nasa.gov/wise/

http://www.nasa.gov/mission_pages/WISE/main/index.html

Image, Text, Credits: X-ray: NASA / CXC / SAO & ESA; Infared: NASA / JPL-Caltech / B. Williams (NCSU).

Cheers, Orbiter.ch

Planck steps closer to the cosmic blueprint

2012-02-13T11:02:00.000-08:00

ESA - Planck Mission patch.

13 February 2012

ESA’s Planck mission has revealed that our Galaxy contains previously undiscovered islands of cold gas and a mysterious haze of microwaves. These results give scientists new treasure to mine and take them closer to revealing the blueprint of cosmic structure.

All-sky image of molecular gas seen by Planck and previous surveys

The new results are being presented this week at an international conference in Bologna, Italy, where astronomers from around the world are discussing the mission’s intermediate results.

These results include the first map of carbon monoxide to cover the entire sky. Carbon monoxide is a constituent of the cold clouds that populate the Milky Way and other galaxies. Predominantly made of hydrogen molecules, these clouds provide the reservoirs from which stars are born.
However, hydrogen molecules are difficult to detect because they do not readily emit radiation. Carbon monoxide forms under similar conditions and, even though it is much rarer, it emits light more readily and therefore is more easily detectable. So, astronomers use it to trace the clouds of hydrogen.

Molecular clouds in the Cepheus region

“Planck turns out to be an excellent detector of carbon monoxide across the entire sky,” says Planck collaborator Jonathan Aumont from the Institut d’Astrophysique Spatiale, Universite Paris XI, Orsay, France.

Surveys of carbon monoxide undertaken with radio telescopes on the ground are extremely time consuming, hence they are limited to portions of the sky where molecular clouds are already known or expected to exist.

“The great advantage of Planck is that it scans the whole sky, allowing us to detect concentrations of molecular gas where we didn’t expect to find them,” says Dr Aumont.

All-sky image of molecular gas and three molecular cloud complexes seen by Planck

Planck has also detected a mysterious haze of microwaves that presently defies explanation.

It comes from the region surrounding the galactic centre and looks like a form of energy called synchrotron emission. This is produced when electrons pass through magnetic fields after having been accelerated by supernova explosions.

The curiosity is that the synchrotron emission associated with the galactic haze exhibits different characteristics from the synchrotron emission seen elsewhere in the Milky Way.

The galactic haze shows what astronomers call a ‘harder’ spectrum: its emission does not decline as rapidly with increasing energies.

The mysterious Galactic Haze seen by Planck

Several explanations have been proposed for this unusual behaviour, including higher supernova rates, galactic winds and even the annihilation of dark-matter particles.

So far, none of them has been confirmed and it remains puzzling.

“The results achieved thus far by Planck on the galactic haze and on the carbon monoxide distribution provide us with a fresh view on some interesting processes taking place in our Galaxy,” says Jan Tauber, ESA’s Project Scientist for Planck.

Planck’s primary goal is to observe the Cosmic Microwave Background (CMB), the relic radiation from the Big Bang, and to measure its encoded information about the constituents of the Universe and the origin of cosmic structure.

Galactic Haze seen by Planck and Galactic 'bubbles' seen by Fermi

But it can only be reached once all sources of foreground emission, such as the galactic haze and the carbon monoxide signals, have been identified and removed.

“The lengthy and delicate task of foreground removal provides us with prime datasets that are shedding new light on hot topics in galactic and extragalactic astronomy alike,” says Dr Tauber.

“We look forward to characterising all foregrounds and then being able to reveal the CMB in unprecedented detail.”

Planck’s first cosmological dataset is expected to be released in 2013.

All-sky image of molecular gas seen by Planck and previous surveys

All-sky image of molecular gas seen by Planck

Molecular clouds in the Taurus region

Molecular clouds in the Pegasus region

Related links:

Planck on Chromoscope: http://www.chromoscope.net/

Planck: looking back at the dawn of time: http://www.esa.int/SPECIALS/Planck/index.html

For specialists:

Planck Science Team: http://www.rssd.esa.int/index.php?project=Planck

In depth:

In depth overview: http://sci.esa.int/science-e/www/object/index.cfm?fobjectid=48201

Galaxy clusters: http://sci.esa.int/science-e/www/object/index.cfm?fobjectid=48202

Coldest objects: http://sci.esa.int/science-e/www/object/index.cfm?fobjectid=48203

Anomalous radiation: http://sci.esa.int/science-e/www/object/index.cfm?fobjectid=48204

Early structure: http://sci.esa.int/science-e/www/object/index.cfm?fobjectid=48205

Planck in depth: http://sci.esa.int/science-e/www/area/index.cfm?fareaid=17

International participation in Herschel and Planck (pdf): http://esamultimedia.esa.int/docs/HP/HP_instrument_fact_sheet_28Sep09.pdf

Images, Text, Credits: ESA / Planck Collaboration / T. Dame et al / NASA / DOE / Fermi LAT / D. Finkbeiner et al. (gamma rays).

Greetings, Orbiter.ch

ESA’s new Vega launcher scores success on maiden flight

2012-02-13T04:48:00.000-08:00

ESA - VEGA Launcher logo.

13 February 2012

Vega, ESA’s new launch vehicle, is ready to operate alongside the Ariane 5 and Soyuz launchers after a successful qualification flight this morning from Europe’s Spaceport in Kourou, French Guiana.

Liftoff of Vega VV01

With Vega extending the family of launchers available at the spaceport, Europe now covers the full range of launch needs, from small science and Earth observation satellites to the largest missions like ESA’s supply freighters to the International Space Station.

The first Vega lifted off at 10:00 GMT (11:00 CET, 07:00 local time) from the new launch pad, and conducted a flawless qualification flight.

Liftoff of Vega VV01

Vega’s light launch capacity accommodates a wide range of satellites – from 300 kg to 2500 kg – into a wide variety of orbits, from equatorial to Sun-synchronous. Its reference mission is 1500 kg into a 700 km-high circular Sun-synchronous orbit.

Vega will thus add to Europe’s set of launch services next to the Ariane 5 heavy-lifter and the Soyuz medium-class launcher already in service.

The combination of these three systems operating from French Guiana will also improve the efficiency of Europe’s launch infrastructure by sharing its operating costs over a larger number of launches.

“In a little more than three months, Europe has increased the number of launchers it operates from one to three, widening significantly the range of launch services offered by the European operator Arianespace. There is not anymore one single European satellite which cannot be launched by a European launcher service,” said Jean-Jacques Dordain, Director General of ESA.

Vega VV01 ready for launch

“It is a great day for ESA, its Member States, in particularly Italy where Vega was born, for European industry and for Arianespace.”

Vega launcher development started in 2003. Seven Member States contributed to the programme: Belgium, France, Italy, the Netherlands, Spain, Sweden and Switzerland.

“Today is a moment of pride for Europe as well as those around 1000 individuals who have been involved in developing the world’s most modern and competitive launcher system for small satellites,” said Antonio Fabrizi, ESA’s Director of Launchers.

“ESA, with the technical support of the Italian and French space agencies, and about 40 industrial companies coordinated by the prime contractor ELV SpA, have made this enormous challenge a reality in under a decade of development.”

Related new:

European students reach for the stars: http://www.esa.int/SPECIALS/Education/SEMW5KYXHYG_0.html

Follow the CubeSats journey to Space on board of Vega's inaugural flight!: http://www.esa.int/SPECIALS/Education/SEMT7JWX7YG_0.html

Related links:

Vega liftoff pictures: http://www.esa.int/esaCP/SEMBTKYXHYG_index_0.html

Vega ecards: http://ecard.esa.int/Vega/

Launchers: http://www.esa.int/SPECIALS/Launchers_Home/index.html

Vega on Flickr: http://www.flickr.com/photos/europeanspaceagency/sets/72157629144644601/

Vega VV01 launch website: http://www.esa.int/SPECIALS/Vega/index.html

Images, Video, Text, Credits: ESA / S. Corvaja / Arianespace.

Best regards, Orbiter.ch

Transforming Galaxies

2012-02-10T19:03:00.000-08:00

NASA - Hubble Space Telescope patch.

02.10.12

Many of the Universe's galaxies are like our own, displaying beautiful spiral arms wrapping around a bright nucleus. Examples in this stunning image, taken with the Wide Field Camera 3 on the NASA/ESA Hubble Space Telescope, include the tilted galaxy at the bottom of the frame, shining behind a Milky Way star, and the small spiral at the top center.

Other galaxies are even odder in shape. Markarian 779, the galaxy at the top of this image, has a distorted appearance because it is likely the product of a recent galactic merger between two spirals. This collision destroyed the spiral arms of the galaxies and scattered much of their gas and dust, transforming them into a single peculiar galaxy with a unique shape.

This galaxy is part of the Markarian catalogue, a database of over 1500 galaxies named after B. E. Markarian, the Armenian astronomer who studied them in the 1960s. He surveyed the sky for bright objects with unusually strong emission in the ultraviolet.

Hubble Space Telescope in orbit

Ultraviolet radiation can come from a range of sources, so the Markarian catalog is quite diverse. An excess of ultraviolet emissions can be the result of the nucleus of an "active" galaxy, powered by a supermassive black hole at its center. It can also be due to events of intense star formation, called starbursts, possibly triggered by galactic collisions. Markarian galaxies are, therefore, often the subject of studies aimed at understanding active galaxies, starburst activity, and galaxy interactions and mergers.

Hubble is a project of international cooperation between NASA and the European Space Agency. NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Md., manages the telescope. The Space Telescope Science Institute (STScI) conducts Hubble science operations. STScI is operated for NASA by the Association of Universities for Research in Astronomy in Washington. For images and more information about the findings, visit: http://www.nasa.gov/hubble and http://hubblesite.org/

ESA Hubble site: http://www.spacetelescope.org/

Image, Text, Credit: ESA / Hubble & NASA.

Cheers, Orbiter.ch

SMOS water mission turns hurricane hunter

2012-02-10T05:41:00.000-08:00

ESA - SMOS Mission logo.

10 February 2012

ESA’s Earth Explorers have again shown how they are surpassing expectations. Designed to map soil moisture and ocean salinity, the versatile SMOS satellite has demonstrated that it can also offer unique information to improve hurricane forecasts.

The Soil Moisture and Ocean Salinity (SMOS) satellite carries a novel microwave radiometer to capture images of ‘brightness temperature’. These images correspond to radiation emitted from the surface of Earth and can be used to work out how much water is held in soil and how much salt is in the surface waters of the oceans.

Hurricane Igor surface winds

This information is leading to a better understanding of the water cycle and the processes that link Earth’s surface and atmosphere.

The SMOS sensor works in the ‘L-band’, at frequencies around 1.4 GHz, which also allows surface wind speeds over oceans to be derived, even in cloudy and rainy conditions.

When winds reach gale force over oceans, breaking waves and whitecaps affect the microwave radiation being emitted from the surface. This means that when a storm builds, changes in the emitted radiation can be linked directly to the strength of the wind over the sea.

In addition, the radiation detected by SMOS is far less disturbed by rain and atmospheric effects than higher microwave frequencies.

SMOS

Since clouds and rain are typical of tropical cyclones, measurements from SMOS uniquely complement observations made in extreme conditions, when measurements from other satellites become less accurate.

This means that SMOS has the potential to improve accuracy for forecasting the strength of tropical cyclones.

SMOS’s new-found capability was demonstrated by analysing SMOS data over Hurricane Igor, which reached category 5 in the North Atlantic in 2010.

The large swath and frequent revisits allowed the satellite to pass over the hurricane nine times during 11–19 September.

Surface wind speeds were estimated from SMOS brightness temperature images using a technique developed by scientists from the French Research Institute for Exploration of the Sea, Ifremer, and Collect Localisation Satellites, CLS, through ESA’s Earth Observation Support to Science Element programme.

Hurricane Igor

The animation at the top shows the result of their work. The estimates of surface-wind speed agree with hurricane model forecasts and data taken over the hurricane by NOAA aircraft.

This information can be particularly useful in the early stages of developing hurricanes in the east of the tropical Atlantic basin and over cyclones in the middle of the Pacific. Since these areas are far from land, they are difficult to reach by plane.

The contributions that SMOS can make are of great interest for operational forecasting of hurricane strength.

SMOS has also achieved another success: it has shown that salinity in the surface waters change in the wake of a hurricane. This is the first time that such changes have been detected from space.

Hurricane Igor changes salinity

As the animation to the left shows, Hurricane Igor caused the freshwater plume from the Amazon to mix with deeper saltier waters, increasing the salinity at the surface.

The combination of salinity data from SMOS with sea-surface temperature and sea-surface height information will improve the monitoring of fresh and warm water in relation to hurricane intensity.

Although ESA’s Earth Explorers are developed to address specific scientific issues, they continue to demonstrate their versatility and complementary role, not only in advancing our understanding of Earth , but also their potential for everyday applications.

Related links:

Ifremer–Cersat Salinity Center: http://www.salinityremotesensing.ifremer.fr/home

CLS: http://www.cls.fr/welcome_en.html

CESBIO–SMOS blog: http://www.cesbio.ups-tlse.fr/SMOS_blog/

Access SMOS data: http://earth.esa.int/SMOS/

SMOS: http://www.esa.int/SPECIALS/smos/index.html

Images, Animation, Text, Credits: ESA / AOES Medialab / Ifremer / N. Reul / NASA.

Cheers, Orbiter.ch

Could Venus be shifting gear?

2012-02-10T05:19:00.000-08:00

ESA - Venus Express Mission patch.

10 February 2012

ESA’s Venus Express spacecraft has discovered that our cloud-covered neighbour spins a little slower than previously measured. Peering through the dense atmosphere in the infrared, the orbiter found surface features were not quite where they should be.

Using the VIRTIS instrument at infrared wavelengths to penetrate the thick cloud cover, scientists studied surface features and discovered that some were displaced by up to 20 km from where they should be given the accepted rotation rate as measured by NASA’s Magellan orbiter in the early 1990s.

Animation of Venus

These detailed measurements from orbit are helping scientists determine whether Venus has a solid or liquid core, which will help our understanding of the planet’s creation and how it evolved.

If Venus has a solid core, its mass must be more concentrated towards the centre. In this case, the planet’s rotation would react less to external forces.

The most important of those forces is due to the dense atmosphere – more than 90 times the pressure of Earth’s and high-speed weather systems, which are believed to change the planet’s rotation rate through friction with the surface.

Venus Express

Earth experiences a similar effect, where it is largely caused by wind and tides. The length of an Earth day can change by roughly a millisecond and depends seasonally with wind patterns and temperatures over the course of a year.

