ESA's Proba-V Turns On In Time To Catch Stunning Image Over Western France
Lawrence LeBlond for redOrbit.com - Your Universe Online The European Space Agency (ESA) successfully launched its Vega rocket on May 7 carrying multiple payloads. The launch was meant to demonstrate the versatility of the agency’s VESPA...
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[WATCH VIDEO: Vega Launch Sequence Replay] Lawrence LeBlond for redOrbit.com - Your Universe Online After a delayed launch due to strong wind conditions on Saturday May 4, ESA's Vega rocket lifted off early Tuesday (02:06 GMT May 7) on a complex mission to set three payloads into two different orbits. The ESA successfully launched the rocket from Europe’s Spaceport in Kourou, French Guiana, carrying Proba-V, VNREDSat-1 and ESTCube-1. Tuesday’s launch was the second mission for...
[ Watch the Video: Fermi's Close Call with a Soviet Satellite ] Lee Rannals for redOrbit.com – Your Universe Online NASA said on Tuesday its Fermi Gamma-ray Space Telescope was able to dodge a 1.5-ton bullet in space. Julie McEnery, a project scientist for Fermi, opened her email at the end of March and found an automatically generated report arrived from NASA's Robotic Conjunction Assessment Risk Analysis (CARA) team. The document said Fermi was just one week away from an...
ESA International development banks often invest in regions where projects can be difficult to monitor and evaluate. Earth-observing satellites are proving to be important tools for the development sector. From 800 km high, satellites enable objective observations consistently over space and time. They can detect changes in land cover, monitor water quality and identify pollutants, evaluate the health of a coral reef or help assess how coastal zones are influenced by sea-level rise....
redOrbit Staff & Wire Reports - Your Universe Online NASA has awarded a two-year, $50 million contract to Orbital Sciences Corporation to build a new heliophysics science satellite that will investigate the connection between space weather storms in the ionosphere and Earth’s terrestrial weather. The mission is currently set to launch in 2017, and will study the interface between the upper reaches of the Earth’s atmosphere and outer space in response to a recent scientific...
Lawrence LeBlond for redOrbit.com - Your Universe Online Update (May 6 at 10:15 a.m.) ESA’s second Vega flight, VV02, due for a launch this past weekend, was canceled at last minute due to unfavorable weather conditions. The Vega rocket was scheduled to lift off on May 4 from Europe’s Spaceport in French Guiana, carrying Proba-V as the prime payload. Proba-V is the first of four ESA missions in the Vega Research and Technology Accompaniment (VERTA) program, which will...
Over the weekend 13-15th April 2013, LJE and Beacon ETS successfully tested Thomson Reuters Eikon at Sea. Utilising existing ship based Ku-Band Satellite Broadband connection, travelling deep sea, between Gibraltar and Palma, Majorca. LONDON, April 29, 2013 /PRNewswire/ -- Land lubbers and shipmates please note: Brighton-based Beacon ETS stress tested Thomson Reuters products at Sea, April 15th, 2013. Chris Smith, Founder, Senior Technical Consultant and 'Salty Sea Dog' at...
Lee Rannals for redOrbit.com – Your Universe Online The findings from the 6th European Conference on Space Debris were released during a press briefing at the ESA's European Space Operations Center (ESOC) in Darmstadt, Germany. The conference included over 350 worldwide participants representing all the major national space agencies, industry, governments, academia and research institutes. “There is a wide and strong expert consensus on the pressing need to act now to begin...
Lee Rannals for redOrbit.com – Your Universe Online Hundreds of experts from all over the world will be meeting at Europe's largest-ever space debris forum next week to discuss the latest findings on the growing problem of space junk. Space debris not only poses problems to other satellites and spacecraft in orbit but it is also hazardous to astronauts aboard the International Space Station (ISS). Scientists believe there could be around 29,000 objects larger than 4 inches, 670,000...
ESA ESA’s Proba-V vegetation-mapping minisatellite has been fitted to the payload adapter and met its fellow passengers for its 2 May flight to orbit on a Vega launcher. Last week, technicians attached Proba-V to the top of the Vespa adapter, which carries multiple payloads on a single Vega. The other two satellites flying with Proba-V have now been installed inside Vespa: Vietnam’s VNREDSat Earth observation mission and Estonia’s ESTCube-1 student nanosatellite, to test...
Watch the video "Proba-3 Mission Spacecraft Will Fly In Formation" April Flowers for redOrbit.com - Your Universe Online The European Space Agency's (ESA) Proba-3 mission, a world first in precise formation flying, is being led by Spanish industry. The aim of the project is to demonstrate that two satellites can be synchronized to move as one object with sub-millimeter precision, enabling the creation of enormous space telescopes with the lens and detector hundreds of feet apart....
Latest Satellite Reference Libraries
Satellite -- A satellite is an object that orbits another object. With sufficient tangential velocity, the object does not collide with the primary object it orbits, but maintains a distance from that object as the rate at which it falls towards that object is similar to the rate that it travels away, thus the object orbits the primary object and becomes a satellite. In other words: gravitational force serves as the centripetal force needed to make the object circle the primary...
NEAR-Shoemaker Mission -- The Near Earth Asteroid Rendezvous - Shoemaker (NEAR Shoemaker), renamed after its launch in honor of Gene Shoemaker, is an unmanned spacecraft designed to study the near-Earth asteroid Eros from close orbit over a period of a year. The primary scientific objectives of NEAR were to return data on the bulk properties, composition, mineralogy, morphology, internal mass distribution and magnetic field of Eros. Secondary objectives include studies of regolith...
Lagrangian Point -- In Lagrangian mechanics, a Lagrangian point (or L-point) is one of five positions in space where the gravitational fields of two bodies of substantial but differing mass combine to form a point at which a third body of negligible mass would be stationary relative to the two bodies. Bodies at the L-point will not move relative to the parent bodies if they are not perturbed by other gravitational forces. They are sometimes also referred to as libration points. The...
Orbit -- An orbit is the path that an object makes around another object under the influence of some force. The classical example is that of the solar system, where the Earth, other planets, asteroids, comets, and smaller pieces of rubble are in orbit around the Sun; and moons are in orbit around planets. These days, many artificial satellites are in orbit around the Earth. Understanding orbits There are a few common ways of understanding orbits. -- As the object moves, it...
