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.

Oppressive China says Express-AM4P satellite space debris recovered

Photo taken on May 19, 2014 shows government technicians preparing to remove space debris that crashed to the ground in Qiqihar, China's Heilongjiang province 

Objects that crashed to the ground in China have been identified as space debris, state media reported, after a Russian rocket carrying a communications satellite fell back to Earth minutes after lift-off.

Qiqihar city in the northeastern province of Heilongjiang, which borders Russia's far east, reported that several objects appeared to have fallen from the sky on Friday, the Xinhua news agency said.

After analysis, experts have concluded they were "parts from a carrier rocket or a satellite", Xinhua said Sunday, citing the China National Space Administration.

Authorities were communicating on the issue "with relevant parties", it added.

The report came after Russia's space officials said the Proton rocket's control engine failed Friday just over nine minutes following blastoff from the Baikonur space centre Moscow leases in Kazakhstan—the latest blow to the country's once-proud space industry.

State television showed the carrier and its Express-AM4P satellite burning up in the upper layers of the atmosphere.

The space debris that crashed to the ground in Qiqihar, China's Heilongjiang province, pictured on May 19, 2014

The 150-million-euro ($205-million) satellite, built by EADS Airbus Group's Astrium corporation, was meant to provide Internet access to far-flung Russian regions with poor access to communication.

Russiand claim large fragment recovered from Chebarkul Lake is from Chelyabinsk meteor,

People look at what scientists believe to be a chunk of the Chelyabinsk meteor, recovered from Chebarkul Lake near Chelyabinsk, about 1500 kilometers (930 miles) east of Moscow, Russia, Wednesday, Oct. 16, 2013. 

Scientists on Wednesday recovered what could be the largest part of this meteor from Chebarkul Lake outside the city. 

They weighed it using a giant steelyard balance, which displayed 570 kilograms (1,256 pounds) before it broke. (AP Photo/Alexander Firsov)

Russian divers Wednesday pulled from a murky lake in the Urals a half-tonne suspected meteorite said to have been part of a meteor whose ground-shaking shockwave hurt 1,200 people in February.

The dramatic recovery operation came eight months after a piercing streak of light lit up the morning sky in the central Russian region of Chelyabinsk in scenes some locals said made them think of the onset of a nuclear war.

The meteor broke up into myriad pieces—some no bigger than the size of a fingernail—that scientists are still finding across the remote region to this day.

Much of the debris landed in a local lake called Chebarkul that the divers entered on Wednesday in an operation covered live on national television.

Broadcasts showed a team pull out a 1.5-metre-long (five-foot-long) rock from the lake after first wrapping it in a special casing while it was still underwater.

The boulder was then pulled ashore and placed on top of a massive scale for the all-important weighing—an operation that quickly went partially wrong.

The rock crumbled into several chunks as scientists began lifting it from the ground with the help of levers and ropes.

The scale itself broke the moment it hit the 570-kilogramme (1,255-pound) mark.

"The rock had a fracture when we found it," one unnamed scientist told the lifenews.ru website in a live broadcast.

"It weighed 570 kgs before the pieces fell off and then the scale broke," said the scientist.

"We think the whole thing weighs more than 600 Kgs," he said.

Experts warned it will take time before scientists can certify that the rock they pulled from the lake did indeed come from outer space.

Titanic Debris Site Mapped by Underwater Robots

Researchers have mapped the entire debris field of the doomed ship, RMS Titanic, using underwater robots and found new clues to learn what happened to the ship 100 years ago, when it hit an iceberg and sank killing more than 1,500 people.

A team of researchers have mapped the entire three-by-five-mile Titanic debris field using sonar imaging and more than 100,000 photos taken from underwater robots.

Explorers have earlier mapped the floor around the wreckage but those old maps were incomplete.

"With the sonar map, it's like suddenly the entire room lit up and you can go from room to room with a magnifying glass and document it," Parks Stephenson, a Titanic historian, was quoted as saying.

"Nothing like this has ever been done for the Titanic site," he added.

The team, which began mapping the debris in 2010, is now planning to air a two-hour documentary on the expedition on 15 April, 100 years after the Titanic sank.

Further info on this story here at ABC News

NASA GRAIL Mission: Final Preparations for September Launch

NASA's Gravity Recovery And Interior Laboratory (GRAIL) mission to study the moon is in final launch preparations for a scheduled Sept. 8 launch from Cape Canaveral Air Force Station in Florida.

GRAIL's twin spacecraft are tasked for a nine-month mission to explore Earth's nearest neighbor in unprecedented detail.

They will determine the structure of the lunar interior from crust to core and advance our understanding of the thermal evolution of the moon.

"Yesterday's final encapsulation of the spacecraft is an important mission milestone," said David Lehman, GRAIL project manager for NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, Calif.

"Our two spacecraft are now sitting comfortably inside the payload fairing which will protect them during ascent. Next time the GRAIL twins will see the light of day, they will be about 95 miles up and accelerating."

