The ISS crew receives a new tool by email

ISS - International Space Station patch.

With a 3D printer, the astronauts on the International Space Station could make some kind of wrench the design was sent to them from Earth.

Image Above: Astronaut Butch Wilmore, commander of the ISS, proudly brandishes his new tool. Image Credit: NASA.

This is the first time that the crew was able to cobble together a tool that was missing with a 3D printer made especially for weightlessness. The spanner was designed by Made in Space, the California-based company that created the printer. The latter had already been used in the space station but only on drawings and uploaded tested first on Earth.

This time, the spanner has been designed and tested on Earth and his drawing emailed to the printer, who made subject to some 4 hours, the company said in a statement. "The spanner was designed with removable parts without need of other materials," said a statement from the company.

Image Above: Made In Space's 3D printer, specially designed for use in microgravity on the International Space Station (ISS). Image Credit: NASA.

A prototype has been printed in a California lab and sent to NASA for her to inspect before the drawing goes to the ISS. The entire process, from design to execution, took less than a week.

The spanner like any other printed objects in the station, will be brought to Earth to be compared with printed objects normally.

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

Images (mentioned), Text, Credits: NASA/Orbiter.ch Aerospace.

Best regards, Orbiter.ch

CERN - LHC filling with liquid helium at 4 kelvin

CERN - European Organization for Nuclear Research logo.

December 20, 2014

CERN gears up to cool LHC down

Last week the cryogenics team at CERN finished filling the arc sections of the Large Hadron Collider (LHC) with liquid helium. The helium, which is injected into magnets that steer particle beams around the 27-kilometre accelerator, cools the machine to below 4 degrees kelvin (-269.15°C).

The process of filling the LHC is an important milestone on the road to restarting the accelerator at higher energy, though it will still take many weeks to cool the entire accelerator to its nominal operating temperature of 1.9 K (-271.3°C).

The electromagnets that steer particle beams around the LHC must be kept cold enough to operate in a superconducting state – the temperature at which electricity can pass through a material without losing energy to resistance. The niobium-titanium wires that form the coils of the LHC’s superconducting magnets are therefore maintained at 1.9 K by a closed liquid-helium circuit. This is colder than the average temperature – 2.7 K – in outer space.

Large Hadron Collider (LHC)

Some 1292 dipole magnets will produce a magnetic field of 8.33 tesla to keep particle beams on course around the LHC's 27-kilometre ring. A current of 11,850 amps in the magnet coils is needed to reach magnetic fields of this amplitude. The use of superconducting materials has proved to be the best – and most cost-effective – way to avoid overheating the coils.

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 link:

Large Hadron Collider (LHC): http://home.web.cern.ch/topics/large-hadron-collider

Find out more:

Cryogenics at the LHC: http://home.web.cern.ch/about/engineering/cryogenics-low-temperatures-high-performance

About the higher energy restart: http://home.web.cern.ch/about/engineering/restarting-lhc-why-13-tev

Image, Text, Credits: CERN/Cian O'Luanaigh/Video: Noemi Caraban Gonzalez.

Cheers, Orbiter.ch

Signs of Europa Plumes Remain Elusive in Search of Cassini Data

NASA - Cassini International logo.

December 20, 2014

Image above: Jupiter's icy moon Europa displays many signs of activity, including its fractured crust and a dearth of impact craters. Scientists continue to hunt for confirmation of plume activity. Image Credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech/SETI Institute.

-- Data from Cassini's 2001 Jupiter flyby show Europa contributes less material to its surrounding environment than previously thought.

-- Unlike Saturn's known-active moon Enceladus, Europa is surrounded by very tenuous hot, excited gas.

A fresh look at data collected by NASA's Cassini spacecraft during its 2001 flyby of Jupiter shows that Europa’s tenuous atmosphere is even thinner than previously thought and also suggests that the thin, hot gas around the moon does not show evidence of plume activity occurring at the time of the flyby. The new research provides a snapshot of Europa's state of activity at that time, and suggests that if there is plume activity, it is likely intermittent.

The Europa results are being presented today at the American Geophysical Union fall meeting in San Francisco and published in the Astrophysical Journal. Europa is considered one of the most exciting destinations in the solar system for future exploration because it shows strong indications of having an ocean beneath its icy crust.

