Chicken Little report: ESA has issued an update on when and where they think GOCE will impact the Earth.
You can see the ground tracks of the orbits here. It looks like the thing does have a chance of coming down over the U.S., should it come down in the early part of the prediction.
Engineers now expect the European GOCE research satellite to crash to Earth either late Sunday or on Monday.
Some pieces are going to reach the Earth’s surface, so be prepared to duck. You can see the predicted orbital path here.
For its next science mission the European Space Agency (ESA) has now decided to give first priority to an X-ray space telescope.
They have demoted a space-based gravity wave detector to second place. As is typical for ESA, the pace here is quite slow, as both missions are now scheduled for launch in 2028 and 2034, decades away.
Want to fly over the surface of Mars? ESA scientists have produced a movie using the data produced by their Mars Express orbiter in the past decade.
Video below the fold. More details here.
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Europe turns off Planck.
Planck operated four-and-a-half years, three times longer than originally planned. Launched in May 2009 on an Ariane 5 rocket shared with ESA’s Herschel telescope, Planck measured the cosmic fingerprint of the Big Bang, detecting subtle variations in background light originating 380,000 years after the genesis of the universe.
Chicken Little report: The abandoned European gravity research satellite GOCE is going to crash to Earth in about two weeks.
The probe is large enough for some pieces to survive and hit the surface.
The competition heats up: Arianespace’s Ariane 5 rocket successfully launched two commercial satellites into orbit late yesterday.
Europe has successfully drop tested its own experimental re-entry vehicle.
The full-scale Intermediate eXperimental Vehicle (IXV) prototype was released from an altitude of 3000 m by a helicopter, falling to gain speed to mimic a space mission before parachute deployment. The parachute slowed IXV for a safe splashdown in the sea at a speed below 7 m/s. This last step in a series of tests shows that IXV can be recovered safely after its mission into space.
Russian concerns about a build-up of mold inside the European ATV, now docked to ISS, has caused a delay in the opening of its hatch.
The Spaceflight101 portal said the delay was due to possible “mold and bacteria contamination on three cargo bags that are inside the spacecraft” and that a decision is yet to be made on whether the crew should use anti-mold kits to clean ATV-4 cargo before taking it inside the ISS.
The Russians had a lot of problems with mold in their early Salyut space stations, and understand the unpleasant consequences should mold spread into the station. Thus, I am not surprised if they are taking this issue seriously.
The preliminary design for Europe’s service module, to be used with the Orion spacecraft, has come in about a half ton too heavy.
Europe’s ATV unmanned freighter has docked successfully with ISS.
Europe successfully launched its heaviest unmanned cargo freighter to ISS today.
The docking of the ATV freighter, dubbed Albert Einstein, will take place after ten days of checkout in orbit.
