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Showing posts with label europe. Show all posts
Showing posts with label europe. Show all posts

Thursday 29 January 2015

Russia to create joint orbital station with India, China

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Russia is exploring the possibility of a joint manned orbital station with India and China as part of a common strategy to create technological alliances and may take up the matter with the two Asian space giants in July.
"Moscow could propose to China and India to create a joint manned orbital station at the summit of the BRICS emerging economies in Russia's Ufa in July," a document drafted by the expert council at Russia's military and industrial commission said.
The experts recommend "working out the possibilities of an international manned project with BRICS (Brazil, Russia, India, China, and South Africa) countries as part of a common strategy of creating technological alliances", Itar Tass reported.
The proposal comes after months of speculation that the crisis in Ukraine would doom U.S.-Russia space cooperation. For two decades this effort has largely been focused on the International Space Station project (ISS), which is due to end in 2020. NASA has proposed extending it to 2024, but Russia has suggested it might duck out and instead build its own space station — possibly with the participation of China.
The BRICS project would be roughly analogous to the ISS, a $150 billion project involving 15 nations. Anchored by the United States and Russia, the world's leading spacefaring powers, the ISS allows countries with less advanced spaceflight capabilities to either join onto the station's Russian and American segments or contribute smaller segments.
A BRICS space station would likely emerge from a similar two-nation partnership, again with Russia in a driver's seat. The Military-Industrial Commission recommended approaching either China or India — both countries that have well-developed and increasingly ambitious space programs. The proposal would then allow other BRICS members to join.
India has yet to put a man in space without hitching rides on other nations' rockets. Last year, it demonstrated its rising capabilities after launching an unmanned satellite to Mars on a shoestring budget.
China is perhaps the best partner for such a project. China already launches its own astronauts into space, and is designing its own medium-sized space station. The placement of Russia's new Vostochny Cosmodrome in Russia's Far East also makes close cooperation with China far easier.
Source : Times Of India , TheMoscowTimes

Monday 26 January 2015

Rosetta images reveal crack hundreds of meters long in comet 67P

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Image of Comet 67P taken by ESA's Rosetta (Click Image to Download)

The European Space Agency (ESA) succeeded in delivering the Philae lander to the surface of comet 67P several months ago, but its Rosetta probe hasn’t been twiddling its robotic thumbs since then. It’s still in orbit of 67P/Churyumov–Gerasimenko to study the comet as it gets closer to the sun. In the newest set of images published by the ESA, scientists reveal 67P is coming apart at the seams. A huge crack was discovered running hundreds of meters along the surface.

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To visualize what’s happening, it’s important to know a little about the shape of 67P/Churyumov–Gerasimenko. Many of us have an idea of comets as being more or less round, but many of them are actually quite oddly shaped. For example, 67P has two lobes, one smaller than the other, connected by a narrow neck. It looks a little like a rubber duck. The crack detected by Rosetta’s Osiris camera is in the neck region, which is also where most of the gas and dust is being expelled.

The crack is about one meter in width, which wouldn’t be so impressive if it wasn’t covering such a large area. The neck region where the crack was found is only 1km wide after all, so a few hundred meters is nothing to sneeze at. In the image above, the crack is visible in two locations on the surface, but the middle section is obscured by layers of dust, which the ESA team has found is plentiful on the surface of 67P, especially in the neck region where the object’s minimal gravity is even less substantial.

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67P won’t reach its closest approach to the sun for several months, but it’s already losing more than 11kg of gas and dust every second. Scientists are unsure if the crack will worsen or close up as the comet continues to lose weight. If the stresses on the neck increase, the comet could fracture and break in two .
Some researchers believe that 67P’s shape is the result of two smaller objects colliding in the distant past, so this crack could be following an existing “fault line” in the structure. It’s also possible this crack is nothing out of the ordinary for porous comets like 67P as they erode. It’s hard to say for sure — this is the first time we’ve gotten such a close-up look at a comet.

Rosetta dropped the Philae lander off on 67P back in November, but it didn’t quite go as planned. The lander’s harpoons failed to fire, which caused it to bounce along the surface, eventually coming to rest in a shadow that prevented the solar panels from creating enough power. After doing most of its science, Philae went to sleep. The ESA has continued to monitor conditions on the comet with Rosetta and hopes that when the comet nears the sun, it will shine more light on Philae, allowing it to come back online.

