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News • Mission Update Space Shorts SpaceX in Europe SpaceX, the commercial rocket developer, has won its first contract in Europe, to launch radar reconnaissance satellites for the German Ministry of Defence’s SARah constellation. The satellites, provided by OHB System AG and Astrium GmbH, will be launched by Falcon 9 rockets in 2018 and 2019. OHB will build two passive-antenna synthetic aperture radar (SAR) satellites, and Astrium GmbH will build a larger, phased-arrayantenna satellite under contract for OHB. The three-satellite constellation will replace the current OHB-built five-satellite SAR-Lupe constellation. http://www.spacex.com Japan’s new rockets The Japanese Space Agency (JAXA) has successfully launched H-IIB Launch Vehicle No. 4 with cargo for the International Space Station, onboard. It lifted off from the Tanegashima Space Center on 4 August. However, the launch of Epsilon-1, a rocket intended to provide frequent launches, was stopped by an automatic alarm 19 seconds before lift-off. Epsilon-1 was intended to carry Japan’s SPRINT-A (Spectroscopic Planet Observatory for Recognition of Interaction of Atmosphere), a space observatory intended for research on planetary atmospheres. http://www.jaxa.jp Comet looks lively Comet ChuryumovGerasimenko, the target of ESA’s comet-chasing mission Rosetta, is likely to become active earlier than anticipated, according to models of its behaviour based on data from its previous three orbits. According to Colin Snodgrass of the Max Plank Institute for Solar System Research, lead author of the study, “ChuryumovGerasimenko could be active by March of next year”. Rosetta, currently in deep-space hibernation, will be reactivated in January 2014, approach the comet in spring, land on it in the autumn and stay with the comet as it approaches the Sun. The results of the study are published in Astronomy and Astrophysics. http://sci.esa.int/rosetta 5.8 Mission update WISE wakes up NASA’s asteroid initiative, to achieve President Obama’s goal of sending humans to an asteroid by 2025, has resulted in a new lease of life for a venerable spacecraft. The Wide-field Infrared Survey Explorer (WISE) is to be reactivated in September in order to find and characterize nearEarth objects (NEOs) within 45 million km of Earth’s orbit around the Sun. NASA anticipates that WISE will discover about 150 previously unknown NEOs and characterize the size, albedo and thermal properties of about 2000 others, using its 40 cm telescope and infrared cameras. The WISE mission, from January 2010 to February 2011, was to scan the entire celestial sky in infrared light. It captured more than 2.7 million images in multiple infrared wavelengths and catalogued more than 560 million objects in space, ranging from galaxies to asteroids and comets, including the most accurate survey to date of NEOs, NEOWISE. Discoveries included 21 comets, more than 34 000 asteroids in the main belt between Mars and Jupiter, and 135 NEOs. “The WISE mission achieved its mission’s goals and, as NEOWISE, extended the science even further in its survey of asteroids. NASA is now extending that record of success, which will enhance our ability to find potentially hazardous asteroids, and support the new asteroid initiative,” said John Grunsfeld, NASA’s associate administrator for science in Washington. “Reactivating WISE is an excellent example of how we are leveraging existing capabilities across the agency to achieve our goal.” http://1.usa.gov/17qPGTY New directions for Kepler NASA’s Kepler Space Telescope team has stopped trying to restore the spacecraft to full working order, and is instead investigating what investigations the spacecraft can carry out in its current state. Two of the original four sets of reaction wheels and thrusters used to orient the Kepler spacecraft have stopped working, the first in July 2012, the second in May of this year. The spacecraft is now in a stable configuration and able to use thrusters to maintain this, but without three 1: Annular eclipse of the Sun by Phobos, as seen by Curiosity from the martian surface. The images are three seconds apart. (NASA/JPLCaltech/Malin Space Science Systems/Texas A&M Univ.) A year on Mars NASA’s Curiosity rover has now spent more than a year on Mars and has already found evidence of flowing surface water and favourable conditions for microbial life in the early history of the planet. In addition, the mast cameras (Mastcam) on the rover recorded one of Mars’s moons passing in front of the other on 1 August this year. Phobos, the larger moon, passed in front of Deimos, from the point of view of the rover’s cameras, the first time this has been recorded. Mars Science Laboratory researchers compiled a series of still images into a video, and will be using the event to study the orbits of the moons. Later in the month, Curiosity also took images of Phobos in an annular eclipse of the Sun. Mark Lemmon of Texas A&M University, College Station, a co-investigator for the use of working reaction wheel systems cannot point precisely enough to detect further exoplanets. The mission team announced a call for proposals for a two-wheel Kepler mission on 2 August this year. Kepler was launched to investigate the abundance of planets around other stars and its four years of data has so far produced 135 confirmed discoveries and 3500 candidates. More are expected, including Earthlike planets orbiting in the habitable zones of their stars. http://1.usa.gov/194B6m9 Close exoplanet is hot stuff An Earth-sized exoplanet discovered by the Kepler mission – Kepler 78b – has been characterized by researchers from MIT who found that it has Mastcam, was part of the team using data from the moons’ orbits to better understand martian solid tides and the internal structure of the planet. Meanwhile, the Mars Science Laboratory mission continues with the rover starting to test its autonomous navigation system on unknown ground. Curiosity uses stereo images of the ground ahead to plan a route, a method adapted from the Mars Exploration Rover Opportunity. The rover had used the navigation system before, but on terrain identified as safe from Earth; this was the first drive into the unknown. Around 10 m of the total of 43 m driven – a section hidden by a dip in the ground – was navigated autonomously. The rover is now on its way to Mt Sharp, where layered rocks indicate a likely place to explore the ancient environment of Mars. http://mars.nasa.gov/msl one of the shortest orbital periods ever detected: 8.5 hours. The planet is extremely close to its star, with an orbital radius only about three times the radius of the star – about 40 times closer to its star than Mercury is to the Sun. As a result, its surface temperatures could reach 3000 K and its surface is probably entirely molten, a massive, roiling ocean of lava. The MIT team was able to detect light emitted by the planet – a first for such a small exoplanet – which may in future provide detailed information about the planet’s surface composition and reflective properties. Kepler 78b is so close to its star that scientists hope to measure its gravitational influence on the star. Such information may be used to measure the planet’s mass, which could make Kepler 78b the first Earth-sized planet outside our own solar system whose mass is known. The paper was A&G • October 2013 • Vol. 54