Prof Jean Pierre Bibring (CNES) ESA Rosetta science team leader at the ESA update broadcast revealing new pictures from Philae lander sitting on the Comet 67/P.
The Philae is sitting close to a rocky cliff like structure, with 2 legs out of three on firm surface. The surface appears to be rocky not powdery.
The instruments on Philae are firing up to gather as much science data as possible while the onboard matteries are running.
Given that the Philae may be sitting on partial shade there is some doubt as to whether the solar panels can be deployed to extend the power cycle of the instruments' data gathering.
Prof Ulamec (DLR) of the ESA Rosetta team shows the approx area (the blue diamond) that the team believe Philae is located, on the comet.
There is some concern that is in the shade of a cliff-like structure.
The ESA team are under great pressure to produce pictures and data from the comet and this is clearly showing up in the professional but sleep deprived presentations.
Short animated sequence showing Philae leaving Rosetta on its descent to Comet 67/P.
This image from Rosetta shows a tiny dot that is the Philae lander in transit to comet 67/P.
This is a composite picture made up of the others (above) showing an almost panaramic view around Philae.
Four-image mosaic of Comet 67P/C-G on 30 October. Credits: ESA /Rosetta /NAVCAM
The mosaic comprises four individual NAVCAM images taken on 30 October when the Rosetta spacecraft was 26.8 km from the centre of the comet.
The image resolution at this distance is 2.27 m/pixel, and thus each 1024 x 1024 frame covers 2.3 km at the comet. The slightly cropped mosaic covers 4.0 x 3.7 km.
Even at this increased distance from the nucleus, the time between the four NAVCAM images means that it is difficult to make a completely accurate mosaic.
Thus, as always, caution is needed in interpreting some features on the surface and faint emission around the nucleus.
The four individual images that make up this mosaic are provided here.
The centre of the landing site is located roughly in the top centre, close to the horizon in this viewing angle; check against this image to help with orientation.
The large depression that characterises the smaller lobe of the comet can be seen in the right-hand side at top right, while parts of the larger lobe can be seen in the lower half, with the still unseen portion of the comet again cast in dramatic shadow.
The ESA Rosetta team says it will attempt to land the first spacecraft on a comet on Nov. 12.
It says the maneuver will take about seven hours starting from the moment its unmanned probe Rosetta releases the 100-kilogram lander at 0835 GMT (0335 EST).
Because of the 28 minutes it takes the signal to travel back to Earth, confirmation of a successful landing won't arrive until about shortly after 1600 GMT (1100 EST).
ESA said in a statement Friday that it has a backup plan in case of a problem with the preferred landing site.
Scientists hope the decade-long mission to examine comet 67P/Churyumov-Gerasimenko will help them learn more about the origins and evolution of objects in the universe.
Site J was chosen unanimously over four other candidate sites as the primary landing site because the majority of terrain within a square kilometre area has slopes of less than 30ยบ relative to the local vertical and because there are relatively few large boulders.
The area also receives sufficient daily illumination to recharge Philae and continue surface science operations beyond the initial 64-hour battery-powered phase.
Researchers at the Space Telescope Science Institute (STScI) which runs the Hubble Space Telescope program, have found that there continues to be a gap between the number of projects given the go-ahead by male principle investigators (PIs) versus those headed by females.
Principle Investigators (PIs) are typically listed as the lead on proposals and when they are male, the researchers report, the chances are greater that their project will be approved.
In their paper uploaded to the preprint server arXiv (soon to be published in Publications of the Astronomical Society of the Pacific) the researchers note that efforts have been made to get rid of gender bias, but there still appears to be room for improvement.
It's not easy getting time on Hubble, researchers must form teams and then come up with something relevant and interesting to study.
After that, they have to write a proposal and submit it to STScI, after review the proposal is accepted or rejected, only a quarter of those submitted wind up getting telescope time.
Unfortunately, it seems that the odds are diminished even further if the PI is female. Not by much, the researchers report, just by four or five projects each proposal cycle, but that's enough to cause concern, especially in light of the fact that program officials have been trying to eliminate such perceived bias.
