CERN - MoEDAL closes in on search for magnetic particle

CERN - European Organization for Nuclear Research logo.

August 10, 2016

Image above: The MoEDAL experiment is searching for magnetic monopoles, which could, in theory, carry either a North or a South pole. (Image: Daniel Dominguez/ CERN).

The Monopole & Exotics Detector at the LHC, nicknamed the MoEDAL experiment at CERN has narrowed the window of where to search for a hypothetical particle, the magnetic monopole, says a new paper published today in the journal JHEP.

In the last decades, experiments have been trying to find evidence for magnetic monopoles at accelerators, including at CERN’s Large Hadron Collider. Such particles were first predicted by physicist Paul Dirac in the 1930s but have never been observed so far.

“Today MoEDAL celebrates the release of its first physics result and joins the other LHC experiments at the discovery frontier," says spokesperson of the MoEDAL experiment, James Pinfold.

The paper published today is based on an analysis of data collected during the LHC’s first run, when the trapping detector was still a prototype. Although showing no evidence for trapped monopoles, the results have allowed the MoEDAL collaboration to place new mass limits, assuming a simple production mode of these hypothetical particles. You can read more in the press release here: https://press.cern/press-releases/2016/08/lhc-moedal-experiment-publishes-its-first-paper-its-search-magnetic-monopoles

What is a magnetic monopole?
Just as electricity comes with two charges, positive and negative, so magnetism comes with two poles, North and South. The difference is that while it’s easy to isolate a positive or negative electric charge, nobody has ever seen a solitary magnetic charge, or monopole. If you take a bar magnet and cut it in half, you end up with two smaller bar magnets, each with a North and South pole. Yet theory suggests that magnetism could be a property of elementary particles. So just as electrons carry negative electric charge and protons carry positive charge, so magnetic monopoles could in theory carry a North or a South pole.

If monopoles exist, they are believed to be very massive. As the LHC produces collisions at unprecedented energy, physicists may be able to observe such particles if they are light enough to be in the LHC’s reach. For instance, high-energy photon–photon interactions could produce pairs of North and South monopoles.  Monopoles could manifest their presence via their magnetic charge and through their very high ionizing power, estimated to be about 4700 times higher than that of the protons. The MoEDAL experiment at the LHC is designed specifically to look at these effects.

How does MoEDAL work?

MoEDAL is composed of a largely passive detector, installed next to the LHCb experiment. As monopoles would be highly ionizing, they would leave tracks in plastic detectors (NTDs) that are examined by a microscope afterwards. Monopoles would also lose their energy very quickly and could therefore be slowed down by another device consisting of 0.8 tonnes of aluminium detectors that act as a trap. A trapped monopole would signal its presence afterwards, when a magnetometer ‘scans’ the detectors for a magnetic charge. Additionally, MoEDAL includes an array of TimePix silicon pixel detectors used to monitor the experiment’s environment in real-time.

What are magnetic monopoles?

Video above: What are magnetic monopoles? James Pinfold explains (Video: Noemi Caraban/CERN).

The results published today provide a clear demonstration of the power of the MoEDAL detector, as the LHC delivers data at higher energy. The MoEDAL collaboration is now actively working on the analysis of data obtained with the full detector – including plastic NTDs and trapping detectors – in 2015, with the exciting possibility of revolutionary discoveries in a number of new physics scenarios.

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:

MoEDAL experiment: http://home.cern/about/experiments/moedal

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

LHCb experiment: http://home.cern/about/experiments/lhcb

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

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

Best regards, Orbiter.ch

Cassini Finds Flooded Canyons on Titan

NASA 6 ESA - Cassini Mission to Saturn & Titan patch.

Aug. 10, 2016

NASA's Cassini spacecraft has found deep, steep-sided canyons on Saturn's moon Titan that are flooded with liquid hydrocarbons. The finding represents the first direct evidence of the presence of liquid-filled channels on Titan, as well as the first observation of canyons hundreds of meters deep.

A new paper in the journal Geophysical Research Letters describes how scientists analyzed Cassini data from a close pass the spacecraft made over Titan in May 2013. During the flyby, Cassini's radar instrument focused on channels that branch out from the large, northern sea Ligeia Mare.

Animation above: Cassini spacecraft pinged the surface of Titan with microwaves, finding that some channels are deep, steep-sided canyons filled with liquid hydrocarbons. One such feature is Vid Flumina, the branching network of narrow lines in the upper-left quadrant of the image. Image Credits: NASA/JPL-Caltech/ASI.

