ЛОСКУТНОЕ ОДЕЯЛО

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Latest CryoSat result revealed
http://www.esa.int/esaCP/SEMU55NW91H_index_0.html

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Jason-1 Satellite To Return to Service May 4 in Lower Orbit

PARIS — The U.S.-French Jason-1 ocean-altimetry satellite, which was put into a safe-hold mode on March 3 after an on-board failure, is expected to return to service May 4 from a lower orbit, program managers said April 26.

The new orbit of 1,323.4 kilometers in altitude — some 12.6 kilometers lower than the former position — will permit ground controllers to operate Jason-1 until it fails completely, as this altitude is considered low enough to serve as a graveyard orbit, officials said.

The lower position means Jason-1 will not clutter the more-useful operational orbit in the event it fails without warning. It also reduces the number of years it will take before atmospheric drag pulls it into a destructive re-entry once it is retired.

Jason-1 was launched in December 2001 on what was supposed to be a three-year mission to succeed the larger U.S.-French Topex-Poseidon satellite.

Ocean altimetry's popularity with civil and military customers has only grown since then.

Jason-2 was launched in August 2008, and has been operated in tandem with Jason-1 to increase the frequency of altimetry data returned to users. Jason-3 is scheduled for launch in 2014 and a successor satellite to that is being designed by the 19-nation European Space Agency.

The U.S.-French Jason operating team said Jason-1, whose payload instruments were switched on starting April 24 after a seven-week outage, should be able to perform partial service for at least another year.

"The move from the altimetry reference orbit has been a difficult decision to take, but it also signals the start of an exciting new chapter in the extraordinary mission of Jason-1," the Jason-1 team from the NASA Jet Propulsion Laboratory and the French space agency, CNES, said in an April 23 message to users.

http://www.spacenews.com/earth_observation/120427-jason1-return-service.html

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Goddard Collaborates With International Partners on MMS Instrument

Whether it's a giant solar flare or a beautiful green-blue aurora, just about everything interesting in space weather happens due to a phenomenon called magnetic reconnection. Reconnection occurs when magnetic field lines cross and create a burst of energy. These bursts can be so energetic they could be measured in megatons of TNT. To study this phenomenon, NASA is readying a fleet of four identical spacecraft, the Magnetospheric Multiscale (MMS) mission, for a planned launch in 2014.

At NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Md., a team of scientists and engineers are working on a crucial element of the MMS instrument suite: the Fast Plasma Instrument (FPI). Some 100 times faster than any previous similar instrument, the FPI will collect a full sky map of data at the rate of 30 times per second -- a necessary speed given that MMS will only travel through the reconnection site for under a second.

"Imagine flying by a tiny object on an airplane very rapidly," says Craig Pollock, the Co-Investigator for FPI at Goddard. "You want to capture a good picture of it, but you don't get to just walk around it and take your time snapping photos from different angles. You have to grab quick shots as you're passing. That's the challenge."

FPI is being assembled at Goddard, from sub-assemblies built there, at the Southwest Research Institute in San Antonio, Texas, and at the Meisei Electric Company, Ltd. in Isasaki Japan. FPI sensors are being tested at Goddard, NASA's Marshall Space Flight Center in Huntsville, Ala., and at Japan's Institute of Space and Astronautical Science near Tokyo.



During the last week of March, 2012, researchers from all four teams came together at the Low Energy Electron and Ion Facility (LEEIF) at the National Space Science and Technology Center in Huntsville to test part of the FPI: the Dual Ion Spectrometer (DIS) flight sensors built at Mesei. The tests focused on the instrument's response when exposed to the space environment.

In the LEEIF facility, scientists and engineers expose the Dual Ion Spectrometer to ion beams of specific energy from specific directions to determine the response. This known response will be used to calibrate the flight data. Each of the MMS spacecraft will need four spectrometers, so there are 16 DIS instruments total. They will be paired with 16 Dual Electron Spectrometers (DES) and 6 Instrument Data Processing Units (IDPUs) that are being built at Goddard to complete the full FPI.

Goddard manages the MMS mission. Dr. James L. Burch at Southwest Research Institute is the principal investigator for the MMS science investigation. Marshall is a Co-Investigator institution and part of the FPI team.