They've tried giving talks to reviewers, to explain the problem in the hopes it will cause them to be less biased, they've tried moving team members name to the back page, and even using just an initial for the first name of the PI. None of its worked, and the researchers don't know why.
They acknowledge that it's possible that female led proposals are simply not as interesting or as well thought out or written, in some cases, but also point out that very few if any proposals are written by only female teams, they're all filled with both men and women. Gender appears to only play a role for the PI.
The researchers have been studying the problem for two years, and are still mystified by the lack of change, they note that the problem is more pronounced when the PI is more senior, the difference is smaller for recent graduates, suggesting that the problem may solve itself given time.
They also note that Hubble isn't the only program with the problem, some small studies have suggested that female led proposals meet with less success on other observatories as well.
The find is exciting in itself, but it also bodes well for the spacecraft's search for orbital debris to prepare for its close encounter with the system in July 2015.
Most of Pluto's moons were discovered while New Horizons was under development, or already on its way.
Mission planners are thus concerned that there could be moons out there that aren't discovered yet, moons that could pose a danger to the spacecraft if it ended up in the wrong spot at the wrong time.
That's why the team is engaging in long-range views to see what else is lurking in Pluto's vicinity.
"We're thrilled to see it, because it shows that our satellite-search techniques work, and that our camera is operating superbly, but it's also exciting just to see a third member of the Pluto system come into view, as proof that we're almost there," stated science team member John Spencer, of the Southwest Research Institute.
In July, researchers using the Hubble Space Telescope began a full-scale search for a suitable Kuiper Belt Object, which would be one of trillions of icy or rocky objects beyond Neptune's orbit.
Flying past a KBO would provide more clues as to how the Solar System formed, since these objects are considered leftovers of the chunks of matter that came together to form the planets.
Watch the difference: Pluto’s moon Hydra stands out in these images taken by the New Horizons spacecraft on July 18 and 20, 2014. Credit: NASA /Johns Hopkins University Applied Physics Laboratory /Southwest Research Institute
ESA' s Rosetta lander Philae will target Site J, an intriguing region on Comet 67P/Churyumov–Gerasimenko that offers unique scientific potential, with hints of activity nearby, and minimum risk to the lander compared to the other candidate sites.
Site J is on the ‘head’ of the comet, an irregular shaped world that is just over 4 km across at its widest point.
The decision to select Site J as the primary site was unanimous.
The backup, Site C, is located on the ‘body’ of the comet.
The 100 kg lander is planned to reach the surface on 11 November, where it will perform indepth measurements to characterise the nucleus in situ, in a totally unprecedented way.
But choosing a suitable landing site has not been an easy task.
“As we have seen from recent close-up images, the comet is a beautiful but dramatic world, it is scientifically exciting, but its shape makes it operationally challenging,” says Stephan Ulamec, Philae Lander Manager at the DLR German Aerospace Center.
“None of the candidate landing sites met all of the operational criteria at the 100% level, but Site J is clearly the best solution.”
“We will make the first ever in situ analysis of a comet at this site, giving us an unparalleled insight into the composition, structure and evolution of a comet,” says Jean-Pierre Bibring, a lead lander scientist and principal investigator of the CIVA instrument at the IAS in Orsay, France.
“Site J in particular offers us the chance to analyse pristine material, characterise the properties of the nucleus, and study the processes that drive its activity.”
The race to find the landing site could only begin once Rosetta arrived at the comet on 6 August, when the comet was seen close-up for the first time. By 24 August, using data collected when Rosetta was still about 100 km from the comet five candidate regions had been identified for further analysis.
Since then, the spacecraft has moved to within 30 km of the comet, affording more detailed scientific measurements of the candidate sites. In parallel, the operations and flight dynamics teams have been exploring options for delivering the lander to all five candidate landing sites.
Over the weekend, the Landing Site Selection Group of engineers and scientists from Philae’s Science, Operations and Navigation Centre at France’s CNES space agency, the Lander Control Centre at DLR, scientists representing the Philae Lander instruments and ESA’s Rosetta team met at CNES, Toulouse, France, to consider the available data and to choose the primary and backup sites.
