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  • A convincing Michel Barnier

    A convincing Michel Barnier

    I am a binational, by birth and upbringing and a profoundly convinced European. I have worked on both sides of the Channel in sectors that themselves are based on international cooperation with magnificent results benefitting our global society. This morning EU chief negociator Michel Barnier has been explaining the situation on the Brexit negociations in a live  interview on French radio. Leaving me and millions of listeners in no doubt as to his sincerity, his ardent wish to reach an agreement. But recognising that even a « soft Brexit » can in no way be considered as positive for Europe and especially for Britain. And that a « no deal » will have far reaching negative consequences for my fatherland.

    I must respect many English friends who voted to leave. Michel Barnier (and I) must put aside the reasons for their vote, fuelled largely by short-sightedness and ignorance of the far-reaching consequences of « going it alone ». There is no question of revenge said Barnier. Instead there must be a full-hearted effort on both sides to overcome the remaining issues, including that of a ´no border’ Ireland. Europe has guaranteed peace on our continent for 60+ years and must also do so on the Irish island.

    Listening to Barnier leaves me in no doubt that Europe is well intentionned but lucid. Lucid regarding the impasse the British gouvernement finds itself in. I can only hope that ‘my’ friends, ‘my’ gouvernement is as lucid. A solution MUST be found, putting aside preconceptions and facing reality, even if it involves putting aside our understanding of a first democratic decision and accepting a second vote on leaving or not a community that is in everybody’s interests. I pray that to start with Theresa May sees the light, that pro- and anti-Brexiteers find the necessary unity to preserve their – my – society from catastrophic consequences. It is a heartfelt wish, expressed after listening to Michel Barnier.

  • A history of space dockings

    A history of space dockings

    A history of RENDEZVOUS in SPACE and space transporters. In chronological order – Video Report for ESA-TV in February 2012 – Video duration: 1:38

    March 1966 Gemini-Agena: first ever rendezvous between twospacecraft, Gemini-8 (Cmd. Neil Armstrong) and an Agena rocket stage. The docking was successful but the Gemini had a systems failure threatening the lives of the astronauts and had to undock after less than a minute.

    November 1966, first unmanned flight of a Soyuz (first successful
    manned flight in 1968). Since the very first Russian spaceflights, the
    series of manned Soyuz craft, designed in the 1960s with their three
    occupants have regularly serviced the Mir and International Space
    Stations. When the Shuttle retires, the only crew-rotation vehicle for the
    ISS until new craft become operational. The last Soyuz to arrive at ISS
    was that of Paolo Nespoli, and remains docked with another Soyuz.

    March 1969: Apollo 9, ten days in Earth orbit demonstrates rendezvous
    and docking of the Lunar Module (« Spider ») and the Command & Service
    Module (« Gumdrop »)

    1973-1974 Skylab: the US’s firt space station, using the third stage of
    a Saturn 5 and Apollo Command/Service modules. Was visited 4 times:
    Severe damage on launch, notably to its insulation and lack of power with
    an un-deployed solar panel prevented its access on the first visit. On the
    second mission astronauts in a space walk repaired Skylab and stayed in
    it for 28 days. There were two additional missions, with the crew
    remaining 84 days on the final one.

    July 1975 ASTP (Apollo-Soyuz Test Project): the historic and symbolic
    meeting in space of the two big space powers (still competing to be first
    on the Moon) with the three astronauts of an Apollo capsule (Cmd. Tom
    Stafford) and three cosmonauts in Soyuz-19 (Cmd. Alexei Leonov). It is
    the first time that rendezvous technologies are exchanged between the
    Soviet Union and the United States. The two craft remain attached for two
    days.

    January 1978: First flight of the Russian Progress space freighter, a
    variation on the Soyuz, is regularly used to service the ISS. Both the
    Soyuz and Progress were designed to dock automatically but astronauts
    and ground teams regularly have to take control and manually conclude
    the dockings. The last vehicle to arrive at ISS on 30th January was the
    41st Progress.

    November 1983 Spacelab: first flight of the European Spacelabs,
    carried into space by the Space Shuttle – two were built, LM-1 given to
    NASA, and LM-2. They were used until 1998 (ESA’s Neurolab mission),
    after which experiments were transferred to the International Space
    Station in the Spacehab (smaller version of Spacelab). The Spacelabs flew
    25 times. On one occasion Spacelab LM-2 docked with the Mir space
    station (June 1995).