In the 1980s and 1990s, the Venera and Magellan orbiters made radar maps of the surface of Venus, long shrouded in mystery as well as a dense, crushing and poisonous atmosphere. These maps gave us our first detailed global view of this unique and hostile world.

Over its four-year mission, Magellan was able to watch features rotate under the spacecraft, allowing scientists to determine the length of the day on Venus as being equal to 243.0185 Earth days. .

However, surface features seen by Venus Express some 16 years later could only be lined up with those observed by Magellan if the length of the Venus day is on average 6.5 minutes longer than Magellan measured.

This also agrees with the most recent long-duration radar measurements from Earth.

Shift in Venus features

“When the two maps did not align, I first thought there was a mistake in my calculations as Magellan measured the value very accurately, but we have checked every possible error we could think of,” said Nils Müller, a planetary scientist at the DLR German Aerospace Centre, lead author of a research paper investigating the rotation.

Scientists, including Özgur Karatekin of the Royal Observatory of Belgium, looked at the possibility of short-term random variations in the length of a Venus day, but concluded these should average themselves out over longer timescales.

On the other hand, other recent atmospheric models have shown that the planet could have weather cycles stretching over decades, which could lead to equally long-term changes in the rotation period. Other effects could also be at work, including exchanges of angular momentum between Venus and the Earth when the two planets are relatively close to each other.

“An accurate value for Venus’ rotation rate will help in planning future missions, because precise information will be needed to select potential landing sites,” noted Håkan Svedhem, ESA’s Venus Express project scientist.

While further study is needed, it’s clear that Venus Express is penetrating far deeper into the mysteries of this enigmatic planet then anyone dreamed.

Notes for Editors

“Atmospheric angular momentum variations of Earth, Mars and Venus at seasonal time scales,” O. Karatekin, et al., Planetary and Space Science 59 (2011) 923–933.

“Rotation period of Venus estimated from Venus Express VIRTIS images and Magellan altimetry,” N.T. Mueller, et al., Icarus 217(2), 474–483.

Last update: 10 February 2012.

Related links:

Submitting your pictures of Venus is now easier: http://www.esa.int/esaSC/SEM350NHE8F_index_0.html

Venus Express operations: http://www.esa.int/SPECIALS/Operations/SEM7QMQJNVE_0.html

Starsem - the Soyuz: http://www.starsem.com/

Where is Venus Express now?: http://www.esa.int/SPECIALS/Venus_Express/SEMLN5NFGLE_0.html

Postcards from Venus: http://www.esa.int/esaCP/SEMHXRMVGJE_Life_0.html

Images, Video, Text, Credits: ESA / C. Carreau / NASA / JPL / Magellan / P. Ford / ESA / Venus Express / P. Drossart / G. Piccioni.

Greetings, Orbiter.ch

New Views Show Old NASA Mars Landers

2012-02-09T16:49:00.000-08:00

NASA - Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter (MRO) patch.

February 09, 2012

The High Resolution Imaging Science Experiment (HiRISE) camera on NASA's Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter recorded a scene on Jan. 29, 2012, that includes the first color image from orbit showing the three-petal lander of NASA's Mars Exploration Rover Spirit mission. Spirit drove off that lander platform in January 2004 and spent most of its six-year working life in a range of hills about two miles to the east.

Another recent image from HiRISE, taken on Jan. 26, 2012, shows NASA's Phoenix Mars Lander and its surroundings on far-northern Mars after that spacecraft's second Martian arctic winter. Phoenix exceeded its planned mission life in 2008, ending its work as solar energy waned during approach of its first Mars winter.

Near the lower left corner of this view is the three-petal lander platform that NASA's Mars Exploration Rover Spirit drove off in January 2004. Image credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech/Univ. of Arizona.

The image showing Spirit's lander platform as a small, bright feature southwest of Bonneville Crater is at http://photojournal.jpl.nasa.gov/catalog/PIA15038. The new image of Phoenix is at http://photojournal.jpl.nasa.gov/catalog/PIA15039 .

Spirit's lander platform. Image credit: NASA / JPL-Caltech

Previous color images from HiRISE have shown the Spirit rover itself, but all previous HiRISE views of the lander that delivered Spirit were in black and white.

Although neither Phoenix nor Spirit still send data to Earth, scientific findings from both missions continue as researchers analyze the wealth of data from the two. A recent report based on inspection of Martian soil particles with microscopes on Phoenix concluded that the soil has experienced very little interaction with liquid water over the past 600 million years or more (see http://www3.imperial.ac.uk/newsandeventspggrp/imperialcollege/newssummary/news_3-2-2012-10-26-2 ).

This image, taken Jan. 26, 2012, shows NASA's no-longer-active Phoenix Mars Lander spacecraft after its second Martian arctic winter. Image credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech/Univ.

The Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter has been examining Mars with six science instruments since 2006. Now in an extended mission, the orbiter continues to provide insights into the planet's ancient environments and how processes such as wind, meteorite impacts and seasonal frosts are continuing to affect the Martian surface today. This mission has returned more data about Mars than all other orbital and surface missions combined.

NASA's Phoenix Mars Lander. Image credit: NASA / JPL-Caltech

More than 21,000 images taken by HiRISE are available for viewing on the instrument team's website: http://hirise.lpl.arizona.edu . Each observation by this telescopic camera covers several square miles, or square kilometers, and can reveal features as small as a desk.

HiRISE is operated by the University of Arizona, Tucson. The instrument was built by Ball Aerospace & Technologies Corp., Boulder, Colo. The Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter Project and the Mars Exploration Rover Project are managed by the Jet Propulsion Laboratory, Pasadena, Calif., for NASA's Science Mission Directorate, Washington. JPL is a division of the California Institute of Technology, also in Pasadena. Lockheed Martin Space Systems, Denver, built the orbiter. For more information about the Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter, see http://www.nasa.gov/mro .

The University of Arizona led the Phoenix mission with project management at JPL and development partnership at Lockheed Martin. International contributions came from the Canadian Space Agency; the University of Neuchatel, Switzerland; the universities of Copenhagen and Aarhus in Denmark; the Max Planck Institute in Germany; the Finnish Meteorological Institute; and Imperial College of London.

Images (mentioned), Text, Credit: NASA / JPl / Guy Webster.

Greetings, Orbiter.ch

NASA's Mars Science Laboratory - Spacecraft Computer Issue Resolved

2012-02-09T16:14:00.000-08:00

NASA - Mars Science Laboratory (MSL) patch.

02.09.12

Mars Science Laboratory Mission Status Report

Engineers have found the root cause of a computer reset that occurred two months ago on NASA's Mars Science Laboratory and have determined how to correct it.

The fix involves changing how certain unused data-holding locations, called registers, are configured in the memory management of the type of computer chip used on the spacecraft. Billions of runs on a test computer with the modified register configuration yielded no repeat of the reset behavior. The mission team made this software change on the spacecraft's computer last week and confirmed this week that the update is successful.

The reset occurred Nov. 29, 2011, three days after launch, during use of the craft's star scanner. The cause has been identified as a previously unknown design idiosyncrasy in the memory management unit of the Mars Science Laboratory computer processor. In rare sets of circumstances unique to how this mission uses the processor, cache access errors could occur, resulting in instructions not being executed properly. This is what happened on the spacecraft on Nov. 29.

"Good detective work on understanding why the reset occurred has yielded a way to prevent it from occurring again," said Mars Science Laboratory Deputy Project Manager Richard Cook of NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory, Pasadena, Calif. "The successful resolution of this problem was the outcome of productive teamwork by engineers at the computer manufacturer and JPL."

This artist concept features NASA's Mars Science Laboratory Curiosity rover, a mobile robot for investigating Mars' past or present ability to sustain microbial life. Image credit: NASA / JPL-Caltech.

The Mars-bound spacecraft performed a brief alignment activity using its star scanner and sun sensor on Jan. 26. During the alignment observations, the star scanner detected Mars.

"Our target is in view," said JPL's Steve Collins, attitude control subsystem engineer for Mars Science Laboratory's cruise from Earth to Mars.

The spacecraft began normal use of its star tracker and true celestial navigation this week after its software update.

The Mars Science Laboratory mission will use its car-size rover, Curiosity, to investigate whether the selected region on Mars inside Gale Crater has offered environmental conditions favorable for supporting microbial life and favorable for preserving clues about whether life existed. Curiosity will land on Mars on Aug. 6, 2012, Universal Time and Eastern Daylight Time (evening of Aug. 5, Pacific Daylight Time).

The spacecraft's cruise-stage solar array is producing 704 watts. The telecommunications rates are 1 kilobit per second for uplink and 800 bits per second for downlink. The spacecraft is spinning at 1.97 rotations per minute.

Mars Science Laboratory Curiosity Rover Animation

As of 9 a.m. PST (noon EST, or 1700 Universal Time) on Friday, Feb. 10, the spacecraft will have traveled 127 million miles (205 million kilometers) of its 352-million-mile (567-million-kilometer) flight to Mars. It will be moving at about 17,800 miles per hour (28,600 kilometers per hour) relative to Earth and at about 63,700 mph (102,500 kilometers per hour) relative to the sun.

JPL, a division of the California Institute of Technology in Pasadena, manages the Mars Science Laboratory mission for the NASA Science Mission Directorate, Washington. More information about Curiosity is online at: http://www.nasa.gov/msl and http://mars.jpl.nasa.gov/msl/ . You can follow the mission on Facebook at: http://www.facebook.com/marscuriosity and on Twitter at: http://www.twitter.com/marscuriosity .

Image (mentioned), Video, Text, Credit: NASA / JPL / Guy Webster.

Best regards, Orbiter.ch

Cracks in the wing: all the Airbus A380 will be examined

2012-02-08T19:58:00.000-08:00

Aerospace Engineering logo.

Feb. 9, 2012

The European Aviation Safety Agency had previously conducted a review of some devices, but now they are all inspected.

All Airbus A380 will be examined because of cracks discovered in the wing of some of them. (Photo by Airbus).

Cracks in the wing: all the Airbus A380 will be examined

The European Aviation Safety Agency had previously conducted a review of some devices, but now they are all scrutinized.

Video above: Wing Cracks Found On Airbus A380 Aircraft - Qantas, Singapore Airlines and Emirates Jets Affected.

The European Aviation Safety Agency (EASA) will recommend Wednesday the inspection of all 67 Airbus A380s currently in service, due to cracks appeared in the wings of some of them, said a spokesman.

January 20, EASA had advocated the examination of aircraft which have accumulated the highest number of flight hours, or twenty aircraft from Airbus.

"Given the outcome of this review, it was decided to extend it to the entire fleet in circulation," added the spokesman.

"The idea is to ensure that there is no security problem with this device," he said.

Upper wing panels or cracks were detected on the Qantas A380

Among the twenty aircraft initially to be inspected, eight having performed over 1,800 flights, had to be within four days and twelve in six weeks.

The most urgent inspections involved six aircraft and two of Singapore Airlines, Emirates, Dubai-based company.

Airbus has repeatedly said that safety of its aircraft was not affected and the companies felt that there was no risk to the safety of their passengers.

(Click on the image for enlarge) Airbus A380 cutaway description

On his side, Wednesday, the Australian airline Qantas has grounded one of its Airbus 380 because of these micro-cracks in the wing of the superjumbo, according to her safely to flight safety.

The A380 is the largest airliner in the world capable of carrying over 500 passengers and more than 800 passengers when configured in economy class only. It was commissioned

Images, Text, Credits / AFP / Airbus / Video: AviationExplorer / Translation: Orbiter.ch.

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Young Stars at Home in Ancient Cluster

2012-02-08T17:16:00.000-08:00

NASA - Hubble Space Telescope èatch.

02.08.12

Looking like a hoard of gems fit for an emperor's collection, this deep sky object called NGC 6752 is in fact far more worthy of admiration. It is a globular cluster, and at over 10 billion years old is one the most ancient collections of stars known. It has been blazing for well over twice as long as our solar system has existed.

NGC 6752 contains a high number of "blue straggler'' stars, some of which are visible in this image. These stars display characteristics of stars younger than their neighbors, despite models suggesting that most of the stars within globular clusters should have formed at approximately the same time. Their origin is therefore something of a mystery.

Studies of NGC 6752 may shed light on this situation. It appears that a very high number -- up to 38 percent -- of the stars within its core region are binary systems. Collisions between stars in this turbulent area could produce the blue stragglers that are so prevalent.

Lying 13,000 light-years distant, NGC 6752 is far beyond our reach, yet the clarity of Hubble's images brings it tantalizingly close.

For more information about Hubble Space Telescope, visit:

NASA Hubble site: http://hubblesite.org/

ESA Hubble site: http://www.spacetelescope.org/

Image, Text, Credit: ESA / Hubble & NASA.

Greetings, Orbiter.ch

NASA's Chandra Finds Milky Way's Black Hole Grazing on Asteroids

2012-02-08T17:00:00.000-08:00

NASA - Chandra X-ray Observatory patch.

02.08.12

The giant black hole at the center of the Milky Way may be vaporizing and devouring asteroids, which could explain the frequent flares observed, according to astronomers using data from NASA's Chandra X-ray Observatory.

Image above: Supermassive black hole Sagittarius A* at the center of the Milky Way. (X-ray: NASA / CXC / MIT / F. Baganoff et al.; Illustrations: NASA / CXC / M.Weiss).

For several years Chandra has detected X-ray flares about once a day from the supermassive black hole known as Sagittarius A*, or "Sgr A*" for short. The flares last a few hours with brightness ranging from a few times to nearly one hundred times that of the black hole's regular output. The flares also have been seen in infrared data from ESO's Very Large Telescope in Chile.

"People have had doubts about whether asteroids could form at all in the harsh environment near a supermassive black hole," said Kastytis Zubovas of the University of Leicester in the United Kingdom, and lead author of the report appearing in the Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society. "It's exciting because our study suggests that a huge number of them are needed to produce these flares."

Zubovas and his colleagues suggest there is a cloud around Sgr A* containing trillions of asteroids and comets, stripped from their parent stars. Asteroids passing within about 100 million miles of the black hole, roughly the distance between the Earth and the sun, would be torn into pieces by the tidal forces from the black hole.

These fragments then would be vaporized by friction as they pass through the hot, thin gas flowing onto Sgr A*, similar to a meteor heating up and glowing as it falls through Earth's atmosphere. A flare is produced and the remains of the asteroid are swallowed eventually by the black hole.

"An asteroid's orbit can change if it ventures too close to a star or planet near Sgr A*," said co-author Sergei Nayakshin, also of the University of Leicester. "If it's thrown toward the black hole, it's doomed."