The Cassini observations reveal that the channels -- in particular, a network of them named Vid Flumina -- are narrow canyons, generally less than half a mile (a bit less than a kilometer) wide, with slopes steeper than 40 degrees. The canyons also are quite deep -- those measured are 790 to 1,870 feet (240 to 570 meters) from top to bottom.

The branching channels appear dark in radar images, much like Titan's methane-rich seas. This suggested to scientists that the channels might also be filled with liquid, but a direct detection had not been made until now. Previously it wasn't clear if the dark material was liquid or merely saturated sediment -- which at Titan's frigid temperatures would be made of ice, not rock.

Cassini's radar is often used as an imager, providing a window to peer through the dense haze that surrounds Titan to reveal the surface below. But during this pass, the radar was used as an altimeter, sending pings of radio waves to the moon's surface to measure the height of features there. The researchers combined the altimetry data with previous radar images of the region to make their discovery.


Image left: The canyons of Vid Flumina are seen in this view from Cassini's radar mapper. Image Credits: NASA/JPL-Caltech/ASI.

Key to understanding the nature of the channels was the way Cassini's radar signal reflected off the bottoms of the features. The radar instrument observed a glint, indicating an extremely smooth surface like that observed from Titan's hydrocarbon seas. The timing of the radar echoes, as they bounced off the canyons' edges and floors, provided a direct measure of their depths.

The presence of such deep cuts in the landscape indicates that whatever process created them was active for a long time or eroded down much faster than other areas on Titan’s surface. The researchers' proposed scenarios include uplift of the terrain and changes in sea level, or perhaps both.

"It's likely that a combination of these forces contributed to the formation of the deep canyons, but at present it's not clear to what degree each was involved. What is clear is that any description of Titan's geological evolution needs to be able to explain how the canyons got there," said Valerio Poggiali of the University of Rome, a Cassini radar team associate and lead author of the study.

Earthly examples of both of these types of canyon-carving processes are found along the Colorado River in Arizona. An example of uplift powering erosion is the Grand Canyon, where the terrain's rising altitude caused the river to cut deeply downward into the landscape over the course of several million years. For canyon formation driven by variations in water level, look to Lake Powell. When the water level in the reservoir drops, it increases the river's rate of erosion.

"Earth is warm and rocky, with rivers of water, while Titan is cold and icy, with rivers of methane. And yet it's remarkable that we find such similar features on both worlds," said Alex Hayes, a Cassini radar team associate at Cornell University, Ithaca, New York, and a co-author of the study.

While the altimeter data also showed that the liquid in some of the canyons around Ligeia Mare is at sea level -- the same altitude as the liquid in the sea itself -- in others it sits tens to hundreds of feet (tens of meters) higher in elevation. The researchers interpret the latter to be tributaries that drain into the main channels below.

Future work will extend the methods used in this study to all other channels Cassini's radar altimeter has observed on Titan. The researchers expect their continued work to produce a more comprehensive understanding of forces that have shaped the Saturnian moon's landscape.

The Cassini-Huygens mission is a cooperative project of NASA, ESA (European Space Agency) and the Italian Space Agency. NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory, a division of Caltech in Pasadena, manages the mission for NASA's Science Mission Directorate, Washington. JPL designed, developed and assembled the Cassini orbiter. The radar instrument was built by JPL and the Italian Space Agency, working with team members from the US and several European countries.

More information about Cassini:

http://www.nasa.gov/cassini

http://saturn.jpl.nasa.gov

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

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

Best regards, Orbiter.ch

A Black Hole Story Told by a Cosmic Blob and Bubble

NASA - Chandra X-ray Observatory patch.

Aug. 10, 2016

Two cosmic structures show evidence for a remarkable change in behavior of a supermassive black hole in a distant galaxy. Using data from NASA’s Chandra X-ray Observatory and other telescopes, astronomers are piecing together clues from a cosmic “blob” and a gas bubble that could be a new way to probe the past activity of a giant black hole and its effect on its host galaxy.

The Green Blob, a renowned cosmic structure also called “Hanny’s Voorwerp” (which means “Hanny’s object” in Dutch), is located about 650 million light years from Earth. This object was discovered in 2007 by Hanny van Arkel, at the time a school teacher, as part of the citizen science project called Galaxy Zoo.

