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I hate to rain on everyone's parade here, but this mission isn't likely to happen soon. The paper referenced in the original post is a write-up of a case made to the call for ideas put out by the European Space Agency for future large missions, specifically looking for one to be launched in 2028 and another in 2034 (L2 and L3, in ESA-speak, with L1 being a mission to Jupiter and its icy moons, selected a year or so earlier).

Problem is, the Uranus/Neptune case didn't win either the L2 or L3 slot. A wide range of scientific ideas and mission concepts were proposed, aired publically, and assessed by a senior survey committee, before the two top-ranked ideas were approved by ESA's Science Programme Committee in late 2013.

And those two future missions will be a new high-energy astrophysics observatory for L2 in 2028 and a gravitational wave observatory for L3 in 2034.

The senior survey committee liked the science case for Uranus and Neptune, saying "The SSC considered the study of the icy giants to be a theme of very high science quality and perfectly fitting the criteria for an L-class mission", but then went on to say:

"However, in view of the competition with a range of other high quality science themes, and despite its undoubted quality, on balance and taking account of the wide array of themes, the SSC does not recommend this theme for L2 or L3. In view of its importance, however, the SSC recommends that every effort is made to pursue this theme through other means, such as cooperation on missions led by partner agencies."

So, it certainly won't be an ESA-led mission in the foreseeable future, but ESA could participate in a wider international mission if someone else leads it.

You can read the whole report here.

Yes, snowfall does make a difference. It compresses to ice, and Greenland's ice sheet has been thickening since the early 1990s. Now 6 cm/yr may not sound like a lot of additional thickness, but since 1993 that's at least 1.2 meters additional thickness (records prior to 1993 aren't that accurate - the satellites don't exist). It may be even more than that over the preceding decades as well. Given that ice weighs around 920 kg/m^3, and there are ~1.7 million km of Greenland ice sheet, the gains since 1993 easily add up to literally trillions of metric tons of additional weight. Weight that will compress the entire ice sheet even a bit more, raising the temperature ever so slightly at the base of the glacier, and thereby melting fractionally more ice - creating more lubrication for the glacier to move.

If you worked in this particular mission control group, how could you possibly resist setting all the clocks forward about 2 minutes on the day in question?

Hold that thought, think of the tense wait... Then consider that the signal was actually received 18 minutes later than expected.

Here is a beautiful interactive 3D simulation of how Rosetta got to where it is now. Where is Rosetta?. Video
The choreography of the Earth, Mars, Earth, Earth slingshots is just amazing.
Here is the complex orbits to come of Rosetta around the comet Orbit around Comet

Here is a beautiful interactive 3D simulation of how Rosetta got to where it is now. Where is Rosetta?. Video
The choreography of the Earth, Mars, Earth, Earth slingshots is just amazing.
Here is the complex orbits to come of Rosetta around the comet Orbit around Comet

Here is a beautiful interactive 3D simulation of how Rosetta got to where it is now. Where is Rosetta?. Video
The choreography of the Earth, Mars, Earth, Earth slingshots is just amazing.
Here is the complex orbits to come of Rosetta around the comet Orbit around Comet

I was following the webcast, a few minutes ago they received the signal from Rosetta, so the wakeup has succeeded, if a bit behind schedule.

(unfortunately I can't see a way to rewind, so you'll have to wait for the video to become available on the archive section of the webcast page)

I dug around ESA's pages and finally found details on the orbital parameters: on Comet Rendezvous, under "Comet mapping and characterisation (August 2014)" (halfway down) it says: "...the spacecraft is inserted into orbit around the nucleus at a distance of about 25 kilometres. Their [sic] relative speed is now down to a few centimetres per second. "

That slow orbital speed (OK, slow compared to what we're used to dealing with) is due to the small mass of the comet (again, compared to things like the Earth or Moon), which Wikipedia gives as about 3e12 kg. Checking the math, the equation for circular orbital velocity v[circ] = sqrt(GM/R) ~= sqrt( (7e-11)(3e12) / 25e3 ) = 0.09 m/s = 9 cm/s, cool. (Even if the quoted 25 km is to the surface rather than the centre, using that figure for R is OK since the comet's radius is only about 2 km.)

