Parking in a pandemic

ESA - Sentinel-2 Mission logo.

June 9, 2020

Parked aircraft

The coronavirus pandemic has brought the tourism and travel industry to a near-standstill, with nationwide lockdowns significantly impacting the aviation and maritime industry worldwide. Satellite images, captured by the Copernicus Sentinel-2 mission, show parked aircraft and anchored vessels in times of COVID-19.

Global aviation is facing its battle to survive, with most flights grounded since March owing to travel restrictions in place to contain the coronavirus pandemic. According to aviation industry researcher Cirium, the number of passenger jets in service is the lowest it has been in 26 years.

Parked planes

Managing large-scale storage poses a challenge for the industry, as airlines hunt for space on the ground for storage facilities. Taxiways, hangers and even runways at major airports around the world are being transformed into parking spaces for planes. These images captured by the Copernicus Sentinel-2 mission show the numerous parked planes on runways – even in remote airports such as Alice Springs in Australia.

Airport storage facilities are sometimes referred to as ‘boneyards’ owing to airlines sending retired aircraft to the desert. These boneyards are often located in dry and arid places as the climate means planes can be preserved in excellent condition before returning to service or being reused.

Teruel Airport in the Aragon province in Spain was built with this purpose in mind. According to a recent report in Reuters, the airport is hosting around 100 aircraft and the number of planes arriving per week to be parked in the airport has doubled since the start of the global pandemic.

Sentinel-2

Another sector heavily affected by the pandemic is the cruise ship industry. Major cruise lines have suspended operations to mitigate the spread of COVID-19. Cruise ship operators around the world have struggled to find open ports to disembark, while some were forced to stay anchored at sea for an extended period of time.

Manila Bay, in the Philippines, has been transformed into a parking lot for cruise ships. In this animation, around 20 vessels can be seen anchored off the coast of Manila Bay. Captured by the Copernicus Sentinel-2 mission, this animation contains a sequence of images captured on 22 April, 2 May and 22 May 2020.

Vessels docked in Manila Bay

According to Reuters, the cruise ships have been asked to wait in the Manila Bay anchorage area with hundreds of seafarers remaining on board awaiting clearance in order to return home. The famous Diamond Princess and Ruby Princess vessels are said to be among the fleet.

In order to learn more about space applications and the socio-economic impact of COVID-19, ESA and the European Commission recently unveiled the new ‘Rapid Action Coronavirus Earth observation’ dashboard, also known as RACE. The platform uses Earth observation satellite data to measure the impact of the coronavirus lockdown worldwide, and monitor post-lockdown recovery.

About the Copernicus Sentinels

The Copernicus Sentinels are a fleet of dedicated EU-owned satellites, designed to deliver the wealth of data and imagery that are central to the European Union's Copernicus environmental programme. The European Commission leads and coordinates this programme, to improve the management of the environment, safeguarding lives every day. ESA is in charge of the space component, responsible for developing the family of Copernicus Sentinel satellites on behalf of the European Union and ensuring the flow of data for the Copernicus services, while the operations of the Copernicus Sentinels have been entrusted to ESA and EUMETSAT.

Related article:

Planes have disappeared from the European sky
https://orbiterchspacenews.blogspot.com/2020/04/planes-have-disappeared-from-european.html

Related links:

Rapid Action Coronavirus Earth observation (RACE): https://race.esa.int/

Sentinel-2: http://www.esa.int/Applications/Observing_the_Earth/Copernicus/Sentinel-2/

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

Cirium: https://www.cirium.com/thoughtcloud/tracking-the-in-storage-fleet-at-a-time-of-uncertainty/

Reuters: https://www.reuters.com/article/us-health-coronavirus-spain-planes/the-planes-in-spain-parked-neatly-on-the-plain-idUSKBN22O21M

Reuters: https://graphics.reuters.com/HEALTH-CORONAVIRUS/PHILIPPINES-CRUISESHIPS/xegvbkeaqpq/index.html?utm_source=twitter&utm_medium=Social

Images, Animation, Text, Credits: ESA/Pixabay/Contains modified Copernicus Sentinel data (2020), processed by ESA, CC BY-SA 3.0 IGO.

