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The International Ultraviolet Explorer (IUE) has been one of the most productive satellites ever built. IUE provided invaluable information about stars located millions of kilometres away as well as objects much closer to home, such as comets approaching our part of the Solar System.
IUE was originally planned as a three to five year mission to analyse ultraviolet light from the stars. By the time it was eventually shut down, more than 18 years later, it had lasted six times as long as originally planned.
The International Ultraviolet Explorer did not produce images but measured the energies of ultraviolet rays coming from celestial objects, giving insight into the physical conditions in those objects.
IUE's best known observation was of Halley's Comet when it visited Earth in 1986. The satellite was also central to the extensive programme of observations of Jupiter’s atmosphere during the impact of Comet Shoemaker-Levy in 1994.
Although it did not capture the public imagination in the way that Hubble has, IUE remains one of the most successful missions of all time. Scientists still use data gathered by the satellite, more than a decade after the mission ended.
Mission facts
IUE was a joint mission between ESA and NASA with UK involvement.
For 18 years, the satellite made one hour long observation every 90 minutes, making it one of the most productive missions in the history of space exploration.
The mission was the precursor of more recent observatories in space, such as Hubble.
Archived data from IUE was the first from any mission to be made available online. This was back in 1985, before the invention of the World Wide Web.
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Each of the three partners was responsible for a key part of IUE
NASA provided the spacecraft, two of the instruments and one ground observatory. ESA provided the solar panels and the second observatory. The UK supplied detectors and sensors.
The reliability of IUE's operation throughout its 18 years in space was remarkable. Although the back-up cameras developed a fault, the primary cameras remained fully operational. And despite the failure of four of its six gyroscopes, control of the satellite’s position remained precise to the last.
UK involvement
As one of the three main partners, the UK had strong involvement in the design, instruments and science of the mission.
Imagine landing on the Moon, climbing down the ladder of your spacecraft, and looking around the harsh lunar landscape—to see another, older spacecraft standing only 200 yards away.
That's exactly what happened in November 1969, when astronauts Pete Conrad and Alan Bean stepped out of the Apollo 12 lunar module. There, within walking distance on the edge of a small crater, stood Surveyor 3, an unmanned U.S. spacecraft that had landed in April 1967.
Apollo 12's landing site had been chosen deliberately near Surveyor 3. The little lander had spent two and a half years exposed to the worst the Moon had to offer: harsh vacuum, intense cosmic radiation, meteoritic bombardment, extreme temperature swings. Back on Earth, NASA engineers wanted to know how metals, glass and other spacecraft building materials held up to that kind of punishment. Inspecting Surveyor 3 first hand seemed a good way to find out.
On their second four-hour EVA, Bean and Conrad walked over to Surveyor 3, took dozens of photographs and measurements, and began snipping off parts of metal tubing and electrical cables. They retrieved a camera. The very last thing they removed was a small scoop at the end of Surveyor's extendable arm, which had dug into the dry moon dust and gravel to make mechanical measurements of lunar soil.
The little scoop, the camera, and other artifacts returned to Earth were analyzed and then put in storage. At some point in the intervening four decades, the scoop, owned by Johnson Space Center, was transferred on permanent loan to a space museum in Kansas. And there matters quietly lay ... until recently when researchers at NASA's Glenn Research Center (GRC) realized that that little scoop could hold big secrets.
Namely, the secrets of digging on the Moon.
NASA is returning to the Moon with plans to establish an outpost--and this will inevitably require some digging. The rocky, dusty lunar soil or "regolith" contains many of the natural resources humans need to live. For instance, there is plentiful oxygen bound up in ordinary moon rocks and, in polar regions, deposits of frozen water may lie hidden in the soil of shadowed craters. All that's required is a little excavation.
"To design lunar digging equipment, we need to predict the forces required to move a scoop or other implement through lunar regolith," says Allen Wilkinson, team leader of the ISRU (In-Situ Resource Utilization) Regolith Characterization team at the Glenn Research Center.
Surveyor 3 and a sister ship Surveyor 7 actually dug into the Moon and measured how hard their drive motors had to work to scoop, press, and scrape the soil. To interpret those measurements more than 40 years later, however, Wilkinson's team needs to know the dimensions of the Surveyor scoops. Unfortunately, they learned, the blueprints had been lost! Only a scoop itself could provide the answer.
That sent Wilkinson to Hutchinson, Kansas, in April 2007 to borrow the Surveyor 3 scoop from the Kansas State Cosmosphere in order to make detailed measurements.
Measuring the scoop, however, would prove to be no simple matter. You can't just lay a ruler along the scoop and read off the dimensions. Indeed, you can't touch it at all. The Surveyor 3 scoop is in an airtight triangular container, and NASA curators do not wish the scoop to be removed because handling in air will degrade the historical fidelity of the unique artifact.
So the Glenn team borrowed photogrammetry apparatus from the Kennedy Space Center. Photogrammetry is a technique of measuring objects strictly from photographs. They have a photographic studio setup with a white background. GRC team member Juan Agui, an expert in digging force experiments, photographed the scoop in its container next to a standard photogrammetry cube, which has a precise checkerboard pattern on it. Then, using software, Robert Mueller of the Kennedy Space Center extracted dimensions using mathematical triangulation, measuring from points on the scoop to points where corners of dark checks meet on the cube. The software was developed for the Columbia Accident Investigation Board activity.
"Photogrammetry is pretty good," Agui remarks. "We got measurements of the scoop accurate to 0.030 or 0.040 inch (~1 mm)."
They've since constructed a replica of the scoop and now they are using it to dig into simulated lunar regolith.
"Measurements of digging forces are underway," he says. The replicated scoop plunges into a rectangular "soil bed" filled with JSC-1a, a man-made moondust substitute that closely matches the known properties of lunar regolith, while a computer monitors bearing forces. "Our team is quite pleased to find that the measurements appear to be close to reproducing [the best] Surveyor 7 data from the Moon."
With this test bed in place, the team can, e.g., move forward to test alternate scoop designs and refine theories of lunar soil mechanics. "Obtaining the Surveyor replica really made the difference," says Agui.
The secrets of digging on the Moon are being revealed.Read more...>
The International Gamma Ray Astrophysics Laboratory (INTEGRAL) is providing new insights into the most violent and exotic objects of the Universe, such as black holes, neutron stars, active galactic nuclei and supernovae. The mission is led by the European Space Agency (ESA) in co-operation with Russia, the United States, the Czech Republic and Poland.
INTEGRAL is the most sensitive gamma ray observatory ever launched and continues to change the way astronomers think of the cosmos. It is the first space observatory that can see visible light, X-rays and gamma rays at the same time.
Gamma rays are even more energetic than X-rays and much more penetrating. Fortunately, the Earth's atmosphere acts as a shield to protect us from any harmful effects of gamma rays. The downside of this is that we can only see them from space.
Gamma rays can also appear as brief explosions of radiation, known as gamma ray bursts. These short bursts create vast amounts of radiation but at the moment scientists don't know what is exploding. INTEGRAL and NASA’s Swiftmission are helping us to understand these phenomena.
Thanks to INTEGRAL, we now know that more than 400 objects in space emit detectable gamma rays. After more than five years in space, INTEGRAL’s other achievements include the discovery of more than 100 ‘super-massive’ black holes and stars so deeply enveloped in dust and gas that other telescopes cannot see them. With more than 70% of the sky now observed by the spacecraft, astronomers have been able to construct a catalogue of celestial gamma ray sources.
Mission facts
INTEGRAL employs much of the same spacecraft engineering as ESA's X-ray satellite XMM-Newton. This meant considerable amounts of money were saved in building the satellite.
The satellite orbits Earth once every 72 hours. It spends most of its orbit at least 40,000 kms outside Earth's radiation belts. This reduces interference from background radiation.
In November 2007, because the mission has been so successful, ESA’s Science Programme Committee unanimously approved an extension of the mission from 2010 to 2012.
Technology
Gamma rays from distant objects are relatively rare and difficult to observe. With their penetrating power they cannot be focused by conventional mirrors or lenses so special detectors and imaging systems had to be designed.
The four scientific instruments in INTEGRAL’s payload weigh a massive 2,000 kg. Two instruments are designed to both create images and measure the energy of gamma rays. Two other instruments provide simultaneous imaging of the same sky region in X-rays and optical light.
UK involvement
Researchers at the University of Southampton were among those who originally proposed the mission. They are also leading the compilation of the celestial gamma ray catalogue.
When it was launched in 1995, the Infrared Space Observatory (ISO) was the most sensitive infrared satellite ever sent into space. ISO has enabled us to peer into regions of space invisible to other telescopes, penetrating dust clouds to observe new stars as they form and detect distant young galaxies.
The satellite made important studies of cool objects in the Universe that emit infrared radiation but no visible light. Infrared radiation is primarily heat, or thermal radiation. Even objects that we think of as being very cold (such as an ice cube) emit infrared radiation.
During its 28 months in orbit, the satellite completed 900 revolutions of the Earth and made 30,000 different scientific observations. Data from the mission is still being used by scientists today.
Mission facts
ISO was originally designed to last 18 months but a combination of some world-class engineering and a bit of luck meant it actually lasted for 28 months, and generated far more data than expected.
On average, ISO made 45 scientific observations each time it went around the Earth. Each orbit lasted just under 24 hours.
To observe the cool part of the Universe, ISO's instruments needed to work at -269 °C, close to absolute zero (-273 °C). Scientists used a coolant of liquid helium to maintain these temperatures throughout the mission. This made ISO one of the coldest objects in the universe.
The mission ended soon after the coolant ran out in April 1998. The satellite is now heading towards the Earth’s atmosphere, where it will burn up in about 2014.
Technology
Scientists from 11 European countries helped to design the four scientific instruments used by ISO.
A telescope with a 60 cm diameter primary mirror fed infrared light via a pyramidal mirror to the four instruments.
Between them, the instruments made observations at a wide range of wavelengths. This meant they could measure and produce images of many different types of astronomical object.
UK involvement
UK scientists led the development of one instrument and were involved in the development of three of the four instruments used by ISO. The STFC Rutherford Appleton Laboratory was involved in collating the data from the mission.
During its three and a half year mission, Hipparcos pinpointed the positions, and measured distances, of more than 100,000 stars with an accuracy that had never been achieved before.
Hipparcos was the first mission dedicated to measuring the positions and motions of stars. This branch of astronomy is known as astrometry. In the process, Hipparcos also measured the brightness and colours of the stars it mapped. It is the predecessor of ESA's Gaiamission, due for launch in 2011.
As well as giving a 3-D picture of the distances between stars close to our Solar System, data from the satellite was also used to confirm the value of a basic parameter in Einstein’s Theory of General Relativity, describing the bending of light around the Sun.
The data from Hipparcos was originally published in a catalogue released in May 1997. Thanks to recent advances in computational processing power and extensive investigations of the Hipparcos data, it has been possible to revisit the original data and significantly improve the accuracy of the derived catalogue.
The latest catalogue from the mission went online in January 2008.
Mission facts
The satellite was named after Hipparchus of Rhodes, a Greek mathematician and astronomer who lived from 190 to 120 BC. Hipparchus is known as a ‘father’ of astronomy for his work in classifying stars into six categories of brightness known as Magnitudes.
At its time of operation, the Hipparcos spacecraft gathered more data than any previous project in the history of astronomy. Its successor, the Gaiamission, is designed to produce data 10 to 100 times more accurate, and for 10,000 more objects, collecting altogether over one thousand times more data during its five year mission.
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While in orbit, the 1.1 tonne satellite turned slowly on its axis to see every part of the sky at least twice every six months, scanning it in at least two different directions.
Each star was measured on average 115 times over the mission.
By observing the sky through two telescope apertures simultaneously, it was possible to derive accurate positions for more than 50,000 stars.
UK involvement
Representatives from the Royal Greenwich Observatory, now based within the Institute of Astronomy, part of the University of Cambridge, were an essential part of one of the two data processing consortia that worked on the original data and contributed to the Hipparcos data catalogue released in 1997.
The Japanese Hinode mission is studying the processes involved in solar flares and Coronal Mass Ejections. These events send billions of tonnes of particles spewing out into space and can have a major effect on the Earth.
Solar flares are tremendous explosions in the atmosphere of the star. They can directly affect the Earth’s upper atmosphere disrupting radio communications.
Coronal Mass Ejections can trigger a disturbance of the Earth's magnetic field called a geomagnetic storm. Large geomagnetic storms can knock-out orbiting satellites. Coronal Mass Ejections drive shock waves of energetic particles outwards from the Sun that could injure astronauts working in orbit.
Designed and built by teams in the US, Japan and the UK, Hinode has key involvement from University College London’s Mullard Space Science Laboratory (MSSL) and the STFC Rutherford Appleton Laboratory (RAL).
Hinode was originally known as Solar-B but was renamed Hinode, meaning sunrise in Japanese, after its launch.
The spacecraft can distinguish between steady movements on the Sun's surface and the changes that take place in the build-up to a solar flare.
The mission is operating in conjunction with SOHO and STEREO. Together with Ulysses these three missions are providing an unprecedented examination of our nearest star.
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There are three instruments on board Hinode, designed to explore the trigger for solar flares.
The Solar Optical Telescope is the first large optical telescope flown in space dedicated to observing the Sun.
The UK is leading the EUV Imaging Spectrometer (EIS) science team. EUV stands for Extreme Ultraviolet. This instrument was designed and developed by an international team led by MSSL.
The primary function of the EIS is to measure the speed, density and temperature of particles coming from the Sun.
The third instrument, an X-ray telescope, is providing images of the Sun’s outer layer, the corona, at different temperatures.
Through the Science and Technology Facilities Council, the UK has invested almost £5 million in developing and building the EIS. Led by a team from MSSL, RAL provided the calibration and observing software. The University of Birmingham was also involved in the build.
The European Space Agency’s Gaia mission will examine the Milky Way in unprecedented 3-D detail.
The spacecraft will survey more than one billion stars to make the largest, most precise map of our Galaxy to date. Gaia will be scanning the sky continuously for five years. This will enable each object to be observed on average about 80 times. Gaia will log the position, brightness and colour of every celestial object of sufficient brightness that falls within its field of view. Gaia will be using the same principle of measurements that was successfully employed by the Hipparcosmission.
The repeated observations will allow astronomers to calculate positions, distances and velocities relative to the Sun for the objects that are observed. Any variations in brightness will also be followed and analysed. With this wealth of data, astronomers will be able to get a better understanding of the history and evolution of our Galaxy.
Gaia will also be able to detect large numbers of double stars throughout the Milky Way, as well as nearby planets that are the same size - or bigger - than Jupiter. It will do this by measuring small disturbances in the positions of stars caused by a planet's gravitational field. Scientists predict Gaia could find up to 50,000 planets during its five-year mission!
Mission facts
Gaia originally stood for Global Astrometric Interferometer for Astrophysics. As the project evolved, the double-interferometer concept was replaced with different instruments. However, the mission name remained even though it no longer uses an interferometer as part of its telescope design.
The measurement accuracy expected for Gaia will be about 10 to 100 times greater than what was achieved for the Hipparcos mission. The number of objects observed will be 10,000 times greater.
As part of its mission, Gaia is expected to detect tens of thousands of stars that failed to ignite. These are known as brown dwarves. The information gathered will help scientists understand the formation of stars.
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Gaia will be equipped with two telescopes, projecting images onto a single integrated instrument. This will be able to record the position, brightness and colour of the objects under observation.
