Nasa Rover Curiosity: New Zealand Kiwi Sighting On Mars

There aren't many places intrepid Kiwi travellers haven't set foot on in this world and now they're moving on to others.

A New Zealander following the travels of Nasa's Mars rover Curiosity has unearthed possible evidence of a Kiwi hiding on the red planet.

Ned Walker, a New Zealander living in Australia, said he was surprised at the find, but it was unmistakable.

"I have a huge interest in the Mars Curiosity Rover and I like to look at the raw images Nasa uploads onto its site each day from the rover's cameras.

‘‘I was amazed to find in today's raw images what can only be described a Kiwi." Walker thought the "monumental find", would be of interest to all New Zealanders.

The picture shows a shadow cast by a martian rock that looks like the very distinctive native New Zealand bird.

The rover Curiosity landed on Mars in August so has only just started beaming images from the surface back to Earth.

It's older brother, Opportunity, has been on the planet since 2004, without finding any Kiwis or other shadow figures!

Nasa's online publication of the Kiwi picture.

Orbital Rolls Antares to NASA Pad To Prepare for Hold down Test

Orbital Sciences Corp. on Oct. 1 rolled the first stage of its Antares rocket out to the launch pad at NASA’s Wallops Island Flight Facility to prepare for a series of tests that, if successful, will clear the way for the company to begin routine cargo deliveries to the international space station sometime next year.

Orbital wanted to move the Antares stage to the pad Sept. 27, but a power problem with a transporter vehicle used to haul the rocket from its hangar to the pad, coupled with expectations of foul weather on the Virginia coast during the weekend, prompted the company to delay rollout until Oct. 1, spokesman Barron Beneski said.

Orbital holds a $1.9 billion NASA contract signed in 2008 that calls for eight cargo flights to the space station.

Orbital will deliver that cargo with its unmanned Cygnus space freighter, which Antares will loft to low Earth orbit from Wallops.

Before it can collect on the delivery contract, however, Orbital has to complete a hold-down test of the Antares first stage, then conduct two Antares demonstration flights out of Wallops.

The first-stage hold-down test will take place at the pad sometime in the next four to five weeks, Orbital said in its Oct. 1 press release.

In the hold-down test, the rocket core’s two liquid engines — Soviet-vintage NK-33s refurbished by Sacramento, Calif.-based Aerojet and rebranded as AJ-26s — will be lit for about 30 seconds.

Antares would have its maiden flight a month after a successful hold-down test, Orbital said Oct. 1.

Assuming a successful test flight, a full-up Antares-Cygnus stack would be cleared to fly a demonstration cargo run to the space station before the end of the year, Orbital said.

In that mission, Cygnus would deliver 550 kilograms of freight and relieve the outpost of about 1,000 kilograms of trash, Orbital said.

Antares will launch all of its space station resupply missions from Pad 0-A at the Mid-Atlantic Regional Spaceport (MARS), a facility at the southern tip of Wallops Island that is operated by the state-funded Virginia Commercial Spaceflight Authority.

Because MARS and Pad 0-A are on a NASA range, the agency had to give its approval for Orbital to begin operations at the launch pad.

ESA Ariane 5 ECA Lifts Indian European Telecom Satellites into Orbit

Europe’s Ariane 5 ECA rocket on Sept. 28 successfully placed Indian and European telecommunications satellites into transfer orbit, with both satellites reported healthy and on the way to final position.

In its 51st consecutive success and the fifth of seven liftoffs scheduled this year, the Ariane 5 ECA exceeded its previous record for the mass of payload deposited into geostationary transfer orbit.

GSAT-10

The two satellites — India’s GSAT-10 and Luxembourg-based SES’s Astra-2F — together weighed 9,367 kilograms at launch.

The adaptors and dispenser platform added slightly more than 800 kilograms, bringing the total mass separated in orbit to 10,177 kilograms.

The Arianespace consortium of Evry, France, and Ariane 5 prime contractor Astrium Space Transportation are making incremental improvements to Ariane 5.

In November, European Space Agency governments are expected to decide whether to complete development of a new upper stage that would further increase performance to geostationary orbit by about 20 percent starting in 2017.

