CERN - Too quiet to hear a particle drop

CERN - European Organization for Nuclear Research logo.

April 11, 2016

Image above: An event display showing the first collisions after the 2015 year-end technical stop as seen by the CMS experiment (Image: CERN).

Since 25 March 2016 the LHC has quietly been sending bunches of particles back into the Large Hadron Collider (LHC) beam pipe.

Last week, due to a number of innovative developments and impressive work from those involved in the restart, the beam was ramped up earlier than expected to an energy of 6.5 TeV.

As of Friday, 8 April 2016 physicists were confident to move to the next stage of the restart – fine-tuning the set-up for colliding beams.

To do this they circulate a small number of particle bunches around the LHC and bring them into collision at top energy. Full-scale data taking by the experiments is not possible at this stage but these early tests, known as ‘quiet beams’, give the experiments their first sight of collisions.

The design of the LHC allows more than 2800 bunches of protons to circulate in each beam at a time. But the LHC Operations team will start collision tests with just one or two bunches per beam to be certain that the beams are colliding properly and that they know the exact points that the beams interact.

In the meantime, the large LHC experiments, ALICE, ATLAS, CMS and LHCb will use the test data to check specific parts of their detectors for the upcoming physics run.

The LHC Operations team plans to declare "stable beams" in the coming weeks – the signal for the LHC experiments to start taking physics data again.

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:

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

LHC experiments: http://home.cern/about/experiments

Related article:

Return of the LHC – season 2 continues:
http://orbiterchspacenews.blogspot.ch/2016/03/return-of-lhc-season-2-continues.html

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

Image (mentioned), Text, Credits: CERN/Harriet Kim Jarlett.

Best regards, Orbiter.ch

NASA Begins Testing of Revolutionary E-Sail Technology

NASA logo.

April 11, 2016

Testing has started at NASA’s Marshall Space Flight Center in Huntsville, Alabama, on a concept for a potentially revolutionary propulsion system that could send spacecraft to the edge of our solar system, the heliopause, faster than ever before.

The test results will provide modeling data for the Heliopause Electrostatic Rapid Transit System (HERTS). The proposed HERTS E-Sail concept, a propellant-less propulsion system, would harness solar wind to travel into interstellar space.

“The sun releases protons and electrons into the solar wind at very high speeds -- 400 to 750 kilometers per second,” said Bruce Wiegmann an engineer in Marshall’s Advanced Concepts Office and the principal investigator for the HERTS E-Sail. “The E-Sail would use these protons to propel the spacecraft.”

Image above: In this concept, long, very thin, bare wires construct the large, circular E-Sail that would electrostatically repel the fast moving solar protons. The momentum exchange produced as the protons are repelled by the positively charged wires would create the spacecraft’s thrust. Image Credits: NASA/MSFC.

Extending outward from the center of the spacecraft, 10 to 20 electrically charged, bare aluminum wires would produce a large, circular E-Sail that would electrostatically repel the fast moving protons of the solar wind. The momentum exchange produced as the protons are repelled by the positively charged wires would create the spacecraft’s thrust. Each tether is extremely thin, only 1 millimeter -- the width of a standard paperclip -- and very long, nearly 12 and a half miles -- almost 219 football fields. As the spacecraft slowly rotates at one revolution per hour, centrifugal forces will stretch the tethers into position.

The testing, which is taking place in the High Intensity Solar Environment Test system, is designed to examine the rate of proton and electron collisions with a positively charged wire. Within a controlled plasma chamber simulating plasma in a space, the team is using a stainless steel wire as an analog for the lightweight aluminum wire. Though denser than aluminum, stainless steel’s non-corrosive properties will mimic that of aluminum in space and allow more testing with no degradation.

Engineers are measuring deflections of protons from the energized charged wire within the chamber to improve modeling data that will be scaled up and applied to future development of E-Sail technology. The tests are also measuring the amount of electrons attracted to the wire. This information will be used to develop the specifications for the required electron gun, or an electron emitter, that will expel excess electrons from the spacecraft to maintain the wire’s positive voltage bias, which is critical to its operation as a propulsion system.

Image above: NASA engineer Bruce Wiegmann, principal investigator for the HERTS E-Sail, demonstrates the long, thin wires that will construct the E-Sail. Each tether is extremely thin, only 1 millimeter -- the width of a standard paperclip -- and very long, 12.5 miles. Image Credits: NASA/MSFC/Emmett Given.