For more information on the MMS Mission, visit: http://mms.gsfc.nasa.gov

http://www.nasa.gov/mission_pages/sunearth/news/mms-collaborates.html

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A NASA Weather 'Eye in the Sky' Marks 10 Years

For 10 years, it has silently swooped through space in its orbital perch 438 miles (705 kilometers) above Earth, its nearly 2,400 spectral "eyes" peering into Earth's atmosphere, watching. But there's nothing alien about NASA's Atmospheric Infrared Sounder, or AIRS, instrument, a "monster" of weather and climate research that celebrates its 10th birthday in orbit May 4.

AIRS, built by BAE Systems, Boston, under the direction of NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory, Pasadena, Calif., is one of six instruments flying on NASA's Aqua spacecraft as part of NASA's Earth Observing System. AIRS, along with its partner microwave instrument, the Advanced Microwave Sounding Unit (AMSU-A), has faithfully measured our planet's atmospheric temperature, water vapor, clouds and greenhouse gases with unprecedented accuracy and stability. Over the past decade, AIRS and AMSU-A have improved our understanding of Earth's global water and energy cycles, climate change and trends and how Earth's climate system is responding to increased greenhouse gases.

Studies have shown AIRS has improved global weather prediction more than any other single satellite instrument in the past 10 years. In 2006, a group led by John Le Marshall of the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration demonstrated that use of AIRS data in weather forecasting models significantly improved forecast "skill" -- the name of the calculation meteorologists use to quantify how close a forecast is to actual observed weather conditions.

"AIRS has performed beyond expectation, exceeding its mission objectives," said AIRS Project Manager Tom Pagano of JPL. "The knowledge we've gained through AIRS has advanced our understanding of weather and climate, and demonstrated an important measurement technology. While the team can be proud of what's been accomplished, we continue to look forward to new discoveries as we explore the connection between extreme weather and climate change."

AIRS was the brainchild of the late Moustafa Chahine, the AIRS science team leader at JPL who also served as JPL's chief scientist for many years. In the 1970s, Chahine had the idea of improving weather forecasting by using thousands of infrared channels to better discern temperature and water vapor variations in Earth's atmosphere, a technique known as hyperspectral sounding.

As the first of a series of hyperspectral sounders for weather forecasting, AIRS has been a trailblazer for understanding and assimilating hyperspectral data. The current generation of European meteorological satellites now host an AIRS-like sounder, the Infrared Atmospheric Sounding Interferometer; while a similar instrument, the Cross-track Infrared Sounder, now flies aboard NASA's new Suomi NPP satellite, the forerunner of the next-generation of U.S. weather satellites.

One of the most significant scientific results from AIRS has been quantification of what's called the water vapor feedback effect. "As Earth's surface warms and the atmosphere with it, the atmosphere can hold a little more water vapor," said AIRS Project Scientist Eric Fetzer. "Water vapor is itself a greenhouse gas-it traps heat the same way carbon dioxide does. So if there's a slight warming, there will be a slight increase in water vapor, and that water vapor itself will cause a continuing increase." This vicious circle of warming is known as a positive feedback, an idea well-rooted in physical theory dating back to the 19th century.

A team led by Andrew Dessler of Texas A&M University, College Station, tested the theory using AIRS' humidity data. AIRS could quantify the amount of water vapor at different levels of the atmosphere globally, permitting them to derive the average strength of the water vapor feedback across the globe. He found the water vapor feedback is extraordinarily strong, capable of doubling the warming due to carbon dioxide alone.

Another important AIRS result is development of data products that quantify the global amount of several key atmospheric trace gases, including carbon dioxide, carbon monoxide and methane. AIRS produced the first global map from space of carbon dioxide in Earth's mid-troposphere, revealing greater-than-expected variations, the transport of carbon dioxide across the equator and a "belt" of higher-than-average concentrations in the mid-latitudes of the Southern Hemisphere.

The AIRS team plans even more new products, some of which will help them better understand the physical properties of clouds. Knowing these properties is critical for understanding clouds, considered one of the largest remaining uncertainties in climate science.

In the meantime, AIRS continues to operate well and is expected to last until Aqua runs out of fuel in 2022. More than 10,000 users worldwide currently use AIRS data for weather prediction and for conducting research into climate processes, atmospheric composition and environmental conditions that affect human health.