Astronomers think that a blast of ultraviolet and X-radiation produced by a supermassive black hole at the center of the galaxy IC 2497 (only 200,000 light years away) excited the oxygen atoms in a gas cloud, giving the Green Blob its emerald glow. At present the black hole is growing slowly and not producing nearly enough radiation to cause such a glow.

However, the distance of the Green Blob from IC 2497 is large enough that we may be observing a delayed response, or an echo of past activity, from a rapidly growing black hole. Such a black hole would produce copious amounts of radiation from infalling material, categorizing it as a “quasar.”

If the black hole was growing at a much higher rate in the past and then slowed down dramatically in the past 200,000 years, the glow of the Green Blob could be consistent with the present low activity of the black hole. In this scenario, the blob would become much dimmer in the distant future, as reduced ultraviolet and X-radiation levels from the faded quasar finally reach the cloud.

In this new composite image of IC 2497 (top object) and the Green Blob (bottom), X-rays from Chandra are purple and optical data from the Hubble Space Telescope are red, green, and blue.

New observations with Chandra show that the black hole is still producing large amounts of energy even though it is no longer generating intense radiation as a quasar. The evidence for this change in the black hole’s activity comes from hot gas in the center of IC 2497 detected in a long exposure by Chandra. The center of the X-ray emission shows cooler gas, which astronomers interpret as a large bubble in the gas.

Astronomers suspect this bubble may have been created when a pair of jets from the black hole blew away the hot gas. In this scenario, the energy produced by the supermassive black hole has changed from that of a quasar, when energy is radiated in a broad beam, to more concentrated output in the form of collimated jets of particles and consistent with the observed radio emission in this source.

Such changes in behavior from strong radiation to strong outflow are seen in stellar-mass black holes that weigh about ten times that of the Sun, taking place over only a few weeks. The much higher mass of the black hole in IC 2497 results in much slower changes over many thousands of years.

Chandra X-ray Observatory

The citizen and professional scientists of the Galaxy Zoo project have continued to hunt for objects like the Green Blob. Many smaller versions of the Green Blob have been found (dubbed “Voorwerpjes” or “little objects” in Dutch.) These latest results from Chandra suggest that fading quasars identified as Voorwerpjes are good places to search for examples of supermassive black holes affecting their surroundings.

A paper on these results recently appeared in Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society and is available online. The authors of the paper are Lia Sartori (ETH Zurich), Kevin Schawinski (ETH Zurich), Michael Koss (ETH Zurich), Ezequiel Treister (University of Concepcion, Chile), Peter Maksym (Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics), William Keel (University of Alabama, Tuscaloosa), C. Megan Urry (Yale University), Chris Lintott (Oxford University), and O. Ivy Wong (University of Western Australia).

NASA’s Marshall Space Flight Center in Huntsville, Alabama, manages the Chandra program for NASA’s Science Mission Directorate in Washington. The Smithsonian Astrophysical Observatory in Cambridge, Massachusetts, controls Chandra’s science and flight operations.

Read More from NASA's Chandra X-ray Observatory: http://chandra.harvard.edu/photo/2016/ic2497/

For more Chandra images, multimedia and related materials, visit: http://www.nasa.gov/chandra

Images, Text, Credits: X-ray: NASA/CXC/ETH Zurich/L. Sartori et al, Optical: NASA/STScI/Lee Mohon.

Greetings, Orbiter.ch

Stellar Lab in Sagittarius

ESO - European Southern Observatory logo.

10 August 2016

The star cluster Messier 18 and its surroundings

The small smattering of bright blue stars in the upper left of this vast new 615 megapixel ESO image is the perfect cosmic laboratory in which to study the life and death of stars. Known as Messier 18 this star cluster contains stars that formed together from the same massive cloud of gas and dust. This image, which also features red clouds of glowing hydrogen and dark filaments of dust, was captured by the VLT Survey Telescope (VST) located at ESO’s Paranal Observatory in Chile.

Messier 18 was discovered and catalogued in 1764 by Charles Messier — for whom the Messier Objects are named — during his search for comet-like objects [1]. It lies within the Milky Way, approximately 4600 light-years away in the constellation of Sagittarius, and consists of many sibling stars loosely bound together in what is known as an open cluster.

The star cluster Messier 18 in the constellation of Sagittarius

There are over 1000 known open star clusters within the Milky Way, with a wide range of properties, such as size and age, that provide astronomers with clues to how stars form, evolve and die. The main appeal of these clusters is that all of their stars are born together out of the same material.

