Philae comet lander wakes up
- 12 minutes ago
- From the sectionScience & Environment
Philae landed on Comet 67P after a 10-year journey
The European Space Agency (Esa) says its comet lander, Philae, has woken up and contacted Earth.
Philae, the first spacecraft to land on a comet, was dropped on to the surface of Comet 67P by its mothership, Rosetta, last November.
It worked for 60 hours before its solar-powered battery ran flat.
The comet has since moved nearer to the sun and Philae has enough power to work again, says the BBC's science correspondent Jonathan Amos.
The probe tweeted the message, "Hello Earth! Can you hear me?"
Jean-Yves Le Gall, the president of France's CNES space agency, told AFP that Philae had sent signals for a period of two minutes "as well as 40 seconds worth of data".
Philae is designed to analyse ice and rock on the comet.
The Rosetta probe took 10 years to reach the comet, and the lander - about the size of a washing-machine - bounced at least a kilometre when it touched down.
Its exact location on the comet has since been a mystery.
However, Esa said on Thursday that it might have located it from images and other data from the mothership.
New Horizons: Pluto shows its spots to Nasa probe
By Jonathan Amos BBC Science Correspondent
- 2 July 2015
- From the section Science & Environment
The science team on the American New Horizons mission to Pluto has released two colour views of the dwarf planet and its biggest moon, Charon.
They were made by combining pictures from the probe’s high-resolution, “black and white” camera, Lorri, and its lower-resolution, colour imager known as Ralph.
The difference in hue between Pluto and Charon is clear.
But what catches the eye are four dark spots on the 2,300km-wide dwarf planet.
Each spot is about 500km across. Quite why they should be so similar in size and spacing is not clear.
Their dominant placing is on the hemisphere that New Horizons will not see during its close flyby on 14 July.
However, there should be ample opportunity to study them in the days leading up to the encounter.
“It’s a real puzzle - we don’t know what the spots are, and we can’t wait to find out,” said New Horizons principal investigator, Alan Stern, of the Southwest Research Institute.
“Also puzzling is the longstanding and dramatic difference in the colours and appearance of Pluto compared to its darker and greyer moon Charon.”
If, as scientists think, Pluto and Charon are the products of a collision between two primitive bodies in the early Solar System, one might expect them to look more similar.
New Horizon’s flyby data will hopefully provide the answer.
The US space agency (Nasa) mission is now closing in on Pluto and its five moons.
The moment of closest approach on the 14th will take place at 11:49 GMT, when the probe is just 12,500km above the surface.
It is moving too fast - at 13.7km/s - to go into orbit, and it will simply scream past the dwarf and its satellites, gathering as much data as it can.
No pictures will be sent back to Earth on the day itself; the spacecraft will be too busy executing its pre-programmed observation campaign.
Instead, the first images from the flyby should be presented on the following day, on 15 July.
Controllers have decided not to alter the course of the probe.
They had been looking for icy debris in the vicinity of Pluto that might pose a collision hazard, but could find nothing obvious.
New Horizons was commanded to make a thruster burn earlier this week, to speed it up ever so slightly.
This will ensure the spacecraft reaches a precise point in space and time to carry out the pre-programmed observation sequence.
The probe must spin around to take pictures of all the different targets, and if its navigation is off by even a small amount it will be looking in the wrong direction at the critical moment.
On Thursday, New Horizons was just under 15 million km from Pluto, but 4.7 billion km from Earth.
The vast distance to the probe's home world means a radio signal takes about 4.5 hours from sending to receipt.
[email protected] and follow me on Twitter: @BBCAmos
It looks to me like a massive depression that covers the upper half of the surface. Can't wait to see some close-up images, I think we'll be getting a lot of surprises.
New Horizons: Pluto snapped from 8 million km
By Jonathan Amos BBC Science Correspondent
- 1 hour ago
- From the section Science & Environment
New Horizons has acquired yet another stunning view of Pluto.
The US space agency probe captured the latest image on Tuesday when it was just under eight million km from the dwarf world.
As of Thursday, New Horizons had moved to within six million km, heading for its historic flyby next week.
The new picture was the first to be returned following the computer hiccup at the weekend that saw the probe briefly drop communications with Earth.
The face of Pluto seen in the image is broadly that which will be examined in detail on 14 July.
It includes a large dark region near Pluto's equator, dubbed "the whale", and a roughly heart-shaped bright area spanning 2,000km.
At closest approach, New Horizons will be about 12,500km above the surface.
Its high-resolution camera Lorri should then be able to discern features at a resolution better than 100m per pixel.
Lorri is responsible for the view seen on this page, too, but the colour information has been overlaid from the probe's other camera, Ralph.