    1995: The shuttle Atlantis docks with the Russian Mir space station
    for the first time. The Atlantis STS-71 flight marked the 100th US human
    space flight. Whilst attached for five days they established a record for the
    largest combined spacecraft in orbit. The Shuttle-Mir programme paved
    the way for ISS.

    On 3rd April 2008 ATV-1, on the inaugural flight of Europe’s Automated
    Transfer Vehicle, the Jules Verne, carried out the first fully automated
    rendezvous and docking with the ISS. On that mission there had been two
    demonstration days during which the ATV rehearsed its final approach to
    the ISS docking port, then withdrawing. These trials fully convinced
    everyone of its great precision and that its anti-collision and avoidance
    systems were total reliable.

    September 2009 HTV: First flight of the Japanese HTV – or Kounotori-1
    (`white stork’) – space freighter arrives at the ISS. But it requires being
    grappled by the Station’s Robotic Arm and must be manually attached to
    the ISS. One can note that for its second flight, at the end of January
    2011, it was NASA astronaut Cady Coleman & ESA astronaut Paolo 10
    Nespoli who operated the robotic arm to berth HTV-2 (on 27 January).
    The HTV-2 was initially docked to the Earth-facing port of the Harmony
    module of the ISS. This port was freed on February 18th for the arrival of
    Discovery when Nespoli & Coleman transferred HTV-2 to Harmony’s
    space-facing port. Japan is building five more HTVs, on the basis of one
    flight a year upto 2016.

    ATV-2 – The Johannes Kepler (launched on 16 February 2011) is due
    to berth at Zvezda docking port of the ISS on 24 February. Paolo Nespoli
    will be with Aleksandr Kaleri to monitor and if necessary take action
    during the final approach. ATV-2 will stay docked to the ISS (nominally)
    until the beginning of June.

    Next ATVs: Edoardo Amaldi (ATV-3 launch in early spring 2012) plus
    two others are being built by EADS Astrium. ESA is currently considering
    ordering a 6th ATV.

    The future…

    United States
    COTS vehicles (Commercial Orbital Transportation Services: This NASA
    programme announced in 2006, called for proposals for vehicles to be
    needed until 2015. In 2006 it made a pre-selection of the SpaceX
    Dragon spacecraft (with Falcon-9 launcher) and in 2008 also retained the
    Cygnus vehicle (with Taurus launcher) proposal from Orbital Sciences.
    NASA contracts were awarded to SpaceX in 2008 for the launch of 20
    tonnes of freight with 12 vehicles and to Orbital for 20 T with 8 launches.
    Both vehicles would be manually berthed to the ISS. The Dragon capsule
    has made one test flight in December 2010. NASA is currently examining
    a SpaceX proposal that its next test flight go all the way and dock with the
    ISS.

    In the framework of the US Commercial Crew Development programme,
    other candidates were selected at the start 2010 for astronaut
    transportation.

    Europe
    ARV: currently being considered by ESA. It would re-use the ATV service
    module but replacing the integrated cargo carrier with a re-entry module
    to bring back experiments and other small freight from the ISS.

    A manned version of ATV is apparently no longer on the cards for
    essentially budgetary reasons.


  • Death of Brian Marsden

    Death of Brian Marsden

    Astronomer Brian Marsden made waves in 1998 when he said that Earth was possibly on a collision course with an asteroid and again years later when he led a campaign to unseat Pluto as a major planet.Mr. Marsden, who died Thursday at age 73 after a prolonged illness, was among the best-placed of scientists to make the asteroid prediction. As head of the International Astronomical Union’s Minor Planet Center, he was responsible for keeping track of the identity and track of nearly everything in the solar system.

    « He was a cross between an archivist, a giver of credit for discoveries, and a preliminary orbit calculator, » said Donald Yeomans, manager of the Near-Earth Object Program Office at the National Aeronautics and Space Administration. « He was one of the very few who paid any attention to the possibility that these near-earth objects could be a problem. »

    In the case of the « 1997 XF11 » asteroid, later observations showed the asteroid’s orbit wouldn’t intersect with Earth, and Mr. Marsden retracted his warning within 24 hours. Astronomers and others lobbed a barrage of criticism, but Mr. Marsden was unbowed.

