WISE's Last Light

NASA - WISE Mission logo.

March 18, 2011

On the morning of Feb. 1, 2011, WISE, or the Wide-field Infrared Survey Explorer, took its last snapshot of the sky. This 'last light' image is reminiscent of the 'first light' image from WISE, taken only 13 months prior. WISE's final picture shows thousands of stars in a patch of the Milky Way galaxy, covering an area three times the size of the full moon, in the constellation Perseus.

After its coolant ran out in October 2010, WISE warmed up from minus minus 436 to minus 328 degrees Fahrenheit (260 degrees to minus 200 degrees Celsius). This image contains data from the two detectors largely unaffected by the warmer temperatures. This region of the sky had been observed by WISE previously in all four of its detectors as part of its primary survey. There is no noticeable difference in the quality between that first image and this newer one, imaged at 3.4 and 4.6 microns.

In the short 13 months that WISE surveyed the sky, it produced millions of infrared images. It covered the whole sky at its four bands, and covered it twice at 3.4 and 4.6 microns. Now that the survey is complete, WISE is being put into hibernation. While the satellite sleeps and circles more than 500 kilometers (about 310 miles) above the Earth's surface, the WISE team is busily preparing its data for two big public releases: one this April, and the final release in the spring of 2012.

Image, Text, Credits: NASA / JPL-Caltech /UCLA.

Cheers, Orbiter.ch

NASA'S MESSENGER Spacecraft Begins Historic Orbit Around Mercury

NASA - MESSENGER Mission to Mercury patch.

March 18, 2011

NASA's MESSENGER spacecraft successfully achieved orbit around Mercury at approximately 9 p.m. EDT Thursday. This marks the first time a spacecraft has accomplished this engineering and scientific milestone at our solar system's innermost planet.

"This mission will continue to revolutionize our understanding of Mercury during the coming year," said NASA Administrator Charles Bolden, who was at MESSENGER mission control at the Johns Hopkins University Applied Physics Laboratory in Laurel, Md., as engineers received telemetry data confirming orbit insertion. "NASA science is rewriting text books. MESSENGER is a great example of how our scientists are innovating to push the envelope of human knowledge."

This animation follows MESSENGER’s journey from launch on August 3, 2004, through flybys of Earth, Venus, and Mercury, to arrival at Mercury for orbit insertion on March 18, 2011 (UTC).  The relative motions of Earth, Venus, Mercury, and the MESSENGER spacecraft, which completed nearly 16 orbits around the Sun, are shown in the plane of Earth’s orbit.  The timeline at the bottom tracks the spacecraft’s progress from launch to Mercury orbit insertion.
At 9:10 p.m. EDT, engineers Operations Center, received the anticipated radiometric signals confirming nominal burn shutdown and successful insertion of the MESSENGER probe into orbit around the planet Mercury. NASA's MErcury Surface, Space ENvironment, Geochemistry, and Ranging, or MESSENGER, rotated back to the Earth by 9:45 p.m. EDT, and started transmitting data. Upon review of the data, the engineering and operations teams confirmed the burn executed nominally with all subsystems reporting a clean burn and no logged errors.

MESSENGER's main thruster fired for approximately 15 minutes at 8:45 p.m., slowing the spacecraft by 1,929 miles per hour and easing it into the planned orbit about Mercury. The rendezvous took place about 96 million miles from Earth.

"Achieving Mercury orbit was by far the biggest milestone since MESSENGER was launched more than six and a half years ago," said Peter Bedini, MESSENGER project manager of the Applied Physics Laboratory (APL). "This accomplishment is the fruit of a tremendous amount of labor on the part of the navigation, guidance-and-control, and mission operations teams, who shepherded the spacecraft through its 4.9-billion-mile journey."

