Worms in space to understand muscle loss

ESA - Columbus Laboratory Module at ISS patch.

5 December 2018

Keeping fit and maintaining muscle strength is hard enough on Earth, but for astronauts in space it is even more important. As they float around the International Space Station working on experiments, their muscles and bones get less of a work-out than if they were walking and lifting objects on Earth.

Neuronal deterioration of a worm as it ages

The Molecular Muscle Experiment is set to investigate on a molecular level how muscles react to spaceflight in the C. Elegans worm. Thousands of worms will be sent into space in special bags placed in an incubator that allow them to grow and reproduce. In less than a week, the worms will have grown to maturity. They will then be frozen in the Space Station’s freezers for analysis in laboratories once they return to Earth.

Loss of muscle mass and function is one of the most pronounced and consistently observed adaptations to spaceflight. Previous studies on the International Space Station with Caenorhabditis elegans showed that these worms express genes and structural changes similar to the way in which astronauts’ muscular strength and energy metabolism are disrupted in space. Researchers want to know more and a follow-up study is being launched today inside the Dragon cargo spacecraft.

Mitochondrial network of young worms

Tim Etheridge, senior lecturer at the University of Exeter explains “Worms are, perhaps surprisingly, a good model for human muscles. At the molecular level they are similar to humans and offer advantages for spaceflight research – they are very small, quick to grow as well as cheap and easy to maintain!"

This experiment will focus on the most observed muscular changes in space, insulin signalling (that causes diabetes on Earth) and cell attachment (that causes muscular dystrophy) and target these to develop countermeasures.

Mitochondrial network deterioration in muscles of aged worms

Finding out more about why muscles change in space and how to counteract these effects will help not only future astronauts, but also people on Earth who suffer from muscular disease.

Getting ready for launch

As this experiment involves living organisms, preparation is key and the team behind the Molecular Muscle Experiment have been nurturing the flight larvae for weeks before putting them into their ‘flight suits’.

Understanding muscle loss

Loading in the Dragon spacecraft is done as late as possible as, once they leave the laboratory, they need to be in the Space Station’s European Kubik incubator within 160 hours or the worms will die prematurely and the experiment results will be skewed.

Neuronal deterioration of worms during ageing

Meanwhile two other sets of worms will be grown in similar conditions on Earth as a reference to compare data.

One batch is a control group and one batch of worms will be grown in the exact same conditions their astronaut-brethren experienced – minus the microgravity.

Related links:

Kubik incubator: https://www.esa.int/spaceinimages/Images/2018/02/Kubik_on_Space_Station

Experiment archive: http://eea.spaceflight.esa.int/

European space laboratory Columbus: http://www.esa.int/Our_Activities/Human_Spaceflight/Columbus

International Space Station Benefits for Humanity: http://www.esa.int/Our_Activities/Human_Spaceflight/International_Space_Station_Benefits_for_Humanity

Images, Video, Text, Credit: European Space Agency (ESA).

Greetings, Orbiter.ch

BepiColombo now firing on all cylinders

ESA - BepiColombo Mission patch.

5 December 2018

BepiColombo, the joint ESA/JAXA spacecraft on a mission to Mercury, is now firing its thrusters for the first time in flight.

BepiColombo approaching Mercury

On Sunday, BepiColombo carried out the first successful manoeuver using two of its four electric propulsion thrusters. After more than a week of testing which saw each thruster individually and meticulously put through its paces, the intrepid explorer is now one step closer to reaching the innermost planet of the Solar System.

BepiColombo left Earth on 20 October 2018, and after the first few critical days in space and the initial weeks of in-orbit commissioning, its Mercury Transfer Module (MTM) is now revving up the high-tech ion thrusters.

The most powerful and high-performance electric propulsion system ever flown, these electric blue thrusters had not been tested in space until now.

Twin ion thrusters firing

It is these glowing power-packs that will propel the two science orbiters – the Mercury Planetary Orbiter and Mercury Magnetospheric Orbiter – on the seven-year cruise to the least explored planet of the inner Solar System.

