ESA SMOS Earth Monitoring satellite - Five Years in Orbit - Video

ESA’s SMOS satellite has clocked up more than one billion kilometres orbiting Earth to improve our understanding of our planet’s water cycle.

Marking its fifth birthday, all the data collected over land and ocean have been drawn together to show how moisture in the soil and salinity in the ocean change over the year.

The Earth Explorer SMOS mission was launched on 2 November 2009 from Plesetsk in Russia.

Carrying a novel sensor, it captures images of ‘brightness temperature’. These images correspond to microwave radiation emitted from Earth’s surface and can be related to soil moisture and ocean salinity, two key variables in Earth’s water cycle.

The animation above uses five years of SMOS data to show how, on average, moisture in the soil changes with the seasons around the world.

It illustrates how change is more pronounced at higher latitudes, but monsoon dynamics in the Indian subcontinent are also clearly visible.

The ‘Sahel transition’ region in Africa is well depicted and seasonal flooding in regions such as La Plata in Argentina and the Orinoco Basin in Veneuzela can also be seen.



Over oceans, measurements from SMOS, the longest continuous record from space, show monthly differences in sea-surface salinity with respect to the average salinity, and show large deviations in the tropical Pacific Ocean and in the Indian Ocean.

This is linked to the occurrence of La Niña, which is associated with cooler than normal sea-surface temperatures in the eastern Pacific, and the Indian Ocean Dipole, which describes sea-surface temperature differences between the eastern and western equatorial Indian Ocean.

While these results are of interest to understanding aspects of the water cycle, information from SMOS is being used for a number of practical applications.

In fact, 18 TB of SMOS data are distributed every year, of which around 13 TB are used by scientists and around 5 TB for near-realtime applications by operational users.

For example, integrating these accurate near-realtime observations into the European Centre for Medium-Range Weather Forecasts’ (ECMWF) system is helping to improve air temperature and humidity forecasts near the surface.

In addition, the inclusion of SMOS observations are helping to improve the prediction of rain.

ESA GALILEO: Satellite Recovered and Transmittting Navigation Signals

ESA's Galileo satellites are placed in medium orbits, at 23 222 km altitude along three orbital planes so that a minimum of four satellites will be visible to user receivers at any point on Earth once the constellation is complete. 

Credit: ESA

ESA’s fifth Galileo satellite, one of two delivered into a wrong orbit by VS09 Soyuz-Fregat launcher in August, has transmitted its first navigation signal in space on Saturday 29 November 2014.

It has reached its new target orbit and its navigation payload has been successfully switched on.

A detailed test campaign is under way now the satellite has reached a more suitable orbit for navigation purposes.

Recovery

The fifth and sixth Galileo satellites, launched together on 22 August, ended up in an elongated orbit travelling up to 25 900 km above Earth and back down to 13 713 km.

A total of 11 manoeuvres were performed across 17 days, gradually nudging the fifth satellite upwards at the lowest point of its orbit.

As a result, it has risen more than 3500 km and its elliptical orbit has become more circular.

“The manoeuvres were all normal, with excellent performance both in terms of thrust and direction,” explained Daniel Navarro-Reyes, ESA Galileo mission analyst.

“The final orbit is as we targeted and is a tribute to the great professionalism of all the teams involved.”

The commands were issued from the Galileo Control Centre by Space Opal, the Galileo operator, at Oberpfaffenhofen in Germany, guided by calculations from a combined flight dynamics team of ESA’s Space Operations Centre, ESOC, in Darmstadt, Germany and France’s CNES space agency.

The commands were uploaded to the satellite via an extended network of ground stations, made up of Galileo stations and additional sites coordinated by France’s CNES space agency.

Satellite manufacturer OHB also provided expertise throughout the recovery, helping to adapt the flight procedures.

Until the manoeuvres started, the combined ESA–CNES team maintained the satellites pointing at the Sun using their gyroscopes and solar sensors. This kept the satellites steady in space but their navigation payloads could not be used reliably.

In the new orbit, the satellite’s radiation exposure has also been greatly reduced, ensuring reliable performance for the long term.

Egmont National Park on New Zealand's North Island from orbit

Credit: KARI/ESA

Egmont National Park on New Zealand's North Island is pictured in this satellite image.