The spacecraft will be equipped with a ‘micro propulsion’ system, allowing fine adjustments to be made to its position.
UK involvement
The data processing for the mission involves pan-European collaboration, with significant leadership from the UK.
Within the UK, the Universities of Cambridge, Leicester, Edinburgh and Brunel are involved in data processing, along with the STFC Rutherford Appleton Laboratory and University College London’s Mullard Space Science Laboratory (MSSL).
A number of UK research groups and industrial partners such as MSSL and the Universities of Leicester and Cambridge have been involved in the design phase of the instruments on board Gaia.
The European Space Agency’s (ESA) Herschel Space Observatory will be the largest ever infrared space observatory. It will collect radiation from some of the coldest and most distant objects in the Universe. The UK has led the development of one of the three instruments on board.
Herschel will observe previously unexplored wavelengths of light in the far infrared region of the electromagnetic spectrum to examine the formation of galaxies and stars.
Stars form inside big clouds of gas and dust, which act as a thick fog when viewed using visible light. Herschel is sensitive in the far infrared so astronomers will be able to see through these clouds to witness what is going on inside.
Herschel's major objectives will be discovering how the first galaxies formed and evolved to give rise to present day galaxies like our own. It will also investigate the continuing formation of stars in our galaxy today. Herschel will observe clouds of gas and dust where new stars are being born, disks out of which planets may form and cometary atmospheres packed with complex organic molecules.
Herschel has a 3.5 m telescope, much bigger than on any previous far infrared satellite. It can therefore collect more light and produce better images.
Herschel was originally named FIRST (Far Infrared and Sub-millimetre Telescope) but was renamed in honour of the pioneering astronomers William and Caroline Herschel.
Herschel will be launched on an Ariane 5 rocket together with ESA's Planckspacecraft. The two spacecraft will separate after launch.
Prior to launch, all the instruments will be installed in the spacecraft and thoroughly tested as part of the complete system. The complete Herschel satellite will then undergo further tests at the ESA technology centre ESTEC, in the Netherlands, where it will be put in a test chamber to simulate the space environment. Finally Hershel will be transported to Kourou in French Guiana in preparation for the launch.
Technology
The Herschel spacecraft is approximately 7.5 m high and 4 x 4 m in overall cross section. Its launch mass is a hefty 3.3 tonnes.
With a diameter of 3.5 m, Herschel will have the largest mirror ever built for use in space.
The spacecraft comprises two modules. The power supply, computers and communication systems and the pointing system are housed in a service module. The payload module consists of the telescope, a sunshade with solar panels and three scientific instruments contained inside a large liquid helium tank or ‘cryostat’.
In order to make measurements at infrared and sub-millimetre wavelengths, parts of the instruments have to be cooled to as near absolute zero (-273.15 °C) as possible. The instruments and their common mounting structure are contained within the cryostat. More than 2,000 litres of liquid helium will be used during the mission to keep everything cold.
UK involvement
A key component of the satellite is being led by the UK. The SPIRE (Spectral and Photometric Imaging Receiver) instrument has been developed by an international consortium. It is led by a Principal Investigator from Cardiff University.
The assembly and testing of SPIRE has taken place at the STFC Rutherford Appleton Laboratory (RAL) in Oxfordshire. The instrument was delivered for installation in the Herschel satellite in April 2007. Other UK institutes involved in SPIRE are Imperial College London, University College London’s Mullard Space Science Laboratory and the UK Astronomy Technology Centre, Edinburgh.
UK companies involved in the mission include AEA Technology, Analyticon, BOC Edwards, Datasat, MT Satellite Products and System International.
ExoMars is part of ESA’s Aurora programmeand lays the foundation for future human exploration of the Solar System.
Its aim is to examine the biological environment on Mars in preparation for other robotic missions and possible human exploration. Data from the mission will also provide invaluable input for broader studies of geochemistry, environmental science and exobiology-the search for life on other planets.
ExoMars will consist of an orbiter, a descent module and a six wheeled rover. The first European rover on Mars will carry a drill that can burrow up to 2 m into the Martian surface allowing its scientific instruments to analyse and sample the soil and search for mineral content, composition and traces of past and present life.
Mission facts
The rover’s Pasteur payload will be devoted to exobiology - the search for evidence of life on Mars, past or present - and geochemistry.
The lander will include a package RPT devoted to studies of geophysics and environmental science.
Mission control will be at the European Space Agency Operations Centre (ESOC) in Darmstadt, Germany.
ExoMars will influence whether Europe contributes to the future Mars Sample Return mission.
Technology
The rover will roam around the Martian surface by using electrical power generated from its solar arrays.
The rover’s software will have a degree of ‘intelligence’ and autonomy to make certain decisions on the ground and will navigate using optical sensors.
PanCam (The Panoramic Camera System) will provide 3-D imagery of the surface and provide context for the life detection experiments.
The GEP (Geophysical and Environmental Package) will characterise the Martian environment at the landing site.
An environmental package will provide data on the planet’s UV and ionising radiation, dust, humidity and meteorology.
UK involvement
Astrium Limited is building the rover and there is considerable involvement from a number of academic institutions with the on board instruments.
UK involvement on the rover is considerable:
PanCam is led by the UK with scientists from University College London’s Mullard Space Science Laboratory (MSSL) working with the University of Aberystwyth, Birkbeck College and Leicester University. The wide angle stereo camera will provide stereo information and enable the concentration of water vapour to be measured.
Brunel University, Bradford University and BNSC partner, STFC Rutherford Appleton Laboratory, are key players in the development of the CCD camera on the Raman-LIBS (Laser-Induced Breakdown Spectrometer) which can detect the presence of past or present life on Mars.
Scientists from Brunel and Leicester Universities also provided the X-ray CCD detectors on the X-Ray Diffractometer which will identify the mineral content of rock samples.
Imperial College London is developing techniques for sample extraction and analysis that will help with the design of the Mars Organics and Oxidants Detector.
The UK-led LMC (Life Marker Chip) instrument will search for specific molecules associated with life. Scientists from Cranfield University and the University of Leicester helped develop the chip. UVIS (the UV-VIS Spectrometer for ultra violet and visible light) is also UK-led at TheOpen University. It is part of the GEP and will measure the UV and visible spectrum on the planet.
AEP, the Meteorological or Advanced Environmental Package, is suite of UK-led instruments involving the Open University together with the University of Oxford. These instruments will measure pressure, temperature, wind speed, direction and sound.
SEIS (Seismic System) contains a microseismometer element provided by Imperial College London (ICL). The instrument will explore the internal structure of the planet and examine whether there is seismic activity within the large volcanic regions of Mars.
ICL is also providing the software for the magnetometer’s on board analysis and magnetic field detection.
The spacecraft’s impactor smashed into comet Tempel 1 on 4 July 2005
Deep Impact will fly-by comet Hartley 2 in December 2010
Deep Impact originally consisted of two spacecraft, one inside the other. It made a rendezvous with comet Tempel 1. Once in position, the smaller impactor craft separated from the larger spacecraft and was put on a collision course with the comet.
The resulting crash was not powerful enough to change the comet’s course. Instead it produced a large crater and scattered material from the comet into space. This allowed the fly-by craft and its on board instruments to successfully investigate beneath the surface of a comet for the first time.
Scientists are using these observations to better understand comets, the formation of our Solar System and also the possible implications of a comet on a collision course with Earth.
In July 2007, NASA gave both Deep Impact and Stardust new assignments and extended their missions. Deep Impact is now part of the EPOXI mission (Extrasolar Planet Observation and Deep Impact Extended Investigation).
Deep Impact is currently observing nearby bright stars and their giant orbiting planets. Direct observations will also allow scientists to find smaller, more Earth-like planets if gravity from these unseen alien worlds, or extrasolar planets, pulls on these transiting giant planets and affects their orbits.
Mission facts
Tempel 1, discovered by Ernst Tempel in 1867, orbits the Sun. It passes through the inner Solar System every five and a half years.
The washing machine-sized impactor travelled ten times faster than a speeding bullet shortly before it slammed into Tempel 1.
During Deep Impact’s fly-by of Earth, on 31 December 2007, the spacecraft observed the Moon, calibrated its instruments and used our planet’s gravity to assist it towards comet Hartley 2.
Technology
The fly-by craft used opitical imaging and infrared mapping technologies to analyse both the comet’s interior and the resulting debris from the crash. The instruments discovered water, microscopic dust, hydrocarbons and carbon dioxide ice.
HRI (High Resolution Instrument), MRI (Medium Resolution Instrument) and ITS (Impactor Targeting Sensor) guided the spacecraft towards the comet and took data readings before and after impact.
The impactor was made from 49 per cent copper to minimise the corruption of spectral emission lines used to analyse the comet nucleus or centre.
A camera on the impactor relayed images of the comet nucleus until seconds before the collision.
UK involvement
UK scientists from the University of Leicester, the Mullard Space Science Laboratory (MSSL) and the University of Cardiff were part of an international team that helped observe and study material ejected from the comet on impact.
The team used the Isaac Newton telescope on La Palma, Spain, to monitor the debris. The UK Schmidt telescope in Australia examined the colours of light emitted during the impact and NASA’s Swift satellite also watched the collision. Both Leicester and MSSL led instruments on Swift.
An Indian Space Research Organisation (ISRO) mission
Chandrayaan-1 is India’s first unmanned mission to the Moon. It will spend two years performing high resolution mapping of the lunar surface in visible light, near infrared, low energy and high energy X-rays.
The spacecraft will also assess the Moon’s mineral resources and the distribution of elements such as silicon, iron and titanium.
Chandrayaan-1 is a 1.5 m cube and its scientific package contains two NASA, three European and seven Indian instruments. This includes a 30 kg Moon Impact Probe (MIP) which will be released from orbit to penetrate the lunar surface.
Its X-ray spectrometer (C1XS) is a further technical development on the D-CIXS instrument on-board the European Space Agency’s SMART-1.
NASA is providing the Moon Mineralogy Mapper (M3) and the Miniature Synthetic Aperture Radar (MiniSAR), which will be able to detect water ice up to a depth of several metres.
Mission facts
Chandrayaan-1 will be launched from a Polar Satellite Launch Vehicle in India.
The spacecraft weighs 523 kg and has similar design to the Kalpansat meteorological satellite.
There are 11 science payloads on board.
Chandrayaan is Hindi for ‘moon craft’.
Technology
A solar array will provide power for the spacecraft and generates 750 Watts.
The initial orbit will be 1,000 km, reducing to an eventual circular polar orbit of 100 km.
The Chandrayaan-1 Imaging X-ray Spectrometer (C1XS) is an X-ray fluorescence spectrometer which will be used to determine the composition of the Moon’s surface. Its main scientific objective is to map the amount of major rock-forming elements - such as magnesium, aluminium, silicon, titanium, calcium and iron - in the lunar crust.
The Terrain Mapping Camera (TMC) has a 5 m resolution.
UK involvement
The STFC Rutherford Appleton Laboratory designed and built the Chandrayaan-1 Imaging X-ray Spectrometer (C1XS) in collaboration with the Indian Space Research Organisation and the University of Helsinki.
The science team is chaired by Dr Ian Crawford from Birkbeck College, London, and the Principal Investigator is Prof Manuel Grande of the University of Wales, Aberystwth.
NASA's Cassini mission is closing one chapter of its journey at Saturn and embarking on a new one with a two-year mission that will address new questions and bring it closer to two of its most intriguing targets—Titan and Enceladus.
On June 30, Cassini completes its four-year prime mission and begins its extended mission, which was approved in April of this year.
Among other things, Cassini revealed the Earth-like world of Saturn's moon Titan and showed the potential habitability of another moon, Enceladus. These two worlds are primary targets in the two-year extended mission, dubbed the Cassini Equinox Mission. This time period also will allow for monitoring seasonal effects on Titan and Saturn, exploring new places within Saturn's magnetosphere, and observing the unique ring geometry of the Saturn equinox in August of 2009 when sunlight will pass directly through the plane of the rings.
"We've had a wonderful mission and a very eventful one in terms of the scientific discoveries we've made, and yet an uneventful one when it comes to the spacecraft behaving so well," said Bob Mitchell, Cassini program manager at NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory, Pasadena, Calif. "We are incredibly proud to have completed all of the objectives we set out to accomplish when we launched. We answered old questions and raised quite a few new ones and so our journey continues."
A new addition to the Cassini science team is Bob Pappalardo who will step into the role of Cassini Project Scientist in July, taking over for Dennis Matson, a multi-year veteran on the project who will be working on future flagship mission studies to the outer solar system. "I am honored and humbled to be able to work with such a scientifically rich mission, and with the outstanding scientists and engineers who are the backbone of Cassini," said Pappalardo.
Pappalardo is a geologist whose research focuses on processes that have shaped the icy moons of the outer solar system, including processes that power the geysers of Saturn's moon Enceladus. He received his bachelor's degree from Cornell University, Ithaca, N.Y., and his Ph.D. in geology from Arizona State University, Tempe. He worked with the Galileo imaging team while a Postdoctoral Researcher at Brown University, Providence, RI. Prior to joining JPL in 2006, he was an assistant professor of planetary sciences at the University of Colorado at Boulder. Currently he resides in Venice, Calif. More information on Pappalardo is at http://science.jpl.nasa.gov/people/Pappalardo.
Cassini launched Oct. 15, 1997, from Cape Canaveral, Fla., on a seven-year journey to Saturn, traversing 3.5 billion kilometers (2.2 billion miles). The mission entered Saturn's orbit on June 30, 2004, and began returning stunning data of Saturn's rings almost immediately. The spacecraft is extremely healthy and carries 12 instruments powered by three radioisotope thermoelectric generators. Data from Cassini's nominal and extended missions could lay the groundwork for possible future missions to Saturn, Titan or Enceladus.
The Cassini Equinox 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 was designed, developed and assembled at JPL.
NASA's Phoenix Mars Lander repositioned its robotic arm slightly today and is now poised to deliver Martian soil to its wet chemistry laboratory.
Sample delivery and analysis is planned as the science highlight tomorrow, June 25, the 30th Martian day of the mission. Phoenix is to perform the first-ever wet-chemistry experiment on polar Martian terrain, testing the soil for salts, acidity and other characteristics.
The wet chemistry laboratory is part of the suite of tools called the Microscopy, Electrochemistry and Conductivity Analyzer, or MECA.
The Phoenix mission is led by Peter Smith of The University of Arizona with project management at JPL and development partnership at Lockheed Martin, located in Denver. International contributions come from the Canadian Space Agency; the University of Neuchatel, Switzerland; the universities of Copenhagen and Aarhus, Denmark; Max Planck Institute, Germany; and the Finnish Meteorological Institute. For more about Phoenix, visit: http://www.nasa.gov/phoenix
NASA's Phoenix Mars Lander scraped to icy soil in the "Wonderland" area on Thursday, June 26, confirming that surface soil, subsurface soil and icy soil can be sampled at a single trench.
Phoenix scientists are now assured they have a complete soil-layer profile in Wonderland's "Snow White" extended trench.
By rasping to icy soil, the robotic arm on Phoenix proved it could flatten the layer where soil meets ice, exposing the icy flat surface below the soil. Scientists can now proceed with plans to scoop and scrape samples into Phoenix's various analytical instruments. Scientists will test samples to determine if some ice in the soil may have been liquid in the past during warmer climate cycles.