Built for the Indian Space Research Organisation (ISRO), which is India’s space agency and doubles as its satellite operator and satellite services vendor, GSAT-10 weighed 3,400 kilograms at launch. It carries 12 C-band, six extended C-band and 12 Ku-band transponders, and is designed to operate for 15 years.

GSAT-10 also carries a navigation payload as part of India’s Gagan GPS augmentation system.

The United States, Europe and Japan have similar overlays, which validate signals delivered by the U.S. GPS constellation of satellites in medium Earth orbit through payloads on geostationary satellites operating 36,000 kilometers over the equator.

ISRO said in a Sept. 30 statement that the maneuvers to bring the satellite to final geostationary position were proceeding on schedule. GSAT-10 will be operated at 83 degrees east.

Astra-2F is the first of four SES satellites being built by EADS, Astrium Satellites of Europe to replace aging SES direct-broadcast spacecraft over Europe.

Astra-2F, weighing nearly 6,000 kilograms at launch, is designed to deliver 13 kilowatts of power to its Ku- and Ka-band payload. It will operate at 28.2 degrees east.

The Ka-band will be used as part of SES’s cautious entry into satellite-delivered consumer broadband service in Europe.

The company already has some 70,000 customers using Ku-band for broadband access, and is adding Ka-band to its new Astra satellites over Europe to test the waters for a higher-speed service.

CME: Coronal Mass Ejection Image

A long filament of solar material that had been hovering in the sun's atmosphere, or corona, erupted out into space. 

The coronal mass ejection, or CME, traveled at over 900 miles per second.

Titan Shows Surprising Seasonal Changes

Detailed observations of Saturn's moon Titan have now spanned 30 years, covering an entire solar orbit for this distant world.

Dr. Athena Coustenis from the Paris-Meudon Observatory in France has analyzed data gathered over this time and has found that the changing seasons of Titan affect it more than previously thought.

Coustenis explains, "As with Earth, conditions on Titan change with its seasons.

We can see differences in atmospheric temperatures, chemical composition and circulation patterns, especially at the poles.

For example, hydrocarbon lakes form around the north polar region during winter due to colder temperatures and condensation.

Also, a haze layer surrounding Titan at the northern pole is significantly reduced during the equinox because of the atmospheric circulation patterns.

This is all very surprising because we didn't expect to find any such rapid changes, especially in the deeper layers of the atmosphere."

The main cause of these cycles is solar radiation. This is the dominant energy source for Titan's atmosphere, breaking up the nitrogen and methane present to create more complex molecules, such as ethane, and acting as the driving force for chemical changes.

Titan is inclined at around 27 degrees, similar to the Earth, meaning that the cause of seasons - sunlight reaching different areas with varying intensity due to the tilt - is the same for both worlds.

Coustenis says, "It's amazing to think that the Sun still dominates over other energy sources even as far out as Titan, over 1.5 billion kilometers from us."

To draw these conclusions data was analyzed from several different missions, including Voyager 1 (1980), the Infrared Space Observatory (1997), and Cassini (2004 onwards), complemented by ground-based observations.

Each season on Titan spans around 7.5 years, while it takes 29.5 years for Saturn to orbit the Sun, so data has now been gathered for an entire Titan year, encapsulating all seasons.

Coustenis explains why it is important to investigate this distant moon: "Titan is the best opportunity we have to study conditions very similar to our own planet in terms of climate, meteorology and astrobiology and at the same time a unique world on its own, a paradise for exploring new geological, atmospheric and internal processes."

Energetic Space Tornadoes hold the key to Solar Mystery

A team of European scientists has discovered super-hot and super-fast tornados on the Sun, which may help answer a number of outstanding questions in the realm of physics.

Writing in the journal Nature, they report that these `magnetic tornadoes reach speeds of up to 10,000 kilometres per hour, completely dwarfing anything found on Earth.

For images and videos visit www.solartornado.info 

In fact the fastest recorded tornado on Earth only reached speeds of approximately 486 km per hour, and was by no means an example of a common occurrence.