For more information on AIRS, visit:
http://airs.jpl.nasa.gov/news_archive/2012-05-04-AIRS-Science-at-10-Years/ and http://airs.jpl.nasa.gov/ . For more on Aqua, see: http://aqua.nasa.gov/ .

http://www.jpl.nasa.gov/news/news.cfm?release=2012-125

[lll]

-А что за лампа на переднем плане по горизонтале- 6П3С или мощнее, кто подскажет?

Что шестьпэтройка - ладно, а вот на фига они контур на алюминиевой болванке намотали?

Если серьёзно, то тут "6П3С" - это фотоумножитель и УФ лампа в одном флаконе (баллоне)
Если интересно, как сия машина (в смысле - часы как устройство) работает, вот ссылка
http://ieeexplore.ieee.org/stamp/stamp.jsp?arnumber=04383369
А то на этом сайте НАСА без поллитры [/size]не понять

[raputor]

на фига они контур на алюминиевой болванке намотали?

Это залитые эпоксидкой контакты. Просто, по всему периметру эпоксидное кольцо, поэтому похоже на намотку.

[lll]

Это залитые эпоксидкой контакты. Просто, по всему периметру эпоксидное кольцо, поэтому похоже на намотку.

Спасибо, конечно, но это шутка была

[raputor]

Спасибо, конечно, но это шутка была

Ну, надеюсь, по поводу 6П3С Вы не шутили? Их же сейчас пачками выпускают - девать некуда. Вот, и в приборы впихивают, в буржуйские, от безысходности...

Вот, и про намотку шутка...

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TDRS-4 Mission Complete; Spacecraft Retired From Active Service

The Tracking and Data Relay Satellite 4 (TDRS-4) recently completed almost 23 years of operations support and successfully completed end-of-mission de-orbit and decommissioning activities. TDRS-4's operational life span was well beyond its original 10-year design.



Launched on March 13, 1989, from onboard Space Shuttle Discovery, TDRS-4 operated in geosynchronous (GEO) altitude at more than 22,000 miles above the Atlantic Ocean region. As part of the spacecraft's end-of-mission activities, its orbit was raised above the congested geosynchronous orbit.

TDRS-4 was forced to retire after the loss of one of three Nickel-Cadmium (24 cell) batteries and the reduction in storage capacity for the two remaining batteries that power the satellite. Retirement for the satellite consisted of excess fuel depletion, disconnecting batteries, and powering down the Radio Frequency Transmitters and receivers so that the satellite is completely and permanently passive. This ensures the satellite will never interfere with other satellites from the radio frequency perspective.

This is the second retirement from within the fleet of TDRS. The fleet of seven remaining satellites operates through a supporting ground system and together they make up the Space Network (SN). The SN provides highly automated, user-driven services supporting customer spacecraft with tracking and data acquisition. The network supports a varied number of missions, including the International Space Station, Hubble Space Telescope, launch vehicles, and a variety of other science missions. The SN also provided primary communication support to the Space Shuttle Project.

"The Space Network spacecraft engineering and operations teams worked together very effectively to execute a practically flawless decommissioning of an incredible satellite," says Mike Rackley, SN deputy project manager at NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center, Greenbelt, Md. "TDRS-4 made great and important contributions to NASA's human spaceflight and science missions. We will certainly miss her."

This is the second end-of-mission execution for the fleet of aging first generation TDRS spacecraft. TDRS-4's retirement was preceded by TDRS-1, which was decommissioned and raised to its permanent orbit in June 2010.



A total of six first generation spacecraft were successfully placed into orbit from April 1983 through July 1995, of which four are still active. The spacecraft are approaching the end of their operational life span but they are supplemented by three, second-generation spacecraft.

Together they provide customers with global space to ground communication services.

To continue this critical lifeline, NASA has contracted Boeing to build three additional follow-on TDRS spacecraft, replenishing TDRS-1 and TDRS-4, and expanding NASA's communication services. TDRS-K is scheduled for launch in December of this year followed by TDRS-L in 2013 and TDRS-M in 2015.

