Slashdot Mirror

an even bigger one can be downloaded from here

an even bigger one can be downloaded from here

Check out the ESA version, It has much larger pictures. At least until it gets Slashdotted... http://www.esa.int/export/esaEO/SEM340NKPZD_index_ 1.html

If the link doesn't work, try this instead:

http://www.esa.int/esaCP/SEM340NKPZD_index_0.html

Which is a direct link to the source article.

That is why the European ATV will do the same when it's ready. Which originally was planned for ... fall 2004, I believe.

Or at least look at the 'artist's impression'.

They may be small and far apart, but the rules of physics does not allow preclusion from stuff like gravity and whatnot.

I suspect because we don't have our own (not even on the ESA astronaut program).

Aurora

I wish that they would publicize the things that the ESA does well, such as the upcoming Herschel mission, the upcoming Planck space satellite (the successor to WMAP and COBE), etc. Instead all we hear about in the US is a disappointing garbage idea like this (with no scientific merit) and the disaster of the BEAGLE 2. Come on, people. Don't take this seriously (and if you have the power, don't support this) -- this is basically a time capsule. Whatever we do to our Earth, I'm still sure it will provide a better record of life on Earth than whatever we might drop on the moon.

I wish that they would publicize the things that the ESA does well, such as the upcoming Herschel mission, the upcoming Planck space satellite (the successor to WMAP and COBE), etc. Instead all we hear about in the US is a disappointing garbage idea like this (with no scientific merit) and the disaster of the BEAGLE 2. Come on, people. Don't take this seriously (and if you have the power, don't support this) -- this is basically a time capsule. Whatever we do to our Earth, I'm still sure it will provide a better record of life on Earth than whatever we might drop on the moon.

One would think that they would dedicate as much as they could to actual SPACE activities

The goal is permanent habitats on the surface of another planets (the moon and mars).

It's a very serious, very long-term goal.

It'a also the most important and revolutionary goal that our species has ever set for itself. We will become citizens of the solar system, not just our home planet. But to get there we need to build and focus - and master the required technology.

Both ESA and NASA have their own programs that are working towards this. I have no doubt that we could get a man to mars right now. Assuming he survives the trip, he'd die there after a couple of weeks. Miserable.. starving, cold and alone.

Progress is slow precisely because the technology and understanding of how to live and be permanently self-sufficient on another planet - with no possiblity of rescue if something goes wrong - is not something that humans usually do.

as an article on the ESA website dated November 13th 2001, already talk about the spacehouse, on earth, with a "true" picture of it!

The Space House: Good in space, good in Europe, good at the South pole, AND good at the bottom of the sea!

Huygens is part of the Cassini mission, so its already at Saturn. According to the ESA the Huygens probe will enter Titan's atmosphere on January 14, 2005. Also, according to the article and this Huygens isn't even designed to search for life.

It costs us a lot less energy to just uplink the data from MER to ODY and let them send it back to Earth than for us to send it all the way back to Earth directly. The energy we save that way, we can spend on driving around, doing science, and staying warm. ODY did such a great job relaying data for us that it soon became our preferred communication mode -- we haven't returned any significant amount of data through another path for months. (Though we did recently test that we can also return data via ESA's Mars Express.)

To put it another way, without ODY, we'd have only about 10% of the pretty pictures you can find at the MER home page.

So on behalf of all of us MERfolk: thanks, and congratulations, Odyssey!

Severe weather has sunk more than 200 supertankers and container ships exceeding 200 metres in length during the last two decades. Rogue waves are believed to be the major cause in many such cases.

Linkage

In reply to my own question - the up and coming ESA Bepicolombo mission to mercury will use.. yep.. Solar Electric Propulsion. It still uses gravity slingshots to slow down, and needs a small conventional rocket to kick it into Mars orbit.

It will launch 2012 and take 4 years to get to Mercury, compared to 7 for messenger. Now the interesting part - how much is saved in the mission profile with ion engines? Do ion engines allow for more flexible mission launch windows? How will the propellant/mass profile compare to Messenger?

..They are not much mass-effective (thrust per unit engine mass) at all.

Current Ion drives can deliver >10x more power overall per Kg compared to rockets - but they do it slowly, over months/years.. Rockets can deliver "punch" at a spacific time. Advantages/Disadvantages both ways really.

Messanger as-is carries 1/2 its weight as fuel, so if you can reduce that 10 fold, or get 10 times the power, thats a good thing. Faster missions are less expensive in terms of keeping support staff too, and less risky. I think a solar-ion mission that spirals inwards as it decelerates would be way more efficient than the current plan. And would be much less dependant on celestial mechanics for launch dates.