Philae isn’t close enough to the neck region to offer any insights about the newly discovered crack, but it can certainly tell us more about the composition of 67P. Even if Philae never comes back online, Rosetta will keep an eye on the surface from a few kilometers up. It will be there through 67P’s solar perigee in August, and will follow as it heads back out toward Jupiter.

Source : Geek.com

Thursday 22 January 2015

Europe Wants To Send Humans To The Dark Side Of The Moon

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(Click Image to Download)

Should we return to the Moon? While Elon Musk, Mars One, and even NASA have their sights set on the Red planet, many think that the Moon is a better option for space exploration .
The European Space Agency (ESA) is one - they just released a new video stating that the Moon is an important and crucial step in mankind's future.

"In the future, the Moon can become a place where the nations of the world can come together to understand our common origins, to build a common future, and to share a common journey beyond. A place where we can learn to move onwards into the solar system," ESA explains in the video "Destination: Moon" .

ESA envisions future manned missions to the far side of the Moon - also known as the dark side of the Moon because it never faces the Earth (though it isn't shrouded in darkness at all). This alien landscape is a rugged terrain, scarred with billions of years worth of impact craters, including one of the largest impact craters in the solar system, the South Pole-Aitken basin.

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Photograph of the far side of the moon taken by a crew member on Apollo 16.

Scientists think the crater formed around 4 billion years ago. Inside of this 8.1-mile-deep crater, certain parts are shrouded in perpetual, freezing darkness, but at the crater's rim, shown below, are high, mountainous peaks that bathe in almost-constant sunlight. It's here, on these lunar mountains that ESA plans to send robots and eventually humans.

By sending future missions to the Moon we will be able to answer questions like:

  • Is there water elsewhere on the Moon?

  • If so, how much?

  • Where did it come from?

  • And what can it teach us about the origins of water and life on Earth?


If the Moon proves to have an abundant store of water under it surface, then future human generations can use the hydrogen and oxygen atoms for rocket fuel.

To Check out the full video Goto to Business Insider

Sunday 16 November 2014

Philae sleeps, but Rosetta's not done yet

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Its battery dead, the European lander is lost in a crater somewhere on a huge comet. But the orbiter that brought it there still has plenty of science left to do.

Rosetta

As of Saturday morning, the Philae lander is in a digital coma somewhere on the surface of comet 67P/Churyumov-Gerasimenko. But even if the history-making little robot never wakes again, the Rosetta mission and the orbiter of the same name still have a long journey ahead of them.

The plan was for Philae to land at a targeted site on the comet, firing harpoons into the surface of the icy rock to keep itself locked in place for a long trip around the sun. The strong grip was particularly important since a comet this size has only a tiny fraction of the gravity of a place like Earth, leaving little Philae at risk of floating off into space.

But when showtime came, there were problems with Philae's downward thrusters and with firing the harpoons. The European Space Agency reports that the lander bounced off the surface of the comet twice and eventually landed somewhere else without much access to the sunlight its solar panels need to keep it functioning.

Friday evening, Philae used its remaining energy to upload all its data before going into hibernation mode. There was a time slot early this morning during which, the ESA had reported, communication with the lander was possible, but that time has now come and gone.

Still, Rosetta remains.

Even if Philae stays lost in a comet crater for the next year, the orbiter that traveled almost half a billion miles to get to this point will continue to orbit the comet and its lost lander.

Right now, Rosetta has been pulling out to a 30 kilometer orbit of the comet. It will come closer again early next month to get more details on the comet -- some of its flybys will be as close as 8 kilometers to the comet. There's a whole lot of potential science and data about comets, planets and our solar system packed in that process, building up to the trio's closest encounter with the sun, next August.

Before that point there may also be better opportunities to rouse Philae.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=crbnOY8WeB8#t=15

Thursday 13 November 2014

The Rosetta comet landing has made history

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After 10 years of hard work and one nerve-wracking night, the Rosetta mission has made history by landing on the surface of a comet.

The lander Philae was confirmed to touch down on the surface of the comet more than 300 million miles away at 11:03 a.m. Eastern. Now, scientists expect it to send a panoramic image home and begin analyzing the comet for scientists back on Earth.

Philae is already transmitting scientific data back home, but we're still waiting to see whether the probe is in a stable position. Until we know it's anchored tight, it could roll onto its back and never get back up.

Tensions were high in the European Space Agency's German mission control center, especially as the landing window approached. Because the comet that Philae landed on is so far from Earth, there's a communications delay of 28 minutes. So as the minutes ticked by, the Rosetta team knew that Philae had already either landed or failed — and there was nothing they could do but wait for the data to reach them. Those following the video online were nearly as desperate for news, and Twitter became a sounding chamber of anticipation and excitement.