FWIW, at the surface, escape velocity sqrt(2)*v[circ] = sqrt( 2(7e-11)(3e12) / 2e3 ) = 0.5 m/s. You could easily jump off of that comet!

The page on the ESA website says there are two panels, each 32 m^2.

I'm not familiar with basketball courts, but I assume they're quite a lot bigger than that.

If the mission failed, would they admit it, or release some photos anyway? (Could they get away with it?)

No, because ESA helps during the whole mission.

Presuming these plumes are not one off events, couldn't we send an orbiter there to sample the plumes to at least get some idea of the chemistry of Europa's ocean, if not possibly outright detect signs of life?

Yes, and according to the BBC article NASA researchers hope to do just that. However, Europa Clipper is expensive and long way off. They are hoping that a European probe due to launch in 2022 (like that is close) will do the job even though is not intended to go over the poles, which is where the plumes were seen.

Take SpaceX for example - where the fanbois refuse to acknowledge the problems the Falcon 9 has experienced and who also treat the Falcon Heavy as if it were a proven craft rather than vaporware.

So you hate Elon Musk because you imagine that people (who are not Elon Musk) are not adequately upset by all the "problems" that Falcon 9 has experienced? Are you sure fanbois (nice ad hominem by the way) refuse to acknowledge the "problems," it seems to me you are blowing them out of proportion. What Falcon 9 problems are out of line for developing a completely new rocket, including engines? I'm not saying there haven't been problems and I know it took longer than they thought, but I don't see anything out of the ordinary in the course of developing a new rocket. Also, kindly list any comparable rockets that had fewer problems during their development and shakedown phases. Most currently flying rockets have had catastrophic failures during their development and service. The "worst" incident so far for the Falcon 9 was an engine failure, and it still reached orbit and deployed it's cargo - albeit in a lower than optimal orbit. Here is a sampling of some respectable rockets, from respectable companies having real problems:

1. First launch of the Ariane 5
2. Ariane 5 Mission Failure
3. Proton-M launch failure
4. Soyez launch failure
5. Progress fails to reach orbit
6. Taurus XL fails to reach orbit
7. Delta II launch failure
8. Zenit-3SL/ NSS-8 Sea Launch rocket vehicle failure

No rocket technology has ever been perfect right off the drawing board and most rockets flying today are using engines originally designed in the 60s and 70s. Those engines failed a lot during their early flights.

The only currently inservice rocket (that I am aware of) that has not had an outright failure is the Atlas V. That thing is amazing, but it costs 4x as much to launch as a Falcon 9 even though ULA gets launch subsidies. Orbital Services' Antares also looks like a solid platform. Its first flight was originally planned to be in December 2010 (when it was called the Taurus II). Its first launch was actually late April 2013. Two and a quarter years behind schedule (which is about the same delay as the Falcon 9.) Yet it's a much less capable rocket than the Falcon 9, using "off the shelf" engines and therefore should have been easier to design and build. But it turns out that building rockets is hard, even for companies that have been doing it for decades.

I want to be clear, I'm not bagging on any of the existing manufacturers nor their rockets. I just don't understand your animosity towards SpaceX, Elon Musk, and those of us excited that space flight is becoming less expensive.

And I feel the same way about Tesla. I don't expect a car to be perfect. It seems like a damn cool car and most the people that own one seem more than pleased with it. As for this problem existing for quite a while, it sounds like Tesla addressed it once they where made aware of it.

Facts aren't hate - except to the fanbois.

If this has to be explained to you... well, then you're either among the fanbois or terminally clueless as to the world around you.

You didn't list any actual facts and calling people fanbois and terminally clueless is pretty rude.

This one is directly relevant : http://xkcd.com/1297/

But this one is also relevant http://xkcd.com/1295/ given how many news sites mindlessly repeated the news "ISON disintegrated" when it was apparent in SOHO Lascar C3 imagery that that hadn't happened by 5 hours post-perihelion (see this at 2318 UTC)

if you looked at it, you are thinking the same thing i am: this rover is a knock-off of our previous rover model.

also, ours is bigger than yours.

if you looked at it, you are thinking the same thing i am: this rover is a knock-off of our previous rover model.

also, ours is bigger than yours.

