NASA Rover Gains Martian Vista From Ridgeline

NASA - Mars Exploration Rover (MER-B) "Opportunity" patch.

May 20, 2014

 (Click on the images for enlarge)

Image above: This vista of the Endeavour Crater rim was acquired by NASA's Mars Exploration Rover Opportunity's panoramic camera on April 18, 2014, from the southern end of "Murray Ridge" on the western rim of the crater. In mid-May, the rover approached the dark outcrops on the flank of the hill at right. Image Credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech/Cornell Univ./Arizona State Univ.

The rim surrounding Endeavour Crater on Mars recedes southward, then sweeps around to the east in a vista obtained by NASA's Mars Exploration Rover Opportunity. The view is from high on the south end of the "Murray Ridge" portion of the crater's western rim.

The image was assembled from multiple exposures taken by Opportunity's panoramic camera (Pancam) in April. It shows locations along the rim that the rover has subsequently reached and may explore in the future.

The panorama is available online at: http://www.jpl.nasa.gov/spaceimages/details.php?id=PIA18093

Image above: This vista of the Endeavour Crater rim was acquired by NASA's Mars Exploration Rover Opportunity's panoramic camera on April 18, 2014, from "Murray Ridge" on the western rim of the crater. It is presented in false color to make differences in surface materials more easily visible. Image Credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech/Cornell Univ./Arizona State Univ.

NASA's Mars Exploration Rover spent several months exploring portions of Murray Ridge. Since reaching the local high point on the ridgeline from which this panorama was taken, the rover has proceeded southward to reach an exposure of aluminum-rich clay detected from orbit.

Image above: The component images for this 360-degree panorama were taken by the navigation camera on NASA's Mars Exploration Rover Opportunity after the rover drove about 97 feet southeastward on April 22, 2014. The location is on the western rim of Endeavour Crater. The two parallel tracks are 3.3 feet apart. Image Credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech.

During Opportunity's first decade on Mars and the 2004-2010 career of its twin, Spirit, NASA's Mars Exploration Rover Project yielded a range of findings proving wet environmental conditions on ancient Mars -- some very acidic, others milder and more conducive to supporting life.

Opportunity Mars rover (MER-B). Image Credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech

JPL manages the Mars Exploration Rover Project for NASA's Science Mission Directorate in Washington. The California Institute of Technology in Pasadena manages JPL for NASA.

For more information about Spirit and Opportunity, visit: http://www.nasa.gov/rovers and http://marsrovers.jpl.nasa.gov

You can follow the project on Twitter and on Facebook at: http://twitter.com/MarsRovers and http://www.facebook.com/mars.rovers

Images (mentioned), Text, Credits: NASA / JPL / Guy Webster.

Greetings, Orbiter.ch

Construction to Begin on NASA Mars Lander Scheduled to Launch in 2016

NASA - InSight Mission logo.

May 19, 2014

NASA and its international partners now have the go-ahead to begin construction on a new Mars lander after it completed a successful Mission Critical Design Review on Friday.

NASA’s Interior Exploration Using Seismic Investigations, Geodesy and Heat Transport (InSight) mission will pierce beneath the Martian surface to study its interior. The mission will investigate how Earth-like planets formed and developed their layered inner structure of core, mantle and crust, and will collect information about those interior zones using instruments never before used on Mars.

InSight will launch from Vandenberg Air Force Base, on the central California coast near Lompoc, in March 2016. This will be the first interplanetary mission ever to launch from California. The mission will help inform the agency’s goal of sending a human mission to Mars in the 2030s.

InSight team leaders presented mission-design results last week to a NASA review board, which approved advancing to the next stage of preparation.

“Our partners across the globe have made significant progress in getting to this point and are fully prepared to deliver their hardware to system integration starting this November, which is the next major milestone for the project," said Tom Hoffman, InSight Project Manager of NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL), Pasadena, California. "We now move from doing the design and analysis to building and testing the hardware and software that will get us to Mars and collect the science that we need to achieve mission success."

