...the who's who,
and the what's what 
of the space industry

Copernical Team

Copernical Team

Friday, 20 December 2013 16:41

NEOWISE

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The NEOWISE project is the asteroid-hunting portion of the Wide-field Infrared Explorer (WISE) mission. Funded by NASA's Planetary Science Division, NEOWISE harvests asteroids and comets from the WISE images and provides an archive for searching the WISE data for solar system scientists.

The mission began its life as WISE for its first eight months of survey operations until the frozen hydrogen cooling the telescope was depleted. The mission continued as NEOWISE for an additional four months, finishing up its survey of the inner solar system.

The NEOWISE project was responsible for archiving the millions of individual images collected by the WISE telescope. To date, the NEOWISE team has delivered infrared detections of more than 158,000 minor planets to the scientific community, including more than 34,000 new discoveries.

NEOWISE data have been used to set limits on the numbers, orbits, sizes, and probable compositions of asteroids throughout our solar system, and the mission discovered the first known Earth Trojan asteroid.

Friday, 20 December 2013 16:31

FINDS Exo-Earths

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The project is called FINDS Exo-Earths (which stands for Fiber-optic Improved Next generation Doppler Search for Exo-Earths).

The Planetary Society had teamed up with planet hunters Debra Fischer of Yale University and Geoff Marcy of the University of California at Berkeley to help with the quest to find other "Earths," other worlds like our own, elsewhere in our galaxy.

This high-end optical system was installed on the 3-meter telescope at the Lick Observatory and dramatically increased discoveries of smaller exoplanets and has been playing a crucial role in verifying Earth-sized planet candidates from the Kepler planet-hunter mission.

This is exactly the kind of project the Society has always excelled at. It's a small, vital effort, overlooked and under-valued by the space community's "Powers That Be." And we can see that it offers an incredible cost-benefit ratio.

Thursday, 19 December 2013 09:40

Space-Time Insight

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Space-Time Insight is an American company based in San Mateo, California, USA, developing geospatial information systems (GIS).

Space-Time Insight objective is to change the way utilities and other organizations with critical assets manage their resources and respond to crises that impact operations, customer service, revenue and risk. From traditional transmission, communications and transportation networks to smart grids and smart cities, our next generation situational intelligence solution makes critical infrastructure smarter, safer and more reliable. We enable enterprises to visualize and analyze their resources across location and time, rapidly respond to disruptions in service, and exceed performance and reliability goals. 

Space-Time Insight's products simplify the detection of problematic situations or potential issues in a geographically-distributed network of resources and assets, provide insights into what the specific issue is and its cause, and help personnel take the appropriate corrective action. 

Wednesday, 18 December 2013 16:31

Planetary Science Institute (PSI)

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The Planetary Science Institute (PSI) is a private, nonprofit corporation dedicated to Solar System exploration. It is headquartered in Tucson, Arizona, where it was founded in 1972.

PSI scientist are involved in numerous NASA and international missions, the study of Mars and other planets, the Moon, asteroids, comets, interplanetary dust, impact physics, the origin of the solar system, extra-solar planet formation, dynamics, the rise of life, and other areas of research. They conduct fieldwork on all continents of the Earth. They are also actively involved in science education and public outreach though school programs, children's books, popular science books and art.

PSI scientists are based in 20 states and the District of Columbia, Australia, Canada, France, Germany, Ireland, Latvia, Russia, South Africa, Switzerland and the United Kingdom.

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The European Satellite Operators' Association (ESOA) was formed in March 2002 to represent the interests of the industry with key European organisations, including the European Commission, Parliament, Council and the European Space Agency as well as other international organisations.

ESOA's goals include ensuring that satellites benefit from the appropriate political, industrial and regulatory environment to fulfil their vital role in the delivery of communications. ESOA is governed by a Board of Directors, made up of the CEO's of its Member Companies.

ESOA is a CEO-driven association representing 22 global and regional satellite operators. ESOA provides thought-leadership and is recognised as the representative body for satellite operators by international, regional and national bodies including regulators, policymakers, standards-setting organisations such as 3GPP and international organisations such as the International Telecommunications Union and the World Economic Forum.

Wednesday, 18 December 2013 16:12

Iranian Space Agency (ISA)

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The Iranian Space Agency (ISA) is Iran's governmental space agency.

Iran is an active participant in the Asian space race and became an orbital-launch-capable nation in 2009. 

Wednesday, 18 December 2013 16:01

American Geophysical Union (AGU)

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The American Geophysical Union (AGU) is a nonprofit organization of geophysicists with the mission to promote discovery in Earth and space science for the benefit of humanity.

It is consisting of thousands of members from 144 countries, the members being individual scientists.

AGU's activities are focused on the organization and dissemination of scientific information in the interdisciplinary and international field of geophysics. The geophysical sciences involve four fundamental areas: atmospheric and ocean sciences; solid-Earth sciences; hydrologic sciences; and space sciences.

Saturday, 14 December 2013 14:26

Chang'e-3 mission

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Chang'e 3  is a lunar exploration mission operated by the China National Space Administration, incorporating a robotic lander and a rover. Chang'e 3 was launched in December 2013 as part of the second phase of the Chinese Lunar Exploration Program.

It is China's first lunar rover. 

The spacecraft is named after Chang'e, the goddess of the Moon in Chinese mythology, and is a follow-up to the Chang'e 1 and Chang'e 2 lunar orbiters.

The lunar rover is called Yutu, or Jade Rabbit, a name selected in an online poll that comes from a Chinese myth about a white rabbit that lives on the Moon as a pet of the moon goddess Chang'e. 

It achieved lunar orbit on 6 December 2013, and landed on 14 December at 13:11 UTC, becoming the first object to soft-land on the moon since Luna 24 in 1976.

Saturday, 14 December 2013 14:18

Yutu rover

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Yutu is a Chinese lunar rover which forms part of the Chang'e 3 mission to the Moon.

Launched on 1 December 2013, and landed on 14 December 2013. If successful it will be the first rover to operate on the Moon since Lunokhod 2 ceased operations in May 1973.

The official mission objective is to achieve China's first soft-landing and roving exploration on the Moon, as well as to develop and analyze key technological developments.

(Yutu, or Jade Rabbit, was a name selected in an online poll; it is a Chinese myth about a white pet rabbit of the Moon goddess Chang'e.)

Saturday, 14 December 2013 14:06

Philae lander

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Philae is a robotic European Space Agency lander that accompanies its Rosetta spacecraft. It is designed to land on Comet 67P/Churyumov-Gerasimenko shortly after arrival in 2014. The lander is named after Philae island in the Nile, where an obelisk was found that was used along with the Rosetta Stone to decipher Egyptian hieroglyphic.

Just as the Philae(*) Obelisk and the Rosetta Stone provided the keys to an ancient civilisation, the Philae lander and the Rosetta orbiter aim to unlock the mysteries of the oldest building blocks of our Solar System - comets.

(*) Philae is the island in the river Nile on which an obelisk was found that had a bilingual inscription including the names of Cleopatra and Ptolemy in Egyptian hieroglyphs. This provided the French historian Jean-François Champollion with the final clues that enabled him to decipher the hieroglyphs of the Rosetta Stone and unlock the secrets of the civilisation of ancient Egypt.

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