“Electric propulsion technology is very novel and extremely delicate,” explains Elsa Montagnon, Spacecraft Operations Manager for BepiColombo.

“This means BepiColombo’s four thrusters had to be thoroughly checked following the launch, by slowly turning each on, one by one, and closely monitoring their functioning and effect on the spacecraft.”

Testing took place during a unique window, in which BepiColombo remained in continuous view of ground-based antennas and communications between the spacecraft and those controlling it could be constantly maintained.

BepiColombo images high-gain antenna

This was the only chance to check in detail the functioning of this fundamental part of the spacecraft, as when routine firing begins in mid-December, the position of the spacecraft will mean its antennas will not be pointing at Earth, making it less visible to operators at mission control.

The first fire

On 20 November at 11:33 UTC (12:33 CET), the first of BepiColombo’s thrusters entered Thrust Mode with a force of 75 mN (millinewtons). With this BepiColombo was firing in space for the very first time.

Three hours later, the newly awakened thruster was really put through its paces as commands from mission control directed it to go full throttle, ramping up to 125mN – equivalent to holding an AAA battery at sea level.

This may not sound like much, but this thruster was now working at the maximum thrust planned to be used during the life of the mission.

ESA Malargüe tracking station

Thrust mode was maintained for five hours before BepiColombo transitioned back to Normal Mode. The entire time, ESA’s Malargüe antenna in Argentina was in communication with the now glowing blue spacecraft – the colour of the plasma generated by the thruster as it burned through the xenon propellant.

These steps were then repeated for each of the other three thrusters over the next days, having only a tiny effect on BepiColombo’s overall trajectory.

The small effects that were observed allowed the Flight Dynamics team to assess the thruster performance in precise detail: analysis of the first two firings reveals that the spacecraft was performing within 2% of its expected value. Analysis of the last two firings is ongoing.

Animation visualising BepiColombo’s journey to Mercury

“To see the thrusters working for the first time in space was an exciting moment and a big relief. BepiColombo’s seven year trip to Mercury will include 22 ion thrust arcs – and we absolutely need healthy and well performing thrusters for this long trip,” explains Paolo Ferri, ESA’s Head of Operations.

“Each thruster burn arc will last for extended periods of up to two months, providing the same acceleration from less fuel compared to traditional, high-energy chemical burns that last for minutes or hours.”

During each long-duration burn the engines do take eight hour pauses, once a week, to allow the ground to perform navigation measurements in quiet dynamic conditions.

The first routine electric propulsion thrust arc will begin in mid-December, steering BepiColombo on its interplanetary trajectory and optimising its orbit ahead of its swing-by of Earth in April 2020.

BepiColombo Earth flyby

Travelling some nine billion kilometers in total, BepiColombo will take nine flybys at Earth, Venus and Mercury, looping around the Sun 18 times.

By late 2025 the transfer module’s work will be done: it will separate, allowing the two science orbiters to be captured by Mercury’s gravity, studying the planet and its environment, along with its interaction with the solar wind, from complementary orbits.

"We put our trust in the thrusters and they have not let us down. We are now on our way to Mercury with electro-mobility,” concludes Günther Hasinger, ESA Director of Science.

“This brings us an important step closer to unlocking the secrets of the mysterious innermost planet and ultimately, the formation of our Solar System.”

Follow ESA Operations on twitter for updates on BepiColombo’s journey, as well as the latest from ESA’s mission control.

Related links:

BepiColombo: http://www.esa.int/Our_Activities/Space_Science/BepiColombo

BepiColombo operations: http://www.esa.int/Our_Activities/Operations/BepiColombo_operations

Images, Video, Text, Credits: ESA/D. Pazos/ATG medialab/NASA/JPL/QinetiQ/BepiColombo/MTM , CC BY-SA 3.0 IGO.

Best regards, Orbiter.ch

Copernicus Sentinel-5P ozone boosts daily forecasts

ESA - Sentinel-5p Mission logo.

5 December 2018

Measurements of atmospheric ozone from the Copernicus Sentinel-5P satellite are now being used in daily forecasts of air quality.