An artist’s impression of a Type Ia supernova, the explosion of a white dwarf locked in a binary system with a companion star. While other types of supernovas are the explosive demises of massive stars, several times more massive than the Sun, Type Ia supernovas are the end product of their less massive counterparts. Low-mass stars, with masses similar to the Sun’s, end their lives gently, puffing up their outer layers and leaving behind a compact white dwarf. Due to their high density, white dwarfs can exert an intense gravitational pull on a nearby companion star, accreting mass from it until the white dwarf reaches a critical mass that then sparks a violent explosion. Credit: ESA/ATG medialab/C. Carreau
While scanning the sky to measure the positions and movements of stars in our Galaxy, ESA's Gaia satellite has discovered its first stellar explosion in another galaxy far, far away.
This powerful event, now named Gaia14aaa, took place in a distant galaxy some 500 million light-years away, and was revealed via a sudden rise in the galaxy's brightness between two Gaia observations separated by one month.
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ESA Gaia, which began its scientific work on 25 July, repeatedly scans the entire sky, so that each of the roughly one billion stars in the final catalogue will be examined an average of 70 times over the next five years.
"This kind of repeated survey comes in handy for studying the changeable nature of the sky," comments Simon Hodgkin from the Institute of Astronomy in Cambridge, UK.
Many astronomical sources are variable: some exhibit a regular pattern, with a periodically rising and declining brightness, while others may undergo sudden and dramatic changes.
"As ESA's Gaia goes back to each patch of the sky over and over, we have a chance to spot thousands of 'guest stars' on the celestial tapestry," notes Dr Hodgkin.
"These transient sources can be signposts to some of the most powerful phenomena in the Universe, like this supernova."
Dr Hodgkin is part of Gaia's Science Alert Team, which includes astronomers from the Universities of Cambridge, UK, and Warsaw, Poland, who are combing through the scans in search of unexpected changes.
It did not take long until they found the first 'anomaly' in the form of a sudden spike in the light coming from a distant galaxy, detected on 30 August.
The same galaxy appeared much dimmer when Gaia first looked at it just a month before.
"We immediately thought it might be a supernova, but needed more clues to back up our claim," explains ลukasz Wyrzykowski from the Warsaw University Astronomical Observatory, Poland.
Other powerful cosmic events may resemble a supernova in a distant galaxy, such as outbursts caused by the mass-devouring supermassive black hole at the galaxy centre.
However, in Gaia14aaa, the position of the bright spot of light was slightly offset from the galaxy's core, suggesting that it was unlikely to be related to a central black hole.
Supernova Gaia14aaa and its host galaxy. Credit: M. Fraser /S. Hodgkin /L. Wyrzykowski /H. Campbell /N. Blagorodnova /Z. Kostrzewa-Rutkowska /Liverpool Telescope /SDSS
To confirm the nature of this supernova, the astronomers complemented the Gaia data with more observations from the ground, using the Isaac Newton Telescope (INT) and the robotic Liverpool Telescope on La Palma, in the Canary Islands, Spain.
A high-resolution spectrum, obtained on 3 September with the INT, confirmed not only that the explosion corresponds to a Type Ia supernova, but also provided an estimate of its distance.
This proved that the supernova happened in the galaxy where it was observed.
"This is the first supernova in what we expect to be a long series of discoveries with Gaia," says Timo Prusti, ESA's Gaia Project Scientist.
Supernovas are rare events: only a couple of these explosions happen every century in a typical galaxy, but they are not so rare over the whole sky, if we take into account the hundreds of billions of galaxies that populate the Universe.
In addition to supernovas, Gaia will discover thousands of transient sources of other kinds, stellar explosions on smaller scale than supernovas, flares from young stars coming to life, outbursts caused by black holes that disrupt and devour a nearby star, and possibly some entirely new phenomena never seen before.
"The sky is ablaze with peculiar sources of light, and we are looking forward to probing plenty of those with Gaia in the coming years," concludes Dr Prusti.