This concept builds upon the electric sail invention of Dr. Pekka Janhunen of the Finnish Meteorological Institute, and the current technologies required for an E-Sail integrated propulsion system are at a low technology readiness level. If the results from plasma testing, modeling, and wire deployer investigations prove promising after the current two-year investigation, there is still a great deal of work necessary to design and build this new type of propulsion system. The earliest actual use of the technology is probably at least a decade away.

The HERTS E-Sail concept is being studied in response to the National Academy of Science’s 2012 Heliophysics Decadal Survey, a study conducted by experts from NASA, industry, academia and government agencies, that identified advanced propulsion as the main technical hurdle for future exploration of the heliosphere. The survey, which offered the agency a road map of the heliophysics community’s priorities for 2013-2022, highlighted the need for propulsion systems that could reach the edge of our solar system significantly faster than in the past.

To send a scientific probe on a deep space journey, the sail would have to have a large effective area. Space travel is generally measured in astronomical units, or the distance from Earth to the sun. At 1 AU, the E-Sail would have an effective area of about 232 square miles, slightly smaller than the city of Chicago. The effective area would increase to more than 463 square miles-- similar to Los Angeles -- at 5 AU.

Animation of Heliopause Electrostatic Rapid Transport System (HERTS)

Video above: NASA engineers are conducting tests to develop models for the Heliopause Electrostatic Rapid Transport System (HERTS) concept. HERTS builds upon the electric sail invention of Dr. Pekka Janhunen of the Finnish Meteorological Institute. An electric sail could potentially send scientific payloads to the edge of our solar system, the heliopause, in less than 10 years. The research is led by Bruce M. Wiegmann, an engineer in the Advanced Concepts Office at NASA's Marshall Space Flight Center in Huntsville, Alabama. The HERTS E-Sail concept development and testing is funded by NASA’s Space Technology Mission Directorate through the NASA Innovative Advanced Concepts Program. Video Credits: NASA/MSFC.

This increase in area would lead to continued acceleration much longer than comparable propulsion technologies. For example, when solar sail spacecraft reach the asteroid belt at 5 AU, the energy of the solar photons dissipates and acceleration stops. Wiegmann believes the E-Sail would continue to accelerate well beyond that.

“The same concerns don’t apply to the protons in the solar wind,” he said. “With the continuous flow of protons, and the increased area, the E-Sail will continue to accelerate to 16-20 AU -- at least three times farther than the solar sail. This will create much higher speeds.”

In 2012, NASA’s Voyager 1 became the first spacecraft to ever cross the heliopause and reach interstellar space. Launched in 1977, Voyager 1 took almost 35 years to make its 121 AU journey. The goal of HERTS is to develop an E-Sail that could make the same journey in less than one-third that time.

“Our investigation has shown that an interstellar probe mission propelled by an E-Sail could travel to the heliopause in just under 10 years,” he said. “This could revolutionize the scientific returns of these types of missions.”

The HERTS E-Sail concept development and testing is funded by NASA’s Space Technology Mission Directorate through the NASA Innovative Advanced Concepts Program, which encourages visionary ideas that could transform future missions with the creation of radically better or entirely new aerospace concepts. NIAC projects study innovative, technically credible, advanced concepts that could one day "change the possible" in aerospace.

Image above: Within a controlled plasma chamber -- the High Intensity Solar Environment Test system -- tests will examine the rate of proton and electron collisions with a positively charged tether. Results will help improve modeling data that will be applied to future development of E-Sail technology concept. Image Credits: NASA/MSFC/Emmett Given.

Selected as a Phase II NIAC Fellow in 2015, the HERTS team was awarded an additional $500,000 to further test the E-Sail and possibly change not only the way NASA travels to the heliopause, but also within our solar system.

“As the team studied this concept, it became clear that the design is flexible and adaptable,” said Wiegmann. “Mission and vehicle designers can trade off wire length, number of wires and voltage levels to fit their needs -- inner planetary, outer planetary or heliopause. The E-Sail is very scalable.”

Steering can be accomplished by modulating the wire’s voltage individually as the spacecraft rotates. Affecting a difference in force applied on different portions of the E-Sail, would give engineers the ability to steer the spacecraft, similar to the sails of a boat.

For more information on the Heliopause Electrostatic Rapid Transit System, visit:

http://www.nasa.gov/feature/heliopause-electrostatic-rapid-transit-system-herts

For more information on the NASA Innovative Advanced Concepts Program, visit:

https://www.nasa.gov/directorates/spacetech/niac/index.html

Images (mentioned), Video (mentioned), Text, Credits: NASA/Lee Mohon/Marshall Space Flight Center/Tracy McMahan/Kimberly Newton.

