Space probes

Artistic concept of the possibile interior of Enceladus with its ocean and geysers (Image NASA/JPL-Caltech)

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A new analysis of the navigational data from NASA’s Cassini space probe allowed to obtain new information about the ocean of liquid water beneath the surface of Enceladus, one of Saturn’s moons. This research, coordinated by Luciano Iess of the department of mechanical and aerospace engineering at Rome’s University La Sapienza, was carried out by a team of Italian and American researchers exploiting the influences of the very small gravitational changes on Cassini’s movements.

The Sentinel-1A satellite on the Soyuz rocket right after liftoff (Photo ESA–S. Corvaja)

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A few hours ago, the Sentinel-1A satellite, the first of the GMES / Copernicus program, blasted of from the Kourou spaceport, French Guiana, on a carrier rocket Soyuz-STA/Fregat. Soon after, the satellite regularly separated from the upper stage of the rocket and started sending signals. A few hours later it started deploying its solar panels.

Mosaic of the Lunar North Pole with details of a crater (Image NASA/Goddard/Arizona State University)

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Using the cameras of the Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter (LRO) space probe, NASA scientists have created a very high resolution map, two-meters (six-and-a-half feet) per pixel, of the region around the Moon’s North Pole. This isn’t a simple but very detailed image, it’s an interactive map like Google Earth.

The GPM Core Observatory satellite at lift off on a H-IIA 202 rocket (Photo NASA/Bill Ingalls)

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It was night in Japan when the Core Observatory satellite, part of the Global Precipitation Measurement Mission (GPM), was launched on a H-IIA 202 rocket from Tanegashima Space Center, run by JAXA, the Japanese space agency, on the island of Tanegashima. After about 16 minutes, the satellite separated from the second stage of the rocket and successfully entered low Earth orbit. In the following minutes, it deployed its solar panels and started sending signals, confirming that it works.