This animation depicts some of the science operations that will be completed during a typical single
orbit in the first week of scientific mapping. At different parts of the orbit, different instruments control spacecraft pointing. Blue frames on the planet denote imaging with either MESSENGER's wide-angle or narrow-angle camera. The green line denotes an observation of Mercury's exosphere with MESSENGER's Ultraviolet and Visible Spectrometer. The red circles denote topographic profiling with the Mercury Laser Altimeter. The magenta scans denote remote sensing of surface elemental composition by MESSENGER's X-Ray Spectrometer and Gamma-Ray and Neutron Spectrometer. Time during the animation is unevenly scaled to time in orbit to permit several of the principal scientific operations to be displayed clearly.

For the next several weeks, APL engineers will be focused on ensuring the spacecraft's systems are all working well in Mercury's harsh thermal environment. Starting on March 23, the instruments will be turned on and checked out, and on April 4 the mission's primary science phase will begin.

"Despite its proximity to Earth, the planet Mercury has for decades been comparatively unexplored," said Sean Solomon, MESSENGER principal investigator of the Carnegie Institution of Washington. "For the first time in history, a scientific observatory is in orbit about our solar system's innermost planet. Mercury's secrets, and the implications they hold for the formation and evolution of Earth-like planets, are about to be revealed."

APL designed and built the spacecraft. The lab manages and operates the mission for NASA's Science Mission Directorate in Washington.

For more information about the mission, visit: http://www.nasa.gov/messenger

Images, Videos, Text, Credits: NASA / APL.

Greetings, Orbiter.ch

ISS Orbit to be Readjusted before Next Arrival

ISS - International Space Station patch / ESA - ATV2 Johannes Kepler Mission patch.

17.03.2011

The orbit of the International Space Station (ISS) will be raised by 3.7 kilometers (2.3 miles) on Friday, Russian Mission Control said on Thursday.

Artist impression of the ATV being used to raise the altitude of the ISS

The readjustment is necessary to ensure the best conditions to dock Russia's Soyuz TMA-21 piloted spacecraft and the U.S. Endeavor space shuttle.

"The maneuver will be conducted using the two main engines on board the European Space Agency's Automated Transfer Vehicle (ATV-2), named after Johannes Kepler," the Mission Control said in a statement.

ESA animation, ATV was used to raise the orbit of the International Space Station

The ATV-2 docked with the ISS on February 24. It will stay in orbit for three months, and will be used mainly to adjust the station's orbit.

Corrections to the space station's orbit are conducted periodically before launches of Russian spacecraft and U.S. shuttles to compensate for the Earth's gravity and to safeguard successful dockings.

Russia's Soyuz TMA-21 is expected to travel to the ISS sometime in early April, while the U.S. Endeavor will blast off from Cape Canaveral on April 19.

Images, Video, Text, Credits: Roscosmos PAO / ESA / D.Ducros.

Best regards, Orbiter.ch

ESA - An unexpected travelling companion

ESA - MagISStra Mission patch.

17 March 2011

Gardens are always a source of surprises. After three weeks of steady growth in space under the watchful eye of the ESA astronaut Paolo Nespoli, the baby space plants of the Greenhouse in Space project have found a new – and unexpected - travelling companion.

The International Space Station (ISS) ecosystem is particularly a delicate one. Whereas some residuals don’t harm much the earthly plants or humans, the balance of the closed systems present in the Station should not be compromised.

An unexpected green travelling companion growing in the Greenhouse in Space

It is known that spaceflight reduces the ability of the crew's immune systems to fight off possible infections and once safety experts confirmed the presence of unexpected particles in the greenhouse, an unavoidable decision was made to carefully remove the greenhouse from the ISS, thus avoiding any probability of causing any harm to the astronauts. 

The Arabidopsis plants, already having proved themselves as a hardy growers in space, seemed to grow very well despite the uninvited hitch-hiker on board.

Paolo was the first one to remark that simple procedures on Earth are extremely complex and possibly dangerous in weightlessness. "Part of the experiment was indeed a success: we were able to grow the plants and observe them."

Paolo with greenhouse at the Space Station

Even though some experiments can go wrong, Paolo said, "This is a lesson to be learned that we can leave to the future astronauts. I’m sure they will get even better at it."