Anyone from NASA here know why they dont use solar-ion drives for these missions? Is there some sort of political bias against solar & pro old fashioned rockets or nuclear? (And yes, I know nuclear (RTG) is needed for deep space - at least for electric power for the science instruments..)

Here is a better link for SMART-1..

I dont understand why solar-powered ion drives are not used on missions like this. Probes like the ESA SMART-1 has shown that such craft can be small & economical, and there is an abundance of solar power available for free. I understand that final orbital insertion can be a problem - could a solar ion drive deliver enough "punch", or would a supplemental booster be needed? Otherwise I understand that solar would be way more fuel/time efficient over a few years compared to carrying rocket fuel & hanging around for gravity slingshots. Am I right?

I have even read of deep-space solar-powered mission designs that head in inside mercurys orbit, grab loads of power and then head out beyond Jupiter..

Why arnt ion drives used more?

For more information, see ESA BepiColombo page.

Would you like your taxes low or would you like NASA funded properly? It doesn't seem like you can have both.

The Hubble has been great, but I believe that we need to focus on observations from the l2 point. Execution of Bush's 'plan' to go back to the moon first would push the technology for that mission, but somehow I don't think that he will ever come across with the money; too busy give contracts to Haliburton. Really all we need to do is focus on getting a spending bill through congress , because Bush hasn't vetoed a spending bill his entire time in office.

Sometimes I think that the world forgets what drove the U.S. to the moon, competition. If our European (and Asian) friends want to see progress on space issues, I suggest that you pressure your own government for the funding, not your 'rich' Uncle Sam (he's a little strapped for cash right now). A little competition always get America going.

"Under a $1,000,000" is a mere bagatelle, the failure to check for arithmetic overflow cost the European Space Agency two Communications Satellites at well over 600,000,000 Euros. For more such fun see Forum On Risks To The Public In Computers And Related SystemsForum On Risks To The Public In Computers And Related Systems

Let me guess.... American, right?

Is a polar orbit useful for anything other than military payloads?

The ESA payload GOCE - Gravity Field and Steady-State Ocean Circulation Explorer - for example would preferably fly in a polar orbit to gather gravity field data for the entire planet including the poles. Instead near-ground (i.e. airplane) measurements will need to fill in the data gaps at the poles. GOCE will fly in a dawn-dusk sun-synchronous orbit, launched by Rockot.

- charboy

the Titan probe may possibly land in it and float for a few hours.

It may float for an eternity, but its batteries will run out only a few (possibly ony three, depending on how long the trip through the atmosphere lasts) minutes after the impact/splashdown. See the mission timeline on the esa webpage.

And it did get to Mars! Sure, it landed much like a bowl of petunias falling from several miles would -- but the fact that it flew at all was the amazing thing.

Except that the "flying to Mars" bit was an accomplishment of the Mars Express, not of the Beagle.

I am somewhat involved with the European version of these missions (the Darwin mission, to be launched around 2014), so I might clear some things up.

Goal: to detect earth-like planets around other starts. Extra-solar planets detected thus far are usually 'hot Jupiters': big planets that orbit the star in a few days. These are relatively easy to detect. Detecting an earth-like planet (which have not been found yet) is far more difficult. It is usually compared to detecting the light of a firefly (reflection of the planet) flying very close to a lighthouse (the star). Measurements need to be done in the far infrared because there the ratio between the planet and the starlight is the highest (but still only 1:10^6 !!). With some luck they might find traces of ozone and CO2 in the spectrum that might be an indication for life.

Methods:
-Coronography: Simply put it is just a conventional big (~10 meter) telescope with a shadow mask that blocks the light of the star. The light of the planet should get past the mask on the detector.

-Interferometry: Somewhat similar to the techniques used in radio astronomy. The resolution of a telescope improves by increasing its size. The trick is to combine several small telescopes. The resolution should then be comparable to the resolution of one big telescope that is as wide as the separation between the small ones. With radio interferometry you can do the 'beam combination' by computer. In optics however you have to physically combine the beams of the different telescopes. This requires flying satellites in formation with stabilities on the order of nanometers!! Current schemes are limited to several hundred meters. There are also some attemps to do this on earth.

There is quite a lot of politics going on between NASA and ESA at the moment about how they should cooperate. First ideas where to do an interferometry mission together, but now NASA has decided to go for coronography and postpone interferometry to 2020. ESA is sticking to interferometry.

I'm curious... the article mentions that TPF-i will be a corroborative effort with the ESA. ESA, however, has been planning a similar endeavor named Darwin, which was to be a flotilla of eight infrared telescopes. So is the ESA folding their Darwin effort into TPF-i? If so, what will be the final name? If they settle on "Darwin", I imagine there might be an outcry by the American fundamentalist camp.

