ESA: Node 3 and Cupola - Tranquility Module

ESA's Director of Human Spaceflight, Mrs. Simonetta Di Pippo and ESA's Head of Node 3 and Cupola Project Office, Mr. Philippe Deloo explain the importance of Node 3 and Cupola to the ISS and Europe.

ESA Node 3 and Cupola - Tranquility Module

Space Shuttle Endeavour will be launched at 10:39 CET on Sunday 7 February towards the International Space Station with two sophisticated modules from Europe: Node-3 ('Tranquility') and Cupola. Their installation will pave the way to completion of the ISS, with more than a third of the pressurised station elements designed, developed and built in Europe.

Node-3 is part of the Columbus launch barter agreement with NASA under which ESA supplied two of the connecting nodes (Node-2 and -3) for the International Space Station (ISS) and additional high-technology laboratory equipment and services to NASA in return for launching Europe’s Columbus laboratory to the ISS in February 2008. Cupola is covered by a separate barter agreement in exchange of the launch and return of five ESA payloads by NASA.

Node-3 will provide more space for equipment and the astronauts. Cupola, the largest and most complex window assembly ever launched into space, will find its home on the Earth-facing port of Node-3. It will provide a unique vantage point for observing Earth and for crew recreation.

ESA Human Spaceflight director Simonetta Di Pippo and Philippe Deloo, Head of Cupola/Nodes Project Office at ESA, tell more about the launch and about the importance of the Node-3 and Cupola on the ESA Webstreaming Network.

NASA Radar Captures its First Haiti Earthquake Image

False-color composite image of the Port-au-Prince, Haiti region, taken Jan. 27, 2010 by NASA’s UAVSAR airborne radar.
The city is denoted by the yellow arrow; the black arrow points to the fault responsible for the Jan. 12 earthquake. Image credit: NASA

JPL’s Uninhabited Aerial Vehicle Synthetic Aperture Radar (UAVSAR) captured this false-color composite image of the city of Port-au-Prince, Haiti, and the surrounding region on Jan. 27, 2010. Port-au-Prince is visible near the center of the image. The large dark line running east-west near the city is the main airport. UAVSAR left NASA’s Dryden Flight Research Center in Edwards, Calif., Jan. 25, 2010, aboard a modified NASA Gulfstream III aircraft on a three-week campaign that will also take it to Central America.

Shortly before 5 p.m. local time on Jan. 12, 2010, a magnitude 7.0 earthquake struck southern Haiti. The earthquake’s epicenter was about 25 kilometers (15 miles) west-southwest of Port-au-Prince, close to the west (left) edge of this image. The large linear east-west valley in the mountains south of the city is the location of the major active fault zone responsible for the earthquake: the Enriquillo-Plantain Garden fault.

The fault extends from the western tip of Haiti past Port-au-Prince into the Dominican Republic to the east of this image. Historical records show that the southern part of Haiti was struck by a series of large earthquakes in the 1700s, and geologists believe those were also caused by ruptures on this fault zone.

Satellite interferometric synthetic aperture radar measurements show that the Jan. 12 earthquake ruptured a segment of the fault extending from the epicenter westward over a length of about 40 kilometers (25 miles), leaving the section of the fault in this image unruptured. The earthquake has increased the stress on this eastern section of the fault south of Port-au-Prince and the section west of the rupture. This has significantly increased the risk of a future earthquake, according to a recent report by the U.S. Geological Survey.

The colors in the image reflect the three different UAVSAR radar polarizations: HH (horizontal transmit, horizontal receive) is colored red; VV (vertical transmit, vertical receive) is colored blue; and HV (horizontal transmit, vertical receive) is colored green. Like a pair of Polaroid sunglasses, these images are sensitive to different parts of the radar signal that is reflected back from Earth’s surface. The HV polarization is sensitive to volume scattering that typically occurs over vegetation—this gives hills a greenish color. VV polarization is sensitive to surface scattering such as that returned from bare surfaces or water—this gives water a bluish tint.