From real Space Station to virtual Mars spacecraft

The Greenhouse in Space education project moves on and encourages participating students throughout Europe to continue their experiments and monitor their plants even more closely. Now it is time to compare their greenhouses with the martian ones, as the crew of Mars500 found four of these little greenhouses packed in their lander module with all other cargo.

Now they are carefully growing the same plants in their spacecraft-like modules and the results are coming in – have a look at the video below.

Romain with greenhouses inside the Mars500 facility

The Greenhouse in Space education project started on 17 February and is being carried out by more than 800 school children throughout Europe. The first online lesson is now posted on ESA educational web pages, where the results of all the participants can be checked and compared.

After three weeks

The Project's group on Facebook has discussions and photos. Teachers can follow the lesson online and should send their class results to the HSF education team at the end of the project.

Related Links:

The first online lesson: http://www.esa.int/esaHS/SEMBAE0U5LG_education_0.html

The Project's group on Facebook: http://www.facebook.com/pages/Greenhouse-in-Space/170305009653929

Human Spaceflight Education: http://www.esa.int/esaHS/education.html

Images, Text, Credits: ESA.

Greetings, Orbiter.ch

NASA Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter Delivers Treasure Trove Of Data

NASA - Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter (LRO) patch.

March 16, 2011

NASA's Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter (LRO) team released Tuesday the final set of data from the mission's exploration phase along with the first measurements from its new life as a science satellite.

 LRO in Moon orbit

With this fifth release of data, striking new images and maps have been added to the already comprehensive collection of raw lunar data and high-level products, including mosaic images, that LRO has made possible. The spacecraft's seven instruments delivered more than 192 terabytes of data with an unprecedented level of detail. It would take approximately 41,000 typical DVDs to hold the new LRO data set.
"The release of such a comprehensive and rich collection of data, maps and images reinforces the tremendous success we have had with LRO in the Exploration Systems Mission Directorate and with lunar science," said Michael Wargo, chief lunar scientist of the Exploration Systems Mission Directorate at NASA Headquarters in Washington.

Among the latest products is a global map with a resolution of 100 meters per pixel from the Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter Camera (LROC). To enhance the topography of the moon, this map was made from images collected when the sun angle was low on the horizon. Armchair astronauts can zoom in to full resolution with any of the mosaics—quite a feat considering that each is 34,748 pixels by 34,748 pixels, or approximately 1.1 gigabytes.

Video above: With LRO's wide angle camera, scientists can create a global catalog of the mountains, craters, and rilles on the moon. Credit: NASA / Goddard Space Flight Center.

"Because the moon is so close and because we have a dedicated ground station, we are able to bring back as much data from LRO as from all the other planetary missions combined," said LRO Project Scientist Richard Vondrak of NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Md.

LRO's Diviner Lunar Radiometer Experiment is providing new data relating to the moon's surface. These include maps of visual and infrared brightness, temperature, rock abundance, nighttime soil temperature and surface mineralogy. The data are in the form of more than 1700 digital maps at a range of resolutions that can be overlaid easily on other lunar data sets.

Image above: LOLA data give us three complementary views of the near side of the moon: the topography (left) along with new maps of the surface slope values (middle) and the roughness of the topography (right). All three views are centered on the relatively young impact crater Tycho, with the Orientale basin on the left side.

The slope magnitude indicates the steepness of terrain, while roughness indicates the presence of large blocks, both of which are important for surface operations. Lunar topography is the primary measurement being provided, while ancillary datasets are steadily being filled in at the kilometer scale. Credit: NASA / LRO / LOLA Science Team.

The Lyman-Alpha Mapping Project, which collects information to help identify surface water-ice deposits, especially in permanently-shadowed regions of the moon, also has new data. This release includes new maps of far-ultraviolet (FUV) brightness, albedo and water-ice data as well as instrument exposure, illumination and other conditions.

As a complement to the high-resolution digital elevation maps, representing 3.4 billion measurements already released by the Lunar Orbiter Laser Altimeter team, the group is delivering new maps of slope, roughness and illumination conditions. New maps from the Lunar Exploration Neutron Detector, and the latest data from the Cosmic Ray Telescope for the Effects of Radiation and the Miniature Radio Frequency instruments, also are featured.

