Juice's flight through Earth's radiation belts
Tuesday, 03 September 2024 14:36
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During its recent flyby of Earth, ESA's Jupiter Icy Moons Explorer (Juice) travelled through the zones of charged particles that surround our planet. These two zones are known as the Van Allen radiation belts. The inner belt is mostly full of energetic protons, and the outer belt is mostly full of energetic electrons. The region between the two belts is mostly empty.
The high levels of radiation in the Van Allen belts makes them very dangerous for electronics and humans, but they pale in comparison to Jupiter's own radiation belts. At Jupiter, extremely energetic electrons can get through even the thickest of shielding, so they could damage Juice's scientific instruments over time.
Juice carries a radiation monitor called RADEM to continuously measure the spacecraft's exposure
NASA explains strange noise heard by astronaut in Boeing's Starliner
Tuesday, 03 September 2024 12:36 Write a comment
There's nothing to see here, or hear here, actually. That's the message NASA gave after reports of a strange noise heard by astronaut Butch Wilmore emanating from Boeing's Starliner docked to the International Space Station this weekend.
"A pulsing sound from a speaker in Boeing's Starliner spacecraft heard by NASA astronaut Butch Wilmore aboard the International Space Station has stopped," NASA posted to its social media accounts Monday.
It explained the mystery noise as feedback from the speaker that was the result of an audio configuration between the spacecraft and the ISS. Wilmore reported the sound as he was working inside Starliner on Saturday.
"The space station audio system is complex, allowing multiple spacecraft and modules to be interconnected, and it is common to experience noise and feedback," NASA stated. "The crew is asked to contact mission control when they hear sounds originating in the comm system."
NASA also took the opportunity to state the feedback has "no technical impact to the crew, Starliner, or station operations, including Starliner's uncrewed undocking from the station no earlier than Friday, Sept.
Space Force and intelligence agencies seek to streamline satellite imagery delivery
Tuesday, 03 September 2024 12:10
U.S. intelligence agency to evaluate trustworthiness of AI models
Tuesday, 03 September 2024 12:00
Evolution Space tests rocket on Spaceport Company sea-based platform
Tuesday, 03 September 2024 11:00
NASA moving ahead with Europa Clipper launch in October
Tuesday, 03 September 2024 10:17
Vega for ESA: the story
Tuesday, 03 September 2024 09:00 Write a comment
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Vega joined the family of launch vehicles at Europe’s Spaceport in French Guiana in 2012. At 30-m tall the rocket weighs 137 tonnes on the launch pad and reaches orbit with three solid-propellant powered stages before the fourth liquid-propellant stage takes over. By rocket standards Vega is lightweight and powerful, the first three stages burn through their fuel and bringing Vega and its satellites to space in just six minutes.
Specialising in launches of small satellites to orbits flying over Earth’s poles, Vega has an impressive roster of missions that it has sent to space. Flagship ESA missions
China launches new set of classified Yaogan-43 satellites
Tuesday, 03 September 2024 08:53
Opportunities with ESA at Big Science Business Forum 2024
Tuesday, 03 September 2024 08:40 Write a comment
ESA is part of the Big Science Business Forum 2024 event on 1–4 October in Trieste, Italy. This is where industry and Europe’s leading science organisations, research infrastructures and their collaborators will meet to inform, network and discuss business opportunities in a market valued at nearly €10 billion annually.
Sentinel-2C operators complete final rehearsals
Tuesday, 03 September 2024 08:30 Write a comment
ESA mission controllers have completed the final phase of their simulation training for the critical launch and early orbit phase, confirming that everything is ready for the launch of Sentinel-2C.
Mission control GO for Sentinel-2C launch
Tuesday, 03 September 2024 07:00 Write a comment
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Mission control GO for Sentinel-2C launch ESA delays BepiColombo orbital insertion because of thruster problem
Tuesday, 03 September 2024 02:09
Inside the 'golden age' of alien hunting at the Green Bank Telescope
Monday, 02 September 2024 20:52 Write a comment
Nestled between mountains in a secluded corner of West Virginia, a giant awakens: the Green Bank Telescope begins its nightly vigil, scanning the cosmos for secrets.
If intelligent life exists beyond Earth, there's a good chance the teams analyzing the data from the world's largest, fully steerable radio astronomy facility will be the first to know.
"People have been asking themselves t Q&A: Scientist discusses the MESSENGER mission to Mercury
Monday, 02 September 2024 16:41 Write a comment
Twenty years ago, the MESSENGER mission revolutionized our understanding of Mercury. We sat down with project head and former Carnegie Science director Sean Solomon to talk about how the mission came together and the groundbreaking work it enabled.
Q: As the principal investigator of the MESSENGER mission, what were your personal highlights or proudest moments throughout the mission's duration?
Sean Solomon: There were many personal highlights for me during the MESSENGER mission, beginning with our initial selection by NASA in 1999 and culminating in the publication by the MESSENGER science team of all of the findings from our mission in a book published nearly two decades later.
The most challenging events in any planetary orbiter mission are launch and orbit insertion. The successful completion of those two milestones for MESSENGER—in 2004 and 2011, respectively—were sources of great pride for me in the technical expertise of all of the engineers, mission design experts, and project managers who contributed to the mission.
The long flight portion of the mission provided multiple scientific highlights. MESSENGER's first flyby of Mercury in January 2008 yielded the first new spacecraft observations of Mercury in 33 years, and our team published 11 papers in a single issue of Science from those measurements six months later.