Artist’s conception of the ESA's Gaia telescope backdropped by a photograph of the Milky Way taken at the European Southern Observatory. Credit: ESA/ATG medialab; background: ESO/S. Brunier
Europe's powerful Milky Way mapper is facing some problems as controllers ready the Gaia telescope for operations.
It turns out that there is "stray light" bleeding into the telescope, which will affect how well it can see the stars around it. Also, the telescope optics are also not transmitting as efficiently as the design predicted.
Controllers emphasize the light problem would only affect the faintest visible stars, and that tests are ongoing to minimize the impact on the mission. Still, there will be some effect on how well Gaia can map the stars around it due to this issue.
"While there will likely be some loss relative to Gaia's pre-launch performance predictions, we already know that the scientific return from the mission will still be immense, revolutionizing our understanding of the formation and evolution of our Milky Way galaxy and much else," wrote the Gaia project team in a blog post.
Both of these problems have been known publicly since April, and the team has been working hard in recent months to pinpoint the cause. Of the two of them, it appears the team is having the most success with the optics transmission problems.
They have traced the issue to water vapor in the telescope that freezes (no surprise since Gaia operates between -100 degrees Celsius and -150 Celsius, or -148 Fahrenheit and -238 Fahrenheit.)
The team turned on heaters on Gaia (on its mirrors and focal plane) to get rid of the ice before turning the temperature back down so the telescope can do its work.
While some ice was anticipated (that's why the heaters were there) there was more than expected.
The spacecraft is also expected to equalize its internal pressure over time, sending out gases that again, could freeze and cause interference, so more of these "decontamination" procedures are expected.
Soyuz VS06, with Gaia space observatory, lifted off from Europe’s Spaceport, French Guiana, on 19 December 2013. Credit: ESA–S. Corvaja
The stray light problem is proving to be more stubborn.
The light waves from sunlight and brighter sources of light in the sky are likely moving around the sunshield and bleeding into the telescope optics, which was unexpected (but the team is now trying to model and explain.)
Perhaps it was more ice. The challenge is, there were no heaters placed into the thermal tent area that could be responsible for the issue, so the team at first considered moving the position of Gaia to have sunlight strike that area and melt the ice.
Simulations showed no safety problems with the idea, but "there is currently no plan to do so," the team wrote.
That's because some tests on ground equipment in European laboratories didn't show any strong evidence for or against layers of ice interfering with the stray light. So there didn't seem to be much point to doing the procedure.
So instead, the idea is to do "modified observing strategies" to collect the data and then tweaking the software on the spacecraft and on the ground to "best optimize the data we will collect," Gaia managers wrote.
"The stray light is variable across Gaia's focal plane and variable with time, and has a different effect on each of Gaia's science instruments and the corresponding science goals."
"Thus, it is not easy to characterise its impact in a simple way," they added. They predict, however, that a star at magnitude 20 (the limit of Gaia's powers) would see its positional accuracy mapping reduced by about 50%, while stars that are brighter would have less impact.
The team of scientists working at CERN's Large Hadron Collider (LHC) facility has reported to the press that the process of restarting the massive experimental mechanism has begun—though it won't finish until sometime next year.
The world's most complicated system of machines will have to be restarted in pieces to ensure that each is operating properly before the next can be brought online.
Though proving the existence of the Higgs boson was a major goal, and achieving it garnered a lot of headlines, the facility at CERN has made progress in other areas as well, the creation of quark, gluon plasma back in 2011, is but one example.
Now the facility is in the process of an upgrade, which has been in the planning stages for several years and will include upgrades to several pieces and parts of the facility that support the LHC as well as the main accelerator itself.
The team recognized that the facility had begun to suffer from diminishing returns and that many parts could be improved due to the development of new technology and improvements on old ways of doing things.
Thus, this past February the LHC, along with other parts and accelerators that feed it, was shut down.
The retooling has been forecast to total approximately $4.4 billion dollars.
Thus far, the team has successfully restarted the part they call the source—the piece of equipment responsible for stripping electrons off of hydrogen atoms for use in producing protons.
Next up the team plans to fire up Linac2, an accelerator whose job it is to give protons their initial push.
After that a booster will be started that will be used to push the protons even faster.
