ESA's Living Planet Symposium: Innovative SMOS

The satellite carries an innovative sensor to image brightness temperature. As key observables, these images are used as input to derive global maps of soil moisture and ocean salinity. Given the success of the mission so far, the maps are expected to be available by the autumn.

Today, a focus at ESA's Living Planet Symposium is on the innovative SMOS mission, which recently became operational.

Early results are proving very encouraging with its first observations due to be released in early July.

ESA's Soil Moisture and Ocean Salinity (SMOS) satellite was launched in November to gather data on moisture in the surface layers of soil and salt in the surface of the oceans.

SMOS will improve our understanding of the water cycle and help advance weather and climate studies.

SMOS has completed an intense programme of calibration and commissioning and, in May, it formally began its operational life delivering data.

Although it is still early days, scientists and users are very impressed with the first snapshots of 'brightness temperature' - the microwave radiation emitted from Earth's surface.

ESA's Mission Manager, Susanne Mecklenburg said, "We still have some way to go before the full soil moisture and ocean salinity data products are available, but the brightness temperature data we have been working on for the past months clearly demonstrate what this advanced mission has to offer."

The satellite carries an innovative sensor to image brightness temperature. As key observables, these images are used as input to derive global maps of soil moisture and ocean salinity. Given the success of the mission so far, the maps are expected to be available by the autumn.

To test the usefulness of SMOS data for numerical weather prediction, data are also being delivered, within three hours of sensing, to meteorological centres such as the European Centre for Medium-Range Weather Forecasts
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US Rely on Russian Soyuz Progress programme to support ISS crew

Progress, a Russian cargo spacecraft, Progress M-06M, lifted off toward the International Space Station at 19:35 Moscow time [15:35 GMT] on Wednesday, the Russian space agency Roscosmos said.

It was launched from the Baikonur space center in Kazakhstan on a Soyuz-U booster rocket. It separated 10 minutes later and successfully entered the designated orbit.

The space freighter will deliver fuel, oxygen, scientific equipment and video and photo equipment to the ISS, as well as food, water and personal items for the crew.

The spaceship is to dock with the space station on July 2 at 20:55 Moscow time [16:55 GMT].

Preparations have already been made for the module's arrival. In early June, Russia's Mission Control readjusted the ISS orbit, raising it by 2.5 kilometers (1.6 miles) to ensure the best conditions for the docking of the Soyuz TMA-19 manned spacecraft and the Progress M-06M.

On Monday, the ISS crew moved the Soyuz TMA-19, which docked with the Zvezda module on June 18, to the Rassvet research module in a 24-minute maneuver to make room for the Progress M-06M.

ESO WFI Image: R Coronae Australis

The nearby star-forming region around the star R Coronae Australis imaged by the Wide Field Imager (WFI) on the MPG/ESO 2.2-metre telescope at ESO’s La Silla Observatory in Chile.

This picture, which covers a field of 33.7 x 31.9 arcminutes (about the diameter of the full Moon), is a combination of twelve CCD frames, 67 megapixels each, taken through B, V and R filters, with four exposures of five minutes each.


This magnificent view of the region around the star R Coronae Australis was created from images taken with the Wide Field Imager (WFI) at ESO's La Silla Observatory in Chile. R Coronae Australis lies at the heart of a nearby star-forming region and is surrounded by a delicate bluish reflection nebula embedded in a huge dust cloud. The image reveals surprising new details in this dramatic area of sky.

The star R Coronae Australis lies in one of the nearest and most spectacular star-forming regions. This portrait was taken by the Wide Field Imager (WFI) on the MPG/ESO 2.2-metre telescope at the La Silla Observatory in Chile. The image is a combination of twelve separate pictures taken through red, green and blue filters.

This image shows a section of sky that spans roughly the width of the full Moon. This is equivalent to about four light-years at the distance of the nebula, which is located some 420 light-years away in the small constellation of Corona Australis (the Southern Crown). The complex is named after the star R Coronae Australis, which lies at the centre of the image.

It is one of several stars in this region that belong to the class of very young stars that vary in brightness and are still surrounded by the clouds of gas and dust from which they formed.

The intense radiation given off by these hot young stars interacts with the gas surrounding them and is either reflected or re-emitted at a different wavelength.

These complex processes, determined by the physics of the interstellar medium and the properties of the stars, are responsible for the magnificent colours of nebulae. The light blue nebulosity seen in this picture is mostly due to the reflection of starlight off small dust particles.

nited Kingdom Infrared Telescope (UKIRT): Mysteries Of Massive Star Formation

A false colour image of a massive star forming region shows outflows associated with IRAS 05137+3919. The image is constructed from J (1.25 micron, blue), H (1.65 micron, green) and H2 (2.122 micron, red). The shocked regions of the outflows rich in line emission appear red here. The blue objects are mostly foreground stars. IRAS 05137+3919 is a luminous Young Stellor Object (YSO) of late-O spectral type. We detect two bipolar outflows here, emanating from the central double star. Credit: JAC/UKIRT.

