Jupiter: A New Point of View

NASA - JUNO Mission logo.

Aug. 17, 2017

This striking Jovian vista was created by citizen scientists Gerald Eichstädt and Seán Doran using data from the JunoCam imager on NASA’s Juno spacecraft.

The tumultuous Great Red Spot is fading from Juno's view while the dynamic bands of the southern region of Jupiter come into focus. North is to the left of the image, and south is on the right.

The image was taken on July 10, 2017 at 7:12 p.m. PDT (10:12 p.m. EDT), as the Juno spacecraft performed its seventh close flyby of Jupiter. At the time the image was taken, the spacecraft was 10,274 miles (16,535 kilometers) from the tops of the clouds of the planet at a latitude of -36.9 degrees.

JUNO spacecraft orbiting Jupiter

JunoCam's raw images are available for the public to peruse and process into image products at:

http://www.missionjuno.swri.edu/junocam     

More information about Juno is at:

https://www.nasa.gov/juno and http://missionjuno.swri.edu

Image, Animation, Text, Credits: NASA/Tony Greicius/JPL-Caltech/SwRI/MSSS/Gerald Eichstädt/Seán Doran.

Best regards, Orbiter.ch

Scientists Improve Brown Dwarf Weather Forecasts

NASA - Spitzer Space Telescope patch.

Aug. 17, 2017

Dim objects called brown dwarfs, less massive than the Sun but more massive than Jupiter, have powerful winds and clouds -- specifically, hot patchy clouds made of iron droplets and silicate dust. Scientists recently realized these giant clouds can move and thicken or thin surprisingly rapidly, in less than an Earth day, but did not understand why.

Now, researchers have a new model for explaining how clouds move and change shape in brown dwarfs, using insights from NASA's Spitzer Space Telescope. Giant waves cause large-scale movement of particles in brown dwarfs' atmospheres, changing the thickness of the silicate clouds, researchers report in the journal Science. The study also suggests these clouds are organized in bands confined to different latitudes, traveling with different speeds in different bands.

Animation above: This artist's concept shows a brown dwarf with bands of clouds, thought to resemble those seen at Neptune and the other outer planets. Animation Credits: NASA/JPL-Caltech.

"This is the first time we have seen atmospheric bands and waves in brown dwarfs," said lead author Daniel Apai, associate professor of astronomy and planetary sciences at the University of Arizona in Tucson.

Just as in Earth’s ocean, different types of waves can form in planetary atmospheres. For example, in Earth’s atmosphere, very long waves mix cold air from the polar regions to mid-latitudes, which often lead clouds to form or dissipate.

The distribution and motions of the clouds on brown dwarfs in this study are more similar to those seen on Jupiter, Saturn, Uranus and Neptune. Neptune has cloud structures that follow banded paths too, but its clouds are made of ice. Observations of Neptune from NASA's Kepler spacecraft, operating in its K2 mission, were important in this comparison between the planet and brown dwarfs.

"The atmospheric winds of brown dwarfs seem to be more like Jupiter’s familiar regular pattern of belts and zones than the chaotic atmospheric boiling seen on the Sun and many other stars," said study co-author Mark Marley at NASA's Ames Research Center in California's Silicon Valley.

Brown dwarfs can be thought of as failed stars because they are too small to fuse chemical elements in their cores. They can also be thought of as "super planets" because they are more massive than Jupiter, yet have roughly the same diameter. Like gas giant planets, brown dwarfs are mostly made of hydrogen and helium, but they are often found apart from any planetary systems. In a 2014 study using Spitzer, scientists found that brown dwarfs commonly have atmospheric storms.

Due to their similarity to giant exoplanets, brown dwarfs are windows into planetary systems beyond our own. It is easier to study brown dwarfs than planets because they often do not have a bright host star that obscures them.

"It is likely the banded structure and large atmospheric waves we found in brown dwarfs will also be common in giant exoplanets," Apai said.