To investigate the planet's interior, the stationary lander will carry a robotic arm that will deploy surface and burrowing instruments contributed by France and Germany. The national space agencies of France and Germany -- Centre National d’Etudes Spatiales (CNES) and Deutsches Zentrum für Luft- und Raumfahrt (DLR) -- are partnering with NASA by providing InSight's two main science instruments.

The Seismic Experiment for Interior Structure (SEIS) will be built by CNES in partnership with DLR and the space agencies of Switzerland and the United Kingdom. It will measure waves of ground motion carried through the interior of the planet, from "marsquakes" and meteor impacts. The Heat Flow and Physical Properties Package, from DLR, will measure heat coming toward the surface from the planet's interior.

Image above: NASA’s Interior Exploration Using Seismic Investigations, Geodesy and Heat Transport (InSight) mission will pierce beneath the Martian surface to study its interior. Launch is scheduled for March 2016. Image Credit: NASA.

"Mars actually offers an advantage over Earth itself for understanding how habitable planetary surfaces can form," said Bruce Banerdt, InSight Principal Investigator from JPL. "Both planets underwent the same early processes. But Mars, being smaller, cooled faster and became less active while Earth kept churning. So Mars better preserves the evidence about the early stages of rocky planets' development."

The three-legged lander will go to a site near the Martian equator and provide information for a planned mission length of 720 days -- about two years. InSight adapts a design from the successful NASA Phoenix Mars Lander, which examined ice and soil on far-northern Mars in 2008.

"We will incorporate many features from our Phoenix spacecraft into InSight, but the differences between the missions require some differences in the InSight spacecraft," said InSight Program Manager Stu Spath of Lockheed Martin Space Systems Company, Denver, Colorado. "For example, the InSight mission duration is 630 days longer than Phoenix, which means the lander will have to endure a wider range of environmental conditions on the surface."

Guided by images of the surroundings taken by the lander, InSight's robotic arm will place the seismometer on the surface and then place a protective covering over it to minimize effects of wind and temperature on the sensitive instrument. The arm will also put the heat-flow probe in position to hammer itself into the ground to a depth of 3 to 5 yards (2.7 to 4 1/2 meters).

Another experiment will use the radio link between InSight and NASA's Deep Space Network antennas on Earth to precisely measure a wobble in Mars' rotation that could reveal whether Mars has a molten or solid core. Wind and temperature sensors from Spain's Centro de Astrobiologia and a pressure sensor will monitor weather at the landing site, and a magnetometer will measure magnetic disturbances caused by the Martian ionosphere.

InSight's international science team is made up of researchers from Austria, Belgium, Canada, France, Germany, Japan, Poland, Spain, Switzerland, the United Kingdom and the United States. JPL manages InSight for NASA's Science Mission Directorate, Washington. InSight is part of NASA's Discovery Program of competitively selected missions. NASA's Marshall Space Flight Center in Huntsville, Alabama, manages the Discovery Program. Lockheed Martin will build the lander and other parts of the spacecraft at its Littleton, Colorado, facility near Denver.

For more about InSight, visit: http://insight.jpl.nasa.gov

For more information about Mars missions: http://www.nasa.gov/mars

For more about the Discovery Program, visit: http://discovery.nasa.gov

Image (mentioned), Text, Credits: NASA / Dwayne Brown / JPL / Guy Webster / Lockheed Martin Space Systems / Gary Napier.

Cheers, Orbiter.ch

CERN experiment sheds new light on cloud formation

CERN - European Organization for Nuclear Research logo.

May 19, 2014

In a paper published in the journal Science today, CERN’s  CLOUD  experiment has shown that biogenic vapours emitted by trees and oxidised in the atmosphere have a significant impact on the formation of clouds, thus helping to cool the planet. These biogenic aerosols are what give forests seen from afar their characteristic blue haze. The CLOUD study shows that the oxidised biogenic vapours bind with sulphuric acid to form embryonic particles which can then grow to become the seeds on which cloud droplets can form. This result follows previous measurements from CLOUD showing that sulphuric acid alone could not form new particles in the atmosphere as had been previously assumed.

