Arianespace’s Vega launches European satellite to study the Earth’s winds
Arianespace’s Vega rocket has successfully launched a European satellite dubbed Aeolus designed to study the Earth’s winds.
Funded by the European Space Agency and built by Airbus Defense and Space, the 480 million euro ($550 million) Aeolus mission is nearly two decades in the making. Since receiving ESA’s formal go-ahead in 2002, Aeolus has suffered numerous delays as engineers encountered problems with the mission’s laser instrument.
Aeolus will gather the first comprehensive worldwide measurements of wind speed — over oceans and land masses — from Earth’s surface to an altitude of nearly 100,000 feet (30 kilometers).
Data collected by the Aeolus satellite will be fed into numerical weather prediction models, replacing simulated “boundary conditions” in the computers models with near real-time measurements from space.
The updated leader board for the 2018 launch standings:
22 China
15 SpaceX
8 Russia
6 ULA
5 Arianespace
In the national race, the U.S. and China remained tied at 22.
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Arianespace’s Vega rocket has successfully launched a European satellite dubbed Aeolus designed to study the Earth’s winds.
Funded by the European Space Agency and built by Airbus Defense and Space, the 480 million euro ($550 million) Aeolus mission is nearly two decades in the making. Since receiving ESA’s formal go-ahead in 2002, Aeolus has suffered numerous delays as engineers encountered problems with the mission’s laser instrument.
Aeolus will gather the first comprehensive worldwide measurements of wind speed — over oceans and land masses — from Earth’s surface to an altitude of nearly 100,000 feet (30 kilometers).
Data collected by the Aeolus satellite will be fed into numerical weather prediction models, replacing simulated “boundary conditions” in the computers models with near real-time measurements from space.
The updated leader board for the 2018 launch standings:
22 China
15 SpaceX
8 Russia
6 ULA
5 Arianespace
In the national race, the U.S. and China remained tied at 22.
Readers!
Please consider supporting my work here at Behind the Black. Your support allows me the freedom and ability to analyze objectively the ongoing renaissance in space, as well as the cultural changes -- for good or ill -- that are happening across America. Fourteen years ago I wrote that SLS and Orion were a bad ideas, a waste of money, would be years behind schedule, and better replaced by commercial private enterprise. Only now does it appear that Washington might finally recognize this reality.
In 2020 when the world panicked over COVID I wrote that the panic was unnecessary, that the virus was apparently simply a variation of the flu, that masks were not simply pointless but if worn incorrectly were a health threat, that the lockdowns were a disaster and did nothing to stop the spread of COVID. Only in the past year have some of our so-called experts in the health field have begun to recognize these facts.
Your help allows me to do this kind of intelligent analysis. I take no advertising or sponsors, so my reporting isn't influenced by donations by established space or drug companies. Instead, I rely entirely on donations and subscriptions from my readers, which gives me the freedom to write what I think, unencumbered by outside influences.
You can support me either by giving a one-time contribution or a regular subscription. There are four ways of doing so:
1. Zelle: This is the only internet method that charges no fees. All you have to do is use the Zelle link at your internet bank and give my name and email address (zimmerman at nasw dot org). What you donate is what I get.
2. Patreon: Go to my website there and pick one of five monthly subscription amounts, or by making a one-time donation.
3. A Paypal Donation or subscription:
4. Donate by check, payable to Robert Zimmerman and mailed to
Behind The Black
c/o Robert Zimmerman
P.O.Box 1262
Cortaro, AZ 85652
You can also support me by buying one of my books, as noted in the boxes interspersed throughout the webpage or shown in the menu above.
Sixteen years from approval to launch – looks like ESA is giving NASA a run for it’s money
As I read, I was very interested in the technical challenges that the article discussed. They had to mitigate two problems that came from running a high power laser in space. From the article: “Those two, I would say, have been the main challenges — laser-induced contamination and laser-induced damage”
The article also helps explain why it took so long to develop the satellite: “So it has taken us about 10 years to get from a prototype laser to a flight-worthy laser with a lifetime that meets our requirements. In the beginning, due to this laser-induced contamination, we lost about 50 percent of the energy within hours, and we now we have run a laser with absolutely no degradation for six months and beyond. So we’re very confident that have achieved the state of the art.”
It seems counterintuitive to use oxygen to eliminate the contaminants without charring them and ruining the optics, but finding these types of solutions is what a development program is for.
Edward – It seems counterintuitive to use oxygen to eliminate the contaminants without
charring them and ruining the optics, but finding these types of solutions is what a development program is for
To quote The Engineer In The Family (dad) – “If we knew what we were doing it wouldn’t have been research”
“tied at 22”??? 15 for SpaceX. 6 for ULA equals 21.
There is another American launch company with 1 launch but our host feels it isn’t worth putting them in the list for such a paltry number but it is added to the total.
Willi: Northrop Grumman did one launch.