Using the United Kingdom Infrared Telescope (UKIRT) astronomers have found the leading mechanism by which most of the massive stars form in our Galaxy.

The largest near-infrared survey of massive star forming regions to date has revealed that a major fraction of these massive stars form by collecting matter onto disks around their equatorial regions.

This was revealed by the detection of gas outflows and shocked regions associated with massive young stars in formation, located in clouds of gas and dust in our Galaxy.

The survey was carried out by a team lead by Dr. Watson Varricatt from the Joint Astronomy Centre and included Dr. Chris Davis (Joint Astronomy Centre), Dr. Suzanne Ramsay (ESO, Germany) and Dr. Stephen Todd (UKATC, Edinburgh, UK).

We know that lower-mass stars like our Sun form by gravitational collapse of material inside clouds of gas and dust in space.

The gas and dust spiral down onto the equatorial regions of the young star via a process known as accretion.

At the same time these accreting young stars drive high velocity jets of gas outwards at thousands of miles per hour.

These "outflows" radiate at infrared wavelengths (this emission is actually produced by hydrogen molecules heated to thousands of degrees). Consequently, observations in the infrared can be used to search for not only the youngest stars, but also evidence of the accretion process.

The big question is, do the massive stars form the same way, or do they form using a different process?

For massive stars, with masses larger than 10 times the mass of our Sun, it has been proposed that the extreme energy output of these young stars, which start nuclear burning in their cores even before they complete their growth through accretion, will prevent further growth by blowing away the accretion disks.

Hence, alternate scenarios like mergers of lower mass stars have been suggested as the main mechanism for massive star formation.

The presence or absence of outflows from massive young stars will tell us whether accretion or some other methods lead to their formation.

Durham Uni's Galactic Archaeologists Find Origin Of Milky Way's Ancient Stars

This simulation shows a Milky Way-like galaxy around five billion years ago when most satellite galaxy collisions were happening. Credit: Andrew Cooper/John Helly, Durham University

Many of the Milky Way's ancient stars are remnants of other smaller galaxies torn apart by violent galactic collisions around five billion years ago, according to researchers at Durham University.

Scientists at Durham's Institute for Computational Cosmology and their collaborators at the Max Planck Institute for Astrophysics, in Germany, and Groningen University, in Holland, ran huge computer simulations to recreate the beginnings of our galaxy.

The simulations revealed that the ancient stars, found in a stellar halo of debris surrounding the Milky Way, had been ripped from smaller galaxies by the gravity generated by colliding galaxies.

Cosmologists predict that the early Universe was full of small galaxies which led short and violent lives. These galaxies collided with each other leaving behind debris which eventually settled into more familiar looking galaxies like the Milky Way.

The researchers say their finding supports the theory that many of the Milky Way's ancient stars had once belonged to other galaxies instead of being the earliest stars born inside the galaxy when it began to form about 10 billion years ago.

The research, funded in the UK by the STFC, appears in the Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society.

Lead author Andrew Cooper, from Durham University's Institute for Computational Cosmology, said: "Effectively we became galactic archaeologists, hunting out the likely sites where ancient stars could be scattered around the galaxy.

"Our simulations show how different relics in the galaxy today, like these ancient stars, are related to events in the distant past.

"Like ancient rock strata that reveal the history of Earth, the stellar halo preserves a record of a dramatic primeval period in the life of the Milky Way which ended long before the Sun was born."

ESA Proba-2 Tracks Sun Surging Into Space

Proba-2 is an experimental ESA micro-satellite carrying four solar physics and space weather instruments and a total of 17 new technology payloads.

Proba-2 is a small but innovative member of ESA's spacecraft fleet, crammed with experimental technologies. In its first eight months of life it has already returned more than 90 000 images of the Sun.

Less than a cubic metre in volume, Proba-2 carries a new generation of miniaturised science instruments, focused on the Sun and space weather, as well as 17 state-of-the-art technology payloads.

Launched on 2 November 2009, Proba-2 began routine operations in February. A workshop at ESA's ESTEC research and technology centre in the Netherlands on 22 June highlighted the microsatellite's initial achievements.

"We're getting very good results," remarked John Jorgensen of Technical University of Denmark, which contributed the mission's Micro Advanced Stellar Compass, a miniaturised startracker.

"This kind of platform works very well to provide in-flight demonstration of new technologies."

ESA Rocky mounds and a plateau on Mars

The region around Magellan Crater stretches across 190 x 112 km, and covers an area of about 21 280 sq km, which is roughly the size of Slovenia. It is to the southwest of the volcanic region Tharsis on the southern highlands of Mars. With a ground resolution of about 25 m per pixel, the data were acquired for the region of Magellan Crater at about 34°S/185°E, during Mars Express’s orbit 6547 on 6 February 2009.

The region around Magellan Crater stretches across 190 x 112 km, and covers an area of about 21 280 sq km, which is roughly the size of Slovenia. It is to the southwest of the volcanic region Tharsis on the southern highlands of Mars. Credits: FU Berlin/MOLA