National parks protect forested areas from human activities that cause land degradation and deforestation.

The boundary between protected and non-protected areas is often very clear in satellite images, as we see here between the green, densely forested area and surrounding agricultural landscape.

The land here was first formally protected in 1881, within a 9.6 km radius of the mountain summit.

With high rainfall and a mild coastal climate, the park is home to a lush rainforest, with some plants unique to the park.

Halfway up the mountain slopes, the forest is sometimes called the 'Goblin Forest' for its gnarled trees and thick moss.

The mountain at the centre of the national park has two names: Mount Egmont and Mount Taranaki.

Taranaki is the original name given by the indigenous Māori people, while the name Egmont was given by British explorer James Cook after John Perceval, 2nd Earl of Egmont in 1770.

Many places in New Zealand have official dual names or, as in this case, alternate names in the original Māori and English (following colonisation by the British).

The mountain is considered an active volcano, although it has been dormant for over 150 years.

According to Māori mythology, Taranaki used to reside over 100 km farther east near other large volcanoes when a fight broke out over the female Mount Pihanga. Taranaki lost and fled west, carving the gorges of the Whanganui River along the way before stopping.

When the mountain peak is covered by clouds and mist, it is believed that Taranaki is weeping for Pihanga.

This image, also featured on the Earth from Space video programme, was acquired on 6 March 2013 by Korea's Kompsat-2 satellite.

Boeing X37B, US Top Secret Spy Plane lands after 674 days in Orbit

This June 16, 2012 file image from video made available by the Vandenberg Air Force Base shows an infrared view of the Boeing X-37B unmanned spacecraft landing at Vandenberg Air Force Base. 

The purpose of the U.S. military's space plane is classified, only fueling speculation about why it has been orbiting Earth for nearly two years on this, its third mission. 

The plane is expected to land this week at a Southern California Air Force base. 

Credit: AP Photo /Vandenberg Air Force Base

A top-secret space plane landed Friday at an Air Force base on the Southern California coast.

The plane spent nearly two years circling Earth on a classified mission. Known as the Boeing X-37B, it resembles a mini space shuttle.

It safely touched down at 9:24 a.m. Friday, officials at Vandenberg Air Force Base said.

Just what the plane was doing during its 674 days in orbit has been the subject of sometimes spectacular speculation.

Several experts have theorized it carried a payload of spy gear in its cargo bay.

Other theories sound straight out of a James Bond film, including that the spacecraft would be able to capture the satellites of other nations or shadow China's space lab.

In a written release announcing the return of the craft, the Air Force only said it had been conducting "on-orbit experiments."

The Boeing X-37B program has been an orphan of sorts, bouncing since its inception in 1999 between several federal agencies, NASA among them. It now resides under the Air Force's Rapid Capabilities Office.

The plane that landed Friday is one of two built by Boeing. This is the program's third mission, and began in December 2012.

The plane stands 9 1/2 feet tall and is just over 29 feet long, with a wingspan under 15 feet. It weighs 11,000 pounds and has solar panels that unfurl to charge its batteries once in orbit.

The Air Force said it plans to launch the fourth Boeing X-37B mission from Cape Canaveral, Florida, next year.

ESA Sentinel-1A Image: Lake County, Oregon from orbit

Credit: ESA

This image from Sentinel-1A was acquired over the Lake County in the US state of Oregon on 17 July.

Even though the northwestern United States receives plenty of rainfall, the 'high desert region' east of the Cascade Mountain Range is fairly dry.

Most crops require irrigation, such as the circles visible in this image from a centre pivot irrigation system.

Sentinel-1A's radar gathers information in either horizontal or vertical radar pulses, and colours were assigned to the different types.

Sentinel-1A satellite

In this image, rough surfaces, like vegetated areas, appear white and light blue while smoother surfaces are red and black.

Some of the black areas are, or once were, lakes. These lakes formed when glaciers melted after the last ice ages, but dried up as the climate became drier.

Running north–south through the centre of the image we see a line of evenly dispersed red dots.

These are reflections from metal towers holding power lines. While these structures are difficult to spot in optical imagery, their reflectivity makes them more visible to radar.

