Archive for the ‘Space News’ Category
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June 17th, 2015
This image was taken by Rosetta’s Navigation Camera on 13 June 13, 2015, shortly before Philae’s wake-up signal was received. The image was taken from a distance of 125 miles (201 kilometers) from the center of Comet 67P/Churyumov-Gerasimenko and measures 11miles (17.5 kilometers) across. The comet is orientated with the small lobe towards the right, with the large depression known as Hatmehit visible. Philae is thought to be resting just outside the rim, towards the top right in this image.
Credit: ESA/Rosetta/NAVCAM – CC BY-SA IGO 3.0
The receipt of signals from Rosetta’s Philae lander on June 13 after 211 days of hibernation has kick-started intense activity.
In coordination with its mission partners, ESA teams are working to juggle Rosetta’s flight plan to help with renewed lander science investigations.
Hidden by shadows, Philae shut down on November 15, 2014 after completing its main science operations sequence on Comet 67P/Churyumov–Gerasimenko when the primary battery expired as expected after about 60 hours.
Artistic look at Philae comet lander.
Credit: DLR
Watch this replay of a media briefing at the Paris Air Show with members of the Rosetta team. The briefing includes an update on the mission, some of the latest results, and an outline what is in the offing regarding new Philae operations.
Go to:
http://www.esa.int/spaceinvideos/Videos/2015/06/Replay_of_Rosetta_conference
Posted in 
Credit: The Planetary Society
The Planetary Society’s impressive solar sail experiment has re-entered Earth’s atmosphere.
Following its deployment in Earth orbit on May 20, LightSail-A deployed its solar sail on June 7.
“The LightSail test mission is officially over. Following a 25-day stay in low-Earth orbit, the spacecraft tumbled back into Earth’s atmosphere Sunday afternoon,” posted the Planetary Society’s Jason Davis.
“A complete image of the spacecraft’s solar sails was downloaded on June 9, confirming the mission’s primary objective of sail deployment had been met. But before engineers could get a picture from the opposite-side cameras, LightSail’s radio began transmitting a continuous, nonsensical signal, and the spacecraft stopped responding to commands,” Davis explained.
For the LightSail-A mission, mission operations were conducted at Cal Poly, San Luis Obispo, the prime ground station that commanded the spacecraft.
Rapid demise
Satellite watcher, Ted Molczan in Canada, told Inside Outer Space that the sail’s decay was near 55 S, 32 W – about 2,800 miles (4,500 kilometers) east of the Falkland Islands.
Molczan said that orbital analysis reveals that with the spacecraft deploying its solar sails, the craft rapidly spiraled toward its demise.
LightSail captured this image of its deployed solar sails in Earth orbit on June 8, 2015.
Credit: The Planetary Society
“For an object to descend from orbit so rapidly may seem non-intuitive, but it was due to LightSail-A’s large ratio of surface area to mass, which was 500 to 1,000 times that of typical spacecraft and rocket bodies,” Molczan said.
Plot shows the ground track on June 14 from 15:00 UTC until the estimated time of disintegration of the LightSail between 17:21 UTC and 17:24 UTC.
Credit: Ted Molczan
What next?
What’s ahead is a follow-on solar sailing test flight now slated for late 2016.
According to Mitchell Walker of Georgia Tech, LightSail-B will be packaged within Prox-1, now targeted for a September 2016 liftoff on the Space Test Program-2 (STP-2) mission on a SpaceX Falcon Heavy booster.
LightSail-B will be deployed from Prox-1 once on-orbit, Walker told Inside Outer Space.
The Prox-1 mission will demonstrate automated trajectory control for on-orbit inspection of a deployed CubeSat. The Prox-1 spacecraft has been designed, fabricated and tested by a team of Georgia Tech undergraduate and graduate students who will also be responsible for mission operations.
Close proximity
The Prox-1 will deploy The Planetary Society’s LightSail solar sail spacecraft. Prox-1 will fly in close proximity to the LightSail, demonstrating automated trajectory control based upon relative orbit determination using infrared imaging.
LightSail mission control team at Georgia Tech, from left, undergraduates Christopher Pubillones, Nick Zerbonia, Teresa Spinelli, Kevin Okseniuk, and Professor David Spencer.
Credit: Georgia Tech
Visible images of the LightSail solar sail deployment event will be acquired and downlinked by Prox-1.
The Prox-1 mission will also provide first-time flight validation of advanced Sun sensor technology, a small satellite propulsion system, and a lightweight thermal imager. The mission is funded by the Air Force Office of Scientific Research, through the University Nanosatellite Program.
For an informative video on Prox-1 and its dance with a LightSail, go to:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eGa2ROpUKE8
Also, go to this video that captures the Georgia Tech team’s thoughts as they monitor the first deployment of the LightSail-A satellite, May 20. Go to:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=K63So6sn68k
China’s human spaceflight program is moving forward on a multimodule space station in the 2020s.