Launched in October 2017, Copernicus Sentinel-5P – short for Sentinel-5 Precursor – is the first Copernicus satellite dedicated to monitoring our atmosphere. It is part of the fleet of Copernicus Sentinel missions that ESA develops for the European Union’s environmental monitoring programme.

Ozone from Sentinel-5P

The satellite carries an advanced multispectral imaging spectrometer called Tropomi. It detects the unique fingerprints of atmospheric gases in different parts of the electromagnetic spectrum to image a wide range of pollutants more accurately and at a higher spatial resolution than ever before.

And, sooner than expected, the Copernicus Atmosphere Monitoring Service (CAMS), which is implemented by the European Centre for Medium-Range Weather Forecasts (ECMWF) on behalf of the European Union, is now including near-realtime Sentinel-5P ozone data in their daily analysis and forecast system.

Ozone is both good and bad, depending on where it is.

High up in the stratosphere, ozone is important because it protects life on Earth from the Sun’s harmful rays of ultraviolet radiation.

But lower down in the atmosphere, ozone is an air pollutant – the main ingredient of urban smog. It can cause breathing difficulties and also damage vegetation.

Before CAMS took the decision to start including the new Copernicus Sentinel-5P ozone data in their forecast system, the data had to be monitored and tested very carefully.

Ozone cross section

Since the data first became available in July, CAMS has been using them in research experiments parallel to their operational system. This allowed any teething problems to be solved.

Deemed good, the data were then included passively into the operational system so that differences between the forecast model and actual observations could be calculated.

CAMS senior scientist, Antje Inness, explained, “First, a lot of technical work is needed to include new data in the processing chain at ECMWF.

“Then the scientific work starts. We monitor the data passively and work with the team at the German Aerospace Centre, DLR, to solve any problems.

“Finally, the assimilation of the data can begin, and the data now influence the CAMS forecasts.”

Ozone hole in motion

Head of the service, Vincent-Henri Peuch, added, “Soon after Copernicus Sentinel-5P was launched in late 2017 we started monitoring the total column near-realtime ozone data in research experiments, and since July in our operational system.

“This has shown that the data are good quality and we are now starting to use them actively in our system.”

ESA’s mission manager for Copernicus Sentinel-5P, Claus Zehner, noted, “The uptake of these first data products into CAMS is a really important milestone – we couldn’t be happier.”

CAMS is also routinely monitoring the mission’s nitrogen dioxide and carbon monoxide data, which also look promising for uptake in the near future.

Air quality monitoring for Copernicus (Sentinel-5p)

The Copernicus Sentinel-5P mission not only offers unprecedented accuracy, but also its 2600 km-wide swath allows the entire planet to be mapped every 24 hours.

All of the mission’s measurements of atmospheric gases and aerosols are ‘column data’, which means they cover the full depth of the atmosphere.

Related links:

Copernicus Atmosphere Monitoring Service (CAMS): http://atmosphere.copernicus.eu/

ECMWF: https://www.ecmwf.int/

DLR: http://www.dlr.de/dlr;internal&action=_setlanguage.action?LANGUAGE=en

Netherlands Space Office: http://www.spaceoffice.nl/en/

Royal Netherlands Meteorological Institute: http://www.knmi.nl/over-het-knmi/about

Sentinel-5P: http://www.esa.int/Our_Activities/Observing_the_Earth/Copernicus/Sentinel-5P

Copernicus: http://www.esa.int/Our_Activities/Observing_the_Earth/Copernicus

Image, Videos, Text, Credits: ESA/ATG medialab/Contains modified Copernicus Sentinel data (2018), processed by DLR/BIRA/CAMS/ECMWF.

Greetings, Orbiter.ch

Flight VA246: Ariane 5 lifts off from French Guiana

ARIANESPACE - Flight VA246 Mission poster.

December 4, 2018

Ariane 5 delivers for two special Arianespace partners: the space agencies of India and South Korea

Flight VA246 lift off

Arianespace’s 10th mission of 2018 orbited satellite payloads today for the Indian Space Research Organisation (ISRO) and the Korea Aerospace Research Institute (KARI), using the workhorse Ariane 5 ECA launch vehicle from Ariane Launch Complex No. 3 (ELA 3) at Guiana Space Centre in Kourou, French Guiana, on 4 December 2018, at 20:37 UTC (17:37 Guiana time).