The authors estimate that it would take asteroids larger than about six miles in radius to generate the flares observed by Chandra. Meanwhile, Sgr A* also may be consuming smaller asteroids, but these would be difficult to spot because the flares they generate would be fainter.

These results reasonably agree with models estimating of how many asteroids are likely to be in this region, assuming that the number around stars near Earth is similar to the number surrounding stars near the center of the Milky Way.

"As a reality check, we worked out that a few trillion asteroids should have been removed by the black hole over the 10-billion-year lifetime of the galaxy," said co-author Sera Markoff of the University of Amsterdam in the Netherlands. "Only a small fraction of the total would have been consumed, so the supply of asteroids would hardly be depleted."

Planets thrown into orbits too close to Sgr A* also should be disrupted by tidal forces, although this would happen much less frequently than the disruption of asteroids, because planets are not as common. Such a scenario may have been responsible for a previous X-ray brightening of Sgr A* by about a factor of a million about a century ago. While this event happened many decades before X-ray telescopes existed, Chandra and other X-ray missions have seen evidence of an X-ray "light echo" reflecting off nearby clouds, providing a measure of the brightness and timing of the flare.

"This would be a sudden end to the planet's life, a much more dramatic fate than the planets in our solar system ever will experience," Zubovas said.

Very long observations of Sgr A* will be made with Chandra later in 2012 that will give valuable new information about the frequency and brightness of flares and should help to test the model proposed here to explain them. This work could improve understanding about the formation of asteroids and planets in the harsh environment of Sgr A*.

NASA's Marshall Space Flight Center in Huntsville, Ala., manages the Chandra program for NASA's Science Mission Directorate in Washington. The Smithsonian Astrophysical Observatory controls Chandra's science and flight operations from Cambridge, Mass.

For Chandra images, multimedia and related materials, visit: http://chandra.si.edu

For an additional interactive image, podcast, and video on the finding, visit: http://www.nasa.gov/chandra

Image, Text, Credits: NASA / Trent J. Perrotto / Chandra X-ray Center/Megan Watzke / Marshall Space Flight Center / Janet Anderson.

Cheers, Orbiter.ch

NASA Small Explorer Mission Celebrates Ten Years and Forty Thousand X-Ray Flares

2012-02-08T16:48:00.000-08:00

NASA - HESSI Mission logo.

02.08.12

A combined movie from RHESSI and the Transition Region and Coronal Explorer, or TRACE mission. TRACE shows the solar surface, while RHESSI data dances over it: red contour lines show soft X-ray sources, and blue lines show hard X-ray sources. Together such information has helped show how and where particles move around during solar eruptions. Credit: NASA/GSFC/Scientific Visualization Studio.

On February 5, 2002, NASA launched what was then called the High Energy Solar Spectroscopic Imager (HESSI) into orbit. Renamed within months as the Ramaty High Energy Solar Spectroscopic Imager (RHESSI) after Reuven Ramaty, a deceased NASA scientist who had long championed the mission, the spacecraft's job was to observe giant explosions on the sun called solar flares.

During a solar flare, the gas soars to over 20 million degrees Fahrenheit, and emits X-rays that scientists can use as fingerprints to study these events on the sun. X-rays cannot penetrate Earth's atmosphere, however, so RHESSI observes them from space. Its goal is simple: to understand how the sun so efficiently shoots out such huge amounts of energy and particles.

Ten years since its launch, RHESSI has observed more than 40,000 X-ray flares, helped craft and refine a model of how solar eruptions form, and fueled additional serendipitous science papers on such things as the shape of the sun and thunder-storm-produced gamma ray flashes.

RHESSI is in a class of NASA spacecraft called Small Explorers – missions that cost under $120 million with highly focused research goals. Launching just after the sun reached its period of maximum activity, known as solar maximum, in 2001, RHESSI was poised to see many explosive bursts of energy from the sun, including both solar flares and another eruption of solar material called coronal mass ejections.

An artist's representation of RHESSI. Flying up above Earth's radiation-blocking atmosphere, the spacecraft can observe X-rays and gamma rays from the sun to study solar flares. Credit: NASA/Goddard/Conceptual Image Lab.

"Except, thanks in part to RHESSI, we don't even separate the biggest explosions into categories like that anymore," says Brian Dennis, the mission scientist for RHESSI at NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Md. "RHESSI has taught us that 'Thou shalt instead say Solar Eruptive Events.' Now we know that one burst of energy in the sun's atmosphere creates both kinds of eruptions. Part of the energy shoots into the sky and becomes a CME (coronal mass ejection). Part of the material is driven down to the sun's surface and appears as the flare. RHESSI's 10 years of observations have helped fill in the holes in this picture."

To accomplish this, RHESSI made use of its one, and only one, instrument, which records both X-rays and even shorter wavelengths of light, gamma rays. The instrument combines high-resolution solar images with "spectroscopic" images that delineate the spectrum of energy coming from any particular point in the image. Together, this helps physically map out energy levels during an explosive event on the sun, as well as track the energy's movement.

For example, to understand how a solar flare forms, one has to understand where the energy to power it comes from. Early RHESSI observations of a flare on April 15, 2002, showed two X-ray sources – one higher in the sun's atmosphere and one lower. RHESSI's unique spectroscopic imaging capability allowed scientists to interpret this to mean that a huge energy release had originally happened between the two spots: that crucial initiation in the current picture of solar eruptions where a single energy burst in the sun's atmosphere, creates both a CME and a flare.

Since RHESSI observes gamma rays as well as X-rays, it has been able to compare how events emit these two forms of radiation. X-rays generally represent electron activity and gamma rays represent activity from protons and other heavier charged particles called ions, so comparing both helps show how different particle populations move around. Scientists have spotted several flares, including their first one using RHESSI in October 2003, where the gamma rays and X-ray sources do not line up. Such a spatial difference was entirely unexpected and suggests that different circumstances guide the movements of different particle populations.

"This opens up new questions for our model," says Dennis. "The electrons and ions have different masses, but we'd still expect them to appear at the same locations in the flare. Perhaps the ions are accelerated in a different way and end up traveling on different magnetic field lines from the electrons."

In addition to observations of giant solar flares, RHESSI has observed more than 25,000 of a smaller version, known as microflares. These much smaller energy releases are also believed to play a role in how the sun transports energy from its surface up into its atmosphere. RHESSI has found that such flares all occur in active regions over the same range of latitudes on the sun as for the bigger events, so perhaps they are just smaller versions of the same phenomenon.

This diagram shows the sun’s oblateness (in blue) magnified 1000 times, so the difference from a true sphere (in red) is visible. The blue curve traces the sun's shape averaged over a three month period. The black asterisked curve traces a shorter 10-day average. The wiggles in the 10-day curve are real, caused by strong magnetic ridges in the vicinity of sunspots. Credit: NASA.

Another interesting result from RHESSI has nothing to do with flares at all, but with the very shape of the sun. Due to its spin, one expects the sun to be slightly flattened and not a perfect sphere, much the same as the slight flattening of the Earth. Pre-RHESSI measurements of the sun, however, showed it to be much flatter than physics would dictate, raising questions of whether scientists had overlooked some fundamental piece of information about the sun's rotation.

RHESSI helped by providing information simply gathered as part of its constant assessment of where its instrument points. To keep perfectly oriented, RHESSI precisely records the position of the sun's horizon, or "limb," some 16 times per second. With such an extensive collection of data, scientists could determine the best ever measurement of the sun's shape. This data suggests the true shape more closely matches what physics predicts.

RHESSI's monitoring of gamma rays throughout the sky also made it a prime tool to measure what are called terrestrial gamma-ray flashes (TGFs), bursts of gamma rays emitted from high in the Earth's atmosphere over lightning storms. The first of these had been spotted before, but RHESSI showed that they are more common and more luminous than previously thought. With RHESSI's help, scientists soon realized they occurred upwards of 50 times per day. Indeed, current numbers suggest there may be as many as 400 TGFs daily from thunderstorms at different locations around the world.

"RHESSI made great strides by taking the first high-resolution movies of flares using their high energy radiation," says Dennis. "The original mission was only for two years and we quickly achieved our initial science goals – but RHESSI didn't stop there. The mission has been extended several times, and this small mission just keeps going and going, collecting great data."

In 2009, NASA extended the mission yet again. Now scientists are working to integrate RHESSI flare observations with data from other solar telescopes such as the Solar TErrestrial RElations Observatory (STEREO), Solar Dynamics Observatory (SDO), SOlar and Heliophysics Observatory (SOHO), and Hinode as they watch the sun's activity rise toward yet another solar maximum, currently predicted for 2013.

The Explorers Program Office at Goddard provides management and technical oversight for the RHESSI mission under the direction of NASA's Science Mission Directorate in Washington, D.C.

For more information about the mission, go to: http://science.nasa.gov/missions/rhessi/

Images, Video, Text, Credits: NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center / Karen C. Fox.

Greetings, Orbiter.ch

Saturn's Rings and Enceladus

2012-02-08T08:16:00.000-08:00

ESA - Cassini Mission to Saturn logo.

8 February 2012

Saturn's rings and Enceladus

A crescent Enceladus appears with Saturn’s rings in this Cassini spacecraft view of the moon.

The famed jets of water ice emanating from the south polar region of the 504 km-diameter moon are faintly visible.

They appear as a small white blur below the dark pole, down and to the right of the illuminated part of the moon’s surface. The image’s contrast was enhanced to increase their visibility.

The sunlit terrain seen here is on the trailing hemisphere of Enceladus; north is up. This view looks toward the northern, sunlit side of the rings from just above the ringplane. The image was taken with Cassini’s narrow-angle camera on 4 January at a distance of 291 000 km from Enceladus. Image scale is about 2 km per pixel.

Notes to editors:

The Cassini–Huygens mission is a cooperative project of NASA, ESA and the Italian space agency, ASI. The Jet Propulsion Laboratory, a division of the California Institute of Technology in Pasadena, manages the mission for NASA’s Science Mission Directorate in Washington. The Cassini orbiter and its two cameras were designed, developed and assembled at JPL. The imaging team is based at the Space Science Institute, Boulder, Colorado, USA.

For more informations about Cassini Mission, visit: http://www.esa.int/SPECIALS/Cassini-Huygens/index.html and http://www.nasa.gov/mission_pages/cassini/main/index.html

Image, Text, Credits: NASA / ESA / JPL–Caltech / Space Science Institute.

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VLT Takes Most Detailed Infrared Image of the Carina Nebula

2012-02-08T05:21:00.000-08:00

ESO - European Southern Observatory logo.

8 February 2012

ESO’s VLT reveals the Carina Nebula's hidden secrets

ESO’s Very Large Telescope has delivered the most detailed infrared image of the Carina Nebula stellar nursery taken so far. Many previously hidden features, scattered across a spectacular celestial landscape of gas, dust and young stars, have emerged. This is one of the most dramatic images ever created by the VLT.

Excerpts from VLT image of the Carina Nebula in infrared light

Deep in the heart of the southern Milky Way lies a stellar nursery called the Carina Nebula. It is about 7500 light-years from Earth in the constellation of Carina (The Keel) [1]. This cloud of glowing gas and dust is one of the closest incubators of very massive stars to the Earth and includes several of the brightest and heaviest stars known. One of them, the mysterious and highly unstable star Eta Carinae, was the second brightest star in the entire night sky for several years in the 1840s and is likely to explode as a supernova in the near future, by astronomical standards. The Carina Nebula is a perfect laboratory for astronomers studying the violent births and early lives of stars.

Infrared/visible-light comparison of the Carina Nebula

Although this nebula is spectacular in normal visible-light pictures (eso0905), many of its secrets are hidden behind thick clouds of dust. To penetrate this veil a European team of astronomers, led by Thomas Preibisch (University Observatory, Munich, Germany) has used the power of ESO’s Very Large Telescope along with an infrared-sensitive camera called HAWK-I [2].

The Carina Nebula in the constellation of Carina

Hundreds of individual images have been combined to create this picture, which is the most detailed infrared mosaic of the nebula ever taken and one of the most dramatic images ever created by the VLT. It shows not just the brilliant massive stars, but hundreds of thousands of much fainter stars [3] that were previously invisible.

Digitized Sky Survey Image of Eta Carinae Nebula

The dazzling star Eta Carinae itself appears at the lower left of the new picture. It is surrounded by clouds of gas that are glowing under the onslaught of fierce ultraviolet radiation. Across the image there are also many compact blobs of dark material that remain opaque even in the infrared. These are the dusty cocoons in which new stars are forming.

Infrared/visible-light comparison view of the Carina Nebula

Over the last few million years this region of the sky has formed large numbers of stars both individually and in clusters. The bright star cluster close to the centre of the picture is called Trumpler 14. Although this object is seen well in visible light, many more fainter stars can be seen in this infrared view. And towards the left side of the image a small concentration of stars that appear yellow can be seen. This grouping was seen for the first time in this new data from the VLT: these stars cannot be seen in visible light at all. This is just one of many new objects revealed for the first time in this spectacular panorama.

Zooming in on a new infrared view of the Carina Nebula

Notes:

[1] Carina is the keel of the mythological ship Argo, of Jason and the Argonauts fame.

[2] Dusty regions of space absorb and scatter short wavelength blue light more than the longer wavelength red. This effect also explains why sunsets on Earth are often red, particularly when the atmosphere is dusty. In some dusty parts of the sky, particularly in star formation regions such as the Carina Nebula, this effect is so strong that no visible light gets through at all. Astronomers overcome this problem by observing in infrared light using special cameras such as HAWK-I on ESO’s VLT or the VISTA infrared survey telescope.

[3] One of the main goals of the astronomers was to search for stars in this region that were much fainter and less massive than the Sun. The image is also deep enough to allow the detection of young brown dwarfs.

More information:

The year 2012 marks the 50th anniversary of the founding of the European Southern Observatory (ESO). ESO is the foremost intergovernmental astronomy organisation in Europe and the world’s most productive astronomical observatory. It is supported by 15 countries: Austria, Belgium, Brazil, the Czech Republic, Denmark, France, Finland, Germany, Italy, the Netherlands, Portugal, Spain, Sweden, Switzerland and the United Kingdom. ESO carries out an ambitious programme focused on the design, construction and operation of powerful ground-based observing facilities enabling astronomers to make important scientific discoveries. ESO also plays a leading role in promoting and organising cooperation in astronomical research. ESO operates three unique world-class observing sites in Chile: La Silla, Paranal and Chajnantor. At Paranal, ESO operates the Very Large Telescope, the world’s most advanced visible-light astronomical observatory and two survey telescopes. VISTA works in the infrared and is the world’s largest survey telescope and the VLT Survey Telescope is the largest telescope designed to exclusively survey the skies in visible light. ESO is the European partner of a revolutionary astronomical telescope ALMA, the largest astronomical project in existence. ESO is currently planning a 40-metre-class European Extremely Large optical/near-infrared Telescope, the E-ELT, which will become “the world’s biggest eye on the sky”.