Using Spitzer, scientists monitored brightness changes in six brown dwarfs over more than a year, observing each of them rotate 32 times. As a brown dwarf rotates, its clouds move in and out of the hemisphere seen by the telescope, causing changes in the brightness of the brown dwarf. Scientists then analyzed these brightness variations to explore how silicate clouds are distributed in the brown dwarfs.

Researchers had been expecting these brown dwarfs to have elliptical storms resembling Jupiter's Great Red Spot, caused by high-pressure zones. The Great Red Spot has been present in Jupiter for hundreds of years and changes very slowly: Such "spots" could not explain the rapid changes in brightness that scientists saw while observing these brown dwarfs. The brightness levels of the brown dwarfs varied markedly just over the course of an Earth day.

Spitzer Space Telescope. Credits: NASA/JPL

To make sense of the ups and downs of brightness, scientists had to rethink their assumptions about what was going on in the brown dwarf atmospheres. The best model to explain the variations involves large waves, propagating through the atmosphere with different periods. These waves would make the cloud structures rotate with different speeds in different bands.

University of Arizona researcher Theodora Karalidi used a supercomputer and a new computer algorithm to create maps of how clouds travel on these brown dwarfs.

"When the peaks of the two waves are offset, over the course of the day there are two points of maximum brightness," Karalidi said. "When the waves are in sync, you get one large peak, making the brown dwarf twice as bright as with a single wave."

The results explain the puzzling behavior and brightness changes that researchers previously saw. The next step is to try to better understand what causes the waves that drive cloud behavior. 

JPL manages the Spitzer Space Telescope mission for NASA's Science Mission Directorate, Washington. Science operations are conducted at the Spitzer Science Center at Caltech in Pasadena, California. Spacecraft operations are based at Lockheed Martin Space Systems Company, Littleton, Colorado. Data are archived at the Infrared Science Archive housed at the Infrared Processing and Analysis Center at Caltech. Caltech manages JPL for NASA. For more information about Spitzer, visit:

http://spitzer.caltech.edu

https://www.nasa.gov/spitzer

Observations of Neptune from NASA's Kepler spacecraft: https://www.nasa.gov/feature/ames/kepler/kepler-observes-neptune-dance-with-its-moons

Animation (mentioned), Image (mentioned),Text, Credits: NASA/Tony Greicius/JPL/Elizabeth Landau.

Best regards, Orbiter.ch

NASA-led Mission Studies Storm Intensification

NASA - Airborne Science Program patch.

August 17, 2017

A group of NASA and National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) scientists, including scientists from NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory, Pasadena, California, are teaming up this month for an airborne mission focused on studying severe storm processes and intensification. The Hands-On Project Experience (HOPE) Eastern Pacific Origins and Characteristics of Hurricanes (EPOCH) field campaign will use NASA's Global Hawk autonomous aircraft to study storms in the Northern Hemisphere to learn more about how storms intensify as they brew out over the ocean.

The scope of the mission initially focused only on the East Pacific region, but was expanded to both the Gulf and Atlantic regions to give the science team broader opportunities for data collection.

"Our key point of interest is still the Eastern Pacific, but if the team saw something developing off the East Coast that may have high impact to coastal communities, we would definitely recalibrate to send the aircraft to that area," said Amber Emory, NASA's principal investigator.

Image above: NASA's Global Hawk being prepared at Armstrong to monitor and take scientific measurements of Hurricane Matthew in 2016. Image Credits: NASA Photo/Lauren Hughes.

Having a better understanding of storm intensification is an important goal of HOPE EPOCH. The data will help improve models that predict storm impact to coastal regions, where property damage and threat to human life can be high.

NASA has led the campaign through integration of the HOPE EPOCH science payload onto the Global Hawk platform and maintained operational oversight for the six planned mission flights. NOAA's role will be to incorporate data from dropsondes -- devices dropped from aircraft to measure storm conditions -- into NOAA National Weather Service operational models to improve storm track and intensity forecasts that will be provided to the public. NOAA first used the Global Hawk to study Hurricane Gaston in 2016.

