Aerospace & Defence News

Title AIDA mission concept
Released 27/05/2012 3:29 pm
Copyright ESA
Description

The US-European Asteroid Impact and Deflection mission – AIDA. This innovative but low-budget transatlantic partnership involves the joint operations of two small spacecraft sent to intercept a binary asteroid. The first Double Asteroid Redirection Test (DART) spacecraft, designed by the US Johns Hopkins Applied Physics Laboratory will collide with the smaller of the two asteroids. Meanwhile, ESA’s Asteroid Impact Monitor (AIM) craft will survey these bodies in detail, before and after the collision. The impact should change the pace at which the objects spin around each other, observable from Earth. But AIM’s close-up view will ‘ground-truth’ such observations.
Id 253212

7 March 2014

These days, even the humblest smartphone camera comes with autofocus, stopping users snapping blurred images. Now ESA’s latest StarTiger team has developed a comparable system for space missions.

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Title Margarita Island, Venezuela
Released 07/03/2014 10:00 am
Copyright JAXA/ESA
Description

Situated in the southern Caribbean Sea about 20 km off of mainland Venezuela’s coast, the island comprises two peninsulas linked by a long, narrow strip of land – called an isthmus.

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Title Upgraded station in Spain
Released 06/03/2014 9:55 am
Copyright ESA/Isdefe
Description

ESA’s 15 m-diameter dish antenna at the European Space Astronomy Centre (ESAC), near Madrid, has been upgraded to use SARAS technology.
Id 304871

7 March 2014

Soaring high above Earth as they speed through space, satellites are difficult targets to track. Now a new approach developed in Europe is helping ground stations to acquire signals faster and more accurately than ever before.

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MARIETTA, Ga., March 6, 2014 -The 61st Airlift Squadron at Little Rock Air Force Base, Ark., received its latest Lockheed Martin [NYSE: LMT] C-130J Super Hercules today. A crew from the squadron ferried the airlifter from the Lockheed Martin Aeronautics Co., facility here.

The 61st, which has operated C-130s since 1956, is part of Air Mobility Command’s 19th Airlift Wing.

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The panel features an image of Kepler’s launch and artist concepts of milestone discoveries (l to r): Kepler-9b and c, Kepler-10b, Kepler-11, Kepler-16b, Kepler-22 and Kepler-64f. The final panel illustrates exoplanet discoveries: blue is previous; red is previous Kepler; gold is Kepler’s on Feb. 26
Image Credit: NASA Ames/W. Stenzel

Five years ago today, on March 6, 2009, NASA’s Kepler Space Telescope rocketed into the night skies above Cape Canaveral Air Force Station in Florida to find planets around other stars, called exoplanets, in search of potentially habitable worlds.

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Aerial photo of a 25-acre sinkhole that formed unexpectedly near Bayou Corne, La., in Aug. 2012.
Image Credit: On Wings of Care, New Orleans, La.

Analyses by NASA’s UAVSAR after the Bayou Corne, La., sinkhole formed show it detected precursory ground movement of up to 10.2 inches (260 millimeters) more than a month before the sinkhole collapsed. Colors represent surface displacement (one full color wrap equals 4.7 inches (120 millimeters).
Image Credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech

Sinkhole map
Sinkholes are common hazards worldwide and are found in all regions of the United States. This map shows parts of the United States where certain rock types are susceptible to dissolving in water, leading to the formation of underground cavities that can result in Image Credit: U.S. Geological Survey

New analyses of NASA airborne radar data collected in 2012 reveal the radar detected indications of a huge sinkhole before it collapsed and forced evacuations near Bayou Corne, La. that year.

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The first two images above show the central portions of galaxy M82 prior to the supernova explosion, while the right image shows supernova SN2014J taken by the FLITECAM instrument on the SOFIA observatory on Feb. 20.
Image Credit: NASA/SOFIA/FLITECAM team / Sachindev Shenoy

On four flights in late February, NASA’s Stratospheric Observatory for Infrared Astronomy (SOFIA) focused on an explosion known as a supernova that obliterated the remains of a star about the mass of the sun in the Messier 82 galaxy (M82). Located 11 million light years from Earth in the direction of the constellation Ursa Major, the exploding star is named Supernova (SN) 2014J.

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This series of Hubble Space Telescope images reveals the breakup of an asteroid over a period of several months starting in late 2013. The largest fragments are up to 180 meters (200 yards) in radius.
Image Credit: NASA, ESA, D. Jewitt (UCLA)

NASA’s Hubble Space Telescope has recorded the never-before-seen break-up of an asteroid into as many as 10 smaller pieces.

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Image Credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech/Univ. of Arizona
Caption: Candy Hansen

Mars’ northern-most sand dunes are beginning to emerge from their winter cover of seasonal carbon dioxide (dry) ice. Dark, bare south-facing slopes are soaking up the warmth of the sun.

The steep lee sides of the dunes are also ice-free along the crest, allowing sand to slide down the dune. Dark splotches are places where ice cracked earlier in spring, releasing sand. Soon the dunes will be completely bare and all signs of spring activity will be gone.

This image was acquired by the HiRISE camera aboard NASA’s Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter on Jan. 16, 2014. The University of Arizona, Tucson, operates the HiRISE camera, which was built by Ball Aerospace & Technologies Corp., Boulder, Colo. NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory, a division of the California Institute of Technology in Pasadena, manages the Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter Project for the NASA Science Mission Directorate, Washington.

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Image Credit: NASA Ames/SETI/J Rowe

02.26.14 – The histogram shows the number of planet discoveries by year for roughly the past two decades of the exoplanet search. The blue bar shows previous planet discoveries, the red bar shows previous Kepler planet discoveries, the gold bar displays the 715 new planets verified by multiplicity.

Read more about the discoveries here: http://www.nasa.gov/ames/kepler/digital-press-kit-kepler-planet-bonanza.

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