Image above: The lunar farside as never seen before! LROC WAC orthographic projection centered at 180° longitude, 0° latitude Credit: NASA / Goddard / Arizona State University.

"All these global maps and other data are available at a very high resolution -- that's what makes this release exciting," said Goddard's John Keller, the LRO deputy project scientist. "With this valuable collection, researchers worldwide are getting the best view of the moon they have ever had."

The complete data set contains the raw information and high-level products such as mosaic images and maps. The data set also includes more than 300,000 calibrated data records released by LROC. All of the final records from the exploration phase, which lasted from Sept. 15, 2009 through Sept. 15, 2010, are available through several of the Planetary Data System nodes and the LROC website.
To access LRO data, visit: http://pds.nasa.gov

LRO was built and is managed by Goddard. The exploration phase was funded by NASA's Exploration Systems Missions Directorate. LRO operates under NASA's Science Mission Directorate. For more information about LRO, visit: http://www.nasa.gov/lro

Images (mentioned), Video, Text, Credits: NASA / NASA Planetary Science / Goddard Space Flight Center.

Greetings, Orbiter.ch

Expedition 26 Crew And Capsule Land Safely In Kazakhstan

ROSCOSMOS - Soyuz TMA-01M Mission patch.

March 16, 2011

Expedition 26 Commander Scott Kelly and Russian Flight Engineers Alexander Kaleri and Oleg Skripochka safely landed their Soyuz spacecraft on the Kazakhstan steppe Wednesday, wrapping up a five-month stay aboard the International Space Station.

The new Soyuz TMA-01M is seen closing on the ISS

Kaleri, the Soyuz commander, was at the controls of the spacecraft as it undocked at 12:27 a.m. EDT from the station's Poisk module. The trio landed at 3:54 a.m. (1:54 p.m. local time) at a site northeast of the town of Arkalyk.

Working in frigid temperatures, Russian recovery teams were on hand to help the crew exit the Soyuz and adjust to gravity. Kaleri and Skripochka will return to the Gagarin Cosmonaut Training Center in Star City, outside of Moscow, while Kelly will fly directly home to Houston.

Soyuz TMA-01M Crews

The trio launched aboard the Soyuz TMA-01M spacecraft from the Baikonur Cosmodrome in Kazakhstan on Oct. 8, 2010. As members of the Expedition 25 and 26 crews, they spent 159 days in space, 157 of them aboard the station.

During their mission, the Expedition 25 and 26 crew members worked on more than 150 microgravity experiments in human research; biology and biotechnology; physical and materials sciences; technology development; and Earth and space sciences.

A quick succession of international space vehicles arrived on the station's loading docks during Expedition 26. The Japanese Kounotori2, or "white stork," H-II Transfer Vehicle 2; the Russian cargo ship Progress 41; the European Jules Verne Automated Transfer Vehicle; and space shuttle Discovery delivered more than 11 tons of supplies necessary for working and living aboard the station.

Soyuz TMA-01M Highlights Undocking, Landing

Kelly has logged more than 180 days in space, and Kaleri has more than 770. Skripochka has completed his first space mission. Expedition 27 Commander and Russian Cosmonaut Dmitry Kondratyev and Flight Engineers Cady Coleman of NASA and Paolo Nespoli of the European Space Agency remain aboard the station.

A new trio of Expedition 27 flight engineers, NASA astronaut Ron Garan and Russian cosmonauts Andrey Borisenko and Alexander Samokutyaev, will launch from the Baikonur Cosmodrome no earlier than March 29.

For more information about the space station, visit: http://www.nasa.gov/station

For a schedule of upcoming flights to the station, visit: http://www.nasa.gov/stationflights

To view Coleman's and Garan's mission updates on their Twitter pages, visit: http://www.twitter.com/Astro_Cady and http://www.twitter.com/Astro_Ron

Images, Text, Video, Credits: ROSCOSMOS / NASA / NASA TV.

Cheers, Orbiter.ch

ESO - The Drama of Starbirth

ESO - European Southern Observatory logo.