For the LHC to be used in its proper context, it must receive protons that are already moving exceedingly fast.
Team members have made much of the complete upgrade to the control system for the LHC, the part that integrates all of the systems and which of course will be central to a successful reboot.
They should know early on if there are any problems. In addition to swapping out parts for new and improved technology, technicians will also be replacing worn cables or other minor but necessary components.
If all goes well, the LHC should be ready and back in business sometime early next year. Projects in the pipeline include: ALICE, CMS, ATLAS and LHCb.
For those wondering who of 16 competing teams would walk away as top performers in the two-day DARPA Robotics Challenge in Florida over the weekend, the suspense is over.
The eight teams now have the opportunity to continue their work with the help ofDefense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA) funding and are to compete in the finals event where one team will net the $2 million prize at the end of 2014.
The Finals will require robots to attempt a circuit of consecutive physical tasks with degraded communications between the robots and their operators.
DARPA said that the 16 teams at this year's challenge in Miami represented a mix of government, academic and commercial backgrounds. They were not only from the United States, but also from South Korea and Japan.
SCHAFT's high scores were impressive as the DARPA Robotics Challenge (DRC), established to advance state of the art in humanoid robot competition, is considered as a baseline on the current state of robotics.
The event is a marker for assessing the evolution of robots in hazardous first-responder environments, a demonstration of what is so far possible in pushing technologies closer to the point where robots will help out in a range of rescue tasks quickly, efficiently and with minimal human interaction.
Artist's concept of NASA's Deep Impact spacecraft. Credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech
Ground controllers have been unable to communicate with NASA's long-lived Deep Impact spacecraft. Last communication with the spacecraft was on Aug. 8, 2013.
Deep Impact mission controllers will continue to uplink commands in an attempt to reestablish communications with the spacecraft.
Mission controllers postulate that there was an anomaly generated by the spacecraft's software which left the vehicle's computers in a condition where they are continuously rebooting themselves.
If this is the case, the computers would not continue to command the vehicle's thrusters to fire and hold attitude.
Lack of attitude hold makes attempts to reestablish communications more difficult because the orientation of the spacecraft's antennas is unknown.
It also brings into question the vehicle's electrical power status, as the spacecraft derives its power from a solar array that is fixed, with its cells pointing in one direction.
Deep Impact is history's most traveled deep-space comet hunter. It successfully completed its original mission and a subsequent extended mission.
One of the team members who successfully launched KickSat on Kickstarter has started a new project called "Pocket Spacecraft" with the aim of launching thousands of CD shaped "space craft" into space and landing them back on Earth or on the moon.
KickSat project was designed to allow anyone (for a small price) to put a tiny satellite aboard a rocket and have it launched and sent into an orbit around Earth.
That Kickstarter project reached its funding goals and is now scheduled for launch sometime later this year.
Upload a profile picture/avatar (left) or school, club or company pennant (middle) to a shared spacecraft, or customise the whole of your Earth or Lunar Scout personal spacecraft! (right)
In this new project, the team wants to give anyone who wishes to do so, the opportunity to send a craft to space and back, or more optimistically, to the moon.
At the heart of the project is the Pocket Spacecraft—it's shape and size is similar to a DVD only smaller and much thinner.
The idea is to pack thousands of them onto a craft that is itself put aboard a rocket.
Upon launch, some of the Pocket Spacecraft will be released into space where they will fall back to Earth—others will continue on to the moon where they will be set free to crash-land onto its surface.
Each Pocket Spacecraft is up for sale—those who wish to purchase one can upload pictures or messages to it, or even add some programming. Each has a solar panel on it, electronic circuitry and communications gear that will allow for its owner to track its movements with their cell phone.
Prices for the Pocket Spacecraft vary depending on whether the buyer wants their craft to fall back to Earth (Earth Scout-£99), or travel on to the moon (Lunar Scout-£199).
Other options are also available to allow for groups to share a craft.
Many of the craft are expected to survive falling to Earth—those falling to moon's surface, on the other hand will perish.
