Successful 18th launch of 2012 for China’s Long March 3B with ChinaSat-12

CNSA - China National Space Administration logo.

Nov. 27, 2012

 Long March 3B rocket

The Chinese have launched the ChinaSat-12 (Zhongxing-12) communications satellite into orbit via a Long March 3B/E (Chang Zheng-3B/E) on Tuesday – their 18th orbital launch of the year. The launch took place at 10:13 UTC from the LC2 launch pad at the Xichang Satellite Launch Center.

 ChinaSat-12 lifted off on a Long March 3B rocket (in Chinese)

This satellite was originally called Apstar-7B, a Spacebus-4000C2 platform geostationary communications satellite, with 24 C-band and 23 Ku-band high power beams. It was contracted to Thales Alenia Space of France for construction, on behalf of APT Satellites, in April of 2010.

Image above: Chinasat-12 lifted off on a Long March 3B rocket at 6:13 p.m. Beijing time on Tuesday. Credit: Xinhua.

Apstar-7B was a back up satellite, in event Apstar-7 failed to make it to orbit. However, the launch – carried out on March 31, 2012 – was a success, allowing Apstar 7B to be transferred to a secondary agreement between APT Satellites and the China Great Wall Industry Corporation (CGWIC).

With the secondary agreement in place, the satellite was taken by China Satcom – a state-owned satellite operator in Beijing – and renamed Zhongxing-12 (or ChinaSat-12). Zhongxing-12′s role is to replace Zhongxing-5A (ChinaSat-5A) at 87.5 degrees East.

ChinaSat-12 communications satellite

ChinaSat-12 had a lift-off mass of 5,054 kg and a design lifetime over 15 years. It uses a S400 propulsion system and is equipped with two deployable solar arrays.

For more information about CNSA, visit: http://www.cnsa.gov.cn/n615709/cindex.html

Images, Video, Text, Credits: CNSA / Xinhua / Thales Alenia / CNTV / Orbiter.ch Aerospace.

Greetings, Orbiter.ch

Do missing Jupiters mean massive comet belts?

ESA - Herschel Mission patch.

27 November 2012

Using ESA’s Herschel space observatory, astronomers have discovered vast comet belts surrounding two nearby planetary systems known to host only Earth-to-Neptune-mass worlds. The comet reservoirs could have delivered life-giving oceans to the innermost planets.

In a previous Herschel study, scientists found that the dusty belt surrounding nearby star Fomalhaut must be maintained by collisions between comets.

Debris disc around GJ 581

In the new Herschel study, two more nearby planetary systems – GJ 581 and 61 Vir – have been found to host vast amounts of cometary debris.

Herschel detected the signatures of cold dust at 200ºC below freezing, in quantities that mean these systems must have at least 10 times more comets than in our own Solar System’s Kuiper Belt.

GJ 581, or Gliese 581, is a low-mass M dwarf star, the most common type of star in the Galaxy. Earlier studies have shown that it hosts at least four planets, including one that resides in the ‘Goldilocks Zone’ – the distance from the central sun where liquid surface water could exist.

 Two planets are confirmed around G-type star 61 Vir, which is just a little less massive than our Sun.

The planets in both systems are known as ‘super-Earths’, covering a range of masses between 2 and 18 times that of Earth.

Interestingly, however, there is no evidence for giant Jupiter- or Saturn-mass planets in either system. 

The gravitational interplay between Jupiter and Saturn in our own Solar System is thought to have been responsible for disrupting a once highly populated Kuiper Belt, sending a deluge of comets towards the inner planets in a cataclysmic event that lasted several million years.

Debris disc around 61 Vir

“The new observations are giving us a clue: they’re saying that in the Solar System we have giant planets and a relatively sparse Kuiper Belt, but systems with only low-mass planets often have much denser Kuiper belts,” says Dr Mark Wyatt from the University of Cambridge, lead author of the paper focusing on the debris disc around 61 Vir.

“We think that may be because the absence of a Jupiter in the low-mass planet systems allows them to avoid a dramatic heavy bombardment event, and instead experience a gradual rain of comets over billions of years.”

“For an older star like GJ 581, which is at least two billion years old, enough time has elapsed for such a gradual rain of comets to deliver a sizable amount of water to the innermost planets, which is of particular importance for the planet residing in the star’s habitable zone,” adds Dr Jean-Francois Lestrade of the Observatoire de Paris who led the work on GJ 581.

