Spokes in Serpens Core

ESA - Herschel Mission patch.

Jan. 18, 2016

Herschel reveals filaments in the Serpens Core

The interstellar medium fills the ‘empty’ space between the stars in our galaxy. It is a mix of molecular clouds, cold and warm gases, regions of electrically charged hydrogen, and more.

Molecular clouds are the densest part of the interstellar medium, holding most of its mass in the form of hydrogen gas. ESA’s Herschel space observatory has revealed that many are built around filaments, with dense threads snaking throughout each cloud. These filaments potentially transport material, and, when massive enough, are known to form new stars.

This Herschel image shows the Serpens Core, the heart of a giant molecular cloud. The Core is the bright clump towards the upper right, with a more diffuse secondary cluster, named Ser G3-G6, shown at the bottom right. Also visible as a faint yellow glow towards the upper left of the frame is a region known as LDN 583 that shines brightly in the far-infrared.

Giant molecular clouds contain up to 10 million times the mass of the Sun, and can stretch for hundreds of light-years. Compared to the rest of space they are dense, holding up to a thousand atoms per cubic centimetre – and even more in star-forming regions. However, these properties are relative: even at their densest, these clouds are more than 10 times emptier than the best laboratory vacuums we can produce on Earth.

These giant clouds are complex formations, most often made up of filaments mixed with clumpy and irregular folds, sheets and bubble-like structures. A typical spiral galaxy like the Milky Way can contain thousands of them, accompanied by many of their smaller relatives.

Serpens is an ideal target for scientists wanting to know more about giant molecular clouds, because it lies just 1400 light-years from us. Scientists compared Herschel’s observations of this cloud to a state-of-the-art simulation to find out more about the cloud’s properties, and to test the accuracy of their model.

They discovered a radial network of filaments stretching throughout the Serpens Core, filaments that are predicted to break and fragment to form the cores of new stars. These filaments resemble the spokes of a wheel, with the Core forming the hub.

Herschel space observatory

This three-colour image is made from observations with Herschel’s PACS camera (blue and green) and SPIRE camera (red). The size of the region shown is 1.7x1.9º on the sky, where 1º corresponds to about 25 light-years.

For more information about ESA’s Herschel space observatory, visit: http://sci.esa.int/herschel/

Images, Text, Credits: ESA/Herschel/PACS/SPIRE/V. Roccatagliata (U. München, Germany).

Greetings, Orbiter.ch

Jason-3 Launches to Monitor Global Sea Level Rise

SpaceX - Falcon 9 / Jason-3 Launch Mission logo.

Jan. 17, 2016

Image above: The SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket launches with the Jason-3 spacecraft Sunday, Jan. 17, 2016, from Space Launch Complex 4 East at Vandenberg Air Force Base in California. Jason-3, an international mission led by the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA), will help continue U.S.-European satellite measurements of global ocean height changes. Image Credits: NASA/Bill Ingalls.

Jason-3, a U.S.-European oceanography satellite mission with NASA participation that will continue a nearly quarter-century record of tracking global sea level rise, lifted off from Vandenberg Air Force Base in California Sunday at 10:42 a.m. PST (1:42 p.m. EST) aboard a SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket.

Jason-3 Launches to Monitor Sea Level Rise

Jason-3 is an international mission led by the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) in partnership with NASA, the French space agency CNES, and the European Organisation for the Exploitation of Meteorological Satellites.

“Jason-3 will take the pulse of our changing planet by gathering environmental intelligence from the world’s oceans,” said Stephen Volz, assistant administrator for NOAA’s Satellite and Information Service.

The mission will improve weather, climate and ocean forecasts, including helping NOAA’s National Weather Service and other global weather and environmental forecast agencies more accurately forecast the strength of tropical cyclones.

“Jason-3 is a prime example of how our nation leverages NASA’s expertise in space and scientific exploration to help address critical global challenges in collaboration with NOAA and our international partners,” said John Grunsfeld, associate administrator for science at NASA Headquarters in Washington. “The measurements from Jason-3 will advance our efforts to understand Earth as an integrated system by increasing our knowledge of sea level changes and the ocean’s roles in climate.”

Minutes after Jason-3 separated from the rocket’s second stage, the spacecraft unfolded its twin sets of solar arrays. Ground controllers successfully acquired the spacecraft’s signals, and initial telemetry reports showed the satellite was in good health.

