European Association for Astronomy Education

Source: ESA

Proba-2 is a small but innovative member of ESA’s spacecraft fleet, crammed with experimental technologies. In its first eight months of life it has already returned more than 90 000 images of the Sun.(read more)

Source: ESA

As the ISS circles Earth, it has begun tracking individual ships crossing the seas beneath. An experiment hosted by ESA’s Columbus module is testing the viability of monitoring global traffic from the Station’s orbit hundreds of kilometres up.(read more)

Source: AFP

Scientists in Australia’s vast Outback on Monday recovered a capsule of the Hyabusa mission that they hope contains the first piece of asteroid ever brought to Earth — perhaps offering a glimpse into ancient space history.

The pod was ejected from a Japanese space probe as the host vessel burned up in a spectacular display over Australia following a seven-year odyssey across the solar system to the far-off Itokawa asteroid.

It lay in the desert dust overnight before scientists were given the go-ahead to retrieve it after Aboriginal elders said it had not landed in any indigenous sacred sites. (read more)

Source: NASA /JPL

This test of the radar system to be used during the August 2012 descent and landing of the NASA Mars rover Curiosity mounted an engineering test model of the radar system onto the nose of a helicopter. Image Credit: NASA

Engineers with NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory, Pasadena, Calif., are running diverse trials with a test version of the radar system that will enable NASA’s Mars Science Laboratory mission to put the Curiosity rover onto the Martian surface in August 2012.

One set of tests conducted over a desert lakebed at NASA’s Dryden Flight Research Center, Edwards, Calif., in May 2010 used flights with a helicopter simulating specific descent paths anticipated for Martian sites.

During the final stage of descent, NASA’s Mars Science Laboratory mission will use a “sky crane” maneuver to lower Curiosity on a bridle from the mission’s rocket-powered descent stage. The descent stage will carry Curiosity’s flight radar.

The testing at Dryden included lowering a rover mockup on a tether from the helicopter to assess how the sky crane maneuver will affect the radar’s descent-speed determinations by the radar. The helicopter carried the test radar on a special nose-mounted gimbal.

Helicopter-flown testing has also been conducted at other desert locations for experience in an assortment of terrains. Later in 2010, the team plans to test the higher-altitude, higher-velocity part of Curiosity’s radar-aided descent by flying the test radar on dives by an F/A-18 jet from Dryden.

Source: ESA

ESA has now opened the possibility of people to try to suggest a name for next mission to the ISS. An oportunity not to loose.

ESA’s promotion slogan is “ESA’s Italian astronaut Paolo Nespoli will soon visit the International Space Station, and he needs your help to name his mission.” (read more)

Source: ESA

ESA and its partners are launching a new kind of fitness initiative using the example of space explorers to promote exercise and healthy nutrition to young people worldwide. ‘Mission X: Train Like an Astronaut’ is boarding now in eight countries. (read more)

Source: NASA Science-News

In Sept. 2010, space shuttle Discovery will deliver Robonaut 2–”R2″ for short–to the ISS, where it will become the first humanoid robot to travel and work in space. Developed jointly by NASA and General Motors, R2 looks a bit like C-3PO of Star Wars fame but lacks the chatty robot’s gift of gab. That’s okay, because the humans on board need a worker that can wield more useful tools than a sharp tongue. (read more)

Source: ESO1018 – Organisation Release

Cerro Armazones. Credit: ESO.

On 26 April 2010, the ESO Council selected Cerro Armazones as the baseline site for the planned 42-metre European Extremely Large Telescope (E-ELT). Cerro Armazones is a mountain at an altitude of 3060 metres in the central part of Chile’s Atacama Desert, some 130 kilometres south of the town of Antofagasta and about 20 kilometres from Cerro Paranal, home of ESO’s Very Large Telescope. (read more)

