From 1998 to 2011, five different space agencies representing 15 countries assembled the International Space Station, the largest structure ever built in space. Today humans are still living and work in the orbital laboratory. November 2, 2016 marks the 16th anniversary of continuous human presence onboard.
In this month’s Asteroid Update we talk to Patrick Michel, a planetary scientist who’s one of the lead proponents of the Asteroid Impact Mission.
The third of a trio of music videos released by ESA to celebrate the first ever attempted soft landing on a comet by ESA’s Rosetta mission.
Vangelis, the world-renowned musician, has composed this piece of music specially for ESA and inspired by the Rosetta mission. Vangelis’s music is often linked to themes of science, history and exploration, and he is best known for his Academy Award–winning score for the film Chariots of Fire, composing scores for the films Antarctica, Blade Runner, 1492: Conquest of Paradise and Alexander, and the use of his music in the documentary series Cosmos, by Carl Sagan.
This view of the Tiangong 2 and Shenzhou 11 docked complex was recorded Sunday and downlinked to Earth on Tuesday by the Banxing 2 micro-satellite.
Orbital ATK cargo ship arrives at the ISS
Scientists have created a detailed map of the Milky Way using two of the world’s largest fully steerable radio telescopes in Germany and Australia.
The research looked at neutral atomic hydrogen—the most abundant element in space and the main component of stars and galaxies—across the whole sky in a survey known as HI4PI.
[…]
University of Bonn astronomer Dr Juergen Kerp said although neutral hydrogen is fairly easy to detect with modern radio telescopes, mapping the whole sky is a significant achievement.
“Radio ‘noise’ caused by mobile phones and broadcast stations pollute the faint emissions coming from stars and galaxies in the Universe,” he said.
“So sophisticated computer algorithms have to be developed to clean each individual data point of this unwanted human interference.
Loaded with more than 2.5 tons of supplies and science experiments, Orbital ATK’s Cygnus cargo craft arrived at the International Space Station Oct. 23 following its launch on a refurbished Antares rocket from the Wallops Flight Facility, Virginia Oct. 17. Expedition 49 crewmembers Takuya Onishi of the Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency and Kate Rubins of NASA captured Cygnus using the station’s Canadian-built robotic arm. Ground controllers then maneuvered Cygnus to the Earth-facing port of the Unity module where it was installed and bolted into place for a month-long stay.
TODAY IN HISTORY: An Atlas-Agena rocket on the launch pad at Cape Canaveral, October 20, 1961. The payload was the Ranger 2 lunar probe.
The most critical moment so far in the ExoMars Trace Gas Orbiter’s journey will be Wednesday’s Mars Orbit Insertion burn – the long (ca. 134 mins) engine firing that will slow the spacecraft down sufficiently to be captured into Mars orbit. What actually happens during this critical burn, though? Here we thought we’d give you a more detailed rundown of that all-important moment.
[…]
When this radio reconfiguration is complete, the orbiter will start sending out this ‘carrier only’ signal. The Low Gain Antenna isn’t powerful enough to send data to Earth, hence why we use this simple beacon signal. The key advantage is that the Low Gain Antenna signal can be picked up almost no matter what orientation Trace Gas Orbiter is in. The signal will be acquired by NASA’s big 70m-diameter dish in Canberra, Australia and that will let the team on ground know that the orbiter is there. Critically it should also show a jump in frequency caused by Doppler shift as the orbiter fires its engine, allowing us to monitor the progress of the burn even without telemetry data.
NASA Television covered the pre-launch and launch activities of the Expedition 49/50 crew on its mission to the International Space Station. On Oct. 19, Soyuz Commander Sergey Ryzhikov and Flight Engineers Andrey Borisenko of Roscosmos and Shane Kimbrough of NASA launched from the Baikonur Cosmodrome in Kazakhstan to begin a two-day journey to the space station and a five-month mission aboard the orbital complex.
ISS Expedition 49 Crew Patch
Photo taken on Oct. 19, 2016 shows the screen at the Beijing Aerospace Control Center showing the two Chinese astronauts Jing Haipeng (L) and Chen Dong in the space lab Tiangong-2. The two astronauts onboard the Shenzhou-11 spacecraft entered the space lab Tiangong-2 Wednesday morning. (Xinhua/Ju Zhenhua)
On Oct. 17, Orbital ATK launched its Cygnus cargo spacecraft atop an Antares rocket to the International Space Station. The spacecraft launched from the Mid-Atlantic Regional Spaceport at NASA’s Wallops Flight Facility in Virginia. This is the sixth cargo mission to the International Space Station for Orbital ATK.
kreuzaderny