The Jules Verne ATV, which was launched earlier this year by ESA to aid in deliveries to the ISS, will burn up today in a controlled fireball re-entry.

President Nicolas Sarkozy’s well-known admiration for all things American now extends to space exploration. Speaking to the BBC, a senior official involved in French space policy said that it was time to shake up the European Space Agency and make it more like NASA by giving it a new, politically-led direction. The French take over the rotating presidency of the European Union on 1 July and are planning to make space policy a key area for reform.

Sarkozy is looking for UK support to bolster his ideas. He wants to lead Europe into space in a way that doesn’t leave it trailing the likes of Indian, China and Japan.

Personally, i think he could do it. This guy is crazy enough and arrogant enough to get it done.

BBC NEWS | Science/Nature | France plans revolution in space

What is this jibberish I’m spouting now? Well LFI and HFI are two instruments flying on ESA’s new Planck spacecraft, which will be launching in a few months time. Planck will measure, and map in exquisite detail, radiation from the Cosmic Microwave Background (CMB). The spacecraft is a sort of cylinder about 4 metres high with a diameter also of 4 metres. you can see what I mean in the image on the embedded poster from ESA.

You learn more about Planck and the LFI and HFI instruments via this link and you can also follow the craft’s Twitter feed. I like this whole Twittering spacecraft thing - its so accessible and easy for anyone. Brilliant.

Oh and did I mention that Cardiff University is heavily involved in Planck, particularly with the HFI instrument which was built here.

Continuing my series of posts regarding Google Sky and Google Earth, here is a KMZ file that will let you find some of the prominent and interesting space telescopes and satellites on Google Earth. This file includes real-time position tracking and 1 hour flight paths for:

• Swift Gamma Ray Mission (NASA)
• RoSat (NASA, UK, Germany)
• CoRoT (CNES, ESA)
• GalEx (NASA)
• COBE (NASA)
• IRAS (NASA, UK, Netherlands)
• Envisat (ESA)
• Hubble Space Telescope (NASA, ESA)
• International Space Station (Many)

This KMZ file splits down into several separate files so you can chose to select or deselect any and all of the above objects. Clicking on the satellite or telescope’s icon brings up information about that object with links to more information. Screenshots below for those who like that sort of thing.

To see more Google Earth satellite files check out the general Satellites on Google Earth post and the Chinese Space Debris post. As always, suggestions are welcomed in the comments section. For example, I had created a time-slider dependent satellite tracker but it just ended up being really annoying. Would that be something people would want? Also, as mentioned in a previous comment, I am in the process of creating a tracker that uses a Sketchup model instead of an icon. All thoughts welcome, have fun playing with these.

ESA have released information on the incredible content of the skies above our heads. In their press release they outline what exactly is littering orbital space around the Earth.

The image here shows the view from above the North Pole of all low Earth orbit objects as of January 2008. To observe the Earth, satellites must be in low orbits. At higher latitudes, the density of such objects increases.

Between the launch of Sputnik on 4 October 1957 and 1 January 2008, approximately 4600 launches have placed some 6000 satellites into orbit, of which only 400 lie beyond near orbits or on interplanetary trajectories. Today, it is estimated that only 800 satellites are operational. About 50 percent of all trackable space debris are due to in-orbit explosion or collision events.

We are adding around 200 objects a year into this picture!

The image below, also from the ESA press release, shows all objects, including the geostationary ring of satellites that lie further away from the Earth’s surface.

My two previous posts have covered what ESA is currently working on and and what ESA may be doing in the decade 2015-2025. So what happens next? Well it may seem crazy to speculate on what we will be sending into space almost twenty years from now, but these things taken some planning. It’s also fun.

ESA currently defines its goals beyond 2025 in four general areas:

Firstly they would like to build a far-infrared interferometer. This is something that they cannot currently do technologically and so are hoping that advances in the next deacde or so may allow them to do it beyond then. This will enable them to study both the distant universe and nearby star-forming regions in amazing detail.

The second point of future study is the B-mode polarization of the CMB. This is a big question, but again ESA are hoping that technology will catch up with their blue skies (or is it black skies?) thinking

Ultra-high energy cosmic rays are the third target. Knowing where the most energetic particles in the universe originate and how they interact with the rest of the universe is vital to fully understanding many of the most fascinating areas of astronomy.

Finally, and most excitingly, ESA wants to build Darwin, the terrestrial planet finder. Darwin has been speculated about for some time. Darwin will use three space telescopes, each at least 3 metres in diameter, and a fourth to serve as a communications hub. The telescopes will operate together to scan the nearby Universe, looking for signs of life on Earth-like planets.

If it works, ESA plan to take spectra which will identify the composition of the atmosphere of exoplanets. They also think they will be able to determine if a planet has oceans and continents from the data that Darwin will produce.

The best-case scenario is that technology will have advanced enough for Darwin to actually make images of the surfaces of other Earth-like planets in the galaxy. Many people now see this, as the goal of space exploration over the next century.

In a previous post I gave a quick run down of where ESA currently stands with regard to missions into space. Now for the lowdown on where they intend to be after 2015. Cosmic Vision is ESA’s plan for the decade 2015-2025.

The aims of Cosmic Vision are divided into four sections:

• What are the conditions for life and for planet formation?
• How does to Solar System work?
• What are the fundamental laws of the Universe?
• How did the Universe originate and what is it made of?

