Europe extends key space missions

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Nov 23, 2010

The European Space Agency (ESA) has announced it is to extend the lifetimes of seven key missions until 2014. The ESA-led probes, including the Planck microwave observatory and the Mars Express orbiter, will now take measurements for a further two years beyond 2012 – the previous end date for the missions.

The decision to operate the missions until 2014 was taken by ESA's Science Programme Committee (SPC) at a meeting in Paris last week. Five other ESA-led missions will be extended, including the Cluster probe studying the Earth's magnetosphere, the International Gamma-Ray Astrophysics Laboratory, the Venus Express orbiter, the X-ray observatory XMM-Newton and the Proba-2 satellite, which tests new types of space technology.

ESA’s contribution to four international projects, including the Cassini–Huygens mission to Saturn and the Hubble Space Telescope, will also continue until at least 2014. The other missions are Hinode, which was launched in 2006 by the Japanese Space Agency (JAXA), and NASA’s SOHO mission. The extension will allow the two probes to study the Sun during its next peak of magnetic activity, which is expected in 2013.

"It is a good day for European space science," says David Southwood, ESA’s director of science and robotic exploration. "It is not an easy time to make such commitments but we should not doubt the wisdom of the SPC in squeezing even more return from the big investments of the past."

ESA’s Planck probe, which was launched in April 2009, will map the cosmic microwave background (CMB) – a remnant of the Big Bang – in the finest detail yet. Planck carries two instruments: the high-frequency instrument (HFI) and the low-frequency instrument (LFI). The HFI will not operate beyond 2011, when it will run out of the liquid coolant needed to cool the instrument to a temperature of about 0.1 K.

However, the two-year extension will allow Planck to make further use of the LFI, which operates at about 20 K and measures the microwave sky with high sensitivity between 27 and 77 GHz. This will enable it to make better measurements of the CMB polarization. Nazzareno Mandolesi, principal investigator for the LFI told physicsworld.com that "This [extension] will improve the sensitivity of the LFI greatly, giving us the possibility to choose a region of the sky that we can more deeply observe."

However, some researchers warn of the need to maintain a balance between keeping operational satellites going and spending the money to build new ones instead."It is very difficult to argue against extending their operation to keep up the flow of excellent scientific data," says Matt Griffin of the University of Wales, Cardiff, and principal investigator of the Spire instrument on ESA's Herschel probe that was launched together with Planck. "Eventually though, some of them are going to have to be retired to make financial room for the next generation of missions."

Michael Banks is news editor of Physics World

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Space probe brings asteroid dust back to Earth

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Nov 16, 2010

A Japanese spacecraft has successfully returned what are the first samples ever obtained from the surface of an asteroid. Using microscopic methods to study the grains, researchers have confirmed that the minerals could only have come from the asteroid and not from contamination of the probe when it landed back on Earth in June.

The Hayabusa mission, operated by the Japanese space agency JAXA, was launched in 2003 to land on the Itokawa asteroid – a 500 m long body that lies around 300 million kilometres away from Earth – and return a sample to Earth by 2007. The craft also had remote sensing instruments onboard, including an X-ray spectrometer, to study the composition of the asteroid before landing on it.

After a few technical glitches, including being hit by a solar flare, Hayabusa's return home was delayed by three years. It eventually landed in late June in the Woomera Prohibited Area in Southern Australia, and the recovered probe – which was largely intact – was then sent back to Japan for examination.

Using a scanning electron microscope, scientists at JAXA announced today that around 1500 grains have been identified as extraterrestrial in origin in the Hayabusa samples. The recovered minerals include olivine, pyroxene, plagioclase and iron sulphide. Although these minerals are found on Earth, the abundance of iron and magnesium in the minerals is different on Earth to that on the asteroid.

The composition of the grains, which were around 10 µm in diameter, matched the measurements taken by the X-ray spectrometer onboard Hayabusa before the craft landed on Itokawa. This ruled out the possibility that the signal was contaminated by terrestrial materials as the probe crashed back to Earth.

"It is a world first and a remarkable accomplishment that [Hayabusa] brought home material from a celestial body other than the Moon," Japan's science and technology minister, Yoshiaki Takagi, told a news conference in Tokyo.

View the original article here

Space probe brings asteroid dust back to Earth

To enjoy free access to all high-quality "In depth" content, including topical features, reviews and opinion sign up

Nov 16, 2010

A Japanese spacecraft has successfully returned what are the first samples ever obtained from the surface of an asteroid. Using microscopic methods to study the grains, researchers have confirmed that the minerals could only have come from the asteroid and not from contamination of the probe when it landed back on Earth in June.

The Hayabusa mission, operated by the Japanese space agency JAXA, was launched in 2003 to land on the Itokawa asteroid – a 500 m long body that lies around 300 million kilometres away from Earth – and return a sample to Earth by 2007. The craft also had remote sensing instruments onboard, including an X-ray spectrometer, to study the composition of the asteroid before landing on it.

After a few technical glitches, including being hit by a solar flare, Hayabusa's return home was delayed by three years. It eventually landed in late June in the Woomera Prohibited Area in Southern Australia, and the recovered probe – which was largely intact – was then sent back to Japan for examination.

Using a scanning electron microscope, scientists at JAXA announced today that around 1500 grains have been identified as extraterrestrial in origin in the Hayabusa samples. The recovered minerals include olivine, pyroxene, plagioclase and iron sulphide. Although these minerals are found on Earth, the abundance of iron and magnesium in the minerals is different on Earth to that on the asteroid.

The composition of the grains, which were around 10 µm in diameter, matched the measurements taken by the X-ray spectrometer onboard Hayabusa before the craft landed on Itokawa. This ruled out the possibility that the signal was contaminated by terrestrial materials as the probe crashed back to Earth.

"It is a world first and a remarkable accomplishment that [Hayabusa] brought home material from a celestial body other than the Moon," Japan's science and technology minister, Yoshiaki Takagi, told a news conference in Tokyo.

View the original article here