Cloud droplets form on aerosol particles that can either be directly emitted, such as evaporated sea spray, or else form through a process known as nucleation, in which trace atmospheric vapours cluster together to form new particles that may grow to become cloud seeds. Around half of all cloud seeds are thought to originate from nucleated particles, but the process of nucleation is poorly understood.

"This is a very important result, since it identifies a key ingredient responsible for formation of new aerosol particles over a large part of the atmosphere – and aerosols and their impact on clouds have been identified by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change as the largest source of uncertainty in current climate models." Jasper Kirkby, CLOUD experiment.

The CLOUD chamber has achieved much lower concentrations of contaminants than previous experiments, allowing nucleation to be measured in the laboratory under precisely controlled atmospheric conditions. The experiment has several unique aspects, including the ability to control the “cosmic ray” beam intensity from the CERN PS, the capability to suppress ions completely by means of a strong electric clearing-field, precise adjustment of "sunlight" from a UV fibre-optic system, and highly-stable operation at any temperature in the atmosphere.

The CLOUD experimental chamber seen in October 2013 (Image: CERN)

Sulphuric acid is thought to play a key role, but previous CLOUD experiments have shown that, on its own, sulphuric acid has a much smaller effect than had been assumed. Sulphuric acid in the atmosphere originates from sulphur dioxide, for which fossil fuels are the predominant source. The new result shows that oxidised biogenic vapours derived from alpha-pinene emitted by trees rapidly form new particles with sulphuric acid. Ions produced in the atmosphere by galactic cosmic rays are found to enhance the formation rate of these particles significantly, but only when the concentrations of sulphuric acid and oxidised organic vapours are relatively low. The CLOUD paper includes global modelling studies which show how this new process can account for the observed seasonal variations in atmospheric aerosol particles, which result from higher global tree emissions in the northern hemisphere summer.

"The reason why it has taken so long to understand the vapours responsible for new particle formation in the atmosphere is that they are present in minute amounts near one molecule per trillion air molecules", explains Jasper Kirkby. "Reaching this level of cleanliness and control in a laboratory experiment is at the limit of current technology, and CERN know-how has been crucial for CLOUD being the first experiment to achieve this performance."

Biogenic vapours join another class of trace vapours, known as amines, that have previously been shown by CLOUD to cluster with sulphuric acid to produce new aerosol particles in the atmosphere. Amines, however, are only found close to their primary sources such as animal husbandry, whereas alpha-pinene is ubiquitous over landmasses. This latest result from CLOUD could therefore explain a large fraction of the birth of cloud seeds in the lower atmosphere around the world. It shows that sulphuric acid aerosols do indeed have a significant influence on the formation of clouds, but they need the help of trees.

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.

Related links:

Journal Science - CLOUD experiment: http://www.sciencemag.org/content/344/6185/717.abstract

CERN's CLOUD experiment: http://home.web.cern.ch/about/experiments/cloud

For more information about the European Organization for Nuclear Research (CERN), visit: http://home.web.cern.ch/

Image (mentioned), Text, Credits: CERN / Dan Noyes.

Cheers, Orbiter.ch

Sciences on International Space Station: Veggie Plant Growth System Activated, Thyroid Cancer Study

ISS - International Space Station logo.

May 19, 2014

Image above: Expedition 39 flight engineer and NASA astronaut Steve Swanson activates the Veggie plant growth system and Veg-01 experiment May 8 in the Columbus module on the International Space Station. Image Credit: NASA/Koichi Wakata.

If you plant it, will it grow—in microgravity on the International Space Station? Expedition 39 crew members soon will find out using a plant growth system called “Veggie” that was developed by Orbital Technologies Corp. (ORBITEC) in Madison, Wisconsin, and tested at NASA's Kennedy Space Center in Florida.