Jason-3 entered orbit about 15 miles (25 kilometers) below Jason-2. The new spacecraft will gradually raise itself into the same 830-mile (1,336-kilometer) orbit and position itself to follow Jason-2’s ground track, orbiting a couple of minutes behind Jason-2. The two spacecraft will fly in formation, making nearly simultaneous measurements for about six months to allow scientists to precisely calibrate Jason-3’s instruments.

Jason-3 begins full science operations after a six-month checkout phase, joining Jason-2, which launched in 2008. From low-Earth orbit, Jason-3 will precisely measure the height of 95 percent of the world’s ice-free ocean every 10 days.

Jason-3 satellite

Coordinating orbits and combining measurements from Jason-2 and Jason-3 should allow even more frequent coverage of the global oceans. Together, the two spacecraft will double global data coverage. This tandem mission will improve our knowledge of tides in coastal and shallow seas and internal tides in the open ocean, while improving our understanding of ocean currents and eddies.

Measurements of sea-surface height, or ocean-surface topography, reveal the speed and direction of ocean currents and tell scientists how much of the sun’s energy is stored by the ocean. Combining ocean current and heat storage data is key to understanding global climate changes.

Since the Topex/Poseidon-Jason satellite missions began in 1992, researchers have observed a total global sea level rise of 2.8 inches (70 millimeters) – an average rate of 0.12 inches (3 millimeters) a year. Because it is a measure of both ocean warming and loss of land ice, sea level rise is an important indicator of human-caused climate change.

“As human-caused global warming drives sea levels higher and higher, we are literally reshaping the surface of our planet,” said Josh Willis, NASA project scientist for Jason-3 at the Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL) in Pasadena, California. “These missions tell us how much and how fast.”

Data from Jason-3 will be used for other scientific, commercial and operational applications, including modeling of deep-ocean waves; forecasts of surface waves for offshore operators; forecasts of tides and currents for commercial shipping and ship routing; coastal forecasts to respond to environmental challenges such as oil spills and harmful algal blooms; coastal modeling crucial for marine mammal and coral reef research; and forecasts of El Nino and La Nina events.

CNES provided the Jason-3 spacecraft bus. NASA and CNES are jointly providing the primary payload instruments. NASA’s Launch Services Program at the Kennedy Space Center in Florida is responsible for launch management and countdown operations for the SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket. JPL manages the mission for NASA’s Science Mission Directorate in Washington.

Spacex Marmac 303 barge

Concerning the return of the Falcon 9 first stage, despite the successful land recovery during December’s Orbcomm mission, Sunday’s launch targetted a barge recovery which would have marked the first attempt to recover the first stage on a launch from the West Coast.

For the barge used, an ASDS based on the Marmac 303 barge and bearing the name “Just Read the Instructions”, was involved with the first recovery attempt. The name Just Read the Instructions, an homage to the literary works of Iain M. Banks, was previously borne by the first ASDS, based on the Marmac 300 barge.

SpaceX's Falcon 9 rocket land, tip over, and explode

This has since been converted back to a standard barge and as such is no longer used for recovery operations. Sadly, the first stage failed to nail the landing, with a hard touchdown breaking one of the landing legs, resulting in the loss of the stage.

For more information about the Jason-3 mission, visit: http://www.nesdis.noaa.gov/jason-3

To find out more about NASA’s Earth science research, visit: http://www.nasa.gov/earth

For more information about SpaceX, visit: http://www.spacex.com/

Images, Videos, Text, Credits: NASA/Steve Cole/JPL/Alan Buis/Karen Northon/CNES/SpaceX.

Greetings, Orbiter.ch

CERN - Winter therapy for the accelerators

CERN - European Organization for Nuclear Research logo.

Jan. 16, 2016

When the accelerators are asleep, the technical teams get to work. Since 14 December, no particles have circulated in any part of CERN's accelerator chain, from the particle source to the intermediate rings and the Large Hadron Collider (LHC) itself. The annual year-end technical stop provides an opportunity to carry out maintenance work on equipment and repair any damage as well as to upgrade the machines for the upcoming runs. “We started planning this technical stop as early as June 2015,” says Marzia Bernardini, the leader of the team that organises and coordinates the work. “Hundreds of people from all the technical departments were involved over the course of the 12 weeks."