Links:

    Research paper describing the infrared observations of the Carina Nebula: http://www.eso.org/public/archives/releases/sciencepapers/eso1208/eso1208.pdf

    Thomas Preibisch’s Carina web page: http://www.usm.uni-muenchen.de/people/preibisch/carina_project.html

    Observations of the Carina Nebula with APEX/LABOCA: http://www.eso.org/public/news/eso1145/

    X-ray observations of the same region from the Chandra Carina Project: http://chandra.si.edu/press/11_releases/press_052411.html

    Photos of the VLT: http://www.eso.org/public/images/archive/category/paranal/

Images, Text, Credits: ESO / T. Preibisch / IAU and Sky & Telescope/Digitized Sky Survey 2. Acknowledgment: Davide De Martin / Videos: ESO / Nick Risinger (skysurvey.org) / Digitized Sky Survey 2 Music: John Dyson (from the album Moonwind) / T. Preibisch.

Best regards, Orbiter.ch

ESA's Mars Express radar gives strong evidence for former Mars ocean

2012-02-06T15:57:00.000-08:00

ESA - Mars Express Mission patch.

6 February 2012

ESA's Mars Express has returned strong evidence for an ocean once covering part of Mars. Using radar, it has detected sediments reminiscent of an ocean floor within the boundaries of previously identified, ancient shorelines on Mars.

The MARSIS radar was deployed in 2005 and has been collecting data ever since. Jérémie Mouginot, Institut de Planétologie et d'Astrophysique de Grenoble (IPAG) and the University of California, Irvine, and colleagues have analysed more than two years of data and found that the northern plains are covered in low-density material.

"We interpret these as sedimentary deposits, maybe ice-rich," says Dr Mouginot. "It is a strong new indication that there was once an ocean here."

Ancient northern ocean on Mars

The existence of oceans on ancient Mars has been suspected before and features reminiscent of shorelines have been tentatively identified in images from various spacecraft. But it remains a controversial issue.

Two oceans have been proposed: 4 billion years ago, when warmer conditions prevailed, and also 3 billion years ago when subsurface ice melted following a large impact, creating outflow channels that drained the water into areas of low elevation.

"MARSIS penetrates deep into the ground, revealing the first 60–80 metres of the planet's subsurface," says Wlodek Kofman, leader of the radar team at IPAG.

"Throughout all of this depth, we see the evidence for sedimentary material and ice."

Mars Express radar investigation

The sediments revealed by MARSIS are areas of low radar reflectivity. Such sediments are typically low-density granular materials that have been eroded away by water and carried to their final destination.

This later ocean would however have been temporary. Within a million years or less, Dr Mouginot estimates, the water would have either frozen back in place and been preserved underground again, or turned into vapour and lifted gradually into the atmosphere.

"I don't think it could have stayed as an ocean long enough for life to form."

In order to find evidence of life, astrobiologists will have to look even further back in Mars' history when liquid water existed for much longer periods.

Nevertheless, this work provides some of the best evidence yet that there were once large bodies of liquid water on Mars and is further proof of the role of liquid water in the martian geological history.

"Previous Mars Express results about water on Mars came from the study of images and mineralogical data, as well as atmospheric measurements. Now we have the view from the subsurface radar," says Olivier Witasse, ESA's Mars Express Project Scientist.

"This adds new pieces of information to the puzzle but the question remains: where did all the water go?"

Mars Express continues its investigation.

Related links:

High Resolution Stereo Camera: http://berlinadmin.dlr.de/Missions/express/indexeng.shtml

Behind the lens: http://www.esa.int/SPECIALS/Mars_Express/SEMSXE1PGQD_0.html

Frequently asked questions: http://www.esa.int/SPECIALS/Mars_Express/SEM76D9OY2F_0.html

For specialists:

ESA Planetary Science archive (PSA): http://www.rssd.esa.int/PSA

NASA Planetary Data System: http://pds-geosciences.wustl.edu/missions/mars_express/hrsc.htm

HRSC data viewer: http://hrscview.fu-berlin.de/

Images, Text, Credits: ESA / C. Carreau.

Best regards, Orbiter.ch

Remnant of a Supernova

2012-02-06T15:46:00.000-08:00

NASA - Chandra X-ray Observatory patch.

Feb. 6, 2012

Vital clues about the devastating ends to the lives of massive stars can be found by studying the aftermath of their explosions. In its more than twelve years of science operations, NASA's Chandra X-ray Observatory has studied many of these supernova remnants sprinkled across the galaxy.

The latest example of this important investigation is Chandra's new image of the supernova remnant known as G350.1-0.3. This stellar debris field is located some 14,700 light years from the Earth toward the center of the Milky Way.

Evidence from Chandra and from ESA's XMM-Newton telescope suggest that a compact object within G350.1+0.3 may be the dense core of the star that exploded. The position of this likely neutron star, seen by the arrow pointing to "neutron star" in the inset image, is well away from the center of the X-ray emission. If the supernova explosion occurred near the center of the X-ray emission then the neutron star must have received a powerful kick in the supernova explosion.

Data suggest this supernova remnant, as it appears in the image, is 600 and 1,200 years old. If the estimated location of the explosion is correct, this means the neutron star has been moving at a speed of at least 3 million miles per hour since the explosion.

Another intriguing aspect of G350.1-0.3 is its unusual shape. Many supernova remnants are nearly circular, but G350.1-0.3 is strikingly asymmetrical as seen in the Chandra data in this image (gold). Infrared data from NASA's Spitzer Space Telescope (light blue) also trace the morphology found by Chandra. Astronomers think that this bizarre shape is due to stellar debris field expanding into a nearby cloud of cold molecular gas.

The age of 600-1,200 years puts the explosion that created G350.1-0.3 in the same time frame as other famous supernovas that formed the Crab and SN 1006 supernova remnants. However, it is unlikely that anyone on Earth would have seen the explosion because of the obscuring gas and dust that lies along our line of sight to the remnant.

These results appeared in the April 10, 2011 issue of The Astrophysical Journal.

For more informations about Chandra X-ray Observatory, visit: http://chandra.si.edu/

Image, Text, Credits: X-ray: NASA / CXC / SAO / I. Lovchinsky et al; IR: NASA / JPL-Caltech.

Greetings, Orbiter.ch

CryoSat breaks the ice with ocean currents

2012-02-06T06:15:00.000-08:00

ESA - CRYOSAT Mission logo.

6 February 2012

Ocean measurements from ESA’s CryoSat mission are being exploited by the French space agency CNES to provide global ocean observation products in near-real time. Understanding sea-surface currents is important for marine industries and protecting ocean environments.

As it orbits from pole to pole, CryoSat’s main objective is to measure the thickness of polar sea ice and monitor changes in the ice sheets that blanket Greenland and Antarctica. But the satellite also features an innovative radar altimeter that not only detects tiny variations in the height of the ice, but can also measure sea level and the height of the waves.

Ocean surface currents

Starting today , CryoSat ocean measurements are being processed by CNES and distributed to the oceanography community. These products will be assimilated using models from the MyOcean project in near-real time to enhance sea surface products and to improve the quality of the model forecasts.

“This achievement is the result of the long-standing collaboration and partnership between ESA and CNES,” says Tommaso Parrinello, CryoSat Mission Manager.

Radioactive pollution

“Through a fusion of processors derived from operational altimeters and experimental software developed specifically for CryoSat’s innovative instrument, CNES experts will be able to transform raw ocean data flows from CryoSat into a quasi-operational end-user ocean product of high quality.

“Ocean topography is an important key environmental parameter to understand how ocean circulation responds to climate change.”

Oil spill movement prediction

Coastal models and applications will also benefit from the additional coverage provided by CryoSat. Users can obtain these products through the AVISO website or MyOcean data portal.

Within the Global Monitoring for Environment and Security (GMES) programme, the MyOcean project is responsible for the development of marine monitoring services.

During major crises such as the Deepwater Horizon and Fukushima disasters, MyOcean models exploited remote sensing data – in particular, altimetry data – to help monitor these crises.

Altimetry data is of highest importance to predict the evolution of local marine currents in near-real time.

Sea-surface topography

A wide range of operational marine applications and services with social and economic benefits needs sea-surface currents: oil spill or marine debris tracking and prediction, fishery and offshore industry support, including cost and risk reduction, optimised ship routing, iceberg detection and alert for worldwide ship racing.

Since the launch of the first European Remote Sensing satellite in 1991, radar altimetry has been used to observe ocean surface topography and geostrophic currents continuously. It has become an invaluable asset for the accurate forecast modelling of ocean currents.

Related links:

CNES: http://www.cnes.fr/web/CNES-en/7114-home-cnes.php

MyOcean: http://www.myocean.eu.org/

AVISO: http://www.aviso.oceanobs.com/

Cryosat 2, Earth Explorers: http://www.esa.int/esaLP/LPcryosat.html

Images, Video, Text, Credits: ESA / MyOcean / Mercator-Ocean / Univ. Colorado / CNES / AVISO / GOES SST / Radarsat-2.

Best regards, Orbiter.ch

What to expect from the LHC in 2012

2012-02-04T13:26:00.000-08:00

CERN - European Organization for Nuclear Research logo.

Feb. 4, 2012

The CERN LHC

The Large Hadron Collider (LHC), the world's largest particle accelerator, is currently shut down for annual maintenance. In February CERN will decide whether to run the LHC at a total energy of 8 TeV this year, instead of 7 TeV as in 2011. Higher energy should increase the chances of finding heavy particles. By early March, all the magnets around the 27-kilometre accelerator will have been cooled down to their operating temperatures of -271.3°C, ready to guide beams of particles through the LHC.

The LHC will resume colliding protons in late March. The goal is to deliver about 1600 trillion proton-proton collisions (16 "inverse femtobarns" of data) to the experiments, compared to the 500 trillion collisions delivered in 2011. More collisions will help the LHC experiments to improve the precision of their measurements and push searches for new physics further.

Engineers at work on the ATLAS calorimeter during last year's maintenance shutdown. Image: CERN

The CMS and ATLAS experiments will continue to look for new particles this year, of which the Higgs boson is the most publicized. Data taken in 2012 will allow them either to confirm a Higgs discovery or to rule out its existence conclusively.

The LHCb experiment will carry on with its precise measurements of quarks, in the search for weak points in the current Standard Model of particle physics. Meanwhile, ALICE is analyzing lead-ion collision data taken in November 2011 in the quest to understand how quark-gluon plasma formed after the Big Bang. More heavy-ion collisions are scheduled for November this year.

Stay tuned for more from CERN in 2012!

Note:

The European Organization for Nuclear Research (French: Organisation européenne pour la recherche nucléaire), known as CERN, is an international organization whose purpose is to operate the world's largest particle physics laboratory, which is situated in the northwest suburbs of Geneva on the Franco–Swiss border. Established in 1954, the organization has twenty European member states.

The term CERN is also used to refer to the laboratory itself, which employs just under 2400 full-time employees/workers, as well as some 7931 scientists and engineers representing 608 universities and research facilities and 113 nationalities.

More information:

    Quantum diaries: 2012 – The year of the dragon: http://www.quantumdiaries.org/2012/01/20/2012-the-year-of-the-dragon/

    ATLAS: http://atlas.ch/

    CMS: http://cms.web.cern.ch/

    LHCb: http://lhcb-public.web.cern.ch/lhcb-public/

    ALICE: http://aliceinfo.cern.ch/Public/Welcome.html

Images, Text, Credit: CERN.

Greetings, Orbiter.ch

Mars Express reveals wind-blown deposits on Mars

2012-02-03T15:39:00.000-08:00

ESA - Mars Express Mission patch.

3 February 2012

New images from ESA’s Mars Express show the Syrtis Major region on Mars. Once thought to be a sea of water, the region is now known to be a volcanic province dating back billions of years.

Syrtis Major can be spotted from Earth even with relatively small telescopes – the near-circular dark area on the planet stretches over 1300 x 1500 km.

Part of Syrtis Major

Christiaan Huygens discovered this area in 1659 and by repeated observations he used it to time the length of day on Mars.

Early ideas held that it was a sea with a water level that rose and fell, causing the markings to change.

Now, however, we know that the region is volcanic in origin, devoid of water and that the changes in its shape are due to dust and sand being blown around in the wind.

Syrtis Major in context

Newly released images of a part of Syrtis Major seen from ESA’s Mars Express orbiter show lava flows that flooded the older highland material, leaving behind buttes – isolated hills with steep sides that were too high to be affected.

They can be identified by their lighter colours and their eroded state, and some even show ancient valleys on their flanks.

Syrtis Major features

Individual lava flows, filled craters and partly-filled craters can be made out in the images. The prevailing wind direction can be seen from the dispersal of the lighter-toned dust and darker-toned sand in and around the craters and buttes. The smaller craters illustrate this clearly.

The largest crater in the pictures has a small central peak and contains a small dune field of darker-toned dunes to the east of its floor.

Syrtis Major elevation

The number and size of craters can be used to date surfaces in the Solar System because craters slowly accumulate as impacts occur over time. This information can be used to date the volcanic province and suggests an age of over 3 billion years.

Syrtis Major high resolution

Syrtis Major perspective

Syrtis Major 3D

Related links:

High Resolution Stereo Camera: http://berlinadmin.dlr.de/Missions/express/indexeng.shtml

Behind the lens: http://www.esa.int/SPECIALS/Mars_Express/SEMSXE1PGQD_0.html

Frequently asked questions: http://www.esa.int/SPECIALS/Mars_Express/SEM76D9OY2F_0.html

For specialists:
ESA Planetary Science archive (PSA): http://www.rssd.esa.int/PSA

NASA Planetary Data System: http://pds-geosciences.wustl.edu/missions/mars_express/hrsc.htm

HRSC data viewer: http://hrscview.fu-berlin.de/

Images, Text, Credits: ESA / DLR / FU Berlin (G. Neukum)/Credits: NASA MGS MOLA Science Team.

Best regards, Orbiter.ch

Classic Portrait of a Barred Spiral Galaxy

2012-02-03T08:00:00.000-08:00

ESA - Hubble Space Telescope logo.

3 February 2012

Hubble image of NGC 1073

The NASA/ESA Hubble Space Telescope has taken a picture of the barred spiral galaxy NGC 1073, which is found in the constellation of Cetus (The Sea Monster). Our own galaxy, the Milky Way, is a similar barred spiral, and the study of galaxies such as NGC 1073 helps astronomers learn more about our celestial home.

