A new component of the International Station, the Mini-Research Module 2 or Poisk (the Russian term for search, seek, and explore), docked to the station on November 12, 2009, at 10:41 AM EST. The new module will serve as docking port for Soyuz and Progress spacecraft and as an airlock for spacewalks, and also provide space for scientific experiments.
Read more about the International Space Station…
Amazing images of Earth….
 |
| Credits: NASA/Sandra Joseph and Kevin O’Connel |
Carnival of Space #127 is hosted by Brian Wang at Next Big Future.
The blog posts cover topics like the Ares I-X flight, NASA’s Institute for Advanced Concepts (NIAC), the Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter, which is currently orbiting the Moon just 50 km off the surface, the HiRISE view of Phoenix in the Martian spring, armadas of robots exploring distant planets, the Chandra Source Catalog, which was loaded onto Google Sky, the Skylon Spaceplane, EMDrive propulsion system, and much more.
 |
| Credits: CNES |
Back in January 2009, I announced the 4th Global Trajectory Optimization Competition organized by CNES (Centre National d’Etudes Spatiales).
The purpose of the competition is to stimulate research of techniques for finding the optimal trajectory for different space missions. I came across the GTOC4 competition results and I would like to share them.
A total of 47 teams registered for the competition! The competition problem was disclosed on March 2, 2009, while March 30, 2009, was the deadline for submitting the solutions. In June the presenters were selected and in September 2009 the teams presented their methods and solutions during a one-day workshop held in Toulouse, France.
The problem proposed to the teams this year was called How to maximize the relevance of a rendezvous mission to a given NEA by visiting the largest set of intermediate asteroids.
The formulation of the problem proposed by CNES was
“… let us assume that a spacecraft is launched from the Earth. This spacecraft has to visit (flyby) a maximum number of asteroids (from a given list of NEAs). Finally, it must rendezvous with a last asteroid of that same list within ten years from departure.
The performance index to be maximized is the number of visited asteroids, but when two solutions are associated with the same number of visited NEAs, a secondary performance index has to be maximized: the final mass of the spacecraft.
Moreover, we assume that the spacecraft is equipped with an electric propulsion system and that gravity assists are not allowed during the mission.”
The CNES team mentioned that the proposed problem aimed at fulfilling some important criteria: “the design space is large and leads to an important number of local optima, the problem is complex but in any case it can be solved within the 4-week period allowed for the competition, its formulation is simple enough so that it can be solved by researchers not experienced in astrodynamics, and even if some registered teams have already developed their own optimization tools for interplanetary missions, the problem specificities make it new to all the teams.”
The winner of the GTOC4 competition is Moscow State University, followed closely by The Aerospace Corporation and the Advanced Concepts Team, ESA.
 |
| Credits: NASA/JPL |
Carnival of Space #126 is hosted by Jason Perry at The Gish Bar Times.
The blog posts cover topics like LCROSS and Kaguya missions, the final report of the Augustine Commission, the potential of moonbases, the Space Elevator Games beaming competition, a new geologic map of the volcano Prometheus on Io, a new visualization of the Chandra Source Catalog, and much more.
 |
| Credits: ESA |
A Rockot launch vehicle lifted off from the Plesetsk Cosmodrome in northern Russia on November 2, 2009, at 02:50 CET. Rockot carried to orbit two new ESA satellites: SMOS and PROBA-2.
SMOS was released by the Breeze-KM upper stage some 70 minutes after the launch. After arriving at a lower orbit, the upper stage released Proba-2 around three hours after the launch.
The Soil Moisture and Ocean Salinity (SMOS) mission, which is the second Earth Explorer Opportunity mission to be developed as part of ESA’s Living Planet Program, will provide global maps of moisture over the Earth’s landmasses and salinity over the oceans. These observations will improve our understanding of hydrology and ocean circulation patterns.
PROBA-2 is part of an ESA program called In-Orbit Technology Demonstration Program, which is dedicated to the demonstration of innovative technologies. The PROBA-2 payload consists of scientific instruments that will make observations of the Sun in the ultraviolet portion of the spectrum and will measure certain properties of the plasma surrounding the spacecraft.
Subscribe to blog posts using RSS