Would make an excellent reality show, one that was more true to life than most of them on the small screen these days.

I think you missed the Youtube videos of the Mars 500 simulation somehow.. I especially liked the one about space pizza.

2012 lists GNU Octave 3, OpenCube software and other projects containers

There is also ESA's CHEOPS, a planet finder, also intended for launch in 2017.

This is why Russia and the ESA recently built a Soyuz launch pad at the Guiana Space Centre; They get nearly double the performance to GEO there, from 1.7 tonnes out of Baikonur to 3 out of Kourou. Russia's still dependent on Kazakhstan for Proton launches, though, and that's what they're currently using for most of their communication satellite launches.

I think the most likely .int you've used (probably linked to from Slashdot) is esa.int, the European Space Agency. (In Europe, we sometimes pronounce that "ay-sa").

http://www.esa.int/

The ExoMars rover will be launched in 2018. There was some reorganization when NASA was replaced by another partner, Roscosmos. The ESA site about the rover was updated last month, so it seems they're still on track.

Don't forget the SoC like programs such as ESA's SOCIS Public and private money for students to code open source software is a great thing.

Here's the correct link. Cool space mission.

Depth Perception

Binocular galactic vision!

The European Space Agency is already doing this. HTH.

They could have purchased TomTom, for example and had everything up and running immediately.

I think it's a bit more complicated than that. From Apple's mapping attribution page:

© 2006-2012 TomTom
Business listings data © Acxiom, 2012.
Map data © AND.
Property parcel data for USA. © CoreLogic Inc., 2012.
Satellite imagery data © DigitalGlobe, 2012.
Map and postal data © DMTI, 2012. This software contains Postal Code OM Data copied by Apple under a sub-license from DMTI Spatial Inc., a party directly licensed by Canada Post Corporation. The Canada Post Corporation file from which this data was copied is dated 2012.
Business listings data © Factual 2012.
Map data © Getchee, 2012.
© INCREMENT P CORP., 2012, http://www.incrementp.co.jp/gc01info/e/legal01.html.
Map data © Intermap, 2012.
Map data © LeadDog, 2012.
Business listings data © Localeze, 2012.
Mapping data for Australia and New Zealand. © MapData Services Pty Ltd., 2012, PSMA http://www.nowwhere.com.au/lic/NowWhereLic.htm.
Map data © MDA Information Systems, Inc., 2012.
Neighborhood data © Urban Mapping, 2012.
Map data © 2012 Waze.
âoeReviews from Yelpâ Yelp, 2012.
(CanVec)
© Department of Natural Resources Canada. All rights reserved.
http://www.geogratis.gc.ca/geogratis/en/index.html
(CGIAR-CSI SRTM)
CGIAR Consortium for Spatial Information, http://srtm.csi.cgiar.org/
Flickr Shapefiles Public Dataset, Version 1.0, http://www.flickr.com/
(GeoNames)
GeoNames and contributors, http://www.geonames.org.
(GlobCover)
© ESA 2010 and UCLouvain, http://www.esa.int/esaEO/index.html

National Aeronautics and Space Administration, http://www.nasa.gov

Contains Ordnance Survey data © Crown copyright and database right 2012. Contains Royal Mail data © Royal Mail copyright and database right 2012. http://www.ordnancesurvey.co.uk/oswebsite/

(OSDM)
© Commonwealth of Australia, 2012. This data has been used with the permission of the Commonwealth. The Commonwealth has not evaluated the data as altered and incorporated within this software, and therefore gives no warranty regarding its accuracy, completeness, currency or suitability for any particular purpose. http://spatial.gov.au

(OSM)
OpenStreetMap contributors, http://www.openstreetmap.org/
(StatCan)
Statistics Canada, http://www.statcan.gc.ca
(TIGER/Line® fi

The DISR movies made from data from the Huygens probe landing on Titan:

http://www.esa.int/esaMI/Cassini-Huygens/SEMKVQOFGLE_0.html
http://www.lpl.arizona.edu/DISR/Multimedia/Titan_Movies.htm

http://www.esa.int/SPECIALS/Mars500/

This argument has gone back and forth for decades. The latest credible report I have on hand is this ESA one, which documents an incident with the Galileo satellite.