Most spiral galaxies in the Universe have a bar structure in their centre, and Hubble’s image of NGC 1073 offers a particularly clear view of one of these. Galaxies’ star-filled bars are thought to emerge as gravitational density waves funnel gas toward the galactic centre, supplying the material to create new stars. The transport of gas can also feed the supermassive black holes that lurk in the centres of almost every galaxy.

Labelled Hubble image of NGC 1073, showing quasars and IXO 5

Some astronomers have suggested that the formation of a central bar-like structure might signal a spiral galaxy's passage from intense star-formation into adulthood, as the bars turn up more often in galaxies full of older, red stars than younger, blue stars. This storyline would also account for the observation that in the early Universe, only around a fifth of spiral galaxies contained bars, while more than two thirds do in the more modern cosmos.

While Hubble’s image of NGC 1073 is in some respects an archetypal portrait of a barred spiral, there are a couple of quirks worth pointing out.

Wide-field view of NGC 1073 and its surroundings (ground-based image)

One, ironically, is almost — but not quite — invisible to optical telescopes like Hubble. In the upper left part of the image, a rough ring-like structure of recent star formation hides a bright source of X-rays. Called IXO 5, this X-ray source is likely to be a binary system featuring a black hole and a star orbiting each other. Comparing X-ray observations from the Chandra spacecraft with this Hubble image, astronomers have narrowed the position of IXO 5 down to one of two faint stars visible here. However, X-ray observations with current instruments are not precise enough to conclusively determine which of the two it is.

Hubble’s image does not only tell us about a galaxy in our own cosmic neighbourhood, however. We can also discern glimpses of objects much further away, whose light tells us about earlier eras in cosmic history.

Zoom into NGC 1073

Right across Hubble’s field of view, more distant galaxies are peering through NGC 1073, with several reddish examples appearing clearly in the top left part of the frame.

Pan across NGC 1073

More intriguing still, three of the bright points of light in this image are neither foreground stars from the Milky Way, nor even distant stars in NGC 1073. In fact they are not stars at all. They are quasars, incredibly bright sources of light caused by matter heating up and falling into supermassive black holes in galaxies literally billions of light-years from us. The chance alignment through NGC 1073, and their incredible brightness, might make them look like they are part of the galaxy, but they are in fact some of the most distant objects observable in the Universe.

Notes:

The Hubble Space Telescope is a project of international cooperation between ESA and NASA.

Links:

Images of Hubble: http://www.spacetelescope.org/images/archive/category/spacecraft/

Images, Videos, Text, Credit: NASA & ESA.

Greetings, Orbiter.ch

Dione on a Diagonal

2012-02-02T07:43:00.000-08:00

NASA / ESA - Cassini Mission to Saturn patch.

Feb. 2, 2012

Image above: Saturn and Dione appear askew in this Cassini spacecraft view, with the north poles rotated to the right, as if they were threaded along on the thin diagonal line of the planet's rings.

This view looks toward the anti-Saturn side of Dione (698 miles, or 1,123 kilometers across). North on Dione is up and rotated 20 degrees to the right. This view looks toward the northern, sunlit side of the rings from less than one degree above the ring plane.

The image was taken in visible green light with the Cassini spacecraft wide-angle camera on Dec. 12, 2011. The view was obtained at a distance of approximately 35,000 miles (57,000 kilometers) from Dione and at a Sun-Dione-spacecraft, or phase, angle of 41 degrees.

For more information about the Cassini-Huygens mission visit http://www.nasa.gov/cassini and http://saturn.jpl.nasa.gov . The Cassini imaging team homepage is at http://ciclops.org

Dione's image gallery: http://www.nasa.gov/mission_pages/cassini/multimedia/gallery-indexDione.html

Image, Text, Credit: NASA / JPL-Caltech / Space Science Institute.

Cheers, Orbiter.ch

NASA Mission Returns First Video From Moon's Far Side

2012-02-01T17:43:00.000-08:00

NASA - GRAIL Mission patch.

02.01.12

NASA's GRAIL mission has beamed back its first video of the far side of the moon. The imagery was taken on Jan. 19 by the MoonKAM aboard the mission's "Ebb" spacecraft.

A camera aboard one of NASA's twin Gravity Recovery And Interior Laboratory (GRAIL) lunar spacecraft has returned its first unique view of the far side of the moon. MoonKAM, or Moon Knowledge Acquired by Middle school students, will be used by students nationwide to select lunar images for study.

GRAIL consists of two identical spacecraft, recently named Ebb and Flow, each of which is equipped with a MoonKAM. The images were taken as part of a test of Ebb's MoonKAM on Jan. 19. The GRAIL project plans to test the MoonKAM aboard Flow at a later date.

Image above: South pole of the far side of the moon as seen from the GRAIL mission’s Ebb spacecraft. Image credit: NASA / JPL-Caltech.

To view the 30-second video clip, visit: http://go.nasa.gov/zZXAPs .

In the video, the north pole of the moon is visible at the top of the screen as the spacecraft flies toward the lunar south pole. One of the first prominent geological features seen on the lower third of the moon is the Mare Orientale, a 560-mile-wide (900 kilometer) impact basin that straddles both the moon's near and far side.

The clip ends with rugged terrain just short of the lunar south pole. To the left of center, near the bottom of the screen, is the 93-mile-wide (149 kilometer) Drygalski crater with a distinctive star-shaped formation in the middle. The formation is a central peak, created many billions of years ago by a comet or asteroid impact.

"The quality of the video is excellent and should energize our MoonKAM students as they prepare to explore the moon," said Maria Zuber, GRAIL principal investigator from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology in Cambridge.

The twin spacecraft successfully achieved lunar orbit this past New Year's Eve and New Year's Day. Previously named GRAIL-A and GRAIL-B, the washing machine-sized spacecraft received their new names from fourth graders at the Emily Dickinson Elementary School in Bozeman, Mont., following a nationwide student naming contest.

Thousands of fourth- to eighth-grade students will select target areas on the lunar surface and send requests to the GRAIL MoonKAM Mission Operations Center in San Diego. Photos of the target areas will be sent back by the satellites for students to study. The MoonKAM program is led by Sally Ride, America's first woman in space. Her team at Sally Ride Science and undergraduate students at the University of California in San Diego will engage middle schools across the country in the GRAIL mission and lunar exploration. GRAIL is NASA's first planetary mission carrying instruments fully dedicated to education and public outreach.

"We have had great response from schools around the country; more than 2,500 signed up to participate so far," Ride said. "In mid-March, the first pictures of the moon will be taken by students using MoonKAM. I expect this will excite many students about possible careers in science and engineering."

Launched in September 2011, Ebb and Flow periodically perform trajectory correction maneuvers that, over time, will lower their orbits to near-circular ones with an altitude of about 34 miles (55 kilometers). During their science mission, the duo will answer longstanding questions about the moon and give scientists a better understanding of how Earth and other rocky planets in the solar system formed.

NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, Calif., manages the GRAIL mission for NASA's Science Mission Directorate in Washington. The GRAIL mission is part of the Discovery Program managed at NASA's Marshall Space Flight Center in Huntsville, Ala. Lockheed Martin Space Systems in Denver built the spacecraft.

For more information about GRAIL, visit: http://www.nasa.gov/grail .

Information about MoonKAM is available at: https://moonkam.ucsd.edu .

JPL is managed for NASA by the California Institute of Technology in Pasadena.

Image (mentioned), Video, Text, Credits: NASA / JPL / DC Agle / Dwayne Brown.

Best regards, Orbiter.ch

Remnant of an Explosion With a Powerful Kick?

2012-02-01T17:32:00.000-08:00

NASA - Chandra X-ray Observatory patch.

02.01.12

Vital clues about the devastating ends to the lives of massive stars can be found by studying the aftermath of their explosions. In its more than twelve years of science operations, NASA's Chandra X-ray Observatory has studied many of these supernova remnants sprinkled across the Galaxy.

The latest example of this important investigation is Chandra's new image of the supernova remnant known as G350.1+0.3. This stellar debris field is located some 14,700 light years from the Earth toward the center of the Milky Way.

Evidence from Chandra and from ESA's XMM-Newton telescope suggest that a compact object within G350.1+0.3 may be the dense core of the star that exploded. The position of this likely neutron star, seen by the arrow pointing to "neutron star" in the inset image, is well away from the center of the X-ray emission. If the supernova explosion occurred near the center of the X-ray emission then the neutron star must have received a powerful kick in the supernova explosion.

Data from Chandra and other telescopes suggest this supernova remnant, as it appears in the image, is between 600 and 1,200 years old. If the estimated location of the explosion is correct, this means that the neutron star has been moving at a speed of at least 3 million miles per hour since the explosion This is comparable to the exceptionally high speed derived for the neutron star in Puppis A, another neutron star moving at a blistering pace within a supernova remnant. The G350+1+0.3 data provide new evidence that extremely powerful "kicks" may be imparted to neutron stars left behind once the supernova has exploded.

Another intriguing aspect of G350.1+0.3 is its unusual shape. While many supernova remnants are nearly circular, G350.1+0.3 is strikingly asymmetrical as seen in the Chandra data in this image (gold). Infrared data from NASA's Spitzer Space Telescope (light blue) also trace the morphology found by Chandra. Astronomers think that this bizarre shape is due to stellar debris field expanding into a nearby cloud of cold molecular gas.

The age of 600-1200 years puts the explosion that created G350.1+0.3 in the same time frame as other famous supernovas that formed the Crab and SN 1006 supernova remnants. However, it is unlikely that anyone on Earth would have seen the explosion because of the obscuring gas and dust that lies along our line of sight to the remnant.

These results appeared in the April 10, 2011 issue of The Astrophysical Journal. The scientists on this paper were Igor Lovchinsky and Patrick Slane (Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics), Bryan Gaensler (University of Sydney, Australia), Jack Hughes (Rutgers University), Jasmina Lazendic (Monash University Clayton, Australia), Joseph Gelfand (New York University, Abu Dhabi), and Crystal Brogan (National Radio Astronomy Observatory).

Image, Credits: X-ray: NASA / CXC / SAO / I. Lovchinsky et al; IR: NASA / JPL-Caltech.

Read more/access all images: http://chandra.harvard.edu/photo/2012/g350/

View Chandra Flickr Photoset: http://www.flickr.com/photos/28634332@N05/sets/72157606205297786/

Image (mentioned), Text, Credits: NASA / Marshall Space Flight Center / Janet Anderson / Chandra X-ray Center / Megan Watzke.

Greetings, Orbiter.ch

A Pocket of Star Formation

2012-02-01T04:16:00.000-08:00

ESO - European Southern Observatory logo.

1 February 2012

The star formation region NGC 3324

This new view shows a stellar nursery called NGC 3324. It was taken using the Wide Field Imager on the MPG/ESO 2.2-metre telescope at the La Silla Observatory in Chile. The intense ultraviolet radiation from several of NGC 3324's hot young stars causes the gas cloud to glow with rich colours and has carved out a cavity in the surrounding gas and dust.

NGC 3324 is located in the southern constellation of Carina (The Keel, part of Jason’s ship the Argo) roughly 7500 light-years from Earth. It is on the northern outskirts of the chaotic environment of the Carina Nebula, which has been sculpted by many other pockets of star formation (eso0905). A rich deposit of gas and dust in the NGC 3324 region fuelled a burst of starbirth there several millions of years ago and led to the creation of several hefty and very hot stars that are prominent in the new picture.

The star formation region NGC 3324 in the constellation of Carina (The Keel)

Stellar winds and intense radiation from these young stars have blown open a hollow in the surrounding gas and dust. This is most in evidence as the wall of material seen to the centre right of this image. The ultraviolet radiation from the hot young stars knocks electrons out of hydrogen atoms, which are then recaptured, leading to a characteristic crimson-coloured glow as the electrons cascade through the energy levels, showing the extent of the local diffuse gas. Other colours come from other elements, with the characteristic glow from doubly ionised oxygen making the central parts appear greenish-yellow.

As with clouds in the Earth's sky, observers of nebulae can find likenesses within these cosmic clouds. One nickname for the NGC 3324 region is the Gabriela Mistral Nebula, after the Nobel Prize-winning Chilean poet [1]. The edge of the wall of gas and dust at the right bears a strong resemblance to a human face in profile, with the "bump" in the centre corresponding to a nose.

Digitized Sky Survey Image of Eta Carinae Nebula

The power of the Wide Field Imager on the MPG/ESO 2.2-metre telescope at ESO's La Silla Observatory also reveals many dark features in NGC 3324. Dust grains in these regions block out the light from the background glowing gas, creating shadowy, filigree features that add another layer of evocative structure to the rich vista.

Zooming in on the star formation region NGC 3324

The sharp sight of the Hubble Space Telescope has also been trained on NGC 3324 in the past. Hubble can pick out finer details than the panoramic view of the Wide Field Imager, but only over a much smaller field of view. The two instruments when used in tandem can provide both "zoomed-in" and "zoomed-out" perspectives.

Notes:

[1] Further explanation and comparison images can be found on the site of the amateur astronomer Daniel Verschatse: http://www.verschatse.cl/nebulae/ngc3324/medium.htm.

More information:

The year 2012 marks the 50th anniversary of the founding of the European Southern Observatory (ESO). ESO is the foremost intergovernmental astronomy organisation in Europe and the world’s most productive astronomical observatory. It is supported by 15 countries: Austria, Belgium, Brazil, the Czech Republic, Denmark, France, Finland, Germany, Italy, the Netherlands, Portugal, Spain, Sweden, Switzerland and the United Kingdom. ESO carries out an ambitious programme focused on the design, construction and operation of powerful ground-based observing facilities enabling astronomers to make important scientific discoveries. ESO also plays a leading role in promoting and organising cooperation in astronomical research. ESO operates three unique world-class observing sites in Chile: La Silla, Paranal and Chajnantor. At Paranal, ESO operates the Very Large Telescope, the world’s most advanced visible-light astronomical observatory and two survey telescopes. VISTA works in the infrared and is the world’s largest survey telescope and the VLT Survey Telescope is the largest telescope designed to exclusively survey the skies in visible light. ESO is the European partner of a revolutionary astronomical telescope ALMA, the largest astronomical project in existence. ESO is currently planning a 40-metre-class European Extremely Large optical/near-infrared Telescope, the E-ELT, which will become “the world’s biggest eye on the sky”.