However, in order to produce the vast amount of dust seen by Herschel, collisions between the comets are needed, which could be triggered by a Neptune-sized planet residing close to the disc.

“Simulations show us that the known close-in planets in each of these systems cannot do the job, but a similarly-sized planet located much further from the star – currently beyond the reach of current detection campaigns – would be able to stir the disc to make it dusty and observable,” says Dr Lestrade.

ESA’s Herschel space observatory

“Herschel is finding a correlation between the presence of massive debris discs and planetary systems with no Jupiter-class planets, which offers a clue to our understanding of how planetary systems form and evolve,” says Göran Pilbratt, ESA’s Herschel project scientist.

Related links:

61 Vir science paper: http://dx.doi.org/10.1111/j.1365-2966.2012.21298.x

GJ 581 science paper: http://dx.doi.org/10.1051/0004-6361/201220325

Herschel: ESA's giant infrared observatory: http://www.esa.int/SPECIALS/Herschel/index.html

Herschel overview: http://www.esa.int/SPECIALS/Herschel/index.html

Online Showcase of Herschel Images OSHI: http://oshi.esa.int/

Herschel in depth: http://sci.esa.int/science-e/www/area/index.cfm?fareaid=16

Images, Text, Credits: ESA / AOES.

Best regards, Orbiter.ch

Cassini Finds a Video Gamers' Paradise at Saturn

NASA / ESA - Cassini Missionto Saturn patch.

Nov. 26, 2012

Scientists with NASA's Cassini mission have spotted two features shaped like the 1980s video game icon "Pac-Man" on moons of Saturn. One was observed on the moon Mimas in 2010 and the latest was observed on the moon Tethys. Image credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech/GSFC/SWRI.

ou could call this "Pac-Man, the Sequel." Scientists with NASA's Cassini mission have spotted a second feature shaped like the 1980s video game icon in the Saturn system, this time on the moon Tethys. (The first was found on Mimas in 2010). The pattern appears in thermal data obtained by Cassini's composite infrared spectrometer, with warmer areas making up the Pac-Man shape.

"Finding a second Pac-Man in the Saturn system tells us that the processes creating these Pac-Men are more widespread than previously thought," said Carly Howett, the lead author of a paper recently released online in the journal Icarus. "The Saturn system - and even the Jupiter system - could turn out to be a veritable arcade of these characters."

Scientists theorize that the Pac-Man thermal shape on the Saturnian moons occurs because of the way high-energy electrons bombard low latitudes on the side of the moon that faces forward as it orbits around Saturn. The bombardment turns that part of the fluffy surface into hard-packed ice. As a result, the altered surface does not heat as rapidly in the sunshine or cool down as quickly at night as the rest of the surface, similar to how a boardwalk at the beach feels cooler during the day but warmer at night than the nearby sand. Finding another Pac-Man on Tethys confirms that high-energy electrons can dramatically alter the surface of an icy moon. Also, because the altered region on Tethys, unlike on Mimas, is also bombarded by icy particles from Enceladus' plumes, it implies the surface alteration is occurring more quickly than its recoating by plume particles.

"Studies at infrared wavelengths give us a tremendous amount of information about the processes that shape planets and moons," said Mike Flasar, the spectrometer's principal investigator at NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Md. "A result like this underscores just how powerful these observations are."

Scientists saw the new Pac-Man on Tethys in data obtained on Sept. 14, 2011, where daytime temperatures inside the mouth of Pac-Man were seen to be cooler than their surroundings by 29 degrees Fahrenheit (15 kelvins). The warmest temperature recorded was a chilly minus 300 degrees Fahrenheit (90 kelvins), which is actually slightly cooler than the warmest temperature at Mimas (about minus 290 degrees Fahrenheit, or 95 kelvins). At Tethys, unlike Mimas, the Pac-Man pattern can also be seen subtly in visible-light images of the surface, as a dark lens-shaped region. This brightness variation was first noticed by NASA's Voyager spacecraft in 1980.

