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its ESA

European Space Agency

Even though they don't mention the name, this sounds likes they are talking about BepiColombo which has been in the works for several years now.

One of the more exciting bit about the mission is the lander (or impactor, depending) which is one of the things which distinguishes it from the US Messenger. Unfortunately, this is also one of the elements most likely to be removed, due to cost and complexity.

Look at Rescheduling of some Beagle 2 'cruise check-out' tests for a slightly more informative document.

It looks like the Solid State Mass Memory (essentially a modern replacement for the tape recorders found on older spacecraft) had a problem and to avoid writing over the data in the memory, they are delaying tests on Beagle. It's not really a Beagle problem, and it doesn't even look like a biggee for Mars Express. It's probably either a SEU (Single Event Upset) caused by some radiation whizzing through part of the electronics, or some sort of odd software bug (probably fixable with some patching).

Nothing much to see, move along here.

I later found thisarticle at the ESA website, but I had already submitted the story... It provides a bit more information.

Sorry, there is no private funding of Beagle 2. It has been paid for as a consortium by the Department of Trade and Industry, ESA, the Wellcome Trust and PPARC. The involvement of Damien Hirst and Blur has been on a volunteer basis - both for their contributions and for the publicity they can give the project.

Best wishes,
Mike.

ESA launched their Mars probe on June 2nd. So, in about half a year there will be three different probes landing on Mars if everything goes as planned.

ESA launched their Mars probe on June 2nd. So, in about half a year there will be three different probes landing on Mars if everything goes as planned.

extrasolar planets.

Etc??? We (The Netherlands) also contribute alot! :-)

See for example this link.
It's our national space and air craft lab that highly cooperates with ESA and it's highly subsidiesed by our gov.

We also built the robotic arm for the space station:

I feel left out!!! :-)

They said they would put "over 1 billion euros" on that. What about some prospective? ESA's budget for 2002 was around 2,8 bn euros. With this sort of money for last four years they were able to put together a mission to Mars - and that's about it. NASA's budget is around 15 bn Euros and it is barely enough to keep the Shuttle fleet flying and make around two scientific missions a year (look for example at the state US Mars exploration is in). And that is not all the money US spends on space - there is also DoD budget.

A single Ariane 5 launch costs around $150 M which is roughly $140 MEuros, so this is good for around ten launches. Proton and Soyuz are cheaper - $80M and $40M respectively. (a table of launch vehicles costs). But of course this money won't be spent directly on launches, you have to have something to launch first.

Europe's space program has been so far driven mostly by France and to some extent Britain. Others were just interested, but with no real substance. All projects of manned missions were dropped along the way (and there were a few - a small shuttle designed by French that was supposed to be Ariane's payload - I forgot the name, German SSTO Sanger plane and similar British project). As a result Europe has no experience in building manned spacecraft - unless they would get it from Russians. I'm afraid that 1 bn Euros won't be enough to put together a manned mission unless it would be just flying Russian spacecrafts with Europe's yellow stars logo painted on them.

If Europe would spend this money on building a GPS-like system, then 1 bn Euros is a significant amount, however again not enough to build the system - and keep it running (Russians build one to guide their warheads but couldn't afford to keep it up).

What is most likely however is that this money won't be spent on a single mission or project. As the article says this money would be "pumped into the sector to overhaul its manufacturing and marketing programmes". It means that it would be divided into many small donations to various projects just to keep the industry afloat. So it is nice, but is far from enough if Europe really wants to be a player in the Space Race.

And - BTW - Deutsche Telekom's loss for 2002 was "over" 24 billion euros.

In addition to these missions, also keep an eye on the NASA/ESA Cassini-Huygens mission to Saturn and Titan, arriving later this year, as well as ESA's SMART-1 mission to the moon to be launched soon. Future plans include NASA's Mercury Messenger, and ESA's Venus Express and Bepi-Columbo.

In addition to these missions, also keep an eye on the NASA/ESA Cassini-Huygens mission to Saturn and Titan, arriving later this year, as well as ESA's SMART-1 mission to the moon to be launched soon. Future plans include NASA's Mercury Messenger, and ESA's Venus Express and Bepi-Columbo.

I dunno, all this atrobiology is pretty speculative, so actually finding life would be pretty exciting confirmation.

Maybe your too young to recall, but there was time when the existence of water anywhere but on Earth was just speculation. And even today there are plenty of unanswered questions about Martian hydrology.

