Category Archives: Space Systems

Asteroids & Comets, Space Science, Space Systems

Video: Rosetta’s closest encounter with Comet 67P/C-G

This ESA video reports on the recent Rosetta fly-by of  Comet 67P/Churyumov-Gerasemenko: Space in Videos – 2015 – 02 – Rosetta’s closest encounter – ESA

On 14 February 2015, Rosetta made its closest encounter with comet 67P/Churyumov-Gerasemenko at just 6 km from the surface. The spacecraft is no longer orbiting the comet, it is now performing a series of flybys to continue its science.

This video explains the next stage of the Rosetta mission, the science that will be done during 2015 by the orbiter’s flybys, and assesses the possibility of the Philae lander’s reactivation from hibernation. So far Rosetta has only mapped about seventy percent of the surface because the comet’s orbit and rotation kept certain areas in darkness.

This year new regions will come into view alongside new activity on the surface. When the comet is at the peak of its activity in the summer, Rosetta’s instruments will be there to observe, measure and record a spectacular event.

It contains interviews in English with Andrea Accomazzo, ESA Rosetta Flight Director, and Matt Taylor, ESA Rosetta Project Scientist.

Living in Space, Multiple media, Space Systems

Video: ISS spacewalk shown as a time lapse spacerun

ISS cable laying by astronauts on an EVA is far more entertaining when speeded up several times. In this video, the EVA by NASA astronauts Butch Wilmore and Terry Virts last Saturday is shown in time lapse briefly at the start for about 15 seconds and then from 5:54 to the end. In between there is a narrated computer animation describing what they were to accomplish during the spacewalk. Via Spacewalk Timelapse Makes Cable Routing Look Fun – The Planetary Society,

Pluto and beyond, Space Science, Space Systems

New Horizons spots small moons circling Pluto

The New Horizons probe is closing in on the Pluto system, which it will fly by in July. the latest pictures from the spacecraft are processed to enhanced the details Pluto’s moons :

85 Years after Pluto’s Discovery,
New Horizons Spots Small Moons Orbiting Pluto

Exactly 85 years after Clyde Tombaugh’s historic discovery of Pluto, the NASA spacecraft set to encounter the icy planet this summer is providing its first views of the small moons orbiting Pluto.

The moons Nix and Hydra are visible in a series of images taken by the New Horizons spacecraft from Jan. 27-Feb. 8, at distances ranging from about 125 million to 115 million miles (201 million to 186 million kilometers). The long-exposure images offer New Horizons’ best view yet of these two small moons circling Pluto, which Tombaugh discovered at Lowell Observatory in Flagstaff, Arizona, on Feb. 18, 1930.

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“Professor Tombaugh’s discovery of Pluto was far ahead its time, heralding the discovery of the Kuiper Belt and a new class of planet,” says Alan Stern, New Horizons principal investigator from Southwest Research Institute, Boulder, Colorado. “The New Horizons team salutes his historic accomplishment.”

Assembled into a seven-frame movie, the new images provide the spacecraft’s first extended look at Hydra (identified by a yellow diamond) and its first-ever view of Nix (orange diamond). The right-hand image set has been specially processed to make the small moons easier to see.

“It’s thrilling to watch the details of the Pluto system emerge as we close the distance to the spacecraft’s July 14 encounter,” says New Horizons science team member John Spencer, also from Southwest Research Institute. “This first good view of Nix and Hydra marks another major milestone, and a perfect way to celebrate the anniversary of Pluto’s discovery.”

These are the first of a series of long-exposure images that will continue through early March, with the purpose of refining the team’s knowledge of the moons’ orbits. Each frame is a combination of five 10-second images, taken with New Horizons’ Long-Range Reconnaissance Imager (LORRI) using a special mode that combines pixels to increase sensitivity at the expense of resolution. At left, Nix and Hydra are just visible against the glare of Pluto and its large moon Charon, and the dense field of background stars. The bright and dark streak extending to the right of Pluto is an artifact of the camera electronics, resulting from the overexposure of Pluto and Charon. As can be seen in the movie, the spacecraft and camera were rotated in some of the images to change the direction of this streak, in order to prevent it from obscuring the two moons.

The right-hand images have been processed to remove most of Pluto and Charon’s glare, and most of the background stars. The processing leaves blotchy and streaky artifacts in the images, as well as a few other residual bright spots that are not real features, but makes Nix and Hydra much easier to see. Celestial north is inclined 28 degrees clockwise from the “up” direction in these images.

