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

Copernical Team

Copernical Team

Thursday, 05 December 2013 12:24

Murchison Widefield Array (MWA)

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The Murchison Widefield Array (MWA) is a joint project between an international consortium of universities to build a low-frequency radio array operating in the frequency range 80–300 MHz.

The main scientific goals of the MWA are to detect neutral atomic Hydrogen emission from the cosmological Epoch of Reionization (EoR), to study the sun, the heliosphere, the Earth's ionosphere, and to study radio transient phenomena. 

The MWA is the first so-called large-N array, fully cross-correlating signals from 128 phased tiles, each of which consist of 16 crossed dipoles arranged in a 4x4 square. The field of view is large by the standard of astronomical instruments, being on the order of 30 degrees across.

The MWA was to be situated at Mileura Station where initial testing had been conducted then moved southwest Boolardy station in outback Western Australia, at the Murchison Radio-astronomy Observatory (MRO), 800 kilometres north of Perth. This location offers a quiet radio environment and stable climate for observations.

The MRO is also the site of CSIRO's Australian Square Kilometre Array Pathfinder (ASKAP) and one of two candidate sites for the Square Kilometre Array (SKA).

In addition to the geographic link, the MWA is a technology and science pathfinder for the SKA.

Wednesday, 04 December 2013 15:28

Zero Gravity Corporation (ZERO-G)

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Zero Gravity Corporation (also known as ZERO-G) is an American company based in Arlington, Virginia, formerly of Fort Lauderdale, Florida, USA, which operates weightless flights from United States airports.

Unlike NASA, ZERO-G is governed under Part 121 of FAA regulations (as are all US commercial passenger and cargo airlines) enabling the company to cater to both tourists and researchers alike.

NASA has a microgravity services contract with ZERO-G, which provided the first flights under this contract on September 9 and 10, 2008. Flight time from Ellington Field near Johnson Space Center was provided for the FASTRACK Space Experiment Platform. The flights were funded by NASA's Strategic Capabilities and Assets Program.

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The GeoForschungsZentrum (GFZ), or "Helmholtz Centre Potsdam GFZ German Research Centre for Geosciences", commonly called GFZ is the German national research center for Earth Sciences and Geosciences.

It is located in Potsdam, in the German federal state of Brandenburg, and is part of the Helmholtz Association of National Research Centers.

 

Tuesday, 03 December 2013 20:34

CHAMP (satellite)

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Challenging Minisatellite Payload (CHAMP) was a German satellite launched July 15, 2000 from Plesetsk, Russia, and was used for atmospheric and ionospheric research, as well as other geoscientific applications, such as GPS radio occultation. 

CHAMP was managed by GeoForschungsZentrum (GFZ), Potsdam, Germany. The spacecraft was the first application of Astrium's "Flexbus" platform, and it was a cooperative project between Germany and NASA. NASA providing a GPS Blackjack Flight receiver built by the Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL).

CHAMP completed its mission and re-entered the Earth's atmosphere on 19 September 2010 after 10 years (design life: five years).

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The Neutron star Interior Composition ExploreR (NICER) is a future NASA Explorer program mission dedicated to the study of the extraordinary gravitational, electromagnetic, and nuclear physics environments embodied by neutron stars. It will explore the exotic states of matter where density and pressure are higher than in atomic nuclei.

NICER will enable rotation-resolved spectroscopy of the thermal and non-thermal emissions of neutron stars in the soft (0.2–12 keV) X-ray band with unprecedented sensitivity, probing interior structure, the origins of dynamic phenomena, and the mechanisms that underlies the most powerful cosmic particle accelerators known.

NICER will achieve these goals by deploying, following launch in December 2016, an X-ray timing and spectroscopy instrument as an attached payload aboard the International Space Station (ISS). 

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The National Center for Atmospheric Research (NCAR) is a North American federally funded research and development center devoted to service, research and education in the atmospheric and related sciences.

NCAR's mission is to understand the behavior of the atmosphere and related physical, biological and social systems; to support, enhance and extend the capabilities of the university community and the broader scientific community – nationally and internationally; and to foster transfer of knowledge and technology for the betterment of life on Earth.

The National Science Foundation is NCAR's primary sponsor, with significant additional support provided by other U.S. government agencies, other national governments and the private sector.

