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The Robert C. Byrd Green Bank Telescope (GBT) in West Virginia, USA, a part of the global network of radio telescopes involved in tracking the Huygens Titan probe, has detected the probe's 'carrier' (tone) signal.

go huygens!

According to ESA's website: The Robert C. Byrd Green Bank Telescope (GBT) in West Virginia, USA, a part of the global network of radio telescopes involved in tracking the Huygens Titan probe, has detected the probe's carrier signal.

This means that the probe survived the entry (heat-shield) phase of the descent and the main parachute opened, but we still have to wait for the main part of the show...

That's AMAZING!

I did some googling and found these:

• from the ESA
• Saturn Today

As to your comment about the resolution of JIVE's VLBI work, I found this quote to be especially descriptive:

...They expect to measure the probe's position within two-thirds of a mile (1 kilometer) at a distance of nearly 750 million miles.

"That's like being able to sit in your back yard and watch the ball in a ping-pong game being played on the Moon," said Leonid Gurvits of JIVE.

Makes me wonder what kind of resolution we could get if we had radio telescopes on the moon, too!

I won't blame anyone who hasn't RTFA for this news, because here is the really interesting link: the ESA (European Space Agency) portal.
A 346 words article from India Daily is not the most relevant for an ESA project.

I hope /. moderators would care a bit more when posting news. Recently the interesting links were often missing. A link to a press agency article may be interesting to some, but we have other sources for that. I expect a bit more from a /. news: the poster should at list post links to official sites with deeper information.

So is atmospheric entry at 10:06 CET or 11:13 CET?

I haven't seen any sign of a dedicated news page yet. I hope the ESA is ready to get news on their web site

Also why do they have to advertise everything in CET? UT works fine for me here in zone +11

So is atmospheric entry at 10:06 CET or 11:13 CET?

I haven't seen any sign of a dedicated news page yet. I hope the ESA is ready to get news on their web site

Also why do they have to advertise everything in CET? UT works fine for me here in zone +11

"Flamebait"? What, did you not see his post title and the first part of his sentence, or do you just not know what flamebait is?

I do agree though, mostly because it's a damn adfest. However, when saying something is "about to do" something, like the probe about to land in this case, the link should be to somewhere WITH MORE INFORMATION (preferably official), and not some third rate ad festering news site.

Beagle 2 was not an ESA probe but rather a British project which piggybacked on ESA's Mars Express orbiter (which is going strong by the way).

Here is the official ESA countdown! At the moment, it's only 4 hours left! :) However, after landing, it will take another 5 hours before the data starts coming in, and we know wether it was a success or a failure.

In the application, you can also fastforward and see what Cassini does in the coming years.

There is the Darwin project to see earth-like planets and analyze the electromagnetic spectrum to determine the atmosphere composition.

And add to that Darwin.

Maybe someone was thinkg about European Space Agency (ESA).

This wattage/mile efficiency thing is always a neat trick. I doubt however, that anyone can beat what must be a record of some sort: the detection of the 10 watt (mostly) non-directional radio transmitter atop the Huygens probe while falling into the atmosphere of Titan by the Very Long Baseline Array when nearly 1 billion miles away. A feat expected to be achieved next week. The power collected by one of the 70 meter dishes on earth will be comparable to what was detected from the feeble low gain antenna on the Galileo Jupiter probe. This power is in the ZEPTOWATT range. (zeptowatt)

In addition to this, the VLBA will be used in interferometer mode (VLBI) in order to pinpoint the landing site of the probe on Titan to within 1Km!! This is equal to an angular resolution of approximately 170 microarcseconds. Thousands of times better than Hubble.

The Cassini-Huygens mission is a cooperation between NASA, the European Space Agency and ASI, the Italian space agency.

Beagle 2 was supposed to land on Isidis Planitia (10.6N, 270W). Opportunity landed on Meridiani Planum (354.4742E 1.9483S). Spirit landed in Gusev Crater (175.4785 E 14.5718 S). Neither are nowhere near Beagle 2. I couldn't find a high resolution map of MARS with the landing sights, but this should give you an idea.

