European Space Agency, Author at 5G Technology World

New Era for New Norcia Deep Space Antenna

European Space Agency — Wed, 05 Jun 2019 09:53:45 +0000

The 35-m deep space antenna in New Norcia, Western Australia, is being looked after by a new team, led for the first time by a female site manager, Suzy Jackson. The New Norcia station is key to communicating with Europe’s missions across the Solar System and observing the Universe, including Mars Express currently in orbit…

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ExoMars Orbiter Prepares for Rosalind Franklin

European Space Agency — Fri, 31 May 2019 10:57:37 +0000

On 15 June, the ESA-Roscosmos ExoMars Trace Gas Orbiter (TGO) will follow a different path. An “Inclination Change Maneuver’ will put the spacecraft in an altered orbit, enabling it to pick up crucial status signals from the ExoMars rover, Rosalind Franklin, due to land on the Red Planet in 2021. After completing a complex series…

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Adding Satnav to Turn Power Grids into Smart Systems

European Space Agency — Tue, 07 May 2019 12:00:00 +0000

An ESA-backed project is harnessing satnav to insert an intelligent sense of place and time to power grids, to provide early warning of potentially dangerous electricity network failures. Four years ago an apparent fire from nowhere forced the evacuation of 5 000 people from central London. Thick black smoke and choking fumes emerged from manhole…

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Hera’s CubeSat to Perform First Radar Probe of an Asteroid

European Space Agency — Thu, 02 May 2019 11:25:00 +0000

Small enough to be an aircraft carry-on, the Juventas spacecraft nevertheless has big mission goals. Once in orbit around its target body, Juventas will unfurl an antenna larger than itself, to perform the very first subsurface radar survey of an asteroid. ESA’s proposed Hera mission for planetary defence will explore the twin Didymos asteroids, but…

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Exoplanet Detectors

European Space Agency — Mon, 15 Apr 2019 08:48:00 +0000

The first batch of charge-coupled devices, or CCDs, to be flown on ESA’s PLATO space observatory was accepted by ESA last month. This is an important milestone on the road to creating a groundbreaking spacecraft that will detect Earth-sized exoplanets in orbit around nearby stars. PLATO, or PLAnetary Transits and Oscillations of stars, is the second…

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Doing up the Deep Dish

European Space Agency — Mon, 15 Apr 2019 08:42:00 +0000

ESA’s 35-metre radio antenna in Malargüe, Argentina, has had a major refurbishment. Extenstive modifications made will now allow the ESTRACK network to support future missions like Euclid, launching in 2022, and to transfer data at much higher rates. Upgrades to the ESA Malargüe station, and similar upgrades carried out in the Cebreros station located in…

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Self-Driving Spacecraft Set for Planetary Defence Expedition

European Space Agency — Tue, 09 Apr 2019 08:56:00 +0000

Engineers designing ESA’s Hera planetary defence mission to the Didymos asteroid pair are developing advanced technology to let the spacecraft steer itself through space, taking a similar approach to self-driving cars. “If you think self-driving cars are the future on Earth, then Hera is the pioneer of autonomy in deep space,” explains Paolo Martino, lead systems engineer of…

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Sentinels Monitor Converging Ice Cracks

European Space Agency — Fri, 15 Mar 2019 15:18:55 +0000

The Copernicus Sentinel-1 radar mission shows how cracks cutting across Antarctica’s Brunt ice shelf are on course to truncate the shelf and release an iceberg about the size of Greater London – it’s just a matter of time. The Brunt ice shelf is an area of floating ice bordering the Coats Land coast in the…

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Space Tech Poised to Make Air Travel Greener and More Efficient

European Space Agency — Fri, 15 Mar 2019 08:54:00 +0000

Passengers travelling through busy airports should soon face fewer delays and have a lower environmental impact, thanks to efforts to use airspace more efficiently. The Iris programme seeks to equip aircraft with satellite-based data communication links to help pilots and air traffic controllers to use the shortest and fastest routes, boosting productivity, saving fuel and reducing environmental…

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Image: Antennas and Auroras

European Space Agency — Tue, 05 Mar 2019 08:44:00 +0000

This photograph, taken a short hike from the Geographic South Pole in Antarctica, shows some of the antennas comprising the Super Dual Auroral Radar Network (SuperDARN) array. They are visible here as the chain of antennas and wiring stretching away into the distance. The red lights along the horizon in the background are lights marking…

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