Additionally, the knowledge that life can exist in extreme environments is relatively recent. Doubts remain as to whether life can emerge e.g. under tremendous pressures or in sulfuric heat vents, or whether it needs warm water and light to get started.

Heck, I remember my heart jumping the first time I heard about evidence of planets in other solar systems. When I was in school that sort of thing was science fiction, not fact.

The problem with applying probability is quite simply that until very recently we've had like a sample size of one in a universe of one--and a handful of hazy blobs orbiting the sun, oh so tempting. I'm laughing. Like some baby in a crib who wants to play with his mobile. We question whether he perceives or has concepts, meanwhile he's trying to apply probability.

I can't believe this article doesn't mention Beagle II is part of the Mars Express mission. Beagle II is a piggyback probe ridding on the Mars Express orbiter which will be launched in a few days. While Beagle II will search for life on Mars, the orbiter will take pictures (different wavelenghts), gather atmospheric data, radar map the surface and relay Beagle II data back to Earth.

Take a look at the mission facts.

In case anyone cares: This is why Europe needs Galileo

I think that, out of all the missions the article mentions, Mars Express is the most exciting. This mission, which is backed by the European Space Agency (rather than NASA, as the article implies), carries the British-built Beagle 2 lander, targeted at looking for evidence for Martian life, past and present. Beagle 2 (named after Charles Darwin's ship) is far more sensitive than the old Viking Missions, which were the first (and so far, the only) missions to look for life. It's worth noting that the more-recent Pathfinder mission was a proof-of-concept for the two upcoming Mars Exploration Rovers, which are for geological surveys rather than life searches.

One partcularly cool feature of Beagle 2 is its "Mole", which can crawl across the surface (at 1cm/s) and burrow imto the ground or under boulders. The Mole will be able to take samples from locations which the Viking landers couldn't reach; these samples may provide conclusive evidence that life once existed on Mars.

Mars Express, carrying Beagle 2, is due to blast off from the Baikonur Cosmodrome in Kazakhstan on June 2. Fingers crossed!

I think that, out of all the missions the article mentions, Mars Express is the most exciting. This mission, which is backed by the European Space Agency (rather than NASA, as the article implies), carries the British-built Beagle 2 lander, targeted at looking for evidence for Martian life, past and present. Beagle 2 (named after Charles Darwin's ship) is far more sensitive than the old Viking Missions, which were the first (and so far, the only) missions to look for life. It's worth noting that the more-recent Pathfinder mission was a proof-of-concept for the two upcoming Mars Exploration Rovers, which are for geological surveys rather than life searches.

One partcularly cool feature of Beagle 2 is its "Mole", which can crawl across the surface (at 1cm/s) and burrow imto the ground or under boulders. The Mole will be able to take samples from locations which the Viking landers couldn't reach; these samples may provide conclusive evidence that life once existed on Mars.

Mars Express, carrying Beagle 2, is due to blast off from the Baikonur Cosmodrome in Kazakhstan on June 2. Fingers crossed!

Like this one? Give it a break already, it launches in just ten days...

Mars Express website

It makes sense. Combining two different nations in a space program might look good for the media, but from an efficiency and productivity point of view, it's very poor. You end up with compromises at every stage of the process, with the result that noone is truly satisfied with the outcome.

Bear in mind Russia has a huge advantage over the US in both long term space missions (Cosmonauts in Mir hold the endurance record for space 'flight'), and it also has far superior heavy lift capabilities. The Energia launch vehicle is capable of orbiting a payload of 100 tons - far more than than the 30 tons capable of being lifted by the shuttle. While there have been plans for US heavy lift systems (cf. the 'Shuttle-C' cargo container, or the Ares booster) which could increase payload weight to 121 tons, the Russians designed a system (Volcano) derived from Energia which could loft over 200 tons of cargo!

NASA is at serious risk of falling further and further behind, and becoming largely irrelevant in space exploration. Mars Express (from the ESA) is a clear example of how quality research can be performed at a fraction of the cost of a typical NASA mission. Pathfinder cost 'just' $200M - compare this to the British built 'Beagle' rover, which is more capable, and cost just £10M (~ $16M) to develop! Mars Express, the overall project of which Beagle is part, cost just 203M. Compare this to the $800M cost of the latest US mission to Mars.

If NASA is to succeed in the long term, and to shine at research, it has to learn hard lessons from several sources. Satellites can be optimally placed with cheap boosters, not expensive manned shuttle missions. Productivity needs to get back, at the very least, to Pathfinder mission standards. Using proven engineering, and modularity of design, you can massively reduce failures, and costs.