But a few minutes after 11 a.m., the stern, cautious expressions of the mission control team melted into smiles. And just like that, the world swiveled from anxiety to elation: Philae was on the surface of the comet and ready to do some science.

The comet contains the materials that originally formed our solar system, frozen in time. By digging them out, we can learn more about the origins of our planet. The Rosetta spacecraft has made invaluable observations about the comet's attributes, and it will continue to do so as it follows it around the sun for the next year. But Philae will be able to look more closely at the comet's physical and molecular composition.

"It's a look at the basic building blocks of our solar system, the ancient materials from which life emerged," said Kathrin Altwegg of the University of Bern in Switzerland, one of the Rosetta project's lead researchers. "It's like doing archaeology, but instead of going back 1,000 years, we can go back 4.6 billion."

It's no easy thing to land on a comet's surface: These chunks of rock and ice are constantly spinning, and Comet 67P/Churyumov-Gerasimenko, which was discovered in 1969, orbits the sun at a speed of about 85,000 mph. It's irregularly shaped — like a toddler's play-dough impression of a duck, or something — and its surface is uneven and pitted. And in a universe of unimaginable proportion, Rosetta's target is just 2.5 miles in diameter — smaller than Northwest Washington's Columbia Heights neighborhood.

So Rosetta has taken an onerous journey to get in sync with the comet's orbit, which would allow it to drop down a lander. In 2004, the spacecraft began what would be three looping orbits around the sun, altering its trajectory as it skimmed Mars, just 150 miles from the surface, and enduring 24 minutes in the planet’s shadow to align with Churyumov-Gerasimenko. The cumulative distance traveled by the craft – with all its looping and gravity assists – is a stunning 4 billion miles. “When the Rosetta signal reappeared after the passage behind Mars, shortly after the end of the ‘shadow’ period, there was a collective sigh of relief,” ESA said.

At one point in 2011, the spacecraft even had to hibernate for nearly three years. It flew so far from the sun — nearly 500 million miles — that its solar panels couldn't leech enough energy to keep the spacecraft operational. But in January of this year, Rosetta woke up, and quickly approached its target.

The last leg of this landing has not been without its bumps. Even as the mission approached its most critical moment, controllers at the European Space Agency on Tuesday night reported a problem with the thruster on the lander that could make for a rough landing. The gravity of the problem — and the extent to which it threatened the mission — remained unknown. “We’ll need some luck not to land on a boulder or a steep slope,” blogged Stephan Ulamec, lander manager for the project.

Source : washington post

Monday 10 November 2014

3D-printed moonbase? ESA suggested future moon colony

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The European Space Agency (ESA) has proven that its project to 3D-print a base on the Moon is possible. In a latest video the agency shows how 3D-printing robots may be used to build the base using lunar material.

The ESA started investigation of the lunar base possibility in 2013, working alongside its industrial and architectural partners. The creation of the reliable semi-spherical structures on the surface of the moon could be fulfilled within the next 40 years, and 90 percent of the materials needed would be derived from the moon itself.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pk9PWUGkz7o

latest details of the new concept, which is, however, still "firmly on the drawing board," were discussed at a conference this week at ESA's technical center in Noordwijk, the Netherlands.

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Thursday 6 November 2014

ROSETTA SPACECRAFT SET TO LAND ON COMET CHURYUMOV-GERASIMENKO

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An artist’s impression of the Philae probe setting down on Comet Churyumov-Gerasimenko.
If you have an interest in space exploration, you could not have picked a better time in history to be alive than right now. Data and images stream back to Earth daily at an unprecedented rate from robotic spacecraft active at far-flung destinations all over the solar system. To use an old political quote – we’ve never had it so good.
In the past 50 years we’ve exploded out of our “little blue dot” to leave boot prints on the moon, land on Venus, Mars and Saturn’s moon Titan, and to orbit Mercury, Jupiter, Saturn, asteroids and comets, giving us incredible visual vistas of all.
What’s missing is a detailed view of dwarf planet Pluto, but we’ll have that when the New Horizons spacecraft gets there next year.
There’s also another missing first about to be achieved next week – we’re going to make a soft landing on the surface of a comet.
Comet Churyumov-Gerasimenko had to wait around patiently for billions of years for humans to discover it in 1967. However, it’s been a much shorter wait for an opportunity to get up close and personal with it – we’re landing a probe on the frozen dumbbell-shaped comet next Wednesday, November 12.
The Rosetta spacecraft, carrying the Philae probe, was launched  from French Guiana in February 2004 by the European Space Agency. It arrived in August this year and has already given us great views of the comet.
It was named for the Rosetta Stone found in Egypt that was crucial in deciphering ancient Egyptian hieroglyphics. Similarly the “lander” is named for the Nile River island Philae, where an obelisk also assisted in solving the puzzle of these symbols.

