Curiosity lands
safely on the surface of Mars
Aug 6 -
NASA's Mars Science Laboratory mission successfully landed the Curiosity
rover on the surface of Mars late Sunday night. The rover touched down
on the surface of Gale Crater at 10:14 pm PDT Sunday (1:14 am EDT, 0514
GMT Monday), with signals confirming the landing arriving at Earth
approximately 15 minutes later. Initial black-and-white images returned
from the rover's "Hazcam" hazard avoidance camera showed the
rover to be on relatively flat terrain, with what may be the crater wall
in the distance. The rover's entry, descent, and landing all appeared to
go as planned, despite warnings prior to the landing of the risks
involved with landing on Mars, particularly using the previously-untried
"skycrane" system. The mission teams plans to slowly check out
the rover's systems and instruments in the coming days and weeks,
preparing for a mission to explore Gale Crater slated to last at least
two years.
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| NASA
lands car-size rover beside Martian mountain
Aug. 6, 2012- NASA's most advanced Mars
rover Curiosity has landed on the Red Planet. The one-ton rover, hanging
by ropes from a rocket backpack, touched down onto Mars on 6 August (UTC)
to end a 36-week flight and begin a two-year investigation. The Mars Science Laboratory (MSL) spacecraft that carried Curiosity succeeded in every step of the most complex landing ever attempted on Mars, including the final severing of the bridle cords and flyaway manoeuvre of the rocket backpack. Curiosity landed near the foot of a mountain 5 km tall and 159 km in diameter inside Gale Crater. During a nearly two-year prime mission, the rover will investigate whether the region ever offered conditions favourable for microbial life. Curiosity returned its first view of Mars, a wide-angle scene of rocky ground near the front of the rover. More images are anticipated in the next several days as the mission blends observations of the landing site with activities to configure the rover for work and check the performance of its instruments and mechanisms. Confirmation of Curiosity's successful landing came in communications relayed by NASA's Mars Odyssey orbiter and received by the Canberra, Australia, antenna station of NASA's Deep Space Network. Curiosity carries 10 science instruments with a total mass 15 times as large as the science payloads on the Mars rovers Spirit and Opportunity. Some of the tools are the first of their kind on Mars, such as a laser-firing instrument for checking elemental composition of rocks from a distance. The rover will use a drill and scoop at the end of its robotic arm to gather soil and powdered samples of rock interiors, then sieve and parcel out these samples into analytical laboratory instruments inside the rover. To handle this science toolkit, Curiosity is twice as long and five times as heavy as Spirit or Opportunity. The Gale Crater landing site places the rover within driving distance of layers of the crater's interior mountain. Observations from orbit have identified clay and sulfate minerals in the lower layers, indicating a wet history. The mission is managed by JPL for NASA's Science Mission Directorate in Washington. The rover was designed, developed and assembled at JPL.
Reference: NASA/JPL PR
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| Arianespace
celebrates 50th launch success in a row
Rocket: Ariane 5 ECA;
Payload: Intelsat 20, HYLAS 2; Date: 2 August 2012, 2054 UTC; Launch site:
Kourou, French Guyana. The successful mission marked the milestone 50th
consecutive success for its Ariane 5 heavy-lift launcher.
Intelsat 20 was installed as the upper
payload on this latest Ariane 5 launch, and was released first during the
mission at 28 minutes into the flight. Built for international satellite
operator Intelsat by Space Systems/Loral of Palo Alto, California based on
its 1300-series platform, Intelsat 20 had a mass of approximately 6,090 kg
at lift-off, and is configured with Ku-band, C-band and Ka-band
transponders. Intended to replace the Intelsat 7 and Intelsat 10
satellites in orbit, Intelsat 20 is to provide video, telephone and data
transmission services for Europe, Africa, Russia, Asia and the Middle
East. The HYLAS 2 satellite orbited by Ariane 5 on this flight was
deployed 34 minutes after lift-off, and will be used by European satellite
operator Avanti Communications. Produced by Orbital Sciences Corporation
of Dulles, Virginia using the Star 2.4E platform, HYLAS 2 is equipped with
Ka-band transponders for data capacity offered to telecommunications,
enterprise and government customers in Europe, the Middle East and
portions of Africa.Ariane 5's combined lift performance in the 50 straight successes totals more than 434,000 kg, delivering payloads to geostationary transfer orbit, low Earth orbit, Sun-synchronous polar orbit and Earth escape trajectories. Arianespace CEO Jean Yves Le Gall said today's mission also was historic from another aspect, as its lift performance of nearly 10.2 metric tons beat the world's record for total mass launched to geostationary transfer orbit. "We captured the previous record last year with just over 10 tons, and this demonstrates the pertinence of our improvement strategy, which - step-by-step - enables us to increase the capacity of our launcher while retaining its extraordinary reliability." The Arianespace mission pace will continue with its next two flights announced for September: a mid-month launch of another Ariane 5 from the Spaceport with the Astra 2F and GSAT-10 telecommunications relay platforms; and the 19 September mission of a Soyuz from Baikonur Cosmodrome in Kazakhstan, performed by Arianespace's Starsem affiliate and carrying Eumetsat's MetOp-B meteorological satellite.
Reference:
Arianespace PR
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India
approves Mars mission
Aug. 6, 2012- The Indian Cabinet of
Ministers cleared ISRO's mission to Mars in 2013. The project envisages
putting a spacecraft in the Red Planet's orbit to study its atmosphere.
Launch aboard a PSLV is slated for November 2013 from the spaceport of
Sriharikota in the southern Indian state of Andhra Pradesh. The spacecraft
will have a scientific payload of 25 kg and is proposed to be placed in an
orbit of 500km x 80,000 km around the planet. |
| News in Brief ... (pl click on following)
|
Tuesday, August 7, 2012
'SPACE in News' this week
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