Successful Mission Arianespace Flight VA246– GSAT-11 and GEO-KOMPSAT-2A

Designated Flight VA246 in Arianespace’s launcher family numbering system, it delivered the ISRO GSAT-11 relay platform for Ku- and Ka-band communications, along with KARI’s GEO-KOMPSAT-2A – which is to provide meteorological and space weather monitoring data.

“I want to express my deepest gratitude to two very special partners since the beginning of their space ambitions: ISRO and KARI,” said Arianespace CEO Stéphane Israël in post-launch comments from the Spaceport.

Continuing the long relationship with India’s ISRO

GSAT-11

Israël noted that GSAT-11 was the 22nd ISRO satellite orbited by Arianespace and Ariane-series launchers, tracing the relationship back to India’s APPLE small experimental communications spacecraft, which had a liftoff mass of 670-kg. and was lofted in 1981 by an Ariane 1 version. On today’s Ariane 5 mission, GSAT-11 weighed in at 5,854.6 kg. – the largest and heaviest satellite ever built by the Indian space agency.

GSAT-11 and GEO-KOMPSAT-2A satellites separation

Deployed first during Ariane 5’s 33-minute mission to geostationary transfer orbit, GSAT-11 will be positioned at 74 deg. East, providing communications services in Ku- and Ka-bands in both forward and return links. The satellite was designed and manufactured by ISRO, with its multi-spot beam coverage over the Indian mainland and nearby islands to bring significant advantages to users when compared with existing India’s INSAT/GSAT satellite systems. GSAT-11’s design lifetime is more than 15 years.

South Korea’s seventh satellite orbited by Arianespace

GEO-KOMPSAT-2A was carried in Ariane 5’s lower payload position and released second in the sequence for Flight VA246. Developed by KARI at its South Korean facility in Daejeon, this 3,507.2-kg. satellite will deliver meteorological and space weather monitoring from an orbital position of 128.2 deg. East as part of a Korean government national program.

GEO-KOMPSAT-2A

“Arianespace is proud to maintain such a close bond with South Korea,” Israël stated, adding that Flight VA246 marked the seventh time South Korea’s flag has appeared on the fairing of an Arianespace launch vehicle.

Image above: This close-up photo shows the Ariane 5 payload fairing logos for Flight VA246’s GSAT-11 and GEO-KOMPSAT-2A passengers, along with a decal for the Community of Ariane Cities and Les Mureaux.

In addition to the Ariane 5’s payload fairing logos representing Flight VA246’s two satellite passengers, also included was a decal recognizing the French city of Les Mureaux – home to the ArianeGroup site responsible for integration of Ariane 5 cryogenic main stages today, and for Ariane 6 launchers in the future. Les Mureaux is completing its year-long presidency for the Community of Ariane Cities, a non-profit association that brings together cities and their industrial companies involved in the Ariane program.

For more information about Arianespace, visit: http://www.arianespace.com/

For more information about ISRO, visit: https://www.isro.gov.in/

For more information about KARI, visit: https://www.kari.re.kr/eng.do

Images, Videos, Text, Credits: ARIANESPACE/ISRO/KARI/SciNews.

Best regards, Orbiter.ch

ESA subjects artifical-intelligence chip to tests at CERN

CERN - European Organization for Nuclear Research logo.

4 December, 2018

Intel’s new Myriad 2 chip underwent tests at the SPS accelerator to simulate conditions experienced in space 

The Myriad 2 chip (Image: Maximilien Brice/CERN)

An ESA-led team subjected Intel’s new Myriad 2 artificial intelligence (AI) chip to one of the most energetic radiation beams available on Earth: the lead-ion beam delivered by CERN’s Super Proton Synchrotron (SPS) accelerator.

The Myriad 2 harnesses artificial intelligence for high-performance, low-power vision processing. It can be pre-trained with data to recognise particular features and patterns or perform in-depth 3D sensing. ESA engineers are interested in harnessing the Myriad 2 to perform in-orbit image processing on future space missions, reducing the amount of data that needs to be sent back to Earth.