It's another encouraging step to meeting Phoenix mission goals, which are to study the history of Martian water in all its phases and determine if the Martian arctic soil could support life.
The Phoenix mission is led by Peter Smith of The University of Arizona with project management at JPL and development partnership at Lockheed Martin, located in Denver. International contributions come from the Canadian Space Agency; the University of Neuchatel, Switzerland; the universities of Copenhagen and Aarhus, Denmark; Max Planck Institute, Germany; and the Finnish Meteorological Institute. For more information on the Phoenix mission, link to http://www.nasa.gov/phoenix
Cassini-Huygens is the first mission to make a long-term study of Saturn, its moons, rings and complex magnetic environment. A joint NASA/European Space Agency (ESA)/Italian Space Agency project, Cassini-Huygens involves UK scientists on both the orbiter (Cassini) and probe (Huygens).
Since entering Saturn’s orbit, the spacecraft has transformed our understanding of the ringed planet. Achievements include the discovery of new rings and several new moons. Cassini has also witnessed a massive hurricane-like storm and found evidence that the planet’s rotation appears to be slowing. The spacecraft recently sent back views of the planet from high above and below these rings – a perspective never seen before.
Remarkable discoveries have been found among Saturn’s moons. The tiny moon, Enceladus, has spectacular jets of ice particles erupting from its south pole. Another moon, Phoebe, has turned out to be older than Saturn itself! The ‘black and white’ moon, Iapetus, was found to have a ridge along its equator higher than any mountain on Earth. The latest moon – the 60th – has been nicknamed ‘Frank’. It was spotted by Carl Murray from Queen Mary, University of London in collaboration with the Cassini imaging team.
Saturn’s largest moon, Titan, is a major focus of the mission. Titan has a very thick atmosphere - similar to Earth's when it was a very young planet. By studying Titan, scientists hope to gain an insight into how life might have first become established on Earth.
In January 2005, the Huygens probe descended by parachute through Titan’s atmosphere and survived for several hours on the surface. No-one knew whether to expect a hard or soft landing. In fact it was somewhere in between.
In March 2007, instruments on board Cassini found evidence of seas in the northern parts of Titan that might be filled with liquid methane or ethane. Results based on data from Huygens also suggest there is liquid methane rain on the planet.
Mission facts
The Cassini spacecraft is named after the Italian-French astronomer Jean-Dominique Cassini (1625 - 1712) who discovered four of Saturn's moons: Iapetus, Rhea, Tethys and Dione.
Huygens is named after the Dutch scientist Christiaan Huygens (1629 - 1695) who explained the nature of Saturn's rings and discovered its largest moon, Titan, in 1655.
Cassini-Huygens is as tall as a two-storey house and weighed 5,574 kg when it left the Earth.
The spacecraft travelled 3.5 billion km to reach its destination. Due to its weight and the distance it had to travel, Cassini-Huygens used a series of ‘gravity assists’ or ‘fly-bys’ on route to Saturn.
Gravity assist is a manoeuvre in which a spacecraft flies passed a planet. It works because of the mutual gravitational pull between the moving planet and a spacecraft. The planet pulls on the spacecraft but the spacecraft's own mass also pulls on the planet. This permits an exchange of energy. The fly-bys with Venus (twice) and Earth saved the equivalent of 68,000 kg of rocket fuel.
Technology
Cassini-Huygens has a total of 18 instruments equipped to investigate many different aspects of the Saturn system.
Cassini
The Cassini Plasma Spectrometer (CAPS) measures the energy and electrical charge of particles like electrons and protons, to help us understand the nature of Saturn's magnetic field.
The Cosmic Dust Analyser (CDA) determines which elements make up the small dust particles around Saturn and how they interact with the planet's rings, moons and magnetic field.
The Composite Infrared Spectrometer (CIRS) provides vital information about Saturn and Titan's atmospheres. It has also been helping scientists identify the molecular composition of Titan's surface.
The Ion and Neutral Mass Spectrometer (INMS) is used to study Saturn's magnetic field and find out how gases around the planet's moons interact with the solar wind - the stream of charged particles coming from the Sun.
The Imaging Science Subsystem (ISS) has two optical cameras that have sent back tens of thousands of spectacular images.
The Dual Technique Magnetometer, or MAG, measures the interior structure and internal magnetic fields of Saturn and its moons, showing us how they interact with the particles that make up the solar wind.
The Magnetospheric Imaging Instrument (MIMI) has been taking images of Saturn’s hot plasmas: gases made up of ions, electrons and neutral particles.
The Radio Detection and Ranging Instrument (RADAR) is being used to create a map of Titan.
The Radio and Plasma Wave Science (RPWS) instrument measures radio and plasma waves given off by the solar wind as it comes into contact with Saturn's atmosphere and magnetic field. This is another experiment that helps scientists build up a clear picture of the planet, and what effect the Sun has on it.
The Radio Science Subsystem (RSS) measures how radio signals from Cassini change as they are sent through objects, such as Saturn's rings. This will give scientists detailed information on the structure of these objects.
The Ultraviolet Imaging Spectrograph (UVIS) measures the ultraviolet light being emitted from, and reflected off, Saturn's atmosphere, surfaces and rings. It will also tell scientists which elements make up the planet's atmosphere.
The two cameras on the Visible and Infrared Mapping Spectrometer (VIMS) are helping scientists determine the weather patterns on Saturn and Titan as well as the composition of the rings and moons.
Huygens
As Huygens reached Titan, it switched itself on, activated its radio link to Cassini and began its descent into the atmosphere at around 20,000 km per hour.
As the first readings were collected, three sets of parachutes deployed to control its descent. Two and a half hours later, the first man-made object touched the Titanian surface.
Instruments on board Huygens measured the physical and electrical properties of the atmosphere and surface while a camera sent back images of the alien landscape.
Once it had landed, the probe was only designed to last around half an hour (at the most) before its batteries ran out. However, it is a testament to its construction that the Earth-based Parkes radio telescope was still receiving a signal more than three hours later.
UK involvement
The UK has been at the forefront of the design, engineering and science of Cassini-Huygens.
The Huygens Surface Science Package is led by the Open University (OU) with contributions from the STFC Rutherford Appleton Laboratory (RAL) and Southampton University.
The very first part of Huygens to touch Titan’s surface was a British-built sensor. The OU also has prime responsibility for the instrument that measured the probe’s deceleration through the upper atmosphere.
Imperial College London led the construction of the Dual Technique Magnetometer and analyses scientific data from the instrument, with input from Leicester University.
Queen Mary, University of London, helped in the design of the Imaging Science Subsystem and has a key role in the analysis of the images it is returning.
Oxford University was heavily involved in developing the hardware for the Composite Infrared Spectrometer, and is helping to analyse the data.
Cardiff University and again Queen Mary, University of London, helped to develop the infrared filters on the Composite Infrared Spectrometer.
University College London worked with RAL to develop part of the Cassini Plasma Spectrometer.
UK industry has also played a significant role with software provided by Logica and electronic testing and procurement co-ordinated by IGG component Technology.
IRVIN-GQ worked on the descent control system under contract to Martin Baker Space Systems. The latter was responsible for the parachute systems and the mechanisms needed to control the probe’s descent.
SciSys developed and maintained Huygens’ mission control system which monitored the probe’s health and controlled it billions of kilometres away on Earth.
All this technology had to operate flawlessly after seven years in the harsh space environment.
NASA's Phoenix Mars Lander performed its first wet chemistry experiment on Martian soil flawlessly yesterday, returning a wealth of data that for Phoenix scientists was like winning the lottery.
"We are awash in chemistry data," said Michael Hecht of NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory, lead scientist for the Microscopy, Electrochemistry and Conductivity Analyzer, or MECA, instrument on Phoenix. "We're trying to understand what is the chemistry of wet soil on Mars, what's dissolved in it, how acidic or alkaline it is. With the results we received from Phoenix yesterday, we could begin to tell what aspects of the soil might support life."
"This is the first wet-chemical analysis ever done on Mars or any planet, other than Earth," said Phoenix co-investigator Sam Kounaves of Tufts University, science lead for the wet chemistry investigation.
About 80 percent of Phoenix's first, two-day wet chemistry experiment is now complete. Phoenix has three more wet-chemistry cells for use later in the mission.
"This soil appears to be a close analog to surface soils found in the upper dry valleys in Antarctica," Kouvanes said. "The alkalinity of the soil at this location is definitely striking. At this specific location, one-inch into the surface layer, the soil is very basic, with a pH of between eight and nine. We also found a variety of components of salts that we haven't had time to analyze and identify yet, but that include magnesium, sodium, potassium and chloride."
"This is more evidence for water because salts are there. We also found a reasonable number of nutrients, or chemicals needed by life as we know it," Kounaves said. "Over time, I've come to the conclusion that the amazing thing about Mars is not that it's an alien world, but that in many aspects, like mineralogy, it's very much like Earth."
Another analytical Phoenix instrument, the Thermal and Evolved-Gas Analyzer (TEGA), has baked its first soil sample to 1,000 degrees Celsius (1,800 degrees Fahrenheit). Never before has a soil sample from another world been baked to such high heat.
TEGA scientists have begun analyzing the gases released at a range of temperatures to identify the chemical make-up of soil and ice. Analysis is a complicated, weeks-long process.
But "the scientific data coming out of the instrument have been just spectacular," said Phoenix co-investigator William Boynton of the University of Arizona, lead TEGA scientist.
"At this point, we can say that the soil has clearly interacted with water in the past. We don't know whether that interaction occurred in this particular area in the northern polar region, or whether it might have happened elsewhere and blown up to this area as dust."
Leslie Tamppari, the Phoenix project scientist from JPL, tallied what Phoenix has accomplished during the first 30 Martian days of its mission, and outlined future plans.
The Stereo Surface Imager has by now completed about 55 percent of its three-color, 360-degree panorama of the Phoenix landing site, Tamppari said. Phoenix has analyzed two samples in its optical microscope as well as first samples in both TEGA and the wet chemistry laboratory. Phoenix has been collecting information daily on clouds, dust, winds, temperatures and pressures in the atmosphere, as well as taking first nighttime atmospheric measurements.
Lander cameras confirmed that white chunks exposed during trench digging were frozen water ice because they sublimated, or vaporized, over a few days. The Phoenix robotic arm dug and sampled, and will continue to dig and sample, at the 'Snow White' trench in the center of a polygon in the polygonal terrain.
"We believe this is the best place for creating a profile of the surface from the top down to the anticipated icy layer," Tamppari said. "This is the plan we wanted to do when we proposed the mission many years ago. We wanted a place just like this where we could sample the soil down to the possible ice layer."
The Phoenix mission is led by Peter Smith of The University of Arizona with project management at JPL and development partnership at Lockheed Martin, located in Denver. International contributions come from the Canadian Space Agency; the University of Neuchatel, Switzerland; the universities of Copenhagen and Aarhus, Denmark; Max Planck Institute, Germany; and the Finnish Meteorological Institute. For more information on the Phoenix mission, link to http://www.nasa.gov/phoenix
BepiColombo will be only the third spacecraft to visit Mercury in the history of space exploration. Mercury’s harsh environment makes it a particularly challenging mission. The spacecraft will have to endure intense sunlight and temperatures up to 350°C while gathering data.
This joint venture between Europe and Japan is an ESA ‘Cornerstone’ mission. It will help our understanding of the formation of the Solar System and its inner rocky planets, including Earth.
The mission will build on the experience gained in using electric propulsion on the SMART-1 mission. BepiColombo’s journey will also be helped by the gravity of the Moon, Earth and Venus during fly-bys to help it on its way to Mercury. It is due to arrive at the planet in 2019.
Mission facts
Mercury is the second smallest planet in the Solar System, larger only than Pluto (if you count Pluto as a planet) and not much bigger than our own Moon.
The surface is pock-marked with enormous craters caused by meteorites smashing into the planet’s surface in the early stages of the Solar System’s evolution some four billion years ago.
Although Mercury is only a third the size of Earth, it is almost as dense.
Scientists believe Mercury’s high density can be put down to the planet having a massive iron core.
The first mission to Mercury was NASA's Mariner 10 in 1974.
NASA's Mercury Messenger is currently on its way to Mercury and will arrive in 2011.
BepiColombo is named after Giuseppe ‘Bepi’ Colombo (1920-1984), a scientist who studied Mercury's orbital motion in detail as well as orbits and interplanetary travel in general.
Although the temperature on Mercury can go as high as 462°C, the side of the planet facing away from the Sun is always very cold.
One of the key objectives for BepiColombo is to find out whether there is ice on the cold side of the planet.
Technology
BepiColombo will consist of three sections: a Mercury Transfer Module (MTM) – designed to get the spacecraft to the planet – and two orbiters: the Mercury Planetary Orbiter (MPO) and the Mercury Magnetospheric Orbiter (MMO).
Astrium Limited in the UK is responsible for the entire structure of the spacecraft.
ESA is responsible for the larger MPO. Its 11 scientific instruments will study Mercury from a low-polar-orbit.
UK space scientists, led by the University of Leicester, will develop one of the key instruments on board BepiColombo: MIXS (Mercury Imaging X-ray Spectrometer). MIXS will be used to help determine the composition of the planet’s surface.
MIXS will measure fluorescent X-rays that originate from the Sun and are reflected off the planet’s surface. Fluorescent X-ray measurements can be used to identify chemical elements while measurements at infrared wavelengths can be used to determine mineral composition.
Japan is developing the MMO. This will have five science instruments on board designed to examine Mercury’s magnetic field and magnetosphere – the magnetic ‘bubble’ surrounding a planet. Mercury intrigues scientists because it is hard to understand why such a small planet can have a magnetic field at all.
Once clear of Earth, BepiColombo will make its way to Mercury with an ion engine. This employs solar panels to generate electricity which is used to produce charged particles from xenon gas. A beam of these charged particles, or ions, is then expelled from the spacecraft. The engine will be used to slow the spacecraft down so that it can eventually be captured by the gravity of Mercury.
UK involvement
BepiColombo has significant UK involvement. Much of the spacecraft will be built in Britain in partnership with several UK science teams.
Astrium Limited has been appointed as the prime contractor to build the European components. In the UK, the company will provide all the spacecraft structures as well as the electrical and chemical propulsion systems for the MTM, the chemical propulsion system for the MPO (which will be the first dual mode propulsion system designed and built in Europe) and the systems which will separate the spacecraft modules on arrival at Mercury.
Scientists from the University of Leicester are leading work on the MIXS instrument. Researchers from STFC Rutherford Appleton Laboratory (RAL), the University of Lancaster, Open University and UCL's Mullard Space Science Laboratory are also involved in many aspects of the mission.
New analysis of Mars' terrain using NASA spacecraft observations reveals what appears to be by far the largest impact crater ever found in the solar system.
NASA's Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter and Mars Global Surveyor have provided detailed information about the elevations and gravity of the Red Planet's northern and southern hemispheres. A new study using this information may solve one of the biggest remaining mysteries in the solar system: why does Mars have two strikingly different kinds of terrain in its northern and southern hemispheres? The huge crater is creating intense scientific interest.
The mystery of the two-faced nature of Mars has perplexed scientists since the first comprehensive images of the surface were beamed home by NASA spacecraft in the 1970s. The main hypotheses have been an ancient impact or some internal process related to the planet's molten subsurface layers. The impact idea, proposed in 1984, fell into disfavor because the basin's shape didn't seem to fit the expected round shape for a crater. The newer data is convincing some experts who doubted the impact scenario.