Cassini spacraft. Image credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech

"Finding a new Pac-Man demonstrates the diversity of processes at work in the Saturn system," said Linda Spilker, Cassini project scientist at NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory, Pasadena, Calif. "Future Cassini observations may reveal other new phenomena that will surprise us and help us better understand the evolution of moons in the Saturn system and beyond."

The Cassini-Huygens mission is a cooperative project of NASA, the European Space Agency and the Italian Space Agency. NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory, Pasadena, Calif., 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 was designed, developed and assembled at JPL. The composite infrared spectrometer team is based at NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Md., where the instrument was built.

More information about the Cassini-Huygens mission is at: http://www.nasa.gov/cassini and http://saturn.jpl.nasa.gov and  http://www.esa.int/SPECIALS/Cassini-Huygens/

Images (mentioned), Text, Credits: NASA/Goddard Space Flight Center/Elizabeth Zubritsky/JPL/Jia-Rui Cook.

Greetings, Orbiter.ch

Fostering Curiosity: Mars Express relays rocky images

ESA - Mars Express Mission patch / NASA - Mars Science Laboratory (MSL) patch.

26 November 2012

 Rocknest3 relayed by Mars Express

For the first time, ESA’s Mars orbiter has relayed scientific data from NASA’s Curiosity rover on the Red Planet’s surface. The data included detailed images of ‘Rocknest3’ and were received by ESA’s deep-space antenna in Australia.

It was a small but significant step in interplanetary cooperation between space agencies.

Early on the morning of 6 October, ESA’s Mars Express looked down as it orbited the planet, lining up its lander communication antenna to point at Curiosity far below on the surface.

For 15 minutes, the NASA rover transmitted scientific data up to the ESA satellite. A few hours later, Mars Express slewed to point its high-gain antenna toward Earth and began downlinking the precious information to the European Space Operations Centre in Darmstadt, Germany, via the Agency’s 35 m-diameter antenna in New Norcia, Australia. 

The data were immediately made available to NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory in California for processing and analysis, proving again that NASA’s amazing new rover can talk with Europe’s veteran Mars orbiter.

Curiosity’s ChemCam images Rocknest3

The information included a pair of tremendously interesting images acquired on 4 October by Curiosity’s ChemCam Remote Micro-Imager camera.

Mars Science Laboratory (MSL)

ChemCam comprises the camera together with a Laser-Induced Breakdown Spectrometer, which fires a laser at targets and analyses the chemical composition of the vaporised material.

The laser zaps areas smaller than 1 mm across on the surface of martian rocks and soils, and then the spectrometer provides information on the minerals and microstructures in the rocks.

Outstanding image quality

The first image (at top of article) was taken before a series of five ChemCam laser blasts and the second image (at right) was taken after. The image is centred on the fifth observation point.

Rocknest3 relayed by Mars Express

“The quality of these images from ChemCam is outstanding, and the mosaic image of the spectrometer analyses has been essential for scientific interpretation of the data,” says Sylvestre Maurice, Deputy Principal Investigator for ChemCam at France’s Research Institute in Astrophysics and Planetology (IRAP).

“This combination of imaging and analysis has demonstrated its potential for future missions.”

ChemCam laser targets

A third image, relayed separately by NASA, indicates the locations of the laser target points on Rocknest3, as seen by the RMI camera.

Laser targets on Rocknest3

‘Rocknest’ is the area where Curiosity stopped for a month to perform its first mobile laboratory analyses on soil scooped from a small sand dune. Rocknest3 was a convenient nearby target where ChemCam made more than 30 observations using 1500 laser shots.

A wide-angle context image was acquired by Curiosity’s MastCam and shows Rocknest3 as targeted by ChemCam. Rocknest3 is about 10 x 40 cm, or roughly the size of a shoe box.

Fostering Curiosity – and others

ESA’s Mars orbiter has also relayed data for NASA’s other surface missions – Phoenix, Spirit and Opportunity – since 2004, and it relayed Curiosity’s radio signal during its arrival at Mars last August.

Rockenest3

During the Curiosity mission, Mars Express is set to provide additional relay slots, while maintaining its own scientific observation programme, under an ESA-NASA support agreement.

It can also rapidly provide relay services in case of unavailability of NASA’s own relay orbiter or if there is a problem on the rover itself.

