Rover video looks down on Mars during landing - Technology & science - Space PASADENA, Calif. — NASA on Monday unveiled a low-resolution, color video from its Curiosity rover that shows what travelers could see if they were riding along for the last couple of minutes of the craft's descent to Mars. The recording begins with the protective heat shield falling away, and ends with dust being kicked up as the rover is lowered by cables inside an ancient crater. Curiosity was successfully deposited on the floor of Gale Crater on Sunday night, using a sky-crane procedure that had never been tried before in a space mission. Since then, the rover has returned a flood of pictures, including black-and-white views of the 3-mile-high (5-kilometer-high) mountain it's heading for. Still more pictures will be on the way, including a panorama of Curiosity's surroundings and a higher-resolution version of the video from Curiosity's Mars Descent Imager, also known as MARDI. The MARDI camera is mounted on the rover's chassis, looking down toward the ground. Wow! More about Mars:
Countdown to launch of ESA’s billion-star surveyor / Gaia / Space Science Gaia sunshield deployment time lapse sequence Countdown to launch of ESA’s billion-star surveyor 21 October 2013 ESA’s billion-star surveyor Gaia will be launched from Europe’s spaceport in Kourou on 20 November to begin a five-year mission to map the stars with unprecedented precision. Gaia’s main goal is to create a highly accurate 3D map of our Milky Way Galaxy by repeatedly observing a billion stars to determine their positions in space and their movement through it. Other measurements will assess the vital physical properties of each star, including temperature, luminosity and composition. Gaia will map the stars from an orbit around the Sun, near a location some 1.5 million km beyond Earth’s orbit known as the L2 Lagrangian point. Gaia mapping the stars of the Milky Way The spacecraft will spin slowly, sweeping its two telescopes across the entire sky and focusing their light simultaneously onto a single digital camera, the largest ever flown in space – it has nearly a billion pixels.
CURIOSITY – Explosion de joie chez les ingénieurs de la NASA A 7 h 31, heure de Paris, le robot Curiosity se pose avec succès sur Mars. Un exploit technologique et humain qui provoque une explosion de joie dans la mission de contrôle à Pasadena, en Californie, où les ingénieurs de la NASA ont tout suivi de très près. Avant le moment-clé, la tension était palpable. Doug McCuistion, directeur de programme d'exploration de Mars à la NASA, résumait la situation à quelques minutes du moment-clé : "Si nous réussissons, ce sera l'un des plus grands exploits dans l'histoire de l'exploration spatiale." Signaler ce contenu comme inapproprié Cette entrée a été publiée dans Actualité.
Planck on course for safe retirement / Operations Planck on course for safe retirement Mapping the cosmic microwave background 21 October 2013 In preparation for its final switch-off on 23 October, mission controllers today fired Planck’s thrusters to empty its fuel tanks. The satellite, which mapped the relic radiation from the Big Bang – the Cosmic Microwave Background, or CMB – in unprecedented detail, will be switched off in two days. One of Planck’s two instruments, the HFI high-frequency instrument, exhausted its liquid helium supply in January 2012. Since January 2012, the spacecraft has conducted three more sky surveys with LFI, enabling scientists to refine their CMB data. Permanent safe disposal “In the past weeks, we’ve been working to prepare Planck for permanent safe disposal,” says ESA’s Steve Foley, Spacecraft Operations Manager at the European Space Operations Centre in Darmstadt, Germany. Andreas Rudolph during Planck launch 2009 Complex procedures 1.5 million kilometres away Final command sent by ‘volunteer’
Curiosity : atterrissage sur Mars en HD (Vidéo) 29 jours de travail. C’est le temps qu’il aura fallu à Bard Canning, un amateur américain, pour mettre bout à bout les images prises par la sonde Curiosity lors de son atterrissage sur Mars, le 6 août dernier. Et le résultat est époustouflant ! Lors de sa descente en parachute, Curiosity a pris une série de photos dirigées vers le bas. Bard Canning a en effet travaillé manuellement chaque image, pour parvenir à reconstruire une vidéo parfaitement fluide à 30 images par secondes, en haute définition. il a même ajouté des sons et des bruits, de sorte que l’on a vraiment l’impression d’être un explorateur martien accompagnant Curiosity vers sa destinée. La vidéo est en temps réel. Source trouver:
