Muscular' UK Space Agency launched

The UKSA will speak for Britain on space matters

The new UK Space Agency (UKSA) will take over responsibility for government policy and the key budgets for space, according to ministers.

The agency, which comes into being on 1 April, will also represent Britain on space matters in all negotiations with international partners.
The UKSA's name, logo and remit were announced at a conference in London.
Its establishment should bring more coherence to space policy - something critics say has been missing for years.
In particular, it is hoped an executive agency that can champion British interests abroad will help an already successful space industry to grow still further.
"The action we're taking today shows that we're really serious about space," said Lord Drayson, the minister for science and innovation.
"The UK Space Agency will give the sector the muscle it needs to fulfil its ambition. Britain's space industry has defied the recession. It can grow to £40bn a year and create 100,000 jobs in 20 years. The government's commitments on space will help the sector go from strength to strength."

British space policy and budgets have until now been devolved to a partnership of government departments and science funding councils. The UKSA will, step by step, assume control of these partners' monies and their management functions.

Ministers want more information on EO and satellite broadband

It will start in the areas related to Britain's membership of the European Space Agency (Esa), where most of the civil space budget is spent.
It will then extend to areas overseen by the EU, which has begun in recent years to develop major space projects of its own, such as the Galileo satellite-navigation system.
In addition to the UKSA announcement, the government says £24m will be put into an International Space Innovation Centre (ISIC) at Harwell in Oxfordshire, the site of a new Esa technical facility. This is in addition to £16m from industry.
Ministers say the ISIC will help establish hubs of excellence in the UK to:
• exploit the data generated by Earth Observation satellites,
• use space data to understand and counter climate change and
• advise on the security and resilience of space systems and services.
The announcements are part of the government's response to a major report produced last month by industry and academia on the future prospects for Britain in space.
The Space Innovation and Growth Strategy (Space-IGS) laid out a path it believed could take the UK from a position where it currently claims 6% of the global market in space products and services to 10%, by 2030, creating 100,000 new hi-tech jobs in the process.

Astronaut Tim Peake on the UK's new space agency

The government says it agrees with most of the Space-IGS recommendations, including developing a National Space Technology Strategy.
One key area of dissent however is the call to double UK spending on Esa programmes over the next decade. The Space-IGS wanted Britain to try to initiate and lead at least three missions between now and 2030.
Ministers say they cannot make such commitments in the current economic climate.
"We will require a compelling business case for each proposal or mission," said Lord Drayson.
The government says it also wants more information from industry on how satellite broadband services could be expanded, and on the feasibility of establishing a UK-based Earth observation (EO) programme.
At the moment, the UK buys Earth imagery taken by foreign spacecraft. The Space-IGS said there was a case for the UK to have its own EO fleet.
The creation of a space agency is just the latest in a series of initiatives affecting British space interests.
In July last year, Esa finally opened a technical centre in Britain - the only one of the agency's senior members not to have such a showcase facility. It also appointed a British national, Major Tim Peake, to its astronaut corps in May.

Thales Alenia Space wins huge Meteosat competition

Staring at the Earth: The MTGs will gather far more detail, faster

A consortium led by Thales Alenia Space of France will enter into negotiations for a 1.3bn-euro (£1.2bn) contract to build Europe's next weather satellites.

The TAS group was selected after a competitive process run by the European Space Agency (Esa).
The Meteosat Third Generation (MTG) system will comprise six satellites, with the first spacecraft likely to be ready for launch in 2016.
MTG is expected to bring a step change in weather forecasting capability.
The programme should guarantee European access to space-acquired meteorological data until at least the late 2030s.
"These spacecraft should improve dramatically the quality of meteorological data, and I'm convinced we will see the difference in the weather forecasts," said Dr Volker Liebig, the head of Earth observation at Esa.
MTG is a joint undertaking between Esa and Eumetsat, the international agency charged with looking after Europe's Meteosats.
In the new programme, Esa will oversee the research and development phase of MTG.