 

Tuesday, 03 December 2013 20:03

Institute of Photonic Sciences (ICFO)

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ICFO – The Institute of Photonic Sciences is a research centre devoted to the science and technology of light. Located in Barcelona, Spain, ICFO was created in 2002 by the Government of Catalonia and the Technical University of Catalonia.

The Institute carries out frontier research and trains the next generation of scientists and technologists. ICFO actively collaborates with many leading research centers, universities, hospitals, and a range of private companies based locally and all over the world. ICFO currently hosts 20 research groups working in more than 50 different laboratories. Available to them are a Nanophotonics Fabrication lab, Super-Resolution Light Microscopy & Nanoscopy Lab, an Advanced Engineering Lab and a range of other support facilities. All research groups and facilities are located in a dedicated 10.000 m2 -building situated in the Mediterranean Technology Park in the metropolitan area of Barcelona.

In Nov 2013, ICFO counts about 200 researchers, a number that is continuously growing. By 2014, when ICFO completes its ongoing expansion phase, the Institute is to count more than 300 researchers working in 25 different research groups.

Tuesday, 03 December 2013 19:56

Czech Space Office (CSO)

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The Czech Space Office (CSO) is the central contact point for the coordination of pure space science related activities in the Czech Republic.

It fulfils tasks of the national information and advisory centre for the academia on opportunities to enter the international space scene and on space activities in the Czech Republic. It is a non-profit association created in November 2003. The bodies of the association are the Management Board, the Supervisory Board and the Managing Director.

Tuesday, 03 December 2013 08:40

Transiting Exoplanet Survey Satellite (TESS)

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The Transiting Exoplanet Survey Satellite (TESS) is a planned space telescope for NASA's Explorer program, designed to search for extrasolar planets using the transit method.

The project is led by the Massachusetts Institute of Technology with seed funding from Google. In 2013 NASA announced that TESS had been selected for launch in 2017. TESS will be located on an High Earth orbit.

Mission concept

Once launched, the telescope would conduct a two-year all-sky survey program for exploring transiting exoplanets around nearby and bright stars. TESS would be equipped with four wide-angle telescopes and charge-coupled device (CCD) detectors, with a total size of 67 megapixels. Science data, which are pixel subarrays around each of up to 10,000 target stars per field, are transmitted to Earth every two weeks for further analysis. Full-frame images with an effective exposure time of two hours are transmitted to the ground as well, enabling astrophysicists to search the data for an unexpected, transient phenomenon, such as the optical counterpart to a gamma-ray burst.

Tuesday, 03 December 2013 08:03

Sentinel satellites

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Sentinel is a multi-satellite project to be launched from 2014, being developed by ESA under the Global Monitoring for Environment and Security (GMES) program, renamed as Copernicus program. The Sentinel missions include satellites radar and super-spectral imaging for land, ocean and atmospheric monitoring.

The Sentinel satellite familiy is designed to replace the ENVISAT mission.


Missions

The Sentinel missions will have the following objectives:

  • Sentinel 1 will provide all-weather, day and night radar imaging for land and ocean services. The first Sentinel-1 satellite is planned for launch in 2014.
  • Sentinel 2 will provide high-resolution optical imaging for land services (e.g. imagery of vegetation, soil and water cover, inland waterways and coastal areas). Sentinel-2 will also provide information for emergency services. The first Sentinel-2 satellite is planned for launch in 2014.
  • Sentinel 3 will provide ocean and global land monitoring services. The first Sentinel-3 satellite is planned for launch in 2017.
  • Sentinel 4, embarked as a payload upon a Meteosat Third Generation Satellite, will provide data for atmospheric composition monitoring. It will be launched in 2019.
  • Sentinel 5 Precursor - subset of the Sentinel 5 sensor set planned for launch in 2015. The primary purpose of this was to provide overlapping data (especially SCIAMACHY atmospheric observations) with the aging ENVISAT. However contact with ENVISAT was lost in April 2012 and the mission was declared ended in May 2012. It is unknown whether Sentinel 5 Precursor will be rescheduled as a result.
  • Sentinel 5 will also provide data for atmospheric composition monitoring. It will be embarked on a post-EUMETSAT Polar System (EPS) spacecraft and launched in 2020.
  • Sentinel 6 is the intent to sustain high precision altimetry missions following the Jason-2 satellite.
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