Launched in April, Sentinel-1A recently completed its commissioning phase, ensuring that the satellite, instruments, data acquisition and data processing procedures are working well.

During this phase, it manoeuvred eight times to avoid space debris.

The satellite is now fully operational delivering radar data for an array of services and scientific research.

ESA Ariane 5 Launch and Orbital insertion of Intelsat 30 and ARSAT-1

On 16 October 2014, Ariane 5 flight VA220 lifted off from Europe’s Spaceport in Kourou, French Guiana to place two telecommunications satellites, Intelsat-30/DLA-1 and Arsat-1, into their planned transfer orbits. 

Credit: ESA

An Ariane 5 has lifted off from Europe's Spaceport in Kourou, French Guiana and delivered two telecom satellites, Intelsat-30/DLA-1 and Arsat-1, into their planned orbits.

Launch of flight VA220 occurred on 16 October at 21:44 GMT (23:44 CEST, 18:44 local time).

Intelsat-30/DLA-1, with a mass of about 6320 kg and mounted with its launch vehicle adapter on top of Ariane's Sylda dual-payload carrying structure, was the first to be released 28 minutes into the mission.


On 16 October 2014, Ariane 5 flight VA220 lifted off from Europe’s Spaceport in French Guiana and delivered two telecom satellites, Intelsat-30/DLA-1 and Arsat-1, into their planned orbits. 

Credit: ESA/Arianespace

Following a series of burns controlled by Ariane's computer, the Sylda structure encasing Arsat-1 was then jettisoned. Arsat-1, with a mass of 2973 kg, was released into its own transfer orbit about six minutes after the first satellite.

Intelsat-30/DLA-1, owned and operated by Intelsat, will be positioned at 95°W longitude in geostationary orbit to provide telecommunications and direct-to-home broadcast services to Latin America. The satellite has a design life of about 15 years.

Arsat-1, owned by Arsat in Argentina, will be positioned at 71.8°W in geostationary orbit to provide direct-to-home television, Internet access services, data transmission and IP telephony to Argentina and neighbouring countries. It has a design life of 15 years.

The payload mass for this launch was 10 083 kg. The satellites totalled 9293 kg, with payload adapters and carrying structures making up the rest.

Flight VA220 was the 76th Ariane 5 mission.

ESA Space Station Astronaut 90 Minute Orbit Time-Lapse into 51 seconds Video

ISS crew member ESA's Alexander Gerst captured a complete orbit of Earth.

The station orbits the Earth roughly every 90 minutes and therefore passes from day to night, back to day in that time-period.

An Aurora Borealis can be seen in the night time portion of the video.

ESA Rosetta Night Time Excursion to reduce orbit to 20Kms

For the last two weeks, ESA's Rosetta has been orbiting comet comet 67P/C-G at a distance of about 30 km on the “Global Mapping Phase” (GMP), and is now set to go even lower.

The aim of the GMP was to gather high-resolution science data to help characterise the potential landing sites for Philae, while also continuing to monitor how the spacecraft responds to the environment of an active comet, before getting closer still.

The Rosetta team discussed whether to fly one complete orbit, the spacecraft conducted two seven-day-long half orbits at about 30 km, in different planes.

That is, on 10 September, the spacecraft was at the terminator plane (the boundary between day and night, which is itself the 06:00/18:00 plane), and performed a thruster burn to insert onto the 30-km circular orbit.

The orbital plane was then 60 degrees away from the Sun’s direction, such that the spacecraft orbited over areas of the comet in their ‘morning’ hours.

Seven days later, when the spacecraft was again on the terminator plane, it conducted another thruster burn to change the orbital plane such that it had the same characteristics as the previous orbit, but instead was flying over ‘afternoon’ areas of the comet.

Thus, from 18 September, the spacecraft was in a 28 km x 29 km orbit around the comet with an orbital period of 13 days 14 hours 59 minutes.

Check out the ESA Rosetta team blog here

NASA's Maven explorer arrives at Mars after one year transit

In this artist concept provided by NASA, the MAVEN spacecraft approaches Mars on a mission to study its upper atmosphere. 

It arrived on Sunday Sept. 21, 2014.