Finally, HH polarization is sensitive to corner-like objects—this gives some urban areas and vegetated regions a reddish tint. The image is roughly 20 kilometers (12.5 miles) wide in the northwest-southeast direction. North is up and radar illumination is from the southeast.

This image will be combined with other images of the same area to be acquired later this month and in the future in order to measure the motion of Earth’s surface during the time between images using a technique called interferometry.The interferometric measurements will allow scientists to study the pressures building up and being released on the fault at depth.

UAVSAR is a reconfigurable polarimetric L-band synthetic aperture radar (SAR) specifically designed to acquire airborne repeat track SAR data for differential interferometric measurements. For more information about radar polarimetry, see http://www.ccrs.nrcan.gc.ca/resource/tutor/polarim/index_e.php .

The radar will eventually be flown aboard an uninhabited, remotely-piloted aircraft such as the Northrop Grumman Global Hawk. The radar was built at JPL with funding by NASA’s Earth Science Technology Office. UAVSAR is managed and operated by JPL under contract with NASA’s Science Mission Directorate, Washington, D.C.

For more information on UAVSAR, visit: http://uavsar.jpl.nasa.gov/.

NASA Charles Messier's catalogue spiral nebula NGC 5194

This NASA image obtained shows the 51st entry in Charles Messier's catalogue, perhaps the original spiral nebula, also catalogued as NGC 5194.

Over 60,000 light-years across, M51's spiral arms and dust lanes clearly sweep in front of its companion galaxy, NGC 5195.

Image data from the Hubble's Advanced Camera for Surveys was reprocessed, which sharpened details and enhanced colour and contrast in otherwise faint areas, bringing out dust lanes and extended streams that cross the small companion, along with features in the surroundings and core of M51 itself

Picture: AFP/GETTY / HUBBLE HERITAGE TEAM

NASA Prometheus acting on Saturn's Rings

The effects of the small moon Prometheus loom large on two of Saturn's rings in this image released by NASA.

The gravity of Prometheus periodically creates streamer-channels in the F ring.The image was taken in visible light with the Cassini spacecraft narrow-angle camera.

The view was acquired at a distance of approximately 1.8 million kilometres (1.1 million miles) from Saturn

Picture: AFP/GETTY / NASA

Space Shuttle Endeavour to deliver Tranquility module incl. ESA Cupola

Space Shuttle Endeavour is to deliver on February 9 a new technological module, Tranquility, to the International Space Station for its U.S. segment, a NASA expert said Friday.

This picture gives you a very good artist's impression of the module which includes the Cupola observation windows developed and manufactured by ESA, as part of a barter agreement with NASA.

Click here for further information on ESA's Node 3 and Cupola

Members of the Apollo 11 mission, Neil Armstrong and Buzz Aldrin, stepped down from the lunar lander onto the moon's Sea of Tranquility on July 20, 1969. The Tranquility module was named in honor of this event's 40th anniversary.

Tranquility will make waste water recycling and oxygen regeneration easier.

The shuttle, to be launched February 7, will carry six astronauts who are to hook Tranquility up during spacewalks. The shuttle fleet is to sated to be mothballed in the autumn of 2010, unless it's replacement is not ready.

Without the Shuttle vehicles the US Space Agency, ESA and its partners are dependent on Russia's RSA to uplift astronauts and large components to the ISS.

Cassini snaps Prometheus

Prometheus is one of Saturn's innermost moons.

Looking for all intents and purposes like a celestial egg after a session in Saturn's skillet, Prometheus displayed its pockmarked, irregular surface for NASA's Cassini spacecraft on Jan. 27, 2010.

It orbits the gas-giant at a distance of 139,353 kilometers (85,590 miles) and is 86 kilometers (53 miles) across at its widest point.

The porous, icy-bodied world was originally discovered by images taken by Voyager 1 back in 1980.

You could say this latest "egg-cellent" view has the Cassini science team licking their chops at the thought of future Prometheus images.

This raw, unprocessed image of Prometheus [pro-MEE-thee-us] , taken in visible light, was obtained by Cassini's narrow-angle camera at a distance of approximately 36,000 kilometers (23,000 miles).