Rosetta spacecraft set to land on Comet Churyumov-Gerasimenko

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1414642336467

An artist's impression of the Philae probe setting down on Comet Churyumov-Gerasimenko.

If you have an interest in space exploration, you could not have picked a better time in history to be alive than right now. Data and images stream back to Earth daily at an unprecedented rate from robotic spacecraft active at far-flung destinations all over the solar system. To use an old political quote – we've never had it so good.

In the past 50 years we've exploded out of our "little blue dot" to leave boot prints on the moon, land on Venus, Mars and Saturn's moon Titan, and to orbit Mercury, Jupiter, Saturn, asteroids and comets, giving us incredible visual vistas of all.

What's missing is a detailed view of dwarf planet Pluto, but we'll have that when the New Horizons spacecraft gets there next year.

There's also another missing first about to be achieved next week – we're going to make a soft landing on the surface of a comet.

Comet Churyumov-Gerasimenko had to wait around patiently for billions of years for humans to discover it in 1967. However, it's been a much shorter wait for an opportunity to get up close and personal with it – we're landing a probe on the frozen dumbbell-shaped comet next Wednesday, November 12.

The Rosetta spacecraft, carrying the Philae probe, was launched  from French Guiana in February 2004 by the European Space Agency. It arrived in August this year and has already given us great views of the comet.

It was named for the Rosetta Stone found in Egypt that was crucial in deciphering ancient Egyptian hieroglyphics. Similarly the "lander" is named for the Nile River island Philae, where an obelisk also assisted in solving the puzzle of these symbols.

Monday 3 November 2014

Success in the search for quiet, distant quasars

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If quasars weren’t so luminous, we couldn’t see them so far away in space and time. But how about modest quasars, also far away? Astronomers say they’ve found some.

Astronomers at the Institute of Astrophysics of Andalusia (IAA-CSIC) in Spain say they have at last discovered a population of quiet, distant quasars. Nearly all the quasars we see at great distances are ultraluminous, and no wonder. They must be extremely luminous in order for us to glimpse them over the vastness of space. And yet astronomers have thought there must be, at those same vast distances, some quasars that were relatively quiet. Now, they say, they’ve found some and have been able to compare them both with the ultraluminous quasars in the early universe and also with closer quasars of moderate luminosity.

The farther away we look in space, the deeper we are looking into the past. Thus the ultraluminous quasars at great distances are showing us events taking place in the early universe: mergers of great galaxies containing gigantic black holes, with masses equivalent to billions of our suns, at their cores. These objects and events in the young universe are what we see as the distant quasars. The question has been, do the distant, tremendously high energy quasars have local relatives, in their same region of space and time, with much lower energy? And are those quiet quasars at great distances the dying versions of formerly ultraluminous quasars? Or are they something else entirely?

Jack W. Sulentic, astronomer at the Institute of Astrophysics of Andalusia (IAA-CSIC), who is leading the research, said:
Astronomers have always wanted to compare past and present, but it has been almost impossible because at great distances we can only see the brightest objects and nearby such objects no longer exist.

Until now we have compared very luminous distant quasars with weaker ones close by, which is tantamount to comparing household light bulbs with the lights in a football stadium.

Now, these astronomers say, they have detected the first distant, quiet quasars.

They say they employed the light-gathering power of the Gran Telescopio Canarias – known as GranTeCan or GTC telescope – located on the island of La Palma, in the Canary Islands in Spain. This telescope let Sulentic and his team obtain the first spectroscopic data from distant, low luminosity quasars similar to typical nearby ones.

They say their data are reliable enough to let them establish essential parameters of the quiet, distance quasars such as their chemical composition, and the mass of the central black hole or rate at which it absorbs surrounding gas and dust.