MAVEN's 442 million mile journey from Earth culminated in a dramatic engine burn, pulling the spacecraft into an elliptical orbit. 

The Maven mission is designed to simply orbit the planet, not land. Credit: AP Photo/NASA

NASA's Maven spacecraft arrived at Mars late Sunday after a 442 million-mile (711 million kilometer) journey that began nearly a year ago.

The robotic explorer fired its brakes and successfully slipped into orbit around the red planet, officials confirmed.

"This is such an incredible night," said John Grunsfeld, NASA's chief for science missions.

Members of the Mars Atmosphere and Volatile Evolution (MAVEN) team celebrate at the Lockheed Martin operations center in Littleton, Colorado, Sunday night, after getting confirmation that the spacecraft entered Mars' orbit.

Now the real work begins for the $671 million mission, the first dedicated to studying Mars' upper atmosphere.

Flight controllers in Colorado will spend the next six weeks adjusting Maven's altitude and checking its science instruments.

Then Maven will start probing the upper atmosphere of Mars. The spacecraft will conduct its observations from orbit; it's not meant to land.

Scientists believe the Martian atmosphere holds clues as to how Earth's neighbor went from being warm and wet billions of years ago to cold and dry.

That early wet world may have harbored microbial life, a tantalizing question yet to be answered.

NASA launched Maven last November from Cape Canaveral, the 10th U.S. mission sent to orbit the red planet.

Three earlier ones failed, and until the official word came of success late Sunday night, the entire team was on edge.

"I don't have any fingernails any more, but we've made it," said Colleen Hartman, deputy director for science at Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Maryland. "It's incredible."

The spacecraft was clocking more than 10,000 mph (16,000 kph) when it hit the brakes for the so-called orbital insertion, a half-hour process.

The world had to wait 12 minutes to learn the outcome, once it occurred, because of the lag in spacecraft signals given the 138 million miles (222 million kilometers) between the two planets on Sunday.

NASA Maven: Sensing Mars Atmosphere from orbit - Video

NASA's Mars Atmosphere and Volatile Evolution (MAVEN) mission will take measurements with its Neutral Gas and Ion Mass Spectrometer (NGIMS) that have never been collected before. Dr. James Garvin speaks to reporters.

ISS crew capture Milky Way from orbit

Image Credit: NASA

One of the Expedition 41 crew members aboard the Earth-orbiting International Space Station on Sept. 13, 2014 captured this image of a starry sky.

The white panel at left belonging to ESA's ATV-5 spacecraft, which is docked with the orbital outpost, obstructs the view of Scorpius.

The red star Antares is directly to the left of the bottom of the second ATV panel from the top.

The two stars that are close together and on the lower left of the photo comprise Shaula, the tip of the scorpion’s tail.

The open cluster close to Shaula is M7. The hardware at bottom right is part of one of the station's solar panels.

M7: Open Star Cluster in Scorpius

NASA Maven: Set to slide into orbit around Mars

NASA's MAVEN spacecraft is quickly approaching Mars on a mission to study its upper atmosphere. 

When it arrives on September 21, 2014, MAVEN's winding journey from Earth will culminate with a dramatic engine burn, pulling the spacecraft into an elliptical orbit.

On Sept. 21, 2014, the Mars Atmosphere and Volatile Evolution spacecraft will complete roughly 10 months of travel and enter orbit around the Red Planet.

The orbit-insertion maneuver will be carried out as the spacecraft approaches Mars, wrapping up an interplanetary journey of 442 million miles (711 million kilometers).

Six thruster engines will fire briefly for a “settling” burn that damps out deviations in pointing.

Then the six main engines will ignite two by two in quick succession and will burn for 33 minutes to slow the craft, allowing it to be captured in an elliptical orbit.

This milestone will mark the culmination of 11 years of concept and development for MAVEN, setting the stage for the mission’s science phase, which will investigate Mars as no other mission has.

“We’re the first mission devoted to observing the upper atmosphere of Mars and how it interacts with the sun and the solar wind,” said Bruce Jakosky, principal investigator for MAVEN at the University of Colorado in Boulder.

These observations will help scientists determine how much gas from Mars’ atmosphere has been lost to space throughout the planet’s history and which processes have driven that loss.