When it arrives at the dwarf planet, New Horizons will be travelling at almost 14km/s - far too fast to go into orbit.
Instead, it will execute an automated, pre-planned reconnaissance, grabbing as many pictures and other data as it can as it barrels past the 2,300km-wide dwarf and its five known moons: Charon, Styx, Nix, Kerberos and Hydra.
The flyby occurs on the 50th anniversary of the first successful American pass of Mars by the Mariner 4 spacecraft.
By way of comparison, New Horizons will gather 5,000 times as much data at Pluto than Mariner did at the Red Planet.
New Horizons' difficulty is getting all that information back to Earth. The distance to Pluto is vast - more than 4.5 billion km - and this makes for very low bit rates.
It will take 16 months to send back all the science acquired over the coming days.
[email protected] and follow me on Twitter: @BBCAmos
New Horizons: Pluto's surface sharpens for Nasa probe
By Jonathan AmosBBC Science Correspondent
- 9 hours ago
- From the sectionScience & Environment
The image was taken on Thursday from a distance of 5.4 million km
As New Horizons bears down on Pluto, its images just get sharper and sharper.
The probe's latest picture released on Saturday has started to give scientists some real indications of the geology on the dwarf world.
The new black-and-white view reveals a vast band of patterned terrain stretching around the globe for roughly 1,500km.
Nasa's spacecraft is due to flyby the distant mini-planet on Tuesday.
When it does so, it will be just 12,500km above the surface.
At that point, its telescopic camera, Lorri, will be acquiring images at a resolution that is better than 100m per pixel.
But for the moment, features still have a rather blurred look about them.
This latest shot from Lorri was taken on Thursday when New Horizons was still 5.4 million km from its target.
At this distance, the resolution is 27km per pixel. Nonetheless, even at this range, there is plenty to excite the geologists.
You can still see just below the patterned band the very dark terrain that scientists have dubbed "the whale". Not visible anymore, however, is the very bright region that looked like a heart in earlier images. This has rotated out of view.
It will, though, come back around, and will be the face of the 2,300km-wide world that is presented to New Horizons at closest approach.
"Among the structures tentatively identified in this new image are what appear to be polygonal features; a complex band of terrain stretching east-northeast across the planet, approximately 1,000 miles long; and a complex region where bright terrains meet the dark terrains of the whale," said New Horizons principal investigator Alan Stern.
New Horizons was launched from Earth in 2006. It is set to gather hundreds of pictures and other types of research data as it sweeps past Pluto and its five moons: Charon, Styx, Nix, Kerberos and Hydra.
The probe's difficulty is getting all that information back to Earth. The distance to the dwarf is vast - more than 4.7 billion km - and this makes for very low bit rates.
The mission team expects it to take 16 months to return all the science to be acquired over the coming week.
Charon, Pluto's biggest moon (L), pictured with the dwarf planet (R) on Wednesday
[email protected] and follow me on Twitter:@BBCAmos
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NASAs latest image of the Earth taken one million miles away.
http://earthobservatory.nasa.gov/IOTD/view.php?id=86257&src=iotdrss
For a minute I thought that picture had something to do with this https://www.nasa.gov/news/media/newsaudio/index.html
Falling energy levels in galaxies mean the Universe is slowly dying, say astronomers
'The universe has basically sat down on the sofa, pulled up a blanket and is about to nod off for an eternal doze'
Steve Connor
Science Editor
Monday 10 August 2015
The Universe is slowly dying, according to astronomers who have made a study of the fall in energy levels resulting from the fusion of matter taking place in the nuclear furnaces of the stars of more than 200,000 galaxies.
A wide-spectrum survey of the galaxies has revealed the precise levels of energy generated within an immense segment of space and found that it is only half of what it was 2bn years ago – and that it is continuing to fade.
Previous work had already discovered that the conversion of matter to energy in the cosmos was declining but this is the most detailed survey to date of the sky across a wide range of light wavelengths, astronomers said.
Researchers from the International Centre for Radio Astronomy Research (ICRAR) in Western Australia used seven of the world's most powerful telescopes to observe galaxies at 21 different wavelengths of light, from the far ultraviolet to the far infrared – the most comprehensive audit of the energy output of a nearby part of the Universe.
Etc...
http://www.independent.co.uk/news/s...is-slowly-dying-say-astronomers-10449115.html
I fully sunlit Moon's darkside as it transits Earth - from the perspective of the same earth observatory.NASAs latest image of the Earth taken one million miles away.
http://earthobservatory.nasa.gov/IOTD/view.php?id=86257&src=iotdrss
Which I'd never really thought about on those terms before.