METEOSAT - BIGGER, BETTER Europe's 1st imaging satellite (800kg) was launched in 1977; it had just three channels Today's 2nd generation imager (above) has 12 channels; it's a 2-tonne class spacecraft The planned 3rd generation imager will be a 3-tonne satellite; it will have 16 channels MTG adds a second platform: a sounding satellite to see the different layers in the atmosphere

This will include two prototype Meteosats: an imaging spacecraft to picture weather systems and a sounding spacecraft (one which can return information about different layers in the atmosphere).
Eumetsat will operate these prototype platforms once they are launched and pay for the production models that follow. It is envisaged the satellites will be launched at intervals of a few years.
The new spacecraft will be quite unlike their forebears. The second generation satellites (MSG), for example, are spin-stabilised and build up their images as they rotate across the field of view.
The MTG spacecraft will look more like standard telecommunications platforms. They will sit and stare at the Earth.
Their image data will have a much higher resolution (capturing details as small as 500m) and will come down in a fraction of the time - in as little as 2.5 minutes.
"The users asked for a higher spatial resolution and even a better signal to noise ratio, and for that we've had to increase the time the satellite is able to observe the Earth," Rolf Stuhlmann, MTG programme scientist at Eumetsat, told BBC News.
"So, the first and the second generation were spin-stabilised satellites - they return around their axes and the instrument on the satellite is only able to look at the Earth 5% of the time. All the other time, it is looking into space.
"To increase the time the instrument is capable of looking at the Earth, we've had to go for the first time to a three-axis stabilised satellite."

Current imaging (L) versus a simulation (R) of the expected MTG performance

The new spacecraft will carry many innovations that should translate into more accurate and more detailed weather forecasts.
One key development is an Infrared Sounding Instrument that has been pioneered on Europe's Metop polar-orbiting Earth-observation spacecraft but which will now be flown in a geostationary orbit by MTG.
The instrument will be able to detect layers of moisture in the atmosphere long before they have developed into weather systems.

The Meteosat-1 spacecraft returned its first weather data in 1977

"If you see clouds, you know you have water vapour; it's very easy to see," explained Ernst Koenemann, director of programme development at Eumetsat. "But even in blue skies you still have water vapour, and this vapour will eventually develop into weather systems.
"With the infrared sounder, we will see this vapour, and by doing that we will be able to predict much better if and how the systems will develop."
The sounding instrument should also give improved warning of extreme precipitation events, such as the one in December that saw about 25cm of rain fall in just 24 hours on Cockermouth in north-west England.
In addition, the sounding spacecraft will have an enhanced capability to study atmospheric chemistry - to track the behaviour of trace gases such as ozone, nitrogen dioxide and sulphur dioxide.
Another new MTG instrument of major note is the Lightning Imager, which should provide much better information on the state of electrification in storms. This is expected to have immense benefits for the aviation sector, allowing it to route planes more safely.

Drawn-out process

The Meteosat series stretches back to 1977. Currently, two platforms - Meteosat-8 and Meteosat-9 - provide the space data on which daily weather forecasts for Europe depend.
Esa member states committed just under a billion euros to the MTG programme at a ministerial meeting in late 2008. The details of the Eumetsat contribution, which will amount to more than 2.4bn euros, are expected to be finalised later this year.
Eumetsat will hold a special council meeting shortly to discuss the scope of its role in the project.
It has taken much longer than expected to sort out the industrial contract. France and Germany wanted to lead MTG and both committed 34% of the requested Esa funds.
Space agency officials have had to ensure the workshare in the contract rewards the commitment of the two nations, as demanded under Esa rules.
The Thales consortium includes OHB System from Bremen which will ensure Germany plays its part; although Germany had hoped a consortium led by EADS Astrium from Friedrichshafen would win through to direct the MTG project.
"Technically, it was very complicated," Dr Liebig told BBC News. "The offers were 18,000 pages each. If we don't count Galileo [Esa's satellite-navigation project], it is the biggest contract in the agency. There were a lot of questions and it took many months to answer them."
Reynald Seznec, president and CEO of TAS, commented: "Esa and Eumetsat have chosen Thales Alenia Space, in partnership with OHB of Germany, to develop the third generation of Meteosat weather satellites, thanks to the technical excellence and competitiveness of our proposal.
"We are very proud of being chosen to meet the challenge of building the most ambitious geostationary satellites ever developed in Europe."
Esa will now negotiate a final price with TAS, with the aim of completing the deal in June.
If the talks are not concluded satisfactorily, Esa reserves the right to open discussions with Astrium.

Esa's Cryosat ice mission given launch date

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Jonathan Amos takes a look around the 'ice explorer'

Europe's Cryosat-2 spacecraft is set to launch on its mission to map the world's ice fields on Thursday 8 April.

The satellite was due to fly in late February but was held on the ground while engineers investigated concerns about the operation of its rocket.

Cryosat will ride into orbit atop a Dnepr vehicle, a converted Russian-Ukrainian nuclear missile.

The satellite is designed to make detailed measurements of the shape and thickness of Arctic and Antarctic ice.

Its data will help scientists to assess better how changing polar ice conditions affect ocean circulation patterns, sea level and global climate.