With the Global Hawk flying at altitudes of 60,000 feet (18,300 meters), the team will conduct six 24-hour-long flights, three of which are being supported and funded through a partnership with NOAA's Unmanned Aircraft Systems program.

NASA's autonomous Global Hawk is operated from NASA's Armstrong Flight Research Center at Edwards Air Force Base in California and was developed for the U.S. Air Force by Northrop Grumman. It is ideally suited for high-altitude, long-duration Earth science flights.

The ability of the Global Hawk to autonomously fly long distances, remain aloft for extended periods of time and carry large payloads brings a new capability to the science community for measuring, monitoring and observing remote locations of Earth not feasible or practical with piloted aircraft or space satellites.

The science payload consists of a variety of instruments that will measure different aspects of storm systems, including wind velocity, pressure, temperature, humidity, cloud moisture content and the overall structure of the storm system.

Many of the science instruments have flown previously on the Global Hawk, including the High-Altitude MMIC Sounding Radiometer (HAMSR), a microwave sounder instrument that takes vertical profiles of temperature and humidity; and the Airborne Vertical Atmospheric Profiling System (AVAPS) dropsondes, which are released from the aircraft to profile temperature, humidity, pressure, wind speed and direction.

New to the science payload is the ER-2 X-band Doppler Radar (EXRAD) instrument that observes vertical velocity of a storm system. EXRAD has one conically scanning beam as well as one nadir beam, which looks down directly underneath the aircraft. EXRAD now allows researchers to get direct retrievals of vertical velocities directly underneath the plane.

The EXRAD instrument is managed and operated by NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Maryland; and the HAMSR instrument is managed by JPL. The National Center for Atmospheric Research developed the AVAPS dropsonde system, and the NOAA team will manage and operate the system for the HOPE EPOCH mission.

Besides the scientific value that the HOPE EPOCH mission brings, the campaign also provides a unique opportunity for early-career scientists and project managers to gain professional development.

HOPE is a cooperative workforce development program sponsored by the Academy of Program/Project & Engineering Leadership (APPEL) program and NASA's Science Mission Directorate. The HOPE Training Program provides an opportunity for a team of early-entry NASA employees to propose, design, develop, build and launch a suborbital flight project over the course of 18 months. This opportunity enables participants to gain the knowledge and skills necessary to manage NASA's future flight projects.

Emory started as a NASA Pathways Intern in 2009. The HOPE EPOCH mission is particularly exciting for her, as some of her first science projects at NASA began with the Global Hawk program.

The NASA Global Hawk had its first flights during the 2010 Genesis and Rapid Intensification Processes (GRIP) campaign. Incidentally, the first EPOCH science flight targeted Tropical Storm Franklin as it emerged from the Yucatan peninsula into the Gulf of Campeche along a track almost identical to that of Hurricane Karl in 2010, which was targeted during GRIP and where Emory played an important role.

"It's exciting to work with people who are so committed to making the mission successful," Emory said. "Every mission has its own set of challenges, but when people come to the table with new ideas on how to solve those challenges, it makes for a very rewarding experience and we end up learning a lot from one another."

Related links:

NOAA first used the Global Hawk to study Hurricane Gaston in 2016: http://research.noaa.gov/News/NewsArchive/LatestNews/TabId/684/ArtMID/1768/ArticleID/11848/NASA-Global-Hawk-alerts-NOAA-National-Weather-Service-of-Gaston_E2_80_99s-intensification.aspx

National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA): http://www.noaa.gov/

NASA: https://www.nasa.gov/

Image (mentioned), Text, Credits: NASA/Armstrong Flight Research Center, written by Kate Squires/JPL/Alan Buis.