For more information on Mars Express, check here and the official ESA project page here.

havn't scratched our own project (Galileo). The first of the 30 satellites (27 + 3 active spares) will be launched in 2004, with an initial service operational by 2006 and the full system operational by 2008. The links are here (European Commission site), and here ESA site).

I think you must have been mistaken - IIRC the US tried to persuade Europe to dump the project, basically because it will be accurate to around 45cm (guaranteed to withing 100cm), whereas GPS can often be several dozen metres out (and has even known to be several hundred km out!), and the US gov doesn't want European civilians having better tech than their military. The project was debated but they finally agreed to go ahead with it anyway and tell the US gov to get lost (ok, more politely, but that was the basic effect).

Since we waste most of our space exploration money on making it possible for people to eat, sleep, drink, defecate/urinate, bathe, and breath in space, we don't have good enough robotics. There is, of course, the european walking robot that is supposed to quickly move to deal with external damage to the ISS, among other things.

By spending so much on manned space flight, we are barking up the wrong tree and drastically retarding space exploration.

Mars Express? It's flying on a Fregat/Soyuz. Your point was what precisely?

Best wishes,
Mike.

And on this photo you can see the ESA flag, floating on some experimental habitat.

> Cassini is on course to arrive at Saturn in July 2004, when it will deploy a smaller spacecraft called Huygens to study that planet.

No! Huygens will not be studying "that planet". It will land on Titan, a moon.

ESA was talking about this project (and five other) in September of last year.

See this link for a little information on them all, and some background gumf.

...to the European Space Agency while you are at it?

They are not erratic over those timescales. The Martian Axis can swing by as much as 30 degrees on one vector (near-randomly) within 2 solar days.

I don't understand what you mean by this. Do you have a reference?

This is from the European Space Agency:
http://sci.esa.int/content/doc/7c/24444_.htm
Read the "obliquity" section.

But, given this, let me add a little nota bene...

I found this by opening up a window to Google and typing the words +"L2" +"orbit" +"space". For me, it was the first entry returned.

"Give a man a fish and you have fed him for a day, but *teach* a man to fish and you have fed him forever". That is what makes sharing the 'tricks of the trade' so special.

It looks like a launch can happen on Jan 22, Jan 23, Jan 26, or Jan 29.

The later article did say it was postponed, and it has been, probably for a year or more. This will make it impossible to get to Wirtanen, so another comet will need to be selected. This will probably mean delaying the launch well past the 12 months point.

See Rosetta Launch Postponed and ESA Press Release.

It looks like a launch can happen on Jan 22, Jan 23, Jan 26, or Jan 29.

The later article did say it was postponed, and it has been, probably for a year or more. This will make it impossible to get to Wirtanen, so another comet will need to be selected. This will probably mean delaying the launch well past the 12 months point.

See Rosetta Launch Postponed and ESA Press Release.

To increase the sensitivity ESA is building a flotilla of space craft that together form a network to measure gravitional waves.

The mission is called LISA and will be supported by a pre-cursor mission SMART-2 to develop the necessary measuring and flotilla operations.

To increase the sensitivity ESA is building a flotilla of space craft that together form a network to measure gravitional waves.

The mission is called LISA and will be supported by a pre-cursor mission SMART-2 to develop the necessary measuring and flotilla operations.

To increase the sensitivity ESA is building a flotilla of space craft that together form a network to measure gravitional waves.

The mission is called LISA and will be supported by a pre-cursor mission SMART-2 to develop the necessary measuring and flotilla operations.

The ESA Human spaceflight budget is a bit harder to pin down due to multi-year authorizations and various breakdowns, but appears to be about 1 billion euros for the four year period from 2002-2006, so roughly 250 million euros per year. Note from the link that the bulk of this figure is contributions to the ISS, not human spacecraft development.

Since the euro and dollar are roughly equivalent lately, at current levels the ESA would need to increase it's human spaceflight budget by 24X just to match NASA spending on the same. However, at that level, NASA isn't even vaguely contemplating a return to the Moon, much less going to Mars.

Given the current economic situation in Europe, I'd put the chance of any of this happening at just about zero.

When (if?) mankind finally returns to the moon, it will most likely be via a private company in some sort of for-profit venture. Unless there is some sort of new political goal to be gained, governments will not (and should not, IMHO) be part of the picture. Its just too damn expensive for taxpayers to stomach. - Necron69

The Rosetta project just fascinates me.