Why not 4 space craft, to measure in 3D, like ESA's Cluster mission ?
NASA Budget cuts ?!
(The Cluster website is a bit out of date: the mission is currently extended to, IIRC, 2015.)

I am really, really trying to find some kind of justification for this "art" project and I'm coming up with bupkis.
OK... It does nothing scientific. But it does nothing artistic either.
It's about as artistic as painting a rock and dumping in the Marianas Trench.
For something to be considered art, it has to be able to communicate to other humans a message beyond just its own physical existence.

This satellite is supposed to send messages transmitted to it by blinking its LEDs and "People will be able to see the blinking lights with the naked eye or through a telescope".
Visible from the Earth's surface. With naked eye. LEDs. A 10x10x10 cm cube. Hanging in low Earth orbit. 600-2000 km from the surface. Right.

I can't really be bothered to look it up, but something tells me that you can't really see a 10 cm cube, 600-2000 km away, with an amateur telescope.
Besides, shouldn't Inter-Agency Space Debris Coordination Committee (IADC) "ground" this project?

Also, WTF is "Science is Fantasy" supposed to mean?
That science is unattainable and/or imaginary? Not real? With no real function or application?
Just dumping that "is" and it would make SOME sense. Or reversing the order of words in the sentence.
This... this is just half-thought through crap.

All I see here is rich, privileged parents, buying their rich, privileged, spoiled kid his 15 minutes of fame since he can't get there with his own effort and talent.

http://sophia.estec.esa.int/socis2012/?q=faq#socis_elig_restrictions

The age bit's been mentioned (18) ... but you must be a student at an accredited institution in a restricted list of countries (other than Canada, all are in Europe) ... which is what's going to knock out most of the readers on here.

(disclaimer: I was a mentor for a SOCIS 2011 project, and I just found out I'm listed on some 2012 projects, too, even though I don't have time to mentor this summer)

If you actually go to the page, they specifically say it was inspired by Google Summer of Code. so they give credit where credit is due.

What? You want me to RTFA? :-)

Anyhow, if they say that it was inspired by GSoC, doesn't that mean that they realize that they're capitalizing on the name?

In regards to the viewer comment, 99.9% of space launches put up satellites for practical purposes. So to say that viewers aren't necessary for those organizations in actually wrong.

Now you're just puting words in my mouth -- when did I say that viewers/data visualization tools aren't useful for the ESA? I think the ESA has a great idea here, and both a number of FOSS projects, the ESA, and a number of space-related organizations can benefit from the result. The whole point I was making is that the name portrays this as putting stuff (code?) up in space, and all of the links I clicked on didn't show that.

Being able to visualize where your satellite could impact given a worst case scenario is considered when developing these satellites. Additionally, visualizing the trajectories of 1000 other satellites is also important. There's a lot of space junk up there.

Sure, that's helpful, but it seems more of a "mission control" piece than an "in space" piece.

Finally, not everything is a viewer.

Perhaps I was too general in my depiction of the stated projects. It was my understanding, based on clicking on a half-dozen links, that the planned projects were to be used as either visualizers of data on the ground (not in any kind of active tracking, etc..), or as general mapping/modeling tools. Everything looked ground-based.

After reading through a bunch of the other links (the "Selected mentoring organizations" page is super-dense), it looks like there are actually a number of software projects will make it to space (or at least high altitudes). Some, like OpenCube nano-satellite hardware/software stack describe the project in plain English, but some are very technical from the get-go, e.g. pyNastran with the tag line "Nastran BDF Reader/Writer, F06 Reader/Writer, OP2 Reader, OP4 Reader & GUI," but no description or link or About page giving us a hint about what 'Nastran', 'BDF', 'F06', 'OP2', or 'OP4' means. It would be really great to have a blurb about each project on the mentoring organizations page, just so that we could see at a glance the purpose of each project, and what specific tasks they were aiming to complete for SoCiS

The ESA funded engineering projects that they believe are useful, not general computer science projects. There's a huge difference. Engineering is all about understanding a problem and finding a way to solve it. Viewers are for understanding your data.