Best regards, Orbiter.ch

Invisible NASA Network Transports Satellite Secrets to Earth

NEN - Near Earth Network poster.


April 11, 2016

Around the world in 80 days? When Jules Verne wrote the novel, that seemed an impossible speed, but almost 150 years later, a NASA team has reduced the trip to minutes for data coming from some of today’s spacecraft.

Based out of NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Maryland, the Near Earth Network (NEN) serves as a conduit for information from spacecraft in low-Earth orbits, geosynchronous orbits, and even lunar orbits to the scientists who will study and use it on the ground. 

An orbiting observatory such as the Hubble Space Telescope collects huge amounts of data continuously, including both science observations and spacecraft health information, such as battery voltages and operational data. The missions of the Hubble Space Telescope and other satellite missions are not complete unless science observations and spacecraft health data are returned to the earth and processed.  There are no internet hook-ups, phone lines, or fiber optic cables in space to route the data to earth. That’s where the NEN comes in.

The NEN receives transmitted data from orbiting satellites like the Global Precipitation Measurement (GPM) mission, the Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter (LRO), the Geostationary Operational Environmental Satellite (GOES) missions and more. Large antennas placed at numerous longitudes and latitudes around the world connect with much smaller antennas onboard the spacecraft as they pass overhead. Once received by ground stations, the information is distributed worldwide to stakeholders continuing their important science work and engineers evaluating how well the satellite is operating.

Image above: NASA’s newest antenna AS-3 in the foreground and AS-1 in the background. Both are at the Alaska Satellite Facility operated by the University of Alaska, Fairbanks. Image Credits: NASA.

"The spacecraft has to be at a point in its orbit where the antenna can actually see it," said NEN engineer Ryan Turner. "It is as if you and I could only talk to each other if we could visually see each other, but if you walk around the corner, our conversation stops."

The ground stations receive data stored on spacecraft hard drives, which have a much smaller capacity than necessary to store a satellite’s lifetime of data. This data passes through a communication system that is capable of distributing it around the world to those in need of the data.

Engineers operating the NEN routinely schedule the connections between spacecraft and ground stations known as passes, referring to when the spacecraft passes above the ground stations to enable a connection opportunity. This is a huge responsibility with the more than 40 NEN spacecraft customers in orbit from 99 to 22,000 miles above Earth’s surface and even in orbit around the moon. The team must ensure no two spacecraft are scheduled to connect with an antenna at the same time, which could overwhelm the system. If a pass is missed, the team must reschedule the pass for another ground station in the area while they ensure the antenna is ready to receive new data. Sometimes changing the location of a pass is not possible, and the spacecraft must hold onto its data for another pass. Over the course of a year, the NEN receives data from more than 54,000 passes, a dramatic increase from when the NEN was first established as the ground network more than 50 years ago during the Apollo era.

Today, NEN engineers and operators face the challenge of keeping up with the heady pace of advancement of modern communication technology. As more and more spacecraft are launched and the need for higher rates of reception increases, the network must evolve to accommodate the increased demands.

"Before a new mission is launched, decisions are made regarding what orbit the spacecraft will fly. Then we decide which networks will work best,” Turner said. "We have to decide how much support the mission is going to need and whether we have enough assets on the ground to accommodate them."

The capability of the NEN is increasing with the recent installment of a new antenna in Alaska and plans to install several antenna in the southern hemisphere. The team is also developing new capabilities that will increase bandwidth and allow the network to keep up with growing data demands as new missions are launched.

"Everyone wants more bandwidth and increased capabilities will allow us to collect more data in less time,” said NEN Project Manager David Carter. “This will definitely make us much more efficient.” 

The team is already looking at a new challenge that will exponentially increase transmission capability. Using lasers to send data optically from customer spacecraft to our network assets greatly expands the bandwidth. Carter said it is the next step in satellite communications efforts, and the team is already preparing to take it on.

Comprised of NASA-owned and commercial tracking stations, the NEN is located throughout the world. Network assets owned by NASA are located at Wallops Flight Facility in Virginia, McMurdo Ground Station in Antarctica, White Sands Complex in New Mexico, and at a Fairbanks facility owned by NASA but operated by the University of Alaska Fairbanks.

Image above: This image maps Near Earth Network ground stations currently in use in 2016. Image Credits: NASA.