“AI is a way of boosting the performance of any system with a camera in the loop,” explains ESA on-board computer engineer Gianluca Furano. “By autonomously figuring out the distance of an object from a camera and how fast it is moving it can take many more and better images. This also offers a means of enhancing guidance, navigation and control – for instance to capture drifting items of space debris.

“And it could let us overcome the performance bottleneck faced by imaging instruments on CubeSats and other small satellites. Low data-downlink bandwidth due to a small antenna size and limited power levels stops us accessing all the imagery we could acquire. The Myriad 2 requires less than a watt of power, and would also let instruments identify features of interest autonomously – for instance, spotting sudden flood events or forest fires, then realising these need to be sent down to the ground.”

The chip being installed for tests at CERN’s SPS (Image: Maximilien Brice/CERN)

Like all candidate hardware to be flown in space, it first needs to be tested against radiation: space is riddled with charged particles from the Sun and further out in the cosmos. CERN provided the most intense beam of ultra-high-energy heavy ions available – short of travelling into orbit. This was made possible under CERN’s R2E (Radiation to Electronics) project and in anticipation of a collaboration between CERN and ESA on matters of radiation environments, technologies and facilities. This collaboration will help explore the potential of CERN technologies and facilities for aerospace applications. CERN has also been collaborating with Intel, through a public-private partnership known as CERN openlab, since 2001.

ESA put chips in a path of an experimental beamline fed by the SPS, CERN’s second largest accelerator, which is located in a circular tunnel nearly 7 km in circumference. The heavy ions from the SPS have a high penetration capability, thus enabling the in-depth test of complex packaged electronic systems, very difficult to test in other irradiation facilities.

ESA TEAM TESTS NEW INTEL CHIP AT CERN, MYRIAD2

Video above: The Myriad 2 chip undergoes tests at CERN (Video: Jacques Fichet/CERN).

The team donned hard hats and ventured into a ground floor ‘cave’ surrounded by protective concrete blocks to place items in the beam path, retreating upstairs before the beam was fired. The results are now under study.

ESA is studying various space uses for the Myriad 2 chip as well as uses for maritime vessel recognition, based on the on-board integration of ‘Automatic Identification System’ signals from ships. Several other users from the aerospace community ran parallel tests in CERN’s North Area to use the unique characteristics of the SPS beam to simulate highly energetic galactic cosmic rays for calibrating scientific instruments or testing equipment capability to cope with the harsh environment of deep space.

This piece is adapted from a longer article originally published on the ESA website: https://www.esa.int/Our_Activities/Space_Engineering_Technology/ESA_team_blasts_Intel_s_new_AI_chip_with_radiation_at_CERN

See more photos of the tests on CDS: https://cds.cern.ch/record/2647358

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 22 Member States.

Related links:

European Space Agency (ESA): https://www.esa.int/

Myriad 2: https://www.movidius.com/myriad2

CubeSats: http://www.esa.int/Our_Activities/Space_Engineering_Technology/Technology_CubeSats

Super Proton Synchrotron (SPS): https://home.cern/science/accelerators/super-proton-synchrotron

CERN openlab: https://openlab.cern/

For more information about European Organization for Nuclear Research (CERN), Visit: https://home.cern/

Images (mentioned), Video (mentioned), Text, Credit:  European Organization for Nuclear Research (CERN).

Greetings, Orbiter.ch

Galileo satellites prove Einstein's Relativity Theory to highest accuracy yet

ESA - Galileo Programme logo.

4 December 2018

Europe’s Galileo satellite navigation system – already serving users globally – has now provided a historic service to the physics community worldwide, enabling the most accurate measurement ever made of how shifts in gravity alter the passing of time, a key element of Einstein’s Theory of General Relativity.

Galileos measure Einsteinian time dilation

Two European fundamental physics teams working in parallel have independently achieved about a fivefold improvement in measuring accuracy of the gravity-driven time dilation effect known as ‘gravitational redshift’.

