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By Daniel Fischer Every page present in Europe & the U.S.!
| Ahead | Awards 
The latest issue!
| A German companion - only available here! Current mission news: MGS (latest pictures!) + Cassini + Stardust |
Among the latest releases is a detailled view of the Andromeda galaxy as never seen before: a JPL Release, the full GALEX galaxy gallery and systematic access thru the PhotoJournal.
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Japanese Mars mission declared a failure - impact avoidedThe Japanese satellite Nozomi has been rerouted away from Mars by JAXA, the Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency. Crucial orbit insertion maneuvers were impossible to achieve because of defective equipment onboard and the mission has been canceled. At least Nozomi, which had not been sterilized, will not crash into the planet but now follow a harmless large elliptic solar orbit - some moderate science may still be possible but no Martian one. In April 2002, on its way to Mars, Nozomi had experienced a very strong solar energetic proton event associated with a strong solar flare: This caused a short circuit in one of the subsystems and a loss of telemetry signal, which made the Mars orbit insertion now impossible.This had already been the 2nd major mishap to the mission which made a 'wrong turn' during an Earth flyby shortly after launch in 1998 and thus had to take a much longer route to Mars. "JAXA gave up injecting Mars Orbiter 'Nozomi' into orbit of Mars," a brief JAXA statement read late on December 9: "Despite trying hard to restore the malfunctioned part of Nozomi, the Institute of Space and Astronautical Science (ISAS) of JAXA found that communications with Nozomi were still not restored as of 8:30 p.m. on Dec. 9 (Japan Standard Time.) It is very unfortunate for JAXA to announce that we have decided to give up its injection into the orbit of Mars. We would like to deeply apologize for this failure, and will continue to do our best to investigate the cause." The whole 5½-year effort from launch to loss was not totally in vain, however. "Although we have had lots of difficulties to overcome, we have established a wide variety of engineering technologies for future planetary exploration," JAXA spokesman Moriuma told Spaceflight Now: "Also we have obtained very fruitful science results during the cruising phase." There is also talk of using the experiments on Nozomi for further unintended 'cruise' science in interplanetary space, e.g. to monitor solar activity. Nozomi carries several foreign instruments, from Germany (a little dust detector) and Canada. |
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Earth's aurora extends to 800+ kilometers!A chance discovery by a space weather instrument on board of a U.S. military research satellite has aurora theorists scratching their heads: How is it possible that there are distinct polar lights at 800 and more kilometers altitude during solar storms when there are hardly any molecules? But this phenomenon has been sighted by the Solar Mass Ejection Imager riding (together with an experimental ocean instrument) on the Coriolis satellite, whenever the Earth is engulfed by a coronal mass ejection from the Sun, the monitoring of which is the main task of the SMEI."Until now, we didn't have a good way to view the clouds of electrons that pass Earth from coronal mass ejections," says Bernard V. Jackson, a solar physicist at the University of California, San Diego, referring to a phenomenon well observed by the SOHO satellite - but only during its initial phase, when the CME is just leaving the Sun. "We are living inside the solar atmosphere, but up until now had no way to view it, so space forecasters couldn't be certain whether an ejection from the sun would affect the Earth one to five days later or harmlessly pass us by. Now that we can see these clouds as they travel through space outward from the sun, we can map their trajectories." The orbiting camera, known as the Solar Mass Ejection Imager, was built by scientists and engineers at UCSD, the Air Force Research Laboratory, University of Birmingham in the United Kingdom, Boston College and Boston University. The instrument was launched in January by the Air Force and has provided the team of scientists with numerous images of coronal mass ejections, which can be seen in the images because of the faint scattering of sunlight from the clouds of electrons. And to the surprise of the scientists, the images also revealed the existence of the totally unexpected high-altitude aurorae, extending more than 800 km above the Earth's surface. Aurorae typically extend from 100 km above Earth's surface to several hundred km.
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Pulsar find boosts hope for gravity-wave huntersNeutron star pairs may merge and give off a burst of gravity waves about six times more often than previously thought - and if that's true, the current generation of gravity-wave detectors might be able to register such an event every year or two, rather than about once a decade, the most optimistic prediction until now. The revised estimate of the neutron-star merger rate springs from the discovery of a double neutron-star system, a pulsar called PSR J0737-3039 and its neutron-star companion with the 64-m CSIRO Parkes radio telescope in eastern Australia. PSR J0737-3039 and its companion are just the sixth known system of two neutron stars. They lie 1600-2000 light-years (500-600 pc) away in our Galaxy.Separated by 800,000 km the two stars orbit each other in 2.4 hours. Systems with such extreme speeds have to be modelled with Einstein's general theory of relativity - which predicts that the system is losing energy in the form of gravity waves: The two stars are in a 'dance of death', slowly spiralling together. In 85 million years the doomed stars will fuse, rippling spacetime with a burst of gravity waves. The previous estimate of the neutron-star merger rate was strongly influenced by the characteristics of just one system, the pulsar B1913+16 and its companion. PSR J0737-3039 and its companion are an even more extreme system, and now form the best laboratory for testing Einstein's prediction of orbital shrinking. The new pulsar boosts the merger rate, for two reasons: It won't live as long as PSR B1913+16, and pulsars like it are probably more common than ones like PSR B1913+16 - these two effects push the merger rate up by a factor of six or seven. But the actual numerical value of the merger rate depends on assumptions about how pulsars are distributed in our Galaxy. Under the most favourable distribution model, we can say at the 95% confidence level that this first generation of gravitational wave detectors could register a neutron star merger every one to two years. The new result is good news for gravity-wave astronomers: They may get to study one of these cosmic catastrophes every few years, instead of having to wait half a career ... |
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Manned Space UpdateConfusion continues over White House "visions" regarding the future of manned spaceflight. The official word from the White House, the Hawaii Declaration [SR] on returning to the Moon, a NASA Release on a Foale record and coverage of Dec. 11: FT 2, 1, SC. Dec. 10: SR, SC. Dec. 9: FT, AFP, CSM. |
Dec. 8:
SpaceRev,
FT.