ESA page for the Cassini-Huygens mission. They have a couple of Flash animations, some nice pictures of Titan (here) and an interesting factsheet on the mission.

ESA page for the Cassini-Huygens mission. They have a couple of Flash animations, some nice pictures of Titan (here) and an interesting factsheet on the mission.

ESA page for the Cassini-Huygens mission. They have a couple of Flash animations, some nice pictures of Titan (here) and an interesting factsheet on the mission.

Good to see some international cooperation in a venture like this. After the stunning shots of Titan and Saturn returned by Cassini's sensors, we can only hope that the remote probe fares better than Beagle 2 :) ESA article with more information

Good to see some international cooperation in a venture like this. After the stunning shots of Titan and Saturn returned by Cassini's sensors, we can only hope that the remote probe fares better than Beagle 2 :) ESA article with more information

Delta 4 Heavy: 13 tonnes to GTO

Arianne 5-ECA: 10 tonnes to GTO

Not a huge difference.

(Ok, so 5-ECA didn't work, but then again neither did 4-Heavy :-)).

Arianne 5-ECA: 10 tonnes to GTO

Not a huge difference.

(Ok, so 5-ECA didn't work, but then again neither did 4-Heavy :-)).

Deep Impact will be launching a copper projectile onto the surface of Comet Tempel 1 and the flyby spacecraft will film the creation of a large crater. All data will be visual only and unfortunately the launch has been delayed.

In contrast the ESA Rosetta Mission is going to orbit Comet 67P/Churyumov-Gerasimenko and attempt to lower a small lander onto it.

The animation of comet rendevous shows expected time to reach it is another 10+ years, the mission ends in December 2015. The launch took place successfully in March of this year.

The purpose of both missions is to discern chemical composition of these very old objects.

Deep Impact will be launching a copper projectile onto the surface of Comet Tempel 1 and the flyby spacecraft will film the creation of a large crater. All data will be visual only and unfortunately the launch has been delayed.

In contrast the ESA Rosetta Mission is going to orbit Comet 67P/Churyumov-Gerasimenko and attempt to lower a small lander onto it.

The animation of comet rendevous shows expected time to reach it is another 10+ years, the mission ends in December 2015. The launch took place successfully in March of this year.

The purpose of both missions is to discern chemical composition of these very old objects.

The asteroids that are large enough to do damage can be seen far away enough that the cosmic blind spot is irrelevant. The article mentions a 2.9 mile wide asteroid (which would quickly wipe out all life on the planet if it hit) which scientists have known about for years. It won't come anywhere close.

At the moment, we have no defense against a planet-killing asteroid, but the European Space Agency is studying the issue, and NASA's Deep Impact project is also working on it.

>Not to be rude here, but your comment about Dubya
>reminded me that Sweden is welcome to develop and
>launch their own GPS when they want to.

Don't worry, we are Galileo

I'm also British. I'm an astrophysicist, and my work revolves around XMM-Newton, an X-ray space telescope satellite made and operated by the European Space Agency which your taxes do pay for (thanks!).

Of course, science is international so the ESA is usually a collaborator with NASA rather than a competitor. I hope this new administrator does everything possible to keep the spirit of international scientific collaboration alive, rather than playing along with a wild goose chase to Mars...

The satellite will be launched in March if I remember correctly.
Meanwhile, you can get EGNOS data via the internet via the sisnet platform.

http://esamultimedia.esa.int/docs/egnos/estb/sisne t/sisnet.htm

Here's a picture of the first prototype.

I think I'll wait until the flip version...

The correct link for the ESA

An official Esa site about SMART is here (in English)
Some information in French.

The Washington Times deals with a Moon too, but another one: Rvd Moon's "church" owns it and it has been recently frequently used to promote US Pentagon anonymous sources' views. It is soooo strange to see it pointed by /. in the same article where the "old Europe's ESA" link is broken!!!

