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.

The Deep Space Atomic Clock project (DSAC), will fly and validate a miniaturized, ultra-precise mercury-ion atomic clock that is orders of magnitude more stable than today's best navigation clocks.

DSAC: Key Mission Facts

• The Deep Space Atomic Clock will be orders of magnitude more stable than any other atomic clock flown in space, as well as smaller and lighter.
• This NASA Technology Demonstration Mission will shift paradigms for navigating spacecraft to distant destinations, enabling collection of more data with better precision; and enabling autonomous radio navigation for time-critical events such as orbit insertion or landing.
• This mission will deliver the next generation of deep-space radio science.

Precise radio navigation -- using radio frequencies to determine position -- is vital to the success of a range of deep-space exploration missions. Ground-based atomic clocks have long been the cornerstone of most deep-space vehicle navigation because they provide root data necessary for precise positioning. The Deep Space Atomic Clock will deliver the same stability and accuracy for spacecraft exploring the solar system. This new capability could forever change the way we conduct deep-space navigation -- by eliminating the need to "turn signals around" for tracking. Much the same way modern Global Positioning Systems, or GPS, use one-way signals to enable terrestrial navigation services, the Deep Space Atomic Clock will provide the same capability in deep-space navigation -- with such extreme accuracy that researchers will be required to carefully account for the effects of relativity, or the relative motion of an observer and observed objected, as impacted by gravity, space and time (clocks in GPS-based satellite, for example, must be corrected to account for this effect, or their navigational fixes begin to drift).

Over the past 20 years, engineers at NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, Calif., have been steadily improving and miniaturizing the mercury-ion trap atomic clock, preparing it to operate in the harsh environment of deep space. In the laboratory setting, the Deep Space Atomic Clock's precision has been refined to permit drift of no more than 1 nanosecond in 10 days.

Now (Dec. 2013) the DSAC team is preparing a miniaturized, low-mass atomic clock -- orders of magnitude more accurate and stable than any other atomic clock flown in space, while still being smaller and lighter -- for a test flight in low-Earth orbit. The clock will make use of GPS signals to demonstrate precision orbit determination and confirm its performance, promising new savings on mission operations costs, delivering more science data and enabling further development of deep-space autonomous radio navigation.
The DSAC project currently is building a demonstration unit and payload to be hosted on a spacecraft provided by Surrey Satellite Technologies U.S. of Englewood, Colo. It will launch to Earth orbit in 2015, where the payload will be operated for at least a year to demonstrate its functionality and utility for one-way-based navigation.

Juno is a NASA New Frontiers mission to the planet Jupiter.

Juno was launched from Cape Canaveral Air Force Station on August 5, 2011 and will arrive in July 2016.

The spacecraft is to be placed in a polar orbit to study Jupiter's composition, gravity field, magnetic field, and polar magnetosphere. Juno will also search for clues about how it formed, including whether Jupiter has a rocky core, the amount of water present within the deep atmosphere, and how its mass is distributed. It will also study its deep winds, which can reach speeds of 618 kilometers per hour (384 mph).

recommended: Mission home and videos

The GSI Helmholtz Centre for Heavy Ion Research (German: GSI Helmholtzzentrum für Schwerionenforschung GmbH) is a federally and state co-funded heavy ion research center in the Wixhausen suburb of Darmstadt, Germany. GSI was founded in 1969 as the Society for Heavy Ion Research (German: Gesellschaft für Schwerionenforschung), abbreviated GSI, to conduct research on and with heavy-ion accelerators. 

The laboratory performs basic and applied research in physics and related natural science disciplines. Main fields of study include plasma physics, atomic physics, nuclear structure and reactions research, biophysics and medical research. The lab is a member of the Helmholtz Association of German Research Centres.

GSI operates a worldwide unique large-scale accelerator facility for heavy ions and currently employs about 1.100 people. In addition approximately 1.000 researchers from universities and other research institutes around the world use the facility for their experiments.

GSI is a limited liability company (Ger. GmbH). Associates are the German Federal Government (90 per cent), the State of Hessen (8 per cent), the State of Rhineland-Palatinate (1 per cent) and the Free State of Thuringia (1 per cent). They are represented in the board of directors by the Federal Ministry of Education and Research and the respective Ministries. GSI is a member of the Helmholtz Association, Germany's largest research organisation.

The goal of the scientific research conducted at GSI Helmholtzzentrum für Schwerionenforschung is to reach a better understanding of the structure and behavior of the world that surrounds us.

The Space Surveillance Telescope program (SST) is DARPA's ground based, advanced, optical system for detection and tracking of faint objects in space such as asteroids. It is also to be employed for space defense missions. The program is designed to advance, or expand, space situational awareness, and be able to quickly provide wide area search capability.

The large curved focal surface array sensors are considered to be an innovative design. It encompasses improvements in detection sensitivity, has short focal length, wide field of view, and improvements in step-and-settle abilities.  SST detects, tracks, and can discern small, obscure objects, in deep space with a "wide field of view system". It is a single telescope with the dual abilities. First the telescope is sensitive enough to allow for detection, also, of small, dimly lit objects (low reflectivity). Second it is capable of quickly searching the visible sky. This combination is a difficult achievement in a single telescope design.