Links:

Photos of La Silla: http://www.eso.org/public/images/archive/category/lasilla/

Images, Text, Credits: ESO / Digitized Sky Survey 2. Acknowledgment: Davide De Martin / Video: ESO/Nick Risinger (skysurvey.org) / Digitized Sky Survey 2. Music: John Dyson (from the album Moonwind).

Greetings, Orbiter.ch

NASA Spacecraft Reveals New Observations of Interstellar Matter

2012-01-31T14:56:00.000-08:00

NASA - IBEX patch.

Jan. 31, 2012

NASA's Interstellar Boundary Explorer (IBEX) has captured the best and most complete glimpse yet of what lies beyond the solar system. The new measurements give clues about how and where our solar system formed, the forces that physically shape our solar system, and the history of other stars in the Milky Way.

Video above: IBEX has directly sampled multiple heavy elements from the Local Interstellar Cloud for the first time. Credit: NASA/Goddard Scientific Visualization Studio.

The Earth-orbiting spacecraft observed four separate types of atoms including hydrogen, oxygen, neon and helium. These interstellar atoms are the byproducts of older stars, which spread across the galaxy and fill the vast space between stars. IBEX determined the distribution of these elements outside the solar system, which are flowing charged and neutral particles that blow through the galaxy, or the so-called interstellar wind.

"IBEX is a small Explorer mission and was built with a modest investment," said Barbara Giles, director of the Heliophysics Division at NASA Headquarters in Washington. "The science achievements though have been truly remarkable and are a testament to what can be accomplished when we give our nation's scientists the freedom to innovate."

In a series of science papers appearing in the Astrophysics Journal on Jan. 31, scientists report finding 74 oxygen atoms for every 20 neon atoms in the interstellar wind. In our own solar system, there are 111 oxygen atoms for every 20 neon atoms. This translates to more oxygen in any part of the solar system than in nearby interstellar space.

Video above: Neutral atoms from the galactic wind sweep past the solar system's magnetic boundary, the heliosheath, and travel some 30 years into our solar system toward the sun. NASA's Interstellar Boundary Explorer (IBEX) can observe those atoms and provide information about the mysterious neighborhood outside our home. Credit: NASA / Goddard Conceptual Image Lab.

"Our solar system is different than the space right outside it, suggesting two possibilities," says David McComas, IBEX principal investigator, at the Southwest Research Institute in San Antonio. "Either the solar system evolved in a separate, more oxygen-rich part of the galaxy than where we currently reside, or a great deal of critical, life-giving oxygen lies trapped in interstellar dust grains or ices, unable to move freely throughout space."

The new results hold clues about the history of material in the universe. While the big bang initially created hydrogen and helium, only the supernovae explosions at the end of a star's life can spread the heavier elements of oxygen and neon through the galaxy. Knowing the amounts of elements in space may help scientists map how our galaxy evolved and changed over time.

NASA's Interstellar Boundary Explorer (IBEX) has found that there's more oxygen in our solar system than there is in the nearby interstellar material. That suggests that either the sun formed in a different part of the galaxy or that outside our solar system life-giving oxygen lies trapped in dust or ice grains unable to move freely in space. Credit: NASA / Goddard.

Scientists want to understand the composition of the boundary region that separates the nearest reaches of our galaxy, called the local interstellar medium, from our heliosphere. The heliosphere acts as a protective bubble that shields our solar system from most of the dangerous galactic cosmic radiation that otherwise would enter the solar system from interstellar space.

IBEX measured the interstellar wind traveling at a slower speed than previously measured by the Ulysses spacecraft, and from a different direction. The improved measurements from IBEX show a 20 percent difference in how much pressure the interstellar wind exerts on our heliosphere.

Image above: The galactic wind streams toward the sun from the direction of Scorpio and IBEX has found that it travels at 52,000 miles an hour. The speed of the galactic wind and its subsequent pressure on the outside of the solar system's boundary affects the shape of the heliosphere as it travels through space. Credit: NASA / Goddard Scientific Visualization Studio.

"Measuring the pressure on our heliosphere from the material in the galaxy and from the magnetic fields out there will help determine the size and shape of our solar system as it travels through the galaxy," says Eric Christian, IBEX mission scientist, at NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Md.

The IBEX spacecraft was launched in October 2008. Its science objective is to discover the nature of the interactions between the solar wind and the interstellar medium at the edge of our solar system.

Image above: NASA's Interstellar Boundary Explorer (IBEX) studies the outer boundaries of the solar system where particles from the solar wind collide with particles from the galactic wind. Credit: NASA.

The Southwest Research Institute developed and leads the IBEX mission with a team of national and international partners. The spacecraft is one of NASA's series of low-cost, rapidly developed missions in the Small Explorers Program. Goddard manages the program for the agency's Science Mission Directorate at NASA Headquarters in Washington.

For more information about IBEX,visit: http://www.nasa.gov/ibex

Additional downloadable media: http://svs.gsfc.nasa.gov/goto?10906

Images (mentioned), Videos (mentioned), Text, Credit: NASA / Goddard Space Flight Center / Karen C. Fox.

Best regards, Orbiter.ch

Space Station manoeuvres to avoid space debris

2012-01-31T14:18:00.000-08:00

ISS - International Space Station patch.

31 January 2012

The International Space Station safely boosted itself to a higher altitude on 28 January to avoid possible collisions with orbital debris. The manoeuvre underscores the continuing need for comprehensive knowledge of orbital objects, a capability that Europe lacks.

The International Space Station burned its thrusters for 64 seconds last Saturday night to raise its orbit and avoid a series of potential collisions with debris from the 2007 explosion of China's Fengyun-1C weather satellite.

The burn began at 23:50 GMT using the main thrusters on the Zvezda module. The burn raised Station altitude by 1.9 km to an average height of 391.7 km.

By firing the thrusters then, the Station also lined itself up for future operations, eliminating the need for a boost that had been set for today.

ISS with ATV Johannes Kepler and Shuttle Endeavour docked

"Space debris is a persistent threat to activity in space," says Emmet Fletcher, manager for space surveillance and tracking at ESA's Space Situational Awareness (SSA) programme office.

"Being able to provide accurate and reliable warnings to spacecraft operators allows a higher level of confidence when planning avoidance manoeuvres like this one."

"This saves on fuel and resources, and reduces mission disruption, which leads to a longer spacecraft operational life."

ESA's SSA programme, in part, aims to improve current European capabilities to track and observe objects, and to develop new resources for providing accurate debris warnings so as to make space a safer place for everyone.

For more information about SSA, visit: http://www.esa.int/esaMI/SSA/index.html

For more information about ISS, visit: http://www.nasa.gov/mission_pages/station/main/index.html

Image, Text, Credits: ESA / NASA.

Cheers, Orbiter.ch

Legendary Astronaut Shannon Lucid Retires From NASA

2012-01-31T14:09:00.000-08:00

NASA logo.

Jan. 31, 2012

Shannon Lucid, a member of NASA's first astronaut class to include women, has retired after more than three decades of service to the agency.

A veteran of five spaceflights, Lucid logged more than 223 days in space, and from August 1991 to June 2007, held the record for the most days in orbit by any woman in the world. Lucid is the only American woman to serve aboard the Russian Mir space station. She lived and worked there for more than 188 days, the longest stay of any American on that vehicle. Her time on Mir also set the single flight endurance record by a woman until Suni Williams broke it in 2006.

"Shannon is an extraordinary woman and scientist. She paved the way for so many of us," said Peggy Whitson, chief of NASA's Astronaut Office at the Johnson Space Center in Houston. "She was a model astronaut for long-duration missions, and whether she was flying hundreds of miles up in space or serving as Capcom [capsule communicator] during the overnight hours for our space shuttle and space station crews, she always brought a smile to our faces. Like so many others, I always will look up to her."

Astronaut Shannon Lucid

Lucid, who holds a doctorate in biochemistry, was selected by NASA in 1978. She joined five other women as the agency's first female astronauts. Her first three shuttle missions deployed satellites. STS-51G in 1985 deployed and retrieved the SPARTAN satellite; STS-34 in 1989 deployed the Galileo spacecraft to explore Jupiter; and STS-43 in 1991 deployed the fifth Tracking and Data Relay Satellite (TDRS-E). Her fourth shuttle mission, STS-58 in 1993, focused on medical experiments and engineering tests.

Lucid traveled aboard Atlantis on STS-76 in March 1996 to the Russian Mir space station. She performed numerous life science and physical science experiments during the course of her stay. She returned from the station aboard Atlantis on STS-79 in September 1996.

In 2002, Lucid served as NASA's chief scientist at the agency's headquarters in Washington. She returned to Johnson in the fall of 2003 and resumed technical assignments in the Astronaut Office. She served as a Capcom in the Mission Control Center for numerous space shuttle and space station crews, representing the flight crew office and providing a friendly voice for dozens of friends and colleagues in space.

For Lucid's complete biography, visit: http://www.jsc.nasa.gov/Bios/htmlbios/lucid.html

Image, Text, Credit: NASA.

Greetings, Orbiter.ch

NASA's THEMIS Satellite Sees a Great Electron Escape

2012-01-31T05:59:00.000-08:00

NASA - THEMIS Mission patch.

Jan. 31, 2012

Video above: From October to December 2003, the radiation belts swelled and shrank in response to geomagnetic storms as particles entered and escaped the belts. Credit: NASA / Goddard Scientific Visualization Studio.

When scientists discovered two great swaths of radiation encircling Earth in the 1950s, it spawned over-the-top fears about "killer electrons" and space radiation effects on Earthlings. The fears were soon quieted: the radiation doesn't reach Earth, though it can affect satellites and humans moving through the belts. Nevertheless, many mysteries about the belts – now known as the Van Allen Radiation belts – remain to this day.

Filled with electrons and energetic charged particles, the radiation belts swell and shrink in response to incoming solar energy, but no one is quite sure how. Indeed, what appears to be the same type of incoming energy has been known to cause entirely different responses on different occasions, causing increased particles in one case and particle loss in another. Theories on just what causes the belts to swell or shrink abound, with little hard evidence to distinguish between them. One big question has simply been to determine if, when the belts shrink, particles escape up and out into interplanetary space or down toward Earth. Now, a new study using multiple spacecraft simultaneously has tracked the particles and determined the escape direction for at least one event: up.

"For a long time, it was thought particles would precipitate downward out of the belts," says Drew Turner, a scientist at the University of California, Los Angeles, and first author on a paper on these results appearing onine in Nature Physics on January 29, 2012 date. "But more recently, researchers theorized that maybe particles could sweep outward. Our results for this event are clear: we saw no increase in downward precipitation."

While it may sound like a simple detail, such knowledge is not just esoteric. Indeed, the study of particle losses in the belts has so far provided more mystery and potential theories than concrete information. But understanding the radiation belts – and how they change as particles and energy come in or go out -- is a crucial part of protecting satellites that fly through the region.

The Van Allen belts fit into a larger system that stretches from the sun to Earth. The sun sends out a constant stream of solar wind, not to mention occasional much larger bursts – such as explosions from the sun's atmosphere called coronal mass ejections (CMEs) or shock fronts caused by fast solar winds overtaking slower winds called corotating interaction regions (CIRs).

When these bursts of energy move toward Earth, they can disturb Earth's own magnetic environment, known as the magnetosphere, and create a geomagnetic storm. Sometimes these storms can cause a sudden drop in the radiation belt particles, seemingly emptying the belt in only a few hours. This "drop out" can last for days. What causes the drop out, why it lasts so long, and just how the particles even leave remain unanswered questions.

Artist concept of the twin Radiation Belt Storm Probes spacecraft, scheduled for launch in August 2012. Credit: NASA.

Solving such a mystery requires numerous spacecraft measuring changes at several points in space to determine whether an event in one place affects an event elsewhere. The Radiation Belt Storm Probes (RBSP), scheduled to launch in August 2012, are specifically geared for such observations, but in the meantime, a team of scientists have brought together two disparate sets of a spacecraft to get an early multipoint view of the radiation belts during an event when the belts experienced a sudden loss of particles.

"We are entering an era where multi-spacecraft are key," says Vassilis Angelopoulos, a space scientist at UCLA, and the principal investigator for THEMIS and a coauthor on the paper. "Being able to unite a fleet of available resources into one study is becoming more of a necessity to turn a corner in our understanding of Earth's environment."

In this case, the team observed a small geomagnetic storm on January 6, 2011 using the three NASA THEMIS (Time History of Events and Macroscale Interactions during Substorms) spacecraft, two GOES (Geostationary Operational Environment Satellite), operated by the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA), and six POES (Polar Operational Environmental Satellite), run jointly by NOAA, and the European Organization for the Exploitation of Meteorological Satellites (EUMETSAT) spacecraft.

THEMIS

GOES

POES

Images above: By harnessing the observation abilities of the three THEMIS (top), two GOES (middle), and six POES (bottom) spacecraft, researchers could observe events in the Van Allen radiation belts from numerous viewpoints simultaneously. Credit: NASA / Goddard Space Flight Center.

The THEMIS and GOES spacecraft orbit around Earth's equatorial region, while the POES spacecraft orbit at lower altitude near the poles and travel through the radiation belts several times per day. All are equipped to study the energetic particles in the region. The observations provided an unprecedented view of a geomagnetic storm from numerous viewpoints simultaneously – and the team found unequivocally that particles escaped the radiation belts by streaming out into space, not by raining down toward Earth.

During this storm, electrons moving near the speed of light dropped out for over six hours. In that time period POES saw no increase in electrons escaping downward from the belts. On the other hand, the spacecraft did monitor a low-density patch of the belt that first appeared at the outer edges of the belts and then moved inward. This sequence is consistent with the notion that particles were streaming outward, just as the low density region of cars leaving from the front of a traffic jam moves backward over time as more and more cars are able to move forward and escape.

"This was a very simple storm," says Turner. "It's not an extreme case, so we think it's probably pretty typical of what happens in general and ongoing results from concurrent statistical studies support this."

If, indeed, electrons usually escape the radiation belts by streaming outward, it seems likely that some kind of waves aid and abet their outward motion, enabling them to reach the outer escape boundary. Hammering out this escape mechanism will be one of the jobs for RBSP, says David Sibeck at NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Md., who is NASA's mission scientist for RBSP and project scientist for THEMIS.

"This kind of research is a key to understanding, and eventually predicting, hazardous events in the Earth’s radiation belts," says Sibeck. "It's a great comprehensive example of what we can expect to see throughout the forthcoming RBSP mission."

For more information about the associated missions, visit:

    › THEMIS mission site: http://www.nasa.gov/themis

    › GOES and POES mission site: http://goespoes.gsfc.nasa.gov/

    › RBSP mission site: http://www.nasa.gov/rbsp

Video (mentioned), Images (mentioned), Text, Credit: NASA / Goddard Space Flight Center / Karen C. Fox.

