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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 |
the launches of Aura, Double Star TC-2 & MESSENGER After several delays, NASA's environmental satellite Aura is due to launch on July 13th at 10:02 UTC: the Status, ST on the latest delay and previews by AW&ST, FT, HC, BBC, CNN, Wired, New Sci., AFP, SPX and SC (earlier). Next in line is the 2nd "Double Star" satellite TC-2 that should launch in China on July 26 at 7:31 UTC: ESA News. And the launch of MESSENGER, which will become the first Mercury orbiter, has slipped to August 2 at 6:16 UTC: the Status, an Update and an FT story.
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Cassini gets the first mineralogical map of Titan - surface more mysterious than everThe Cassini spacecraft has revealed surface details of Saturn's moon Titan and imaged a huge cloud of gas surrounding the planet-sized moon, gathering data before and during a distant flyby on July 2. Titan's dense atmosphere is opaque at most wavelengths, but the spacecraft captured some surface details, including a possible crater, through wavelengths in which the atmosphere is clear with its visible and infrared mapping spectrometer. This instrument, capable of mapping mineral and chemical features of the moon, reveals an exotic surface bearing a variety of materials in the south and a circular feature that may be a crater in the north. Near-infrared colors, some three times redder than the human eye can see, reveal the surface with unusual clarity. At some wavelengths, one can see dark regions of relatively pure water ice and brighter regions with a much higher amount of non-ice materials, such as simple hydrocarbons: This is the first time scientists are able to map the mineralogy of Titan.
61 high-resolution images of Saturn's rings, called "mind-boggling"The first pictures taken by the Cassini spacecraft after it began orbiting Saturn show breathtaking detail of Saturn's rings, and other science measurements reveal that Saturn's magnetic field pulsed in size as Cassini approached the planet. The narrow angle camera on Cassini took 61 images soon after the main engine burn that put Cassini into orbit. Some images show patterned density waves in the rings, resembling stripes of varying width. Another shows a ring's scalloped edge. Other instruments on Cassini besides the camera have also been busy collecting data: The magnetospheric imaging instrument took the first image of Saturn's magnetosphere. And the bow shock where the solar wind piles into the planet's magnetosphere was encountered earlier than expected.
"The spacecraft couldn't have performed any better": Cassini in perfect Saturn orbit!Here is a measure of success: The intended period of the first orbit of Cassini around Saturn was 117.4 days - and the first solution for the present one is 116.3 days ± 18 hours! In the wee hours of July 1 (UTC; it was still the previous evening at the JPL) a 96-minute firing of the primary main engine has done the job: The engine was a percent or so stronger than expected and so the onboard computer cut down the burn by one minute. Instead of 4:13:04 UTC as the last model had said (which actually expected a 97-min. burn), the burn ended at 4:12:04 UTC. Everything had worked during the critical hours: Not only was the carrier signal from one of Cassini's low gain antennae strong, telling ground controllers via the Doppler effect that the burn was progressing exactly as planned: it didn't even fade away completely when Cassini passed behind the A ring from 3:06 UTC.Perhaps there is even some science in that: When Cassini passed behind the Encke gap at 3:12 UTC, the signal became pretty strong again for a short time, than faded once more when the passage behind the A ring continued. But still the signal was there, to the surprise of the radio scientists. From 3:31 to 37 Cassini passed behind the almost free Cassini gap, and only when it then disappeared behind the dense B ring, the signal was gone for good. At 4:03 UTC Cassini had come closest to Saturn, and at 4:04 the signal was back again, now shining clearly through the C ring. At 4:08 it was already clear that Cassini was slowing down - and at 4:12 someone called out: "The Doppler has swung up." This meant that the burn had stopped, and loud cheers could be heard for minutes. Another big relief came at 4:30 UTC: a "blast of data on the High Gain Antenna" which had been pointed briefly at Earth. This proved that the science sequence was running now and that Cassini had not slipped into some safe mode during the burn. Thus one can expect that it would take the close-up pictures of the rings as planned now (they will be downlinked around 12:45 UTC). At a news conference/celebration at 5:00 UTC one Cassini manager stated that "the spacecraft couldn't have performed any better," and Dave Southwood from ESA - whose Huygens probe is riding on Cassini - was elated: "You guys did it right!" He also found the precision of the maneuver "frightening to the nail" and knew that "we have a lot to live up to" with the Huygens mission 6 months from now. (NASA TV live via telephone) |