Procedures to line up MAVEN for proper orbit insertion began shortly after MAVEN launched in November 2013. These included two trajectory-correction maneuvers, performed in December 2013 and February 2014.

MAVEN's instrument payload

Calibration of the mission’s three suites of science instruments, the Particles and Fields Package, the Remote Sensing Package and the Neutral Gas and Ion Mass Spectrometer (NGIMS), was completed during the cruise phase to Mars.

“Every day at Mars is gold,” said David Mitchell, MAVEN’s project manager at NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Maryland.

“The early checks of instrument and spacecraft systems during cruise phase enable us to move into the science collection phase shortly after MAVEN arrives at Mars.”

The voyage also gave the team an opportunity to take data on the interplanetary solar wind using the Fields and Particles Package.

Meanwhile, teams in California, Colorado and Maryland carried out rehearsals of the entire orbit insertion twice.

The science team also performed a weeklong simulation of the planning and implementation required to obtain science data. Two months prior to arrival at Mars, all instruments were turned off, in preparation for orbit insertion.

SpaceX Night Time Launch: AsiaSat 6 Satellite Lifted Into Orbit

A SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket streaks across the night sky on Sept. 7, 2014 in this long-exposure view of the AsiaSat 6 satellite launch from Cape Canaveral Air Force Station in Florida.

Credit: SpaceX

The private spaceflight company SpaceX successfully launched a new commercial telecommunications satellite for Asia early Sunday (Sept. 7) in a dazzling nighttime liftoff that ended a nearly two-week delay for the mission.

A SpaceX's Falcon 9 rocket blasted off from Cape Canaveral Air Force Station in Florida at 1 a.m. EDT (0500 GMT) Sunday, carrying the AsiaSat 6 satellite into space for Hong Kong-based firm AsiaSat.

The launch was originally scheduled for Aug. 26, but SpaceX pushed it back to give engineers time to investigate the self-destruction of its Falcon 9 Reusable (F9R) rocket during an Aug. 22 flight test in Texas.

A SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket carrying the AsiaSat 6 satellite lifts off from the spaceflight company's launch pad at Cape Canaveral Air Force Station in Florida on Sept. 7, 2014 in this still from a SpaceX launch webcast. 

Credit: SpaceX

SpaceX's F9R rocket prototype is quite different than the company's operational Falcon 9 booster, so the mishap did not raise any specific red flags about SpaceX's commercial liftoffs, company representatives said.

But SpaceX wanted to do a thorough check of its launch systems regardless, to make sure all is well. 

"What we do want to triple-check is whether even highly improbable corner case scenarios have the optimal fault detection and recovery logic," SpaceX founder and CEO Elon Musk said in a statement late last month.

Sunday's launch appeared to go off without a hitch, with SpaceX declaring the mission a success about 30 minutes after liftoff.

New Horizons crossed the orbit of Neptune

Artist's concept of NASA's New Horizons probe flying past the dwarf planet Pluto on July 14, 2015. 

New Horizons crossed the orbit of Neptune on Aug. 25, 2014, 25 years to the day after NASA's Voyager 2 spacecraft flew by the distant blue planet.

Credit: Johns Hopkins University Applied Physics Laboratory/Southwest Research Institute

A speedy NASA probe has crossed the orbit of Neptune, notching one more spaceflight milestone on its way toward a historic flyby of Pluto next summer.

New Horizons, which is scheduled to zoom through the Pluto system on July 14, 2015, passed Neptune's orbit today (Aug. 25), 25 years to the day after NASA's Voyager 2 probe executed the first-ever flyby of faraway Neptune and its icy moon Triton.

New Horizons team members took the opportunity provided by this spaceflight coincidence to pay tribute to Voyager 2, the only probe ever to visit the "ice giant" planets Uranus and Neptune.

SpaceX Falcon 9 Rocket Launches AsiaSat 8 Telecom Satellite Into Orbit

A high-powered AsiaSat 8 telecommunications satellite blasted into space atop SpaceX's Falcon 9 rocket early Tuesday morning (Aug. 5).

The Falcon 9 rocket, which was carrying the AsiaSat 8 spacecraft, lifted off from SpaceX's launch pad at Cape Canaveral Air Force Station in Florida at 4:00 a.m. EDT (0800 GMT) Tuesday, tracing an arc of orange flame across the dark southeastern skies on the fourth Falcon 9 flight of 2014.