Greetings, Orbiter.ch

New Ideas Sharpen Focus for Greener Aircraft

2012-01-30T06:39:00.000-08:00

Aerospace engineering.

Jan. 30, 2012

Leaner, greener flying machines for the year 2025 are on the drawing boards of three industry teams under contract to the NASA Aeronautics Research Mission Directorate's Environmentally Responsible Aviation Project.

Three proposed aircraft designs have varying levels of success in meeting tough NASA goals for reducing fuel use, emissions and noise all at the same time. Image credit: NASA.

Teams from The Boeing Company in Huntington Beach, Calif., Lockheed Martin in Palmdale, Calif., and Northrop Grumman in El Segundo, Calif., have spent the last year studying how to meet NASA goals to develop technology that would allow future aircraft to burn 50 percent less fuel than aircraft that entered service in 1998 (the baseline for the study), with 75 percent fewer harmful emissions; and to shrink the size of geographic areas affected by objectionable airport noise by 83 percent.

"The real challenge is we want to accomplish all these things simultaneously," said ERA project manager Fay Collier. "It's never been done before. We looked at some very difficult metrics and tried to push all those metrics down at the same time."

The Boeing Company's advanced design concept is a variation on the extremely aerodynamic hybrid wing body. Image credit: NASA / Boeing.

So NASA put that challenge to industry – awarding a little less than $11 million to the three teams to assess what kinds of aircraft designs and technologies could help meet the goals. The companies have just given NASA their results.

"We'll be digesting the three studies and we'll be looking into what to do next," said Collier.

Boeing's advanced vehicle concept centers around the company's now familiar blended wing body design as seen in the sub-scale remotely piloted X-48, which has been wind tunnel tested at NASA's Langley Research Center and flown at NASA's Dryden Flight Research Center. One thing that makes this concept different from current airplanes is the placement of its Pratt & Whitney geared turbofan engines. The engines are on top of the plane's back end, flanked by two vertical tails to shield people on the ground from engine noise. The aircraft also would feature an advanced lightweight, damage tolerant, composite structure; technologies for reducing airframe noise; advanced flight controls; hybrid laminar flow control, which means surfaces designed to reduce drag; and long-span wings which improve fuel efficiency.

Lockheed Martin's concept uses a box wing design and other advanced technologies to achieve green aviation goals. Image credit: NASA / Lockheed Martin.

Lockheed Martin took an entirely different approach. Its engineers proposed a box wing design, in which a front wing mounted on the lower belly of the plane is joined at the tips to an aft wing mounted on top of the plane. The company has studied the box wing concept for three decades, but has been waiting for lightweight composite materials, landing gear technologies, hybrid laminar flow and other tools to make it a viable configuration. Lockheed's proposal combines the unique design with a Rolls Royce Liberty Works Ultra Fan Engine. This engine has a bypass ratio that is approximately five times greater than current engines, pushing the limits of turbofan technology.

Northrop Grumman chose to embrace a little of its company's history, going back to the 1930s and '40s, with its advanced vehicle concept. Its design is a flying wing, championed by Northrop founder Jack Northrop, and reminiscent of its B-2 aircraft. Four high-bypass engines, provided by Rolls Royce and embedded in the upper surface of the aerodynamically efficient wing would provide noise shielding. The company's expertise in building planes without the benefit of a stabilizing tail would be transferred to the commercial airline market. The Northrop proposal also incorporates advanced composite materials and engine and swept wing laminar flow control technologies.

What the studies revealed is that NASA's goals to reduce fuel consumption, emissions and noise are indeed challenging. The preliminary designs all met the pollution goal of eliminating landing and takeoff emissions of nitrogen oxides by 50 percent. All still have a little way to go to meet the other two challenges. All the designs were very close to a 50-percent fuel burn reduction, but noise reduction capabilities varied.

Northrop Grumman's concept is based on the extremely aerodynamic "flying wing" design. Image credit: NASA / Northrop Grumman.

"All of the teams have done really great work during this conceptual design study,” say Mark Mangelsdorf, ERA Project chief engineer. “Their results make me excited about how interesting and different the airplanes on the airport ramp could look in 20 years. Another great result of the study is that they have really helped us focus where to invest our research dollars over the next few years," he said.

NASA's ERA project officials say they believe all the goals can be met if small gains in noise and fuel consumption reduction can be achieved in addition to those projected in the industry studies. The results shed light on the technology and design hurdles airline manufacturers face in trying to design lean, green flying machines and will help guide NASA's environmentally responsible aviation investment strategy for the second half of its six-year project.

View Image Gallery: http://www.nasa.gov/topics/aeronautics/features/future_airplanes_index.html

Images (mentioned), Text, Credit; NASA Langley Research Center / Kathy Barnstorff.

Greetings, Orbiter.ch

Astronaut Jerry Ross, First Seven-Time Flier, Retires

2012-01-27T07:15:00.000-08:00

NASA logo.

Jan. 27, 2012

Jerry Ross, the first person to launch into space seven times, has retired from NASA. In a career that spanned more than three decades, Ross spent almost 1,400 hours in space and conducted nine spacewalks to rank third on the list of most extravehicular activity time in space.

"Jerry has been instrumental in the success of many of NASA's human spaceflight missions and numerous spacewalks," said Peggy Whitson, chief of the Astronaut Office. "Not only were his skills and operational excellence key in major spaceflight activities but his expertise and vigilance also helped all those who followed in his footsteps. We are the better for his years of dedication to the corps and NASA."

Ross joined NASA in 1979 as a payload officer and flight controller. In 1980, he was selected as an astronaut. He and Franklin Chang-Diaz are the only two astronauts to have flown into space seven times. In addition to Ross' spaceflight mission accomplishments, he went on to serve NASA in the critical role of managing the Vehicle Integration Test Office.

Astronaut Jerry Ross

"Jerry was equally invaluable leading this critical team, especially through space station assembly, the transition to the space shuttle retirement, and during the initial phases of our future programs," said Janet Kavandi, director of Flight Crew Operations. "He was considered a mentor to many he worked with there. We wish him the best in his well-deserved retirement."

Of his seven flights into orbit, Ross flew on space shuttles Endeavour and Columbia once each and a record-setting five times on shuttle Atlantis, including his first and last missions. His first flight was on the STS-61B mission in 1985. His final flight into space was on the STS-110 mission in 2002.

During his seven missions, he assisted in deploying a number of satellites and other payloads. He performed experiments in life, material and Earth sciences, and physics, robotics and astronomy. Ross was a member of the STS-74 mission's crew, the second mission to dock to the Russian space station Mir. He also traveled to the then-fledgling International Space Station, where he helped connect the U.S.-built Unity node to the Russian Zarya module. On the STS-110 mission, Ross' final trip to space, he was instrumental in delivering and installing the S0 (S-Zero) truss. Ross accumulated more than 1,393 hours in space, including 58 hours and 18 minutes on nine spacewalks.

For Ross' complete biography, visit: http://www.jsc.nasa.gov/Bios/htmlbios/ross.html

Image, Text, Credit: NASA.

Best regards, Orbiter.ch

Vesta Likely Cold and Dark Enough for Ice

2012-01-26T14:04:00.000-08:00

NASA - Dawn Mission patch.

Jan. 26, 2012

This image obtained by the framing camera on NASA's Dawn spacecraft shows the south pole of the giant asteroid Vesta. Image credit: NASA / JPL-Caltech / UCLA / MPS / DLR / IDA.

Though generally thought to be quite dry, roughly half of the giant asteroid Vesta is expected to be so cold and to receive so little sunlight that water ice could have survived there for billions of years, according to the first published models of Vesta's average global temperatures and illumination by the sun.

"Near the north and south poles, the conditions appear to be favorable for water ice to exist beneath the surface," says Timothy Stubbs of NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Md., and the University of Maryland, Baltimore County. Stubbs and Yongli Wang of the Goddard Planetary Heliophysics Institute at the University of Maryland published the models in the January 2012 issue of the journal Icarus. The models are based on information from telescopes including NASA's Hubble Space Telescope.

Vesta, the second-most massive object in the asteroid belt between Mars and Jupiter, probably does not have any significant permanently shadowed craters where water ice could stay frozen on the surface all the time, not even in the roughly 300-mile-diameter (480-kilometer-diameter) crater near the south pole, the authors note. The asteroid isn't a good candidate for permanent shadowing because it is tilted on its axis at about 27 degrees, which is even greater than Earth's tilt of roughly 23 degrees. In contrast, the moon, which does have permanently shadowed craters, is tilted at only about 1.5 degrees. As a result of its large tilt, Vesta has seasons, and every part of the surface is expected to see the sun at some point during Vesta's year.

As this global map of average surface temperature shows, the warmer equatorial zone of the giant asteroid Vesta is likely too warm to sustain water ice below the surface. Image credit: NASA / GSFC / UMBC.

The presence or absence of water ice on Vesta tells scientists something about the tiny world's formation and evolution, its history of bombardment by comets and other objects, and its interaction with the space environment. Because similar processes are common to many other planetary bodies, including the moon, Mercury and other asteroids, learning more about these processes has fundamental implications for our understanding of the solar system as a whole. This kind of water ice is also potentially valuable as a resource for further exploration of the solar system.

Though temperatures on Vesta fluctuate during the year, the model predicts that the average annual temperature near Vesta's north and south poles is less than roughly minus 200 degrees Fahrenheit (145 kelvins). That is the critical average temperature below which water ice is thought to be able to survive in the top 10 feet or so (few meters) of the soil, which is called regolith.

Near Vesta's equator, however, the average yearly temperature is roughly minus 190 degrees Fahrenheit (150 kelvins), according to the new results. Based on previous modeling, that is expected to be high enough to prevent water from remaining within a few meters of the surface. This band of relatively warm temperatures extends from the equator to about 27 degrees north and south in latitude.

"On average, it's colder at Vesta's poles than near its equator, so in that sense, they are good places to sustain water ice," says Stubbs. "But they also see sunlight for long periods of time during the summer seasons, which isn't so good for sustaining ice. So if water ice exists in those regions, it may be buried beneath a relatively deep layer of dry regolith."

New modeling shows that, under present conditions, Vesta's polar regions are cold enough (less than about 145 kelvins) to sustain water ice for billions of years, as this map of average surface temperature around the asteroid's south pole indicates. Image credit: NASA / GSFC / UMBC.

The modeling also indicates that relatively small surface features, such as craters measuring around 6 miles (10 kilometers) in diameter, could significantly affect the survival of water ice. "The bottoms of some craters could be cold enough on average -- about 100 kelvins -- for water to be able to survive on the surface for much of the Vestan year [about 3.6 years on Earth]," Stubbs explains. "Although, at some point during the summer, enough sunlight would shine in to make the water leave the surface and either be lost or perhaps redeposit somewhere else."

So far, Earth-based observations suggest that the surface of Vesta is quite dry. However, the Dawn spacecraft is getting a much closer view. Dawn is investigating the role of water in the evolution of planets by studying Vesta and Ceres, two bodies in the asteroid belt that are considered remnant protoplanets – baby planets whose growth was interrupted when Jupiter formed.

Dawn is looking for water using the gamma ray and neutron detector (GRaND) spectrometer, which can identify hydrogen-rich deposits that could be associated with water ice. The spacecraft recently entered a low orbit that is well suited to collecting gamma ray and neutron data.

"Our perceptions of Vesta have been transformed in a few months as the Dawn spacecraft has entered orbit and spiraled closer to its surface," says Lucy McFadden, a planetary scientist at NASA Goddard and a Dawn mission co-investigator. "More importantly, our new views of Vesta tell us about the early processes of solar system formation. If we can detect evidence for water beneath the surface, the next question will be is it very old or very young, and that would be exciting to ponder."

The modeling done by Stubbs and Wang, for example, relies on information about Vesta's shape. Before Dawn, the best source of that information was a set of images taken by NASA's Hubble Space Telescope in 1994 and 1996. But now, Dawn and its camera are getting a much closer view of Vesta.

"The Dawn mission gives researchers a rare opportunity to observe Vesta for an extended period of time, the equivalent of about one season on Vesta," says Stubbs. "Hopefully, we'll know in the next few months whether the GRaND spectrometer sees evidence for water ice in Vesta's regolith. This is an important and exciting time in planetary exploration."

Dawn's mission to Vesta and Ceres is managed by NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory, Pasadena, Calif., for NASA's Science Mission Directorate in Washington. JPL is a division of the California Institute of Technology in Pasadena. Dawn is a project of the directorate's Discovery Program, managed by NASA's Marshall Space Flight Center in Huntsville, Ala. UCLA is responsible for overall Dawn mission science. Orbital Sciences Corp. in Dulles, Va., designed and built the spacecraft. The German Aerospace Center, the Max Planck Institute for Solar System Research, the Italian Space Agency and the Italian National Astrophysical Institute are international partners on the mission team. The asteroid modeling by Stubbs and Wang is an extension of analysis originally applied to the moon and partially funded by the NASA Lunar Science Institute.

For more information about Dawn Mission, visit: http://dawn.jpl.nasa.gov/ and http://www.nasa.gov/mission_pages/dawn/main/index.html

Images (mentioned), Text, Credit: NASA / Goddard Space Flight Center / Elizabeth Zubritsky / JPL / Jia-Rui Cook.

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NASA's Kepler Announces 11 Planetary Systems Hosting 26 Planets

2012-01-26T13:24:00.000-08:00

NASA - Kepler Mission patch.

Jan. 26, 2012

NASA's Kepler mission has discovered 11 new planetary systems hosting 26 confirmed planets. These discoveries nearly double the number of verified planets and triple the number of stars known to have more than one planet that transits, or passes in front of, the star. Such systems will help astronomers better understand how planets form.

(Click on the image for enlarge)

Kepler's Planetary Systems: The artist's rendering depicts the multiple planet systems discovered by NASA's Kepler mission. Image credit: NASA Ames / Jason Steffen, Fermilab Center for Particle Astrophysics.

The planets orbit close to their host stars and range in size from 1.5 times the radius of Earth to larger than Jupiter. Fifteen are between Earth and Neptune in size. Further observations will be required to determine which are rocky like Earth and which have thick gaseous atmospheres like Neptune. The planets orbit their host star once every six to 143 days. All are closer to their host star than Venus is to our sun.

"Prior to the Kepler mission, we knew of perhaps 500 exoplanets across the whole sky," said Doug Hudgins, Kepler program scientist at NASA Headquarters in Washington. "Now, in just two years staring at a patch of sky not much bigger than your fist, Kepler has discovered more than 60 planets and more than 2,300 planet candidates. This tells us that our galaxy is positively loaded with planets of all sizes and orbits."