The first fresh food production system, along with the Veg-01 experiment, were delivered to the space station on the SpaceX-3 mission from Cape Canaveral in April and transferred to the Columbus module for storage until it was time for in-orbit activation.

Expedition 39 flight engineers and NASA astronauts Steve Swanson and Rick Mastracchio installed Veggie in the Columbus module May 7 in an Expedite the Processing of Experiments to the Space Station (EXPRESS) rack.

Wearing sunglasses, Swanson activated the red, blue and green LED lights inside Veggie on May 8. A root mat and six plant "pillows," each containing 'Outredgeous' red romaine lettuce seeds, were inserted into the chamber. The pillows received about 100 milliliters of water each to initiate plant growth. The clear, pleated bellows surrounding Veggie were expanded and attached to the top of the unit.

Image above: Expedition 39 flight engineer and NASA astronaut Steve Swanson opens the plant wicks in the Veggie plant growth system May 11 on the International Space Station. The six plant pillows contain 'Outredgeous' red romaine lettuce seeds. Image Credit: NASA.

Inside each plant pillow is a growth media that includes controlled release fertilizer and a type of calcined clay used on baseball fields. This clay increases aeration and helps the growth of plants. 

Dr. Gioia Massa is the NASA science team lead for Veggie. She sees Veggie and Veg-01 representing the initial steps toward the development of bioregenerative food production systems for the space station and long-duration exploration missions.

"The farther and longer humans go away from Earth, the greater the need to be able to grow plants for food, atmosphere recycling and psychological benefits," Massa said. "I think that plant systems will become important components of any long-duration exploration scenario."

About 24 hours after Veggie was activated on the space station, back on Earth, "pseudo-naut" researchers activated identical plant pillows in the Veggie control chamber in the International Space Station Environmental Simulator laboratory at Kennedy's Space Station Processing Facility. Researchers will monitor the plant growth and perform the same procedures as Swanson is doing on the space station.

Image above: Researchers activated the Veggie plant growth system May 9 inside a control chamber at the Space Station Processing Facility at NASA's Kennedy Space Center in Florida to shadow the activation and procedures being performed on Veggie on the International Space Station. Image Credit: NASA/Dimitri Gerondidakis.

"My hopes are that Veggie will eventually enable the crew to regularly grow and consume fresh vegetables," Massa said.

One of the plant experiment's goals is to verify the Veggie hardware is working correctly. Another goal is to establish that the space lettuce is safe to eat.

On the space station, the Veg-01 plants will grow for 28 days. Photographs will be taken weekly, and water will be added periodically. The pillow wicks were opened to help the seedlings emerge. As the plants grow, the pillows will be thinned to one plant per pillow, and microbial samples will be taken to check for any microorganisms that may be growing on the plants. At the end of the cycle, the plants will be carefully harvested, frozen and stored for return on the SpaceX-4 mission later this year.

Veggie will remain on the station permanently and could become a research platform for other top-growing plant experiments. ORBITEC developed Veggie through a Small Business Innovative Research Program. NASA and ORBITEC engineers and collaborators at Kennedy worked to get the unit's hardware flight-certified for use on the space station.

"Veggie could be used as a modular plant chamber for a variety of plants that grow up rather than in the ground," said Gerard Newsham, the Veggie payload support specialist with Jacobs Technology on the Test and Operations Support Contract. "This is just the beginning."

Another set of six plant pillows, containing 'Profusion' Zinnia seeds could be activated in Veggie for the Expedition crew to grow and enjoy as they wait for word that the red romaine lettuce is safe to eat. If the lettuce is safe to eat, Massa said an additional set of plant pillows containing the romaine lettuce seeds will be activated in Veggie.

International Space Station (ISS). Image Credit: NASA

"I hope that the astronauts on the space station eventually will use the equipment to 'experiment' with their own seeds or projects," said Nicole Dufour, who coordinated and led the testing of the flight hardware at Kennedy and wrote the crew procedures for the astronauts to use on space station. "Veggie is designed for crew interaction and to enjoy the plants as they are growing."