The launch was originally scheduled for 1:25 a.m. EDT Tuesday, but an issue with the rocket's first stage caused a 2.5-hour delay.

The launch plan calls for the rocket to deliver AsiaSat 8 to a highly elliptical "transfer orbit," but the satellite will eventually make its way to geosynchronous orbit about 22,300 miles (35,900 kilometers) above the planet.

From there, AsiaSat 8 will look down on much of Asia, providing a variety of telecom services to customers in the region over the next 15 years.

"AsiaSat 8 will provide exceptional power and additional Ku beam coverage with inter-beam switching capability for services including DTH [direct-to-home] television, private networks and broadband services," representatives for the Hong Kong-based firm AsiaSat (short for Asia Satellite Telecommunications Company Ltd.) wrote in an online description of the satellite, which was built by Space Systems/Loral.

The craft "will be the most powerful member of AsiaSat's fleet, with a payload power of about 8,500 watts," the description said.

In a departure from several recent SpaceX launches, Tuesday morning's liftoff did not include a rocket-reusability test as a secondary objective.

Atlas 5 rocket launch carried a GPS 2F-7 spacecraft into orbit

A new Global Positioning System (GPS) satellite has been launched into space.

An unmanned Atlas 5 rocket lifted off from Cape Canaveral Air Force Station shortly before midnight Friday.

The rocket carried a GPS 2F-7 spacecraft which will join a constellation of other satellites already orbiting 11,000 miles above Earth.

The GPS 2F-7 satellite (pdf) will provide navigation for both military and civilian users.

The craft, when it becomes operational, will replace a 17-year-old satellite.

The older satellite will be used as a back-up for the new one.

This was the second launch from Cape Canaveral this week.

A Delta 4 rocket lifted off on Monday, carrying a pair of military satellites.

NASA's Cassini: Final Mission Phase to be named 'Grand Finale'

With help from the public, members of NASA's Cassini mission have chosen to call the spacecraft's final orbits the "Cassini Grand Finale." 

Image courtesy NASA/JPL-Caltech.

With input from more than 2,000 members of the public, team members on NASA's Cassini mission to Saturn have chosen a name for the final phase of the mission: the Cassini Grand Finale.

Starting in late 2016, the Cassini spacecraft will begin a daring set of orbits that is, in some ways, like a whole new mission.

The spacecraft will repeatedly climb high above Saturn's north pole, flying just outside its narrow F ring.

Cassini will probe the water-rich plume of the active geysers on the planet's intriguing moon Enceladus, and then will hop the rings and dive between the planet and innermost ring 22 times.

Because the spacecraft will be in close proximity to Saturn, the team had been calling this phase "the proximal orbits," but they felt the public could help decide on a more exciting moniker.

In early April, the Cassini mission invited the public to vote on a list of alternative names provided by team members or to suggest ideas of their own.

"We chose a name for this mission phase that would reflect the exciting journey ahead while acknowledging that it's a big finish for what has been a truly great show," said Earl Maize, Cassini project manager at NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, California.

ULA Delta II rocket Launch: OCO-2 Heads to Orbit

A United Launch Alliance Delta II rocket launches with the Orbiting Carbon Observatory-2 (OCO-2) satellite onboard from Space Launch Complex 2 at Vandenberg Air Force Base, California.

OCO-2 will measure the global distribution of carbon dioxide, the leading human-produced greenhouse gas driving changes in Earth’s climate.

Image Credit: NASA/Bill Ingalls

NASA Cassini Probe Celebrates 10 Years orbiting Saturn - Video

A photo taken of Saturn by the Cassini spacecraft, which has been exploring the Saturn system for 10 years. Image uploaded June 30, 2014.

Credit: NASA/JPL

NASA spacecraft Cassini passes a big milestone, a decade exploring Saturn and its many moons.

Since arriving in orbit around Saturn 10 years ago today, the Cassini probe has made a number of unprecedented observations and discoveries.

Although the spacecraft was originally approved for a four-year mission, it has been granted three mission extensions, allowing it to continue roaming the gas giant’s system.