Greetings, Orbiter.ch

Three New Views of Mars' Moon Phobos

NASA - 2001 Mars Odyssey Mission patch.

June 8, 2020

Taken with the infrared camera on NASA's Odyssey orbiter, the images reveal temperature variations aboard the small moon as it drifts into and out of Mars' shadow.

Image above: Six views of the Martian moon Phobos captured by NASA's Odyssey orbiter as of March 2020. The orbiter's THEMIS camera is used to measure temperature variations that suggest what kind of material the moon is made of. Image Credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech/ASU/NAU.

Three new views of the Martian moon Phobos have been captured by NASA's Odyssey orbiter. Taken this past winter and this spring, they capture the moon as it drifts into and out of Mars' shadow.

The orbiter's infrared camera, the Thermal Emission Imaging System (THEMIS), has been used to measure temperature variations across the surface of Phobos that provide insight into the composition and physical properties of the moon. Further study could help settle a debate over whether Phobos, which is about 16 miles (25 kilometers) across, is a captured asteroid or an ancient chunk of Mars that was blasted off the surface by an impact.

Led by NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Southern California, Odyssey's mission is mostly dedicated to studying the Martian surface. But in recent years, a process has been developed to flip the spacecraft upside-down so it can point its camera at Phobos.

Taken with the infrared camera on NASA's Odyssey orbiter, the images reveal temperature variations aboard the small moon as it drifts into and out of Mars' shadow.

Three new views of the Martian moon Phobos have been captured by NASA's Odyssey orbiter. Taken this past winter and this spring, they capture the moon as it drifts into and out of Mars' shadow.

The orbiter's infrared camera, the Thermal Emission Imaging System (THEMIS), has been used to measure temperature variations across the surface of Phobos that provide insight into the composition and physical properties of the moon. Further study could help settle a debate over whether Phobos, which is about 16 miles (25 kilometers) across, is a captured asteroid or an ancient chunk of Mars that was blasted off the surface by an impact.

NASA's Odyssey orbiter. Image Credits: NASA/JPL-Caltech

Led by NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Southern California, Odyssey's mission is mostly dedicated to studying the Martian surface. But in recent years, a process has been developed to flip the spacecraft upside-down so it can point its camera at Phobos.

View Phobos, one of Mars' two moons, using NASA's Eyes on the Solar System:
https://eyes.nasa.gov/apps/orrery/#/home

Among the three new images, the one taken Dec. 9, 2019, shows Phobos in full-moon phase, when more of the surface is exposed to sunlight, with a maximum temperature of 81 degrees Fahrenheit (27 degrees Celsius). An image taken Feb. 25, 2020, shows Phobos while in eclipse, where Mars' shadow completely blocked sunlight from reaching the moon's surface.This provided some of the coldest temperatures measured on Phobos to date, with the lowest being about minus 189 degrees Fahrenheit (minus 123 degrees Celsius). On March 27, 2020, Phobos was observed exiting an eclipse, when the surface was still warming up.

All of the THEMIS infrared images are colorized to show temperature variations and are overlain on THEMIS visible-light images taken at the same time to show the geology of the surface. The one exception is the eclipse image, which is computer-generated and shows what Phobos would have looked like if it wasn't in complete shadow.

Combined with three previous images, these observations represent waxing, waning and full views of the moon. The Odyssey team plans to observe crescent phases in coming months, providing a comprehensive view of how Phobos' surface warms and cools as it rotates.

Image above: These three views of the Martian moon Phobos were taken by NASA's 2001 Mars Odyssey orbiter using its infrared camera, THEMIS. Each color represents a different temperature range. Image Credits: NASA/JPL-Caltech/ASU/SSI.

"We're seeing that the surface of Phobos is relatively uniform and made up of very fine-grained materials," said Christopher Edwards of Northern Arizona University in Flagstaff, who leads the processing and analysis of the Phobos images. "These observations are also helping to characterize the composition of Phobos. Future observations will provide a more complete picture of the temperature extremes on the moon's surface."