Greetings, Orbiter.ch

Sentinel-1 speeds up crop insurance payouts

ESA - Sentinel-1 Mission logo.

17 August 2017

For the first time in India, a state government is using satellites to assess lost crops so that farmers can benefit from speedy insurance payouts.

The southern Indian state of Tamil Nadu is home to around 68 million people, of which almost a million are rice farmers. However, Tamil Nadu is facing the worst drought in 140 years, leading to the land being too dry for paddy fields, lost yield, widespread misery and unrest.

Assessing rice crops with Sentinel-1

The Copernicus Sentinel-1 radar mission has been used to alleviate a little of the suffering by providing evidence of damaged land and failed crops so that the Agricultural Insurance Company of India can compensate farmers as quickly as possible. So far, more than 200 000 farmers have received payouts.

Malay Kumar Poddar, the company’s general manager, said, “Assessing damages based on remote-sensing technology is introducing much objectivity into the crop insurance programme.

“Beyond the area loss assessment, we are also keen to apply the technology to assess actual yields at the end of the season.”

Satellites carrying optical cameras can provide images of Earth’s surface only in daylight and in the absence of cloud, but the Sentinel-1 satellites carry radar which works regardless.

Sentinel-1: seeing through clouds

This makes it an ideal mission to use in tropical and subtropical regions, which are often cloudy.

Sentinel-1 radar imagery combined with rice-yield modelling is at the heart of the German–Swiss Remote-Sensing based Information and Insurance for Crops in Emerging Economies initiative (RIICE).

Francesco Holecz, from sarmap, set up the service in collaboration with the International Rice Research Institute, RIICE partners, Indian authorities and universities.

He said, “The reliable repetitiveness of the Sentinels, their short revisit intervals, the free, quick and easy access to the products and the high quality of the data have contributed a lot to the practicability of satellite-based rice monitoring systems.”

Start of rice cropping

Gagandeep Singh Bedi, agricultural production commissioner and principle secretary to the government in Tamil Nadu added, “RIICE remote-sensing technology allows us to assess crop loss and damages in a more transparent and timely manner.

“It was particularly useful during the last cropping season to identify villages that had been hit by drought, and farmers benefited from the technology by getting claims in a record time.”

The research network is also working with partners in other countries to develop the method further.

Rice yield

For example, the Tamil Nadu Agricultural University and the International Rice Research Institute in the Philippines are looking to use it to assess yields at the end of the season.

Sellaperumal Pazhanivelan, from the university, said, “We believe that this technology can help the state governments to obtain objective and transparent data on actual rice yields so that farmers affected by natural hazards can be identified quickly.”

Related links:

Sentinel-1: http://www.esa.int/Our_Activities/Observing_the_Earth/Copernicus/Sentinel-1

Sentinel data access & technical information: https://sentinels.copernicus.eu/web/sentinel/home

sarmap: http://www.sarmap.ch/

Agriculture Insurance Company of India: http://www.aicofindia.com/AICEng/Pages/default.aspx

Tamil Nadu Agricultural University: http://www.tnau.ac.in/

Government of Tamil Nadu–Agriculture Department: http://www.tn.gov.in/department/2

International Rice Institute: http://irri.org/

Images, Video, Text, Credits: ESA/contains modified Copernicus Sentinel data (2016), processed by RIICE/TNAU.

Greetings, Orbiter.ch

ESA’s Proba-3 will create artificial solar eclipses

ESA - European Space Agency patch.

17 August 2017

Astrophysicists are joining sightseers in watching Monday’s total solar eclipse across North America but, in the decade to come, they will be viewing eclipses that last for hours instead of a few minutes – thanks to a pioneering ESA space mission.

Aiming for launch in late 2020, Proba-3 is not one but two small metre-scale satellites, lining up to cast a precise shadow across space to block out the solar disc for six hours at a time, and give researchers a sustained view of the Sun’s immediate vicinity.

