Successfully launched in November 2009, the European Space Agency’s (ESA) SMOS satellite is sending data which is considered very satisfactory, as evidenced by recent observations of the Amazon’s influence on the Atlantic. Indeed, the detail in the measurements performed by the satellite has enabled scientists to see how the world's largest river locally modifies the ocean's salinity (at the outflow) by depositing significant quantities of fresh water into it.

ESA Press Release

Published 3 September 2010

The Canadian Space Agency (CSA) has announced that its astronaut Chris Hadfield will assume the role of commander of the International Space Station’s Expedition 35 from March 2013, during the second half of his six-month space station mission.  Born in 1959, this military test pilot was selected by his country’s space agency in 1992.  He has already been to space twice during U.S. space shuttle missions STS-74 in 1995 to the Russian space station Mir and STS-100 in 2001 to install the Canadian robotic arm on the ISS. So, Chris Hadfield will once again fly to the International Space Station in December 2012, but this time in a Russian Soyouz rocket accompanied by the American Tom Marshburn and the Russian Roman Romanenko forming Expedition 34 with 3 other astronauts already onboard the station (the American Kevin Ford and the Russians Oleg Novitskiy and Evgeny Tarelkin). As announced above, he will take command of the Station three months later in 2013 for Expedition 35 and will return to Earth in June 2013.  Below is the video of the press conference where Chris Hadfield talks about his appointment as future commander of the Station and first Canadian to hold this position.



Published 3 September 2010

The American program Top Chef on the Bravo Channel (a reality TV cookery competition) focused on food for the astronauts during the episode on 1 September.  In fact, the competitors had to design a dish intended to be eaten in orbit since NASA will use the winning recipe. For the purposes of this episode, the producers filmed footage at the American agency’s Johnson Space Centre in Houston and the moonwalker Buzz Aldrin (Apollo 11) was a guest star on the show.

Top Chef, “Gastro-nauts” episode

Published 2 September 2010

No, this is not a new launch pad for spacecraft located near the South pole! However, from 4 September, the French space agency will release around twenty stratospheric balloons from the U.S. McMurdo research base (often used for this type of launch, because it enjoys favourable winds). The measurements made by the onboard instruments will allow for example, the famous hole in the ozone layer around the Antarctic to be studied in greater detail, but also ensure the smooth operation of the IASI interferometer (Infrared Atmospheric Sounding Interferometer) present on the European meteorological satellite MetOP-A.

CNES article

The IASI instrument

Published 2 September 2010

Well, to be exact, 8 minutes and 50 seconds! James Cameron, the director who once sat on the NASA Advisory Council (see this article), is presenting an extended version of Avatar, with for example, a sequence introducing animals, cut from the original version and another that explores the school that Grace Augustine runs more thoroughly, the death of  Tsu’tey is no longer shortened as the studio had demanded and of course the famous love scene is more complete this time round (but don’t forget that James Cameron himself declared that we should not expect a major upheaval concerning this specific moment in the film). This “Avatar Special Edition” is currently in cinemas (in 3D or 2D depending on the cinema) while a new DVD and Blu-ray version soon to be released will feature 16 more minutes, including 7 “bonus” minutes with regards this second version of the space saga which touches on many astronautical themes (see this article and this feature).

Published 1 September 2010

At the moment, two very different satellites are currently being rescued by their ground controllers. The first, GOCE, is central to a scientific mission by the European Space Agency (ESA). Responsible for accurately measuring variations in Earth's gravity field, this satellite has experienced two successive failures in two onboard computers (in February then July 2010). The satellite is operating normally, but can no longer transmit the data that it collects. On the ground, engineers are hoping that a software update sent to GOCE will allow this failure to be resolved. To date, the mission has however already collected two thirds of the expected data and provided a first map of the variations in Earth's gravity field (see this Enjoy Space article). The second is an American military telecommunication satellite, AEHF-1.  Successfully launched from Cape Canaveral Air Force Station on 14 August, it should provide secure high-level communications between United States military staff, their theatres of operations and even the president!  However, due to a failure in its main propulsion system, AEHF-1 has not been able to reach its operating orbit. The American military has announced that that the best specialists are working on the issue and that by using the altitude thrusters (much less powerful and normally used to keep the satellite in its orbit), ground controllers will “drive” AEHF-1 to its intended location within several months. Despite this unexpected fuel consumption, the operational life of 14 years could still be achieved.

Published 31 August 2010

Statistically speaking, a great deal of luck is needed to be able to observe a planet transiting its star as this requires perfect alignment between the star, the planet and the observer. However, this is the method that has been adopted for the French satellite CoRoT belonging to the CNES and NASA’s counterpart Kepler. Both detect exoplanets by measuring the variations in luminosity induced as the planets pass in front of their star and NASA has just announced that Kepler has marked up a double success: two planets around the same star. There is even perhaps a third one…

Both planets, the size of Saturn (80 and 54 times the mass of the Earth), are orbiting a yellow star renamed “Kepler 9”, slightly larger than our Sun and situated in the Lyre constellation, about 2,300 light years from the Earth. These planets complete their orbits in 19.2 and 38.9 days, which tends to indicate that there is gravitational resonance between them. A third planet, a “Super-Earth” about 1.5 times bigger than our planet might be following an orbit very close to the star, with a 38-hour revolution, but this remains to be confirmed as the slight variations in luminosity that indicate its presence could also come from parasite sources such as a star companion or other stars in the background.

In seven months, Kepler has observed variations in luminosity for more than 156,000 stars and detected about 700 potential planets, of which seven have been confirmed by observations from ground observatories.