Interplanetary cooperation

Mars Express Spacecraft

“ESA–NASA cooperation at Mars is a continuing success, and comes after both sides have worked diligently for a number of years to set technical and engineering standards to enable sharing data between spacecraft, networks and ground stations,” says Mars Express Spacecraft Operations Manager Michel Denis.

“Exploring Mars is a huge challenge, and space agencies are working to boost cooperation and mutual support for current and upcoming missions. It’s the way of the future.”

More information:

Mars Express: http://www.esa.int/SPECIALS/Mars_Express/index.html

Mars Science Laboratory: http://www.nasa.gov/mission_pages/msl/index.html

NASA MSL mission at JPL: http://marsprogram.jpl.nasa.gov/msl/

ChemCam team online: http://www.msl-chemcam.com/

Images, Text, Credits: ESA / NASA / JPL-Caltech / Malin Space Science Systems / LANL / CNES / IRAP / LPGN / CNRS.

Best regards, Orbiter.ch

Revisiting an old friend

ESA - Giotto Mission patch.

26 November 2012

Comet Halley, the originator of the Orionids meteor shower that lit up our skies last month – as they do every October – is seen here up close by ESA’s Giotto probe as it flew past the famous comet on 13–14 March 1986.

Comet Halley close up

Giotto was ESA’s first deep-space mission. It swept within 600 km of Halley, obtaining the first close-up images of a comet. This image was taken from a distance of about 2000 km from Comet Halley.

Comets are considered to be the primitive building blocks of the Solar System and likely helped to ‘seed’ Earth with water.

This milestone mission showed for the first time the nucleus of a comet and revealed jets of gas and dust streaming out into space.

The flyby also revealed the first evidence of organic material in a comet, boosting the idea that comets might have delivered some of the building blocks needed for life on Earth.

Comet Halley is visible to observers on Earth every 75–76 years and will not return to the inner Solar System until 2061. Its presence makes itself known every year, however, in the form of the Orionids meteor shower.

As the icy comet is warmed by the Sun, parts of it transform directly into a gas, dragging its dusty component along, which streams out in a long tail. These fragments continue along the trajectory of the comet, which Earth crosses on its yearly trip around the Sun.

Although only tiny grains of cometary debris, these fragments produce spectacular trails as they burn up in Earth’s atmosphere as ‘shooting stars’.

The Orionids are so-called because meteors appear to originate close to the constellation of Orion. Halley’s comet is also thought to be responsible for the Eta Aquariids meteor shower, which occurs every year in May.

Image above: The Giotto spacecraft, launched in 1985 on an Ariane 1 V14 launcher, brushed past the hidden nucleus of Comet Halley in 1986.

After visiting Comet Halley, Giotto went on to make a flyby of Comet 26P/Grigg-Skjellerup in July 1992.

Meanwhile, ESA’s new Rosetta comet-chasing spacecraft is en route to rendezvous with Comet 67P/Churyumov-Gerasimenko in 2014, where it will make the most detailed study of a comet ever attempted as it follows it on its journey around the Sun.

The mission will also be the first to land on a nucleus to ‘taste’ the surface ingredients, providing key details about the role of comets in the evolution of the Solar System. 

More about...

ESA's comet chaser: http://www.esa.int/SPECIALS/Rosetta/index.html

Giotto overview: http://www.esa.int/esaSC/120392_index_0_m.html

Rosetta Blog: http://webservices.esa.int/blog/blog/5/

Images, Text, Credits: ESA / MPS.

Cheers, Orbiter.ch

CERN - ATLAS prepares for upgrades

CERN - European Organization for Nuclear Research logo.

Nov. 24, 2012

Image above: A technician conducts routine maintenance on the ATLAS detector during a technical stop last year (Image: CERN).

The ATLAS collaboration is preparing a series of upgrades to their detector for the coming long shutdown of the Large Hadron Collider (LHC) in 2013-2014. As well as routine maintenance, a new layer will be added to one of the tracking detectors at the heart of ATLAS, and changes to the data acquisition system will give physicists more precise spatial information about signals in the detector.

 ATLAS Experiment and LHC. (Image: CERN)

Note:

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

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

Founded in 1954, the CERN Laboratory sits astride the Franco–Swiss border near Geneva. It was one of Europe’s first joint ventures and now has 20 Member States.