    « Much as the incident was bad for my reputation, we needed a scare like that to bring attention to this problem, » he told Scientific American magazine in 2003.

    Most of Mr. Marsden’s work was the less dire but still epochal job of identifying, naming and alerting the scientific community to new asteroids. He also headed the Central Bureau for Astronomical Telegrams, responsible for monitoring comets. Mr. Marsden in 1994 alerted the media that Comet Shoemaker-Levy 9 was on a collision course with Jupiter. This time his prediction proved accurate, and the comet broke up upon impact, creating a vivid light display.

    Calculating orbits had been his specialty since he was an adolescent. Mr. Marsden grew up in Cambridge, England, the son of a mathematician. He said his mother sparked his interest in astronomy when she showed him a solar eclipse, viewed through smoked glass. What impressed him, he said, was not the image, « but the fact that it had been predicted in advance. »

    A prodigy of calculation, Mr. Marsden joined the Royal Astronomical Society while in high school and published predictions on the movements of Jupiter’s moons. He studied mathematics at the University of Oxford and went to graduate school at Yale starting in 1959, where for the first time he had access to a computer.

    When he joined the Smithsonian Astrophysical Observatory in Cambridge, Mass., asteroids weren’t in fashion. They were notoriously « vermin of the sky, » creating streaks on the photographic plates of astronomers studying stars much farther away.

    During Mr. Marsden’s tenure, interest grew and by the 1990s the Minor Planet Center was awash in data supplied by professional and amateur astronomers. Thousands of new asteroids were added to the records each month.

    « If it moves or it’s fuzzy, it goes through us, » he told Astronomy magazine in 1998.

    Mr. Marsden refined the way comet orbits were calculated, and he succeed in predicting the return in 1992 of Swift-Tuttle, the comet with the longest known orbital period. Mr. Marsden made the re-identification of « lost comets » and « lost asteroids »—typically spotted once but without a known orbit—a specialty.

    In addition to his notoriety for raising alarms about an asteroid impact, Mr. Marsden won enmity with a segment of the public as a leader of the campaign to downgrade Pluto. Partly at his urging, the International Astronomical Union voted at a meeting in Prague in 2006 to designate Pluto and three asteroids « dwarf planets. » At the end of his career, Mr. Marsden noted that Pluto was retired as a planet on the same day that he retired as an astronomer.

    Wall Street Journal by STEPHEN MILLER

  • 40 years, marking a milestone at the BBC

    40 years, marking a milestone at the BBC

    Article by John Simpson published on BBC web site Thursday, 31 August 2006

    Forty years ago, just after 10 o’clock on the morning of Thursday 1 September 1966, I pushed open the heavy bronze doors of Broadcasting House for the first time.

    At 22, newly graduated, I was about to start work as a sub-editor in radio news.

    I was scarcely a great success at it. But soon, through a stroke of luck, I got a much more enjoyable job as a reporter. That is what I still am.

    Since then, the world has changed utterly. Newsmen – there were very few newswomen then – were far more deferential.

    We did not interrupt people when we interviewed them. Nor did we suggest that they should answer the question.

     

    My very first reporting assignment was a photo call for the prime minister, Harold Wilson, at Euston Station, in London.

    The newspapers were full of election talk, so I went up to him and asked when he was going to name the date.

    Prime ministerial punch

    Wilson exploded. He punched me in the stomach, tried to wrench the microphone from me, and threatened to complain formally about my outrageous behaviour.

    The incident was observed by the entire British national media, yet no hint of it appeared in the newspapers or on radio or television.

    In those days « Prime Minister punches journalist » wasn’t a story; it was all my fault for daring to ask him a question.

    John Simpson’s career has taken him to many of the world’s hotspots

    The BBC has changed utterly, too. Forty years ago it was just one of a number of middle-ranking national broadcasters.

    It had a good reputation, because of its reporting during the Second World War. Having resisted Winston Churchill’s demands early on that it should keep quiet about Allied defeats, it was generally believed when it reported Allied successes.

    But it was dwarfed by the big American broadcasting networks.

    Nowadays the BBC is the world’s biggest international broadcaster, leaving rivals like CNN, Fox or Al-Jazeera behind, both in terms of its bureaux and correspondents and its vast worldwide audiences.

