Eideard

Europe’s new Vega rocket has completed a flawless first flight.

Controllers at the Kourou spaceport in French Guiana ignited the rocket at 07:00 local time (10:00 GMT), and it completed its mission 70 minutes later…

For its first outing, Vega placed nine payloads in orbit, including a physics experiment to test Einstein’s theory of general relativity…

The vehicle is intended to guarantee access to space for an increasingly important class of satellite weighing less than 2.5 tonnes. At the moment, these smaller spacecraft, which include many Earth observation satellites, tend to ride converted Russian nuclear missiles to get into orbit. European operators can sometimes wait many months to get a launch slot on these ICBMs, however.

Vega should allow them to have more control over the schedules of their space projects. It also means that the value of what it is an immensely high-tech enterprise will return to the European economy, not to foreign industry…

Monday’s mission was intended to qualify the overall Vega system, including the rocket vehicle itself and all its ground infrastructure and operations systems.

Read the rest of this entry »

Click on the photo for lots more

NASA image of Papua New Guinea’s Manam Volcano releasing a thin, faint plume as clouds clustered at the volcano’s summit, taken by The Advanced Land Imager (ALI) on NASA,s Earth Observing-1 (EO-1) satellite, over Manam island, 8 miles off the coast of mainland Papua New Guinea

Mid-latitude storm tracks are major weather patterns that account for the majority of precipitation in the globe’s middle latitudes, which includes most of the heavily populated areas of North America, Eurasia, and Australia. Due to atmospheric circulation and the dynamics of weather systems, these bands of low pressure form repeatedly in the same locations. Apart from being meteorologically important, they’re also major players on the climate scene -— clouds in these regions are responsible for reflecting much of the incoming solar radiation that is bounced back to space before penetrating Earth’s atmosphere.

Many climate models have predicted that the positions of these storm tracks would slowly migrate toward the poles, but so far this trend had not been detected. However, analysis of 25 years worth of data from the International Satellite Cloud Climatology Project now indicates that this shift is probably already taking place.

The International Satellite Cloud Climatology Project (or ISCCP) operates a network of geostationary and polar orbiting satellites that have been collecting data on clouds since 1983. A team of researchers carefully analyzed data for Northern and Southern Hemisphere storm tracks in the Atlantic and Pacific Oceans to look for trends in storm track positions. (The Indian Ocean could not be included because of issues with satellite coverage.) The results indicated a slight poleward shift of the storm tracks…

That’s mainly interesting because it had been predicted by many climate models. But the data also shows something that may be much more important, though there are some considerable uncertainties involved. The satellite observations also show a roughly two-to-three percent reduction in total cloud cover since 1983. This occurred through a large decrease in low-level cloudiness, and it came despite a slight increase in high-level cloudiness.

Both of these changes act as positive feedbacks to warming…

Although the same models that predict the poleward movement of storm tracks also predict reductions in total cloud cover, the paper is heavy on caveats here. The most interesting data comes at the limits of detection for these satellites, making it unclear how robust the signal is. Like the storm track positions, the trend is consistent among the regions studied, though.

Increasing the accuracy, increasing accumulation of these kind of data is something only satellites can provide. Naturally, your friendly neighborhood politician probably considers this a low priority in his fundraising life.

Thanks, Ursarodinia

Daylife/Reuters Pictures used by permission

The Iridium sat-phone company will use the Falcon 9 rocket to launch many of its replacement spacecraft.

The US firm recently announced a $2.9bn project to upgrade its network of 66 operational satellites from 2015. It has now contracted the fledgling SpaceX corporation and its brand new Falcon vehicle to put the Iridium Next constellation in orbit…

Wednesday’s deal is valued at $492m, making it one of the largest commercial launch contracts ever signed.

The Iridium Next project itself is probably the world’s biggest private space venture right now.

The Falcon could loft several satellites at once and a special mechanism to dispense multiple payloads would be developed for the task, an Iridium spokesperson told BBC News…

The Iridium constellation operates in a low-Earth orbit about 780km above the planet. The spacecraft are aligned in six planes and relay communications between themselves and ground stations to provide global coverage.

Rock on, SpaceX.

Rock on, Iridium.

India has launched seven satellites from a single rocket, demonstrating its growing skills in multi-satellite launches. The success comes nearly a month after India had to end its inaugural Moon mission early.

Within a space of 20 minutes, an Indian rocket placed one big satellite and six small ones into space from the Sriharikota space center in eastern India.

