Mars Express wins unanimous support at ESA Committee
All fourteen national delegations in the European Space Agency's Science
Programme Committee have backed the project to send a spacecraft to Mars
in 2003. The support for "Mars Express", however, is
qualified by concern about the long-term budget of ESA's science programme.
At its meeting in Paris on 2 and 3 November, the SPC
made its approval of the implementation of Mars Express conditional on
sufficient funding for the science programme and no impact on previously
approved projects.
Development of the spacecraft will now proceed swiftly, to meet the deadline
of an exceptionally favourable launch window early in June 2003. Mars Express
will go into orbit around Mars at Christmas 2003. Seven scientific
instruments on board will include a high-resolution camera, a range of
spectrometers, and a radar to penetrate below the surface. And there will -
perhaps - be a lander as well, "Beagle 2" from the U.K., which has to be
funded independently. Not all money has been raised yet, but a British
pop band is helping already...
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ESA Science news item on the SPC Meeting
Beagle 2 Homepage
"Blur" supports the mission
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In a related story, the U.S. and France have agreed on a wideranging
cooperation in Mars research: The French space agency CNES will
contribute the orbiter part of the 2005 mission - and pay for its
launch on an Ariane 5. It is now also planned to have both the 2003
and 2005 landers equipped with rockets that will launch soil samples into a
Mars orbit where the French orbiter will snatch them and bring them to Earth.
CNES has already set aside 2 billion Francs for its Mars activities between
1999 and 2006. Other European countries could also become involved.
(Space News Oct. 26, 1998)
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CNES Actualites
All past, current and future
NASA Mars Missions
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ROSAT gone. The End of an Era
After eight years of successful operations it was agreed among the ROSAT
institutions in Germany, the U.S. and the UK to officially terminate the
guest observer programme of the X-ray spacecraft. The reason for this
decision is the irreversible damage of the High Resolution Imager (HRI)
due to an accident on 20 September 1998. The HRI was the only focal
plane instrument available for X-ray observations since September 1994,
when the gas supply of the Position Sensitive Proportional Counters
(PSPC) effectively became exhausted. ROSAT had an extraordinary long life
compared with astronomy satellites in a near earth orbit, longer than
any other X-ray astronomy satellite.
The recent problems had started on 28 April 1998 when the star tracker
attached to the X-ray telescope used for navigating the satellite failed.
The remedy was to bring the star tracker of the Wide Field Camera (WFC)
into the loop of the attitude control system (AMCS). The task soon turned
out to be more difficult than anticipated, but at the end of August the
situation had improved significantly, and almost normal scientific operations
were resumed. Shortly before a revised version of the AMCS software was
uplinked an 'accident' happened on 20th September: during a slew the
pointing direction of the satellite came close to the sun; as a result
the HRI was irreversibly damaged.
After the launch on 1 June 1990 ROSAT - a German initiative with U.S.
and UK participation - had carried out the first All Sky
Survey with imaging X-ray and EUV telescopes. This half year operation
led to the discovery of some 80 000 X-ray and 500 EUV sources. In the
following 7 1/2 years about 9 000 fields in the sky were observed in a
guest observer programme involving 650 principal investigators from 26
countries. Numerous discoveries have been made and more than 3 000
scientific publications have been published until now. ROSAT will continue
to have a strong impact: The utilization of the ROSAT archives is very
high, and currently more than one ROSAT based publication appears every day
in the scientific literature. (Based on ROSAT NEWS #67 of Nov. 3rd)
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ROSAT NEWS # 67 and
66
, covering the accident.
ROSAT's Homepage
Future X-ray Missions:
ABRIXAS
(still on track for an April 1999 launch)
AXAF (launch delayed because of
software trouble; now new date set; won't fly before spring/summer 1999)
XMM (also delayed, to
early 2000)
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SPARTAN's final flight major success
On its 5th and final flight the SPARTAN 201-05 satellite performed:
Release and capture by Discovery's crew were flawless, and the solar
telescopes worked as well - more than 1000 images of the corona were
captured, as well as spectra. A coronal mass ejection happened just at
the right time and was observed by the instruments, while two other solar
satellites (SOHO and TRACE) performed parallel observations. About half of
the images of the White Light Coronagraph were downlinked to Earth while
the satellite was still flying; 600 are stored on-board. The 6 million
dollar spacecraft won't be used anymore in the future, but it could be
possible to develop a real satellite with similar capabilities in a few
years that would keep a constant look at the Sun.
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The
image collection, an
ABC report and the Homepage
of SPARTAN 201.
The STS-95 Press Kit and
CNN's saturation coverage
on launch day (click at all the 22 se.*.html files).
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