The SN is managed by GSFC and its primary ground communications facility is located at the White Sands Complex in Las Cruses, NM. The Human Exploration and Operations Mission Directorate and the Space Communications and Navigation Program at NASA Headquarters fund NASA's Space Network.

http://www.nasa.gov/topics/technology/features/tdrs4-retired.html

[6717898]

Спасибо, конечно, но это шутка была

Ну, надеюсь, по поводу 6П3С Вы не шутили? Их же сейчас пачками выпускают - девать некуда. Вот, и в приборы впихивают, в буржуйские, от безысходности...

Вот, и про намотку шутка...

--Да, понятно. На лампу с первого взгляда похож, ностальгия, шарманки вспомнились на 6п3с, и т.п.

[6717898]

"lll"

-
Если интересно, как сия машина (в смысле - часы как устройство) работает, вот ссылка
http://ieeexplore.ieee.org/stamp/stamp.jsp?arnumber=04383369
А то на этом сайте НАСА без поллитры [/size]не понять

Не работает ссылка, исправьте, пожалуйста.

[lll]

у меня работает - перепроверил.
http://ieeexplore.ieee.org/xpl/articleDetails.jsp?
Если надо, могу е-мэйлом
вот ещё, но тут не так понятно
http://trs-new.jpl.nasa.gov/dspace/bitstream/2014/41395/1/08-0610.pdf
http://www.npl.co.uk/upload/pdf/atomic_clocks_space.pdf

[6717898]

ни фига себе -- не так понятно-- с формулами и тд.
А ссылка не работает, пишет- стр. не найдена .

Да ладно, не надо копаться, мне и этого хватит . спасибо.

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NASA's New Carbon-Counting Instrument Leaves the Nest

Technicians prep the OCO-2 instrument for shipping at JPL. The instrument consists of three parallel, high-resolution spectrometers, integrated into a common structure and fed by a common telescope. Image credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech

PASADENA, Calif. - Its construction now complete, the science instrument that is the heart of NASA's Orbiting Carbon Observatory-2 (OCO-2) spacecraft - NASA's first mission dedicated to studying atmospheric carbon dioxide - has left its nest at NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, Calif., and has arrived at its integration and test site in Gilbert, Ariz.

A truck carrying the OCO-2 instrument left JPL before dawn on Tuesday, May 9, to begin the trek to Orbital Science Corporation's Satellite Manufacturing Facility in Gilbert, southeast of Phoenix, where it arrived that afternoon. The instrument will be unpacked, inspected and tested. Later this month, it will be integrated with the Orbital-built OCO-2 spacecraft bus, which arrived in Gilbert on April 30.

Once technicians ensure the spacecraft is clean of any contaminants, the observatory's integration and test campaign will kick off. That campaign will be conducted in two parts, with the first part scheduled for completion in October. The observatory will then be stored in Gilbert for about nine months while the launch vehicle is prepared. The integration and test campaign will then resume, with completion scheduled for spring 2014. OCO-2 will then be shipped to Vandenberg Air Force Base, Calif., in preparation for a launch as early as the summer of 2014.

"The OCO-2 instrument looks great, and its delivery to Orbital's Gilbert, Ariz., facility is a big step forward in successfully launching and operating the mission in space," said Ralph Basilio, OCO-2 project manager at JPL.

OCO-2 is the latest mission in NASA's study of the global carbon cycle. Carbon dioxide is the most significant human-produced greenhouse gas and the principal human-produced driver of climate change. The original OCO mission was lost shortly after launch on Feb. 24, 2009, when the Taurus XL launch vehicle carrying it malfunctioned and failed to reach orbit.

The experimental OCO-2 mission, which is part of NASA's Earth System Science Pathfinder Program, will uniformly sample the atmosphere above Earth's land and ocean, collecting more than half a million measurements of carbon dioxide concentration over Earth's sunlit hemisphere every day for at least two years. It will do so with the accuracy, resolution and coverage needed to provide the first complete picture of the regional-scale geographic distribution and seasonal variations of both human and natural sources of carbon dioxide emissions and their sinks-the places where carbon dioxide is removed from the atmosphere and stored.

Scientists will use OCO-2 mission data to improve global carbon cycle models, better characterize the processes responsible for adding and removing carbon dioxide from the atmosphere, and make more accurate predictions of global climate change.