The lander measures about 1 meter across, 80 cm in height. ESA scientists managed to cram 9 science instruments on board, weighing altogether not more than 21 kg. Earth sized versions of some of these instruments (for example: I believe there is a mass spectrometer on board) are as large as the lander itself, if not bigger.

Also think of the duration of this project. From designing, building the spacecraft, to 9 years flight time and the processing of science data afterwards certainly must be keeping some people occupied for perhaps 15 years. (Just think, suppose you can't get along with your manager for 15 years ;-)

For those of you who want to know more about Rosetta, check ESA's Rosetta website.

Surprisingly, since Apollo 17 left 30 years ago there were not only no further manned missions, but also almost no further robotic missions. The Moon became a "been there done that" world, when in fact there are still a huge number of mysteries about it.

Apollo could only scratch the surface: they had to be very careful about safe landing spots which favored the relatively rare Mare regions, they couldn't dig more than a couple of meters into the surface, they didn't go anywhere near the poles or the far side, which have quite different terrain and likely mineral deposits, etc. Despite some evidence of volcanic activity only Apollo 14 landed in one of the regions of volcanic interest, and the crew there were the least geologically educated of the lot so the samples taken were not terribly useful. etc. etc.

We have more high-resolution pictures of Mars than we do of the Moon - the only really high-res shots (1 meter or better) were from the Apollo command modules as they circled, and those cover just narrow strips of the Moon's surface.

Missions since Apollo amounted to a handful of Russian Luna missions through 1974, then a long gap, a Japanese experimental flight (HITEN) in the 1980's, and Clementine and Lunar Prospector in the 1990's. Clementine was run by the Dept. of Defense, not NASA, and Lunar Prospector was Alan Binder's baby at Lockheed Martin, done on the cheap for $60 million. That's basically the total NASA spending on the Moon since Apollo - less than 2% of the cost of the Mars missions that have failed!

NASA's negelect of the Moon seems to be continuing, but scheduled for next year we have at least 1 government (ESA's SMART-1) and 1 private (TransOrbital's TrailBlazer
) mission on track. The Japanese space agency also plans a Lunar-A mission that may launch next year. So things are starting to look up!

And for those interested in a exploration and development of the Moon, why not join the Moon Society!

Neither launchers nor satellites are controlled at Toulouse. The ESA's (not Arianespace's) control center is ESOC in Darmstadt, but i doubt it was involved in this launch.

Actually the European Space Operations Centre is at Darmstadt in Germany.

J

There have been a number of people from European countries that have been on board of MIR or manned other space missions.

From the ESA (European Space Agency) web site:

The European Space Agency began its manned flight programme with Spacelab, providing the opportunity for the selection of the first ESA Astronauts in 1978. The three first astronauts selected were the German Ulf Merbold, the Dutch Wubbo Ockels and the Swiss Claude Nicollier. (Original)

There have been a number of people from European countries that have been on board of MIR or manned other space missions.

From the ESA (European Space Agency) web site:

The European Space Agency began its manned flight programme with Spacelab, providing the opportunity for the selection of the first ESA Astronauts in 1978. The three first astronauts selected were the German Ulf Merbold, the Dutch Wubbo Ockels and the Swiss Claude Nicollier. (Original)

Your numbers are way off base:

Cost of Skylab was about US$10 billion.

TOTAL (ie. not just the US) cost of the ISS is about $100 billion over 30 years (Reference)

The original US Share of this was about US$15 billion (for comparison, ESA's share was US$8 billion) when the plans were finalized in 1993 (I think?). NASA's cost overruns in January were revised to be a little under US$5 billion

For comparison, the American Manned Lunar Program (Mercury, Gemini, Apollo) cost about $100 billion (in 1994 currency terms). Reference

One of the reasons this option was not used is that NASA doesn't have any boosters that could be retrofitted.

That season (1997/1998), the fires spread because the forests were unusually dry. This was partly because it was an El Niño year, which caused severe drought.

But human activity was probably a more important factor--in the mid '90s large drainage canals were cut in the peat forests (as part of the Mega Rice Project), which dried out large areas of peat; and large areas of the forest have been damaged by other activities, especially logging. So the fires spread along the banks of the drainage canals (see this article from the Guardian), along logging roads, and in general, areas where humans had damaged the forest--pristine areas were far less affected by the fire, even when they did burn. (See Satellite shows how logging makes forest more flammable, which is based on an article in the Nov 22 2001 issue of Nature.)

So, yeah, I'd blame humans for this fire--they started the fires, human use of the forest made the fires both larger and more damaging than they would have been otherwise. El Niño was a huge factor in the spread of the fires, but humans made it way worse.

