ESA and CNES experts ready for Galileo's first orbits
Paris (ESA) Aug 22, 2014 -
Lift-off for Galileo satellites 5 and 6 is set for Thursday, 21 August, at 12:31 GMT (14:31 CEST) on a Soyuz rocket from the Guiana Space Centre, French Guiana. Just 9 minutes and 23 seconds later, the Fregat upper stage carrying the payload will separate from the Soyuz third stage, and conduct a pair of engine burns separated by an approximately three-hour ballistic coast phase.
Three hou ...
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Arianespace serves the Galileo constellation
Kourou, French Guiana (SPX) Aug 22, 2014 -
Arianespace and the European Space Agency (ESA) have signed a contract for three launch services with Ariane 5 ES in order to step up the deployment of the European navigation system Galileo, the European Union's flagship program.
With this new launch contract and thanks to the performance of Ariane 5 ES, a total of 12 Galileo FOC (Full Operational Capability) satellites will be launched u ...
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Has sea plankton been discovered on the ISS outer hull
Moscow (Voice of Russia) Aug 22, 2014 -
Russian scientists say they made a "unique" discovery while analyzing samples from the exterior of the International Space Station - traces of tiny sea creatures on the station's windows and walls. It remains unclear how marine plankton ended up in space.
The results of the recent experiments prove that that some organisms are capable of living on the outer surface of the International Spa ...
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First LOFAR observations of the "Whirlpool Galaxy"
Southampton, UK (SPX) Aug 22, 2014 -
Using a radio telescope with frequencies just above those of commercial FM radio stations, a European team of astronomers has obtained the most sensitive image of a galaxy below 1 GHz. The team viewed the "Whirlpool Galaxy" Messier 51 (M51), about 30 million light years away, with the Low Frequency Array (LOFAR) radio telescope in the frequency range 115-175 MHz, just above the normal commercial ...
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Electric Sparks May Alter Evolution of Lunar Soil
Washington DC (SPX) Aug 22, 2014 -
The moon appears to be a tranquil place, but modeling done by University of New Hampshire (UNH) and NASA scientists suggests that, over the eons, periodic storms of solar energetic particles may have significantly altered the properties of the soil in the moon's coldest craters through the process of sparking-a finding that could change our understanding of the evolution of planetary surfaces in ...
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Engineers and Technicians Install Protective Shell on NASA's Orion Spacecraft
Washington DC (SPX) Aug 22, 2014 -
The heat shield on NASA's Orion spacecraft gets all the glory when it comes to protecting the spacecraft from the intense temperature of reentry. Although the blunt, ablative shield will see the highest temperatures - up to 4,000 degrees Fahrenheit on its first flight this December - the rest of the spacecraft is hardly left in the cold.
Engineers and technicians at NASA's Kennedy Space Ce ...
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A Spectacular Landscape of Star Formation
Paris (SPX) Aug 22, 2014 -
This image, captured by the Wide Field Imager at ESO's La Silla Observatory in Chile, shows two dramatic star formation regions in the southern Milky Way. The first is of these, on the left, is dominated by the star cluster NGC 3603, located 20 000 light-years away, in the Carina-Sagittarius spiral arm of the Milky Way galaxy.
The second object, on the right, is a collection of glowing gas ...
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