Odyssey has been orbiting Mars since 2001. It takes thousands of images of the Martian surface each month, many of which help scientists select landing sites for future missions. One of the sites Odyssey captured pictures of is Jezero Crater, the landing site for NASA's Perseverance rover, which launches to Mars this summer. Odyssey also serves an important role relaying commands and data for Mars' newest inhabitant, NASA's InSight lander.

THEMIS was built and is operated by Arizona State University in Tempe. The prime contractor for the Odyssey project, Lockheed Martin Space in Denver, developed and built the orbiter. Mission operations are conducted jointly from Lockheed Martin and from JPL, a division of Caltech in Pasadena.

More about Odyssey:

https://mars.nasa.gov/odyssey/

https://www.nasa.gov/mission_pages/odyssey/index.html

Thermal Emission Imaging System (THEMIS): https://mars.nasa.gov/odyssey/mission/instruments/themis/

Images (mentioned), Text, Credits: NASA/Grey Hautaluoma/Alana Johnson/JPL/Andrew Good.

Greetings, Orbiter.ch

Crew Starts Week on Communications Gear and Orbital Plumbing

ISS - Expedition 63 Mission patch.

June 8, 2020

The five-member Expedition 63 crew aboard the International Space Station started the workweek servicing a variety of communications gear. The quintet also worked on spacewalk gear, orbital plumbing and microgravity research.

NASA Commander Chris Cassidy started Monday working in the Japanese Kibo laboratory module. The veteran astronaut disconnected and removed an HDTV camera from Kibo’s airlock that filmed activities outside of the orbiting lab.

Image above: Expedition 63 Commander Chris Cassidy is pictured setting up a space bubbles experiment seeking ways to provide oxygen for a spacecraft or deliver drugs through a skin patch. Image Credit: NASA.

During the afternoon, he and fellow NASA astronauts Doug Hurley and Bob Behnken worked in the station’s bathroom checking drain valves and recycle tanks. Located in the Tranquility module, the Waste and Hygiene Compartment also recycles urine into drinking water.

Hurley and Behnken started the morning unpacking more cargo from inside Japan’s H-II Transfer Vehicle-9 (HTV-9). After the space plumbing work, the pair set up the U.S. Quest airlock and began organizing hardware to get ready for upcoming spacewalks.

International Space Station (ISS). Animation Credit: NASA

In the Russian segment of the space station, cosmonauts Anatoly Ivanishin and Ivan Vagner inspected headsets and cables and updated communications inventory. The duo split up in the afternoon taking pictures of the Earth and studying the station’s magnetic environment.

Related links:

Expedition 63: https://www.nasa.gov/mission_pages/station/expeditions/expedition63/index.html

Commercial Crew Program: http://www.nasa.gov/commercialcrew

Space bubbles experiment: https://www.nasa.gov/mission_pages/station/research/experiments/explorer/Investigation.html?#id=1939

Kibo laboratory module: https://www.nasa.gov/mission_pages/station/structure/elements/japan-kibo-laboratory

Tranquility module: https://www.nasa.gov/mission_pages/station/structure/elements/tranquility/

H-II Transfer Vehicle-9 (HTV-9): https://www.nasa.gov/feature/kounotori-htv-launches-arrivals-and-departures

U.S. Quest airlock: https://www.nasa.gov/mission_pages/station/structure/elements/joint-quest-airlock

Pictures of the Earth: https://www.energia.ru/en/iss/researches/study/09.html

Magnetic environment: https://www.energia.ru/en/iss/researches/develop/11.html

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

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

Image (mentioned), Animation (mentioned), Text, Credits: NASA/Mark Garcia.

Greetings, Orbiter.ch

Stable foams and unstable muscles – a month of European Space Station science

ISS - International Space Station logo.

June 8, 2020

European experiments have been looking at how human muscles react to living in weightlessness or used the lack of gravity’s pull to investigate foams. A recap of the European science run on the International Space Station in May.

Low Sun on the horizon

The Myotones experiment is testing the biomechanical properties of astronauts’ muscles and tendons and how they change during their time in space. The hypothesis is that muscles generally used for posture on Earth will relax more in weightlessness as they are not needed when floating around the Space Station. The experiment uses a novel device called MyotonPro that quickly measures muscle stiffness by emitting a painless pressure pulse and recording how the tissue responds.