Proba-3

Total eclipses occur thanks to a remarkable cosmic coincidence: Earth’s Moon is about 400 times smaller than our parent star, which is about 400 times further away. During the rare periods when the two overlap, the Moon can sometimes blank out the Sun entirely.

This brief period of ‘totality’ – Monday’s will be just 160 seconds long at most – reveals features of the Sun normally hidden by its intense glare, most notably the faint atmosphere, known as its corona.

The corona is a focus of interest because it is the source of the solar wind and space weather that can affect satellites and Earth itself, especially through the irregular eruptions of energy called ‘coronal mass ejections’.

Solar eclipses

With temperatures reaching more than a million degrees celsius, the corona is also much hotter than the relatively cool 5500ºC surface of the Sun – a fact that seems to contradict common sense.

Researchers seek ways to increase the corona’s visibility, chiefly through ‘coronagraphs’ – telescopes bearing discs to block out the direct light of the Sun. These are used both on the ground and in space, as aboard the veteran Sun-watching SOHO satellite. 

“The inner extent of the view afforded by standard coronagraphs is limited by stray light,” explains  Andrei Zhukov of the Royal Observatory of Belgium, serving as Principal Investigator for Proba-3’s coronagraph.

Proba-3 satellites form artificial eclipse

“Stray light is a sort of light pollution inside an instrument. In coronagraphs it is a kind of bending of the sunlight around the blocking disc.

“This problem can be minimised by extending the coronagraph length, the distance between the camera and the disc, as far as possible – but there are practical limits to coronagraph size.

Proba-3's pair of satellites

“Instead, Proba-3’s coronagraph uses two craft: a camera satellite and a disc satellite. They fly together so precisely that they operate like a single coronagraph, 150 m long.”

Each six-hour artificial eclipse per 19.6 hour Proba-3 orbit of Earth should provide a view close to the Sun’s visible surface. This will span the current observing gap between standard coronagraphs and the extreme-ultraviolet imagers used to monitor the face of the Sun on missions such as NASA’s Solar Dynamics Observatory and ESA’s Proba-2.

The challenge is in keeping the satellites safely controlled and correctly positioned, using new technologies and  sensors, plus intelligent software – autonomous driving, but this time in space.

Proba-3: Dancing with the stars

Proba-3 development is progressing well, with a structural and thermal model version of the coronagraph built, ahead of its critical design review this autumn, followed by that of the entire mission.

Related links:

Proba-3 mission: http://www.esa.int/Our_Activities/Space_Engineering_Technology/Proba_Missions

Science backing for formation-flying Sun-watcher Proba-3: http://www.esa.int/Our_Activities/Space_Engineering_Technology/Proba_Missions/Science_backing_for_formation-flying_Sun-watcher_Proba-3

Models of Proba-3 designs: http://www.esa.int/ESA_Multimedia/Images/2016/05/Models_of_Proba-3_designs

Proba-3: set the controls for the verge of the Sun: http://www.esa.int/Our_Activities/Space_Engineering_Technology/Proba_Missions/Proba-3_set_the_controls_for_the_verge_of_the_Sun

Eclipse 2017: http://cesar.esa.int/index.php?Section=Total_Eclipse_2017

Images, Video, Text, Credits: ESA/P. Carril/Wendy Carlos & Fred Espenak.

Greetings, Orbiter.ch

Khrunichev Center: The 100th launch of the Proton-M LV was completed successfully

ROSCOSMOS logo.

08/17/2017

Proton-M carrying Blagovest No. 11L launch

Started today, August 17, 2017 at 01:07 Moscow time from the Baikonur cosmodrome, the Proton-M booster rocket with the Breeze-M upper stage successfully launched a spacecraft into the orbit in the interests of the Ministry of Defense of the Russian Federation.

The launch was the jubilee, 100th, for the RN of the heavy-duty Proton-M class, which has been in use since 2001, and the 414th launch in the Proton carrier rocket history (all modifications since 1965).