"We haven't proved the giant-impact hypothesis, but I think we've shifted the tide," said Jeffrey Andrews-Hanna, a postdoctoral researcher at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology in Cambridge.
Andrews-Hanna and co-authors Maria Zuber of MIT and Bruce Banerdt of NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, Calif., report the new findings in the journal Nature this week. A giant northern basin that covers about 40 percent of Mars'surface, sometimes called the Borealis basin, is the remains of a colossal impact early in the solar system's formation, the new analysis suggests. At 5,300 miles across, it is about four times wider than the next-biggest impact basin known, the Hellas basin on southern Mars. An accompanying report calculates that the impacting object that produced the Borealis basin must have been about 1,200 miles across. That's larger than Pluto.
"This is an impressive result that has implications not only for the evolution of early Mars, but also for early Earth's formation," said Michael Meyer, the Mars chief scientist at NASA Headquarters in Washington.
This northern-hemisphere basin on Mars is one of the smoothest surfaces found in the solar system. The southern hemisphere is high, rough, heavily cratered terrain, which ranges from 2.5 to 5 miles higher in elevation than the basin floor.
Other giant impact basins have been discovered that are elliptical rather than circular. But it took a complex analysis of the Martian surface from NASA's two Mars orbiters to reveal the clear elliptical shape of Borealis basin, which is consistent with being an impact crater.
One complicating factor in revealing the elliptical shape of the basin was that after the time of the impact, which must have been at least 3.9 billion years ago, giant volcanoes formed along one part of the basin rim and created a huge region of high, rough terrain that obscures the basin's outlines. It took a combination of gravity data, which tend to reveal underlying structure, with data on current surface elevations to reconstruct a map of Mars elevations as they existed before the volcanoes erupted.
Aurora includes robotic missions to explore the Moon and Mars and lays the foundation for possible human exploration of the Solar System. The UK is the second largest financial contributor to this ambitious European Space Agency (ESA) programme.
Aurora was started in 2001 and is a key part of the strategy to take Europe’s space exploration to the next level. One of the ultimate long-term goals of Aurora is to find places elsewhere in the Solar System where humans could one day live and work.
There are a number of projects already underway in the Aurora programme. At the top of the list is ExoMars, a European mission to land a rover on Mars in 2015. The 205 kg rover will be packed with instruments, including a drill to burrow into the rocky Martian surface. An experimental rover is currently under development. This is being led by a team at AstriumLimited in Stevenage.
In addition to Aurora, the UK is also an active member of the Global Exploration Strategy Team. This is a group of 14 space agencies which has set out a long-term vision for co-operation in space exploration. The short-term focus is likely to be on robotic lunar exploration. While much of the effort is focused through ESA, an agreement has been signed between BNSC and NASA. A joint UK-NASA team is examining the possibilities of developing a joint robotic lunar lander programme.
Find out more on ESA’s Aurora web pages or on STFC's web pages.
Mission facts
Aurora consists of several different missions. The UK, through the Science and Technology Facilities Council (STFC), has committed €108.1 million to the next stage of Aurora.
The first mission, ExoMars, is due for launch in 2013.
ExoMars will be followed by other robotic missions to the Moon and Mars, including a mission to bring back samples of lunar or Martian soil to Earth.
If all goes to plan, an international mission to send humans to Mars will be launched by 2030. Sending humans to Mars would be the most ambitious project ever in the history of space exploration.
During its furthest orbit, the distance between Earth and Mars is more than a thousand times the distance of the Earth and Moon.
Astronauts may need to live on Mars for up to a year and a half before they can return home.
Technology
Much of the technology for the Aurora mission has yet to be invented! However, work on ExoMars is well advanced and other missions, instruments and technologies are under development.
Following successful tests on the ExoMars rover’s motor and chassis, efforts are now going into giving the rover a degree of ‘intelligence’. This will allow the rover to make its own way across the Martian surface rather than wait the 10-15 minutes for commands to reach it from Earth.
Trials are currently being conducted at the University of Aberystwyth where a half-sized model of the rover is being tested on soil and ground conditions similar to those on Mars.
STFC in conjunction with Surrey Satellite Technology Limited has completed a feasibility study into two robotic missions – MoonLITE and MoonRaker.
MoonLITE is designed to be launched in 2012 and comprises a small orbiter – providing a communications link between the Moon and Earth – and four ‘penetrators’ which would impact the Moon at high speed. MoonRaker consists of a single robotic lander.
UK involvement
The UK is taking a major role in developing the Aurora programme and is the second largest contributor to the ExoMars mission.
ESA has given the contract for designing the ExoMars rover to Astrium Limited and several UK teams are developing instruments for the mission.
STFC has also awarded the first of its annual ‘Aurora Fellowships’ to three young scientists who will be at the heart of the UK’s future work in space exploration.
The progress of ExoMars is complemented by the Aurora Core Programme. This involves the preparation of technologies needed for future exploration missions for both the Moon and Mars. The UK has subscribed about £70 million to ExoMars over eight years and £5 million over three years for the Aurora Core Programme.
AKARI is an infrared space telescope. It mapped 94 per cent of the sky and made the most extensive survey of our Universe at mid infrared (shorter) and far infrared (longer) wavelengths. It also made observations of selected celestial objects.
The birth of stars and galaxies is often heavily shrouded in dust. This makes astronomical processes invisible even to the most powerful optical telescopes. Infrared astronomy allows astronomers to see how stars are born and is key to understanding the birth of stars and galaxies.
In order to make its sensitive far infrared observations possible the spacecraft’s telescope was cooled down to minus -267 °Celsius by liquid Helium. The supply ran out as expected on 26 August 2007. However, the spacecraft is continuing to collect data in the near infrared, just beyond the range of human sight. The data is currently being analysed by scientists and astronomers, many of whom are from the UK.
Mission facts
Originally called ASTRO-F, AKARI was also known as the Infrared Imaging Surveyor (IRIS).
AKARI’s Near and Mid Infrared Camera (IRC) and Far Infrared Surveyor (FIS) observed star formation over three generations of stars in the constellation Vulpecula about 6,500 light years from Earth.
AKARI also observed the material surrounding a black hole and made the first ever infrared detection of a supernova remnant in the Small Magellanic Cloud, a galaxy relatively close to our own Milky Way about 200,000 light years away.
ESA provided the ground station ESOC (European Space Operations Centre).
Technology
AKARI orbited the Earth at an altitude of 750 km.
The super cooled 68.5 cm diameter telescope observed wavelengths between near infrared (1.7 microns) and far infrared (180 microns).
UK Involvement
UK scientists from The Open University, Sussex University, the STFC Rutherford Appleton Laboratory and Imperial College developed the software used to process AKARI’s all-sky survey data from the telescope.
For more information, visit the AKARI UK consortium website.
Comets are often referred to as time machines because they contain ice, gas and dust from the Solar System’s distant past. This frozen material, formed some 4.6 billion years ago, is mostly found in an area of space called the Edgeworth-Kuiper Belt and the Oort cloud, beyond Pluto.
Comets lie here until the gravity of a nearby star gives one a gentle push and it falls into orbit towards the Sun. About ten comets a year join the inner Solar System, and become visible from Earth.
As the comet gets closer to the Sun, the temperature of its outer layer rises and becomes a gas. This gas forms a cloud around the nucleus, called a coma. As the stream of particles from the Sun, known as the solar wind, hits the comet coma it is blown back to form a tail – this can be many hundreds of millions of kilometres long.
Omens
Comets were once seen as omens for good or evil. Their appearance in the night sky might foretell a great battle or the birth of a wise ruler. A comet features in the Bayeux Tapestry of the Norman conquest of England and in paintings of the birth of Jesus Christ.
Although few now believe comets have any mystical properties, they are no less exciting. There is now a consensus among scientists that much of the water on Earth was brought here by comets. It is also likely that the complex organic molecules that formed the basis for life also came from cometary debris. This means we are all mostly made from bits of comets.
Clues
Their beautiful appearance alone is enough to interest astronomers but comets can also tell us a lot about the Solar System. By studying comets scientists hope to gain an understanding of what conditions were like as the Solar System formed and gain clues to the origins of life on Earth.
Missions
The NASA-led mission Deep Impact smashed an impactor spacecraft into the nucleus of Comet Tempel 1 on the 4 July, 2005. This was the first time scientists were able to ‘see’ into a comet and there has been considerable UK involvement in this mission.
The European Space Agency Rosettamission, launched in 2004, is one of the most ambitious robotic missions ever conceived. Rosetta is designed to land on a comet and comprises a large orbiter and a small lander. After entering orbit around comet 67P/Churyumov-Gerasimenko in 2014, the spacecraft will release the Philae lander onto the icy nucleus and spend the next two years orbiting the comet as it heads towards the Sun.
On 2 January 2004, NASA’s Stardustmission flew within 236 km of Comet Wild 2 and survived the high-speed impact of millions of dust particles and small rocks. Stardust captured cometary and interstellar particles with an extended, tennis racket shaped collector and brought these back to Earth in a Sample Return Capsule in 2006.
These will be studied to learn about the fundamental nature of interstellar grains (stardust) and other solid materials that assembled to form our Solar System. The UK’s Open University will be involved in analysing the returned particles.
Distance from the Sun: Varies between 4.3 and 7.4 billion km
Satellites: 3
Pluto lies beyond Neptune and is so tiny – its diameter is smaller than the width of the Atlantic Ocean - that for years many astronomers questioned its status as a planet.
Pluto was discovered by the American astronomer Clyde Tombaugh in 1930 after predictions in the late 1800s concluded that another planet’s gravity was affecting the orbits of Uranus and Neptune. In fact, Pluto was not the cause so its discovery was a fortunate accident.
The name of the dwarf planet’s largest moon, Charon, reflects its mythological association with Pluto (Pluto was the Roman god of the underworld and Charon was the ferryman who took the dead across the river Acheron to Hades). Charon was only discovered in 1978 and is almost as half the size of Pluto itself. The other moons are called Nix and Hydra.
Pluto takes 248 years to orbit the Sun and is a member of the Kuiper Belt. This consists of thousands of small icy worlds which orbit beyond Neptune and is also believed to be the source of short period comets. These are comets whose orbits take less than 200 years.
Our knowledge of Pluto is relatively recent – based on observations by the Infrared Astronomical Satellite on Earth and the Hubble Space Telescope. In 2006, NASA launched the New Horizons mission – the first to explore both Pluto and the Kuiper Belt region. New Horizons will reach Pluto and its moons in 2015.
Distance from the Sun: Varies between 4.46 and 4.54 billion km
Satellites: 13
Named after the Roman god of the sea, Neptune is about four times larger than Earth and is the fourth largest planet in our Solar System. Its beautiful blue colour results from the presence of methane in the atmosphere.
Now that Pluto has been officially demoted to a dwarf planet, Neptune is the only planet in our Solar System that cannot be seen with the naked eye. Although Pluto is further away from the Sun, every 248 years it moves inside Neptune’s orbit for around 20 years.
A day on Neptune lasts 17 hours but each year is the equivalent of 165 years on Earth. It has a ring system, which is not as pronounced as Saturn’s, and several moons. The largest moon is Triton (2,705 km in diameter).
Cold winds
Temperatures on Neptune reach several hundred degrees below zero with winds of over 1,900 km per hour close to the equator. There is also evidence of storms or vortices similar to those on Jupiter and Saturn.
Thick clouds cover the planet and scientists believe that Neptune is made up chiefly of hydrogen, helium, water and silicates. It does not have a solid surface and instead consists of compressed gases, like frozen methane and possibly hydrogen sulphide.
The English mathematician
Neptune was first predicted mathematically when astronomers realised that Uranus’ orbit was being influenced by another, unseen planet.
The English astronomer and mathematician, John C Adams, began working on this new planet’s location in 1843. Two years later he had a solution and sent it to England’s Astronomer Royal, George B Airy. Unfortunately Airy did not have much faith in Adams’ work and a French mathematician, Urbain Joseph Le Verrier, presented his similar predictions to Johann Galle at the Urania Observatory in Berlin in 1846.
The Frenchman’s predictions were proved right by Galle and Neptune was located. Today both Le Verrier and Adams are credited with its discovery, as well as Galle.
Voyager 2
Voyager 2 was the first mission to reach Neptune. In August 1989, it provided the first close-up views of the planet and most of its moons.
The spacecraft also discovered the planet's rings and discovered that they were narrower than Saturn’s rings and contained a greater proportion of fine dust particles, rather than lumps of ice and rock.
It's a mission to once more push the boundaries of how deep in space and far back in time humanity can see. It's a flight to again upgrade what already may be the most significant satellite ever launched.
And, for the space shuttle, it's a final visit to a dear, old friend.
The STS-125 mission will return the space shuttle to the Hubble Space Telescope for one last visit before the shuttle fleet retires in 2010. Over 12 days and five spacewalks, the shuttle Atlantis’ crew will make repairs and upgrades to the telescope, leaving it better than ever and ready for another five years – or more – of research.
The shuttle Discovery launched Hubble in 1990, and released it into an orbit 350 miles above the Earth. Since then it’s circled Earth more than 97,000 times and provided more than 4,000 astronomers access to the stars not possible from inside Earth’s atmosphere. Hubble has helped answer some of science’s key questions and provided images that have awed and inspired the world.
“We’ve actually seen an object that emitted its light about 13 billion years ago,” said Hubble senior scientist Dave Leckrone. “Since the universe is 13.7 billion years old, that’s its infancy, the nursery. From the nearest parts of our solar system to further back in time than anyone has ever looked before, we’ve taken ordinary citizens on a voyage through the universe.” Read more...>
Did you say one million? That’s how many names have been submitted to blast off on NASA’s Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter, or LRO, spacecraft.
Since May 1, NASA has invited the public to join the excitement of the first mission in NASA's exploration program to return humans to the moon by 2020. LRO, which is scheduled to launch later this year, will map the lunar surface in extraordinary detail and help future human missions to the moon locate safe landing sites and vital resources on the moon.
There is still time to be part of the adventure and send your name on a mission to the moon.
Participants can submit their names at the LRO web site and print a certificate. The names will be placed on a microchip that will be installed on the LRO spacecraft and travel to the moon. The deadline for submitting names is June 27, 2008.
This is an unprecedented number of people to take part in a send your name campaign. People from all over the world are telling NASA how excited they are to be part of the nation's journey back to the moon. Here are some of the more than 700 comments NASA received:
"We will all feel the journey to the moon when our names are there. A wonderful mission."
"I can't fly to the moon, so am thrilled my name will be there forever!"
"When I was young I always watched the moon wishing that I could go there. I never did, but my name could be there. That's better than nothing."
You may ask how LRO reached one million people so quickly. Stephanie Stockman, LRO Education and Public Outreach lead has been exploring ideas for NASA to reach as many people as possible.
“The outreach team has been using social media and web 2.0 for the past year, and when it was time to send your name to the moon, I promoted it on my personal blog and Twitter account,” Stockman said. “Send your name also was set up as group on Facebook, and video was posted on YouTube.
"It was on blogs all over the world. I am amazed that we can reach thousands of people in days and millions of people in weeks,” she added.
Humans continue to be fascinated by the planetary body closest to home on Earth. This sentiment is summed up in the words of one commenter, "I want to join a lunar exploration journey with this opportunity."For more information visit:http://www.nasa.gov/mission_pages/LRO/news/nametomoon2.html
After a wait of more than two decades, "hope" arrived at the International Space Station on June 3, 2008, just three days into space shuttle Discovery's STS-124 mission.