The mission provides a key new measurement that can be combined with other ground and aircraft measurements and satellite data to answer important questions about the processes that regulate atmospheric carbon dioxide and its role in the carbon cycle and climate. This information could help policymakers and business leaders make better decisions to ensure climate stability and retain our quality of life. The mission will also serve as a pathfinder for future long-term satellite missions to monitor carbon dioxide.

Each of the OCO-2 instrument's three high-resolution spectrometers spreads reflected sunlight into its various colors like a prism, focusing on a different, narrow color range to detect light with the specific colors absorbed by carbon dioxide and molecular oxygen. The amount of light absorbed at these specific colors is proportional to the concentration of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere. Scientists will use these data in computer models to quantify global carbon dioxide sources and sinks.

OCO-2 is managed by JPL for NASA's Science Mission Directorate, Washington. Orbital Sciences Corporation, Dulles, Va., built the spacecraft and provides mission operations under JPL's leadership. The California Institute of Technology in Pasadena manages JPL for NASA.

For more information on OCO-2, visit: http://oco.jpl.nasa.gov/ and http://www.nasa.gov/oco .

http://www.jpl.nasa.gov/news/news.cfm?release=2012-134

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OHB Awarded Carbonsat Study Contract

PARIS — Germany's OHB System will design a satellite to monitor global carbon dioxide and methane concentrations, the two most significant contributors to global warming, under a 20-month study with the European Space Agency (ESA) announced May 24.

Under the study, valued at 2.5 million euros ($3.3 million), Bremen-based OHB and its partners, Thales Alenia Space of France, GMV of Spain and CGS of Italy — an OHB System sister company — will propose a satellite and mission architecture for ESA to review in 2013.

Competing with OHB on Carbonsat is a consortium led by Astrium Satellites, whose separate 22-month contract with ESA was announced in April.

Carbonsat is one of two missions bidding for funding as ESA's eighth Earth Explorer mission. Both have relevance to the assessment of the causes and effects of global warming.

The other mission ESA is studying is the Florescence Explorer satellite. Its purpose is to assess vegetation florescence and photosynthetic activity with a view to evaluating the amount of carbon stored in plants.

http://www.spacenews.com/contracts/120524-ohb-carbonsat-contract.html

[mefisto_x]

Терраформирование Марса
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Terraforming_of_Mars

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Science Nugget: Catching Solar Particles Infiltrating Earth's Atmosphere

05.31.12
 

Science nuggets are a collection of early science results, new research techniques, and instrument updates that further our attempt to understand the sun and the dynamic space weather system that surrounds Earth.

On May 17, 2012 an M-class flare exploded from the sun. The eruption also shot out a burst of solar particles traveling at nearly the speed of light that reached Earth about 20 minutes after the light from the flare. An M-class flare is considered a "moderate" flare, at least ten times less powerful than the largest X-class flares, but the particles sent out on May 17 were so fast and energetic that when they collided with atoms in Earth's atmosphere, they caused a shower of particles to cascade down toward Earth's surface. The shower created what's called a ground level enhancement (GLE).

GLEs are quite rare – fewer than 100 events have been observed in the last 70 years, since instruments were first able to detect them. Moreover, this was the first GLE of the current solar cycle--a sure sign that the sun's regular 11-year cycle is ramping up toward solar maximum.

This GLE has scientists excited for another reason, too. The joint Russian/Italian mission PAMELA, short for Payload for Antimatter Matter Exploration and Light-nuclei Astrophysics, simultaneously measured the particles from the sun that caused the GLE. Solar particles have been measured before, but PAMELA is sensitive to the very high-energy particles that reach ground level at Earth. The data may help scientists understand the details of what causes this space weather phenomenon, and help them tease out why a relatively small flare was capable of producing the high-speed particles needed to cause a GLE.

"Usually we would expect this kind of ground level enhancement from a giant coronal mass ejection or a big X-class flare," says Georgia de Nolfo, a space scientist who studies high speed solar particles at NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Md. "So not only are we really excited that we were able to observe these particularly high energy particles from space, but we also have a scientific puzzle to solve."