A long list of maintenance work had to be completed along with important upgrades on all the machines and infrastructures. In the Proton Synchrotron (PS), for example, the third link in the chain, two new items of beam instrumentation equipment have been installed. One ring further along, 16 of the 1818 magnets in the Super Proton Synchrotron (SPS) and its transfer lines to the LHC have been replaced. Since each magnet weighs 16 tonnes, it’s a big job, but one that is performed routinely. The SPS will be 40 this year, and its magnets wear out over time and need to be renovated.

Image above: On 12 January, members of the team working on CERN's year-end technical stop prepare to install one of the LHC’s new beam absorbers. The six-metre-long component will be lowered 100 metres into the LHC ring. Image Credit: CERN.

In the LHC, several major operations are under way. Two beam absorbers for injection have been replaced. These huge six-metre-long pieces of equipment are used when the beams are ejected from the SPS and into the LHC: they absorb the SPS beam if a problem occurs, providing vital protection for the LHC. The accelerator’s complex cryogenics system also needs regular maintenance. Two of the LHC’s eight sectors have been emptied of helium, the cooling fluid, to ensure that no losses occur while one of the coldboxes is being repaired. Twelve collimators, on either sides of ATLAS and CMS, have been dismantled ready to be upgraded. These devices protect the machine by absorbing particles that stray from the beam trajectory. Finally, cabling campaigns are continuing throughout the machine: four teams are working in parallel to install 25 km of signal cabling for new equipment and upgrades.

The Large Hadron Collider (LHC). Image Credit: CERN

The work affects not only the accelerators but also the experiments, especially the LHC experiments. The collaborations are making the most of the stop to carry out maintenance and upgrades on their detectors, which are made up of millions of components.

The work on the injectors has to be completed by early February and on the LHC and its experiments by early March. The injectors will then be progressively restarted while the LHC magnets are tested, before the arrival of the first beams in the LHC scheduled for the end of March.

Note:

CERN, the European Organization for Nuclear Research, is one of the world’s largest and most respected centres for scientific research. Its business is fundamental physics, finding out what the Universe is made of and how it works. At CERN, the world’s largest and most complex scientific instruments are used to study the basic constituents of matter — the fundamental particles. By studying what happens when these particles collide, physicists learn about the laws of Nature.

The instruments used at CERN are particle accelerators and detectors. Accelerators boost beams of particles to high energies before they are made to collide with each other or with stationary targets. Detectors observe and record the results of these collisions.

Founded in 1954, the CERN Laboratory sits astride the Franco–Swiss border near Geneva. It was one of Europe’s first joint ventures and now has 22 Member States.

Related links:

CERN's accelerator chain: http://home.cern/about/accelerators

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

Proton Synchrotron (PS):  http://home.cern/about/accelerators/proton-synchrotron

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

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

Images (mentioned), Text, Credits: CERN/Corinne Pralavorio.

Best regards, Orbiter.ch

Long March 3B rocket carrying Belintersat-1 launch opens 2016 campaign

CASC - China Aerospace Science and Technology Corporation logo.

Jan. 16, 2016

Long March 3B rocket carrying Belintersat-1 fairing

CASC have conducted their first orbital launch of 2016 with the lofting of a new communications satellite for Belarus. Belintersat-1 was launched at 16:57 UTC on Friday via a Long March 3B/G2 rocket. The launch was conducted from the Xichang’s Satellite Launch Center’s LC3 pad.

Long March 3B rocket carrying Belintersat-1 launches

Belintersat-1 is based on the Chinese DFH-4 bus, with the communications payload being supplied by Thales Alenia Space. The satellite is equipped with 20 C-band transponders (36 MHz), 18 Ku-band transponders (36MHz) and 4 enhanced Ku-band transponders (54 MHz). The satellite will be operational at the 51.5 degrees East longitude on the geostationary orbit. Operational lifetime is expected to be 15 years.

Some of the transponders on board Belintersat-1 have been sold to China Satcom, being marketed under the designation ZX-15 Zhongxing-15 (or ChinaSat-15). The creation of the National System of Satellite Communication and Broadcast of the Republic of Belarus is the largest project in the field of telecommunications, implemented by the Republic of Belarus.

China Launches Belarusian Telecom Satellite

The project is considered of high innovative, economic, social and political importance, providing a full range of advanced satellite services in Europe, Africa and Asia, as well as to ensure global coverage in the Eastern Hemisphere.