The Dnepr will lift off from the Baikonur cosmodrome in Kazakhstan. The Russian authorities overseeing the flight have advised the European Space Agency (Esa) they are ready to proceed with the mission.

The launch is timed for 1357 GMT (1457 BST; 1557 CEST).

Re-attachment task

Earlier worries that the rocket's second-stage steering engines might not have enough margin on their performance have been allayed.

Richard Francis, the Esa Cryosat project manager, said software changes had been introduced to ensure the Dnepr managed its supplies of fuel and oxidiser in the most efficient way possible, giving the engines sufficient room for contingencies.

Cryosat had already been installed on the rocket when the order came to stand down, and was removed during the delay.

"We took it off the day after the call was made and moved it back to the cleanroom, and it's been in a secure area ever since. We have a man who goes and monitors it every day," explained Richard Francis.

"The planning we have at the moment is to put it back on the rocket on 31 March," he told BBC News.

Cryosat carries the "2" designation because it is actually a rebuild of a mission that was destroyed in 2005 when its then launcher (also a converted missile) failed just minutes into its flight.

Esa member-states considered its polar ice measurements to be so important to the assessment of climate change that they approved the construction of a facsimile spacecraft within months of the accident.

Cryosat's radar instrument will make detailed maps of the ice that covers both the sea and land at the poles.

Data from other satellites, such as the US Icesat and European ERS/Envisat missions, has already indicated that some of this cover is diminishing at a rapid rate, with the biggest changes occurring in the Arctic.

Cryosat will add significantly to the information scientists already possess, making observations that are beyond the current generation of spacecraft.

The mission is part of Esa's Earth Explorer programme - seven spacecraft that will do innovative science in obtaining data on issues of pressing environmental concern.

The first in the series, a gravity mapper called Goce, was launched in March 2009. The second, known as Smos, is measuring soil moisture and ocean salinity, and was launched in November.

Exoplanet gas spotted from Earth

The team used Nasa's Nasa's Infrared Telescope Facility in Hawali.

Astronomers have used a new ground-based technique to study the atmosphere of a planet outside our Solar System.

The work could assist the search for Earth-like planets with traces of organic, or carbon-rich, molecules.
Gases have previously been discerned on exoplanets before, but only by using space-based telescopes.
Astronomers reporting in Nature say their method of spotting methane gas on exoplanets could be extended to many other, ground-based telescopes.
Methane was first spotted on an exoplanet named HD 189733b in 2008 by a group led by Mark Swain of Nasa's Jet Propulsion Laboratory in the US.
It is a "hot Jupiter" or gas giant that orbits very close to its parent star, which lies about 63 light-years away from Earth.
It marked the first time that an organic molecule had been detected on an exoplanet. The known planets residing outside our Solar System currently number more than 400.
Dr Swain and his colleagues have now shown that by looking at a different set of light wavelengths, methane and possibly other components can be catalogued using relatively small, Earth-bound telescopes.
They used Nasa's Infrared Telescope Facility in Hawaii to perform measurements of the light emitted by HD 189733b, using a version of the so-called transit method that measures an exoplanet's "secondary eclipse".

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What is a light year? Dr Tim O'Brien from Jodrell Bank explains

At its heart, the approach takes the light received on Earth when HD 189733b is behind its parent star and subtracts it from the light received when it is between its star and the Earth.
What results is the light due solely to the planet. However, the effects of the Earth's atmosphere, with its own atmospheric gases and passing clouds, would typically tend to overwhelm the signal from the distant star.
To overcome this obstacle, Dr Swain and his colleagues decided to look in the infrared part of the light spectrum - in a region that is not currently covered by space-based telescopes - and devised a method to get rid of the effects of Earth's atmosphere.
Their approach made simple assumptions about how errors in the light detected in the telescope are related to each other in terms of the wavelength or colour that is detected, or in terms of the time at which the detection is made. By making these correlations and correcting the signal over and over again, the overall error is whittled down.
With Earth's swirling atmosphere effectively subtracted, the team discovered a peak in their data that corresponded to methane emitting light in a process known as fluorescence.
"Up until this point we've not been able to use ground-based telescopes to detect molecules in an exoplanet's atmosphere," Dr Swain told BBC News.
"These molecules are probes of the conditions and chemistry, and since these planets are too far away for us to send a probe, they are eventually how we're going to answer the question of whether expolanets have a habitable atmosphere to support life."
However, the methane appears to contradict an assumption made about both stars and exoplanet atmospheres before - the existence of a so-called local thermodynamic equilibrium, or LTE. Something is putting more energy into the methane than it can quickly get rid of.
"We don't know what that process is in this case," Dr Swain said. "In our own Solar System, charged particles can cause this fluorescence; the other possibility is some sort of [light in the form of] photons."
Emission of light stimulated by charged particles bumping into atmospheric gases is exactly the mechanism behind the aurora displays seen at visible wavelengths at the Earth's poles.
"If we could show it was charged-particle pumping, you could put constraints on the planet's magnetic field - no-one's been able to do that for an exoplanet before."