Dufour said she hopes Veggie serves as a regular facility the crew uses to grow food crops. Dufour is an engineer in the Flight Mechanisms and Flight Crew Systems Branch of the Engineering and Technology Directorate.

Brian Onate, former Veggie project manager, helped shepherd the plant growth system from initiating the build of the flight units in 2012 to just a couple of months before its delivery to the space station.

"I hope to see Veggie's success as the first step in food production that will allow astronauts on the space station to enjoy fresh food and gain knowledge as we explore beyond low-Earth orbit," Onate said.

Related link:

Orbital Technologies Corp. (ORBITEC): http://www.orbitec.com/

Images (mentioned), Text, Credit: NASA's John F. Kennedy Space Center / By Linda Herridge.

Scientists Seek Answers With Space Station Thyroid Cancer Study

The multi-national efforts that go into research aboard the International Space Station show that working together can yield results with universal benefits. This is especially the case when talking about human health concerns such as cancer. Researchers make use of the microgravity environment aboard the space station to seek answers to questions about the nature of cancer cells. With the Microgravity on Human Thyroid Carcinoma Cells (Cellbox-Thyroid) study, recently conducted in orbit, the hope is to reveal answers that will help in the fight against thyroid cancer.

The American Cancer Society estimates about 62,980 cases of thyroid cancer in the U.S. for 2014. The thyroid is a gland in the neck that secretes hormones that help the body to regulate growth and development, metabolism, and body temperature. The Cellbox-Thyroid study is enabled through a collaborative effort between NanoRacks, Airbus Defense and Space, the German Aerospace Center (DLR) and the Center for the Advancement of Science in Space (CASIS) to facilitate the microgravity investigation aboard the space station.

Image above: Poorly differentiated follicular thyroid cells shortly before launch. The cells were then exposed to microgravity aboard the International Space Station for the Cellbox-Thyroid investigation. Image Credit: Daniela Grimm.

“NanoRacks is hosting this German research study aboard the U.S. National Laboratory,” said Jeff Manber, CEO of NanoRacks. “It may well make critical advances in understanding and even delaying the onset of cancer in the thyroid.”

Image above: Nanoracks Frame-3 with the Airbus, Defense and Space Centrifuge for use to culture thyroid cancer cells aboard the International Space Station.
Image Credit: Team Daniela Grimm.

The overall aim of the Cellbox-Thyroid study is to identify new biomarkers and target proteins for use in developing new cancer-fighting drugs. The investigation has roots in research performed in SIMBOX aboard the Sino-German Chinese Shenzhou-8 mission. During that 2011 study, Daniela-Gabriele Grimm, M.D., principal investigator and researcher with the Department of Biomedicine, Pharmacology at Aarhus University in Aarhus, Denmark, looked at cancer cells in microgravity and found that tumors behave less aggressively in that environment. Grimm’s published findings appeared earlier this year in the Federation of the American Societies for Experimental Biology Journal.

“A further important finding was that a tumor grows three-dimensionally in space. The mechanism for this finding will also be investigated in this Cellbox-Thyroid experiment,” said Grimm. This result published in Elsevier Biomaterials 2013.

With the Cellbox-Thyroid study, Grimm seeks to build on her earlier conclusions by identifying the proteins that can be targeted to anti-cancer therapies. Insights into what controls how tumors grow may lead to knowledge for enhancing treatments on Earth. The experiments took place aboard the space station soon after berthing of the SpaceX Dragon on April 20. The samples returned to Earth aboard the same vehicle on May 18 for further analysis by researchers on the ground.

Specifically, researchers are looking for the microgravity environment to reveal an altered gene expression pattern—how the gene’s encoded information directs protein molecule assembly. They also seek to learn about the proteins expressed or secreted by the cells, called proteome and secretome. Isolating how the cell processes work could lead to new thyroid cancer drugs and provide a better understanding of the mechanism leading to cancer development for new strategies in thyroid cancer therapy.

Image above: Jessica Pietsch, Ph.D., and Stefan Riwaldt, medical student, work on the hardware assembly for the Cellbox-Thyroid study. Image Credit: Team Daniela Grimm.