Source: Hubble Site

NASA’s best-recognized, longest-lived, and most prolific space observatory zooms past a threshold of 20 years of operation this month. On April 24, 1990, the space shuttle and crew of STS-31 were launched to deploy the Hubble Space Telescope into a low Earth orbit. What followed was one of the most remarkable sagas of the space age. Hubble’s unprecedented capabilities made it one of the most powerful science instruments ever conceived by humans, and certainly the one most embraced by the public. Hubble discoveries revolutionized nearly all areas of current astronomical research, from planetary science to cosmology. And, its pictures were unmistakably out of this world. This brand new Hubble photo is of a small portion of one of the largest seen star-birth regions in the galaxy, the Carina Nebula. Towers of cool hydrogen laced with dust rise from the wall of the nebula. The scene is reminiscent of Hubble’s classic “Pillars of Creation” photo from 1995, but is even more striking in appearance. The image captures the top of a three-light-year-tall pillar of gas and dust that is being eaten away by the brilliant light from nearby bright stars. The pillar is also being pushed apart from within, as infant stars buried inside it fire off jets of gas that can be seen streaming from towering peaks like arrows sailing through the air.

NASA and the Space Telescope Science Institute (STScI) are celebrating Hubble’s journey of exploration with this stunning new picture, online educational activities, an opportunity for people to explore galaxies as armchair scientists, and an opportunity for astronomy enthusiasts to send in their own personal greetings to Hubble for posterity.

Happy Birthday Hubble Space Telescope.

Links:

Source: ESA

The International Space Station (ISS) is now almost complete and capable of housing a crew of six astronauts. At times, more than 12 people can work aboard.

One of the most ambitious international projects ever and the largest spacecraft to orbit our planet is ready for at least 10 more years of productive operations.

Now that the International Space Station is fully operational, the programme partners will gather in Berlin on 19–21 April to discuss the successes and potential of this unique international cooperation. (read more)

Source: ESO Announcement ann1013

E-ELT site testing — Cerro Armazones by night.
Credit: ESO/S. Brunier

ESO Council received a report with the main conclusions from the E-ELT Site Selection Advisory Committee. These conclusions confirm that all sites examined in the final short list (Armazones, Ventarrones, Tolonchar and Vizcachas in Chile, and La Palma in Spain) have very good conditions for astronomical observing, each one with its particular strengths. The technical report concludes that Cerro Armazones, near Paranal, stands out as the clearly preferred site, because it has the best balance of sky quality across all aspects and it can be operated in an integrated fashion with the existing ESO Paranal Observatory.(read more)

Source: MESSENGER Mission News

Today the MESSENGER spacecraft crossed the four-billion-mile mark since its launch. The probe has completed about 81 percent of its journey toward its destination to be the first spacecraft inserted into orbit about Mercury.

That MESSENGER’s odometer reading has reached another major milestone reminds us of the long and complex route that our spacecraft must follow. Mercury orbits deep within the Sun’s gravity well. So, even though the planet can be as close as 82 million kilometers (51 million miles) from Earth, getting the probe into orbit around Mercury depends on an innovative trajectory that uses the gravity of Earth, Venus, and Mercury itself to slow and shape the probe’s descent into the inner solar system.

On its 4.9 billion-mile journey to becoming the first spacecraft to orbit the planet Mercury, MESSENGER has flown by Earth once, Venus twice, and Mercury three times. (read more)

Source: NASA

Sundogs are formed by the refracting action of plate-shaped ice crystals.
Image credit: Les Cowley/Atmospheric Optics

NASA’s Solar Dynamic Observatory amazed onlookers last week when it flew past a sundog and destroyed it. Videos of the event captured shock waves from the rocket billowing through the sundog, eliciting cries of delight and amazement from the crowd below. (read more)

Source: ESA

The AMS instrument’s position on the ISS.
Credits: CERN et Universite de Geneve

One of the most exciting scientific instruments ever built, the Alpha Magnetic Spectrometer (AMS), arrived at ESA’s Test Centre in the Netherlands for testing before being launched on the Space Shuttle to the ISS this July.

The quest for the origins of the Universe is about to take a step further in the Large Space Simulator (LSS) at ESA’s research and technology centre, ESTEC, in Noordwijk, the Netherlands, under responsibility of Agency’s Directorate of Human Spaceflight.

The LSS is used to test satellites and spacecraft before they are sent to space and has seen all kinds of space hardware, but the AMS detector is still very special. Not only is it the biggest scientific instrument to be installed on the International Space Station (ISS), but also it is the first magnetic spectrometer to be flown in space, and the largest cryogenically cooled superconducting magnet ever used in space.