    And the American networks scarcely register nowadays in the reporting of international news.

    Yet we have lost a lot, also.

    Robust defence

    The BBC used to be managed by charming, tweed-clad, middle-aged men who watched over your career and made the corporation a pleasant place to work.

    Nowadays it is tightly run and impersonal. You still don’t work for the BBC for the money. But the work was fascinating, the BBC was much respected, and you stayed with it for life.

    Well, it is still wonderfully interesting. The BBC gives you a freedom and a scope which no other broadcasting organisation can offer. It is still as highly-respected as ever.

    He survived a « friendly fire » attack in Iraq in 2003

    But the management style is tougher and less benign. There is less job security, and people in the lower and middle ranks often resent the salaries at the top.

    Of course, the BBC took a big hit at the time of the Kelly/Gilligan affair in 2004, when we reported that the Blair government had knowingly exaggerated the evidence for Iraq’s weapons of mass destruction.

    The government hit back with unparalleled ferocity. We defended ourselves robustly, but an inquiry by a senior judge, Lord Hutton, went against the BBC.

    Culture of truth

    Yet the BBC’s reporting, though flawed, has largely been vindicated. There was an immense upsurge of public support for us. Our self-confidence was shaken, but it has long-since returned in full.

    Future British governments will surely think more carefully before attacking the BBC.

    Over 40 years I myself have made many mistakes, every single one of which I feel badly about.

    But, like my colleagues, I can honestly say I have never broadcast anything I did not believe to be correct. The culture of telling the truth for its own sake is as deeply embedded in the BBC in 2006 as it was in 1966.

    It’s a funny old outfit: slow, cumbersome, and sometimes intensely irritating. But it still does its level best to be honest and unbiased.

    For that I remain profoundly grateful.

  • Le lancement du satellite européen MetOp reporté de « plusieurs semaines »

    Le lancement du satellite européen MetOp reporté de « plusieurs semaines »

    European satellite on Russian rocket faces 2-month launch delay
    15:23 | 20/ 07/ 2006

    LONDON, July 20 (RIA Novosti) – The first launch of a new generation carrier rocket, Soyuz-2.1a, has been delayed for two months for technical reasons, a spokesman for the Federal Space Agency said Thursday. (suite…)

  • Author Muriel Spark dies aged 88

    Author Muriel Spark dies aged 88

    BBC Last Updated: Saturday, 15 April 2006, 17:16 GMT 18:16 UK

    Novelist Dame Muriel Spark, who wrote the classic The Prime of Miss Jean Brodie, has died in Tuscany where she had made her home.
    The Scottish-born writer, who was 88, wrote more than 20 books, winning numerous literary awards.

    As well as writing fiction, Dame Muriel also wrote critical studies of Emily Bronte and Mary Shelley.

    Dr Gavin Wallace of the Scottish Arts Council called her death « an ineffably sad and deep loss to our literature ».

    The mayor of the Tuscan village of Civitella della Chiana confirmed the author died in hospital on Thursday.

    Her funeral was scheduled to be held on Saturday.

    Dame Muriel was considered one of the liveliest literary talents in her more than 50 years of publishing.

    Her first novel The Comforters was published in 1957, but it was The Prime of Miss Jean Brodie in 1962 that brought her to the attention of critics and fans.

    She was a simple person, affectionate and considerate
    Massimliano Dindalini, mayor of Civitella della Chiana

    Send your tributes
    Set in an Edinburgh girls’ school, it centred on Miss Brodie and a group of adoring pupils to whom she taught her liberal views on sex and politics.

    Honorary citizen

    The book was turned into a much performed play and later a film starring Dame Maggie Smith, for which she won a best actress Oscar in 1969.

    Dame Muriel moved to the US in the late 1960s for a brief period before moving to Italy where she continued to write poetry and novels.

    Dame Muriel wrote more than 20 novels

    Her last book, The Finishing School, became a best-seller when it was published in 2004.

    In 2005 she was made an honorary citizen of the Tuscan village of Civitella della Chiana where she had lived for 30 years.

    « She was a simple person, affectionate and considerate, » Civitella mayor Massimliano Dindalini said.