The path to this observation began on Saturday, May 5, when a large sunspot rotated into view on the left side of the sun. The sunspot was as big as about 15 Earths, a fairly sizable active region, though by no means as big as some of the largest sunspots that have been observed on the sun. Dubbed Active Region 1476, the sunspots had already shown activity on the back side of the sun—as seen by a NASA mission called the Solar Terrestrial Relations Observatory (STEREO) -- so scientists were on alert for more. Scientists who study high-energy particles from the sun had been keeping their eye out for just such an active region because they had seen no GLEs since December of 2006.

In addition, they had high hopes that the PAMELA mission, which had focused on cosmic rays from outside our galaxy could now be used to observe solar particles. Such "solar cosmic rays" are the most energetic particles that can be accelerated at or near the sun.

But there was a hitch: the satellite carrying the PAMELA instruments were not currently usable since they were in calibration mode. Scientists including de Nolfo and another Goddard researcher, Eric Christian, let the PAMELA collaboration know that this might be the chance they had been waiting for and they convinced the Russian team in charge of the mission to turn the instruments back on to science mode.

"And then the active region pretty much did nothing for two weeks," says Christian. "But just before it disappeared over the right side of the sun, it finally erupted with an M-class flare."

Bingo. Neutron monitors all over the world detected the shower of neutrons that represent a GLE. Most of the time the showers are not the solar energetic particles themselves, but the resultant debris of super-fast particles slamming into atoms in Earth's atmosphere. The elevated levels of neutrons lasted for an hour.



An artist's concept of the shower of particles produced when Earth's atmosphere is struck by ultra-high-energy cosmic rays. Credit: Simon Swordy/University of Chicago, NASA

Simultaneously, PAMELA recorded the incoming solar particles up in space, providing one of the first in-situ measurements of the stream of particles that initiated a GLE. Only the early data has been seen so far, but scientists have high hopes that as more observations are relayed down to Earth, they will be able to learn more about the May 17 onslaught of solar protons, and figure out why this event triggered a GLE when earlier bursts of solar protons in January and March, 2012 didn't.

PAMELA is a space-borne experiment of the WiZard collaboration, which is an international collaboration between Italian (I.N.F.N. – Istituto Nazionale di Fisica Nucleare), Russian, German and Swedish institutes, realized with the main support of the Italian (ASI) and Russian (Roscosmos) Space Agencies.

http://www.nasa.gov/mission_pages/sunearth/news/particles-gle.html

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Emerging Optics Technology to Fly on Microsatellite
http://www.nasa.gov/topics/technology/features/kitchen-optics.html

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NASA To Cancel GEMS X-Ray Telescope

WASHINGTON -- NASA is pulling the plug on the Gravity and Extreme Magnetism Small Explorer (GEMS) X-ray telescope, an astrophysics mission that was to have launched in 2014 to observe the space adjacent to neutron stars and black holes.

GEMS, a project managed by NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Md., failed to advance past a May 10 confirmation review, said Paul Hertz, director of NASA's Astrophysic Division.

"The decision was made to non-confirm GEMS," Hertz said June 4 at a meeting of the National Research Council's Committee on Astronomy and Astrophysics here. "The rationale was that the pre-confirmation cost and schedule growth was too large."

GEMS principal investigator Jean Swank, a Goddard-based astrophysicist, told Space News that her project team was headed to NASA headquarters June 5 to appeal the cancellation.

In its 2013 budget request, White House envisioned spending about $171 on GEMS through 2014, the year it was to have launched. When NASA picked GEMS as one of two Small Explorer missions in mid-2009, the agency set a price ceiling of $105 million, plus launch costs, and a late 2012 launch date.

The GEMS instrument was to be built at Goddard, with Dulles, Va.-based Orbital Sciences Corp. responsible for the spacecraft and mission operations. ATK Space of Goleta, Calif., was tapped to build a boom to place the X-ray telescope the proper distance from the detectors.

http://www.spacenews.com/civil/nasa-cancel-gems-x-ray-telescope.html

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Envisat Failure Changes ESA Calculus on Sentinel Launches

COPENHAGEN, Denmark — The European Space Agency (ESA) on June 13 will ask its member nations to reverse their earlier position and agree to launch a series of environment-monitoring satellites starting in late 2013 despite the absence of funds to operate them, ESA and European government officials said.