While the carbon released by the fires is something to worry about, these fires also caused a big loss of biodiversity. Borneo is one of the few places where orangutans are found in the wild, along with other endangered primates. The fires are thought to have killed thousands of orangutans and destroyed much of their habitat. This wouldn't be such a huge problem--forest can grow back, after all--except that Borneo is being heavily deforested, because of (largely illegal) logging, conversion to farmland, and so on. At current rates of deforestation, some think that Borneo's forest might be essentially gone in two decades, driving orangutans, proboscis monkeys, and other species to extinction.

Incidently, since these fires were burning in peat, some of them never really stopped--the peat has just been smoldering for years. It's an El Niño year right now (much weaker than '97/98), and there are fires on Borneo again (or at least there were, as of August--it's hard to find current information, though you can look at the Global Fire Monitoring Center's webpage for southeast Asia). Another chance to take measurements of carbon emissions, I guess.

The LISA experiment, which gets mentioned in passing, is really quite audacious - three spaceships orbiting the sun in a clever rotating triangle pattern, 5 million miles apart from each other, and detecting changes in distance between each other to an accuracy of 20 picometers!
In essence, it's just a really, really big version of the Michelson interferometer we all played with in 1st year physics - I remember the thrill back then of realising what tiny changes in distance you could discern with just a couple of mirrors, a lamp and something to measure the recieved intensity.
It's exciting to witness the nascence of an entirely new form of astronomy.

Go take a look at the photo at the top of the page linked to in the /. summary (ESA's launch page)

Is it just me or does the thrust coming from the bottom of that rocket look suspiciosly clean + straight? They have other pictures that look fairly normal, but that looks like it's straight out of some CG computer game or something...

Because Baikonur is in Russia and a Russian Proton rocket was used to place Integral in orbit, as explained here.

" If they succeed the SKA will be so big and precise it will jump the world's current best, the American Very Large Array in New Mexico, by a factor of 100, both in sensitivity and resolution."

Fortunately it's only compared to the VLA in regards of resolution. Single radiotelescopes have no chance in hell to get to extreme resolutions. Resolution is all in the diameter, or baseline. Nothing you can do about, it's just basic physics. Fortunately you can have big holes in your telescope, or inversely just a few parts of the surface. Excactly the principle of the VLA and VLBI in radio frequencies and the VLTI for light. You can even find a simulation applet here

In fact the earth itself is getting too small to get more resolution. Going into space is indeed being looked into, but not in the sense of a satellite like the Hubble orbiting the earth. That would hardly be worth the effort where radio astronomy is concerned. Having a baseline as long as the distance between the earth and the moon, now that would be an improvement. Plus, if it's built on the side that's always turned away from the earth, the telescope will be shielded from all the annoying interference created by all the radiochatter on earth, while it's still possible to look at the same piece of sky as an earth based telescope.

In the visual spectrum, Darwin from ESA looks set to become the next record holder . A first technology demonstration/development flight in the form of SMART-2 is currently under development.

" If they succeed the SKA will be so big and precise it will jump the world's current best, the American Very Large Array in New Mexico, by a factor of 100, both in sensitivity and resolution."

Fortunately it's only compared to the VLA in regards of resolution. Single radiotelescopes have no chance in hell to get to extreme resolutions. Resolution is all in the diameter, or baseline. Nothing you can do about, it's just basic physics. Fortunately you can have big holes in your telescope, or inversely just a few parts of the surface. Excactly the principle of the VLA and VLBI in radio frequencies and the VLTI for light. You can even find a simulation applet here

In fact the earth itself is getting too small to get more resolution. Going into space is indeed being looked into, but not in the sense of a satellite like the Hubble orbiting the earth. That would hardly be worth the effort where radio astronomy is concerned. Having a baseline as long as the distance between the earth and the moon, now that would be an improvement. Plus, if it's built on the side that's always turned away from the earth, the telescope will be shielded from all the annoying interference created by all the radiochatter on earth, while it's still possible to look at the same piece of sky as an earth based telescope.

In the visual spectrum, Darwin from ESA looks set to become the next record holder . A first technology demonstration/development flight in the form of SMART-2 is currently under development.

I tried to surf the sites to find information on the cargo. Any pointers?

A EUTELSAT satellite. Wonder why they didn't launch it on our own Ariane?

Excellent idea. Can I suggest somewhere nearby where that comet is expected to land?

Cnn't we just put them all on the Venus express