Myotones: Measurement of muscle atrophy on the ISS

NASA astronaut Chris Cassidy collected the equipment and Roscosmos cosmonaut Anatoly Ivanishin measured Chris’ muscles and drew a sample of his blood on 20 May. This was the second session in space for Myotones, with Chris doing a third in three months as researchers want to measure any changes over time. This experiment will help prepare for even longer space missions while keeping astronauts healthy but will also help understand muscular diseases back on Earth. The European Physiology Module inside the Columbus laboratory supports Myotones and results were sent to CADMOS ground control in Toulouse, France, at the end of the session.

Five bubble result

The Foam-Coarsening experiment ran throughout May with new experiment cartridges. Foams have huge benefits on Earth as they are lighter, offer better insulation and can be just as strong as compact materials. Foams are also a staple in our food and drink, but they collapse quickly on Earth under pressure from gravity. Researching foams in space offers more stability to examine the finer points of their existence.

Foam-Coarsening experiment

The foams come contained in cells and bubbles are generated by moving a piston at high speed in a mixture of water and soap. The foam is observed for up to 100 hours, during which the foam bubbles become larger but less in number. This process slows down over time so measurements are stopped when five bubbles are formed in each cell section. The results are analysed with laser optics and high-resolution cameras. A second batch of Foams cartridges ran with Chris swapping containers out as needed and a quick reset of the video unit.

Sunlight and spacecraft

The Atmosphere-Space Interactions Monitor, ASIM, continues to observe lightning from above. Many unseen things are happening above our heads, from gamma ray bursts to elves and sprites and the space-based thunderstorm-hunter outside Columbus monitors Earth at all times, with some exceptions. When spacecraft arrive or leave the Space Station, ASIM is switched off so the sensitive instruments do not get damaged by their bright navigation lights. When the Sun is too low on the horizon its light can saturate ASIM’s sensors too.

Waiting for thunderstorms

ASIM operated in reduced modes for a few days around the departure of Cygnus and the arrival of the Japanese HTV-9 cargo craft and due to the Sun’s “beta angle”. These operations are controlled  from Brussels, Belgium, by the Belgian User Operations Centre.

HTV-9 approaches the International Space Station

The new arrivals that caused ASIM to turn off bought vital supplies and equipment for the astronauts and international partners that run the Space Station. For ESA highlights include a new European Drawer Rack on HTV-9, and replacement LAN cables on the first crewed Dragon spacecraft.

Coding complete

The educational miniature computers Astro Pi were running student-developed code last month and took 128 017 images, totalling 168 gigabytes of data downloaded. Both challenges for this season have now been completed and it is time for the students to analyse the results. The European Astro Pi Challenge is a school project gives young people the opportunity to write programmes that run on Raspberry Pi computers on the International Space Station.

Meanwhile in the background…

A number of experiments ran continuously in the background without much need for astronaut intervention or commands from ground control. A simple sounding experiment called CANES is storing grape vines in the Station’s freezer to determine whether ligneous plants could be grown in space. It could also lead to the discovery of new biologically-active products that would be of interest to the food, pharmaceutical and cosmetic industries.

Dosis radiation monitor

A number of radiation detectors dotted around the Station are recording levels of cosmic rays to create a map of these harmful rays and help design more radiation-resistant spacecraft of the future. Meanwhile the MATISS-2.5 sample containers are testing water resistant surfaces to see if they offer anti-bacterial properties.

Related links:

Atmosphere-Space Interactions Monitor (ASIM): https://www.esa.int/ASIM

Belgian User Operations Centre: http://www.busoc.be/

European Drawer Rack on HTV-9: https://www.esa.int/Science_Exploration/Human_and_Robotic_Exploration/New_European_Drawer_Rack_set_for_Space_Station

Astro Pi: https://astro-pi.org/

CANES: https://space-cu.com/space-cargo-unlimited-debuts-the-third-space-experiment-of-mission-wise-in-partnership-with-cnes-and-esa/

Human and Robotic Exploration: http://www.esa.int/Science_Exploration/Human_and_Robotic_Exploration

International Space Station (ISS): http://www.esa.int/Science_Exploration/Human_and_Robotic_Exploration/International_Space_Station

Images, Video, Text, Credits: ESA/NASA/DLR (CC-BY 3.0).