An official Esa site about SMART is here (in English)
Some information in French.

The Washington Times deals with a Moon too, but another one: Rvd Moon's "church" owns it and it has been recently frequently used to promote US Pentagon anonymous sources' views. It is soooo strange to see it pointed by /. in the same article where the "old Europe's ESA" link is broken!!!

That seemed like a ridiculous amount of accelleration, though, so I checked further, and the spacecraft's final velocity is given by the esa as 2737 m /s, not km. Interestingly, that's actually less than the earth's escape velocity by a good margin. My best guess at this point, then, is that the 2737m/s figure is the velocity imparted to the craft by the engine, not counting the initial velocity it was given by the rocket it was strapped to.

In this case, its acceleration is just 2737m/s / (3648h * 3600s/h) = 2.08*10^-4 m/s^2

At that rate, it will cross it's first football field (91.4m) in 296s, and the next one in just 122s. (It goes by the last one in just 0.033s)

Assuming constant acceleration and no retarding forces, if the initial velocity on leaving the Earth's atmosphere was 11.2 km/s, then the acceleration is (change in velocity)/(change in time) = (2737 - 11.2)km/s * 3600s / 3648h = 2725.8 * 3600 / 3648 km/h^2 = 2690 km/h^2 = 2.08e-4 km/s^-2 = 2.08e-7 m/s^2.

Rather slow accelaration, at that rate it'll take 29683seconds to travel the length of an American Football pitch (from a stationary start), approximately 8.25 hours. That's slow.

Data taken from here.

it's http://www.esa.int/ not http://www.esa.in/

According to this, ESA has a budget of 2700 million. It is paid by its members proportional to their gross national product as some kind of "base funding" and optional donations for specific additional projects.

Holding something in space is dangerous and inefficient. Most probably dangerous asteroid will be spotted while it is far enough to launch rockets from earth and change it's path. ESA http://www.esa.int/ is planning Don Quijote http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/tg/detail/-/0060 188707?v=glance mission http://www.space.com/spacenews/donquixote_040714.h tml http://www.esa.int/export/esaCP/SEMZO8M26WD_Expand ing_0.html. I saw a 15 seconds movie illustrating the impact but can't find a link at the moment. I guess, if we spot something that close to earth that launching from space would be quicker than from the Earth, that would already be too late.

Holding something in space is dangerous and inefficient. Most probably dangerous asteroid will be spotted while it is far enough to launch rockets from earth and change it's path. ESA http://www.esa.int/ is planning Don Quijote http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/tg/detail/-/0060 188707?v=glance mission http://www.space.com/spacenews/donquixote_040714.h tml http://www.esa.int/export/esaCP/SEMZO8M26WD_Expand ing_0.html. I saw a 15 seconds movie illustrating the impact but can't find a link at the moment. I guess, if we spot something that close to earth that launching from space would be quicker than from the Earth, that would already be too late.

The link to the orbit graph doesn't work for me

Working link here
you added a 1 to the end of the url

SMART-1 has been making bigger and bigger orbits around the earth, because of the smaller thrust explained above. It goes faster and faster, and because the craft gets further from the earth, it becomes easier to get into a bigger orbit. So at first the orbits became larger very slowly, but the last months it has grown faster than ever before.

The last months the orbit was also synchronized with the moon. The highest part of SMART-1's orbit coincided with the lowest point of the moon's orbit. This helps the craft to get an extra boost every month. Take a look at a graph of the orbit here.

Oh, and they do have normal propellant onboard, there's some 70kg left iirc. I think it was installed in case the ion engine failed, but I'm not sure of that. It could also be to correct the initial orbit if the launcher would have placed it in a wrong one. Anyway I *hope* it will be used to attempt a soft landing after the mission is over.

I'm not saying I don't like what the MERs have sent back, but some of the ESA stuff is pretty sweet looking

ESA's Mars Express

BAD science reporter! BAD! no treat for you.