Kepler identifies planet candidates by repeatedly measuring the change in brightness of more than 150,000 stars to detect when a planet passes in front of the star. That passage casts a small shadow toward Earth and the Kepler spacecraft.

Each of the new confirmed planetary systems contains two to five closely spaced transiting planets. In tightly packed planetary systems, the gravitational pull of the planets on each other causes some planets to accelerate and some to decelerate along their orbits. The acceleration causes the orbital period of each planet to change. Kepler detects this effect by measuring the changes, or so-called Transit Timing Variations (TTVs).

Kepler's Planetary Systems' Orbits: The image shows an overhead view of orbital positions of the planets in systems with multiple transiting planets discovered by NASA's Kepler mission.Image credit: NASA Ames / Dan Fabrycky, University of California, Santa Cruz.

Planetary systems with TTVs can be verified without requiring extensive ground-based observations, accelerating confirmation of planet candidates. The TTV detection technique also increases Kepler's ability to confirm planetary systems around fainter and more distant stars.

Five of the systems (Kepler-25, Kepler-27, Kepler-30, Kepler-31 and Kepler-33) contain a pair of planets where the inner planet orbits the star twice during each orbit of the outer planet. Four of the systems (Kepler-23, Kepler-24, Kepler-28 and Kepler-32) contain a pairing where the outer planet circles the star twice for every three times the inner planet orbits its star.

"These configurations help to amplify the gravitational interactions between the planets, similar to how my sons kick their legs on a swing at the right time to go higher," said Jason Steffen, the Brinson postdoctoral fellow at Fermilab Center for Particle Astrophysics in Batavia, Ill., and lead author of a paper confirming four of the systems.

Kepler's Planetary Systems in Motion: The animation shows an overhead view of the orbital position of the planets in systems with multiple transiting planets discovered by NASA's Kepler mission. All the colored planets have been verified. More vivid colors indicate planets that have been confirmed by their gravitational interactions with each other or the star. Several of these systems contain additional planet candidates (shown in grey) that have not yet been verified. Video credit: NASA Ames / Dan Fabrycky, University of California, Santa Cruz.

Kepler-33, a star that is older and more massive than our sun, had the most planets. The system hosts five planets, ranging in size from 1.5 to 5 times that of Earth. All of the planets are located closer to their star than any planet is to our sun.

The properties of a star provide clues for planet detection. The decrease in the star's brightness and duration of a planet transit, combined with the properties of its host star, present a recognizable signature. When astronomers detect planet candidates that exhibit similar signatures around the same star, the likelihood of any of these planet candidates being a false positive is very low.

"The approach used to verify the Kepler-33 planets shows the overall reliability is quite high," said Jack Lissauer, planetary scientist at NASA Ames Research Center at Moffett Field, Calif., and lead author of the paper on Kepler-33. "This is a validation by multiplicity."

Transit Timing Variations: The animation shows the difference between planet transit timing of single and multiple planet system. In tightly packed planetary systems, the gravitational pull of the planets among themselves causes one planet to accelerate and another planet to decelerate along its orbit. The acceleration causes the orbital period of each planet to change. Kepler detects this effect by measuring the change known as Transit Timing Variations (TTVs). Video credit: NASA Ames / Kepler mission.

These discoveries are published in four different papers in the Astrophysical Journal and the Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society.

Ames manages Kepler's ground system development, mission operations and science data analysis. NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory, Pasadena, Calif., managed the Kepler mission's development.

For more information about the Kepler mission and to view the digital press kit, visit: http://www.nasa.gov/kepler

Images (mentioned), Videos (mentioned), Text, Credit: NASA Ames Research Center / Michele Johnson.

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INTEGRAL reveals new facets of the Vela pulsar wind nebula

2012-01-25T13:21:00.000-08:00

ESA - INTEGRAL Mission patch.

25 Jan 2012

Astronomers studying the Vela pulsar wind nebula with ESA's INTEGRAL observatory have successfully resolved its morphology in the hard X-ray band, for the first time. This pulsar-powered nebula is the most extended individual source yet observed at these energies. The study exploited a special imaging technique to reveal a new component of the source that likely consists of highly energetic electrons that have escaped from the core of the nebula in the last few thousand years.

All-sky image obtained with INTEGRAL at hard X-ray energies. The Vela pulsar wind nebula is shown in the insert. Credit: All-sky image: ESA/INTEGRAL/IBIS/F. Lebrun / CEA, Saclay; Insert: ESA / INTEGRAL / IBIS-ISGRI / F. Mattana et al.

One of the milestones in modern astrophysics was the discovery, in the late 1960s, of the Vela and Crab pulsars. These pulsating sources were the first of their kind to be detected within the remnants of supernova explosions. By providing the first evidence for a causal link between the then recently discovered class of sources and the demise of massive stars, these observations clarified the nature of pulsars: rapidly spinning and strongly magnetised neutron stars.

Like all pulsars powered by their own rotation, the Vela pulsar gradually releases its rotational kinetic energy by driving a steady wind of highly energetic electrons and positrons. Pulsar winds create clouds of charged particles, known as pulsar wind nebulae (PWN), that radiate energy across the electromagnetic spectrum and are thus observable in several bands. During its early phases, the highly pressurised PWN expands at high speed in its denser environment, which consists of ejected material from the supernova explosion that created the pulsar and swept up material from the surrounding interstellar medium. This structure, known as a supernova remnant (SNR), in turn expands into the diffuse interstellar medium. Interactions between the expanding components produce a number of interesting effects affecting the dynamical evolution and, subsequently, the morphology of PWN.

Image of the Vela pulsar wind nebula obtained with INTEGRAL at hard X-ray energies, between 18 and 40 keV. The angular size of the full Moon is shown for comparison.Credit: ESA / INTEGRAL / IBIS-ISGRI / F. Mattana et al.

At a distance of about 900 light-years, the Vela PWN is one of the nearest of its kind and thus offers an opportunity for detailed investigations. It has been studied extensively at X- and gamma-ray energies, as well as in radio waves. A recent study led by Fabio Mattana from the Laboratoire APC – AstroParticule et Cosmologie, Paris, France, has used data from ESA's INTEGRAL mission to image the Vela PWN at hard X-ray energies, between 18 and 40 keV. By resolving a PWN at these energies for the first time, the study opens up a new and revealing spectral window on these intriguing objects.

Multiwavelength observations of a PWN help to sample populations of particles with different energies that exist in the cloud. In particular, X-rays are released by electrons as they move along the pulsar's magnetic field (synchrotron emission); in contrast, gamma-ray emission arises from a different physical mechanism: the energy boost that synchrotron photons experience when they scatter off electrons (Inverse Compton emission). This means that, somewhat counterintuitively, the most energetic particles in a PWN are revealed by observations in the hard X-ray, rather than the gamma-ray, spectral band.

"Since the most energetic particles in a PWN are the ones with the shortest lifetime, our observations of the Vela PWN in hard X-rays provide a fresh look at this source's recent history," comments Mattana. The study used data from the IBIS imager on board INTEGRAL and applied a special data analysis technique that was developed in 2006 to further exploit the capabilities of the instrument. Originally optimised to study point sources, with this method IBIS is also suitable for the observation of extended sources and the characterisation of their morphology.

The Vela pulsar wind nebula in the X- and gamma-ray bands. Credit: ESA / INTEGRAL / IBIS-ISGRI / F. Mattana et al./ROSAT/ H.E.S.S. / Spacelab 2.

"Besides confirming the results of previous observations of the Vela PWN, which showed a cocoon-shaped cloud to the south-west of the pulsar at soft X-ray and gamma-ray wavelengths, the new INTEGRAL image reveals a previously unknown component at a rather unexpected location, north-east of the pulsar," Mattana adds.

The well-known asymmetric structure of the Vela PWN, with the 'cocoon' on one side of the pulsar, is typical of an evolved PWN. This object is in fact a prototype of PWN undergoing this phase of their evolution. As the expanding SNR sweeps up material from the surrounding interstellar medium, it produces two shock waves, moving outwards and inwards, respectively. When the latter, known as the 'reverse' shock, eventually hits the boundary of the PWN, a few thousand years after the supernova explosion, it compresses and distorts the cloud, giving it a chaotic and filamentary structure. In the process, as a consequence of the SNR expansion into an inhomogeneous interstellar medium asymmetries in the cloud shape and displacements of the PWN with respect to the pulsar often arise.

The newly detected component, seen only in hard X-rays so far, can also be explained as an effect of the reverse shock. "We believe that the newly-revealed region is a 'recently' born cloud, consisting of particles that have been injected by the pulsar after the supernova reverse shock has 'wiped away' the pre-existing nebula from the pulsar surroundings," explains Mattana. "In this case, the displaced lobe would only be populated by freshly injected particles, released by the Vela pulsar in the last couple of thousand years; these shine brightly at hard X-ray energies," he adds. This scenario is also consistent with the spectral analysis of data from INTEGRAL and from the Japanese-US Suzaku mission, also performed during the same study. Mattana and his colleagues hope that more clues about the nature of the newly-detected lobe will emerge with future observations of the source at lower X-ray energies, to be performed with ESA's XMM-Newton X-ray observatory and other facilities.

This study presents the first INTEGRAL image of extended emission around the Vela pulsar in this energy range. With an angular size of about 50 arc minutes on each side, the Vela PWN is the most extended individual source observed at hard X-ray energies thus far. It is also the first time that the application of this imaging technique has allowed a detailed investigation of the source's morphology.

"The result is a significant achievement for INTEGRAL and showcases the versatility of the instruments on board the observatory as well as the creativity of its user community," comments Chris Winkler, INTEGRAL Project Scientist at ESA. "With this technique, we have a new way to investigate the hard X-ray sky, and we look forward to its application to other sources, such as nearby supernova remnants."

Notes for editors:

The study presented here is based on observations performed with IBIS, the coded-mask imager on board INTEGRAL, with its low-energy detector ISGRI, which is sensitive to the energy range between 15 keV and 1 MeV.

As with all coded-mask imagers, IBIS does not produce images directly but via a reconstruction algorithm. The design of IBIS is optimised for the study of point sources in the hard X-ray sky and the standard reconstruction technique used to obtain images from IBIS data strongly concentrates on the portions of the sky where the radiation flux peaks. This has the disadvantage of centralising possibly extended sources at the expense of their flux, reducing them to apparent point sources with a tenfold dimmer flux.

In order to employ IBIS to study extended sources, a novel approach has been developed to overcome this drawback. This method takes account of the telescope point spread function over the entire field of view in order to properly rescale the flux in the images. A correct image of the source over its entire angular extent is then achieved. The method has been developed by Matthieu Renaud (currently at Laboratoire Univers et Particules de Montpellier, France) and collaborators in 2006 and is described in M. Renaud, et al. (2006).

INTEGRAL is an ESA project with instruments and science data centre funded by ESA Member States (especially the Principal Investigator countries: Denmark, France, Germany, Italy, Spain, Switzerland) and Poland, and with the participation of Russia and the USA.

Related publications:

F. Mattana, et al., "Extended Hard X-Ray Emission from the Vela Pulsar Wind Nebula", 2011, The Astrophysical Journal Letters, 743, 18
DOI: 10.1088/2041-8205/743/1/L18

M. Renaud, et al., "Imaging extended sources with coded mask telescopes: application to the INTEGRAL IBIS/ISGRI instrument", 2006, Astronomy and Astrophysics, 456, 389
DOI: 10.1051/0004-6361:20065156

For more information about INTEGRAL, visit: http://www.esa.int/esaMI/Integral/index.html

Images (mentioned), Text, Credits: Laboratoire APC – AstroParticule et Cosmologie Université Paris Diderot Paris, France / INTEGRAL Project Scientist Research and Scientific Support Department Directorate of Science and Robotic Exploration ESA, The Netherlands.

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Microsatellite "Chibis-M" was launched into orbit

2012-01-25T08:25:00.000-08:00

ROSCOSMOS - Microsatellite Chibis-M patch.

25.01.2012

January 25 in Moscow 03.18.30 small spacecraft "Chibis-M" separated from the cargo vehicle (THC), "Progress M-13M" and began its autonomous flight.

Dropping of microsatellite "Chibis-M" in orbit

According to the ballistic Service Mission Control Center microsatellite was launched with the following parameters:

    • The minimum height above the surface of the Earth - 497.535 km;

    • The maximum height above the surface of the Earth - 513.607 km;

    • period - 94.55 minutes;

    • inclination - 51.62 degrees.

A few minutes after separation, "Shibis-M" was produced the first telemetry data, which confirmed that the office of the device are included.

Small Spacecraft "Chibis-M" was delivered to the International Space Station (ISS), THC, "Progress M-13M" November 2, 2011. After flights to the ISS January 24, 2012 a cargo ship with a set of microsatellite It undocked from the station and transferred to a higher orbit. For the first time that a tug was used THC such as "Progress".

This maneuver was performed in order to launch into the working orbit "Chibisa-M", intended to implement a new geophysical experiment designed to study complex physical processes in atmospheric lightning discharges.

Chibis-M

Microsatellite "Chibis-M" was created at the Institute of Space Research Institute in conjunction with other scientific organizations.

Approximately one-third the mass of the satellite is a complex of scientific equipment (KPA), "The Storm". For the first time on a single satellite has a set of devices, "overlapping" range from gamma to radio waves, which are intended research will "see" the largest possible number of processes that occur when a lightning discharge.

In the KPA "The Storm" includes x-ray detectors, gamma, ultraviolet and radio waves (30-50 MHz), generated by lightning discharge at an altitude of 13-20 km. In the KPA also includes instruments for studying the plasma oscillations. To understand whether these are accompanied by flashes of lightning radiation, the KPA equipped with a digital camera.

X-ray detector and gamma-radiation and UV detector set at the Research Institute of Nuclear Physics. DV Skobeltsyn University. Radio frequency analyzer is designed to IKI. In the KPA is also a digital camera digital camera (IKI), which will take pictures of Earth in the optical and detector analyzers electromagnetic radiation (0,1-40000 Hz) - magnetic plasma ERM complex, created by Ukrainian and Hungarian scientists.

"Chibis-M" is in line with several devices, which are also involved in the study of phenomena and lightning discharges in the upper atmosphere.

Weight about 40 kg microsatellite.

Dimensions in the open state (antenna and solar panels) 1250x966 mm.

Original text in Russian: http://www.federalspace.ru/main.php?id=2&nid=18604

Image, Video, Text, Credit: Press-service of Federal Space Agency (Roscosmos PAO), and PCOs / Translation: Orbiter.ch.

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