Using the space station's robotic arm, Mission Specialists Akihiko Hoshide and Karen Nyberg slowly and carefully maneuvered the 32,500-pound Japanese Pressurized Module out of Discovery's payload bay. More than two hours later, as Earth rolled by below, Hoshide installed it on the left side of the station's Harmony node.
"We have a new hope on the International Space Station," said Hoshide, who represents the Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency.
The Pressurized Module is the largest piece of hardware in the Japanese Experiment Module known as "Kibo," or hope. After 23 years in the making, Japan's contribution to the International Space Station is finally taking shape in orbit.
Discovery's STS-124 mission was the second of three shuttle flights required to deliver the entire Kibo complex to the station.
Commanded by astronaut Mark Kelly, the seven-member crew started the two-week mission May 31 with a spectacular late-afternoon liftoff from NASA's Kennedy Space Center in Florida. Discovery roared toward orbit at 5:02 p.m. EDT and started its two-day orbital pursuit of the space station.
On June 2, with Pilot Ken Ham at the controls, the orbiter linked up with the space station as the two spacecraft flew above the South Pacific. Later that afternoon, astronaut Greg Chamitoff took the place of ISS Flight Engineer Garrett Reisman, who had served three months aboard the station.
Mission Specialists Mike Fossum and Ron Garan conducted the mission's first spacewalk the next day, which marked the 43rd anniversary of astronaut Ed White's first U.S. spacewalk. During their six-and-a-half-hour excursion, the spacewalkers prepared the laboratory module for installation. They also cleaned and inspected the station's starboard Solar Alpha Rotary Joint, one of two such joints which help the power-generating solar arrays follow the sun.
The Japanese Pressurized Module was officially open for science the following day. Read more...>
Cassini-Huygens is one of the most ambitious missions ever launched into space. Loaded with an array of powerful instruments and cameras, the spacecraft is capable of taking accurate measurements and detailed images in a variety of atmospheric conditions and light spectra.
Two elements comprise the spacecraft: The Cassini orbiter and the Huygens probe. In 2004, Cassini-Huygens reached Saturn and its moons. There the spacecraft began orbiting the system in July 2004, beaming home valuable data that will help us understand the vast Saturnian region. Huygens entered the murky atmosphere of Titan, Saturn's biggest moon, and descended via parachute onto its surface.
Cassini-Huygens is a three-axis stabilized spacecraft equipped for 27 diverse science investigations. The Cassini orbiter has 12 instruments and the Huygens probe had six. Equipped to thoroughly investigate all the important elements that the Saturn system may uncover, many of the instruments have multiple functions. The spacecraft communicates through one high-gain and two-low gain antennas. It is only in the event of a power failure or other such emergency situation, however, that the spacecraft communicates through one of its low-gain antennas.
Three Radioisotope Thermoelectric Generators -- commonly referred to as RTGs -- provide power for the spacecraft, including the instruments, computers, and radio transmitters on board, attitude thrusters, and reaction wheels.
In some ways, the Cassini spacecraft has senses better than our own. For example, Cassini can "see" in wavelengths of light and energy that the human eye cannot. The instruments on the spacecraft can "feel" things about magnetic fields and tiny dust particles that no human hand could detect.
The science instruments can be classified in a way that can be compared to the way human senses operate. Your eyes and ears are "remote sensing" devices because you can receive information from remote objects without being in direct contact with them. Your senses of touch and taste are "direct sensing" devices. Your nose can be construed as either a remote or direct sensing device. You can certainly smell the apple pie across the room without having your nose in direct contact with it, but the molecules carrying the scent do have to make direct contact with your sinuses. Cassini's instruments can be classified as remote and microwave remote sensing instruments, and fields and particles instruments--these are all designed to record significant data and take a variety of close-up measurements.
The remote sensing instruments on the Cassini Spacecraft can calculate measurements from a great distance. This set includes both optical and microwave sensing instruments including cameras, spectrometers, radar and radio.
The fields and particles instruments take "in situ" (on site) direct sensing measurements of the environment around the spacecraft. These instruments measure magnetic fields, mass, electrical charges and densities of atomic particles. They also measure the quantity and composition of dust particles, the strengths of plasma (electrically charged gas), and radio waves.
Discovered: 1781 by William Herschel from Bath, England
Diameter: 51,499 km
Temperature: -210 ºC (at cloud tops)
Distance from the Sun: Varies between 2.7 and 3 billion km
Satellites: 27
The seventh planet from the Sun is blue-green in colour with bright clouds, multiple rings and strange moons.
The third largest planet in the Solar System, Uranus is named after the Greek god of the heavens and was the first planet to be discovered through a telescope.
Uranus has a total of 13 rings and 27 known moons, all named after characters in works by William Shakespeare and Alexander Pope. A day on the planet lasts 17 hours while a year on Uranus is equivalent to 84 Earth years.
Structure
Uranus is referred to as an ‘ice giant’ and has no solid surface. Its atmosphere is made up of hydrogen (83 per cent) and helium (15 per cent) with small amounts of methane, water and ammonia.
The bulk of the planet's mass is contained in a liquid mantle surrounding a small, rocky core and Uranus’ blue colour results from methane in its atmosphere.
Winds in the upper atmosphere can blow up to 600 km per hour and, because it is so far away from the Sun, it takes Uranus 84 years to complete a single orbit. It also explains why the temperature near the cloud tops is a chilly -210º C.
Rotation
Unlike other planets in the Solar System, Uranus rotates as though it has been tipped on its side: the planet turns at right angles to its orbit around the Sun. This means that the rings and moons are also at right angles and circle Uranus like a target.
The result is that the poles experience periods of darkness and light lasting 42 years as the planet orbits the Sun. Scientists believe that Uranus is unlikely to have formed naturally this way. One suggestion for how this occurred is that it may have collided with another body.
Missions
Much of what we know about Uranus has been discovered relatively recently. The rings were identified in 1977 and only one spacecraft has passed close enough to observe the planet in detail.
In 1986, Voyager 2 came within 82,000 km of the planet’s cloud-tops and was able to send back thousands of images. The spacecraft can also lay claim to identifying 11 of the planet’s moons.
At present there are no firm plans for a return mission to this mysterious and intriguing planet.
A new NASA-French space agency oceanography satellite launched today from Vandenberg Air Force Base, Calif., on a globe-circling voyage to continue charting sea level, a vital indicator of global climate change. The mission will return a vast amount of new data that will improve weather, climate and ocean forecasts.
With a thunderous roar and fiery glow, the Ocean Surface Topography Mission/Jason 2 satellite arced through the blackness of an early central coastal California morning at 12:46 a.m. PDT, climbing into space atop a Delta II rocket. Fifty-five minutes later, OSTM/Jason 2 separated from the rocket's second stage, and then unfurled its twin sets of solar arrays. Ground controllers successfully acquired the spacecraft's signals. Initial telemetry reports show it to be in excellent health.
"Sea-level measurements from space have come of age," said Michael Freilich, director of the Earth Science Division in NASA's Science Mission Directorate, Washington. "Precision measurements from this mission will improve our knowledge of global and regional sea-level changes and enable more accurate weather, ocean and climate forecasts."
Measurements of sea-surface height, or ocean surface topography, reveal the speed and direction of ocean currents and tell scientists how much of the sun's energy is stored by the ocean. Combining ocean current and heat storage data is key to understanding global climate variations. OSTM/Jason 2's expected lifetime of at least three years will extend into the next decade the continuous record of these data started in 1992 by NASA and the French space agency Centre National d'Etudes Spatiales, or CNES, with the TOPEX/Poseidon mission. The data collection was continued by the two agencies on Jason 1 in 2001.
The mission culminates more than three decades of research by NASA and CNES in this field. This expertise will be passed on to the world's weather and environmental forecasting agencies, which will be responsible for collecting the data. The involvement of the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) and the European Organisation for the Exploitation of Meteorological Satellites (EUMETSAT) as mission partners on OSTM/Jason 2 helps establish this proven research capability as a valuable tool for use in everyday applications.
OSTM/Jason 2's five primary instruments are improved versions of those flying on Jason 1. These technological advances will allow scientists to monitor conditions in ocean coastal regions -- home to about half of Earth's population. Compared with Jason 1 measurements, OSTM/Jason 2 will have substantially increased accuracy and provide data to within 25 kilometers (15 miles) of coastlines, nearly 50 percent closer to shore than in the past. Such improvements will be welcome news for all those making their living on the sea, from sailors and fishermen to workers in offshore industries. NOAA will use the improved data to better predict hurricane intensity, which is directly affected by the amount of heat stored in the upper ocean.
OSTM/Jason 2 entered orbit about 10 to 15 kilometers (6 to 9 miles) below Jason 1. The new spacecraft will gradually use its thrusters to raise itself into the same 1,336-kilometer (830-mile) orbital altitude as Jason 1 and position itself to follow Jason 1's ground track, orbiting about 60 seconds behind Jason 1. The two spacecraft will fly in formation, making nearly simultaneous measurements for about six months to allow scientists to precisely calibrate OSTM/Jason 2's instruments.
Once cross-calibration is complete, Jason 1 will alter course, adjusting its orbit so that its ground tracks fall midway between those of OSTM/Jason 2. Together, the two spacecraft will double global data coverage. This tandem mission will improve our knowledge of tides in coastal and shallow seas and internal tides in the open ocean, while improving our understanding of ocean currents and eddies.
CNES is providing the OSTM/Jason 2 spacecraft. NASA and CNES jointly are providing the primary payload instruments. NASA's Launch Services Program at the Kennedy Space Center in Florida was responsible for launch management and countdown operations for the Delta II. NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, Calif., manages the mission for NASA's Science Mission Directorate, Washington.
Distance from the Sun: Varies between 1,351 and 1,510 million km
Satellites: 52 officially named (and counting) including Titan
Named after the Roman god of agriculture, Saturn is the second largest planet in our Solar System. Its icy rocky core is surrounded by hydrogen and helium with traces of methane, ammonia and water ice.
Saturn, like Jupiter, is known as a gas giant. Engulfed in yellow clouds of ammonia, the planet’s wispy orange stripes result from 1,770 km per hour winds and hot air from the planet’s interior. It also spins rapidly on its axis, completing a full rotation every 10 hours 39 minutes.
The rings
Saturn is circled by a majestic halo of concentric rings and is the most distant planet visible to the naked eye. But Galileo Galilei, when he first viewed Saturn through a telescope in 1610, didn’t fully understand that he was also seeing a ring system. That honour went, a few years later, to the Dutch astronomer Christiaan Huygens, who had a better telescope.
It was two hundred years before astronomers realised that the rings weren’t solid but made from billions of pieces of ice and rock. These orbiting fragments range in size from a grain of sugar to a large house and are thought to be remnants from comets, asteroids and shattered moons.
The main rings are labelled A, B, C, D, and E but between 1979 - 81 Pioneer 11 and the Voyager space probes identified thousands more separate bands.
Moons
Saturn’s moons are numerous but not always easy to find among the rings. They have been discovered by Earth-based telescopes, the Voyager spacecraft and, most recently, the successful Cassini-Huygens mission. Cassini-Huygens is an ongoing collaboration between NASA, the European Space Agency (ESA) and the Italian Space Agency and involves UK scientists on both the Cassini orbiter and Huygens probe.
The astronomer Huygens discovered Titan, Saturn’s largest moon, which is bigger than both Mercury and Pluto. Since then a further 60 planetary satellites have been recorded, including Polydeuces, though not all have been officially named. Polydeuces was first detected by Professor Carl Murray of Queen Mary, University of London, and a member of the European Cassini-Huygens mission’s imaging team.
In January 2005, the Huygens probe descended by parachute through Titan’s atmosphere and survived for several hours on the surface. No one knew whether to expect a hard or soft landing. In fact it was somewhere in between. Later, in March 2007, the Cassini orbiter found evidence for seas in the northern parts of Titan that might be filled with liquid methane or ethane.
The Death Star
Another of Saturn's famous features is its moon Mimas, also known as the Death Star. The moon’s resemblance to the Death Star (the planet-destroying weapon in the film Star Wars) is due to its massive crater, 10 km deep and 130 km wide. It was caused by a collision with another body. For more information about Saturn, visit http://www.bnsc.gov.uk/content.aspx?nid=5946
For decades, astronomers have been blind to what our galaxy, the Milky Way, really looks like. After all, we sit in the midst of it and can't step outside for a bird's eye view.
Now, new images from NASA's Spitzer Space Telescope are shedding light on the true structure of the Milky Way, revealing that it has just two major arms of stars instead of the four it was previously thought to possess.
"Spitzer has provided us with a starting point for rethinking the structure of the Milky Way," said Robert Benjamin of the University of Wisconsin, Whitewater, who presented the new results at a press conference today at the 212th meeting of the American Astronomical Society in St. Louis, Mo. "We will keep revising our picture in the same way that early explorers sailing around the globe had to keep revising their maps."
Since the 1950s, astronomers have produced maps of the Milky Way. The early models were based on radio observations of gas in the galaxy, and suggested a spiral structure with four major star-forming arms, called Norma, Scutum-Centaurus, Sagittarius and Perseus. In addition to arms, there are bands of gas and dust in the central part of the galaxy. Our sun lies near a small, partial arm called the Orion Arm, or Orion Spur, located between the Sagittarius and Perseus arms.
"For years, people created maps of the whole galaxy based on studying just one section of it, or using only one method," said Benjamin. "Unfortunately, when the models from various groups were compared, they didn't always agree. It's a bit like studying an elephant blind-folded."
Large infrared sky surveys in the 1990s led to some major revisions of these models, including the discovery of a large bar of stars in the middle of the Milky Way. Infrared light can penetrate through dust, so telescopes designed to pick up infrared light get better views of our dusty and crowded galactic center. In 2005, Benjamin and his colleagues used Spitzer's infrared detectors to obtain detailed information about our galaxy's bar, and found that it extends farther out from the center of the galaxy than previously thought.
The team of scientists now has new infrared imagery from Spitzer of an expansive swath of the Milky Way, stretching 130 degrees across the sky and one degree above and below the galaxy's mid-plane. This extensive mosaic combines 800,000 snapshots and includes over 110 million stars.
Benjamin developed software that counts the stars, measuring stellar densities. When he and his teammates counted stars in the direction of the Scutum-Centaurus Arm, they noticed an increase in their numbers, as would be expected for a spiral arm. But, when they looked in the direction where they expected to see the Sagittarius and Norma arms, there was no jump in the number of stars. The fourth arm, Perseus, wraps around the outer portion of our galaxy and cannot be seen in the new Spitzer images.
The findings make the case that the Milky Way has two major spiral arms, a common structure for galaxies with bars. These major arms, the Scutum-Centaurus and Perseus arms, have the greatest densities of both young, bright stars, and older, so-called red-giant stars. The two minor arms, Sagittarius and Norma, are filled with gas and pockets of young stars. Benjamin said the two major arms seem to connect up nicely with the near and far ends of the galaxy's central bar.
"Now, we can fit the arms together with the bar, like pieces of a puzzle," said Benjamin, "and, we can map the structure, position and width of these arms for the first time." Previous infrared observations found hints of a two-armed Milky Way, but those results were unclear because the position and width of the arms were unknown.