Dec. 7:
WP,
BBC,
ST.
Dec. 6:
WP,
Guardian,
Indep.,
FT,
SC,
ST,
Welt 2,
1,
Dec. 5:
WP,
USA Today,
VOA 2,
1,
FT,
CNN,
SC,
ST,
NZ,
RP.
Dec. 4:
SN,
FT 2,
1,
AFP,
UPI,
NBC17,
NY Post,
SC,
ZEIT.
Dec. 3:
FT,
AP,
Ananova,
ST.
Dec. 2:
FT.
Shenzhou 5's orbital module continues to orbit the Earth and other Chinese (wo)manned stories: Dec. 9: BBC. Dec. 7: AFP. Dec. 3: SC. |
Stardust sights target comet Wild 2Forty-nine days before its historic rendezvous with a comet, Stardust has found its quarry, comet Wild 2 from 25m km away - such images will aid Stardust's navigators and scientists as they plot their final trajectory toward a Jan. 2, 2004 flyby and collection of samples from Wild 2: JPL Release [SN], Ast., Dsc., AP.SMART-1 changes orbital strategy on the way to the Moon, having fired the ion engine for some 1000 hours already: Dec. 9 and Dec. 4 status. International lunar ambitions - with NASA just looking on? SC. China's lunar dreams include an orbiter in 2007, unmanned landings from 2010 and manned missions from 2020: Xinhua (earlier), China Daily, AFP, BBC. Moon rover model shown: Xinhua. A great Saturn picture from Cassinihas been taken from 111m km distance, about the equivalent of three-fourths of the distance between Earth and the Sun - the image shows details in the rings and atmosphere not seen a year ago, as well as five of Saturn's icy moons: Cassini Release [alt., SN], BBC, Guardian, Rocky Mtn. News, SC.CO found in the atmosphere of Uranus, probably deposited by bombardment by micrometeorites: ObsPM Press Release, AFP. It's still a long way to the termination shock for the Voyagers, new calculations indicate: U. Iowa Press Release. Interstellar pick-up ions detected by Cassini beyond the orbit of Jupiter: SWRI Press Release. Rings around planets: Recycling of material may extend lifetimesAlthough rings around planets like Jupiter, Saturn, Uranus and Neptune are relatively short-lived, new evidence implies that the recycling of orbiting debris can lengthen the lifetime of such rings: U. of CO Press Release, NSU, NZ, Welt, BdW.Earthlike planets might be common, a planet-formation model indicates - in 44 computer simulations of planet formation near a sun, astronomers found that each simulation produced one to four Earthlike planets, including 11 so-called "habitable" planets about the same distance from their stars as Earth is from our sun: U. Wash. PR, SC. Three major space anniversaries!
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Did the Kuiper Belt form farther in?Neptune's migration could have moved everything outwards - a model that would explain several mysteries: SwRI Press Release, Ast., S&T, AFP, BdW.Migration of "another Neptune" also in Vega's disk? This could explain the two dusty blobs seen with sub-mm telescopes: PPARC Press Release [SR], the author's homepage and coverage by SciAm, BBC, SC and NZ. Yarkovsky effect measured on an asteroidfor the 1st time - radar data show that it is not where Kepler would have predicted, thanks to subtle radiation presssure forces: JPL Press Release, Nat'l Geogr., Astronomy, New Sci., BdW.Fine Quadrantids forecast for early January - one model gives them a ZHR of 150: SF Gate. No global fires after the K/T B impact? Searches found no charcoal in sedimentary rocks laid down at the time: NSU, BBC. Field trips to the stars ...Astronomers at Cardiff University in Wales will lead an ambitious, �9 million project that connects students throughout the United Kingdom to research-class telescopes in Hawaii and Australia: Ast.Three finalists for the site of a 4-m solar telescope, the ATST, have been selected: NSO PR [SR]. ICESat captures Earth in spectacular 3-D imagesNASA's Ice, Cloud and land Elevation Satellite (ICESat) is sending home important scientific data and spectacular 3-D views of Earth's polar ice sheets, clouds, mountains, and forestlands: GSFC Release.
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All other historical issues can be found in the Archive.
The U.S. site of this Cosmic Mirror has been visited
since it was issued (the German site has no counter).
Compiled and written by Daniel Fischer
(send me a mail to [email protected]!), Skyweek