Proton-M carrying Blagovest No. 11L at the launch-pad few second before launch

The Proton-M booster rocket and the Breeze-M upper stage are designed and mass-produced in the State Space Research and Production Center of the Khrunichev Space Research Center. M.V. Khrunichev (Khrunichev Center, part of the State Corporation "ROSCOSMOS").

Proton-M carrying Blagovest No. 11L rollout

Proton-M is a heavy-duty launch vehicle. The launch vehicle is intended for launches of various space vehicles for state and commercial programs. Today, the Proton-M rocket with the Breeze-M boost unit provides for the launch of a payload of more than 6 tons to the geostationary orbit and directly to the geostationary orbit to 3.3 tons. Proton-M is the development of a carrier rocket "Proton-K" and has improved energy-mass, operational and environmental characteristics. The first launch of the Proton-M - Breeze-M complex took place on April 7, 2001. The developer and manufacturer of the Proton-M LV is the FSUE "GKNPTS im. MV Khrunichev. "

Blagovest No. 11L satellite

At present, the Proton-M rocket with the Breeze-M upper stage is the main Russian heavy-duty rocket launcher that is used to launch automatic spacecraft into near-earth orbit and off-track trajectories within the framework of federal and commercial programs. With the help of the Proton-M LV, the national orbiting satellite systems GLONASS and EXPRESS are being updated and deployed, which provide the regions of Russia with communications. The Proton LV is the main means of launching the orbital modules for the ISS Russian Segment. In early 2002, the first launch of the Proton-M LV with the Breeze-M upper stage with commercial payload (Nimiq 2 spacecraft) took place. Over the past years, with the help of the Proton-M LV, about 70 space vehicles have been launched in the interests of foreign customers.

Roscosmos Press Release: https://www.roscosmos.ru/23918/

More information about ROSCOSMOS: http://en.roscosmos.ru/

Images, Text, Credits: ROSCOSMOS/Khrunichev Center/Günter Space Page/Orbiter.ch Aerospace/Roland Berga.

Best regards, Orbiter.ch

TDRS: An Era of Continuous Space Communications

NASA - TDRS-M Mission patch.

Aug. 16, 2017

More than 50 years ago, at the dawn of human spaceflight, the first brave astronauts were only able to communicate with mission control operators on Earth for about 15 percent of each orbit. If this were true today, the International Space Station would only be in contact with the ground for less than 15 minutes out of its 90-minute orbit. Today, nearly continuous communications with the space station and other Earth-orbiting missions is possible through a space-based communications network allowing nearly continuous global communications coverage for astronauts and robotic missions alike.

Image above: llustration of a first-generation Tracking and Data Relay Satellite. Image Credits: NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center.

NASA’s Tracking and Data Relay Satellites (TDRS) have provided critical communication and navigation services to NASA’s missions as part of the Space Network (SN) since the launch of the first satellite, TDRS-A, in 1983. The next satellite in the network, TDRS-M, is scheduled to launch Aug. 18, 2017. The satellites are initially given a letter designation, and then when they reach their orbit and become operational, their name changes from a letter to a number. With the addition of TDRS-M to the fleet, to be designated TDRS-13, the SN will have the ability to provide space communications and navigation support into the mid-2020s.

The Space Network is a communications network built and operated by NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Maryland. The TDRS program was established in 1973 to reduce NASA’s dependence on ground stations around the world. Prior to TDRS, space missions such as Skylab (America’s first space station) and the space shuttle could only communicate with their ground teams while passing overhead of the communications network’s ground station antennas. These passes only lasted minutes, resulting in intermittent communication.

Animation above: TDRS-M will launch from NASA’s Kennedy Space Center in Florida, on Aug. 18, 2017, at 8:03 a.m. aboard ULA’s Atlas V rocket. Animation Credits: NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center.

