4-Dec-2017: Sentinel- 5P satellite tracks air pollution around the world.
Sentinel- 5P, a European satellite tracking the levels air pollutants around the world has beamed back new views of the Earth’s atmosphere, including images of pollution drifting away from power plants in India. The worst of this pollution runs from north of Patna in Bihar to south of Raipur in Chhattisgarh. The Sentinel-5P satellite is designed to make daily global maps of the gases and particles that pollute the air.
Sentinel-5P is the latest spacecraft in a fleet of Earth observers being commissioned by the European Union and the European Space Agency. It was launched into an 824 kilometre high orbit by a Russian rocket on October 13 this year. When fully operational, the new Sentinel will be an extremely powerful tool to monitor air quality.
It carries an instrument called Tropomi – a spectrometer that observes the reflected sunlight coming up off the Earth, analysing its many different colours. This helps detect the presence of trace gases such as nitrogen dioxide, ozone, sulphur dioxide, methane, and carbon monoxide in the atmosphere.
18-Nov-2017: NASA launches Joint Polar Satellite System-1.
The Joint Polar Satellite System-1, an advanced U.S. weather satellite designed to improve the accuracy of extended forecasts has been launched into polar orbit from California.
This satellite is the first of four next-generation spacecraft for NASA and the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration. Circling the Earth from pole to pole 14 times a day, JPSS-1 carries a suite of five instruments intended to make global observations that will improve forecasts of severe weather events three to seven days beforehand. The satellite also will contribute to near-term weather forecasts, climate and ocean dynamics research, among many other uses.
The satellite will improve weather forecasting, such as predicting a hurricane’s track, and will help agencies involved with post-storm recovery by visualizing storm damage and the geographic extent of power outages. JPSS-1 data will also improve recognition of climate patterns that influence the weather, such as El Nino and La Nina.
19-Oct-2017: NASA extends Dawn Mission at Ceres.
NASA has authorized a second extension of the Dawn mission at Ceres, the largest object in the asteroid belt between Mars and Jupiter. During this extension, the spacecraft will descend to lower altitudes than ever before at the dwarf planet, which it has been orbiting since March 2015. The spacecraft will continue at Ceres for the remainder of its science investigation and will remain in a stable orbit indefinitely after its hydrazine fuel runs out.
The Dawn flight team is studying ways to maneuver Dawn into a new elliptical orbit, which may take the spacecraft to less than 120 miles (200 kilometers) from the surface of Ceres at closest approach. Previously, Dawn's lowest altitude was 240 miles (385 kilometers).
A priority of the second Ceres mission extension is collecting data with Dawn's gamma ray and neutron spectrometer, which measures the number and energy of gamma rays and neutrons. This information is important for understanding the composition of Ceres' uppermost layer and how much ice it contains.
The spacecraft also will take visible-light images of Ceres' surface geology with its camera, as well as measurements of Ceres' mineralogy with its visible and infrared mapping spectrometer.
The extended mission at Ceres additionally allows Dawn to be in orbit while the dwarf planet goes through perihelion, its closest approach to the Sun, which will occur in April 2018. At closer proximity to the Sun, more ice on Ceres' surface may turn to water vapor, which may in turn contribute to the weak transient atmosphere detected by the European Space Agency's Herschel Space Observatory before Dawn's arrival. Building on Dawn's findings, the team has hypothesized that water vapor may be produced in part from energetic particles from the Sun interacting with ice in Ceres' shallow surface. Scientists will combine data from ground-based observatories with Dawn's observations to further study these phenomena as Ceres approaches perihelion.
The Dawn team is currently refining its plans for this next and final chapter of the mission. Because of its commitment to protect Ceres from Earthly contamination, Dawn will not land or crash into Ceres. Instead, it will carry out as much science as it can in its final planned orbit, where it will stay even after it can no longer communicate with Earth. Mission planners estimate the spacecraft can continue operating until the second half of 2018.
Dawn is the only mission ever to orbit two extraterrestrial targets. It orbited giant asteroid Vesta for 14 months from 2011 to 2012, then continued on to Ceres, where it has been in orbit since March 2015.