Actually, I think the article might be right - the total mass carried to Mars won't be the same as what enters the Martian atmosphere, thanks to there being various support equipment attached to the orbiter. Dodgy mass-to-weight calculations were probably never involved. :-)

The original Beagle 2 apparently had a mass of 65kg, probably including support equipment, so the new Beagle is over twice as massive.

It seems they really got the science instrumentation right for the old lander, so let's hope they get everything else working too. Instruments do have a tendency to fly on missions they weren't originally intended for - the camera on Mars Express, the High Resolution Stereo Camera (a mere 20.4kg) was originally designed for the ill-fated Russian Mars 96 probe, for example.

With a bit of luck, Beagle 2's successor will safely reach the surface of Mars in 2009, so the important work can start...

It's almost as if they don't speak english.

I think the Gaia mission is pretty exciting, above and beyond the giant space mirror array. A precise mapping of the galaxy's stars, their distribution and relations would be invaluable. It also presents some great marketing possibilities while the search for exo-planets drags on.

The European Space Agency has been taking advantage of an equatorial launch site for 40 years in French Guiana. NASA has managed to remain relevant during those 40 years, so I don't foresee Brazil's recent launch changing that.

That is not that far fetched; last year there was an experiment at the Freie Universität Berlin about possible physiological and psycholocigal effects of (long time ) space travel.
I googled for an english article about the experiment.

A group of 250 students from many European universities has collectively designed a satellite by using a dedicated news server and weekly chats on Internet. By using the Web, the virtual team was able to move from design to construction in less than a year. The SSETI Express is currently under integration in one of the technology centers of the European Space Agency (ESA) in the Netherlands. Only a few selected members of the team will attend the launch which will be part of the Russian mission Cosmos DMC-3 in May 2005. The SSETI Express will embark three mini 'cubesats' for specific experiments whilethe main satellitewill test a propulsion system and act as a transponder for amateur radio users. I sure hope that this collaborative action will be successful. Read more...

Here is what ESA says about this collective work over Internet.

Scattered in universities across Europe, a 250-strong team of students have never collectively met in person, but between them they have built a space-ready satellite.

Collaboration between the pan-European network of students, universities and experts involved in the Student Space Education and Technology Initiative (SSETI) has been carried out via the internet.

Now that the completed subsystems are being delivered to ESA's European Space Technology Centre ( ESTEC ) in the Netherlands, remote participants from Italy to Denmark are eagerly following the integration process through daily photo updates, the integration logbook, and even a webcam.

What is the mission of this satellite?

Like a Russian doll, SSETI Express will carry inside it three smaller 'cubesats' -- 10-centimetre cube technology testers built respectively by universities in Germany, Japan and Norway -- for deployment when in orbit. The main SSETI Express satellite itself will test and characterise a propulsion system, return images of the Earth and serve as a transponder for amateur radio users.

The SSETI team is already working on another satellite, the European Student Earth Orbiter (ESEO). This one will be more complex than Express, weigh 100 kilograms, and it will be launched by an Ariane 5 rocket in 2007.

Besides these two satellites, the ESA looks at the future.

Coordination between groups is carried out using a dedicated news server and weekly Internet Relay Chats (IRCs) as well as the SSETI website. Face-to-face meetings are the exception rather than the rule, with group representatives meeting every six months for a workshop at ESTEC.

Beyond Express and ESEO, SSETI has hopes of becoming a fully-fledged facilitation network for all student space activity, with members carrying out detailed feasibility studies for a European Student Moon Orbiter (ESMO) a European Student Moon Rover (ESMR) and even an orbiter for Mars.

And here is the conclusion of Philippe Willekens of the ESA Education Department.

"This unique opportunity for students is also a unique opportunity for ESA to see how the young generation is working through a wide internet-distributed system, with little resources, but great enthusiasm and energy."

Good luck to all!

