tagged w/ European Space Agency
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Space junk forces astronauts into escape capsules on International Space Station
By the CNN Wire Staff
updated 6:08 AM EDT, Sat March 24, 2012 |
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Six crew members were forced to get into escape capsules after space debris threatened the International Space Station.
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STORY HIGHLIGHTS
The six crew members aboard the space station are ordered to take shelter
The step is taken after it is discovered the debris could hit the space station
It's the third time a crew aboard the space station has been ordered into escape capsules
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(CNN) -- A piece of a debris from a Russian Cosmos satellite passed close enough to the International Space Station on Saturday that its crew was ordered into escape capsules as a precaution, NASA said.
The six crew members were told to take shelter late Friday in their Soyuz capsules after it was determined there was a small possibility the debris could hit the station, the U.S. space agency said in a statement.
NASA said it began tracking the debris early Friday morning but only decided to take the precautionary steps after an analysis showed a slight possibility of hitting the space station.
The debris was predicted to pass about 23 kilometers (14.2 miles) from the space station, NASA said.
"The Expedition 30 crew aboard the International Space Station received an 'all clear' to move out of their Soyuz vehicles after a small piece of a Russian Cosmos satellite debris passed by the complex without incident early Saturday," the statement said.
"They began the process of moving out of the vehicles and back to their regular duties and a weekend off."
NASA also tweeted details of the incident as it occurred, describing the Soyuz capsules as "the crew's transportation to Earth, for either a normal end of mission, or as a 'rescue craft.'"
It described the International Space Station, via Twitter, as the "most heavily shielded spacecraft ever, to protect it from debris."
It is the third time in the space station's history that a crew has had to take shelter in escape capsules because of the possibility of being hit by orbital debris. The last time the crew took cover was in June 2011.
The Expedition 30 crew includes NASA's Commander Dan Burbank and Don Pettit, Russian cosmonauts Anton Shkaplerov, Anatoly Ivanishin and Oleg Kononenko, as well as Andre Kuipers of the European Space Agency.
The crew has been aboard the International Space Station since mid-December.
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CNN's Chelsea J. Carter contributed to this report.
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Space junk forces astronauts into escape capsules on International... more
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The European Space Agency’s Herschel space telescope has captured this gorgeous new view of the famed Eagle Nebula.
The Eagle Nebula, located 6,500 light-years away in the constellation Serpens, is visible as a fuzzy red spot to backyard astronomers with a modest telescope.
In 1995, NASA’s Hubble space telescope captured a famous image of one region within the Eagle Nebula: a star-forming cluster named NGC6611, known as the “Pillars of Creation.” Light and heat from young stars carved out the iconic pillars, which are each several trillion miles long.
Herschel’s image isn’t just beautiful, it also updates the Hubble photo and reveals new details about the region. While the Hubble image — taken in optical wavelengths — suggested that the area was a stellar nursery, obscuring dust prevented researchers from proving this.
The above photo, taken in far-infrared wavelengths that can penetrate the dust, gives astronomers an insider’s view of the pillars. They can now see the cocoons of gas and dust that surround the young stars as they form. Eventually, these casings will blow away and the star’s light will be visible.
The Herschel data has also been combined with ESA’s XMM-Newton space telescope, which sees the powerful x-ray radiation that the hot, young stars generate. These points stand out as a rainbow of dots near the image center.
The data also suggests one of the massive, hot stars in NGC6611 may have exploded in a supernova 6,000 years ago, releasing a shockwave that destroyed the pillars. Because of the distance of the Eagle Nebula, the destruction of the pillars won’t be visible on Earth for hundreds of years.The European Space Agency’s Herschel space telescope has captured this gorgeous... more
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In this image taken by the Hubble Space Telescope, an unusual, ghostly green blob of gas appears to float near a neighboring spiral galaxy.