    ‘Far-reaching influence’

    Among her literary achievements was the TS Eliot prize in 1992 and the British Literature Prize in 1997.

    The Scottish Arts Council created the Muriel Spark International Fellowship in 2004, with Canadian Margaret Atwood winning the inaugural prize.

    Dr Gavin Wallace, who is head of literature at the council, said Dame Muriel’s influence had been enormous.

    « Her achievement and influence as Scotland’s, if not the UK’s, greatest novelist have been so vast and far-reaching that in an odd way she seemed to be an immutable part of the cultural landscape.

    « I wrote to her only two weeks ago with the good news that we had secured the first Muriel Spark international literary fellowship, a new post to which she graciously gave her name. »

    Scottish Culture Minister Patricia Ferguson said: « Dame Muriel Spark was a great Scottish woman who brought pleasure to readers all over the world.

    « She led a fascinating life, producing work over more than half a century which has transcended generations and entertained millions. »

    ‘Unusual person’

    The author was made a Dame in 1993 in recognition of her services to literature.

    Christine Lloyd, who founded the Muriel Spark Society, recalled how fortunate the society felt when the author attended a luncheon in her honour at the Edinburgh Book Festival in 2004.

    « It was just delightful. She was just a very unusual person, she really was. Bright, witty of course, and a marvellous conversationalist, » she said.

    « She just loved company and fun and wanted to talk about anything and everything. The lunch lasted far longer than any of us dared hope it would. »

  • Ariane rocket launches satellites – V168 (BBC)

    Ariane rocket launches satellites – V168 (BBC)

    Last Updated: Friday, 14 October 2005, 10:48 GMT 11:48 UK

    Europe’s Ariane 5 rocket has launched two satellites from the equatorial Kourou spaceport in French Guiana. It was the 19th successful flight for the vehicle in its standard, or « Generic », configuration.

    The first satellite to be ejected was a 3,700kg communications payload for the French military called Syracuse 3A. The second spacecraft was PanAmSat’s 2,000kg Galaxy 15, which will deliver a range of TV, broadband and aircraft services over the US. Blast-off from Kourou was timed at 1932 local time (2232 GMT) on Thursday. It was Ariane’s third mission of the year.

    The next launch on 9 November will see the Ariane 5-ECA fly again. This beefed up rocket can lift 10 tonnes into a geostationary transfer orbit. It will be the second qualification flight for the ECA after the rocket’s disastrous maiden mission in 2002 when it veered out of control over the ocean.

  • Cassini probe shows signs of wear

    Cassini probe shows signs of wear

    12:45 08 April 2005, NewScientist.com news service by Maggie McKee

     

    The 7.5-year-old Cassini spacecraft in orbit around Saturn is beginning to show wear, with three of its 12 main instruments experiencing difficulties. But mission officials believe the glitches will cause minimal losses to science.

    « The three that are acting up a bit are disappointments, but not a major setback by any means, » says Robert Mitchell, Cassini’s programme manager at NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, California, US.

    The problems in two instruments can be traced to the motors that point their detectors. In late 2004, mission managers lost the ability to control a motor that steers one of three detectors on Cassini’s plasma spectrometer, which studies charged particles.

    « It moves but we can’t control it, » Mitchell told New Scientist. He says engineers may try to lock it into a fixed position or program new software to regain control of the motor. « We haven’t given up on getting it back up and going again, » he says.

    Another motor controlling one of three detectors on the Magnetospheric Imaging Instrument (MIMI), which measures magnetic fields, may be impossible to fix. A mechanical failure may have caused the motor to stop turning in response to commands in late January 2005, and mission managers turned the motor off in mid-February.

    « It’s like you have a telescope that works just fine but if you want to point it you can’t, » says Mitchell. The instrument’s other two detectors – like those on the plasma spectrometer – are fully functional, though. So the scientific losses from this problem are estimated to be less than 10% of the total data it could have taken, says Mitchell.

    Bad vibrations

    But MIMI’s motor glitch did add to problems with the third instrument, called the Composite Infrared Spectrometer (CIRS). CIRS acts as a thermometer, studying the heat from objects such as Saturn’s rings, and it can also map the molecules in the atmospheres of Saturn and one of its moons, Titan.