These magnetic tornadoes on the Sun, created by rotating magnetic field structures which force plasma to move in spirals, are not only common but may hold the answer to a long-standing physics conundrum: why the surface of the Sun is cooler than its outermost atmospheric layer.

Think of any fire and it is common knowledge (and sense) that the closer one gets to the fire, the hotter it gets.

The Sun however doesn't quite follow this logic. Its central core is an amazing 15,000,000 degrees Celsius and its surface cools to 5,500 degrees Celsius - following the logic that the further away, the cooler it gets.

The Sun cools to a mere 4,300 degrees Celsius to where a layer of the Sun's atmosphere, the photosphere, meets the chromosphere. In the chromosphere, however, things become topsy-turvy.

When the chromosphere begins to merge with the Sun's outermost atmospheric layer, the corona, the temperature rises to 100,000 degrees Celsius and continues to increase to a scorching 2,000,000 degrees Celsius in the part of the corona that is farthest from the Sun.

This, almost accordion-like sequence of heat, has puzzled many scientists. A puzzle which this recent discovery of magnetic tornadoes may have solved.

Professor Robertus Erdélyi, head of the Solar Physics and Space Plasma Research Centre (SP2RC) of the University of Sheffield's School of Mathematics and Statistics explains: 'One of the major problems in modern astrophysics is why the atmosphere of a star, like our own Sun, is considerably hotter than its surface?

Imagine, that you climb a mountain, e.g. a munro in the Scottish highlands, and it becomes hotter as you go higher and higher.

'It is understood that the energy originates from below the Sun's surface, but how this massive amount of energy travels up to the solar atmosphere surrounding it is a mystery.'

'We believe we have found evidence in the form of rotating magnetic structures - solar tornadoes - that channel the necessary energy in the form of magnetic waves to heat the magnetised solar plasma.'

'We report here the discovery of ubiquitous magnetic solar tornadoes and their signature in the hottest areas of the Sun's atmosphere where the temperature is a few millions of degree kelvin, about thousands of kilometres from the Sun's surface. This is a major step in the field.'

It is estimated that there are as many as 11,000 of these magnetic tornadoes above the Sun's surface at any time, and each one more than 1,600 km wide. Despite their number and size, they have never been seen until now.

Read the full article at EU CORDIS

Read more info on Space Tornadoes here at Institute of Theoretical Physics, University Oslo

ESA Twin Galileo GPS satellites fueled and ready for launch

Galileo FM3 in the clean room at Europe's Spaceport, French Guiana. The fueling process has begun ahead of the next Galileo launch in early October 2012.

The twin Galileo satellites are now fully fuelled and mated together atop the upper stage that will haul them most of the way up to their final orbit.

The launch is now planned for the evening of 12 October.

Technicians donned protective suits to fill the two satellites’ tanks with hydrazine fuel, used to maintain the satellites’ attitude and orbital position during their planned 12-year lifetime.

Rather than carry a significant amount of extra fuel to insert themselves into their planned orbits – like typical telecommunications satellites or Galileo’s US GPS equivalents – the Galileo satellites are transported to medium orbit by the Fregat fourth stage of their Soyuz ST-B launcher.

Doing without this extra fuel and orbital thrusters means that Galileo satellites are small enough to be launched in pairs aboard the Soyuz – or in fours by the new Ariane 5 variant currently being prepared.

The first two of four Galileo In-Orbit Validation satellites were launched on 21 October 2011.

Credits: ESA – P. Carril

The Galileo satellites are attached to a special dispenser that holds them securely in position during launch, before pyrotechnic mechanisms release them sideways in opposite directions once their set 23 222 km altitude is reached.

The aluminium plates on each side of the satellites are temporary additions to protect their delicate solar panels; these will be removed later.

The combined satellites, dispenser and Fregat upper stage will now be carefully checked ahead of the next major milestone, the fitting of the protective launch fairing on Thursday.

The mission’s satellite launch readiness review will begin at the start of the following week.

If that goes well, the combined ‘Upper Composite’ will be moved from the Fregat Integration Building to the launch pad, where it will be attached to the Soyuz launcher.