Best regards, Orbiter.ch

Saturn's Moon Titan Drifting Away Faster Than Previously Thought

NASA - Cassini Mission to Saturn patch.

June 8, 2020

Just as our own Moon floats away from Earth a tiny bit more each year, other moons are doing the same with their host planets. As a moon orbits, its gravity pulls on the planet, causing a temporary bulge in the planet as it passes.

Image above: Larger than the planet Mercury, huge moon Titan is seen here as it orbits Saturn. Below Titan are the shadows cast by Saturn's rings. This natural color view was created by combining six images captured by NASA's Cassini spacecraft on May 6, 2012. Image Credits: NASA/JPL-Caltech/Space Science Institute.

Over time, the energy created by the bulging and subsiding transfers from the planet to the moon, nudging it farther and farther out. Our Moon drifts 1.5 inches (3.8 centimeters) from Earth each year.

Scientists thought they knew the rate at which the giant moon Titan is moving away from Saturn, but they recently made a surprising discovery: Using data from NASA's Cassini spacecraft, they found Titan drifting a hundred times faster than previously understood — about 4 inches (11 centimeters) per year.

The findings may help address an age-old question. While scientists know that Saturn formed 4.6 billion years ago in the early days of the solar system, there's more uncertainty about when the planet's rings and its system of more than 80 moons formed. Titan is currently 759,000 miles (1.2 million kilometers) from Saturn. The revised rate of its drift suggests that the moon started out much closer to Saturn, which would mean the whole system expanded more quickly than previously believed.

"This result brings an important new piece of the puzzle for the highly debated question of the age of the Saturn system and how its moons formed," said Valery Lainey, lead author of the work published June 8 in Nature Astronomy. He conducted the research as a scientist at NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Southern California before joining the Paris Observatory at PSL University.

To learn more about Saturn, zoom in and give the planet a spin. Use the search function at bottom to learn more about its moons — or just about anything else in the solar system. View the full interactive experience at Eyes on the Solar System: https://eyes.nasa.gov/apps/orrery/#/home

Making Sense of Moon Migration

The findings on Titan's rate of drift also provide important confirmation of a new theory that explains and predicts how planets affect their moons' orbits.

For the last 50 years, scientists have applied the same formulas to estimate how fast a moon drifts from its planet, a rate that can also be used to determine a moon's age. Those formulas and the classical theories on which they're based were applied to moons large and small all over the solar system. The theories assumed that in systems such as Saturn's, with dozens of moons, the outer moons like Titan migrated outward more slowly than moons closer in because they are farther from their host planet's gravity.

Four years ago, theoretical astrophysicist Jim Fuller, now of Caltech, published research that upended those theories. Fuller's theory predicted that outer moons can migrate outward at a similar rate to inner moons because they become locked in a different kind of orbit pattern that links to the particular wobble of a planet and slings them outward.

Titan orbiting Saturn. Animation Credits: NASA/JPL-Caltech/Space Science Institute

"The new measurements imply that these kind of planet-moon interactions can be more prominent than prior expectations and that they can apply to many systems, such as other planetary moon systems, exoplanets — those outside our solar system — and even binary star systems, where stars orbit each other," said Fuller, a coauthor of the new paper.

To reach their results, the authors mapped stars in the background of Cassini images and tracked Titan's position. To confirm their findings, they compared them with an independent dataset: radio science data collected by Cassini. During ten close flybys between 2006 and 2016, the spacecraft sent radio waves to Earth. Scientists studied how the signal's frequency was changed by their interactions with their surroundings to estimate how Titan's orbit evolved.

"By using two completely different datasets, we obtained results that are in full agreement, and also in agreement with Jim Fuller's theory, which predicted a much faster migration of Titan," said coauthor Paolo Tortora, of Italy's University of Bologna. Tortora is a member of the Cassini Radio Science team and worked on the research with the support of the Italian Space Agency.

Managed by JPL, Cassini was an orbiter that observed Saturn for more than 13 years before exhausting its fuel supply. The mission plunged it into the planet's atmosphere in September 2017, in part to protect its moon Enceladus, which Cassini discovered might hold conditions suitable for life.