The big remote-sensing satellite will map fishing zones around India, measure ocean surfaces and wind speeds and track monsoons and cyclones.

The six small satellites belong to other countries – four to Germany, one to Switzerland and one to Turkey…

In the past decade, India’s 46-year space program has focused on developing rocket-launching capabilities to gain a slice of the multi-billion-dollar space-launch market. It has put an Italian satellite and an Israeli spy satellite into orbit. But India is still a relative newcomer in a field dominated by big players such as the United States, Russia and the European Space Agency…

In recent years, India has scaled up its ambitions to explore space, not wanting to be left behind by countries like China. It hopes to send a manned mission into space, in four years time.

India’s space program functions on a relatively modest budget of about $1 billion a year.

I’m trying to recall if the U.S. has done anything on a modest budget ever since management of our government became a function of the military-industrial complex.

It has become one of the staples of modern, hi-tech life: using satellite navigation tools built into your car or mobile phone to find your way from A to B. But experts have warned that the system may be close to breakdown.

US government officials are concerned that the quality of the Global Positioning System (GPS) could begin to deteriorate as early as next year, resulting in regular blackouts and failures – or even dishing out inaccurate directions to millions of people worldwide…

The satellites are overseen by the US Air Force, which has maintained the GPS network since the early 1990s. According to a study by the US government accountability office (GAO), mismanagement and a lack of investment means that some of the crucial GPS satellites could begin to fail as early as next year.

“It is uncertain whether the Air Force will be able to acquire new satellites in time to maintain current GPS service without interruption,” said the report, presented to Congress. “If not, some military operations and some civilian users could be adversely affected.”

The report says that Air Force officials have failed to execute the necessary steps to keep the system running smoothly…

The first replacement GPS satellite was due to launch at the beginning of 2007, but has been delayed several times and is now scheduled to go into orbit in November this year – almost three years late.

If you consider the faith-based incompetents who’ve been in charge of running the government for the previous eight years, we’re lucky someone can even find the bloody satellites.

A privately owned U.S. communications satellite collided with a defunct Russian satellite in the first such collision in space, a U.S. military spokesman said on Wednesday.

The collision, which took place on Tuesday in low-earth orbit, involved a spacecraft of privately owned Iridium Satellite LLC and a “non-operational” Russian communications satellite, said Air Force Lieutenant Colonel Les Kodlick of the U.S. Strategic Command.

“We believe it’s the first time that two satellites have collided in orbit,” he said.

The command’s Joint Space Operations Center was tracking 500 to 600 new bits of debris, some as small as 10 centimeters (3.9 inches) across, in addition to the 18,000 or so other man-made objects it has catalogued in space, Kodlick said.

The collision occurred at roughly 780 kilometers (485 miles), an altitude used by satellites that monitor weather and carry telephone communications among other things, he said.

“It’s a very important orbit for a lot of satellites,” he said.

Uh-oh. This is something a lot of communications geeks have worried about for a long time. All those bits and pieces comprise a new and special danger to existing satellites.

Click photo for larger image

Some time this month an intercontinental ballistic missile will blast off from its silo from beneath the ground in deepest Kazakhstan. It will not, however, be carrying the nuclear warhead it was designed to deliver. Instead the payload will include five small satellites designed and built amid the neatly clipped lawns and ornamental lakes of the University of Surrey, almost within the shadow of Guildford cathedral.

The satellites are each the size of a normal fridge. Once they break away from the ex-Soviet rocket the five will form a constellation but their purpose is far from astrophysical. When they swing into action they will beam back pictures of the Earth – capable of collecting, among other things, evidence of agricultural fraud, illegal oil dumping, the impact of natural disasters and likely deposits of minerals.

They are the latest in a series of satellites of increasing sophistication which have been built by Surrey Satellite Technology Ltd, until recently part of Surrey University and the brainchild of a team led by the company’s chief executive, Professor Sir Martin Sweeting…

Size, or rather the lack of it, was to become SSTL’s trade mark. Its satellites would be smaller, cheaper and quicker to build. According to SSTL, a large satellite might weigh more than 1,000kg, cost $500m and take years to develop. One of its micro-satellites, by comparison, would weigh 100kg, cost $10m and take 18 months to put together.

A thoroughly enjoyable article about technologists and scientists with the acumen to develop niche markets with suitable budgets – and successfully market their dreams.