Linda Spilker

"Having a healthy, long-lived spacecraft at Saturn has afforded us a precious opportunity," Linda Spilker, Cassini project scientist at NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, California, said in a statement.

"By having a decade there with Cassini, we have been privileged to witness never-before-seen events that are changing our understanding of how planetary systems form and what conditions might lead to habitats for life."

For example, Cassini has helped scientists learn more about what kinds of molecules populate our solar system.

The spacecraft discovered plumes containing water-ice shooting out into space from the south polar region of Saturn’s moon Enceladus.



The Enceladus discovery is one of Cassini’s most remarkable findings because it marked an extension of the search for life in the solar system, NASA officials said.

Researchers know that life as we understand it relies on water, so finding the substance on a moon or planet could be a sign that life might be able to exist there.

Scientists now think that Enceldus harbors an underground ocean.

Enceladus wasn’t the only mysterious moon Cassini helped reveal. Saturn’s huge satellite Titan has also been studied by the long-lasting orbiter.

Cassini’s measurements have shown that Titan has rain, lakes, seas and rivers like Earth, NASA officials said. Unlike Earth, however, Titan is a cold world with seas of liquid methane rather than water.

The Titan-exploring Huygens probe also launched to the Saturn system with Cassini in October 1997.

The European Space Agency’s Huygens robot landed on Titan in 2005 and became the first manmade craft to land on a moon in the outer solar system.

It measured the atmosphere and beamed images of the moon back to Earth.

“The probe’s 2 hour and 27 minute descent revealed Titan to be remarkably like Earth before life evolved, with methane rain, erosion and drainage channels and dry lake beds,” NASA officials said.

“A soup of complex hydrocarbons, including benzene, was found in Titan's atmosphere.”

Saturn's moon Tethys with its prominent Odysseus Crater silently slips behind Saturn's largest moon Titan.

Cassini has also unveiled how Saturn’s rings change over time, and because of its long tenure in the planetary system, the probe has observed seasonal changes taking place on the planet and its moons, according to NASA.

Cassini will continue to beam back data to Earth for a few more years, until 2017 when it is scheduled to intentionally plunge into Saturn’s atmosphere, ending its mission.

Hydrocarbon Lakes on Titan

Sea Launch: Russia Zenit 3SL successfully puts Eutelsat 3B satellite in orbit

Russia has sent a European communications satellite into orbit from a floating platform in the Pacific Ocean, after the last launch in 2013 ended with the satellite plunging into the sea.

The Zenit-3SL rocket blasted off at 2209 GMT on Monday from the Odyssey launch pad and reached its orbit around an hour later, said the Sea Launch international consortium, 95 percent of which is controlled by Russia.

"Sea Launch went according to plan. The control of the (satellite) has been handed over," Deputy Prime Minister Dmitry Rogozin, who oversees Russia's space programme, wrote on Twitter.

Sea Launch has been using the deep-sea platform named Odyssey to perform commercial operations since 1999.

Boeing of the United States and Norway's Aker ASA indirectly control five percent of the Swiss-based company, created in 1995, which has faced severe financial problems.

The last launch on February 1, 2013 failed, with the Zenit rocket, made from parts produced both in Ukraine and Russia, falling into the sea without managing to put a US Intelsat satellite into orbit.

The last planned launch of a Eutelsat 3B built by Airbus Defence and Space had been postponed from April 16 due to fresh technical problems.

Russia's space-rocket company Energia has said it plans to use the sea platform for four launches in 2014 and five in 2015.

Russia in recent years has experienced a series of embarrassing failures in the space sphere, leading to the loss of numerous satellites and other equipment.

Earlier this month, a Proton rocket carrying a European satellite fell to Earth less than 10 minutes afer it was launched at Russia's Baikonur cosmodrome in Kazakhstan.

In October last year, the Russian authorities dismissed the head of the space agency, Vladimir Popovkin, who was replaced by Oleg Ostapenko as part of a huge project to reform this highly strategic sector.

The former head of space-rocket company Energia, Vitaly Lopota, faces a criminal investigation into alleged abuse of office over loans to companies taking part in Sea Launch.

Energia owns a controlling share in Sea Launch through an affiliated company.