NASA's Space Communications and Navigation program, part of the Human Exploration and Operations Mission Directorate at the agency's headquarters in Washington, is responsible for all of NASA's space communication activities. The NEN is managed, operated and maintained at Goddard. Team members are located at the Greenbelt and Wallops campuses.

The NEN is currently augmenting its ground station network to provide communication services for future spacecraft. Future users will include NASA's newest heavy lift vehicle, the Space Launch System (SLS), and the Orion spacecraft that will carry astronauts into deep space on the journey to Mars.

Related links:

Near Earth Network (NEN): http://www.nasa.gov/directorates/heo/scan/services/networks/txt_nen.html

Global Precipitation Measurement (GPM): http://www.nasa.gov/mission_pages/GPM/main/index.html

Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter (LRO): http://lunar.gsfc.nasa.gov/

Geostationary Operational Environmental Satellite (GOES): https://www.nasa.gov/content/goes

Space Launch System (SLS): http://www.nasa.gov/exploration/systems/sls/index.html

NASA's Space Communications and Navigation program: http://www.nasa.gov/directorates/heo/scan/index.html

Images (mentioned), Text, Credits: NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center/Ashley Morrow.

Best regards, Orbiter.ch

Kepler Spacecraft in Emergency Mode

NASA - Kepler Space Telescope patch.

April 11, 2016

During a scheduled contact on Thursday, April 7, mission operations engineers discovered that the Kepler spacecraft was in Emergency Mode (EM). EM is the lowest operational mode and is fuel intensive. Recovering from EM is the team's priority at this time.

The mission has declared a spacecraft emergency, which provides priority access to ground-based communications at the agency's Deep Space Network.

Initial indications are that Kepler entered EM approximately 36 hours ago, before mission operations began the maneuver to orient the spacecraft to point toward the center of the Milky Way for the K2 mission's microlensing observing campaign.

Kepler Space Telescope

The spacecraft is nearly 75 million miles from Earth, making the communication slow. Even at the speed of light, it takes 13 minutes for a signal to travel to the spacecraft and back.

The last regular contact with the spacecraft was on April. 4.  The spacecraft was in good health and operating as expected.

Kepler completed its prime mission in 2012, detecting nearly 5,000 exoplanets, of which, more than 1,000 have been confirmed. In 2014 the Kepler spacecraft began a new mission called K2. In this extended mission, K2 continues the search for exoplanets while introducing new research opportunities to study young stars, supernovae, and many other astronomical objects.

Updates will be provided as additional information is available.

Related links:

Deep Space Network: http://deepspace.jpl.nasa.gov/

K2 mission's microlensing observing campaign: http://orbiterchspacenews.blogspot.ch/2016/04/searching-for-far-out-and-wandering.html

Image, Text, Credits: NASA/Charlie Sobeck/Michele Johnson.

Greetings, Orbiter.ch

Past and present moons

NASA & ESA - Cassini-Huygens Mission to Saturn & Titan patch.

April 11, 2016

Saturn’s beautiful rings form a striking feature, cutting across this image of two of the planet’s most intriguing moons.

The rings have been a source of mystery since their discovery in 1610 by Galileo Galilei. There is not full agreement on how they formed, but among the possibilities are that they may have formed along with Saturn, or that they are debris of a former moon that strayed too close to the planet and was ripped apart.

The rings are now shepherded by the gravity of some of the planet’s surviving moons. Of more than 60 known natural satellites, two of the most fascinating are also pictured in this image: Titan and Enceladus.

At 5150 km across, Titan is 10 times larger than Enceladus, which measures just 505 km in diameter. Titan is seen as a disc because light from the distant Sun is being refracted through the moon’s dense atmosphere.

Somewhere on Titan’s surface rests the Huygens probe. On 25 December 2004, Huygens detached from the Cassini mothership and, a few weeks later, parachuted through the dense atmosphere to return the first pictures of Titan’s rugged landscape of icy mountains.

Although Enceladus is a smaller moon, it has as much character. The restless interior means that water constantly jets through cracks in the icy surface. In some images, these geysers can be glimpsed at the south pole.

The image was taken on 10 June 2006 in red light with the Cassini spacecraft’s narrow-angle camera, and is orientated with north facing up. The spacecraft was some 3.9 million km from Enceladus and 5.3 million km from Titan.