About ESA:
"ESA is an independent European agency and does not form part of the European Union (EU). Some countries that belong to the EU are not members of ESA and vice versa. "

Actually, ESA has a roadmap and a program already in place for the manned exploration of mars - and did long before it was announced NASA might be going. I applied to a well known UK university to work on the program for my PhD.

You can find out about the Aurora project here.

but needs to be recalibrated, as Andre Kuipers (ESA) stated on an interview this morning with Dutch television (Dutch language).

I'm not impressed. Have ESA made a pen that can be used in zero gravity yet?

Yes.

No water on Mars? What rock have you been living under the last couple of years? No offense, but that remark just seemed off whack considering the recent discoveries.

From the ESA website
LISA
LISA is an ESA-NASA mission involving three spacecraft flying approximately 5 million kilometres apart in an equilateral triangle formation. Together, they act as a Michelson interferometer to measure the distortion of space caused by passing gravitational waves. Lasers in each spacecraft will be used to measure minute changes in the separation distances of free-floating masses within each spacecraft.
The LISA mission is designed to search for and detect gravitational radiation from astronomical sources. In the process, LISA can test some of the fundamental tenets of the theory of gravitation.
The most predictable sources
The most predictable sources of gravitational waves are binary star systems in our galaxy. LISA's observations of these systems would be of interest both for fundamental physics and for astrophysics. The LISA design is such that both the amplitude and also the polarization of gravitational waves can be measured. If gravitational radiation from known binary systems is not detected, or is detected with amplitudes or polarizations not predicted by general relativity, then general relativity must be wrong. If the sources are detected then the polarization measurement reveals the angle of inclination of the orbit of the binary system. This is a crucial missing factor from many optical observations of these systems, and is necessary in order to infer the mass of the stars in the binary pair.
Why so much emphasis on Einstein's Theory all of a sudden??
SBD

ESA's 'shipping forecast' - from Titan!

This is a newsworthy story as the this guy is going to be one of the first to use ISS to test crystal growth . . .

Okay, I'll be nice since you said "one of the first". I just want to point out that ESA has already flown a crystal growth experiment to ISS three times. The experiment is called PromISS from the Universite Libre de Bruxelles. The PromISS experiment box and samples were sent to ISS via Russian Progress and Soyuz modules. PromISS operates inside the ESA built Microgravity Science Glovebox within NASA's Destiny Laboratory.

PromISS first flew on the Odissea Mission, also known as the Belgian Taxi Flight, in 2002. PromISS-2 flew again in 2003 on the Cervantes Mission (Spanish Soyuz Mission) and the third set of experiments is currently being performed on ISS as part of the Delta Mission (Dutch Soyuz Mission).

- charboy

This is a newsworthy story as the this guy is going to be one of the first to use ISS to test crystal growth . . .

Okay, I'll be nice since you said "one of the first". I just want to point out that ESA has already flown a crystal growth experiment to ISS three times. The experiment is called PromISS from the Universite Libre de Bruxelles. The PromISS experiment box and samples were sent to ISS via Russian Progress and Soyuz modules. PromISS operates inside the ESA built Microgravity Science Glovebox within NASA's Destiny Laboratory.

PromISS first flew on the Odissea Mission, also known as the Belgian Taxi Flight, in 2002. PromISS-2 flew again in 2003 on the Cervantes Mission (Spanish Soyuz Mission) and the third set of experiments is currently being performed on ISS as part of the Delta Mission (Dutch Soyuz Mission).

- charboy

This is a newsworthy story as the this guy is going to be one of the first to use ISS to test crystal growth . . .

Okay, I'll be nice since you said "one of the first". I just want to point out that ESA has already flown a crystal growth experiment to ISS three times. The experiment is called PromISS from the Universite Libre de Bruxelles. The PromISS experiment box and samples were sent to ISS via Russian Progress and Soyuz modules. PromISS operates inside the ESA built Microgravity Science Glovebox within NASA's Destiny Laboratory.

PromISS first flew on the Odissea Mission, also known as the Belgian Taxi Flight, in 2002. PromISS-2 flew again in 2003 on the Cervantes Mission (Spanish Soyuz Mission) and the third set of experiments is currently being performed on ISS as part of the Delta Mission (Dutch Soyuz Mission).

- charboy

Russia are involved in a lot of ESA work (and have been for 15 years apparently), as well as working with their Soyuz launch vehicle for many European probes. ESA are currently planning a Soyuz launch pad at Europe's launch site in Kourou, French Guiana.

The article also made no mention of SMART-1, the 'ion-drive' probe heading to the moon. It will be taking various readings and photos - in of course, higher detail than some previous endeavours. Wonder if they'll photograph the US moon landing sites? (Even apart from satisfying the skeptics - it'd be kinda cool to see new aerial shots of the sites!)