Though galaxy arms appear to be intact features, stars are actually constantly moving in and out of them as they orbit the center of the Milky Way, like London commuters in a busy traffic circle. Our own sun might have once resided in a different arm. Since it was formed more than 4 billion years ago, it has traveled around the galaxy 16 times.
Distance from the Sun: Varies between 740 - 817 million km
The largest object in our Solar System, Jupiter is a planetary tour de force. More than a thousand Earths would fit inside it and Jupiter has moons larger than planets. It is also home to storms that have raged for hundreds of years. No wonder it was named after the Roman king of the gods.
Structure
This enormous orange gas giant is made up of 90 per cent hydrogen. The atmosphere is not only poisonous, its pressure is so strong deep down that hydrogen gas is compressed into a liquid and any spacecraft would be crushed.
Although it takes 12 years to orbit the Sun, Jupiter only has a ten hour day. As a result, the planet rotates so fast that it produces violent winds, bulges 9,000 km at its equator and stretches the striped white clouds of ammonia ice. Its distinctive Red Spot is a 40,000 km storm system and could swallow the entire Earth.
Miniature solar system
Jupiter, with its many moons, is often compared to a miniature solar system. The astronomer Galileo discovered Jupiter’s four planet-sized moons in 1610. Today Io, Europa, Ganymede and Callisto are known as the Galilean satellites and are a source of great interest for space scientists.
Io is a volcanic minefield while Ganymede is the largest moon in our Solar System (it’s bigger than the planet Mercury) and is the only moon to have its own magnetic field. Meanwhile, Europa and Callisto may house a liquid ocean beneath their frozen crusts.
Jupiter also has a ring system. The Voyager 1 spacecraft first discovered a ring and subsequent Voyager 2 images found that it had three distinct components or bands, with the main ring thought to be formed by smashed meteoroids or the debris from small moons.
All eyes were on the planet in July 1994 when fragments of comet Shoemaker Levy 9 crashed into the planet producing fireballs and impact sites larger than the Earth.
Visitors
There have been several recent visitors to Jupiter – including Ulysses en route to observe the Sun’s poles and Cassini during its highly successful mission to Saturn.
Galileo was the first spacecraft to orbit Jupiter and the last dedicated mission to the planet. It arrived at Jupiter in December 1995 after a six year journey. It also sent the first probe into Jupiter’s atmosphere and beamed back unprecedented information about wind speeds, temperature and pressure, studying the planet as well as its larger moons.
UK scientists from Oxford University, Imperial College London and the Open University were involved in three of the 11 instruments onboard Galileo, contributing greatly towards the mission’s success.
In 2003, after 14 years and 4.6 billion km later, Galileo made its final journey. It was sent plunging into Jupiter’s atmosphere and vaporised.
The biggest black holes may feed just like the smallest ones, according to data from NASA's Chandra X-ray Observatory and ground-based telescopes. This discovery supports the implication of Einstein's relativity theory that black holes of all sizes have similar properties, and will be useful for predicting the properties of a conjectured new class of black holes.
The conclusion comes from a large observing campaign of the spiral galaxy M81, which is about 12 million light years from Earth. In the center of M81 is a black hole that is about 70 million times more massive than the Sun, and generates energy and radiation as it pulls gas in the central region of the galaxy inwards at high speed.
In contrast, so-called stellar mass black holes, which have about 10 times more mass than the Sun, have a different source of food. These smaller black holes acquire new material by pulling gas from an orbiting companion star. Because the bigger and smaller black holes are found in different environments with different sources of material to feed from, a question has remained about whether they feed in the same way.
Using these new observations and a detailed theoretical model, a research team compared the properties of M81's black hole with those of stellar mass black holes. The results show that either big or little, black holes indeed appear to eat similarly to each other, and produce a similar distribution of X-rays, optical and radio light.
One of the implications of Einstein's theory of General Relativity is that black holes are simple objects and only their masses and spins determine their effect on space-time. The latest research indicates that this simplicity manifests itself in spite of complicated environmental effects.
"This confirms that the feeding patterns for black holes of different sizes can be very similar," said Sera Markoff of the Astronomical Institute, University of Amsterdam in the Netherlands, who led the study. "We thought this was the case, but up until now we haven't been able to nail it." Read more...>
Distance from the Sun: Varies between 387 million km and 489 million km
Asteroids are irregular fragments of rock left over from the formation of the Solar System 4.6 billion years ago. Millions of asteroids are thought to orbit the Sun and are largely concentrated in a belt, 180 million km wide, between the orbits of Mars and Jupiter.
The astronomer William Herschel first used the word asteroid (Greek for star-like) to describe these celestial objects. They range in size from less than 1 km across to the largest known asteroid, Ceres, which is 940 km in diameter.
Asteroid impacts
The asteroid belt is relatively stable but occasionally gravity from a larger body, such as a planet, pulls one of them out of orbit. Stray asteroids have hit Earth in the past. Many scientists believe one impact, around 65 million years ago in an area now known as Mexico, was responsible for a sudden change in climate and the extinction of dinosaurs.
The chances of a similar event are, thankfully, slim but ground-based telescopes are monitoring Near Earth Asteroids (NEAs) – defined as those whose orbits are able to approach or cross the orbit of Earth. BNSC is involved through the European Space Agency (ESA).
Telescopes on Earth track NEAs and detect new asteroids in case any of them are in an orbit that might collide with our planet. NASA’s Galileo spacecraft was the first to observe an asteroid close up in the early 1990s and in 2000 the Near Earth Asteroid Rendezvous (NEAR) mission orbited the asteroid Eros for a year before the first ever landing on an asteroid on 12 February 2001.
The European Rosetta mission, launched in 2004, will also make two fly-bys of asteroids before intercepting, orbiting and dropping a lander onto a comet in 2014.
NASA's Phoenix Mars Lander began digging in an area called "Wonderland" early Tuesday, taking its first scoop of soil from a polygonal surface feature within the "national park" region that mission scientists have been preserving for science.
The lander's Robotic Arm created the new test trench called "Snow White" on June 17, the 22nd Martian day, or sol, after the Phoenix spacecraft landed on May 25. Newly planned science activities will resume no earlier than Sol 24 as engineers look into how the spacecraft is handling larger than expected amounts of data.
During Tuesday's dig, the arm didn't reach the hard white material, possibly ice, that Phoenix exposed previously in the first trench it dug into the Martian soil.
That's just what scientists both expected and wanted. The Snow White trench is near the center of a relatively flat hummock, or polygon, named "Cheshire Cat," where scientists predict there will be more soil layers or thicker soil above possible white material.
The Snow White trench is about two centimeters deep (about three-quarters of an inch) and 30 centimeters (about a foot) long. The Phoenix team plans at least one more day of digging deeper into the Snow White trench.
They will study soil structure in the Snow White trench to decide at what depths they will collect samples from a future trench planned for the center of the polygon.
Meanwhile, the Thermal and Evolved-Gas Analyzer (TEGA) instrument continues its ongoing experiment in the first of its eight ovens.
TEGA has eight separate tiny ovens to bake and sniff the soil to look for volatile ingredients, such as water. The baking is performed at three different temperature ranges.
The Phoenix mission is led by Peter Smith of the University of Arizona with project management at JPL and development partnership at Lockheed Martin, located in Denver. International contributions come from the Canadian Space Agency; the University of Neuchatel, Switzerland; the universities of Copenhagen and Aarhus, Denmark; Max Planck Institute, Germany; and the Finnish Meteorological Institute. For more about Phoenix, visit: http://www.nasa.gov/phoenix and http://phoenix.lpl.arizona.edu.
Distance from the Sun: Varies between 206 and 249 million km
Satellites: 2, Phobos and Deimos
Mars is named after the Roman God of war and is often known as the Red Planet. Mars’ orange-red appearance results from soil rich in iron oxide (more commonly known as rust).
Galileo was the first person to observe the planet through a telescope in the early 1600s. Its distinctive colour, associated by the Romans with blood, makes Mars a highly visible planet in the night sky and it can be seen with the naked eye. Mars’ orbit is closest to the Earth every 26 months.
Canyons and volcanoes
Although relatively small – its radius is about half that of the Earth’s – Mars boasts scenery on a massive scale.
Its surface has been pummelled by asteroids and, running roughly along part of the equator, is an enormous set of canyons called the Valles Marineris. This split in the Martian crust is around 4,000 km long, up to 600 km wide and 7 km deep in places.
Mars also has the highest volcano in the solar system. Olympus Mons stands at 26 km above the surrounding plain, three times higher than Mount Everest.
Life on Mars?
The Martian environment is far from hospitable. The thin atmosphere is made up mostly of carbon dioxide with extremely low levels of oxygen.
Temperatures can drop to -133ºC although in the Martian summer it’s more typically around 0ºC. The surface can be extremely stormy with winds reaching speeds of up to 100 km per hour and there are frozen water ice caps at the poles.
There is no definitive evidence that life exists or existed on Mars – yet – but many scientists believe that microscopic life may have existed there at some point in the past. These questions could be answered by the future ExoMars mission.
Mars Express – new discoveries
Mars Express is operated by the European Space Agency (ESA) with significant UK involvement in its design, operation and science.
Since arriving at the Red Planet in December 2003, the ESA mission has sent back scientific data of unprecedented quality. Instruments are searching for water and measuring climate, volcanic, magnetic and geological activity.
Mars Express has found evidence of glacial and volcanic activity in the relatively recent past. There has also been a tentative detection of tiny amounts of methane in the atmosphere. As the methane could only exist on Mars for a few hundred years before being broken down by radiation, its presence can only be explained if there is some process, perhaps biological, keeping it replenished.
UK scientists have been at the forefront of efforts to investigate the interaction between the planet and the solar wind – the stream of charged particles coming from the Sun. These particles are eroding the Martian atmosphere and could be responsible for stripping away a large amount of the water that was once believed present.
Auroras – patterns of coloured light in the atmosphere - have also been discovered in the Martian sky but because Mars doesn’t have a magnetic field, researchers have concluded that the auroras are created as a result of local magnetic fields generated in the planet’s crust making them unique in the Solar System.
The Mars Express mission was due to end in October 2007 but has been extended until 2009.
New observations from NASA's Phoenix Mars Lander provide the most magnified view ever seen of Martian soil, showing particles clumping together even at the smallest visible scale.
In the past two days, two instruments on the lander deck -- a microscope and a bake-and-sniff analyzer -- have begun inspecting soil samples delivered by the scoop on Space StationPhoenix's Robotic Arm.
"This is the first time since the Viking Space Stationmissions three decades ago that a sample is being studied inside an instrument on Mars," said Phoenix Principal Investigator Peter Smith of the University of Arizona, Tucson.
Stickiness of the soil at the Space Shuttle Phoenix site has presented challenges for delivering samples, but also presents scientific opportunities. "Understanding the soil is a major goal of this Space Station mission and the soil is a bit different than we expected," Smith said. "There could be real discoveries to come as we analyze this soil with our various instruments. We have just the right instruments for the job."
Images from Solar System Phoenix's Optical Microscope show nearly 1,000 separate soil particles, down to sizes smaller than one-tenth the diameter of a human hair. At least four distinct minerals are seen.
"It's been more than 11 years since we had the idea to send a microscope to Mars and I'm absolutely gobsmacked that we're now looking at the soil of Mars at a resolution that has never been seen before," said Tom Pike of Imperial College London. He is a PhoenixSpace Station co-investigator working on the lander's Microscopy, Electrochemistry and Conductivity Analyzer.
The sample includes some larger, black, glassy particles as well as smaller reddish ones. "We may be looking at a history of the soil," said Pike. "It appears that original particles of volcanic glass have weathered down to smaller particles with higher concentration of iron."
The fine particles in the soil sample closely resemble particles of airborne dust examined earlier by the microscope.
Atmospheric dust at the Phoenix Space Station site has remained about the same day-to-day so far, said Phoenix Space Station co-investigator and atmospheric scientist Nilton Renno of the University of Michigan, Ann Arbor.
"We've seen no major dust clouds at the landing site during the mission so far," Renno said. "That's not a surprise because we landed when dust activity is at a minimum. But we expect to see big dust storms at the end of the mission. Some of us will be very excited to see some of those dust storms reach the lander."
Studying dust on Mars, The Space Technology helps scientists understand atmospheric dust on Earth, which is important because dust is a significant factor in global climate change.
"We've learned there is well-mixed dust in the Martian atmosphere, much more mixed than on Earth, and that's a surprise," Renno said. Rather than particles settling into dust layers, strong turbulence mixes them uniformly from the surface to a few kilometers above the surface.
Space Station Scientists spoke at a news briefing today at the University of Arizona, where new color views of the spacecraft's surroundings were shown.
"We are taking a high-quality, 360-degree look at all of Mars that we can see from our landing site in color and stereo," said Mark Lemmon, Surface Stereo Imager lead from Texas A&M University, College Station.
"These images are important to provide the context of where the lander is on the surface. The panorama also allows us to look beyond our workspace to see how the polygon structures connect with the rest of the area. We can identify interesting things beyond our reach and then use the camera's filters to investigate their properties from afar."
The Phoenix Space Station mission is led by Smith at the University of Arizona with project management at JPL and development partnership at Lockheed Martin, Denver. International contributions come from the Canadian Space Agency; the University of Neuchatel, Switzerland; the universities of Copenhagen and Aarhus, Denmark; Max Planck Institute, Germany; and the Finnish Meteorological Institute. For more about Phoenix, visit: http://www.nasa.gov/phoenix and http://phoenix.lpl.arizona.edu.
Temperature on surface: Varies from -233 °C to 122°C
Distance from the Earth: About 386,200 km
Satellites: None
The Moon, Solar System is our closest astronomical neighbour and the brightest object in the night sky. It has no light of its own, however, and instead reflects light from the Sun.
It is therefore sunlight that enables us to see the enormous craters on the Moon. This pockmarked surface is often referred to as the lunar surface from the word luna, which is Latin for moon. The Roman moon goddess was also called Luna while the Greeks called their moon deity Selene.
The Moon has no atmosphere, no seasons and no life. The lack of atmosphere means there is no weather and no wind, so the footprints left by the Apollo Space Station astronauts will remain for centuries.
The dark areas on the Moon are known as maria (Latin for seas) or mare (singular) because they resembled bodies of water. They were formed by lava from once active volcanoes.
The light parts are cratered highlands known as terrae (Latin for lands), the original crust of the Moon. Space StationMeteoroids, Space asteroids and Space comets have all contributed to its jagged landscape. The largest crater is the South Pole Aitken Basin, at 2,500 km wide.
The Dark Side
The moon rotates on its axis as it orbits the Earth. Because both the rotation and orbit are similar, about once every 28 days, we only ever see one side of the Moon facing the Earth.
The hidden, dark side of the Moon can never be seen by Space Station astronomers on Earth without the use of orbiting space craft mission. But this does not mean it is literally dark. A more accurate description is that is the far side because it is simply the side farthest away from the Earth.
Eclipses
A total eclipse occurs when the Moon’s, Solar system orbit brings it between the Earth and the Sun, and the Moon covers the Sun in its entirety. This causes areas of the Earth to darken during daylight beneath the Moon’s shadow.
In lunar eclipses the Earth is between the Sun and the Moon and the Earth’s shadow falls on the Moon, making it appear red.
Phases
The Moon presents different shapes - or phases - in the night sky: from a thin silver crescent to a full bright circle. These phases are called new moon, first quarter, full moon and last quarter. A new moon is when the Moon’s sunlit side is away from the Earth.