Quasars appear to evolve with distance. That is, the farther away they are in space, the brighter they are. This could indicate that quasars extinguish over time. Or it could be the result of anobservational bias masking a different reality: that gigantic quasars evolving very quickly, most of them already extinct, coexist with a quiet population that evolves more slowly, but which our technological limitations have not allowed astronomers to study. Ascensión del Olmo, another IAA-CSIC researcher who took part in this study, said:
We have been able to confirm that, indeed, apart from the highly energetic and rapidly evolving quasars, there is another population that evolves slowly. This population of quasars appears to follow the quasar main sequence … There does not even seem to be a strong relation between this type of quasars, which we see in our environment and those ‘monsters’ that started to glow more than 10 billion years ago.

Are there also differences between distant, quiet quasars and the moderate quasars closer to us in space? These astronomers say there are, and these differences are not surprising. Jack W. Sulentic said:
The local quasars present a higher proportion of heavy elements such as aluminum, iron or magnesium, than the distant relatives, which most likely reflects enrichment by the birth and death of successive generations of stars.

Bottom line: Astronomers in Spain have been able to identify a population of quiet quasars located in the distant universe, that is, in the early universe. They have compared them both to ultraluminous quasars in the early universe and also to quasars closer to us in space and time … and found differences in both cases.

Source : earth sky

Thursday 30 October 2014

Czech Republic prepares own space program

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The Czech Republic will have its own space program, according to the National Space Plan for 2014-2019 that the government approved at the beginning of the week, the daily Hospodárske noviny (HN) writes today.
The plan recommends that the National Space Agency, "a considerably smaller variant of NASA," be established to integrate the currently fragmented competences in this field, HN says.
So far the Czech Republic has participated in the European Space Agency (ESA) programs, the second most significant player in space exploration after NASA, which they joined in 2008. Czechs annually give some 14 million euros to the ESA.
The national space exploration program should have an annual budget of three to five million euros and last for five years at least.
It should complement the research carried out within the ESA. Consequently, the National Space Agency could fund the projects that cannot be paid by the ESA, HN says.
Jan Kolář, head of the Czech Space Office NGO, welcomes the idea of the national space program.
"However, it should focus on the preparation of research and development activities in technical sciences," such as the development of materials and various types of detectors and the aerodynamics area, Kolář said.
HN writes that one of the rare successes that Czech science and industry has recently scored in this filed is a micro-accelerometer used in the SWARM satellites that were sent into space last November. The device, developed by 15 Czech firms, measures slight and slow accelerations that influence the satellite's movement, which removes possible distortions in the magnetic field measurements, HN notes.
However, the successful Czech micro-accelerometer was rather an exceptional case, Kolář told HN.
He said Czech participation in the ESA is limited by finances on the one hand, and by skills on the other hand. "In addition, our participation in each program is confronted with other European countries," he added.
Under the approved national space plan, the Czech Republic's contribution to the ESA's optional programs must be doubled at least, HN writes.
The transitory six-year period, in which the Czech Republic as a new ESA member could use a special incentive program, ends this year. Almost a half of the Czech obligatory payments to the agency went to it.
After the Czech Republic, Poland and Romania entered the ESA, while Estonia and Hungary plan to do so, and now they can use the advantages of newcomers, HN adds.
Source : prague post

Tuesday 28 October 2014

European Scientists Conclude That Distant Comet Smells Terrible

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Kathrin Altwegg, a lead scientist on the Rosetta space probe project, explains:
"The perfume of 67P/C-G is quite strong, with the odour of rotten eggs (hydrogen sulphide), horse stable (ammonia), and the pungent, suffocating odour of formaldehyde. This is mixed with the faint, bitter, almond-like aroma of hydrogen cyanide. Add some whiff of alcohol (methanol) to this mixture, paired with the vinegar-like aroma of sulphur dioxide and a hint of the sweet aromatic scent of carbon disulphide, and you arrive at the 'perfume' of our comet."

Since August, Rosetta's two mass spectrometers have been sniffing out what 67P/Churyumov-Gerasimenko smells of. Scientifically speaking, that means detecting the most volatile molecules released via sublimation. But really, that means working out what it smells like. So far, Rosetta has sniffed out the following

  • Water (H2O)

  • Carbon monoxide (CO)

  • Carbon dioxide (CO2)

  • Ammonia (NH3)

  • Methane (CH4)

  • Methanol (CH3OH)

  • Formaldehyde (CH2O)

  • Hydrogen sulphide (H2S)

  • Hydrogen cyanide (HCN)

  • Sulphur dioxide (SO2)

  • Carbon disulphide (CS2)