In order to try to answer these questions, ESA takes submissions for proposed missions and then gives these to a series of committees and panels, who then advise and give their thoughts. Space missions are extremely costly and take a very long time to fully execute. Hubble has been running for 17 years now, but was conceived of even before I was born, making it older than me in a strange sort of way.

They began calls for Cosmic Vision in 2004 and received 50 proposals for missions. They have decided that there will be one large and one medium sized mission launched in 2018 and 2017 respectively.

Considerations are now underway as to which of several viable options should been followed through. The medium sized mission has been alloted around €300 million and the large has €650 million (you’ll note later that many proposed missions cost more but collaborations can solve that). Assessment will continue now until 2009, when after a few of the options are discarded, further assessment goes until 2011. Given the time spent assessing these things, you’d think ESA could just save enough money for a whole new mission if they cut out the decision makers!

So on to the good stuff: what missions will they chose? The possibilities are listed below, and there are some really cool options. Though, oddly, I prefer the medium-sized options in general. I have included links where available. If you know where I can find any missing ones, please let me know and I’ll add them in.

Medium-Sized Possible Future Missions:

Plato - A planetary transits and astroseismology mission. Would produce high-accuracy photometry of a large sample of bright stars. It would be able to determine the ages of planetary systems and create a evolutionary sequence of how planets form. [Link]

SPACE/DUNE - This would be an either/or situation between two missions that would try to find evidence of dark energy. DUNE would use a wide-field infrared camera to detect gravitational lensing of galaxies caused by intervening dark material. Thus it would be able to verify the existence of such material and tell us where it is. SPACE would perform near-infrared spectroscopy of 500 million galaxies to try and measure the baryonic acoustic imprint of dark energy in the universe. (Way over my head). [DUNE PDF Link] [SPACE Link]

Marco Polo - This mission would travel to a near Earth object (NEO) and return a sample of material to the Earth itself. A bit like the recent missions to an asteroid and a comet that have tried to do the same.

Cross-Scale - Magnetoshperic physics mission involving multiple craft to study plasma in the Earth-Sun system. The idea is to launch a feasibility study first to see whether such a program of exploration would be beneficial.

Large-Sized Possible Future Missions:

Xeus - A large-collecting-area x-ray observatory. Not a singular mission, but an observatory in space like Hubble or JWST. This is essentially a follow up to ESA’s very successful XMM-Newton mission. Could probe large-scale structure in the universe and the growth of supermassive black holes and galaxies. (Approximate cost €1.2 billion) [Link]

LaPlace - Missions to the Outer planets. LaPlace would visit the Jupiter system and would consist of more than one orbiting probe. It would investigate the magnetosphere of Jupiter as well as how the system may have formed. In a best-case scenario there would also be a Europa lander to assess the feasibility of life of the moon. (Joint mission with NASA/JAXA)

TANDEM - The Titan AND Enceladus Mission would head to Saturn to explore the origins and nature of these two moons. (Joint mission with NASA/JAXA) [Link]

LISA - The much hyped gravitational waves mission. always cited as being a few year around the corner, this larg-scale mission didn’t even need to apply with a new proposal. LISA is a giant interferometer in space, composed of three craft, which should hopefully be able to detect the stretching and squeezing of the fabric of spacetime caused by the motions of extremely massive objects. (Approximate cost €1 billion) [Link]

In the final post in this series, I will be talking about ESA’s plans beyond 2025 and the technology they hope to be able to exploit.

We had a talk yesterday from Dr. Fabio Favata titled “Space Astronomy in ESA’s Cosmic Vision 2015-2025 plan”. Cosmic Vision is the European Space Agency’s peculiar name for its plan over the next decade and a bit. The talk was very good, and covered almost the whole breadth of ESA’s big activities that are either currently running or up-and-coming.

So where is ESA right now? Currently ESA is supporting or in some way dealing with about a dozen missions in operation. Between now and 2015, ESA has 8 more spacecraft due to launch. In this post I will briefly overview those upcoming launches. In my next post, I shall discuss the future beyond 2015.

This year will see three payloads put into orbit: Chandryaan, Herschel and Planck. Chandrayaan is an unmanned lunar mission in association with the Indian Space Agency. Herschel and Planck are ESA endeavours and Herschel particularly is seen as a flagship mission. Herschel will be a big step forward technologically and will usher in a lot of Far Infrared data for people like me in the area of star formation, and indeed for anyone else who likes to look at fairly cold, dusty things.

2010 will see something called Microscope go up. This is an experiment to test Einstein’s equivalence principle, which is a key postulate in the characterization of space-time and the theory of gravitation. 2010 also sees the LISA Pathfinder mission launch, which will test the viability of LISA, a much talked about gravity wave experiment which always seems to be 5 years away.

In 2011, GAIA, another flagship mission will be sent up to measure the precise distances and velocities of a billion stars. It will track the motions of stars down to 10-20 microarcseconds and a magnitude down to 15. This mission will revolutionise the way we model our galaxy, as we will begin to see how the stars that make it up are moving about.

In 2013, the James Webb Space Telescope will launch, which is seen by many as the successor to Hubble although it will really be looking at non-visible wavelengths. Also in 2013 is the wonderfully named BepiColombo, a Mercury mission which will also test the theory of relativity.

Finally in 2015, ESA will launch the Solar Orbiter which will produce images of the Sun at an unprecedented resolution and perform closest ever in-situ measurements.

You can find out more about any of these mission at ESA’s website.