“Spaceflight experiments are of great value for cell biology research in general and for cancer research in particular,” said Grimm. “Our experiments indicate that microgravity induce[s] changes in the expression and secretion of genes and proteins involved in cancer cell proliferation, metastasis, and survival, shifting the cells toward a less aggressive phenotype.”

In microgravity, researchers anticipate the cancer cells will form three-dimensional multicellular tumor spheroids. This behavior was identified in the previous study, where cells floated without mixing with each other in the microgravity environment. This finding revealed that biochemical components on the cell surfaces were responsible for the initial cell-to-cell interactions required for spheroid formation.

For the Cellbox-Thyroid study, researchers used six experiment containers that fit into the NanoRacks platform and centrifuge for the test runs. After the experiments completed, the samples were stored for return to Earth. Once back on the ground, researchers will analyze the samples and compare them to data from ground controls using simulated microgravity via a random positioning machine and the results from the SIMBOX study.

The hope is that the continuance of this research from the original SIMBOX mission to the space station study will confirm findings and build the statistical data. Grimm plans an additional follow up study, called Spheroids, for 2015. Spheroids will operate for two weeks while in orbit, providing data that—together with its predecessors—may one day take a chunk out of those annual thyroid cancer statistics.

Related links:

Grimm’s published findings - Federation of the American Societies for Experimental Biology Journal: http://www.fasebj.org/content/28/2/813.abstract

Cellbox-Thyroid experiment - Elsevier Biomaterials 2013: http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/23866977

NanoRacks: http://nanoracks.com/

Center for the Advancement of Science in Space (CASIS): http://www.iss-casis.org/

German Aerospace Center (DLR): http://www.dlr.de/dlr/en/desktopdefault.aspx/tabid-10002/

For more information about the International Space Station (ISS), visit: http://www.nasa.gov/mission_pages/station/main/index.html

Images (mentioned), Text, Credit: NASA’s Johnson Space Center / Jessica Nimon.

Greetings, Orbiter.ch

CryoSat finds sharp increase in Antarctica’s ice losses

ESA - CryoSat-2 Mission logo.

19 May 2014

Three years of observations from ESA’s CryoSat satellite show that the Antarctic ice sheet is now losing 159 billion tonnes of ice each year – twice as much as when it was last surveyed.

The polar ice sheets are a major contributor to the rise in global sea levels, and these newly measured losses from Antarctica alone are enough to raise global sea levels by 0.45 mm each year.

Antarctica’s ice loss

These latest findings by a team of scientists from the UK’s Centre for Polar Observation and Modelling show that the pattern of imbalance continues to be dominated by glaciers thinning in the Amundsen Sea sector of West Antarctica.

Between 2010 and 2013, West Antarctica, East Antarctica and the Antarctic Peninsula lost 134, 3 and 23 billion tonnes of ice each year, respectively.

The average rate of ice thinning in West Antarctica has increased compared to previous measurements, and this area’s yearly loss is now one third more than measured over the five years before CryoSat’s launch.

Launched in 2010, CryoSat carries a radar altimeter that can measure the surface height variation of ice in fine detail, allowing scientists to record changes in its volume with unprecedented accuracy.

CryoSat surveys almost all – 96% – of the Antarctic continent, reaching to within 215 km of the South Pole. In addition, it has increased coverage over coastal regions, where today’s ice losses are concentrated.

CryoSat-2 satellite

“Thanks to its novel instrument design and to its near-polar orbit, CryoSat allows us to survey coastal and high-latitude regions of Antarctica that were beyond the capability of past altimeter missions, and it seems that these regions are crucial for determining the overall imbalance,” said Prof. Andrew Shepherd from the University of Leeds, UK, who led the study.

In particular, newly mapped areas by CryoSat in West Antarctica have now brought altimeter observations closer to estimates based on other approaches.