Once the first two TDRS became operational, spacecraft coverage in low-Earth orbit increased to 85 percent. The uncovered 15 percent, above the Indian Ocean, was known as the “zone of exclusion,” or ZOE. With the construction of the Guam Remote Ground Terminal, declared operational in 1998, the ZOE was closed and Earth-orbiting mission coverage increased to more than 99 percent of every orbit. This constant communication is essential to NASA’s human and science missions.

Currently, there are nine TDRS in orbit, positioned above the Atlantic Ocean, the Pacific Ocean and the Indian Ocean. Through three different frequencies of radio waves (S-band, Ku-band and Ka-band), TDRS uplinks and downlinks more than 99 percent of NASA’s mission data and provides data for navigating those missions in low-Earth orbit. The different frequencies are able to communicate different amounts of data at once. Ka-band, for example, can communicate the most data at a time of the three. Spacecraft beam their data through TDRS to ground stations that then forward the received data to scientists and those operating the mission for analysis and possible new discoveries about the universe.

Animation above: TDRS uses radio waves to communicate with the International Space Station and more than 40 other NASA missions, including the Hubble Space Telescope.
Animation Credits: NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center.

Shortly after TDRS-10 was launched, NASA determined that replenishment of the fleet with additional satellites was needed and began work on the third generation: TDRS-11, TDRS-12 and TDRS-M. While each TDRS generation is distinct (for example, the second and third TDRS generations provide Ka-band service with higher data rates than the first generation), they are functionally identical, providing reliable space communication services.

NASA is currently developing its next-generation space communications architecture, including laser communications, also known as optical communications, which encodes data onto a beam of light that is transmitted between spacecraft and eventually to Earth terminals. Both radio and lasers travel at the speed of light, but lasers travel in a higher-frequency bandwidth. That allows them to carry more information than radio waves, which is crucial when missions collect massive amounts of data and have narrow windows of time to send that data back to Earth.

Image above: NASA’s Laser Communications Relay Demonstration, set to launch in 2019, will be the agency’s next step in implementing a revolutionary communications system. Laser communications has the potential to communicate 10 to 100 times as much data at a time as radio-frequency systems. Image Credits: NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center.

The scientific data received from TDRS over the last 34 years has provided vital insight to making discoveries about our universe. A particularly noteworthy discovery was awarded the Nobel Prize in physics in 2006 for the blackbody discovery and characterization of cosmic microwave background radiation from the Cosmic Background Explorer (COBE) mission.

Laser communications may be a next step in space communications for NASA’s space communications networks, and no matter the technology utilized, the Space Network will be with the space station and more than 40 other NASA missions for years to come providing critical navigation and communication connectivity around the clock and around the globe.

Artist's view of TDRS-M satellite. Image Credit: Boeing

NASA's Space Communications and Navigation program, part of the Human Exploration and Operations Mission Directorate (HEOMD) at the agency's Headquarters in Washington, is responsible for the Space Network. The TDRS project office at Goddard Space Flight Center manages the TDRS development program. Launch management of the launch service for TDRS-M is the responsibility of HEOMD’s Launch Services Program based at the agency's Kennedy Space Center in Florida. United Launch Alliance provided the Atlas V rocket launch service.

For more information about TDRS, visit: http://tdrs.gsfc.nasa.gov

SCaN (Space Communications and Navigation): https://www.nasa.gov/directorates/heo/scan/index.html

TDRS (Tracking and Data Relay Satellite): https://www.nasa.gov/mission_pages/tdrs/home/index.html

Space Network (SN): https://sn.gsfc.nasa.gov/sn

Cosmic Background Explorer (COBE): https://science.nasa.gov/missions/cobe

NASA History: https://www.nasa.gov/topics/history/index.html

Animation (mentioned), Images (mentioned), Text, Credits: NASA/Rob Garner/Goddard Space Flight Center, by Katherine Schauer/Dewayne Washington.

Greetings, Orbiter.ch