Belintersat 1 satellite

For the commercial and government institutions in the territory of the Republic of Belarus, the Belintersat project will be providing a number of widely demanded services that will include: satellite Internet; mobile satellite communication; solutions for mobile operators; corporate networks provisioning; and live TV broadcasting.

For more information about China Aerospace Science and Technology Corporation (CASC), visit: http://english.spacechina.com/n16421/index.html

Images, Video, Text, Credits: CASC/CCTV+/NEWS.CN/Günter Space Page/Orbiter.ch Aerospace.

Greetings, Orbiter.ch

Possible Ice Volcano on Pluto Has the ‘Wright Stuff’

NASA - New Horizons Mission logo.

Jan. 15, 2016

Image above: Wright Mons in Color. This composite image of a possible ice volcano on Pluto includes pictures taken by the New Horizons spacecraft’s Long Range Reconnaissance Imager (LORRI) on July 14, 2015, from a range of about 30,000 miles (48,000 kilometers), showing features as small as 1,500 feet (450 meters) across. Sprinkled across the LORRI mosaic is enhanced color data from the Ralph/Multispectral Visible Imaging Camera (MVIC), from a range of 21,000 miles (34,000 kilometers) and at a resolution of about 2,100 feet (650 meters) per pixel. The entire scene is 140 miles (230 kilometers) across. Image Credits: NASA/JHUAPL/SwRI.

Scientists with NASA’s New Horizons mission have assembled this highest-resolution color view of one of two potential cryovolcanoes spotted on the surface of Pluto by the New Horizons spacecraft in July 2015.

This feature, known as Wright Mons, was informally named by the New Horizons team in honor of the Wright brothers.  At about 90 miles (150 kilometers) across and 2.5 miles (4 kilometers) high, this feature is enormous. If it is in fact a volcano, as suspected, it would be the largest such feature discovered in the outer solar system.

Pluto area zoomed

Mission scientists are intrigued by the sparse distribution of red material in the image and wonder why it is not more widespread. Also perplexing is that there is only one identified impact crater on Wright Mons itself, telling scientists that the surface (as well as some of the crust underneath) was created relatively recently. This is turn may indicate that Wright Mons was volcanically active late in Pluto’s history.

For more information about New Horizons, visit:
http://www.nasa.gov/mission_pages/newhorizons/main/index.html

Images, Text, Credits: NASA/JHUAPL/SwRI/Tricia Talbert.

Greetings, Orbiter.ch

NASA's Stardust Sample Return was 10 Years Ago Today

NASA - StarDust Mission logo.

Jan. 15, 2016

It was less than an hour into the new day of January 15, 2006 (EST), when tens of thousands of miles above our planet, two cable cutters and two retention bolts fired, releasing a spring which pushed a 101-pound (46-kilogram) sample return capsule away from its mother ship. Later, during its final plunge Earthward, the capsule would become the fastest human-made object to enter our atmosphere, achieving a velocity of about 28,600 mph (12.8 kilometers per second).

Then, at 5:10 a.m. EST (3:10 a.m. MST), for the first time in seven years, the sample return capsule finally stopped moving. By the time it landed, under parachute in the desert salt flats of the U.S. Air Force's Utah Test and Training Range in Dugway, the capsule had travelled 2.88 billion miles (4.5 billion kilometers) -- a journey that carried it around the sun three times and as far out as halfway to Jupiter. Inside the Stardust mission's graphite-epoxy covered capsule was the objective of its prime mission -- humanity's first samples collected from a celestial body in deep space (beyond the Earth-moon system).

Image above: The sample return capsule from NASA's Stardust mission successfully landed at the U.S. Air Force's Utah Test and Training Range in Dugway, Utah, at 2:10 a.m. Pacific (3:10 a.m. Mountain) on January 15, 2006. The capsule carried cometary and interstellar samples gathered by the Stardust spacecraft. Image Credit: NASA.

"The Stardust sample return capsule carried inside cometary material it gathered from comet Wild-2 during a flyby in January of 2004," said Don Brownlee, Stardust principal investigator from the University of Washington, Seattle. "The spacecraft deployed a tennis racket-like, aerogel-lined collector, and we flew the spacecraft within 150 miles (241 kilometers), capturing particles from the coma as we went."