Nix and Hydra were discovered by New Horizons team members in Hubble Space Telescope images taken in 2005. Hydra, Pluto’s outermost known moon, orbits Pluto every 38 days at a distance of approximately 40,200 miles (64,700 kilometers), while Nix orbits every 25 days at a distance of 30,260 miles (48,700 kilometers). Each moon is probably between 25-95 miles (approximately 40- 150 kilometers) in diameter, but scientists won’t know their sizes more precisely until New Horizons obtains close-up pictures of both of them in July. Pluto’s two other small moons, Styx and Kerberos, are still smaller and too faint to be seen by New Horizons at its current range to Pluto; they will become visible in the months to come.

The Johns Hopkins University Applied Physics Laboratory manages the New Horizons mission for NASA’s Science Mission Directorate in Washington. Alan Stern, of the Southwest Research Institute (SwRI), headquartered in San Antonio, is the principal investigator and leads the mission. SwRI leads the science team, payload operations, and encounter science planning. New Horizons is part of the New Frontiers Program managed by NASA’s Marshall Space Flight Center in Huntsville, Alabama. APL designed, built and operates the spacecraft.

Image credits: NASA/Johns Hopkins University Applied Physics Laboratory/Southwest Research Institute.

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Living in Space, Space Systems, SpaceCasts

Video: ‘Space to Ground’ report on ISS action – Feb.20.15

This week’s NASA report on Int. Space Station related activities:

Asteroids & Comets, Space Science, Space Systems

Dawn snaps sharper images of Ceres

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Dwarf plane Ceres coming into focus as the Dawn spacecraft nears it:

Dawn Captures Sharper Views of Ceres

February 17, 2015 Image Advisory—Craters and mysterious bright spots are beginning to pop out in the latest images of Ceres from NASA’s Dawn spacecraft. These images, taken Feb. 12 at a distance of 52,000 miles (83,000 kilometers) from the dwarf planet, pose intriguing questions for the science team to explore as the spacecraft nears its destination.

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Two views of Ceres were acquired by NASA’s Dawn spacecraft on Feb. 12, 2015, from a distance of about 52,000 miles (83,000 kilometers) as the dwarf planet rotated. The images, which were taken about 10 hours apart, have been magnified from their original size. Credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech/UCLA/MPS/DLR/IDA

“As we slowly approach the stage, our eyes transfixed on Ceres and her planetary dance, we find she has beguiled us but left us none the wiser,” said Chris Russell, principal investigator of the Dawn mission, based at UCLA. “We expected to be surprised; we did not expect to be this puzzled.”

Dawn will be gently captured into orbit around Ceres on March 6. As the spacecraft delivers better images and other data, the science team will be investigating the nature and composition of the dwarf planet, including the nature of the craters and bright spots that are coming into focus. The latest images, which have a resolution of 4.9 miles (7.8 kilometers) per pixel, represent the sharpest views of Ceres to date.

The spacecraft explored the giant asteroid Vesta for 14 months during 2011 and 2012. Scientists gained numerous insights about the geological history of this body and saw its cratered surface in fine detail. By comparing Vesta and Ceres, they will develop a better understanding of the formation of the solar system.

Dawn’s mission to Vesta and Ceres is managed by the Jet Propulsion Laboratory for NASA’s Science Mission Directorate in Washington. Dawn is a project of the directorate’s Discovery Program, managed by NASA’s Marshall Space Flight Center in Huntsville, Alabama. UCLA is responsible for overall Dawn mission science. Orbital ATK, Inc., of Dulles, Virginia, designed and built the spacecraft. JPL is managed for NASA by the California Institute of Technology in Pasadena. The framing cameras were provided by the Max Planck Institute for Solar System Research, Gottingen, Germany, with significant contributions by the German Aerospace Center (DLR) Institute of Planetary Research, Berlin, and in coordination with the Institute of Computer and Communication Network Engineering, Braunschweig. The visible and infrared mapping spectrometer was provided by the Italian Space Agency and the Italian National Institute for Astrophysics, built by Selex ES, and is managed and operated by the Italian Institute for Space Astrophysics and Planetology, Rome. The gamma ray and neutron detector was built by Los Alamos National Laboratory, New Mexico, and is operated by the Planetary Science Institute, Tucson, Arizona.

The new Dawn images are available at the Ceres Science Gallery.