Courtesy: CMSE
There’s a growing debate over whether China and the Unites States should cooperate in space, and the dialogue now appears to focus on how to create an “open-door” policy in orbit for Chinese astronauts to make trips to the International Space Station (ISS).
European Space Agency (ESA) director, Jean-Jacques Dordain and Yu Tongjie, European Space Agency (ESA) director, Jean-Jacques Dordain and Yu Tongjie, Director of the China Manned Space Agency, met May 27 to continue and promote strategic cooperation on long-term objectives and implementation steps.
Credit: CMSE/Wei Yan Juan
Changing of the guard: Jean-Jacques Dordain (left) with incoming leader of ESA, Johann-Dietrich Wörner at this week’s Paris Air Show.
Credit: ASDS Media Bank
More details about the promise and problems ahead for U.S.-China space cooperation are discussed in my new Space.com story:
US-China Cooperation in Space: Is It Possible, and What’s in Store?
by Leonard David, Space.com’s Space Insider Columnist
June 16, 2015 07:01am ET
Go to:
http://www.space.com/29671-china-nasa-space-station-cooperation.html
The Philae lander of Europe’s Rosetta comet mission is shown in this artistic rendering.
Credit: DLR (CC-BY 3.0)
On June 13, the European Space Agency’s Philae lander woke up for 85 seconds for the first time after a nearly seven-month hibernation.
The Philae lander also reported back on June 14 sending some data packets that are now being evaluated.
The data acquired during the second contact confirms that Philae — planted on the surface of Comet 67P/Churyumov-Gerasimenko — is in good condition and ready for operations.
To permit longer communication links with the lander, the trajectories of the Rosetta spacecraft now orbiting the comet are going to modified.
Along for the ride
Given stable and long duration connections to Philae, more scientific work with the probe’s 10 instruments is planned.
Long distance view taken by the Rosetta orbiter of the comet nucleus may show Philae – but maybe not.
Credits: ESA/Rosetta/MPS for OSIRIS Team MPS/UPD/LAM/IAA/SSO/INTA/UPM/DASP/IDA
“First, the non-mechanical instruments will be used… instruments that do not drill or hammer,” explains Stephan Ulamec at the German Aerospace Center (Deutsches Zentrum fuer Luft- und Raumfahrt; DLR. He is DLR Philae Lander Project Leader.
Thanks to the awakening of Philae, it appears possible to carry out on-the-spot research on the comet as the celestial wanderer becomes ever-more active on the way to the Sun for the first time.
Powering-up
Philae is currently receiving at least three hours of sunlight per comet day, which supplies the lander with energy. Philae’s body is coated with solar panels.
Recent image of the active Comet 67P/Churyumov-Gerasimenko taken from a safe distance by Rosetta orbiter.
Credits: ESA/Rosetta/MPS for OSIRIS Team MPS/UPD/LAM/IAA/SSO/INTA/UPM/DASP/IDA
Rosetta is an ESA mission with contributions from its Member States and NASA. Rosetta was launched On March 2, 2004 and let loose the lander that touched down on the comet on November 12, 2014.
Rosetta’s Philae lander is contributed by a consortium led by DLR, MPS, CNES of France and ASI of Italy.
Credit: DLR
The European Space Agency’s Philae lander has beeped back, coming out of hibernation and sending the first data to Earth.
“The lander is ready for operations,” said Stephan Ulamec, team leader at the German Aerospace Center (Deutsches Zentrum fuer Luft- und Raumfahrt; DLR) Lander Control Center.
Philae “spoke” for 85 seconds with its team on ground in its first contact since it went into hibernation.
The Lander Control Center (LCC) at the German Aerospace Center (Deutsches Zentrum für Luft- und Raumfahrt; DLR) facility in Cologne is responsible for commanding and operating the Philae lander.
Credit: DLR (CC-BY 3.0)
Data packets
More good news! In Philae’s mass memory, there are still more than 8,000 data packets, which will give the DLR team information on what happened to Philae in the past few days on comet Churyumov-Gerasimenko.
Philae shut down on November 15, 2014 at 01:15 CET, after being in operation on the comet for about 60 hours.
Credit: ESA
Since March 12, 2015 the communication unit on the Rosetta orbiter circling the comet has repeatedly been turned on to communicate with the lander and receive its reply.
Thanks to the lander’s reawakening, the exact whereabouts of Philae is expected to be identified.
Sputnik 1 embedded into auto. Artist Brandon Vickerd with his clash/crash of cultures.
Photo courtesy: Artcite/Nick Brancaccio/The Windsor Star
There’s an “artistic bent” to the works of Brandon Vickerd – a Toronto-based sculptor.