Wider view

In any case, the methane emission is comparatively strong from HD 189733b, leading to two important conclusions. Firstly, other exoplanets may well be experiencing this same process, and detecting any methane or possibly other atmospheric gases would be made easier.

HD 189733b orbits very close to its parent star

"It's a pretty interesting discovery," said Keith Horne, an astrophysicist and exoplanet expert from the University of St Andrews.
"The main impact is this strong emission line that stands out quite dramatically," he told BBC News.
"You'd be able to detect it on other objects that are farther away [from their parent stars] or are fainter. So far, it's been just the nearest, transiting 'hot Jupiters' that are bright enough to detect this secondary eclipse."
But more than that, the new research shows that some observations that were once only possible from space can now be done using ground-based telescopes.
That vastly increases the number of instruments - far larger than the 3m telescope used in the Nature work - that could be trained on exoplanet atmospheres.
"Larger telescopes could look at this in more detail, because there's so many of them. It potentially allows many different teams to participate; previous detections with the Hubble and Spitzer telescopes are great, but there's only one Hubble and only one Spitzer."
Both Dr Swain and Professor Horne agree that more detailed work is required to be certain that the peak is due to methane, and to establish how the methane violates the LTE assumption.
However, with the new results in hand, further observations in the new spectral region will be easy to justify, at least until the James Webb Space Telescope - the first space-based telescope that can "see" in this part of the infrared - takes to the skies in 2014.
"It's a hard measurement to do, and they seem to have succeeded," Professor Horne said. "The committees that decide how big telescope time is spent will be able to see it's a worthwhile measurement."

Esa mission concepts vie for position

Euclid would map the distribution of dark matter

The competition to find the next great European space mission has seen three ideas move to the front of the field.

The European Space Agency's (Esa) Science Programme Committee (SPC) will meet next month to consider the current status of the candidates.

The committee members will have in front of them a report from an advisory group that has done a ranking on science.

A final decision is unlikely to be made for a year or so.

And to secure the opportunities available, the various competitors will have to show not only that their science is compelling but that their technological ambition is realistic and affordable.

Even then, only two missions can be afforded out of the three.

The concepts include a satellite that would map the "dark Universe" (called Euclid), a probe to study the Sun up-close (Solar Orbiter), and a telescope to find distant planets (Plato).

At the moment, the trio are in the lead, jockeying for position for the earliest launch opportunities in Esa's Cosmic Vision programme. The first launch could come in 2017.

However, the missions still have much to prove if they are ever to be flown by the agency.

Costs division

A further concept known as Spica (a contribution to a Japanese-led infrared telescope that builds on Europe's heritage with its Herschel observatory) is relatively low budget, and again has compelling science.

However, its special nature means it may now be treated in a separate way, depending on how the partner state's side of the project evolves and the budget that ultimately becomes available.

The scientific community ran the rule over the concepts in December

Two other ideas put forward for consideration in the competition have not been put out of the long-term picture. They seem though to be too far from the SPC's budget constraints to progress in this round.

They are Marco Polo (an asteroid sample-return mission) and Cross-Scale (to study space plasmas). Again, these concepts were considered to have excellent science credentials, according to the Space Science Advisory Committee.

But the high prospective cost of implementing these concepts means they would have to acquire additional partners to bring their foreseen budgets back into contention.

Very similar ideas to Marco Polo and Cross-Scale could well return to run in future competitions if the right international cooperation can be found.

Esa has budgeted up to 475 million euros (£430m) (at 2010 prices) for its contribution to the Cosmic Vision winners. The expectation is that the cost of the instruments that fly on the spacecraft will be borne directly by the member-states that provide them.

All the concepts were presented to the scientific community in December in what amounted to a kind of space "beauty contest".

The six concepts in more detail:

 

EUCLID - MAPPING THE 'DARK UNIVERSE'

Euclid would map the distribution of "dark matter", the matter that cannot be detected directly but which astronomers know is there because of its gravitational effects on the matter we can see. Hubble has done this for a tiny portion of sky measuring two square degrees. Euclid would do it across 20,000 square degrees of sky. The study would yield information also on "dark energy", the mysterious phenomenon thought to be accelerating the expansion of the cosmos.