AMS will help scientists to understand better the fundamental issues on the origin and structure of the Universe by observing ‘antimatter’ and ‘dark matter’. As a byproduct, AMS will gather a lot of other information from cosmic radiation sources such as stars and galaxies millions of light years from our home galaxy. Not only astronomers, but also particle physicists are waiting for AMS data.

The AMS project is led by Nobel laureate Samuel Ting, from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT), and involves an international team composed of 56 institutes from 16 countries. ESA is a partner in the AMS collaboration through the Directorate of Human Spaceflight. The first version of the experiment, AMS-01, was flown in June 1998 aboard the Space Shuttle Discovery and, after promising results, the bigger and more capable version was accepted to be flown on the ISS.(read more)

Source: NASA/SDO

Artist’s impression about the SDO. Credit: NASA/SDO.

The Solar Dynamics Observatory (SDO) is ready to launch! The mission will be launced on February 9th, 2010, from  Goddard Space Flight Center.  SDO will ride a rocket into orbit and begin a new era in Heliophysics, the study of our sun and its effects on Earth and the solar system.

SDO is the first mission to be launched for NASA’s Living With a Star (LWS) Program, a program designed to understand the causes of solar variability and its impacts on Earth. SDO is designed to help us understand the Sun’s influence on Earth and Near-Earth space by studying the solar atmosphere on small scales of space and time and in many wavelengths simultaneously.

SDO will help us to understand the how and why of the Sun’s magnetic changes. It will determine how the magnetic field is generated and structured, and how the stored magnetic energy is released into the heliosphere and geospace. SDO data and analysis will also help us develop the ability to predict the solar variations that influence life on Earth and humanity’s technological systems.

SDO will measure the properties of the Sun and solar activity.  (read more)

Source: ESA

The Orion Nebula. Credit: NASA, ESA, M. Robberto (STScI/ESA) and
The Hubble Space Telescope Orion Treasury Project Team

ESA’s Herschel observatory is back to full operation following the reactivation of its HiFi instrument. HiFi, having been offline for 160 days while engineers investigated an unexpected problem in the electronic system, is now perfectly placed to resume its study of forming stars and planets.(read more)

Source: ESA

Artist’s impression of the ExoMars Trace Gas Orbiter. Credits: ESA

ESA and NASA are inviting scientists from across the world to propose instruments for their joint Mars mission, the ExoMars Trace Gas Orbiter. Scheduled for launch in 2016, the spacecraft will focus on understanding the rarest constituents of the martian atmosphere, including the mysterious methane that could signal life on Mars.(read more)

Source: HiRISE

Martian landforms shaped by winds, water, lava flow, seasonal icing and other forces are analyzed in 21 journal reports based on data from a camera orbiting Mars.

Juventae Chasma in the Valles Marineris region of Mars.
Credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech/University of Arizona

The research in a January special issue of Icarus testifies to the diversity of the planet being examined by the High Resolution Imaging Science Experiment (HiRISE) camera on NASA’s Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter. (read more)

Links:
Icarus -Volume 205, Issue 1, Pages 1-320 (January 2010)

Source: NASA Science News

SOFIA at the beginning of its Dec. 18th test flight.
Credit: NASA

Most astronomers wouldn’t dream of opening their observatory’s doors in 100 mph winds. Yet NASA’s new SOFIA telescope recently flew in an airplane at 250 mph with doors wide open. The successful test is an important step forward for infrared astronomy. (read more)

Source: ESO 49/09 – Organisation Release

The new infrared southern sky survey telescope VISTA (Visible and Infrared Survey Telescope for Astronomy) right here on Earth has gone online and released its first few wonderful pictures of the Universe.

Flame Nebula, or NGC 2024, in the constellation of Orion (the Hunter). Credit: ESO/VISTA.

VISTA is the latest telescope to be added to ESO’s Paranal Observatory in the Atacama Desert of northern Chile. It is housed on the peak adjacent to the one hosting the ESO Very Large Telescope (VLT) and shares the same exceptional observing conditions. VISTA’s main mirror is 4.1 metres across and is the most highly curved mirror of this size and quality ever made — its deviations from a perfect surface are less than a few thousandths of the thickness of a human hair — and its construction and polishing presented formidable challenges. (read more)