The prestigious Physical Review Letters journal has just published the independent results obtained from both consortiums, gathered from more than a thousand days of data obtained from the pair of Galileo satellites in elongated orbits.

 “It is hugely satisfying for ESA to see that our original expectation that such results might be theoretically possible have now been borne out in practical terms, providing the first reported improvement of the gravitational redshift test for more than 40 years,” comments Javier Ventura-Traveset, Head of ESA’s Galileo Navigation Science Office.

Time shift in billionths of a second

“These extraordinary results have been made possible thanks to the unique features of the Galileo satellites, notably the very high stabilities of their onboard atomic clocks, the accuracies attainable in their orbit determination and the presence of laser-retroreflectors, which allow for the performance of independent and very precise orbit measurements from the ground, key to disentangle clock and orbit errors.”

 These parallel research activities, known as GREAT (Galileo gravitational Redshift Experiment with eccentric sATellites), were led respectively by the SYRTE Observatoire de Paris in France and Germany’s ZARM Center of Applied Space Technology and Microgravity, coordinated by ESA’s Galileo Navigation Science Office and supported through its Basic Activities.

Happy results from an unhappy accident

These findings are the happy outcome of an unhappy accident: back in 2014 Galileo satellites 5 and 6 were stranded in incorrect orbits by a malfunctioning Soyuz upper stage, blocking their use for navigation. ESA flight controllers moved into action, performing a daring salvage in space to raise the low points of the satellites’ orbits and make them more circular.

Incorrect orbits

Once the satellites achieved views of the whole Earth disc their antennas could be locked on their homeworld and their navigation payloads could indeed be switched on. The satellites are today in use as part of Galileo search and rescue services while their integration as part of nominal Galileo operations is currently under final assessment by ESA and the European Commission.

However, their orbits remain elliptical, with each satellite climbing and falling some 8500 km twice per day. It was these regular shifts in height, and therefore gravity levels, which made the satellites so valuable to the research teams.

Reenacting Einstein’s prediction

Albert Einstein predicted a century ago that time would pass more slowly close to a massive object, a finding that has since been verified experimentally several times – most significantly in 1976 when a hydrogen maser atomic clock on the Gravity Probe-A suborbital rocket was launched 10 000 km into space, confirming Einstein’s prediction to within 140 parts per million.

Albert Einstein

In fact, atomic clocks aboard navigation satellites must already take into account the fact that they run faster up in orbit than down on the ground – amounting to a few tenths of a microsecond per day, which would result in navigation errors of around 10 km daily, if uncorrected.

The two teams relied upon the stable timekeeping of the passive hydrogen maser (PHM) clocks aboard each Galileo – stable to one second in three million years – and kept from drifting by the worldwide Galileo ground segment.

“The fact that the Galileo satellites carry passive hydrogen maser clocks, was essential for the attainable accuracy of these tests,” noted Sven Hermann at the University of Bremen’s ZARM Center of Applied Space Technology and Microgravity.

Gravity Probe A

“While every Galileo satellite carries two rubidium and two hydrogen maser clocks, only one of them is the active transmission clock. During our period of observation, we focus then on the periods of time when the satellites were transmitting with PHM clocks and assess the quality of these precious data very carefully. Ongoing improvements in the processing and in particular in the modelling of the clocks, might lead to tightened results in the future.”

Refining the results

A key challenge over three years of work was to refine the gravitational redshift measurements by eliminating systematic effects such as clock error and orbital drift due to factors such as Earth’s equatorial bulge, the influence of Earth’s magnetic field, temperature variations and even the subtle but persistent push of sunlight itself, known as ‘solar radiation pressure’.

Day of Galileo observations

“Careful and conservative modelling and control of these systematic errors has been essential, with stabilities down to four picoseconds over the 13 hours orbital period of the satellites; this is four millionth of one millionth of a second,” Pacôme Delva of SYRTE Observatoire de Paris.

“This required the support of many experts, with notably the expertise of ESA thanks to their knowledge of the Galileo system.”

Passive Hydrogen Maser atomic clock

Precise satellite tracking was enabled by the International Laser Ranging Service, shining lasers up to the Galileos’ retro-reflectors for centimetre-scale orbital checks.