Russia are not (yet) members of the ESA. In the last week, Greece and Luxembourg were granted membership - the effort is growing. Members contribute an amount based on GNP, with a corresponding proportion of contracts and research being offered to that member.

Efforts are widely distributed - even my own (relatively small) University in Ireland has a number of researchers working on ESA stuff!

Russia are involved in a lot of ESA work (and have been for 15 years apparently), as well as working with their Soyuz launch vehicle for many European probes. ESA are currently planning a Soyuz launch pad at Europe's launch site in Kourou, French Guiana.

The article also made no mention of SMART-1, the 'ion-drive' probe heading to the moon. It will be taking various readings and photos - in of course, higher detail than some previous endeavours. Wonder if they'll photograph the US moon landing sites? (Even apart from satisfying the skeptics - it'd be kinda cool to see new aerial shots of the sites!)

Russia are not (yet) members of the ESA. In the last week, Greece and Luxembourg were granted membership - the effort is growing. Members contribute an amount based on GNP, with a corresponding proportion of contracts and research being offered to that member.

Efforts are widely distributed - even my own (relatively small) University in Ireland has a number of researchers working on ESA stuff!

There's another Mercury probe too, BepiColombo. And I'm surprised we haven't heard more about the Japanese asteroid sample return mission in the mainstream media. It's more interesting than that.

I mean, how long did it take for them to even confirm it was once wet?

I don't think that ultimately mattered. People have been obsessed with life on Mars since it was first discovered and the possibility of canals that were built by other beings.

The thought that water once flowed on the planet wasn't really that much of a profound/thought provoking concept in the scheme of things. There is some fairly obvious evidence that has hinted at the possibility of water. (I know, that image is from Mars Express, but we've known about major valleys and canyons since at least the time of the Viking Landers).

Regarding whether we are being eased into the possibility of life being on other planets. There is a greater chance of that than trying to prepare of for the possibility of water existing on another body.

However, I think the confirmation of life would be such huge and amazing news, I doubt word of it could be covered up for very long before it got out.

http://www.esa.int/export/SPECIALS/Mars_Express/SE MKK75V9ED_0.html

the case has long been settled in europe. ..that doesn't change if you're blind like nasa and have to go there touchy feely to verify for the 50th time what your instruments have told you for 30 years.

this aint science. its a show.

If you can tear your eyes away from the JPL rovers for a second, Mars Express has answered that question last week.

If you can tear your eyes away from the JPL rovers for a second, Mars Express has answered that question last week.

Well, you could - for example - look at the photo of Earth and moon together that was taken from the European Mars Express half way enroute to Mars. You can clearly see Earth & moon as small spots in the universe. Very interesting photo, I think!

Sorry you're wrong, isotopes are chemically almost identical, but you can separate them using chemical processes. Uranium is routinely enriched using chemical techniques. They may also be separated physically, the heavier isotope tending to have slightly higher boiling points and very slightly lower reactivity. The processes that incorporate carbon into living tissues favour the lighter isotope of carbon over the heavier.

The depletion of carbon 13 in plant tissues is one method of determining nutrient sources for herbivores. Since different groups of plants have slightly different photosynthetic pathways they produce slightly different depletions of carbon 13 (so-called dC13) in their tissues which can be traced through into animal tissue.

And a quick scan of the Beagle 2 page shows that they were trying to get a C12/13 ratio from Mars.

If life did select -12, then radio-carbon dating would simply say that all dead things are exactly the same age.

And why is that, when radiocarbon measures the amount of carbon 14 in a sample?

Since the c-13 decays (known half-life) then the current ratio of c-12 to c-13 implies the time passed between death and now.

Oh dear. carbon 13 is perfectly stable. You're thinking of carbon 14 which no one has even mentioned in this context as yet. C14 dating is hardly ever used in geology because the half-life is too short for all but the most recent of sediments.

Best wishes,
Mike.

The outer container of the Matroshka experiment is made by DTM, formerly known as Ferrari S.p.A Space Division. The DTM logo is visible on the outside of the composite container. This composite, Carbon Fibre Reinforced Plastics, is similar to those used for the better-known Ferrari Formula 1 cars (although a special mould was made to get the shape of the Matroshka container since not too many cars have that shape). The container is leak tight to maintain an atmosphere inside until it's brought back inside ISS (scheduled in ~1 year).

IMHO this is ESA's biggest challenge thusfar. 10 years is a very long time to wait for results of your mission... This flash animation shows Rosetta's long journey. This mission is even more awe inspiring than Stardust or Deep Impact.