Laser Communication System Sets Record with Data Transmissions to and from Moon NASA's Lunar Laser Communication Demonstration (LLCD) has made history using a pulsed laser beam to transmit data over the 239,000 miles between the moon and Earth at a record-breaking download rate of 622 megabits per second (Mbps). LLCD is NASA's first system for two-way communication using a laser instead of radio waves. It also has demonstrated an error-free data upload rate of 20 Mbps transmitted from the primary ground station in New Mexico to the spacecraft currently orbiting the moon. "LLCD is the first step on our roadmap toward building the next generation of space communication capability," said Badri Younes, NASA's deputy associate administrator for space communications and navigation (SCaN) in Washington. Since NASA first ventured into space, it has relied on radio frequency (RF) communication. LLCD is a short-duration experiment and the precursor to NASA's long-duration demonstration, the Laser Communications Relay Demonstration (LCRD). -end-
Gaia launch postponement update / Gaia / Space Science Gaia launch postponement update Gaia mapping the stars of the Milky Way 23 October 2013 Yesterday, the decision was taken to postpone the launch of ESA’s Gaia mission after a technical issue was identified in another satellite already in orbit. Gaia shares some of the components involved in this technical issue and prompt notification of this problem has allowed engineers working on the final preparations for Gaia’s launch to take additional precautionary measures. The issue concerns components used in two transponders on Gaia that generate ‘timing signals’ for downlinking the science telemetry. The transponders will be removed from Gaia at Kourou and returned to Europe, where the potentially faulty components will be replaced and verified. As a consequence of these precautionary measures, it will not be possible to launch Gaia within the window that includes the previously targeted launch date of 20 November. The next available launch window is 17 December to 5 January 2014.
Laser communications set for Moon mission / Operations Laser communications set for Moon mission Laser from Optical Ground Station on Tenerife 30 July 2013 An advanced laser system offering vastly faster data speeds is now ready for linking with spacecraft beyond our planet following a series of crucial ground tests. The laboratory testing paves the way for a live space demonstration in October, once NASA’s Lunar Atmosphere and Dust Environment Explorer – LADEE – begins orbiting the Moon. LADEE carries a terminal that can transmit and receive pulses of laser light. LADEE approaching lunar orbit “The testing went as planned, and while we identified a number of issues, we’ll be ready for LADEE’s mid-September launch,” says Zoran Sodnik, manager for ESA’s Lunar Optical Communication Link project. “Our ground station will join two NASA stations communicating with the LADEE Moon mission, and we aim to demonstrate the readiness of optical communication for future missions to Mars or anywhere else in the Solar System.” Testing new European technology
NASA's Next Mars Probe Arrives at Launch Site As NASA's Curiosity rover celebrates one year on Mars, the space agency has begun final preparations for the launch of its next Red Planet mission later this year. The Mars Atmosphere and Volatile Evolution spacecraft, or MAVEN, arrived at NASA's Kennedy Space Center in Florida on Friday (Aug. 2), just three days before the one-year anniversary of Curiosity's dramatic Mars landing. MAVEN is now sitting in a cleanroom, where engineers are testing and fueling the orbiter ahead of its planned Nov. 18 launch from Kennedy toward the Red Planet. [NASA's MAVEN Mission to Mars: Photos] "We're excited and proud to ship the spacecraft right on schedule," David Mitchell, MAVEN project manager at NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Md., said in a statement Monday (Aug. 5). "But more critical milestones lie ahead before we accomplish our mission of collecting science data from Mars. Studying Martian air Mars has lost most of its atmosphere to space over the eons. A U.S.
Herschel closes its eyes on the Universe Herschel and Vela C Herschel closes its eyes on the Universe 29 April 2013 ESA’s Herschel space observatory has exhausted its supply of liquid helium coolant, ending more than three years of pioneering observations of the cool Universe. The event was not unexpected: the mission began with over 2300 litres of liquid helium, which has been slowly evaporating since the final top-up the day before Herschel’s launch on 14 May 2009. The liquid helium was essential to cool the observatory’s instruments to close to absolute zero, allowing Herschel to make highly sensitive observations of the cold Universe until today. The confirmation that the helium is finally exhausted came this afternoon at the beginning of the spacecraft’s daily communication session with its ground station in Western Australia, with a clear rise in temperatures measured in all of Herschel’s instruments. Ariane 5 lift off The archive will become the legacy of the mission. Star birth Dense filaments of gas in IC5146 Notes for Editors