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Spacecraft around the solar system felt the big stormson the Sun in October and November of 2003 (see Update # 263) - all the way out to the Voyagers that noticed something in the interplanetary medium this spring. These "Halloween" solar storms were the most powerful ever measured, and the storms' effects on Earth were severe enough to cause the rerouting of aircraft, affect satellite operations, and precipitate a power failure in Malmoe, Sweden. Long-distance radio communications were disrupted because of the effects on the ionosphere, and northern lights (aurora borealis) were seen as far south as Florida. No NASA satellites near Earth were severely damaged by the storms. The International Space Station astronauts curtailed some of their activities and took shelter in the Russian-supplied Service Module several times during the storm. Because this kind of event will have significant implications for radiation protection requirements for explorers who venture outside the Earth's protective magnetosphere (magnetic field), scientists have been working for years to develop the capability to predict when these massive storms will erupt.The storms rocked the inner solar system from Mars to Saturn. The Mars Radiation Environment Experiment (MARIE) instrument on the Mars Odyssey spacecraft orbiting Mars was disabled by radiation. The Ulysses spacecraft near Jupiter and the Cassini spacecraft near Saturn both detected radio waves from magnetic storms generated as the blast wave slammed into the vast magnetic fields around those giant planets. The material launched by the huge solar storms last fall blasted by Earth at 8 mio. km/h and raced past spacecraft near Earth, Mars, Jupiter and Saturn on its way to NASA's twin Voyager spacecraft at the fringes of the solar system. The most recent reports come from the Voyagers, which are near an unexplored region where the solar wind becomes turbulent as it crashes into the thin gas between stars. Slowing as it plowed into the outer heliosphere (a large bubble of space around the sun which is "blown up" by fast- moving solar wind), the blast wave reached Voyager 2 at 11 billion km from the Sun on April 28 and continued toward Voyager 1 at almost 14.5 billion km from the sun. The widely dispersed spacecraft are helping scientists piece together a more comprehensive picture of how disturbances propagate through the solar system. What determines the evolving shape and variable speed with which the shocks travel in different directions is not well understood. The differences in the speeds and arrival times at Mars and Earth suggest that the process is not simple. Understanding how particle-accelerating shocks travel through the solar system will help us understand and predict how radiation levels will change in different locations in space. In the months ahead, the blast wave will crash into the heliopause, the tangible edge of the heliosphere, where the material ejected by the sun piles up against the wind from nearby stars. The collision may generate extremely low-frequency radio signals that will give us a much more accurate understanding of the size of the sun's domain. The energy carried by the material will push the interstellar gas outward by as much as 640 mio. km, about 4 times the distance from the Sun to the Earth. |
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SS1's X Prize attempt apparently planned for late SeptemberNo official announcement has been made yet but the pilot of SpaceShipOne has said on TV that the first of three flights planned in rapid succession to capture the X Prize will be made in late September. The problems that appeared during the June 21 flight are meanwhile described as less dramatic than had first seemed; e.g. the loss of the primary trimming system lasted for only 3 seconds. There is a rule that any attempts to go for the Prize must be announced 60 days in advance, thus the gap before the next flights. The Rutan team plans three launches within the specified 2-week window because there is a chance that the first one will not reach the 100-km mark: ballast representing two passengers has to accompany the pilot during the flight which raises the envelope significantly. There is some possibility that during the 2nd flight a real passenger may be on board.