Members of Cassini's ultraviolet imaging spectrograph (UVIS) team analyzed data collected by their instrument during the brief time it observed Europa in 2001, as Cassini sped through the Jupiter system en route to Saturn. The observations show that most of the hot, excited gas, or plasma, around Europa originates not from the moon itself, but from volcanoes on the nearby moon Io. In fact, from their data, the researchers calculated that Europa contributes 40 times less oxygen than previously thought to its surrounding environment.

"Our work shows that researchers have been overestimating the density of Europa's atmosphere by quite a bit," said Don Shemansky, a Cassini UVIS team member with Space Environment Technologies in Pasadena, California, who led the study. The team found that the moon's tenuous atmosphere, which was already thought to be millions of times thinner than Earth’s atmosphere, is actually about 100 times less dense than those previous estimates.

A downward revision in the amount of oxygen Europa pumps into the environment around Jupiter would make it less likely that the moon is regularly venting plumes of water vapor high into orbit, especially at the time the data was acquired.

Scientists would expect that ongoing plume activity at Europa, as Cassini has observed at Saturn's moon Enceladus, would inject large amounts of water vapor into the area around Europa's orbit if the plumes were large enough, but that is not what UVIS observed.

"We found no evidence for water near Europa, even though we have readily detected it as it erupts in the plumes of Enceladus," said Larry Esposito, UVIS team lead at the University of Colorado at Boulder.

"It is certainly still possible that plume activity occurs, but that it is infrequent or the plumes are smaller than we see at Enceladus," said Amanda Hendrix, a  Cassini UVIS team member with the Planetary Science Institute in Pasadena, who co-authored the new study. "If eruptive activity was occurring at the time of Cassini's flyby, it was at a level too low to be detectable by UVIS."

Cassini spacecraft. Image Credits: NASA/JPL

Indications of possible plume activity were reported in 2013 by researchers using NASA's Hubble Space Telescope, launching a wave of interest in searching for additional signs, including this effort by the UVIS team. Cassini's 2001 Jupiter flyby provided UVIS the opportunity to directly measure the environment near Europa, which is not possible with Hubble.

For more than a decade, Cassini's UVIS has observed the cold, dense doughnut of gas that encloses the orbit of Enceladus. There, the massive amount of gas being breathed into orbit around Saturn by the Enceladus plumes acts like a brake on electrons being dragged through it by Saturn's magnetic field, which rotates with the planet. This braking helps to keep down the temperature of the plasma. Apparently there is no such brake at Europa.

Since UVIS saw a hot plasma, rather than a cold one, around Europa's orbit, it suggests Europa is not outputting large amounts of gas -- including water.

Snapshots provided by missions that visited Jupiter prior to Cassini provided strong indications that Io is the major contributor of material to the environment around Jupiter, and indicated a hot, low density plasma surrounding Europa. The new results confirm that. "Io is the real monster here," Shemansky said.

“Europa is a complex, amazing world, and understanding it is challenging given the limited observations we have,” said Curt Niebur, Outer Planets program scientist at NASA Headquarters in Washington. “Studies like this make the most of the data we have and help guide the kinds of of science investigations NASA should pursue in the future.”

Scientists are currently using the Hubble Space Telescope to conduct an extensive six-month long survey looking for plume activity, and NASA is also studying various possible Europa missions for future exploration.

The Cassini-Huygens mission is a cooperative project of NASA, the European Space Agency and the Italian Space Agency. NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory, a division of the California Institute of Technology in Pasadena, manages the mission for NASA's Science Mission Directorate, Washington, D.C. JPL designed, developed and assembled the Cassini orbiter. The UVIS team is based at the University of Colorado, Boulder, where the instrument was designed and built.

More information about Cassini: http://www.nasa.gov/cassini and http://saturn.jpl.nasa.gov and http://www.esa.int/Our_Activities/Space_Science/Cassini-Huygens

More information about Europa: http://solarsystem.nasa.gov/europa

Images (mentioned), Text, Credits: NASA/JPL/Preston Dyches.

Greetings, Orbiter.ch

XMM-Newton spots monster black hole hidden in tiny galaxy

ESA - XMM-Newton Mission patch.

20 December 2014

First impressions can be deceptive – astronomers have used ESA's X-ray satellite XMM-Newton to find a massive black hole hungrily feeding within a tiny dwarf galaxy, despite there being no hint of this black hole from optical observations.