Buckling under pressure from Earth observation data users since the unexpected failure of the Envisat satellite in April, ESA will ask its ruling council to approve contracts to launch the Sentinel environmental satellites during a June 13-14 meeting at ESA headquarters in Paris.

"We have already seen how the loss of Envisat has affected users, for example in the aftermath of an earthquake in Italy," ESA Earth Observation Director Volker Liebig said June 5. "The users are sending us a clear message and we will ask our council to approve entering into a contract with Arianespace" for the launch, in late 2013, of the Sentinel 1 satellite. "We don't think we really have any choice. We cannot break faith with the users."

The decision, if accepted by ESA governments, would represent an about-face for the agency, which has repeatedly warned the commission of the 27-nation European Union that the commission, not ESA, is responsible for the satellites' operating budgets starting in 2014.

ESA's ruling council went so far as to warn the commission, in writing, that it would order ESA not to launch the satellites if the commission did not signal its commitment to operate Global Monitoring for Environment and Security (GMES) beyond mid-2014.

The council's letter, sent in October to European Commission President Jose Manuel Barroso, did not lack for clarity. It said ESA must reserve the Sentinel launches starting in mid-2012.

"In the absence, at that time, of EU commitments for the reliability of operational funding beyond 2014, we will instruct ESA not to launch the satellites," the council's letter to Barroso said.

The operating budget for the GMES program, an elaborate system of Earth observation satellites and ground facilities, has long been the commission's responsibility.

ESA and the commission together have already spent more than 3 billion euros ($4 billion) on GMES in preparation for the commission's expected takeover as part of the European Union's 2014-2020 budget.

The two agencies had agreed that, after ESA financed early GMES development, including part of the development of three Sentinel satellites and three duplicates, the commission would secure 5.8 billion euros for GMES in its multiyear financial framework budget.

But the commission, buffeted by multiple budget pressures that have nothing to do with GMES, has been unable to reinsert GMES into the seven-year budget package a year after it removed it.

Despite the protests of several large European Union member nations and of the European parliament, the commission's preferred GMES funding mechanism is an intergovernmental agreement financed outside the seven-year package.

ESA officials have said they have no objection in principle, but that it will take months, and possibly years, to create the intergovernmental agreement structure and secure the funds for it.

Meanwhile, GMES operations are funded only to mid-2014.

ESA Director-General Jean-Jacques Dordain wrote Barroso in May asking that the commission find an interim budget for GMES to support early operations while a longer-term solution was sought. Such a gesture would give Dordain the cover he needed to ask ESA governments to agree to contract the launches.

One ESA official said that Barroso has not answered Dordain's letter.

Mauro Facchini, head of the commission's GMES Bureau, on June 4 said the commission would be hard-pressed to find funds available in the seven-year budget that ends in 2013.

"In principle all of the money is committed, so the margins are small," Facchini said here during the "GMES in Action" conference organized by ESA and the commission. "I don't see how this would be possible."

Liebig said much of the work in preparing ground reception stations for the Sentinel satellites — after Sentinel-1, Sentinel-2 and Sentinel-3, carrying different observing instruments, are scheduled for launch in 2014 — has been suspended as ESA figures out whether to proceed with the launches.

Liebig said the operating costs for the first year of Sentinel-1 are expected to be about 75 million euros including the ground infrastructure. For the first three Sentinels taken together, first-year operations are expected to total 175 million euros, he said.

ESA has struck temporary agreements with the Canadian Space Agency for the use of Canada's Radarsat-2 for an interim period to help fill the gap left by Envisat.

Government and industry officials said one reason GMES has been unable to secure a place in the commission's multiyear financial package is that some nations, notably Poland and Portugal, fear that GMES's high cost will reduce funding available for projects dear to them. Among these is the so-called Cohesion Fund.

Commission officials say they are unlikely to have a firm seven-year budget until sometime in early 2013, if not later.

"The loss of Envisat has put tremendous pressure on us from users to launch the Sentinels as soon as possible," said Josef Aschbacher, head of ESA's GMES Space Office. "We will be talking to our member states and at ESA we would favor an early launch, hoping that the [operations] funding will be found along the way.

http://www.spacenews.com/policy/120606-envisat-failure-sentinel-launches.html