Pocket Mission Control will allow you to monitor your spacecraft telemetry (d), onboard apps (e), your training achievements (f), ground station status (g), and where your spacecraft is in space (h)
Those who sign up to the project and buy a craft will be able to watch as their Pocket Spacecraft is made, tested, packed and carried to a rocket for launch.
On its Kickstarter page, the team says they hope to collect the £290,000 goal needed for the project to proceed, and that if all goes as planned, would like to create a similar project for launching tiny craft to other planets in the solar system as well.
British scientists exploring the ocean floor in the Caribbean have discovered an "astounding" set of hydrothermal vents, the deepest anywhere in the world.
Deploying a remotely-operated vehicle (ROV) in the Cayman Trough, a giant underwater canyon, they stumbled across a previously-unknown site nearly 5000m below the surface.
Video pictures relayed live back to the research ship mounting the operation show spindly chimneys up to 10m high and belching out dark water - "a stunning sight", according to one scientist.
In the immense pressure of the sea three miles down, the ROV, known as ISIS, was gently steered around the vents, taking pictures and gathering samples.
Hydrothermal vents are among the strangest features of the deep ocean and their existence was not known until the 1970s. Since then they have been discovered at about 200 sites around the world including the Southern Ocean and the Atlantic.
The JPL team is one of many groups working on LISA, a joint European Space Agency and NASA mission proposal, which, if selected, would launch in 2020 or later.
In August of this year, LISA was given a high recommendation by the 2010 U.S. National Research Council decadal report on astronomy and astrophysics.
One of LISA's primary goals is to detect gravitational waves directly. Studies of these cosmic waves began in earnest decades ago when, in 1974, researchers discovered a pair of orbiting dead stars -- a type called pulsars -- that were spiraling closer and closer together due to an unexplainable loss of energy.
That energy was later shown to be in the form of gravitational waves. This was the first indirect proof of the waves, and ultimately earned the 1993 Nobel Prize in Physics.
LISA is expected to not only "hear" the waves, but also learn more about their sources -- massive objects such as black holes and dead stars, which sing the waves like melodies out to the universe as the objects accelerate through space and time.
The mission would be able to detect gravitational waves from massive objects in our Milky Way galaxy as well as distant galaxies, allowing scientists to tune into an entirely new language of our universe.
The proposed mission would amount to a giant triangle of three distinct spacecraft, each connected by laser beams. These spacecraft would fly in formation around the sun, about 20 degrees behind Earth. Each one would hold a cube made of platinum and gold that floats freely in space.
As gravitational waves pass by the spacecraft, they would cause the distance between the cubes, or test masses, to change by almost imperceptible amounts -- but enough for LISA's extremely sensitive instruments to be able to detect corresponding changes in the connecting laser beams.
"The gravitational waves will cause the 'corks' to bob around, but just by a tiny bit," said Glenn de Vine, a research scientist and co-author of the recent study at JPL. "My friend once said it's sort of like rubber duckies bouncing around in a bathtub."
The JPL team has spent the last six years working on aspects of this LISA technology, including instruments called phase meters, which are sophisticated laser beam detectors.
The latest research accomplishes one of their main goals -- to reduce the laser noise detected by the phase meters by one billion times, or enough to detect the signal of gravitational waves.
Japanese scientists have uncovered how thalidomide led to deformities in children born to mothers taking the drug in the 1950s and 1960s, according to a study released Friday.
The researchers at the Tokyo Institute of Technology have now unlocked the mechanism by which thalidomide -- an anti-nausea drug given to pregnant women that turned into one of the worst pharmaceutical disasters in history -- triggered the deformities in developing fetuses.
"Though scientists have proposed a number of hypotheses, the drug's mechanism of action has been a mystery until now," the researchers said.
In the study published in the March 12 issue of the journal Science, the researchers concluded that thalidomide causes deformities in developing limbs by inhibiting production of a protein called cereblon, which in turn produces enzymes needed for limb development.
The study, which used chick and zebrafish embryos, may lead to the development of safer alternatives for thalidomide, which is now being used for treatments of some cancers and for leprosy, the researchers said.
Thalidomide was launched in October 1957 and was sold in nearly 50 countries before being withdrawn little more than four years later after babies began showing the severe side effects of the drug.