In Messier 18 the blue and white colours of the stellar population indicate that the cluster’s stars are very young, probably only around 30 million years old. Being siblings means that any differences between the stars will only be due to their masses, and not their distance from Earth or the composition of the material they formed from. This makes clusters very useful in refining theories of star formation and evolution.

Wide-field view of the region around the star cluster Messier 18

Astronomers now know that most stars do form in groups, forged from the same cloud of gas that collapsed in on itself due to the attractive force of gravity. The cloud of leftover gas and dust — or molecular cloud — that envelops the new stars is often blown away by their strong stellar winds, weakening the gravitational shackles that bind them. Over time, loosely bound stellar siblings like those pictured here will often go their separate ways as interactions with other neighbouring stars or massive gas clouds nudge, or pull, the stars apart. Our own star, the Sun, was most likely once part of a cluster very much like Messier 18 until its companions were gradually distributed across the Milky Way.

Zooming in on the star cluster Messier 18

The dark lanes that snake through this image are murky filaments of cosmic dust, blocking out the light from distant stars. The contrasting faint reddish clouds that seem to weave between the stars are composed of ionised hydrogen gas. The gas glows because young, extremely hot stars like these are emitting intense ultraviolet light which strips the surrounding gas of its electrons and causes it to emit the faint glow seen in this image. Given the right conditions, this material could one day collapse in on itself and provide the Milky Way with yet another brood of stars — a star formation process that may continue indefinitely (eso1535).

Close-up look at the region around the star cluster Messier 18

This mammoth 30 577 x 20 108 pixel image was captured using the OmegaCAM camera, which is attached to the VLT Survey Telescope (VST) at ESO’s Paranal Observatory in Chile.

Notes:

[1] Messier 18 is also listed in the New General Catalogue as NGC 6613.

More information:

ESO is the foremost intergovernmental astronomy organisation in Europe and the world’s most productive ground-based astronomical observatory by far. It is supported by 16 countries: Austria, Belgium, Brazil, the Czech Republic, Denmark, France, Finland, Germany, Italy, the Netherlands, Poland, Portugal, Spain, Sweden, Switzerland and the United Kingdom, along with the host state of Chile. ESO carries out an ambitious programme focused on the design, construction and operation of powerful ground-based observing facilities enabling astronomers to make important scientific discoveries. ESO also plays a leading role in promoting and organising cooperation in astronomical research. ESO operates three unique world-class observing sites in Chile: La Silla, Paranal and Chajnantor. At Paranal, ESO operates the Very Large Telescope, the world’s most advanced visible-light astronomical observatory and two survey telescopes. VISTA works in the infrared and is the world’s largest survey telescope and the VLT Survey Telescope is the largest telescope designed to exclusively survey the skies in visible light. ESO is a major partner in ALMA, the largest astronomical project in existence. And on Cerro Armazones, close to Paranal, ESO is building the 39-metre European Extremely Large Telescope, the E-ELT, which will become “the world’s biggest eye on the sky”.

Links:

VLT Survey Telescope (VST): http://www.eso.org/public/teles-instr/surveytelescopes/vst/

ESO Information on OmegaCAM: https://www.eso.org/public/teles-instr/surveytelescopes/vst/camera/

eso1535: http://www.eso.org/public/news/eso1535/

Images, Text, Credits: ESO/IAU and Sky & Telescope/Digitized Sky Survey 2. Acknowledgement: Davide De Martin/Videos: ESO/Digitized Sky Survey 2/N. Risinger (skysurvey.org). Music: Johan B. Monell (www.johanmonell.com).

Best regards, Orbiter.ch

NASA's IMERG Measures Hurricane Earl's Deadly Rainfall in Mexico

NASA & JAXA - Global Precipitation Measurement (GPM) logo.

Aug. 9, 2016

Hurricane Earl began as a tropical wave that was tracked by the National Hurricane Center (NHC) from the African coast to the Caribbean Sea. The tropical wave drenched the Dominican Republic, where it was blamed for the deaths of six people. Southwest of Jamaica on Aug. 2, 2016, the tropical wave developed a closed circulation, and Earl was upgraded to a tropical storm.

Image above: The analysis of rainfall from Aug. 2 through Aug. 8, 2016, showed the period from when Earl became a tropical storm until Earl's remnants interacted with an area of disturbed weather along the Pacific coast. Some areas in extreme southern Mexico received up to 43.3 inches (1,100 mm) of rain. Earl's locations and intensities, as defined by the National Hurricane Center (NHC), are shown overlaid in white. Image Credits: NASA/JAXA/Hal Pierce.