Source: European Space Agency news release, October 19, 2004

A group of 250 students from many European universities has collectively designed a satellite by using a dedicated news server and weekly chats on Internet. By using the Web, the virtual team was able to move from design to construction in less than a year. The SSETI Express is currently under integration in one of the technology centers of the European Space Agency (ESA) in the Netherlands. Only a few selected members of the team will attend the launch which will be part of the Russian mission Cosmos DMC-3 in May 2005. The SSETI Express will embark three mini 'cubesats' for specific experiments whilethe main satellitewill test a propulsion system and act as a transponder for amateur radio users. I sure hope that this collaborative action will be successful. Read more...

Here is what ESA says about this collective work over Internet.

Scattered in universities across Europe, a 250-strong team of students have never collectively met in person, but between them they have built a space-ready satellite.

Collaboration between the pan-European network of students, universities and experts involved in the Student Space Education and Technology Initiative (SSETI) has been carried out via the internet.

Now that the completed subsystems are being delivered to ESA's European Space Technology Centre ( ESTEC ) in the Netherlands, remote participants from Italy to Denmark are eagerly following the integration process through daily photo updates, the integration logbook, and even a webcam.

What is the mission of this satellite?

Like a Russian doll, SSETI Express will carry inside it three smaller 'cubesats' -- 10-centimetre cube technology testers built respectively by universities in Germany, Japan and Norway -- for deployment when in orbit. The main SSETI Express satellite itself will test and characterise a propulsion system, return images of the Earth and serve as a transponder for amateur radio users.

The SSETI team is already working on another satellite, the European Student Earth Orbiter (ESEO). This one will be more complex than Express, weigh 100 kilograms, and it will be launched by an Ariane 5 rocket in 2007.

Besides these two satellites, the ESA looks at the future.

Coordination between groups is carried out using a dedicated news server and weekly Internet Relay Chats (IRCs) as well as the SSETI website. Face-to-face meetings are the exception rather than the rule, with group representatives meeting every six months for a workshop at ESTEC.

Beyond Express and ESEO, SSETI has hopes of becoming a fully-fledged facilitation network for all student space activity, with members carrying out detailed feasibility studies for a European Student Moon Orbiter (ESMO) a European Student Moon Rover (ESMR) and even an orbiter for Mars.

And here is the conclusion of Philippe Willekens of the ESA Education Department.

"This unique opportunity for students is also a unique opportunity for ESA to see how the young generation is working through a wide internet-distributed system, with little resources, but great enthusiasm and energy."

Good luck to all!

Source: European Space Agency news release, October 19, 2004

• Before the Huygens probe separates from Cassini, a timer is set which will awaken it prior to entry into Titan's atmosphere. This timer triple-redundant.
  
• The probe separates from Cassini, and shuts down all systems (except for the timer). It coasts for 21 days before reaching Titan.
  
• Five days after separation, Cassini (not Huygens, it's asleep, remember?) will perform a deflection maneuver to position itself such that it can receive data from Huygens via radio (which will be relayed to Earth).
  
• A few hours before entering the atmosphere, Huygens will be awakened by its timer.
  
• At the time that Huygens starts to enter the atmosphere, Cassini will start to listen for signals from the probe. It will continue to listen until 30 minutes after the landing of Huygens.
  
• When Huygens has decelerated to 1440 km/h, a mortar will deploy the "pilot" parachute, which in turn will remove the aft cover and deploy the main parachute.
  
• After the 8.3 meter parachute is deployed, the front shield is released and falls away.
  
• After a delay of 30 seconds (to prevent instrument contamination from the shield), inlet ports are opened and atmospheric instruments are activated. At this time, the Atmospheric Structure Instrument boom is also deployed.
  
• 2 minutes later, the Imager/Spectral Radiometer cover is ejected.
  
• 15 minutes after the main parachute has been deployed, it is ejected and in its place the descent parachute (3 meters) is deployed.
  
• From this point on, the descent will last between 2 and 2.5 hours.