The ESA funded a number of projects in various different areas. I just wish that they had chosen a more inclusive name so that both the projects that were going to space (hardware, software control, etc..) as well as the ground-based projects were both covered. "ESA Summer of Code" would have been short and descriptive. If they want to make it "in space," they should hire that sign painter from Kickstarter to paint a nice sign with a bold offset section for the "In Space!" portion of the sign.

(...), and we can't physically take enough oxygen, food, and water there and back.

So what did the six cosmo/euro/taikonauts eat in their sealed Mars 500 experiment? They had pizza only once, it was reported they made it themselves rather than phoning the nearest Moscow pizzeria for a take-away.

Search and ye shall find, lazy troll: http://sophia.estec.esa.int/socis2011/?q=node/16

Since this is the second instalment of SOCIS, I looked up SOCIS 2011's site -- http://sophia.estec.esa.int/socis2011/

And guess what?

There is no listing of what they did, nor what they had achieved, nor any project, nor program, nor nothing that they can convince anyone to participate on SOCIS 2012

Wonder why taxpayers of Europe are allowing this scam to go on ?

What I mean is, at the very least the SOCIS people should have let the world know what they have done, what kind of achievement they have attained, in past year's SOCIS, before announcing this year's SOCIS
 

The US is spending 25.7 billion (17.7 billion NASA, 8 billion for the military (GPS, etc)) on space in 2012

ESA spent 4 billion Euros (about $5 billion)... a total of 413 million EU on human space flight.

There's a lot of talk in the paper about "global" exploration of the moon. I can only assume that means they don't plan on increasing that.

ESA has 19 member countries and even some of them have space organizations of their own so the spending you cite is inaccurate. The EU actually has 27 member countries, 6 applicants for membership and additionally Switzerland and Norway are in ESA but not in the EU. Don't ask me how this correlates with the eurozone...

The US is spending 25.7 billion (17.7 billion NASA, 8 billion for the military (GPS, etc)) on space in 2012

ESA spent 4 billion Euros (about $5 billion)... a total of 413 million EU on human space flight.

There's a lot of talk in the paper about "global" exploration of the moon. I can only assume that means they don't plan on increasing that.

That's why the EU is making a case to return to the moon -- so somebody else will foot the bill for them.

The US is spending 25.7 billion (17.7 billion NASA, 8 billion for the military (GPS, etc)) on space in 2012

ESA spent 4 billion Euros (about $5 billion)... a total of 413 million EU on human space flight.

There's a lot of talk in the paper about "global" exploration of the moon. I can only assume that means they don't plan on increasing that.

I don't know.. there's probably loads of research to be done before the actual launch of the actual base.
Russia did recently organize (together with ESA) the Mars 500 experiment. It's not as "sexy" as actually sending a mission to Mars, but I am always impressed when all the more boring preparatory work just gets quietly and calmly worked on.
There's no hurry. If there is no large budget, focus first on life-support systems, on the right worms for regolith agriculture, lubrication of machinery in vacuum and moondust conditions, on how large the solar panels need to be for the miniature solar-panel-baking-oven, how well Calcium works as electricity wire, etc. etc.
They can always team up with their neighbours the Poles (Krakow moon radio station) or their other neighbours the Chinese (Chang'e program).

As with x-ray lensing, the question was of feasibility for certain applications.

It seems the idea of focusing gamma rays isn't as new. ESA made a study on it years ago. They proposed multilayer coatings and Laue crystals.
ESA study on gamma lens

Fear not: I am sure those old-worlders, with their evil state subsidies of Science, including EO, will share their data ;-)

Learn to read. 21 tonnes is the mass of the entire loaded capsule at launch. Of which 7 tonnes is cargo.