SpaceShipOne reaches 100.1 km - but major technical problem delays attempt for X PrizeThey did it - barely: The first attempt to reach space with Scaled Composites' SpaceShipOne on June 21 was successful, as a peak altitude of 100.124 km was reached and 100 km is generally regarded as the edge of space. But a major system failure during ascent had caused SS1 to start rolling and veer offcourse and miss its target altitude of 110 km. The primary trim mechanism is now being taken apart (a back-up system had saved the day), and before the problem has not been solved, no further space flights will take place. Thus the hunt for the X Prize remains open a bit longer: To get it the same space vehicle has to reach 100 km twice, with the pilot plus two passengers on board (or ballast equivalent to two passengers) and within two weeks.Still joy over the remarkable achievement prevailed on day one of what clearly is a new era in manned space flight (although SS1 pilot Mike Melvill later confessed that he had feared for his life). "The world witnessed the dawn of a new space age today, as investor and philanthropist Paul G. Allen and Scaled Composites launched the first private manned vehicle beyond the Earth's atmosphere," said the offical press release: "The successful launch demonstrated that the final frontier is now open to private enterprise. Under the command of test pilot Mike Melvill, SpaceShipOne reached a record breaking altitude of 328,491 feet (approximately 62 miles or 100 km), making Melvill the first civilian to fly a spaceship out of the atmosphere and the first private pilot to earn astronaut wings. 'This flight begins an exciting new era in space travel,' said Paul G. Allen, sole sponsor in the SpaceShipOne program. 'Burt Rutan and his team at Scaled Composites are part of a new generation of explorers who are sparking the imagination of a huge number of people worldwide and ushering in the birth of a new industry of privately funded manned space flight.' The historic flight also marks the first time an aerospace program has successfully completed a manned mission without government sponsorship. 'Today's flight marks a critical turning point in the history of aerospace,' said Scaled Composites founder and CEO Burt Rutan. 'We have redefined space travel as we know it.'" |
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ISS UpdateAn EVA has succeeded in the 2nd attempt to bring one of the ISS gyros back on, while NASA is restructuring. NASA Release on the "transformation" and coverage of July 8: SC. July 5: SpaceRev. July 2: FT, ST. July 1: HC, AFP, New Sci., FT (OpEd), SC, ST. |
June 30:
HC,
SC.
June 28:
Science Now,
SpaceRev,
SN,
AP,
ST,
Welt.
June 27:
FT.
June 26:
FT,
HC,
ST,
Welt.
June 25:
SN,
FT,
HC,
BBC,
AP,
ST
(other story),
NZ,
RP.
June 24:
SN,
ABC,
SR,
AFP,
SC
ST.
June 23:
FT,
AP,
SC,
ST
(other story),
June 22:
HC.
June 21:
FT.
The HST crisis - a paper by Meylan & al. on the high-quality scientific impact of the HST and coverage of June 23: UPI, AP. |
Fire threatened Mt. Graham observatories, has stabilized for nowA wildfire threatening the Large Binocular Telescope (LBT) at Mount Graham, Arizona came within 650 meters of the observatory on July 6th, but firefighters halted its progress: S&T Earlier: AP, S&T, ST, RP.Spitzer captures our Galaxy's twinOur Milky Way galaxy might look a lot like a new image by NASA's Spitzer Space Telescope of the spiral galaxy NGC 7331: a paper by Smith & al., JPL Release, PhotoJournal.Gravity Probe B a month away from science phase - the Initialization and Orbit Checkout (IOC) phase of the mission has been extended to 90 days: Status. Optical interferometer images galaxy nucleus in the spiral galaxy NGC 1068: ESO PR. Supernova Spectrograph Sees First LightThe Nearby Supernova Factory, an international collaboration of astronomers and astrophysicists, has announced that SNIFS, the Supernova Integral Field Spectrograph, achieved "first light" on June 8: LBNL Press Release.A point source has appeared in the remnant of SN 1986J, either a neutron star or a black hole - never has such a source been seen so early after the explosion: NRAO Press Release, SC, NZ, Welt. A white dwarf with an exposed burned-out nuclear reactor, showing hardly any H or He: PPARC and Uni T�bingen Press Releases, SC, BdW. Strange behavior of PolarisThe current pole star is highly variable on more than one time scale: Ast., S&T.How fat stars grow - in giant accretion disks and not by merging: ESO PR, SC, NZ. Starformation burst in nebula RCW49: U. Wisc. PR, NSU, BdW. Two new interstellar moleculeshave been discovered by radio astronomers - Propenal and Propanal point to probable pathways for chemical evolution in space: NRAO Press Release.A new distance estimate to the Veil nebula based on stellar absorption: JHU Press Release, Ast., S&T. Bizarre light effects in the Eta Car nebula: S&T. The first detection of molecular nitrogen in the ISM has been accomplished by FUSE: JHU Release. Deuterium measured: Univ. of CO PR. A fifth arm of the Milky WayRadio observation of hydrogen motions could be interpreted that way: S&T, New