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.
On Christmas Eve 1968 three Americans became the first humans to visit another world. What they did to celebrate was unexpected and profound, and will be remembered throughout all human history. Genesis: the Story of Apollo 8, Robert Zimmerman's classic history of humanity's first journey to another world, tells that story, and it is now available as both an ebook and an audiobook, both with a foreword by Valerie Anders and a new introduction by Robert Zimmerman.
The ebook is available everywhere for $5.99 (before discount) at amazon, or direct from my ebook publisher, ebookit. If you buy it from ebookit you don't support the big tech companies and the author gets a bigger cut much sooner.
The audiobook is also available at all these vendors, and is also free with a 30-day trial membership to Audible.
"Not simply about one mission, [Genesis] is also the history of America's quest for the moon... Zimmerman has done a masterful job of tying disparate events together into a solid account of one of America's greatest human triumphs."--San Antonio Express-News
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.
On Christmas Eve 1968 three Americans became the first humans to visit another world. What they did to celebrate was unexpected and profound, and will be remembered throughout all human history. Genesis: the Story of Apollo 8, Robert Zimmerman's classic history of humanity's first journey to another world, tells that story, and it is now available as both an ebook and an audiobook, both with a foreword by Valerie Anders and a new introduction by Robert Zimmerman.
The ebook is available everywhere for $5.99 (before discount) at amazon, or direct from my ebook publisher, ebookit. If you buy it from ebookit you don't support the big tech companies and the author gets a bigger cut much sooner.
The audiobook is also available at all these vendors, and is also free with a 30-day trial membership to Audible.
"Not simply about one mission, [Genesis] is also the history of America's quest for the moon... Zimmerman has done a masterful job of tying disparate events together into a solid account of one of America's greatest human triumphs."--San Antonio Express-News
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.