ATV total cargo upload capacity: 7,667 kg
ATV mass at launch (max.): 20,750 kg

http://esamultimedia.esa.int/docs/ATV/FS003_12_ATV_updated_launch_2008.pdf

http://blogs.esa.int/andre-kuipers/2012/03/24/evacueren-naar-mijn-sojoez-vanwege-ruimtepuin/?lang=nl

Translated by Google: http://translate.google.com/translate?sl=nl&tl=en&js=n&prev=_t&hl=nl&ie=UTF-8&layout=2&eotf=1&u=http%3A%2F%2Fblogs.esa.int%2Fandre-kuipers%2F2012%2F03%2F24%2Fevacueren-naar-mijn-sojoez-vanwege-ruimtepuin%2F%3Flang%3Dnl&act=url

Is there any advantage to sending a person? Does that accomplish anything more than just doing it? I'm all for research and exploration I just don't see the point in wasting resources on sustaining a person until we have technology which makes it more practical.

Well, given the time frame that they are setting, and the work that they are doing towards manned flight such as the Mars500 there does seem to be some hope for getting a small "colony" working and fairly self reliable. Would it be better if they had a precanned fusion reactor to go with it, ready to accept He3 and provide all the power they could ever use? Sure - although they can still go there without it.

But who knows what you will find out when you send folks to places that you wouldn't find out by sending a robot.

I'm sorry, but 700 km = 434 miles, is well within the height necessary for Low Earth Orbit (LEO), 400km = 234 mi. The normal delineation for LEO is anywhere from 100 - 620 miles (200-2000KM) to 200-500 mi (340-800 km). Well at least according to NASA , NASA again, Wikipedia and ESA . So it seems this little rocket "barrage" is one way to test a new "inexpensive" launch vehicle. Perhaps with military implications. Minutemen are rather expensive , and three stages. A two stage rocket is bound to be cheaper.

Considering it's a 10cm^3 cube, it's good to know we still have our sense of (self-)irony :)

Why is "Europe's Spaceport" in South America? Isn't that South America's Spaceport?

"Europe's Spaceport" is in Kourou, in French Guiana. Which is a French colony in South America.

Space Micro doesn't list the prices of their components or systems, nor can I find any from anyone else. Honeywell don't list their prices either. Atmel seem to have dropped out of the field. Linear don't list the prices for their space-hardened stuff. Don't see any for BAE either, or Intersil. Empire Magnetics require a lot of personal data before they give you access to even the price classification information. Not the prices, just how they're classified.

You've got to allow for a year's worth of traveling outside of an atmosphere and then operating on Mars for the duration of the mission. This analysis of radiation for manned missions suggests you're looking at 3.5 mSv per day, then 20 rems per year in most of the places of interest.

Converting everything to rads, it's 0.1 rads per mSv and 1 rad per rem, so that's 12.75 rads to get to Mars if you assume a year-long trip, plus 20 rads for the mission, so anything with a rating of less than 32.75 rads is pretty much guaranteed to fail. However, over the course of a two years, the odds of there being a solar flare are not insignificant. To be safe, you want resistance to a further 400 rad. 432.75 rad is within the tolerance of most of the space-hardened components (some components can be taken up to 1000 rad, others up to 10,000). However, the cheapest space components would NOT survive. You're talking high-end on the space scale.

I'm going to figure that the top-line components will cost 100x that of their conventional counterparts, due to the higher-level of precision and QA that are required. It might well be a good deal more. In Russia, you've also got to pay for smuggling decent-grade hardware out of the US, as all of this stuff will be under massive amounts of regulation.

My guess is that the cuts would have saved enough that those doing the cost-cutting could buy second homes in Switzerland.

And NASA and ESA are working on two more, but my understanding is that they won't be as coordinated like STEREO (they'll be rotating around the sun faster, so they won't necessarily get the 100% coverage that we currently get with STEREO):

http://www.nasa.gov/topics/solarsystem/sunearthsystem/main/solarprobeplus.html

http://sci.esa.int/science-e/www/area/index.cfm?fareaid=45

(disclaimer: I work for the STEREO Science Center)