On Aug. 3, Earl became a hurricane when it was located about 150 miles east of Belize. On Aug. 4 Earl made landfall just southwest of Belize City, Belize, at about 2 a.m. EDT (6 a.m. UTC). At landfall Earl had winds of about 81 mph (70 knots). Earl weakened to tropical depression intensity over the Yucatan but regained tropical storm wind speeds of about 58 mph (50 knots) when it emerged over the Bay of Campeche. On Aug. 6, Earl hit Mexico again just south of Veracruz. Earl was then disrupted by Mexico's rough terrain and dissipated.

Data from NASA's Integrated Multi-satellite Retrievals for GPM (IMERG) were used to estimate the amount of rain that fell from Aug. 2 through Aug. 8. GPM is the Global Precipitation Measurement mission, a joint mission of NASA and the Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency.

Animation Credits: NASA/JAXA/Hal Pierce

The analysis, created at NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Maryland, showed rainfall over the period from when Earl became a tropical storm until Earl's remnants interacted with an area of disturbed weather along the Pacific coast. Some areas in extreme southern Mexico received up to 43.3 inches (1,100 mm) of rain.

The IMERG analysis showed the extreme amount of rain that was dropped by Earl over Belize, Guatemala, eastern Mexico and Mexico's Pacific coast.

According to the official Twitter account of Luis Puente, Mexico’s national civil protection coordinator, at least 40 people were reported killed by landslides in the Mexican states of Puebla and Veracruz.

The remnants of Earl interacted with an area of disturbed weather along the Pacific coast of Mexico and aided in the formation of a tropical depression that became Tropical Storm Javier on Aug. 7.

Related article:

GPM Looks at Historic Flooding from Slow-Moving Maryland Storms
http://orbiterchspacenews.blogspot.ch/2016/08/gpm-looks-at-historic-flooding-from.html

Related Links:

NASA's Earl coverage: http://www.nasa.gov/feature/goddard/2016/earl-caribbean-sea

GPM (Global Precipitation Measurement): http://www.nasa.gov/mission_pages/GPM/main/index.html and http://global.jaxa.jp/projects/sat/gpm/topics.html

Image (mentioned), Animation (mentioned), Text, Credits: NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center/Hal Pierce/Rob Gutro/Rob Garner.

Greetings, Orbiter.ch

Infrared Saturn Clouds

NASA - Cassini Mission to Saturn patch.

Aug. 9, 2016

This false-color view from NASA's Cassini spacecraft shows clouds in Saturn's northern hemisphere. The view was produced by space imaging enthusiast Kevin M. Gill, who also happens to be an engineer at NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory.

The view was made using images taken by Cassini's wide-angle camera on July 20, 2016, using a combination of spectral filters sensitive to infrared light at 750, 727 and 619 nanometers.

Filters like these, which are sensitive to absorption and scattering of sunlight by methane in Saturn's atmosphere, have been useful throughout Cassini's mission for determining the structure and depth of cloud features in the atmosphere.

The Cassini-Huygens mission is a cooperative project of NASA, the European Space Agency and the Italian Space Agency. The 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. The Cassini orbiter and its two onboard cameras were designed, developed and assembled at JPL. The imaging operations center is based at the Space Science Institute in Boulder, Colorado.

For more information about the Cassini-Huygens mission visit http://www.nasa.gov/cassini and http://saturn.jpl.nasa.gov and ESA's website: http://www.esa.int/Our_Activities/Space_Science/Cassini-Huygens

Image, Text, Credits: NASA/JPL-Caltech/Space Science Institute/Kevin M. Gill/Sarah Loff.

Best regards, Orbiter.ch

Salvaged Galileos to help satnav specialists find their way

ESA - Galileo logo.

9 August 2016

Europe’s fifth and sixth Galileo satellites, which were salvaged from their faulty launch into working orbits, are set to begin broadcasting working navigation signals for test purposes.

This activation will allow satnav receiver manufacturers, service providers and scientific researchers to make use of these test signals. A decision on whether these satellites will become part of the operational Galileo constellation is due to be taken by the European Commission.

Galileos in orbit

A malfunction in their Soyuz-Fregat upper stage during their 22 August 2014 launch placed Galileos 5 and 6 into highly elliptical – or elongated orbits – instead of their planned circular medium-Earth orbits.

