A Russian launcher will put several European Space Agency (ESA) satellites into orbit from the Kourou space port in French Guiana on December 17, Russia’s Federal Space Agency (Roscosmos) said on Monday. The Soyuz ST-A will orbit Pleades and SSoT satellites, as well as four Elisa microsatellites. The rocket was delivered to the launch pad [...]
Tag: european space agency
December 12, 2011
December 3, 2011
ESA Abandons Attempts To Contact Stranded Russian Space Probe
The European Space Agency (ESA) has said it would no longer try to make contact with Russia’s stranded Mars probe Phobos-Grunt if December 2 attempts failed. Interfax quoted ESA’s representative in Russia, Rene Pichel, as saying ESA and the Russians had not had contacts with the probe for more than a week, and the instruments [...]
December 3, 2011
Main news of December 2
WORLD * Russia’s United Shipbuilding Corporation and the Baltiisky Zavod shipyard signed a 2.5 billion ruble ($80 million) contract on Friday to build hulls for the third and fourth French Mistral-class warships for the Russian Navy * Russian specialists have started construction works on the Ninh Thuan nuclear power plant in Vietnam, a spokesman for [...]
December 2, 2011
ESA halts attempts to contact Russian Mars moon probe
The European Space Agency (ESA) said on Friday it had ended attempts to establish contact with Phobos-Grunt, Russia’s failed probe to one of Mars’ moons. “In consultation and agreement with Phobos-Grunt mission controllers, ESA engineers will end ESTRACK ground station support today,” the agency said. “ESA ground teams remain available to assist the Phobos-Grunt mission [...]
November 25, 2011
NASA to launch Curiosity rover to probe for life on Mars Nov. 26
NASA will launch a unique car-sized Curiosity rover on Saturday on a 2-year mission to Mars to search for traces of life on the red planet, NASA said on its web site. The Mars Science Laboratory is the largest and most capable rover going to another planet. The six-wheeled robot, which weighs 900 [...]
November 24, 2011
Data beamed from Russian probe ‘indecipherable’
Telemetry data received from a wayward Russian Mars probe is impossible to decipher, a space industry source said on Thursday. The European Space Agency (ESA) tracking station in Perth, Australia, received signals from the Phobos-Grunt, which has been stuck at a low-Earth orbit since after its launch. “It was impossible to get anything out of [...]
November 24, 2011
Data beamed from Russia Mars probe ‘deciphered’
Russian specialists have deciphered telemetry data received from a wayward Mars probe, but have yet to find out the cause of its erratic behavior, a space industry source said on Thursday. “Some data” on the spacecraft’s condition were obtained, but it was not yet clear how “functional” it was, the source said. Earlier in the [...]
November 23, 2011
ESA to make 5 attempts to receive data from Russian probe
A tracking station in Perth, Australia, will make five attempts early on Thursday to receive telemetry from a Russian Mars probe that has been stuck at a low-Earth orbit since after its launch, the European Space Agency (ESA) said on Wednesday. “We will make five attempts to get the telemetry data from Russia’s Phobos-Grunt spacecraft,” [...]
November 23, 2011
Ground Controllers Make Contact With Lost Russian Mars Probe
Russia’s stranded “Phobos-Grunt” Mars probe has emitted its first “sign of life.” The European Space Agency (ESA) said that controllers at a tracking station in western Australia made contact with the Phobos-Grunt spacecraft late on November 22. The probe was launched successfully on November 8 but mission control lost radio contact with the craft hours [...]
November 23, 2011
Last attempt to contact Phobos-Grunt
Stations of the European Space Agency located in South America, Australia and the Canary Islands will try on Tuesday night to establish contact with the Phobos-Grunt unmanned spacecraft that is stranded at a low-Earth orbit after launch, the managing directorate of the European Space Agency (ESA) said. “The ESA team will make the last attempt [...]
November 12, 2011
Russia again fails to make contact with Mars moon probe
Russia has again been again unsuccessful in its attempts to establish contact with its Phobos Grunt probe, whose engines failed to put in on course for Mars after take-off, a source in the space rocket industry told RIA Novosti on Saturday. “Attempts to make contact were made overnight and this morning by Russian specialists from [...]
November 12, 2011
Mission to Mars impossible?
Almost no hope left to save Russia’s Phobos-Grunt interplanetary mission to Mars, as attempts to re-establish contact with it failed. Some say, in theory it may be destroyed by a rocket to prevent it falling back to Earth. Last night witnessed several unsuccessful attempts to contact the spacecraft, a source in the Russian space industry [...]
November 9, 2011
Mars ‘astronauts’ are still friends after 520 days locked up together
After 520 days locked in a container in a Moscow car park with just each other for company, the six would-be astronauts hailed as Russia‘s newest pioneers have made their first public appearance. The three Russians, two Europeans and their fellow volunteer from China took to the stage still dressed in the blue jumpsuits they [...]
November 9, 2011
Participants in mock Mars mission ‘family now’
What would it be like to spend some 18 months confined in a spaceship as you hurtle through the blackness of space towards Mars? No one knows for sure, but the Moscow-based Mars500 experiment attempted to recreate at least some of the conditions by locking six men away in a mock spacecraft. Despite fears of [...]