Thalidomide, when taken by pregnant women, stunted the growth of fetal arms and legs, and also put the fetus at risk of ear and eye defects, and various other internal defects, including those of the heart, kidneys and digestive tract.
Around 10,000 children around the world were born with deformities, such as the absence of arms and legs, as a result of thalidomide.
The German Aerospace Centre and Bombardier Transportation are pooling their expertise in the area of railway vehicle research.
During a press conference at DLR's facility in Gottingen, Prof. Johann-Dietrich Worner, Chairman of the Executive Board of DLR, and Dr Klaus Baur, Chairman of the Management Board of Bombardier Transportation Germany, have signed a cooperation agreement aimed at long-term collaboration.
The terms of the contract include regular professional exchanges and provide for simpler commissioning of joint research and development work. The framework agreement covers an initial period up to 31 December 2014.
The main aim of the agreement is to jointly promote research and development into next-generation high-speed trains and to optimise the use of each party's expertise. Practical fields of collaboration are railway vehicle aerodynamics and aeroacoustics, dynamic stability, interior airflows and interior acoustics.
Lightweight vehicle construction, energy systems and energy management, issues regarding homologation and railway control systems, as well as safety systems, are also covered.
"In the medium-term we expect the creation of express trains that are more climate-friendly, more efficient, lighter and more comfortable," explained Prof. Worner during the signing ceremony.
"We are developing technologies for tomorrow's trains and identifying what could be technically feasible. However, only with a strong partner from private industry, such as the one we have found in Bombardier Transportation to an optimum degree, can we determine whether and how our ideas can actually be implemented in practice," continued Prof. Worner.
DLR was pleased to agree to Bombardier Transportations proposal to enter into a framework agreement, the DLR Chairman explained. He said that the Gottingen research site possesses a long tradition and an excellent level of expertise in the field of high-speed research. Over the next year, two key test facilities for high-speed vehicle construction are to be opened: a tunnel simulation facility that is globally unique and a crosswind test facility.
"DLR is an ideal research and development partner for Bombardier. We are world market leader in rail technology; DLR is the leading research institution in the area of mobility. This is an ideal combination for exchange between industry and science," emphasized Dr Klaus Baur, Chairman of the Management Board of Bombardier Transportation Germany.
"Both partners have excellent specialists, whose fields of activity outstandingly complement each other. We will use these abilities in close cooperation and for a systematic exchange of expert knowledge. The innovative strategy of Bombardier focuses on making rail traffic even more attractive, more economical and environmentally friendly. Together with DLR we will be able to recognise and set technical trends even earlier," continued Dr Baur.
In two special presentations, Prof. Andreas Dillmann, Executive Director of DLR's Institute of Aerodynamics and Flow Technology in Gottingen, and Dr Alexander Orellano, Manager, Centre of Competence in Aero- and Thermodynamics at Bombardier Transportation, presented the topics of railway transportation aerodynamics and high-speed research for the trains of the future.
Prof. Dillmann explained that a key safety aspect for high-speed trains is crosswind stability, especially with regard to double-deck trains as planned by DLR.
The forces acting upon high-speed trains are enormous, particularly in tunnels, on bridges or when there is oncoming traffic. For example, at a speed of 300 kilometres per hour, there is very little downforce on the leading vehicle of the train, so it could tip over if subjected to a strong crosswind.
Dr Orellano used the aerodynamic table developed by Bombardier Transportation to demonstrate the aerodynamic effects that act upon trains that are constructed using various techniques. Using a silver rotary switch, five construction variables can be adjusted for the table.
The user can then run a race against the ZEFIRO high-speed train developed by Bombardier and tested in DLR's facilities. In this way, users can understand which components of a train have an effect on aerodynamics.
With its five wind tunnels related to high-speed vehicle construction, DLR possesses a test facility portfolio that is unique in Europe. At DLR, the elements for tomorrow's trains come together in the 'Next Generation Train' project. The expertise of nine of DLR's institutes will be combined under the auspices of the DLR Institute for Vehicle Concepts in Stuttgart.
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