A team based at ESA’s ESOC control centre in Darmstadt, Germany, then performed a complex series of manoeuvres to raise and circularise their orbits.

The satellites lacked sufficient fuel to reach their originally envisaged orbits, but the salvage meant that their navigation payloads could then be operated on an ongoing basis; their initial orbits dipped the satellites too close to Earth to keep their antennas properly locked on the planet.

Controlling Galileo

“Once their orbits were modified, their navigation payloads could be turned on and in-orbit testing could take place,” explains Marco Falcone, Head of the Galileo System Office “The good news was their performance was excellent.

“Now they will be tested on a more sustained basis, along with the rest of the Galileo satellites. A pair of ‘Notice Advisory to Galileo Users’ (NAGUs) informing the user community of their availability for testing purposes have been published on the European Global Navigation Satellite System Service Centre website. Users are welcome to provide feedback on their usage of GSAT0201 and GSAT0202 by contacting the GSC helpdesk.

“On our side, switching on their navigation signals allows us to evaluate the entire spectrum of performance of the satellites on an end-to-end basis.

Corrected orbits 

“The navigation signals will include a signal health status reading that ‘signal component currently in test’ and its navigation data validity status will be ‘working without guarantee’. In this way, these signals will not disturb the performance of any receivers using the Galileo signals coming from the other satellites.

“On the user community side, some application providers are interested in harnessing as many available satellites as possible for precision applications.”

Because these satellites are not placed in nominal Galileo orbits, the orbital almanacs included in Galileo’s navigation signal will leave out their orbital positions, making Galileos 5 and 6 harder for receivers to locate – although the GSA website will give acquisition details.

Satnav signals

Their testing will take place in two phases: initially their navigation signal will be updated via the Galileo ground segment every 14 hours or so. Later on this year, the ground segment will be reconfigured to upgrade the update frequency more often, greatly enhancing their navigation precision – although they will remain outside the official Galileo constellation until decided otherwise.

The two satellites have not been idle since their in-orbit testing was completed. Instead, they are midway through an ambitious space experiment to test Einstein’s General Theory of Relativity more precisely than ever before, by measuring how their onboard time varies in accordance with their altitude and therefore gravity, known as their ‘gravitational redshift’.

This experiment uses only the carrier wave of the signals, so will be unaffected by the transmission of navigation messages by satellites 5 and 6.

About Galileo:

Galileo FOC

The Galileo programme is funded and owned by the EU. The European Commission has the overall responsibility for the programme, managing and overseeing the implementation of all programme activities.

Galileo’s deployment, the design and development of the new generation of systems and the technical development of infrastructure are entrusted to ESA. The definition, development and in-orbit validation phases were carried out by ESA, and co-funded by ESA and the European Commission.

The Commission and ESA have signed a delegation agreement by which ESA acts as design and procurement agent on behalf of the Commission.

The European Global Navigation Satellite System Agency (GSA) is ensuring the uptake and security of Galileo. Galileo operations and provision of services will be entrusted to the GSA from 2017.

Related articles:

Galileos 5 & 6: Salvage in space:

Salvaged Galileo performs its first navigation fix
http://orbiterchspacenews.blogspot.ch/2014/12/salvaged-galileo-performs-its-first.html

Sixth Galileo satellite reaches corrected orbit
http://orbiterchspacenews.blogspot.ch/2015/03/sixth-galileo-satellite-reaches.html

Galileo satellite recovered and transmitting navigation signals
http://orbiterchspacenews.blogspot.ch/2014/12/galileo-satellite-recovered-and.html

Galileo satellite set for new orbit
http://orbiterchspacenews.blogspot.ch/2014/11/galileo-satellite-set-for-new-orbit.html

Soyuz lifts off from French Guiana with the first fully-operational Galileo spacecrafts
http://orbiterchspacenews.blogspot.ch/2014/08/soyuz-lifts-off-from-french-guiana-with.html

Related links:

Galileo Tour: http://esamultimedia.esa.int/multimedia/Galileo_tour/galileo.swf?lang=gb&mylang=gb

EC Galileo website: http://ec.europa.eu/growth/sectors/space/galileo/index_en.htm

European GNSS Agency: http://www.gsa.europa.eu/

NAGU for Galileo 5 and NAGU for Galileo 6: http://www.gsc-europa.eu/notice-advisory-to-galileo-users-nagu-2016030

GSC helpdesk: http://www.gsc-europa.eu/

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

Greetings, Orbiter.ch