The galaxy, an irregular dwarf named J1329+3234, is one of the smallest galaxies yet to contain evidence of a massive black hole. Located over 200 million light-years away, the galaxy is similar in size to the Small Magellanic Cloud, one of our nearest neighbouring galaxies, and contains a few hundred million stars.

Image above: X-ray emission from dwarf galaxy J1329+3234. Credit: ESA/XMM-Newton/N. Secrest, et al. (2015).

In 2013, an international team of astronomers was intrigued to discover infrared signatures of an accreting black hole within J1329+3234 when they studied it with the Wide-Field Infrared Survey Explorer (WISE).

The same team has now investigated the galaxy further, using ESA's XMM-Newton to hunt for this black hole in X-rays – and found something very surprising.

"The X-ray emission from J1329+3234 is over 100 times stronger than expected for this galaxy," says Nathan Secrest of George Mason University in Virginia, USA, lead author of the new study published in The Astrophysical Journal. "We would typically expect to find low-level X-ray emission from stellar-mass black holes within the galaxy, but what we found instead was emission consistent with a very massive black hole."

The combined X-ray and infrared properties of this galaxy can only be explained by the presence of a massive black hole residing in J1329+3234, similar to the supermassive black holes found at the centres of much more massive galaxies.

While the exact mass of the black hole is not known, it must be at least 3000 times as massive as the Sun, although it is likely to be much more massive than that. If the black hole in J1329+3234 is similar to known low-mass supermassive black holes, then it has a mass of around 150 000 times that of the Sun.

A feeding black hole at the centre of a galaxy is known as an active galactic nucleus, or AGN. In the region surrounding the black hole, material from the galaxy emits intensely bright radiation as it swirls inwards towards the centre of the galaxy and is devoured by the black hole. AGNs powered by massive black holes are commonplace in large galaxies, but they appear to be rarer in galaxies without a central "bulge" of stars – dwarf galaxies being a key example.

"This is a really important discovery," says co-author Shobita Satyapal, also from George Mason University. "It's interesting enough that such a tiny galaxy has such a large black hole, but this also raises questions about how these black holes form in the first place."

Image above: Artist's impression of accreting black hole in a dwarf galaxy. Credit: ESA/ATG medialab.

Astronomers believe that the "seeds" of massive black holes formed very early on in the Universe, along with the first generation of stars. These seed black holes then grew into massive black holes via a string of galaxy mergers. As the galaxies merged, so did their central black holes.

The turbulent merging process would feed the accreting black holes with copious amounts of material while simultaneously building up large, bulge-dominated galaxies. However, with each successive merger information about the properties of the original black hole is lost, meaning that astronomers cannot determine the mass of the original seeds by looking at massive bulge-dominated galaxies – instead they probe their dwarf and bulgeless relatives, such as J1329+3234, for clues.

Finding a massive black hole within such a tiny bulgeless galaxy provides support for the theory that black holes may have grown very efficiently within the gaseous haloes of forming galaxies, originating in massive, collapsing clouds of primordial gas.

Along with J1329+3234, Secrest and his colleagues found several hundred other bulgeless galaxies from the WISE survey that also show intriguing infrared properties – many of which, like J1329+3234, display no evidence for AGNs in optical light.

"The idea that we could find an accreting black hole even in a galaxy with no optical evidence for one is exciting," notes Secrest. "Massive black holes and AGNs may be much more common within low mass and bulgeless galaxies than we currently think."

ESA's X-ray satellite XMM-Newton. Image Credit: ESA

In recent years, growing numbers of massive black holes have been identified within dwarf and bulgeless galaxies. However, it is much harder to find them than it is to find their supermassive counterparts – they are less likely to show up in optical studies since they are often obscured by dust and are usually much dimmer, making them difficult to detect above surrounding light.

This emphasises the importance of multi-wavelength sky surveys, says ESA's XMM-Newton project scientist Norbert Schartel. "Using a mix of optical, infrared, and X-ray observations was vital here," he adds. "The sensitivity of XMM-Newton made it possible not only to discover this black hole but to also fully characterise its spectrum, meaning we can say with much more certainty that it's a black-hole-fuelled AGN."