The bizarre object, dubbed Hanny’s Voorwerp (Hanny’s Object in Dutch), is the only visible part of a 300,000-light-year-long streamer of gas stretching around the galaxy, called IC 2947. The greenish Voorwerp is visible because a beam of light from the galaxy’s core illuminated it. This beam came from a quasar–a bright, energetic object powered by a black hole. The quasar may have turned off about 200,000 years ago.
http://ramanan50.wordpress.com/2011/01/11/6637/In this image taken by the Hubble Space Telescope, an unusual, ghostly green blob of... more
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International Space Innovation Centre
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ESA's Rosetta takes pictures of the Lutetia asteroid and history is made...
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Planck's first image of space, past and present
Xeni Jardin at 11:36 AM Monday, Jul 5, 2010
The European Space Agency today released the first image of space obtained by the Planck mission.
Shown above, the image includes emissions from dust in our own galaxy and faint ripples of the cosmic microwave background that is light left behind from The Big Bang.
This is the first all-sky map from the spacecraft, which will complete four surveys before its mission ends in 2012. A good explanatory article here on SpaceFlight Now (click on link).
(image courtesy ESA/ LFI & HFI Consortia; Thanks, Dave Clements)Planck's first image of space, past and present
Xeni Jardin at 11:36 AM... more
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In preparation for the European Space Agency's ExoMars mission to the Red Planet in 2018, the agency's engineers are playing in a large sandpit in Noordwijk in the Netherlands. But they aren't using plastic buckets and spades.
The 90-square-metre playpen, known as the Planetary Utilisation Testbed is filled with sand, soil, gravel and rocks designed to recreate the look and feel of the Mars surface.
The ESA engineers are using the area to test the sense of direction of a prototype of the six-wheeled ExoMars rover. The final version will have to travel across the surface without the aid of a map, as well as to drill 2 metres beneath the Martian surface in search of life. Ensuring the rover can look after itself is vital to the mission's success.In preparation for the European Space Agency's ExoMars mission to the Red Planet... more
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The European Space Agency (Esa) is to open a research centre in Britain.
The facility, which will be based on the Harwell innovation campus in Oxfordshire, will concentrate on space robotics and climate change science.
The UK has been the only major Esa member not to host one of the agency's technical or administrative centres.
The agreement to open the facility was announced in The Hague where European science ministers have been meeting to approve agency policies and funding.The European Space Agency (Esa) is to open a research centre in Britain.
The... more
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Photos of the Echus Chasma taken by the ESA probe Mars Express.
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By MARCIA DUNN
AP Aerospace Writer
CAPE CANAVERAL, Fla. (AP) -- The newest space station addition, a giant Japanese science lab, is about to get bigger. After installing TV cameras and removing covers during a spacewalk Thursday, the astronauts at the linked shuttle and station got ready for their next challenge: attaching a storage shed to the bus-size lab. The 210-mile construction job was set for Friday afternoon.
The lab, named Kibo, Japanese for hope, is so big that it had to be split into three shuttle missions to get to the international space station. Its 14-foot storage shed was delivered in March and left in a temporary parking spot. The third and final section, a porch, will be launched next spring.
Spacewalkers Michael Fossum and Ronald Garan Jr. looked like puffy white dolls Thursday against the 37-foot-long, 14-foot-wide lab, which is now the space station's biggest room.
It was their second spacewalk in three days.
"I feel like I'm on a camping trip trying to pack up a wet tent on a Sunday morning," Fossum said as he wrestled with some of the lab's insulation. He and Garan removed thermal covers from the lab's robot arm and added them to a variety of attachment points.
As the spacewalkers toiled outside, their eight colleagues hauled more experiment racks into the billion-dollar lab, and flight controllers near Tokyo monitored the power systems.
"Lots of people at work in there," astronaut Kenneth Ham informed the spacewalkers.
"No, there's not. I don't see anybody," one of the spacewalkers said.
"They got tired of your banging on the roof," Ham answered.
Even with all the racks moving in, Kibo was still noticeably bigger than the eight other rooms at the space station. "We have not seen that much space in space since Skylab," Mission Control told the astronauts in a written message. Skylab was NASA's first space station, back in the 1970s.
Space shuttle Discovery's astronauts delivered and installed Kibo earlier in the week. There are now three labs at the orbiting complex, supplied by NASA, the European Space Agency and, now, the Japanese Space Agency.
