I love that we launched a spacecraft with the sole purpose of measuring the positions of as many stars as possible, just because we could. Well done Gaia, and all the teams who worked on it.
Smaller than a strawberry seed, this tiny signal amplifier was produced by the European Space Agency to fill a missing link in current technology, helping to make future radar-observing and telecommunications space missions feasible.
“This integrated circuit is a low noise amplifier, measuring just 1.8 by 0.9 mm across,” explains ESA microwave engineer David Cuadrado-Calle. “Delivering state of the art performance, the low noise amplifier’s task is to boost very faint signals to usable levels.”
Analysis shows that one temperature measurement exceeded a pre-defined limit and that the flight software correctly triggered a shut down
Sounds like the fix is changing the start up procedure such that it doesn’t reach the temperature limit. It would be nice to know why it went outside what they deemed safe but I guess it is rocket science.
Yes, not really the complete picture of what happened.
Would have there been actual damage to the system or even destruction if the software did not shut down? Or was the temperature threshold set too conservative? Did the thermal simulations not match the observed temperatures and if so why?
What’s the solution to this problem now for the next flight?
“We are obviously not surprised by these results… it would have been extremely concerning to find out that Earth was not habitable! But they indicate that MAJIS and SWI will work very successfully at Jupiter, where they will help us investigate whether the icy moons could be potential habitats for past or present life.”
If it reenables European sovereign and independent access to space it’s a success. Fingers crossed that it’s also as reliably as A5. Commercially I agree.
Godspeed! I don’t think Ariane 6 will go down in history as a successful rocket, mostly on account of the shift in economics forced on the rest of the industry by SpaceX. But I do get excited for debut launches – some very clever people worked very hard on this. :)
The first ESA instrument to land on the Moon has detected the presence of negative ions on the lunar surface produced through interactions with the solar wind.
The European team working with the Negative Ions at the Lunar Surface (NILS) instrument confirmed the success of this scientific mission that flew to the far side of the Moon aboard the Chang’e-6 spacecraft.
The discovery of a new component of plasma at the surface of the Moon opens a new window for space physics and for human and robotic missions in an era of renewed lunar exploration.
Existential crisis about how every narrow image shows 100,000x the amount of matter and bodies that I already can’t conceptualize from just our own galaxy
esa.int
Aktywne