Cassini itself is nearing the end of its mission, after 12 years exploring Saturn’s system. It will be guided to a dramatic end, plunging into Saturn’s atmosphere on 15 September 2017. Before then it will be moved into closer and closer orbits to the giant planet. Known as the Cassini Grand Finale, the spacecraft’s movements will reveal details of Saturn’s gravitational field.

As well as providing a way to determine the mass of the rings themselves, this will also tell scientists whether the ringed planet has a dense core of rocks and metal. If it does, it confirms that planets build up through the collision of smaller asteroid-like planetesimals.

For more information about Cassini, visit:

http://www.nasa.gov/cassini

http://www.esa.int/Our_Activities/Space_Science/Cassini-Huygens

http://saturn.jpl.nasa.gov

Image, Text, Credits: ESA/NASA/JPL/Space Science Institute.

Best regards, Orbiter.ch

SpaceX Dragon Mated to Harmony

SpaceX - CRS-8 Dragon Mission patch.

April 10, 2016

Image above: The SpaceX Dragon approaches the International Space Station moments before its robotic capture. Image Credit: NASA TV.

While the International Space Station was traveling over the Pacific Ocean west of Hawaii, astronaut Tim Peake of ESA (European Space Agency), with the assistance of NASA’s Jeff Williams, successfully captured the SpaceX Dragon spacecraft with the station’s robotic Canadarm2 at 7:23 a.m. EDT.

Let the Unloading Begin Aboard the ISS

Dragon’s arrival marks the first time two commercial cargo vehicles have been docked simultaneously at the space station. Orbital ATK’s Cygnus spacecraft arrived to the station just over two weeks ago.  With the arrival of Dragon, the space station ties the record for most vehicles on station at one time – six.

Image above: The SpaceX Dragon is seen shortly after it was mated to the Harmony module. The Cygnus cargo craft with its circular solar arrays and the Soyuz TMA-19M spacecraft (bottom right) are also seen in this view. Image Credit: NASA TV.

The SpaceX Dragon cargo spacecraft was bolted into place on the Harmony module of the International Space Station at 9:57 a.m. EDT as the station flew 250 miles over southern Algeria.

The spacecraft is delivering about 7,000 pounds of science and research investigations, including the Bigelow Expandable Activity Module, known as BEAM.

Related articles:

Experiments Headed to the Space Station Seek Insight on Challenges From Habitat Design to Drug Development:
http://orbiterchspacenews.blogspot.ch/2016/03/experiments-headed-to-space-station.html

Dragon Cargo Headed to Space Station Includes Habitat Prototype, Medical Research:
http://orbiterchspacenews.blogspot.ch/2016/04/dragon-cargo-headed-to-space-station.html

For more information about SpaceX's mission, visit: http://www.nasa.gov/spacex

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

Images (mentioned), Video, Text, Credits: NASA/NASA TV/Mark Garcia.

Greetings, Orbiter.ch

Long March 2D launches the recoverable Shijian-10

CASC - China Aerospace Science and Technology Corporation logo.

April 9, 2016

Chinese Long March 2D rocket launches recoverable Shijian-10

China has launched the Shijian-10 recoverable satellite. The launch of Shijian-10 took place at 17:38 UTC on Tuesday April 5, 2016 using a Long March-2D launch vehicle from the 603 Launch Pad at the Jiuquan Satellite Launch Center’s LC43.

Microgravity experiments on Shijian-10, the 24th recoverable satellite of China, cover the fields of physical science and life science.

ShiJian-10 launch. Video Credits: CCTV/SciNews

The scientific purpose of the program is to promote the scientific research in the space microgravity environment by operating Shijian-10 at low Earth orbit for two weeks.

There are six experiments for fluid physics, three for combustion and eight for materials science in the field of physical science.

Also on board are three experiments for radiation biology, three for gravitational biology and four for biotechnology in the field of life science.

Shijian-10 spacecraft

The satellite also carries an experiment from the European Space Agency that consists of containers of highly pressurized crude oil will to help to improve our knowledge of oil reservoirs buried kilometers underground.

A full list and overview of the experiments can be found on this link:
https://forum.nasaspaceflight.com/index.php?topic=38110.msg1423581#msg1423581

Shijian-10 will operate on a 220 x 482 km orbit at 63 degrees orbital inclination. Mission duration is expected to be two weeks. The launch mass of the satellite is 3,600 kg.

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

Images, Video (mentioned), Text, Credits: CASC/CCTV/NASA Spaceflight.com/Rui C. Barbosa.

Best regards, Orbiter.ch