The Membrane Optical Imager for Real-Time Exploitation (MOIRE) program is a technology demonstration for the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA) that will provide persistent, real-time, tactical video to the war fighter. To accomplish this capability, MOIRE is incrementally demonstrating the technologies needed to develop a large lightweight space-based telescope for geosynchronous orbit using advanced diffractive membrane optics.

MOIRE plans to demonstrate the manufacturability of large collection area telescopes (up to 20 meters), large structures to hold the optics tight and flat, and also demonstrate the additional optical elements needed to turn a diffraction-based optic into a wide bandwidth imaging device.

While the membrane is less efficient than glass, which is nearly 90 percent efficient, its much lighter weight enables creating larger lenses that more than make up the difference. The membrane is also substantially lighter than glass. Based on the performance of the prototype, a new system incorporating MOIRE optics would come in at roughly one-seventh the weight of a traditional system of the same resolution and mass. As a proof of concept, the MOIRE prototype validates membrane optics as a viable technology for orbital telescopes.

With a proposed diameter of 20 meters, MOIRE's membrane optic "lens" would be the largest telescope optics ever made and dwarf the traditional glass mirrors used in the world's most famous telescopes.

Space telescope size comparison (click image to enlarge) - (copyright DARPA)

The Beyond Blue Aerospace Corporation was established in January 2010 as a Federal (Canadian) Corporation to provide air & space flight products and services.

Beyond Blue Aerospace Corporation. will bring spaceflight to Canada for scientific research, career training, industrial growth, and adventure.

We are currently (Dec. 2013) focused on creating ground school training products for space pilots. Once our initial products are developed then flight training and charter services will follow. 

The Goddard Center for Astrobiology (GCA) is a NASA center focusing on astrobiology research themes.

• Did delivery of carbon-containing molecules and water to the early Earth enable the emergence and evolution of life?
• If so, how did it happen?
• What were the processes involved in the creation of such molecules?

These are some of the driving questions behind the research that is performed at the Goddard Center for Astrobiology. Our scientists focus on various aspects of exogneous materials, from the formation of complex organic materials on ice grains to the delivery of those primordial materials to the Earth, starting in the early bombardment period and continuing until today.

A critical assessment requires investigations of very diverse topics. Our research encompasses four themes: each focusing on a different aspect of how life emerges from cosmic and planetary precursor (Goal 3 of the NASA Astrobiology Road Map).

The National Reconnaissance Office (NRO) is one of the 16 U.S. intelligence agencies and considered to be one of the "big five" U.S. Intelligence agencies, along with the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA), National Security Agency (NSA), Defense Intelligence Agency (DIA), and National Geospatial‐Intelligence Agency (NGA).

The NRO develops and operates space reconnaissance systems and conducts intelligence-related activities for U.S. national security. It also coordinates collection and analysis of information from airplane and satellite reconnaissance by the military services and the Central Intelligence Agency. It is funded through the National Reconnaissance Program, which is part of the National Intelligence Program. The agency is part of the Department of Defense. The NRO works closely with its intelligence and space partners, which include the National Security Agency (NSA), the National Geospatial-Intelligence Agency (NGA), the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA), the Defense Intelligence Agency (DIA), the United States Strategic Command, Naval Research Laboratory and other agencies and organizations. The NRO operates ground stations around the world that collect and distribute intelligence gathered from reconnaissance satellites. 

The NRO is headquartered 2 miles (3 km) south of Washington Dulles International Airport. It designs, builds, and operates the spy satellites of the United States government, and provides satellite intelligence to several government agencies, particularly signals intelligence (SIGINT) to the NSA, imagery intelligence (IMINT) to the NGA, and measurement and signature intelligence (MASINT) to the DIA. The Director of the NRO reports to both the Director of National Intelligence and the Secretary of Defense and serves as Assistant Secretary of the Air Force (Intelligence Space Technology). The NRO's federal workforce consists primarily of Air Force, CIA, NGA, NSA, and Navy personnel. A 1996 bipartisan commission report described the NRO as having by far the largest budget of any intelligence agency, and "virtually no federal workforce", accomplishing most of its work through "thousands" of defense contractor personnel.

The Swedish National Space Board, SNSB, is a central governmental agency under the Ministry of Education and Research.

SNSB is responsible for national and international activities relating to space and remote sensing, primarily research and development.

SNSB has three main tasks:

• to distribute government grants for space research, technology development and remote sensing activities
• to initiate research and development in Space and Remote Sensing areas
• to act as Swedish contact for international co-operation

The Swedish space programme is carried out by means of extensive international cooperation, in particular through Sweden´s membership of the European Space Agency, ESA.

SNSB's responsability for international activities includes the Swedish involvement in ESA as well as bilateral cooperation within space. Most of the activities funded by the Swedish National Space Board are carried out in cooperation with other countries.