Outside of Artcite Inc. of Windsor, Ontario, Canada, a replica of the former Soviet Union’s Sputnik 1– the first human-made satellite to orbit Earth – sits embedded into a parked car.
The Sputnik Returned #2 artwork by Vickerd is viewable from June 6 – August 1, 2015. It is an anchor exhibition for Summer Arts Fest 2015.
Vickerd is a professor of Visual Arts at York University and has done a number of pieces involving spacecraft.
Metaphor artwork
According to Art Mûr, a Canadian art gallery that represents Vickerd, an earlier Sputnik Returned work is called a metaphor “for the failed promises of a future predicated on scientific advancement,” according to the Art Mûr site.
Credit: Brandon Vickerd
“The stainless steel orb, resting lifeless in a crater recalls a modern day Icarus, whose faith in technology lead to hubris and imminent demise as he fell back to earth. This simple design, streamlined and reflective, seems to encapsulate the space race of the 1950s. Today this design appears as a wonderfully crude relic of the period, a potential unmanned doomsday weapon mirroring the excesses of the cold war while also recalling the proto-modernist sculptures of Brancusi.”
Other Vickerd works include Satellite – a 2009 sculpture that is a full scale replica of a grounded Global Positioning System (GPS) satellite. AstroMonkey is a 2012 piece, while Northern Satellite in 2009 appears to depict a Voyager spacecraft that’s taken a nosedive into terra firma.
Credit: Brandon Vickerd
High and low culture
In an artist’s statement posted by Vickerd, he shares some of his views that stirred his works: “Purposely diverse, my work straddles the line between high and low culture, acting as a catalyst for critical thought and addressing the failed promise of a modernist future predicated on boundless scientific advancement. Whether through craftsmanship, the creation of spectacle, or humor, my goal is to provoke the viewer into questioning the dominate myth of progress ingrained in Western world views.”
Credit: Brandon Vickerd
Elements of his works, Vickerd adds, “appear as wonderfully crude relics of past visions of the future, as vehicles or potential doomsday weapons mirroring the excesses of the cold war and the space race, while also recalling proto-modernist sculpture of the same period. I attempt to highlight our nostalgia for a past, when science held the promise of a limitless future, and not the very strange and often frightening world of tomorrow we find ourselves living in today.”
Credit: Brandon Vickerd
Resources
To take a close-up look at Sputnik Returned #2 and other artwork that’s part of the Summer Arts Fest 2015, Artcite is located in a storefront space in the Capitol Theatre and Arts Center in Windsor’s downtown core. The gallery is open 12:00 noon through 5:00 PM, Wednesdays through Saturdays.
Artcite is a non-profit, Artist-run Centre for the Contemporary Arts, dedicated exclusively to expanding the visibility of contemporary arts and advancing the professional presentation, promotion and animation of contemporary art forms.
Go to: http://www.artcite.ca/
For Brandon Vickerd’s website, go to:
Credit: Newsweek Magazine
Check out Newsweek Magazine’s cover story:
We Can Save Ourselves From Earth-Killing Asteroids, but Someone Has to Pay
By Nina Burleigh in Newsweek’s June 19th issue.
Go to:
Credit: NASA
It is tagged as the Apollo 11 50th Anniversary Commemorative Coin Act.
U.S. Representatives Bill Posey (R-FL), Frederica Wilson (D-FL) John Culberson (R-TX), Gene Green (D-TX) and Rod Blum (R-IA) have introduced legislation to recognize and celebrate the 50th Anniversary of the Apollo 11 Moon landing with a Commemorative Coin.
July 20, 2019 will mark the 50th anniversary of the Apollo 11 mission moon landing.
Proceeds from the coin
According to a statement from lawmaker Posey’s office, the Apollo 11 50th Anniversary Commemorative Coin “would celebrate not only the innovative spirit and resolve that defined the Apollo program but also the estimated 400,000 Americans across the country who contributed to its extraordinary success.”
Additionally, proceeds from the coin will support college scholarships for students pursuing science, technology, engineering or mathematics (STEM) degrees, educational initiatives that promote space exploration, the Astronauts Memorial that honors the astronauts whom have fallen in the line of duty, and the National Air and Space Museum’s new “Destination Moon” exhibit– all at no cost to taxpayers.
Representative Posey worked on the Apollo program as a young man.
Apollo 11 moonwalkers, Neil Armstrong and Buzz Aldrin.
Credit: NASA
Great achievement
“It is an honor to cosponsor the Apollo 11 50th Anniversary Commemorative Coin Act. I will never forget the day that I and millions of others witnessed on television what is inarguably one of our nation’s greatest achievements,” said Representative Frederica Wilson.