Two days after the return, the sample return capsule's science canister and its cargo of comet and interstellar dust particles was stowed inside a special aluminum carrying case and transported to a curatorial facility at NASA's Johnson Space Center in Houston. Eileen Stansbery -- now Chief Scientist at Johnson -- worked on Stardust as the deputy director of Astromaterials Research and Exploration Science at the time. "We were investigating big questions with the smallest samples -- how did our solar system form? What are we made of? This comet is representative of one of the most primitive bodies in the solar system, preserving the earliest record of material from the nebula during the 'planetesimal' forming stage in its evolution."

Brownlee notes, "The science team couldn't wait to get their hands on the samples. It had been 10 years of planning and then seven more years for the actual mission, so everyone was raring to go."

The Stardust mission's international team of scientists -- 200 strong -- helped re-write the book on comets and the evolution of the solar system. The Stardust mission samples indicated that some comets may have included materials ejected from the early sun and may have formed very differently than scientists had theorized.

"What we found was remarkable," said Brownlee. "Instead of rocky materials that formed around previous generations of stars, we found that most of the comet's rocky matter formed inside our solar system at extremely high temperature. In great contrast to its ice, our comet's rocky material had formed under white-hot conditions."

Comet ice formed in cold regions beyond the planet Neptune, but the rocks, probably the bulk of any comet's mass, formed much closer to the sun in regions hot enough to evaporate bricks. The materials that Stardust collected from comet Wild-2 contain pre-solar "stardust" grains, identified on the basis of their unusual isotopic composition, but these grains are very rare.

Stardust-NExT Spacecraft Artist rendering of Stardust-NExT spacecraft. Credit: NASA/JPL

"Even though we confirmed comets are ancient bodies with an abundance of ice -- some which formed a few tens of degrees above absolute zero at the edge of the solar system -- we now know that comets are really a mix of materials made by conditions of both 'fire and ice,'" said Brownlee.

While Stardust was the first deep-space sample-return mission, it was by no means the last. The Japanese Space Agency (JAXA's) Hayabusa mission collected samples from an asteroid and returned them to Earth in 2010, and the Hayabusa 2 mission to return material from asteroid Ryugu is currently underway. Still to come is NASA's OSIRIS-Rex mission. Scheduled to launch in September of this year, OSIRIS-REx will travel to the near-Earth asteroid Bennu and retrieve at least 2.1 ounces (60 grams) of surface material and return it to Earth for study.

"The ways to explore space are probably as big as space itself," said Brownlee. "But for my money, you can't beat sample return. Having samples there in front of you, available for laboratory analysis when you want -- that's tough to beat."

Another thing about Stardust that was tough to beat was the spacecraft itself. Launched on Feb. 7, 1999, Stardust flew past an asteroid known as Annefrank, flew past and collected particle samples from comet Wild-2, and returned those particles to Earth in a sample return capsule in January 2006. As planned, the Stardust spacecraft did not re-enter Earth's atmosphere along with its sample return capsule. Instead, it went into a solar orbit. NASA then re-tasked the still-healthy spacecraft to perform a flyby of comet Tempel 1 on Feb. 14, 2011.

For more information on the prime mission of the Stardust spacecraft, please visit: http://stardust.jpl.nasa.gov

For more information on the Stardust-NExT mission, please visit: http://stardustnext.jpl.nasa.gov

For more information on the OSIRIS-REx mission, visit: https://www.nasa.gov/mission_pages/osiris-rex/index.html

Images (mentioned), Text, Credits: NASA/JPL/DC Agle/Tony Greicius.

Best regards, Orbiter.ch

NASA’s SDO Captures Cascading Magnetic Arches

NASA - Solar Dynamics Observatory (SDO) patch.

Jan. 15, 2016

SDO Captures Cascading Magnetic Arches. Image Credits: NASA/SDO

A dark solar filament above the sun's surface became unstable and erupted on Dec. 16-17, 2015, generating a cascade of magnetic arches. A small eruption to the upper right of the filament was likely related to its collapse.

NASA’s SDO Captures Cascading Magnetic Arches

Video Credits: NASA/SDO.

The arches of solar material appear to glow as they emit light in extreme ultraviolet wavelengths, highlighting the charged particles spinning along the sun's magnetic field lines. This video was taken in extreme ultraviolet wavelengths of 193 angstroms, a type of light that is typically invisible to our eyes, but is colorized here in bronze.

For more information about Solar Dynamics Observatory (SDO), visit:
http://www.nasa.gov/mission_pages/sdo/main/index.html

Image (mentioned), Video (mentioned), Text, Credits: NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center/Steele Hill/Sarah Frazier.

Greetings, Orbiter.ch