“We find that ice losses continue to be most pronounced along the fast-flowing ice streams of the Amundsen Sea sector, with thinning rates of 4-8 m per year near to the grounding lines – where the ice streams lift up off the land and begin to float out over the ocean – of the Pine Island, Thwaites and Smith Glaciers,” said Dr Malcolm McMillan from the University of Leeds, UK, and lead author of the study.

This area has long been identified as the most vulnerable to changes in climate. Recent assessments say its glaciers may have passed a point of irreversible retreat.

Thinning ice

“Although we are fortunate to now have, in CryoSat, a routine capability to monitor the polar ice sheets, the increased thinning we have detected in West Antarctica is a worrying development,” said Prof. Shepherd.

“It adds concrete evidence that dramatic changes are under way in this part of our planet. The challenge is to use this evidence to test and improve the predictive skill of climate models.”

The findings were published in Geophysical Research Letters.

“We at ESA are extremely pleased to see CryoSat achieve yet another one of its primary mission objectives. It is a great testament to the hard work put in by the whole team, who have worked on the mission over the past 10 years, ” said Tommaso Parrinello, CryoSat Mission Manager.

Related link:

Geophysical Research Letters - Increased ice losses from Antarctica detected by CryoSat-2: http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1002/2014GL060111/abstract

For more information about CryoSat-2 Mission, visit: http://www.esa.int/Our_Activities/Observing_the_Earth/The_Living_Planet_Programme/Earth_Explorers/CryoSat-2/ESA_s_ice_mission

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

Best regards, Orbiter.ch

Lighting up Saturn

ESA - Hubble Space Telescope patch.

May 19, 2014

Astronomers using the NASA/ESA Hubble Space Telescope have captured new images of the dancing auroral lights at Saturn’s north pole. Taken in April and May 2013 from Hubble’s perspective in orbit around Earth, these observations provide a detailed look at previously unseen dynamics in the choreography of the auroral glow.

Hubble sees aurora on Saturn

The ultraviolet images, taken by Hubble’s super-sensitive Advanced Camera for Surveys, capture moments when Saturn’s magnetic field is affected by bursts of particles streaming from the Sun.

Saturn’s magnetosphere – the vast magnetic ‘bubble’ that surrounds the planet – is compressed on the Sunward side of the planet, and streams out into a long ‘magnetotail’ on the nightside.

It appears that when particles from the Sun hit Saturn, the magnetotail collapses and later reconfigures itself, an event that is reflected in the dynamics of its auroras.

Saturn was caught during a very dynamic light show – some of the bursts of light seen shooting around Saturn’s polar regions travelled more than three times faster than the speed of the gas giant’s roughly 10-hour rotation period!

The new observations were taken as part of a three-year Hubble observing campaign, and are presented in a paper published in the journal Geophysical Research Letters. The images complement those taken by the international Cassini spacecraft orbiting Saturn.

For images and more information about Hubble, visit: http://www.nasa.gov/hubble and http://www.spacetelescope.org/

Image, Text, Credits: NASA/ESA, Acknowledgement: J. Nichols (University of Leicester).

Greetings, Orbiter.ch

Former ESA astronaut Wubbo Ockels deceased

ESA / ESTEC logo.

May 18, 2014

Former ESA astronaut Wubbo Ockels is Sunday, May 18th deceased to the effects of cancer. Ockels flew in 1985 with Space Shuttle Challenger (STS-61-A) to space, where he stayed for a week and scientific tests performed. Thus he became the first astronaut with a Dutch passport and only the second astronaut who was doing outside the atmosphere. Worked in research for ESA.

Wubbo Ockels

In 1986 Wubbo Ockels joined ESTEC. He was professor of the Faculty of Aerospace Engineering of the Delft University of Technology and professor in Groningen. Wubbo Ockels became 68 years.

ESA Astronaut biography: http://www.esa.int/Our_Activities/Human_Spaceflight/Astronauts/Wubbo_J._Ockels

Image, Text, Credit: ESA Netherlands / Translation: Orbiter.ch Aerospace.

Condolences, Orbiter.ch