Laser ranging station

Major support was also received from the Navigation Support Office based at ESA's ESOC operations centre in Germany, whose experts generated the reference stable clock and orbit products for the two Galileo eccentric satellites and also determined the residual errors of the orbits after the laser measurements.

Related article:

Salvaged Galileos to help satnav specialists find their way
https://orbiterchspacenews.blogspot.com/2016/08/salvaged-galileos-to-help-satnav.html

Related links:

Physical Review Letters: https://journals.aps.org/prl/highlights

SYRTE Observatoire de Paris: https://syrte.obspm.fr/

ZARM Center of Applied Space Technology and Microgravity: https://zarm.uni-bremen.de/en/

International Laser Ranging Service: https://ilrs.cddis.eosdis.nasa.gov/

Navigation Support Office: http://www.esa.int/Our_Activities/Operations/gse/ESA_Navigation_Support_Office

Navigation: http://www.esa.int/Our_Activities/Navigation

Galileo: http://www.esa.int/Our_Activities/Navigation/Galileo

Images, Text, Credits: ESA/P. Carril/Wikimedia Commons/G. Porter/ESOC Navigation Support Office/Dr Erik Schoenemann/Dr Javier Ventura-Traveset/ZARM Center of Applied Space Technology and Microgravity/Dr Sven Hermann.

Best regards, Orbiter.ch

Dragon Launch Slips One Day as New Crew Moves In

ISS - Expedition 57 Mission patch.

December 4, 2018

The launch of the SpaceX Dragon cargo vessel slipped one day to Wednesday at 1:16 p.m. EST with meteorologists forecasting 90% favorable weather for launch. Meanwhile, the newest crew members aboard the International Space Station are getting used to their new home in space.

Image above: Expedition 57 Commander Alexander Gerst of ESA (European Space Agency) peers out the International Space Station’s “window to the world,” the seven-windowed cupola. Just outside the cupola are two spacecraft including the Soyuz MS-09 crew craft and Northrop Grumman’s Cygnus cargo craft with one of its cymbal-shaped UltraFlex solar arrays featuring prominently in the frame. Image Credit: NASA.

Dragon’s 16th mission to the orbital lab will deliver almost 5,700 pounds of science, crew supplies and hardware. The commercial space freighter is due to arrive at the station Saturday when astronauts Alexander Gerst and Serena Auñón-Chancellor will command the Canadarm2 to grapple Dragon around 6 a.m.

New station crew members Oleg Kononenko, Anne McClain and David Saint-Jacques are in their second day aboard the station. The trio are familiarizing themselves with station systems and safety procedures today. They began their mission Monday when they launched aboard the Soyuz MS-11 spacecraft at 6:31 a.m. and docked just six hours and two minutes later to the Poisk module. The new crew will stay in space until June.

Image above: Sunrise over Austral Ocean, seen by EarthCam on ISS, speed: 27'558 Km/h, altitude: 404,19 Km, image captured by Roland Berga (on Earth in Switzerland) from International Space Station (ISS) using ISS-HD Live application with EarthCam's from ISS on December 4, 2018 at 18:35 UTC. Image Credits: Orbiter.ch Aerospace/Roland Berga.

Expedition 57 Commander Alexander Gerst is getting for his return to Earth on Dec. 20 and began packing his personal items today. He’ll wrap up his mission with Flight Engineers Serena Auñón-Chancellor and Sergey Prokopyev and land in Kazakhstan inside the Soyuz MS-09 crew ship after six-and-a-half months in space.

Related links:

Expedition 57: https://www.nasa.gov/mission_pages/station/expeditions/expedition57/index.html

SpaceX Dragon: https://www.nasa.gov/spacex

Space Station Research and Technology: https://www.nasa.gov/mission_pages/station/research/index.html

International Space Station (ISS): https://www.nasa.gov/mission_pages/station/main/index.html

Images (mentioned), Text, Credits: NASA/Marck Garcia/Orbiter.ch Aerospace/Roland Berga.

Best regards, Orbiter.ch