More information

"An optically obscured AGN in a low mass, irregular dwarf galaxy: A multi-wavelength analysis of J1329+3234" by N. Secrest et al. is published in The Astrophysical Journal: http://sci.esa.int/science-e/www/object/index.cfm?fobjectid=55160

The European Space Agency's X-ray Multi-Mirror Mission, XMM-Newton, was launched in December 1999. The largest scientific satellite to have been built in Europe, it is also one of the most sensitive X-ray observatories ever flown. More than 170 wafer-thin, cylindrical mirrors direct incoming radiation into three high-throughput X-ray telescopes. XMM-Newton's orbit takes it almost a third of the way to the Moon, allowing for long, uninterrupted views of celestial objects.

For more information about XMM-Newton mission, visit: http://www.esa.int/Our_Activities/Space_Science/XMM-Newton_overview

Images (mentioned), Text, Credit: ESA.

Best regards, Orbiter.ch

Video Gives Astronaut’s-Eye View Inside NASA’s Orion Spacecraft

NASA - ORION EFT-1 Mission logo.

December 20, 2014

Astronaut’s-Eye View of NASA’s Orion Spacecraft Re-entry

Video above: New video recorded during NASA’s Orion return through Earth’s atmosphere provides viewers a taste of what the vehicle endured as it returned through Earth’s atmosphere during its Dec. 5 flight test. Image Credit: NASA.

New video recorded during the return of NASA’s Orion through Earth’s atmosphere this month provides a taste of the intense conditions the spacecraft and the astronauts it carries will endure when they return from deep space destinations on the journey to Mars.

Among the first data to be removed from Orion following its uncrewed Dec. 5 flight test was video recorded through windows in Orion’s crew module. Although much of the video was transmitted down to Earth and shown in real time on NASA Television, it was not available in its entirety. Also, the blackout caused by the superheated plasma surrounding the vehicle as it endured the peak temperatures of its descent prevented downlink of any information at that key point. However, the cameras were able to record the view and now the public can have an up-close look at the extreme environment a spacecraft experiences as it travels back through Earth's environment from beyond low-Earth orbit.

The video begins 10 minutes before Orion's 11:29 a.m. EST splashdown in the Pacific Ocean, just as the spacecraft was beginning to experience Earth's atmosphere. Peak heating from the friction caused by the atmosphere rubbing against Orion's heat shield comes less than two minutes later, and the footage shows the plasma created by the interaction change from white to yellow to lavender to magenta as the temperature increases.

As Orion emerges safely on the other side of its trial by fire, the camera continues to record the deployment of the series of parachutes that slowed it to a safe 20 mph for landing and the final splash as Orion touched down on Earth.

Image above: NASA's Orion spacecraft is viewed by members of the media at the Launch Abort System Facility at NASA's Kennedy Space Center in Florida. Orion made the 8-day, 2,700 mile overland trip back to Kennedy from Naval Base San Diego in California. Analysis of date obtained during its two-orbit, four-and-a-half hour mission Dec. 5 will provide engineers detailed information on how the spacecraft fared. The Ground Systems Development and Operations Program led the recovery, offload and transportation efforts. Image Credit: NASA/Dimitri Gerondidakis.

Orion was then retrieved by a combined NASA, U.S. Navy and Lockheed Martin team and carried back to shore aboard the Navy's USS Anchorage. After returning to shore, it was loaded on to a truck and driven back to NASA's Kennedy Space Center in Florida, where it arrived on Thursday.

Orion traveled 3,600 miles above Earth on its 4.5-hour flight test – farther than any spacecraft built for humans has been in more than 40 years. In coming back from that distance, it also traveled faster and experienced hotter temperatures – 20,000 mph and near 4,000 degrees Fahrenheit, to be exact. Orion will travel faster and experience even higher temperatures on future missions, when it returns from greater distances, but this altitude allowed engineers to perform a good checkout of Orion's critical systems – in particular its heat shield.

Orion's flight test was a critical step on NASA's journey to Mars. Work already has begun on the next Orion capsule, which will launch for the first time on top of NASA's new Space Launch System rocket and travel to a distant retrograde orbit around the moon.

To view the video of Orion’s re-entry, visit: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MtWzuZ6WZ8E

For information about Orion, visit: http://www.nasa.gov/orion

Image (mentioned) , Video (mentioned), Text, Credits: NASA/Rachel Kraft/Johnson Space Center/Brandi Dean.

Greetings, Orbiter.ch

Launch of RS-18 rocket carrying a Kondor-E radar satellite into orbit

ROSCOSMOS logo.