The spacecraft twins, GRAIL-A and GRAIL-B, will fly aboard a Delta II rocket launched from Florida. The twins' circuitous route to lunar orbit will take 3.5 months and cover approximately 2.6 million miles (4.2 million kilometers) for GRAIL-A, and 2.7 million miles (4.3 million kilometers) for GRAIL-B.

In lunar orbit, the spacecraft will transmit radio signals precisely defining the distance between them. Regional gravitational differences on the moon are expected to expand and contract that distance.

GRAIL scientists will use these accurate measurements to define the moon's gravity field. The data will allow mission scientists to understand what goes on below the surface of our natural satellite.

"GRAIL will unlock lunar mysteries and help us understand how the moon, Earth and other rocky planets evolved as well," said Maria Zuber, GRAIL principal investigator from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology in Cambridge.

GRAIL's launch period opens Sept. 8 and extends through Oct. 19. On each day, there are two separate launch opportunities separated by approximately 39 minutes. On Sept. 8, the first launch opportunity is 8:37 a.m. EDT (5:37 a.m. PDT); the second is 9:16 a.m. EDT (6:16 a.m. PDT).

Nasa Shuttle Atlantis: Solid Rocket Booster Recovery

One of the Nasa Shuttle Atlantis Solid Rocket Boosters is recovered, towed behind and led along by the US Coast Guard.

Airbus A330 Recovery: Bodies and Wreckage

Specialists could start pulling up bodies and wreckage from an Air France plane found on the Atlantic Ocean floor within a month, after the stunning deep-water discovery raised new hope of determining the cause of the 2009 crash.

Investigators said Monday they still haven’t found the plane’s “black box” flight recorders, and it’s unclear whether they remain attached to the fuselage, or whether they’re even still intact after nearly two years in sandy depths of 3,900 meters (2.4 miles).

All 228 people aboard the plane were killed when Flight 447, en route from Rio de Janeiro to Paris, slammed into the ocean northeast of Brazil on June 1, 2009, after running into an intense high-altitude thunderstorm. The cause of the crash — the worst in Air France’s history — remains unclear.

French officials said Monday that undersea robots have located bodies, motors and most of the Airbus jet in a fourth underwater search operation, after the last two search efforts turned up nothing. Investigators have said without the recorders, the cause of the crash may never be determined.

France’s air accident investigation agency, the BEA, showed photos of the wreckage — intact wheels from the plane’s landing gear, two engines dusted with silt, a panel of the fuselage with oval window openings.

The BEA did not show images of any bodies. French officials said identifiable bodies have been found and will be raised to the ocean surface, but would not say how many or further comment out of respect for the victims’ families.

Fifty bodies were found during the first phase of the search, along with more than 600 pieces of the plane scattered on the sea. No bodies or debris have been found since, until now.

Victims’ families, who had pushed for continued search efforts despite the high cost, cautiously welcomed the surprise announcement.

BEA chief Jean-Paul Troadec told reporters Monday that he’s confident that engineers can still read the data and recordings in the black boxes, if they weren’t damaged in the crash.

JAXA Hayabusa capsule recovered in Australian Outback

A helicopter found the capsule about an hour after the return Japanese scientists began the process on Monday of retrieving the Hayabusa capsule from the Australian Outback.

The canister and its delivery spacecraft fell to Earth during the night, the culmination of a seven-year round trip to asteroid Itokawa.

The first photo of the capsule, which landed in the Woomera Prohibited Area, shows it still attached to a parachute.

The researchers will prepare the canister for evacuation to Japan. They will hope it holds samples of Itokawa.

If that is confirmed, it would be the first time fragments of rock had been picked up off the surface of an asteroid and returned to Earth.

But scientists caution it could be some weeks before they are able to confirm the presence of Itokawa dust. For the moment, the Japanese space agency (Jaxa) is simply celebrating the success of bringing Hayabusa home.

The re-entry produced a remarkable fireball in the Australian sky. The main spacecraft broke apart in a shower of light. As these bright streaks faded, a single point could be seen heading to the ground. This was the capsule protected against the intense heat generated in the fall by its carbon shield.

It took about an hour to locate the capsule by helicopter, its position tracked by radar and a beacon that was transmitting from inside the canister. It was only when daylight came up on Monday that recovery teams began to approach the capsule.

"We will package the capsule and then send it back by aircraft - it's a special aircraft - from the Woomera range to Tokyo International Airport, to go to our facility, our laboratory, where we will analyse the samples," Yoshiyuki Hasegawa, the associate executive director of Jaxa, told BBC News.

Even now, there is still some uncertainty as to whether the capsule really does contain pieces of Itokawa.

Analysis has shown the Hayabusa spacecraft's capture mechanism malfunctioned at the moment it was supposed to pick up the asteroid rock fragments.

However, Jaxa officials remain confident of success.

They say a lot of dust would have been kicked up when Hayabusa landed on the space rock to make the grab, and some of this material must have found its way inside the probe.