When the moon changes from new to full it is said to be waxing. When less and less can be seen, from full to new moon, it is waning. It is a crescent moon when smaller than a half moon and gibbous when larger.
Tides
The Moon’s, Space Station gravity is only 1/6th (17 per cent) that of Earth’s which is why astronauts on the Moon can bounce along the surface because a human being’s weight has decreased by 5/6th (83 per cent).
This weak gravitational force is still enough to produce tides on Earth because of the Moon’s proximity to our planet. High (spring) tides take place at new or full moon. Low (neap) tides occur when the Sun and Moon are at right angles and pulling against each other.
Origins
The most popular theory about how the Moon was formed is the giant impact hypothesis - where the Earth collided with another planet around 4.6 billion years ago – shortly after our Solar System formed.
The impact produced molten rock from the Earth which combined with the other planet to form the Moon.
Missions
The space Station race between the Soviet Union and the United States culminated in the first Apollo Moon landing on 20 July, 1969. Humans last walked on the lunar surface in 1972 (Apollo 17) but there has been renewed worldwide interest in recent years, with lunar orbiters from Japan, the USA, Europe, China and India.
An American spacecraft mission, Clementine, found the first evidence for water ice at the poles in 1994. Lunar Prospector also found strong evidence for ice in the late 1990s.
UK scientists were involved in the European SMART-1Space mission, launched in 2003, and are also contributing to India’s first mission to the Moon, Chandrayaan-1 and NASA’s Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter.
A Space station satellite that will help the solar system scientists better monitor and understand rises in global sea level, study the world's ocean circulation and its links to Earth's climate, and improve weather and climate forecasts is undergoing final preparations for a June 15 launch from California's Vandenberg Air Force Base.
The Ocean Surface Topography Mission (OSTM)/Jason 2 is a partnership of NASA, the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA), the French Space Station Agency Centre National d'Etudes Spatiales (CNES) and the European Organisation for the Exploitation of Meteorological Satellites (EUMETSAT). The Space station mission will extend into the next decade the continuous record of sea-surface height measurements started in 1992 by the NASA-French Space Agency's TOPEX/Poseidon Space Station mission and extended by the NASA-French Space Station Agency Jason 1 Space Station mission in 2001.
The Space Technology satellite will continue monitoring trends in sea-level rise, one of the most important consequences and indicators of global climate change. Measurements from TOPEX/Poseidon and Jason 1 have shown that mean sea level has risen by about three millimeters (0.12 inches) a year since 1993, twice the rate estimated from tide gauges in the past century. But 15 years of data are not sufficient to determine long-term trends.
"OSTM/Jason 2 will help create the first multi-decadal global record for understanding the vital roles of the ocean in climate change," said OSTM/Jason 2 project scientist Lee-Lueng Fu of NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, Calif. "Data from the new Space Station mission will allow us to continue monitoring global sea-level change, a field of study where current predictive models have a large degree of uncertainty."
Developed and proven through the joint efforts of NASA and the French Space Station Agency, high-precision ocean altimetry measures the height of the sea surface relative to Earth's center to within about 3.3 centimeters (1.3 inches). These measurements, also known as ocean Solar Systemsurface topography, provide information on the speed and direction of ocean currents. Because sea surface height is strongly influenced by the amount of heat in the ocean, it also is an indicator of ocean heat storage in most places. Combining ocean current and heat storage data is key to understanding global climate variations.
OSTM/Jason 2 marks the transition of high-precision altimetry data collection to the world's weather and climate forecasting agencies. Space StationScientists soon will be able to forecast how ocean circulation will change from one season to the next and how that circulation is linked to climate change and weather patterns.
"What began as an investment by NASA and CNES in research tools for studying the ocean has matured into a proven technique that will now be routinely used by the world's weather and climate agencies to make better forecasts," said Michael Freilich, director of the Earth Science Division in NASA's Science and Technology Mission Directorate in Washington. "People in coastal areas will benefit from improved near-real-time data on ocean conditions, while people everywhere will benefit from better seasonal predictions resulting from the increased understanding of Earth system processes enabled by these measurements."
OSTM/Jason 2 will ride to Solar Systemspace aboard a NASA-provided United Launch Alliance Delta II rocket, entering orbit about 10 to 15 kilometers (six to nine miles) below the 1,336-kilometer-high (830-mile-high) orbit of Jason 1. OSTM/Jason 2 will use its thrusters to raise itself into the same orbital altitude as Jason 1 and move in close behind its predecessor.
The two spacecraftmission will fly in formation, making nearly simultaneous measurements. For six to nine months after launch, Space Station scientists will verify the instruments are calibrated precisely. OSTM/Jason 2 then will continue Jason 1's former flight path, and Jason 1 will move into a parallel ground track midway between two of the OSTM/Jason 2 ground tracks. This tandem Space Shuttle mission will double the amount of data collected, further improving tide models in coastal and shallow seas and helping researchers better understand ocean currents and eddies. OSTM/Jason 2's Space Shuttle mission is designed to last at least three years.
The OSTM/Jason 2 spacecraft mission, provided by the French Space Shuttle Agency, carries five primary instruments similar to those on Jason 1. Its main instrument is the Poseidon 3 altimeter, also provided by the French Space Shuttle Agency. NASA's Advanced Microwave Radiometer measures atmospheric water vapor, which can distort the altimeter measurements. Three location systems combine to precisely measure the Space Station satellite's position in orbit: NASA's Laser Retroreflector Array and Global Positioning Space System Payload, and the French Space Station Agency's Doppler Orbitography and Radio-positioning Integrated by Satellite instrument. Instrument improvements since Jason 1 will allow scientists to monitor ocean coastal regions with increased accuracy, nearly 50 percent closer than in the past. Three experimental instruments round out the payload: the French Space Station Agency's Environment Characterization and Modelisation-2 and Time Transfer by Laser Link, and Japan's Light Particle Telescope.
JPL manages the mission for NASA's Science Mission Directorate. After on-orbit spacecraft mission commissioning, CNES will hand over Space Shuttle mission operations and control to NOAA. NOAA and EUMETSAT will generate, archive and distribute data products. For more on OSTM/Jason 2 on the Web, visit: http://www.nasa.gov/ostm .
The third planet from the Sun, the Solar system, Earth is an average-sized green and blue planet with a single moon. But it is distinctly special for humankind because it occupies a so-called ‘Goldilocks’ zone of space Technology. It is neither too hot, nor too cold, possessing the perfect conditions for life.
The name Earth comes from the Anglo-Saxon word Erda, meaning ground, soil and earth. The planet’s surface consists of a thin crust of tectonic plates which vary in thickness from 7 – 70 km.
The crust floats on a solid rocky mantle divided into three separate regions - the lower mantle (2,290 km thick), the transition zone (260 km thick) and the upper mantle (630 km thick).
The core is made up of an outer layer of molten iron and a solid iron centre. The rotation of this core drives the planet’s magnetic field which helps deflect harmful solar and cosmic particles away from the surface.
Three quarters of the planet is covered by vast oceans of water, thought to have arrived from a shower of Space Stationcomets.
The thick Solar systematmosphere contains a complex weather system and its layers extend more than 560 km from the Earth’s surface. It is made up of 77 per cent nitrogen and 21per cent oxygen as well as small amounts of other gases such as carbon dioxide and protects us from harmful ultraviolet radiation from the Sun.
Life on Earth
The earliest evidence of primitive life appeared 3.5 billion years ago as simple single celled organisms, either in shallow pools or deep under the oceans in hydrothermal vents. Life could even have been seeded from space on fragments of Space discovery meteorites or Space Shuttle comets.
Today the Earth is home to up to 100 million species of plants and animals. Almost all living things are found in a zone called the biosphere which runs from 200 m below the surface of the oceans high into the Space Station atmosphere.
Earth Observation
There are thousands of artificial satellites orbiting the Earth, several hundred of which are operational. The UK is currently taking a leading role in the following missions:
Envisat, Europe’s largest and most sophisticated Earth Observation satellite.
Topsat, delivering high quality images to any area on Earth.
MSG, European Meteosat Second Generation satellites.
CLUSTER, four identical Space Discoveryspacecraft examining the interaction between the solar wind and the magnetic field surrounding the Earth. Orbiting in formation, each Cluster spacecraft carries 11 identical instruments, three of which are led by UK scientists and Space Technology.
NASA's Phoenix Mars Lander has filled its first oven with Martian soil. "We have an oven full," Space staionPhoenix co-investigator Bill Boynton of the University of Arizona, Tucson, said today. "It took 10 seconds to fill the oven. The ground moved."
Boynton leads the Thermal and Evolved-Gas Analyzer instrument, or TEGA, for Phoenixspace system. The instrument has eight separate tiny ovens to bake and sniff the soil to assess its volatile ingredients, such as water.
The lander's Robotic Arm delivered a partial scoopful of clumpy soil from a trench informally called "Baby Bear" to the number 4 oven on TEGA last Friday, June 6, which was 12 days after landing.
A screen covers each of TEGA's eight ovens. The screen is to prevent larger bits of soil from clogging the narrow port to each oven so that fine particles fill the oven cavity, which is no wider than a pencil lead. Each TEGA chute also has a whirligig mechanism that vibrates the screen to help shake small particles through.
Only a few particles got through when the screen on oven number 4 was vibrated on June 6, 8 and 9.
Boynton said that the oven might have filled because of the cumulative effects of all the vibrating, or because of changes in the soil's cohesiveness as it sat for days on the top of the screen.
"There's something very unusual about this soil, from a place on Mars we've never been before," said Space stationPhoenix Principal Investigator Peter Smith of the University of Arizona. "We're interested in learning what sort of chemical and mineral activity has caused the particles to clump and stick together." Plans prepared by the Space StationPhoenix team for the lander's activities on Thursday, June 12 include sprinkling Martian soil on the delivery port for the spacecraft'smission Optical Microscope and taking additional portions of a high-resolution color panorama of the lander's surroundings.
The Space StationPhoenix mission is led by Peter Smith at the University of Arizona with project management at JPL and development partnership at Lockheed Martin, Denver. International contributions come from the Canadian Space Shuttle Agency; the University of Neuchatel, Switzerland; the universities of Copenhagen and Aarhus, Denmark; Max Planck Institute, Germany; and the Finnish Meteorological Institute. For more about Phoenix, visit: http://www.nasa.gov/phoenix
Distance from the Sun: Varies between 108 and 109 million km
Satellites: None
Venus is the second planet of our solar system from the Sun and is named after the Roman goddess of love and beauty. The landscape consists of rolling plains, mountain ranges, lava flows and volcanoes. A compass wouldn’t work on Venus of our solar system because there is no discernible magnetic field.
Venus has asimilar chemical composition and density to the Earth but any water the planet might have had evaporated long ago due to its closeness to the Sun and the planet’s runaway greenhouse effect. Also, its thick clouds of sulphuric acid and carbon dioxide make Venus one of the most inhospitable places in the Solar System.
The surface temperature is hot enough to melt lead. There are 350 km/h winds at high altitude and the surface pressure is equivalent to 11 km below sea level on Earth.
Morning star
After the moon, Venus is the second brightest object in the night sky and galaxy. This is because it is Earth’s nearest planetary neighbour and its thick clouds reflect back most of the sunlight that reaches the space station planet.
It was sometimes mistaken for a star and galaxy because it can be seen with the naked eye at sunrise and sunset which is why the planet Venus is also known as the morning or evening star.
Since 1962, there have been over twenty successful space station missions to Venus, the most recent being ESA’s Venus Express.
The first successful landing on Venus was in 1970 when the Soviet probe Venera 7 parachuted a capsule of scientific technology instruments onto the planet's surface.
Venus Express
Venus Express, the first European space station mission to Venus, entered the planet’s orbit on the 11 April, 2006.
Many of the instruments on board are upgraded versions of those on Mars Express and Rosetta. There is also considerable involvement from UK space scientists — it was originally proposed by Professor Fred Taylor from the University of Oxford — and the space station mission has now been extended until at least 2009.Read more...>
After more than 17 years of pioneering solar science, a joint NASA and European Space Station Agency mission to study the sun will end on or about July 1.
The Ulysses spacecraft mission has endured for almost four times its expected lifespan. However, the spacecraft mission will cease operations because of a decline in power produced by its onboard generators. Ulysses has forever changed the way space station scientists view the sun and its effect on the surrounding space technology. Space shuttle Mission results and the science technology legacy it leaves behind were reviewed today at a media briefing at European Space Agency Headquarters in Paris.
"The main objective of Ulysses was to study, from every angle, the heliosphere, which is the vast bubble in spaceshuttle carved out by the solar system wind," said Ed Smith, Ulysses project scientist at NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory, Pasadena, Calif. "Over its long life, Ulysses redefined our knowledge of the heliosphere and went on to answer questions about our solar system neighborhood we did not know to ask."
Ulysses ends its career after revealing that the magnetic field emanating from the sun's poles, International space station is much weaker than previously observed. This could mean the upcoming solar system maximum period will be less intense than in recent history.
"Over almost two decades of science news observations by Ulysses, we have learned a lot more than we expected about our star and galaxy and the way it interacts with the space station shuttle surrounding it," said Richard Marsden, Ulysses project space mission scientist and spacecraft mission manager for the European Space Agency (ESA). "Solar missions have appeared in recent years, but Ulysses is still unique today. Its special point of view over the sun's poles never has been covered by any other space station mission."
The spacecraft mission and its suite of 10 instruments had to be highly sensitive, yet robust enough to withstand some of the most extreme conditions in the solar system, including intense radiation while passing by the giant planet Jupiter's north pole. The encounter occurred while injecting the mission into its orbit over the sun's poles.
"Ulysses has been a challenging solar system mission since launch," said Ed Massey, Ulysses project manager at JPL. "Its success required the cooperation and intellect of engineers and space station scientists from around the world."
Ulysses was the first space stationmission to survey the environment in space shuttle above and below the poles of the sun in the four dimensions of space galary and time. It showed the sun's magnetic field is carried into the solar system in a more complicated manner than previously believed. Particles expelled by the sun, space system from low latitudes can climb to high latitudes and vice versa, sometimes unexpectedly finding their way out to the planets. Ulysses also studied dust flowing into our solar system from deep space, and showed it was 30 times more abundant than space station astronomers, suspected. In addition, the spacecraft detected helium atoms from deep space and confirmed the universe does not contain enough matter to eventually halt its expansion.
Ulysses collected and transmitted science technology data to Earth during its 8.6 billion kilometer journey (5.4 billion miles). As the power supply weakened during the years, engineers devised methods to conserve energy. The power has dwindled to the point where thruster fuel soon will freeze in the spacecraft's mission pipelines.
"When the last bits of data finally arrive, it surely will be tough to say goodbye," said Nigel Angold, ESA's Ulysses spacecraft mission operations manager. "But any sadness I might feel will pale in comparison to the pride of working on such a magnificent space mission. Although operations will be ending, space scientific discoveries from Ulysses data will continue for years to come."
Ulysses was launched aboard space shuttle Discovery on Oct. 6, 1990. From Earth orbit, it was propelled toward Jupiter by solid-fuel rocket motors. Ulysses passed Jupiter on Feb. 8, 1992. The giant planet's gravity then bent the spacecraft's mission flight path downward and away from the ecliptic plane to place the spacecraft mission in a final orbit around the sun that would take it past our star's north and south poles.