16 March 2011

New-born stars wreak havoc in their nursery

Close-up of the drama of star formation

A new image from ESO’s Very Large Telescope gives a close-up view of the dramatic effects new-born stars have on the gas and dust from which they formed. Although the stars themselves are not visible, material they have ejected is colliding with the surrounding gas and dust clouds and creating a surreal landscape of glowing arcs, blobs and streaks.

The star-forming region NGC 6729 is part of one of the closest stellar nurseries to the Earth and hence one of the best studied. This new image from ESO’s Very Large Telescope gives a close-up view of a section of this strange and fascinating region (a wide-field view is available here: eso1027). The data were selected from the ESO archive by Sergey Stepanenko as part of the Hidden Treasures competition [1]. Sergey’s picture of NGC 6729 was ranked third in the competition.

Star formation in the constellation of Corona Australis

Stars form deep within molecular clouds and the earliest stages of their development cannot be seen in visible-light telescopes because of obscuration by dust. In this image there are very young stars at the upper left of the picture. Although they cannot be seen directly, the havoc that they have wreaked on their surroundings dominates the picture. High-speed jets of material that travel away from the baby stars at velocities as high as one million kilometres per hour are slamming into the surrounding gas and creating shock waves. These shocks cause the gas to shine and create the strangely coloured glowing arcs and blobs known as Herbig–Haro objects [2].

ESO - Zooming in on a stellar nursery in Corona Australis

In this view the Herbig–Haro objects form two lines marking out the probable directions of ejected material. One stretches from the upper left to the lower centre, ending in the bright, circular group of glowing blobs and arcs at the lower centre. The other starts near the left upper edge of the picture and extends towards the centre right. The peculiar scimitar-shaped bright feature at the upper left is probably mostly due to starlight being reflected from dust and is not a Herbig–Haro object.

Close-up of the drama of star formation (annotated)

This enhanced-colour picture [3] was created from images taken using the FORS1 instrument on ESO’s Very Large Telescope. Images were taken through two different filters that isolate the light coming from glowing hydrogen (shown as orange) and glowing ionised sulphur (shown as blue). The different colours in different parts of this violent star formation region reflect different conditions — for example where ionised sulphur is glowing brightly (blue features) the velocities of the colliding material are relatively low — and help astronomers to unravel what is going on in this dramatic scene.

Notes:

[1] ESO’s Hidden Treasures 2010 competition gave amateur astronomers the opportunity to search through ESO’s vast archives of astronomical data, hoping to find a well-hidden gem that needed polishing by the entrants. Participants submitted nearly 100 entries and ten skilled people were awarded some extremely attractive prizes, including an all expenses paid trip for the overall winner to ESO’s Very Large Telescope (VLT) on Cerro Paranal, in Chile, the world’s most advanced optical telescope. The ten winners submitted a total of 20 images that were ranked as the highest entries in the competition out of the near 100 images.

[2] The astronomers George Herbig and Guillermo Haro were not the first to see one of the objects that now bear their names, but they were the first to study the spectra of these strange objects in detail. They realised that they were not just clumps of gas and dust that reflected light, or glowed under the influence of the ultraviolet light from young stars, but were a new class of objects associated with ejected material in star formation regions.

[3] Both the ionised sulphur and hydrogen atoms in this nebula emit red light. To differentiate between them in this image the sulphur emission has been coloured blue.

More information:

ESO, the European Southern Observatory, 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 VISTA, the world’s largest survey telescope. ESO is the European partner of a revolutionary astronomical telescope ALMA, the largest astronomical project in existence. ESO is currently planning a 42-metre European Extremely Large optical/near-infrared Telescope, the E-ELT, which will become “the world’s biggest eye on the sky”.

Links:

    * Science paper (Wang et al.): http://www.eso.org/public/archives/releases/sciencepapers/eso1109/eso1109.pdf

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

Images, Video, Text, Credits: ESO / IAU and Sky & Telescope / Video: ESO/S. Brunier / Loke Kun Tan (StarryScapes.com). Music: John Dyson (from the album "Darklight").

Greetings, Orbiter.ch