OrbitalHub

NASA dixit:

“Earth’s energy budget is a metaphor for the delicate equilibrium between energy received from the Sun versus energy radiated back out in to space. Research into precise details of Earth’s energy budget is vital for understanding how the planet’s climate may be changing, as well as variabilities in solar energy output.

Missions like NASA’s TSIS will help scientists keep a close watch. NASA’s Total and Spectral Solar Irradiance Sensor, or TSIS-1, is a mission to measure the sun’s energy input to Earth. Various satellites have captured a continuous record of this solar energy input since 1978. TSIS-1 sensors advance previous measurements, enabling scientists to study the sun’s natural influence on Earth’s ozone layer, atmospheric circulation, clouds, and ecosystems. These observations are essential for a scientific understanding of the effects of solar variability on the Earth system.

NASA Goddard Space Flight Center manages the project. The University of Colorado’s Laboratory for Atmospheric and Space Physics (LASP) built both instruments and provides mission operations. The International Space Station carries TSIS-1.”

Video Credit: NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center/Michael Starobin

NASA dixit:

“In a remote area of northwest Greenland, an international team of scientists has made a stunning discovery, buried beneath a kilometer of ice. It’s a meteor impact crater, 300 meters deep and bigger than Paris or the Beltway around Washington, DC. It is one of the 25 largest known impact craters on Earth, and the first found under any of our planet’s ice sheets. The researchers first spotted the crater in July 2015, while they were inspecting a new map of the topography beneath Greenland’s ice sheet that used ice-penetrating radar data primarily from Operation IceBridge, an ongoing NASA airborne mission to track changes in polar ice, and earlier NASA airborne missions in Greenland.”

Video Credit: NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center/Jefferson Beck

Wikipedia dixit:

“InSight is a robotic lander designed to study the interior of the planet Mars. The mission launched on 5 May 2018 and is expected to land on the surface of Mars at Elysium Planitia on 26 November 2018, where it will deploy a seismometer and burrow a heat probe. It will also perform a radio science experiment to study the internal structure of Mars.

The mission is managed by the Jet Propulsion Laboratory for NASA. The lander was manufactured by Lockheed Martin Space Systems and was originally planned for launch in March 2016. The name is a backronym for Interior Exploration using Seismic Investigations, Geodesy and Heat Transport.

InSight’s objective is to place a stationary lander equipped with a seismometer called SEIS produced by the French space agency CNES, and measure heat transfer with a heat probe called HP3 produced by the German space agency DLR to study the planet’s early geological evolution. This could bring new understanding of the Solar System’s terrestrial planets — Mercury, Venus, Earth, Mars — and the Earth’s Moon. By reusing technology from the Mars Phoenix lander, which successfully landed on Mars in 2008, it is expected that the cost and risk will be reduced.”

Video Credit: Lockheed Martin

Wikipedia dixit:

“Progress MS-10, identified by NASA as Progress 71 or 71P, is a Progress spacecraft used by Roscosmos to resupply the International Space Station (ISS). Progress MS-10 launched atop a Soyuz-FG rocket on November 16, 2018, from the Baikonur Cosmodrome in Kazakhstan. Progress MS-10 docked as scheduled with the aft docking port of the Zvezda module on 18 November 2018.

The Progress MS-10 spacecraft is carrying 2564 kg of cargo and supplies to the International Space Station. The spacecraft will deliver food, fuel and supplies, including about 750 kg of propellant, 75 kg of oxygen and air, 440 kg of water.”

Video Credit: Roscosmos

ESA dixit:

“Space weather describes the changing environment throughout the Solar System, driven by the energetic and unpredictable nature of our Sun. Solar wind, solar flares and Coronal Mass Ejections can result in geomagetic storms on Earth, potentially damaging satellites in space and the technologies that rely on them, as well as infrastructure on the ground.

ESA’s future Lagrange mission will keep constant watch on the Sun. The satellite, located at the fifth Lagrange point, will send early warning of potentially harmful solar activity before it affects satellites in orbit or power grids on the ground, giving operators the time to act to protect vital infrastructure.”

Video Credit: ESA

NASA dixit:

“NASA’s Earth Polychromatic Imaging Camera (EPIC) sits onboard NOAA’s Deep Space Climate Observatory (DSCOVR) satellite at the Lagrange point 1, a million miles away from Earth. EPIC has been imaging the sunlit side of Earth between 13 and 22 times a day since 2015. Now, scientists have developed ways to use these images to study specific elements of our home planet’s atmosphere and plant life, like ozone in the stratosphere, the makeup of clouds and the health of vegetation on land.”

Video Credit: NASA Goddard/Kathryn Mersmann