Read more:

"Action stations at ATLAS" [PDF]: http://www.stfc.ac.uk/resources/PDF/UKnewsfromCERNIssue9AMENDED.pdf

ATLAS collaboration: http://atlas.ch/

Large Hadron Collider: http://public.web.cern.ch/public/en/lhc/HowLHC-en.html

Follow CERN on Twitter: http://twitter.com/cern/

Images, Text, Credit: CERN.

Greetings, Orbiter.ch

Spacecraft Monitoring Martian Dust Storm

NASA - Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter (MRO) patch.

Nov. 23, 2012

Image above: This nearly global mosaic of observations made by the Mars Color Imager on NASA's Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter on Nov. 18, 2012, shows a dust storm in Mars' southern hemisphere. Image credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech/MSSS.

A Martian dust storm that NASA's Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter has been tracking since last week has also produced atmospheric changes detectable by rovers on Mars.

Using the orbiter's Mars Color Imager, Bruce Cantor of Malin Space Science Systems, San Diego, began observing the storm on Nov. 10, and subsequently reported it to the team operating NASA's Mars Exploration Rover Opportunity. The storm came no closer than about 837 miles (1,347 kilometers) from Opportunity, resulting in only a slight drop in atmospheric clarity over that rover, which does not have a weather station.

Halfway around the planet from Opportunity, the NASA Mars rover Curiosity's weather station has detected atmospheric changes related to the storm. Sensors on the Rover Environmental Monitoring Station (REMS), which was provided for Curiosity by Spain, have measured decreased air pressure and a slight rise in overnight low temperature.

"This is now a regional dust storm. It has covered a fairly extensive region with its dust haze, and it is in a part of the planet where some regional storms in the past have grown into global dust hazes," said Rich Zurek, chief Mars scientist at NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory, Pasadena, Calif. "For the first time since the Viking missions of the 1970s, we are studying a regional dust storm both from orbit and with a weather station on the surface."

Curiosity's equatorial location and the sensors on REMS, together with the daily global coverage provided by the Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter, provide new advantages compared with what Viking offered with its combination of orbiters and landers. The latest weekly Mars weather report from the orbiter's Mars Color Imager is at http://www.msss.com/msss_images/2012/11/21/

Video above: Martian weather between 12 November 2012 and 18 November 2012. Video Credits: NASA/JPL-Caltech/Malin Space Science Systems.

Each Martian year lasts about two Earth years. Regional dust storms expanded and affected vast areas of Mars in 2001 and 2007, but not between those years nor since 2007.

"One thing we want to learn is why do some Martian dust storms get to this size and stop growing, while others this size keep growing and go global," Zurek said.

From decades of observing Mars, scientists know there is a seasonal pattern to the largest Martian dust-storm events. The dust-storm season began just a few weeks ago, with the start of southern-hemisphere spring.

Starting on Nov. 16, the Mars Climate Sounder instrument on the Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter detected a warming of the atmosphere at about 16 miles (25 kilometers) above the storm. Since then, the atmosphere in the region has warmed by about 45 degrees Fahrenheit (25 degrees Celsius). This is due to the dust absorbing sunlight at that height, so it indicates the dust is being lofted well above the surface and the winds are starting to create a dust haze over a broad region.

Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter (MRO). Image Credit: NASA

Warmer temperatures are seen not only in the dustier atmosphere in the south, but also in a hot spot near northern polar latitudes due to changes in the atmospheric circulation. Similar changes affect the pressure measured by Curiosity even though the dust haze is still far away.

Besides the research value in better understanding storm behavior, monitoring the storm is also important for Mars rover operations. If the storm were to go global, the Opportunity rover would be affected most. More dust in the air or falling onto its solar panels would reduce the solar-powered rover's energy supply for daily operations. Curiosity is powered by a radioisotope thermoelectric generator, rather than solar cells. The main effects of increased dust in the air at its site would be haze in images and increased air temperature.

JPL, a division of the California Institute of Technology, Pasadena, manages the Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter Project and both of the Mars rover projects for NASA's Science Mission Directorate, Washington.

For more information about the missions of NASA's Mars Exploration Program, visit http://marsprogram.jpl.nasa.gov/

Images (mentioned), Video (mentioned), Text, Credits: NASA / JPL / Guy Webster / D.C. Agle.

Best regards, Orbiter.ch