On Saturday, the astronauts will test drive Kibo's 33-foot robot arm. The two TV cameras that were set up on the lab's exterior Thursday will be instrumental in those robot-arm operations.
And on Sunday, one final spacewalk will be conducted to replace an empty nitrogen-gas tank at the space station. Fossum and Garan got a head start on that work Thursday.
Just before the seven-hour spacewalk ended, Fossum checked the solar wing rotating joint on the space station's left side. He found streaks of white grease, but no metal shavings like those that are clogging an identical joint on the right side.
Flight director Annette Hasbrook said the left joint looked to be in fine shape and noted that the leaked grease actually may be preventing a buildup of friction between the moving parts.
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On the Net:
NASA: http://spaceflight.nasa.govBy MARCIA DUNN
AP Aerospace Writer
CAPE CANAVERAL, Fla. (AP) -- The newest space... more
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Gravitas: Portraits of a Universe is astrophysicist John Dubinski's self-published DVD containing his stunning supercomputer simulations of galactic evolution set to music. Gravitas: Portraits of a Universe is astrophysicist John Dubinski's... more
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Do you want to know whether a satellite is passing over your head right now? Switch to the Sky View, open the Location tab, select your city from the pop-down list or enter your location coordinates.Do you want to know whether a satellite is passing over your head right now? Switch to... more
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Satellite Rapid Response System (SRRS) is a data-driven system for real time image rendering and quality analysis of satellite data. It has been designed and developed by Chelys.
This website represents the SRRS front-end and it shows the gallery of images generated on the satellites raw data few seconds after their availability.Satellite Rapid Response System (SRRS) is a data-driven system for real time image... more
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The European Space Agency
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Officials from the European Space Agency arrived in Britain yesterday for its most eagerly awaited launch in decades: a recruitment drive to find new blood for its ageing astronaut corps.
The ESA is looking for at least four new astronauts, who can expect to fly on missions to the International Space Station and conceivably take part in Nasa's mission to return to the moon around 2020. The ESA's eight existing astronauts are all male and have an average age of 50.Officials from the European Space Agency arrived in Britain yesterday for its most... more
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"Viewing these amazing new images of the Red Planet, you could be mistaken for thinking you were looking at the gooey insides of a Mars chocolate bar. Have your say: What does the Red Planet remind you of?"
Great new 3D pictures of Mars. Asking people what Mars looks like is a little odd though.
I think it looks like a bit of well-aged Serrano ham, if anyone cares."Viewing these amazing new images of the Red Planet, you could be mistaken for... more
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Now it isn't entirely necessary to send humans up to the Space Station to resupply it. That is, unless we're resupplying it with humans.Now it isn't entirely necessary to send humans up to the Space Station to... more
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Other than the hellish heat, a crushing carbon dioxide atmosphere and corrosive clouds of sulfuric acid, Venus is a lot like Earth, scientists said yesterday.
In a news conference at the Paris headquarters of the European Space Agency, the scientists, working on the agencys Venus Express mission, played up the Venus-as-Earths-twin angle in presenting their newest findings, including signs of lightning, surprising swings of temperature and additional evidence that Venus could have once had oceans the size of Earths.
Theyre really twins which are just separated at birth, said Dmitri Titov, the missions science coordinator. The key question is why those twins are so different.
Understanding the dynamics and history of Venuss turbulent atmosphere could lead to a better understanding of the role that heat-trapping gases like carbon dioxide play in shaping the climate of planets including Earth.
Eight scientific articles describing the observations of Venus Express, the first spacecraft to visit the planet in more than a decade, appear in todays issue of the journal Nature.
Venus is about the same size and mass as Earth, and of roughly the same composition. And before the space age, planetary scientists imagined an Earth-like environment, perhaps even tropical jungles, obscured by Venuss perpetual cloud cover. But in 1958, when astronomers measured intense microwaves emanating from the planet, they first got a hint that it was not as lush as they had imagined.Other than the hellish heat, a crushing carbon dioxide atmosphere and corrosive clouds... more
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