Sci., AFP.A remnant of a gamma-ray burst in our galaxy? That's what some think of nebula W 49B: Chandra picture, S&T. A medium-sized black hole in another galaxy? Something's going on in Holmberg II: CfA Press Release, BBC, SC. A galaxy gets stripped bareof its star-forming material by its violent ongoing encounter with the hot gas in the center of the Virgo galaxy cluster: NOAO Press Release.Where did the 'missing' dwarf galaxies go? Galaxy formation theories predict them: U. Chicago PR, SciAm. When & where did the first stars appear? Different indicators have been reconciled: U. Chicago PR. Galaxy at z=6.535: NOAO PR. Early fat blazar: McDonald Obs., Stanford PRs, SC. Nuclear physics experiment makes oldest stars 1 Gyr olderBut the age of the Universe is not affected, only the ages of the oldest globular clusters: a paper by Imbriani & al., an INFN Press Release [SR], the homepage of the LUNA experiment and coverage by BBC and BdW. Top quark a bit, Higgs a lot heavier: Rochester PR, Kwork. Dark Matter, Dark Energy all the same? Vanderbilt PR. How constant are the constants of Nature? New Sci.What the Big Bang "sounded" like has been created from the power spectrum of the CMBR and its (calculated) temporal evolution: Virginia PR, page w/files, New Sci., BBC, SC, BdW. What size is the Universe? NSU, SC. And what topology? BdW. Subaru/XMM-Newton Deep Survey finds a million galaxies, providing a comprehensive population census of galaxies from the early Universe to the present: NAOJ Press Release. What's the true color of the UDF? A paper by Wherry & al. and an NYU visualitzation. More UDF analysis: HST Nugget, S&T, SC. Analyzing GOODS: ESO PR, S&T. |
Thomas Gold, Cornell astronomer and brilliant scientific gadfly, dead at 84Thomas "Tommy" Gold, a brilliant and controversial figure in 20th century science and professor emeritus of astronomy at Cornell University, died June 22 after a long battle with heart disease: Cornell PR, Ast., Guardian.Cosmonaut Andrian Nikolayev, once longest in space, dies - he had followed Gagarin and Titov into space in 1962: CollectSpace, AFP, ST. Sir Patrick Moore had a severe Salmonella infection - and missed presenting "The Sky at Night" for the first time in 47 years: BBC. The first results from MOST(a Canadian Space Agency mission) include the detection of a strong 'pulse' in a young adult star called eta Bootis, and a bad case of stellar acne and hyperactivity in a 'pre-teen' version of the Sun, kappa 1 Ceti - and a distinct lack of pulsations by Procyon: UBC Press Release (earlier), Ast., SPX.LISA Pathfinder contract signed - the s/c will demonstrate technologies that will be necessary to detect gravitational waves in space: BBC. Camera to shoot first direct images of exoplanetsThe SDI (Simultaneous Differential Imager) will be used on two big telescopes in Arizona and Chile: UA Press Release [SN], BdW.Did Hubble find 100 new exoplanets with the transit method? This bold claims needs confirmation which will take time: BBC. HET finds its first exoplanet - the success serves as proof-of-concept that the Texas telescope, combined with its High Resolution Spectrograph instrument, is on track to become a major player in the hunt for other worlds: a paper by Cochran & al., a special page and an McDonald Obs. PR. Discovery of a unique pair of newborn brown dwarfsThey are orbiting each other at a remarkably wide separation - all previously known pairs of brown dwarfs are relatively close to each other, less than half the distance of Pluto from the Sun, but the brown dwarfs in the new pair are much farther apart, about six times the distance of Pluto from the Sun: CfA Press Release, New Sci., BdW. Brown dwarf masses determined in pair: ESO PR.When forming stars stop accreting - the peak age for planet formation is around 1 to 3 million years: CfA Press Release. Lots of asteroids around Tau Ceti? PPARC PR [SN], RP. Similarities between Earth's ocean currents and Jupiter's bands beg the question of whether the phenomena are rooted in similar physical forces: USF Press Release. Venus now bright in the morning skyone month after the transit: SC. The "Top of the World Transit of Venus Expedition": Homepage. Getting the AU from photographs: page by Fischer. How the ESO AU from the VT was rigged: Communication # 7, special site. The VT-floods nonsense: Bad Astronomy.Jupiter is April 2004 as imaged - and processed - by G�hrken. Aurorae on May 29/30: Ueberschaer. The story of Hapkeit: PSRD. How the Sudbury impact turned over the Earth's crust1.8 billion years ago, bringing very deep stuff to the surface: U. Toronto PR [SR], Wired, SC.Asteroid (302) Clarissa seems to have a moon, an occultation suggests: IOTA Message, Richmond report, S&T. Asteroid radar echos: Ast. Toutatis returns: SC. Impact crater in Texas? AP. Darkness after KT/B hit: Purdue PR. How the 2004 Bootids worked is summarized in an IMO Shower Circular. Trail of a German fireball: pictures. Meteorite hits house in NZ: Guardian. Park Forest trajectory calculated: Ast.
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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