The spacecraft mission was provided by ESA. NASA provided the launch vehicle and upper stage boosters. The U.S. Department of Energy supplied a radioisotope thermoelectric generator to provide power to the spacecraft technology. Science instruments were provided by both U.S. and European investigators. The spacecraftmission is operated from JPL by a joint NASA/ESA team. More information about the joint NASA/ESA Ulysses space station mission is available at http://ulysses.jpl.nasa.gov or http://www.esa.int/esaSC/SEMPEQUG3HF_index_0_ov.html .
Temperature on surface: 400 °C facing the Sun, -183 °C in shadow
Distance from the Sun: Varies Between 47 and 69 million km
Satellites: None
Mercury is the closest planet to the Sun, the solar system and the smallest in our Solar System. Named after the Roman messenger god, the planet is not much larger than the Earth’s Moon and superficially resembles it with a surface pock-marked by enormous craters.
These craters were caused by meteorites smashing into the planet’s surface in the early stages of the Solar System’s evolution, some 4 billion years ago. Although it’s only a third the size of Earth, space station, Mercury is almost as dense. Space shuttle Scientists put down to a massive iron core, which is also responsible for Mercury’s magnetic field.
Secrets
The planet of our solar system holds a number of secrets. Its surface rock appears to have very little iron despite the presumed iron-rich core. There’s also evidence that the hottest planet in the Solar System might even have patches of ice in permanently shadowed polar craters.
The Space stationatmosphere, while difficult to measure, is a thick layer of sodium and helium. In fact, the entire planet is difficult to study because of its closeness to the Sun. It was investigated by Mariner 10 space mission in the 1970s but two new space shuttle missions will change our knowledge of this hot, dense, rocky world.
Missions
Mercury, the Space System is currently the focus of NASA’s Mercury Messenger space mission. Launched in 2004, Messenger underwent its first fly-by of the planet in January 2008 and will perform two more fly-bys in late 2008 and September 2009 before starting a year long orbital space mission in 2011.
Britain is at the forefront of the future BepiColumboSpace station mission.
BepiColombo will launch in 2013 on a six year journey and will begin its orbital tour of Mercury in late 2019.
The spacecraft mission will consist of two separate spacecraft mission. ESA is building the Mercury Planetary Orbiter (MPO), and the Japanese space agency will contribute the other, the Mercury Magnetospheric Orbiter (MMO).
BepiColombo will investigate the origin and evolution of Mercury, its geology and magnetic field. The spacecraft mission will also employ ion propulsion technology tested on SMART-1.
Today, NASA's Gamma-ray Large Area Space Station Telescope (GLAST for short) left Earth onboard a Delta II rocket. "The entire GLAST Team is elated," reported program manager Kevin Grady of NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center shortly after the rocket's liftoff from Cape Canaveral. "The observatory is now on-orbit and all systems continue to operate as planned."
What is NASA's newest space telescope going to accomplish? GLAST will explore the most extreme environments in the Space station universe, searching for signs of new laws of physics, investigating the nature of dark matter, and many other things as well. Read today's story, A Violent History of Time, to preview one of the deep mysteries researchers hope GLAST will solve.
A Violent History of Time
From mother Earth, the night sky can look peaceful and unchanging, but the Solar system, universe as seen in gamma-rays is a place of sudden and chaotic violence. Using gamma-ray telescopes, Space Shuttleastronomers witness short but tremendously intense explosions called gamma-ray bursts, and there is nothing more powerful.
No one is sure what causes gamma-ray bursts. Favored possibilities include the collision of two neutron stars and galaxy or a sort of super-supernova that occurs when extremely massive stars and galaxy explode. One thing is certain: gamma-ray bursts happen in solar systemgalaxies far, far away -- so far away that the distances are called "cosmological," beyond ordinary comprehension.Read more...>
The Sun is the star at the centre of our Solar System. It is a giant nuclear reactor with a mass of approximately 75 per cent hydrogen and 25 per cent helium.
At the heart of the Sun, the solar system the pressure is high enough for nuclear fusion reactions. Every second millions of tons of hydrogen nuclei fuse together and produce helium nuclei. This process releases energy, providing us with the heat and light that sustains life on solar system Earth.
It is so hot that most of the Sun, space station isn’t gas at all but plasma - the fourth state of matter. Plasma is what you get if you take a gas and heat it up even more. Eventually the atoms will break apart into charged particles, whizzing around at high speeds.
The solar system Planets, space station asteroids and other satellites within the Solar System all orbit the Sun which, like Earth, also has a north and south pole and rotates on its axis.
Space Weather
Every second a million tonnes of hot plasma and charged particles (electrons and ions) escape the Sun’s gravity into space station. This material is known as the solar space wind. Space weather is the effect all these millions of charged particles have on the science discovery Earth and depends on solar system activity. As the solar system wind carries the Sun’s magnetic field with it, when it connects with the Earth’s magnetosphere this also causes space weather.
The most visible sign of space shuttle weather is the aurora – the Northern or Southern Lights. These beautiful patterns in the upper space technology atmosphere are usually seen in the polar regions. An aurora is caused when the charged particles of the solar wind interact with the Earth’s magnetosphere, the magnetic bubble surrounding the Earth. This generates a current between Earth’s upper atmosphere and the magnetosphere.
Just as currents flow through a neon light to light up the gas, so the currents flowing between the magnetosphere and upper atmosphere light up gases in the Earth’s atmosphere to produce aurora.
Every so often the Sun, Star and galaxy belches out billions of tonnes of particles and a magnetic field in events known as coronal mass ejections. If one of these heads towards the Earth it can trigger a disturbance of the Earth's magnetic field called a geomagnetic storm.
Large geomagnetic storms can cause power cuts and knock out communications space station satellites. Coronal mass ejections can drive shock waves of energetic particles that could injure space astronauts working in orbit.
The Solar system Sun also produces solar flares. These tremendous explosions in the atmosphere of the star and galaxy directly affect the Earth’s upper atmosphere disrupting radio communications.
Missions
NASA’s twin Solar Terrestrial Relations Observatory (STEREO) is sending back the first 3-D images of the solar system Sun. The two spacecraft mission are also studying the nature of coronal mass ejections. The spacecraftmission carry cameras developed by the University of Birmingham and the STFC Rutherford Appleton Laboratory (RAL).
The Japanese Hinodespace mission is studying the processes involved in solar flares and coronal mass ejections. Designed and built by teams in the US, Japan and the UK, the spacecraft mission has key involvement from University College London’s Mullard Space Science Laboratory (MSSL) and RAL.
The Solar and Heliospheric Observatory (SOHO) is a joint project between the European Space Agency (ESA) and NASA and has been studying the Sun from its deep core to outer corona.
ESA’s Cluster Space mission is studying the Earth’s Space Technology environment. It consists of four identical spacecraft mission flying in formation, hundreds to thousands of kilometres apart. Each spacecraft mission carries 11 identical instruments, three of which are led by UK space station scientists. Cluster is being operated in conjunction with China’s Double Starspace station mission.
For more than 400 years, space stationastronomers have studied the sun from afar. Now NASA has decided to go there.
"We are going to visit a living, breathing star and galaxy for the first time," says program scientist Lika Guhathakurta of NASA Headquarters. "This is an unexplored region of the solar system and the possibilities for space discovery are off the charts."
The name of the space shuttle mission is Solar Probe+ (pronounced "Solar Probe plus"). It's a heat-resistant spacecraft designed to plunge deep into the sun's atmosphere where it can sample solar system wind and magnetism first hand. Launch could happen as early as 2015. By the time the space shuttle mission ends 7 years later, planners believe Solar system Probe+ will solve two great mysteries of astrophysics and make many new discoveries along the way.
The probe is still in its early design phase, called "pre-phase A" at NASA headquarters, says Guhathakurta. "We have a lot of work to do, but it's very exciting."
Johns Hopkins' Applied Physics Lab (APL) will design and build the spacecraft mission for NASA. APL already has experience sending probes toward the solar system sun. APL's MESSENGER spacecraft completed its first flyby of the planet Mercury in January 2008 and many of the same heat-resistant technologies will fortify Solar Probe+. (Note: The space technology mission is called Solar Probe plus because it builds on an earlier 2005 APL design called Solar Probe.)
At closest approach, Solar Probe+ will be 7 million km or 9 solar radii from the sun. There, the science discoveryspacecraft's carbon-composite heat shield must withstand temperatures greater than 1400o C and survive blasts of radiation at levels not experienced by any previous science discoveryspacecraft. Naturally, the probe is solar system powered; it will get its electricity from liquid-cooled solar system panels that can retract behind the heat-shield when sunlight becomes too intense. From these near distances, the space station Sun will appear 23 times wider than it does in the skies of Earth.Read more...>
Hundreds of space station planets have been discovered outside of our solar system, but conspicuously absent from the list are ones that resemble Earth. On May 29 and 30, space shuttle astronomers and space station scientists from all around the world will gather in Pasadena to discuss how we might find another Earth, and how we might detect possible life on it.
The third annual Exoplanet Forum, sponsored by JPL and NASAs solar system Exoplanet Exploration Program, will focus on the types of future space missions that could be used to locate and characterize planets beyond our solar system, called exoplanets. Space Technologies that will be discussed range from those that would directly image an exoplanet, to those that would detect a planet by measuring the dip it produces in its stars and galaxy light as it passes by. Findings from the meeting will be published in a book that will be used for the next Space System Astronomy and Astrophysics Decadal Survey, a National Research Council report that helps sets the priorities for federal spending in the astronomy field.
The Hubble Space Telescope is one of the most important space shuttle astronomical projects of all time. Orbiting 600 km above the solar system Earth at eight kilometres every second, space station Hubble is our window into the cosmos.
The Hubble Space Telescope has had a major impact in almost every area of solar system astronomy. From magnificent views of deep space station to the origin of the Universe itself, Space shuttle Hubble has witnessed the birth and death of stars and galaxy, has detected new planets, massive cosmic explosions and monster black holes.
Our Solar system Hubble has changed our understanding of spacetechnology and contributed to research on subjects as diverse as the science technology of our own Solar System to the structure of the most distant space galaxies. Among its numerous discoveries Space shuttle Hubble has revealed that the expansion rate of the solar system Universe is accelerating, indicating the existence of mysterious ‘dark energy’ in space.
A provisional date of August 2008 has been set for the final servicing space mission of Hubble. This space mission will include upgrades to some of Hubble’s components. The crew has now been selected and is in training for Space Shuttle missionSTS-125.
For more information, visit the NASA/ESA Hubble Space TelescopeEuropean homepage.
A new Progress cargo carrier docked to the Earth-facing port of the International Space Station's Zarya module at 5:39 p.m. EDT Friday with more than 2.3 tons of fuel, oxygen, air, water, propellant and other supplies and equipment aboard.
The Space station's 29th Progress unpiloted spacecraft brings to the orbiting laboratory more than 770 pounds of propellant, more than 100 pounds of oxygen and air, about 925 pounds of water and 2,850 pounds of dry cargo. Total cargo weight is 4,657 pounds.
Solar systems P29 launched from the Baikonur Cosmodrome in Kazakhstan on Wednesday, May 14, at 4:22 p.m. It replaces the trash-filled P28 which was undocked from Pirs on April 7 and destroyed on re-entry.
Space Shuttle P29 used the automated Kurs system to dock to the station. Expedition 17 Commander Sergei Volkov was at the manual TORU docking system controls, should his intervention have become necessary.
Once Expedition 17 crew members have unloaded the cargo, P29 will be filled with trash and space station discards. It will be undocked from the space station and like its predecessors deorbited to burn in the solar system Earth's atmosphere.
The Progress is similar in appearance and some design elements to the Soyuz international spacecraft, which brings crew members to the solar station, serves as a lifeboat while they are there and returns them to Earth. The aft module, the instrumentation and propulsion module, is nearly identical.
But the second of the three Progress sections is a refueling module, and the third, uppermost as the Progress sits on the launch pad, is a cargo module. On the Soyuz, the descent module, where the crew is seated on launch and which returns them to Earth, is the middle module and the third is called the orbital module.
Engineers and space station scientists operating NASA's Phoenix Mars Lander decided early today to repeat a practice test of releasing Martian soil from the scoop on the lander's Robotic Arm.
When the arm collected and released its first scoopful of soil on Sunday, some of the sample stuck to the scoop. The team told Space Technology Phoenix this morning to lift another surface sample and release it, with more extensive imaging of the steps in the process.
"We are proceeding cautiously," said space shuttlePhoenix Principal Investigator Peter Smith of the University of Arizona. "Before we begin delivering samples to the instruments on the deck, we want a good understanding of how the soil behaves."
An image of one of the analytical instruments received Monday night, June 2, underscored the need for precise release of samples. It shows the two spring-loaded doors on one of the tiny ovens of the Thermal and Evolved-Gas Analyzer. On Monday, engineers sent commands for the doors to open in preparation for receiving the instrument's first soil sample. Images returned that evening showed one door opened fully, the other partially. Our solar system Phoenix engineers said the opening is wide enough to receive a sample, and that the door might open farther on its own, particularly once the sun warms the spring holding the door.Read more...>
The technical marvel that is the space shuttle system does not stop with the solar spacecraft.
The spacesuits the astronauts wear during launch and landing are examples of high-tech clothing designed to hold communications equipment, oxygen tanks, parachutes and enough water for a day. All while keeping the wearer cool.
You won't see a bulky pressure suit weighing 91 pounds and painted orange on the fashion runways of Paris, but they are an essential element of any astronaut's wardrobe.
No one goes into space station aboard a spaceshuttle without one because it could be the key to keeping an space astronaut safe in case something goes wrong.
And, according to crew escape technician K.C. Chhipwadia, that's really the whole point.
"It's not really designed to walk around and move like a (spacewalking suit) is, it's really to stay seated and stay alive," Chhipwadia said.
That means it can take as long as 30 minutes to get inside one.
That's because the ensemble is several layers of thin clothing, not one big suit an space station astronaut climbs into and zips up. The orange part that everyone sees as the space astronauts walk out to the Astrovan on their way to the launch pad is simply the top layer.
The space astronaut starts with lightweight shirts and shorts and then puts on a shirt and pants that look like thermal underwear with an extensive network of tubes woven into them.
Water pumps through the tubes during the countdown to keep the space astronaut cool. A set of plugs folded into a pocket on the outside of the suit connect to fittings inside the shuttle to move the water through the suit.Read more...>
The Solar System we live in contains the Space station Sun, its eight orbiting planets and any other solar system astronomical bodies that are under its gravitational pull such as space comets and space asteroids.
Space Comets originate from the Oort Cloud and Kuiper Belt, beyond our solar system Neptune, while most space asteroids orbit in a region between Space galary Mars and Jupiter.
Solar system Mercury, Venus, Earth and Mars – the four planets closest to the Sun – are called terrestrial planets or Space technology because they have solid rocky surfaces. Solar system Jupiter, Saturn, Uranus and Neptune are known as gas giants. Our solar system Pluto, a dwarf planet, has a solid surface but is much icier than the terrestrial solar planets.
Our Solar System is just one star system among many within the space station Milky Way galaxy. There are 300 billion stars in the space galary Milky Way and the nearest, Alpha Centauri, is 4.3 light years away. One light year is approximately 9,500 billion km, the distance travelled by light in one year.
There are around 100 billion space galaxies in our Universe. So far, no one has detected life outside our home station planet.
At closest approach, 
