Vitruvian man on the International Space Station

Credits: +NASA 

Bright meteor over New Mexico on Saturday October 19th 2013

GOCE satellite will crash on Earth due its lack of fuel

Dear followers,

on October 18th, +European Space Agency, ESA reported a fuel trouble in the GOCE (Gravity Field and Steady-State Ocean Circulation Explorer) satellite. Actually, the pressure in the fuel system of the ion engine had dropped below 2.5 bar, which is the nominal operating pressure required to fire the engine. Last Monday, the end of mission was formally declared when the ion drive stopped working during at 03:16 UTC. The European satellite will reenter in our atmosphere and will be partially destructed before to crash on Earth.

Credits: +European Space Agency, ESA 

The GOCE satellite, has been developed by an industrial consortium of 45 companies distributed over 13 European countries. One of the missions was focused on the mapping of Earth’s gravity field in unprecedented detail. In order to achieve its very challenging mission objectives, this 5 meters long satellite was orbiting at a very low altitude of just 260 km because the gravitational variations are stronger closer to Earth. GOCE satellite was launched on March 17th 2009 on a modified Russian intercontinental ballistic missile that had been decommissioned as part of the Strategic Arms Reduction Treaty. 

The danger for the population due to the crack of the satellite is very low. Actually the risk to be hit by a debris of a spacecraft is 65 000 times lower than the risk to be struck by lightning.

Sources: ESA

Moon eclipse 2007 taken from the Paranal observatory in Chile

Credits: Stéphane Guisard

Curiosity confirms the Martian origin of some meteors on Earth

Dear followers,

After the discovery of of water on Mars, few weeks ago, the Curiosity rover is still performing this work. Actually, while the NASA was out due to the shutdown during 2 weekend, the +NASA 's rover analysed the Martian atmosphere. These analyses confirm that some meteorites that have dropped to Earth really are from the Red Planet.

A key new measurement of the inert gas argon in Mars' atmosphere by the laboratory on-board the rover, provides the most definitive proof yet of the origin of Mars meteorites while at the same time giving a way to rule out Martian origin of other meteorites.

Credits: +NASA / +NASA Jet Propulsion Laboratory 

The Curiosity measurements do not directly measure the current rate of atmospheric escape, but NASA's next mission to Mars, the Mars Atmosphere and Volatile Evolution Mission (MAVEN), is designed to do so. This mission is being prepared at NASA’s Kennedy Space Center in Florida for a launch around November 18th 2013.

Sources: NASA

A piece of the meteor fallen in Russia in February 2013

Dear followers,

few months ago (February 2013), a large meteor fell in Russia induced an amazing fireball in the sky. Yesterday, the Russian authorities find a piece for this meteor in a lake. Actually, the meteor had created a 6-meter-wide hole in this frozen lake.

Source: AFP

International Space Station 15/10/2013 from Worcestershire, UK

Credit: +Sarah Fisher 

ATV4 report mission for week 42

Dear followers,

on June 15th, the ATV Albert Einstein has arrived at the International Space Station, making a successful rendezvous and docking. After 4 months docked to the international space station, the last steps of the ATV-4 are planned before to undock (October 28th) and reentry (November 2nd) :

• 17 October: Cargo transfer
• 17 October: ATV Proximity Communications Equipment (PCE) installation on board ISS
• 18 October: Cargo transfer
• 19 October: PCE test between ISS and ESA ground stations

Credits: +NASA / +European Space Agency, ESA 

Sources: +European Space Agency, ESA 

Fireball from a meteor over Maryland and New Jersey, USA

Dear followers,

today, the +American Meteor Society indicates that they received 63 reports of a fireball over the state of Maryland and New Jersey during the night on October 14th 2013 around 8:25 pm

Sources: +American Meteor Society 

A preliminary trajectory plot shows the meteor entered over New Jersey and flew on a north east trajectory, ending somewhere in or near Lancaster County in Maryland.

NGC 33 sculptor galaxy taken from Agentina

Credit: Claudio Pietrasanta

Venus, Earth, our Moon, Mars and Saturn's moon Titan

Source: +reddit 

Maps of dangerous asteroids for Earth

Credits: +NASA / +NASA Jet Propulsion Laboratory - Caltech

First ever strike of a comet on Earth

Dear followers,

The first ever evidence of a comet entering Earth’s atmosphere and exploding, raining down a shock wave of fire over Sahara desert in Egypt, has been discovered by a team of South African scientists from the University of Witwatersrand and international collaborators.

Credits: Terry Bakker

In 1997, in Egypt, close to the border with Libya, fragments of a natural silica-rich glass aged of around 28.5 million years, are found. The analyse of a stone and the comparison with specimen of the glass leads the scientists to discover the first ever comet striking Earth. 

Actually, the comet entered Earth’s atmosphere and exploded, heating up the Sahara's sand beneath it to a temperature of about 2 000 degrees Celsius, and resulting in the formation of a huge amount of yellow silica glass which lies scattered over a 6 000 km² area

An amazing specimen of the glass, polished by ancient Egyptian jewelers can be see on this brooch of Tutankhamun with its striking yellow-brown scarab.

"+NASA and +European Space Agency, ESA spend billions of dollars collecting a few micrograms of comet material and bringing it back to Earth, and now we’ve got a radical new approach of studying this material, without spending billions of dollars collecting it,” says Professor Jan Kramers of the University of Johannesburg.

Sources: Wits

Water on Mars discovered by Curiosity

Dear followers,

few weeks after its first anniversary on the red planet, the NASA's rover Curiosity is still working.  The first scoop of soil analysed by the analytic suite in the belly of martian rover reveals that fine materials on the surface of the planet contain several percent water by weight. The scientists used the ChemCam, CheMin instruments, the Alpha Particle X-ray Spectrometer (APXS) and the Sample Analysis at Mars (SAM) suite aboard NASA’s Curiosity Rover to perform the analysis.

Credits: +NASA / +NASA Jet Propulsion Laboratory 

About 2 percent of the soil on the surface of Mars is made up of water, which is great resource, and interesting scientifically. The sample also released significant carbon dioxide,oxygen and sulfur compounds when heated.

The result were published in Science as one article in a five-paper special section on the curiosity mission.

NGC 4038 and 4039 in the constellation of Corvus

Source: +Hubble Space Telescope by +NASA 

The Online Astronomy Society Word magazine October 2013

The Online Astronomy Society is proposing this magazine, let us know your feelings about

Orion nebula

Source: Viviana Marchi

Clues to the Growth of the Colossus in Coma

Credits: +NASA 

Antares rocket with Cygnus capsule launch

Credits: +NASA 

Source

A private capsule launched with success to ISS

Dear followers,

yesterday was a busy day for the space launches in USA. Actually after the successful liftoff of the space rocket Atlas5, the private company, Orbital Sciences, became the second private challenger to successfully launch a cargo vessel to the International Space Station. The lift off could be watched from New York was depicted on the picture below.

Credit: Orbital Sciences / +Google Earth 

The next step for the Cygnus spacecraft is four days of tests while its in orbit. If successful, the mission will take a rendezvous and dock with the International Space Station on Sunday, September 22th , as the ATV4, from +European Space Agency, ESA did few weeks ago.

The liftoff of the space rocket Antares happened from the center of Wallops Flight, located on an island near the coast of Virginia. Cygnus is separated from the second stage of the launcher ten minutes after launch to reach the Earth orbit. 

For this first flight, Cygnus carries 589 kg of supplies including food and clothing. It will remain docked to the ISS thirty days. Upon his return, Cygnus will be destroyed in the atmosphere.

Source