December 19, 2014

RS-18 rocket was launched out of a rocket silo at Site 175/59 at the Baikonur

A Russian RS-18 rocket was launched out of a rocket silo at Site 175/59 at the Baikonur Cosmodrome at 4:43 UTC (7 hours 43 minutes Moscow time) on Friday, embarking on its third overall mission since being inaugurated in 2003, carrying a Kondor-E radar satellite into orbit for operation by South African Defence & Intelligence Agencies. The launch came after a one-day delay as technical problems kept Kondor-E on the ground on Thursday, set to deliver high resolution radar imagery for a variety of applications.

Confirmation of a successful orbital insertion was provided by the Russian Space Agency several hours after liftoff and orbital tracking has shown Kondor-E in the expected orbit.

RS-18 rocket carrying a Kondor-E radar satellite, trail in the sky

20 years in the making, the Kondor program saw its first launch in 2013 when the first satellite was orbited for operation by the Russian military. Manufactured by NPO Mash, the Kondor satellites can carry optical imaging instruments or radar payloads for use by Russian operators or by foreign agencies under the Kondor-E designation.

Kondor-E 1 radar satellite

South Africa procured the first Kondor-E satellite in 2006 under a top secret program codenamed Flute. Delays in the launch of the first Kondor satellite also pushed the launch of the first export version and even after the first Kondor spread its wings, the launch of the second satellite encountered several launch delays from late 2013 into 2014 end eventually to December. Despite criticism claiming that there was no need for the operation of a radar satellite by South Africa, the government pressed on with the project that reportedly consumed $120 million of funding in the past eight years.

The road to launch was relatively bumpy as conflicts on operational requirements emerged from the South African side, not agreeing to NPO Mash being the operator of the satellite with South Africa’s role reduced to issuing imaging requests and receiving imagery at the discretion of NPO Mash.

ROSCOSMOS Press Release: http://www.federalspace.ru/21206/

Images, Text, Credits: Press Service of the Russian Federal Space Agency/NPO Mash/Orbiter.ch Aerospace.

Cheers, Orbiter.ch

India launches largest rocket into space and unmanned capsule

ISRO - Indian Space Research Organization logo.


December 19, 2014

GSLV Mk-III X / CARE Mission

Yesterday 18 December, India has successfully launched its largest rocket and an unmanned capsule which could send astronauts into space. The rocket called the Geosynchronous Satellite Launch Vehicle (GSLV) Mark 3 successfully launched December 18th 2014 at 04:00 UTC.

The 630-tonne Geosynchronous Satellite Launch Vehicle (MK III) blasted off from Sriharikota in the southern state of Andhra Pradesh on Thursday morning.

Launch of New Indian GSLV MkIII with Test Capsule

The new rocket will be able to carry heavier satellites into space. India has successfully launched lighter satellites in recent years, but has faced problems sending up heavier payloads.

The new rocket is capable of carrying communication satellites weighing 4,000kg, reports say, meaning India will not have to rely on foreign launchers to do so.

Image above: The CARE crew module prototype will be attached to the third stage of the GSLV Mark III rocket in "upside down" position. Image credit: ISRO.

Prime Minister Narendra Modi tweeted after the launch: "Successful launch of GSLV MK-III is yet another triumph of brilliance & hard work of our scientists. Congrats to them for the efforts."

K Radhakrishnan, chairman of the Indian Space and Research Organization (ISRO), said the launch marked a "very significant day in India's space history".

The rocket's main cargo was an Indian-made capsule capable of carrying two to three astronauts into space.

Geosynchronous Satellite Launch Vehicle (MK III) is India's heaviest rocket

ISRO said the capsule has "safely splashed down into Bay of Bengal off Andaman and Nicobar Islands" and that the experiment was successful.

ISRO has sought funding from the government to send its astronauts into space and the successful launch could be the first step towards boosting its claim, correspondents say.

India is emerging as a major player in the multi-billion dollar space market and has undertaken several missions. In September, it successfully put a satellite into orbit around Mars, becoming the fourth nation or geo-bloc to do so.

For more information about GSLV Mk-III X / CARE Mission and Indian Space Research Organisation (ISRO), visit: http://www.isro.org/

Images, Video, Text, Credits: ISRO/Orbiter.ch Aerospace.

Greetings, Orbiter.ch