Following last week’s wake-up of the Rosetta comet-chaser, ESA’s flight controllers have conducted the first in a series of health checks aimed at assessing how well it came through 31 months of hibernation. After its long deep-space hibernation, Europe’s Rosetta spacecraft woke up on 20 January to begin the final leg of its 10-year journey … Dowiedz się więcej
The world enters a new era of global weather observing and climate science in February with the launch of the Global Precipitation Measurement (GPM) Core Observatory, a new international science satellite built by NASA. GPM, a joint mission between NASA and the Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency (JAXA), is scheduled to launch Feb. 27 from Tanegashima … Dowiedz się więcej
Boeing [NYSE: BA] has received the first on-orbit signals from the Tracking and Data Relay Satellite (TDRS)-L after a successful launch today, bolstering the tracking and communications network used by NASA and its customers. TDRS-L is the fifth Boeing-built satellite to join the network that NASA uses in support of vital missions, including the International … Dowiedz się więcej
NASA’s uncrewed Global Hawk research aircraft is in the western Pacific region on a mission to track changes in the upper atmosphere and help researchers understand how these changes affect Earth’s climate. Deployed from NASA’s Dryden Flight Research Center in Edwards, Calif., the Global Hawk landed at Andersen Air Force Base in Guam Thursday at … Dowiedz się więcej
ATK (NYSE: ATK) demonstrated full deployment of a large MegaFlex™ solar array under a NASA contract to further the development of a high-power system to be used for future robotic and manned exploration missions. ATK’s 9.6 meter (32 ft) diameter Solar Electric Propulsion (SEP) MegaFlex solar array design is capable of generating approximately 40kW of … Dowiedz się więcej
It was a fairy-tale ending to a tense chapter in the story of the Rosetta space mission this evening as ESA heard from its distant spacecraft for the first time in 31 months. Rosetta is chasing down Comet 67P/Churyumov-Gerasimenko, where it will become the first space mission to rendezvous with a comet, the first to … Dowiedz się więcej