Representative John Culberson added: “The landing of Apollo 11 marks an important milestone in human history and to-date, is the farthest humans have traveled. We need to inspire the next generation of scientists, engineers, and explorers to push the limits and take up the mantle of space exploration to Mars and beyond. So it is fitting that proceeds from the coin will fund STEM education scholarships and programs.”
Radio waves
“The commemorative coin will serve a reminder of what we’ve achieved and an inspiration to continue to strive for greatness,” said Texas representative, Gene Green.
Iowa Representative, Rod Blum, noted that there is a strong connection between Iowa’s First District and the Apollo missions.
Turns out that Cedar Rapids-based Rockwell Collins provided a Collins radio used to broadcast back to Earth Neil Armstrong’s immortal words: “That’s one small step for [a] man, one giant leap for mankind.”
“I am proud to support this bipartisan legislation,” Blum said.
A series of new images obtained by the spacecraft’s telescopic Long Range Reconnaissance Imager (LORRI) during May 29-June 2 show Pluto is a complex world with very bright and very dark terrain, and areas of intermediate brightness in between. These images afford the best views ever obtained of the Pluto system.
Credit: NASA/Johns Hopkins University Applied Physics Laboratory/Southwest Research Institute
The countdown clock to Pluto is ticking away, now some 31 days, 22 hours away.
NASA’s New Horizons spacecraft is speeding toward the first reconnaissance of the dwarf planet Pluto and by venturing deeper into the distant, mysterious Kuiper Belt – a relic of solar system formation.
The surface of Pluto is becoming better resolved as New Horizons pulls in closer and closer to its July flight through the Pluto system.
New Horizons closest approach to Pluto is July 14, 2015.
New video
To help prepare for the encounter with the unknown, The Johns Hopkins University’s Applied Physics Laboratory – builder of the spacecraft – has just issued an impressive video.
Take a view of what’s in store next month at:
The Philae lander would only be a few pixels across in images acquired by the Rosetta orbiter’s Optical, Spectroscopic, and Infrared Remote Imaging System (OSIRIS). Most candidates fail after more detailed study. From these images, only the data acquired by OSIRIS in this image reveals a promising candidate.
Credit: ESA/Rosetta/NAVCAM; ESA/Rosetta/MPS for OSIRIS Team MPS/UPD/LAM/IAA/SSO/INTA/UPM/DASP/IDA
For months, there has been a dedicated search for a three-legged lander dropped off by ESA’s Rosetta spacecraft – now circling the comet 67P/Churyumov-Gerasimenko.
There are now some candidate images that could reveal Philae’s whereabouts.
Complex search
On November 12, 2014, the European Space Agency’s Philae lander “hopped” roughly one kilometer away from its planned landing site.
Philae’s harpoons designed to anchor the probe to the comet failed to fire and the ice screws in its feet were unable to secure the lander to the surface.
That search is complex because even when fully illuminated by the Sun, Philae will be just a few pixels across in images acquired by the Rosetta orbiter’s Optical, Spectroscopic, and Infrared Remote Imaging System (OSIRIS).
This series of 19 images, acquired by the Rosetta orbiter’s Optical, Spectroscopic, and Infrared Remote Imaging System (OSIRIS) on 12 November 2014, shows the Philae lander during its descent towards Comet 67P/Churyumov-Gerasimenko.
Credit: ESA/Rosetta/MPS for OSIRIS Team MPS/UPD/LAM/IAA/SSO/INTA/UPM/DASP/IDA
Possibility of contact
“The possibility of contact [with Philae} is improving as the comet moves closer to the Sun, and the chances of Philae receiving sufficient heat and energy are increasing,” explains Project Leader Stephan Ulamec from the German Aerospace Center (Deutsches Zentrum für Luft- und Raumfahrt; DLR).
Philae’s exact location could be determined when the lander wakes up from hibernation and provides further scientific data.
To do so, the lander needs to generate at least five watts of power and have an operating temperature above minus 45 degrees Celsius. Given those power and temperature requirements, the lander would switch itself into operating mode.
Slightly more energy – a total of 19 watts – is needed to communicate with the DLR team here on Earth.
Active comet
For the communications unit on board the Rosetta orbiter to be able to transmit the status of Philae, the orbiter’s flight path must allow it to “see” the lander.
Currently, the Rosetta orbiter is flying about 200 kilometers above the comet.
Since 67P/Churyumov-Gerasimenko is now always active and is ejecting gas and dust into space, the flight plan for Rosetta has become even more challenging.
“In recent weeks, the team at the DLR Lander Control Center has been preparing for the operation of Philae and its instruments…now we hope that it will get in touch with us,” says DLR’s Ulamec.
Credit: DLR
Rosetta is an ESA mission with contributions from its Member States and NASA.
Rosetta’s Philae lander is funded by a consortium headed by DLR, the Max Planck Institute for Solar System Research (MPS), CNES and the Italian Space Agency (ASI).