The Cassini-Huygens mission is a cooperative project of NASA, ESA (the European Space Agency) and the Italian Space Agency. JPL, a division of Caltech in Pasadena, manages the mission for NASA's Science Mission Directorate in Washington. JPL designed, developed and assembled the Cassini orbiter.

More information about Cassini can be found here:

https://solarsystem.nasa.gov/cassini

Saturn: http://www.nasa.gov/saturn

Titan: https://solarsystem.nasa.gov/moons/saturn-moons/titan/overview/

Image (mentioned), Animation (mentioned), Text, Credits: NASA/Tony Greicius/Grey Hautaluoma/Alana Johnson/JPL/Gretchen McCartney.

Best regards, Orbiter.ch

The Red Planet's Holden Crater

NASA - Mars Science Laboratory (MSL) patch.

June 8, 2020

Much of Mars is covered by sand and dust but in some places stacks of sedimentary layers are visible. In this image, exquisite layering is revealed emerging from the sand in southern Holden Crater. Sequences like these offer a window into Mars' complicated geologic history.

Mars Science Laboratory (MSL) or Curiosity

Holden Crater was once a candidate landing area for the Curiosity, Mars Science Laboratory, and is still an intriguing choice today.

Related link:

Curiosity, Mars Science Laboratory: https://www.nasa.gov/mission_pages/msl/index.html

Image, Animation, Text, Credits: NASA/Yvette Smith/JPL-Caltech/University of Arizona.

Greetings, Orbiter.ch

China to hunt aliens

FAST - Five-hundred-meter Aperture Spherical Telescope logo.

June 7, 2020

China announced the launch in September of its search for intelligent life forms in space, using a gigantic telescope.

Five-hundred-meter Aperture Spherical Telescope (FAST)

China will begin this year the search for an extraterrestrial life. A scientist at the head of the Chinese research of extraterrestrial intelligence (SETI) indeed declared that the immense spherical telescope with five hundred meters of opening, known under the name of FAST, would launch "officially" its hunting in September of this year, according to the official journal Science and Technology Daily. The project started in the mid-1990s, but it took two decades to complete. The actual construction of FAST started in 2011 and ended with its inauguration on September 25, 2016. However, the device did not officially enter service until January, after years of testing. Since January, according to the Chinese press body, scientists have still had to make various adjustments.

Five-hundred-meter Aperture Spherical Telescope (FAST)

Today it is the largest, most sensitive and most powerful single-element radio telescope in the world. Located near the village of Dawodang 170 km from Guiyang, FAST extends over a diameter of five hundred meters. It has many cutting-edge technologies that can eliminate interference, sort through received signals, and identify those that may be from another solar system, according to a document released in March.

Upcoming improvements

The Chinese government has announced that FAST will officially return to business in September this year. It will focus on finding foreign signals and trying to determine their source, which could really testify to another civilization than ours. However, you should not expect immediate results. The process on which FAST is based is still uncertain and imprecise. The telescope should see further improvements in the coming years.

FAST: The World's Largest Telescope

The search for these signals should not impact the other projects carried out by the teams present on site, according to one of the scientific officials. FAST will not only be intended to seek and detect extraterrestrial signals. At the heart of many other ambitious space projects, it is currently used to observe pulsars (astronomical objects) and to detect interstellar molecules that can offer elements of knowledge about the formation of the universe.

Related articles:

Gigantic Chinese telescope opens to astronomers worldwide
https://orbiterchspacenews.blogspot.com/2019/09/gigantic-chinese-telescope-opens-to.html

FAST - The World largest radiotelescope in service
https://orbiterchspacenews.blogspot.com/2016/09/fast-world-largest-radiotelescope-in.html

China FAST hunt for alien life with giant telescope
https://orbiterchspacenews.blogspot.ch/2016/07/china-fast-hunt-for-alien-life-with.html

Related link:

For more information about Five-hundred-meter Aperture Spherical Telescope (FAST), visit: http://fast.bao.ac.cn/en/

Image, Animation, Video, Text, Credits: AFP/FAST/CCTV17/China Icons/Orbiter.ch Aerospace/Roland Berga.

Best regards, Orbiter.ch