    It does this by taking the spectrum of infrared light from its targets – a sensitive process that involves taking the light in along two different paths and studying the patterns it produces when it meets up again. A mirror sets the lengths of the paths by moving at a constant rate through a distance of about 1 centimetre.

    But vibrations on the spacecraft have interfered with the mirror’s motion, in some cases causing it to reverse direction. CIRS is a « very delicate instrument », says Michael Flasar, the instrument’s principal investigator at NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Maryland, US. « Anytime there’s a vibration on the craft, we seem to be very sensitive to it. »

    MIMI’s motor malfunction in January caused vibrations that were « particularly onerous » for CIRS, says Flasar. The problem was magnified because – just weeks beforehand, on 24 December 2004 – the 349-kilogram Huygens space probe had been jettisoned from Cassini to land on Saturn. « Huygens’s mass was apparently acting as a damper on the vibrations, » says Flasar.

    The vibrations have lessened since MIMI’s motor was shut down, « but we’re not out of the woods yet », says Flasar.

    His team will have to process the spectra carefully to remove the « noise » from the vibrations. But Flasar adds: « Even during the worst of the problems, we’ve been able to rescue some good data. »

  • Ariane father figure dies

    Ariane father figure dies

    For all those who have closely followed the development and history of European space and particularly the Ariane rockets, the news will be felt with much sorrow. Hubert Curien, one of the principal artisans of the launcher has died, aged 80.

    (plus…)
  • Cassini-Huygens prepare for a titanic plunge

    Cassini-Huygens prepare for a titanic plunge

    Original post on 23/12/2004

    In less than 24 hours, the European dare-devil probe to Saturn’s moon Titan will leave its mothership. The ‘green for go’ decision was taken on 23 December. After a 7-year journey, the moment of truth approaches. Mankind will be discovering another world with revelations, perhaps, on the true nature of this enigmatic moon, shrouded in a thick veil of mystery.

    The Cassini orbiter is due to release Europe’s « flying-saucer » – as one of ESA’s former Directors of Science has called it – early on Christmas morning, at 04:08 CET European time. If successfully separated it will then head for Titan, arriving there on 14 January. Meanwhile the Cassini orbiter will change its collision course on 27 December so as to be in position to relay the Huygens descent data back to Earth.

    On this occasion, to better understand the objectives of the Cassini-Huygens’ mission, we publish a series of articles describing the way the probe and orbiter instruments work. They carry accronyms that are sometimes obscure, sometimes evocative. (We particularly appreciated the gallic sounding ‘MIMI’, and its team leader). Indeed, it is also an occasion to show a few faces behind the mission, those of the principal investigators and team leaders, most of whom we have been honoured to meet. These coming days as the probe approaches its target, we will better understand their expectations… and anxieties.

    We focus first on the Huygens instruments

    The Descent Imager/Spectral Radiometer contains four cameras, which will capture the brightness of Titan’s sky and send back panoramic, pie-shaped photo mosaics of its surface.
    The Huygens Atmospheric Structure Instrument contains sensors that will measure the physical and electrical properties of Titan’s atmosphere. Temperature and pressure sensors will measure the atmosphere’s heat. The Doppler Wind Experiment will improve communication with the probe by giving it a stable carrier frequency. The probe drift caused by winds in Titan’s atmosphere will induce a measurable Doppler shift in the carrier signal. The swinging of the probe beneath its parachute due to atmospheric properties may also be detected.
    A Gas Chromatograph Mass Spectrometer will identify and measure chemicals in Titan’s atmosphere. It is equipped with samplers that will be filled at high altitude for analysis.
    The Aerosol Collector and Pyrolyser will draw in and analyze particles from clouds in the atmosphere through a system of filters and portable ovens.
    A Surface Science Package houses sensors designed to determine whether Titan’s surface at the landing site is solid or liquid. A tilt sensor will measure any pendulum motion during the descent and will show any motion due to waves. If the surface is liquid, other sensors will measure its density, temperature and other characteristics.

    And there are the Cassini orbiter instruments

    UVIS – VIMS – ISS – RADAR – CDA – INMS – CAPS – CIRS – MAG – MIMI – RPWS – RSS

    For further details on the mission progress and to see images already obtained by the Cassini instruments since arrival around Saturn last July, please consult the agencies’ web sites:
    European Space Agency – Cassini-Huygens
    NASA-JPL Cassini-Huygens