 

SOLAR ORBITER - GETTING UP CLOSE TO THE SUN'S 'ENGINE'

This would be a joint venture with the US. Solar Orbiter would circle the Sun, flying to within 35 million km of our star to make detailed measurements of the activity from the equator to the poles. The multi-instrumented probe would both observe the Sun and take in-situ measurements of its environment.

 

PLATO - SEARCHING FOR PLANETS LIKE OURS

A spacecraft incorporating a suite of telescopes to hunt for planets around nearby bright stars. Crucially, these would include many rocky planets in the "habitable zone" - the region around a star where water can keep a liquid state. Plato would find these worlds by monitoring stars for the tiny dips in light that occur when planets move across their faces.

 

SPICA - TO FILL THE 'INFRARED GAP'

A joint mission with the Japanese space agency (Jaxa) to send the next generation of infrared telescope into orbit. Europe's contribution would include the 3.5m primary mirror and an instrument. Spica would see targets beyond the vision of the current state-of-the art infrared observatories - Esa's new Herschel telescope and Nasa's soon-to-launch James Webb telescope.

 

CROSS-SCALE - SAMPLING THE SPACE AROUND US

A constellation of spacecraft that would fly around Earth to sample the charged gas, or plasma, that envelops our world. Esa would provide seven spacecraft; Japan and Canada are considering their own mission (Scope) which could bring an additional five satellites. Together they would sample the plasma and detail its behaviour in three dimensions.

 

MARCO POLO - GRABBING SAMPLES FROM AN ASTEROID

A mission to a near-Earth asteroid to grab a handful of dust and pebbles off its surface to bring back to Earth labs for study. Marco Polo is a spacecraft that would land on the asteroid to try to drill or scoop up what would be perhaps just tens of grams of material. But even this small sample could give scientists invaluable insight into the formation of the Solar System.

Herschel space telescope restored to full health

Hifi experienced a damaging voltage peak in August

Europe's billion-euro Herschel Space Telescope is fully operational again after engineers brought its damaged instrument back online.

The observatory's HiFi spectrometer was turned off just three months into the mission because of an anomaly that was probably triggered by space radiation.

The Dutch-led consortium that operates HiFi has now switched the instrument across to its reserve electronics.

It says the failure event has been understood and cannot happen again.

"We've had 30 people working on this," said Dr Frank Helmich, the lead scientist on HiFi, from the SRON Netherlands Institute for Space Research.

"I don't watch much television but I know Crime Scene Investigation and this was just such an investigation - but in space! We found out what happened and then we designed all the mitigating measures," he told BBC News.

The European Space Agency (Esa) telescope was launched from Earth last May. 

THE HERSCHEL SPACE TELESCOPE The observatory is positioned 1.5m km from Earth Its instruments sense far-infrared and sub-millimetre radiation Its 3.5m diameter mirror is the largest ever flown in space Herschel can probe clouds of gas and dust to see stars being born It will investigate how galaxies have evolved through time The mission will end when its helium refrigerant boils off

Its quest is to study how stars and galaxies form, and how they evolve through cosmic time.

The Heterodyne Instrument for the Far Infrared (HiFi) is one of three scientific experiments onboard.

The high-resolution spectrometer is designed to capture and split light into its constituent wavelengths, creating a kind of "fingerprint" that will reveal information on the chemistry of a light source.

HiFi is expected to bring remarkable new insights into the composition and behaviour of the clouds of gas and dust that give rise to stars.

But the instrument was taken offline in August when it started returning anomalous readings.

The detailed inquiry at SRON traced the fault to a failed diode in a Local Oscillator Control Unit (LCU), which is part of the system that helps process the sky signal received by the instrument.

Even though the investigators and their "crime scene" were separated by 1.5 million km, the SRON team was able to establish that the most likely cause was a cosmic ray hitting a microprocessor.

This upset triggered a sequence of hardware and software actions that ultimately resulted in a powerful voltage being sent through the LCU and killing the diode.

HiFi project leader Dr Peter Roelfsema said: "It turned out to be a very complex technological puzzle that we had to solve based on limited information and under a great deal of pressure. 

While Hifi was down, Spire and Pacs took up the observing time Herschel captures birth of stars Herschel 'fingerprints' huge star Herschel scans hidden Milky Way Herschel shows breadth of vision Herschel gives glimpse of power

"But for all researchers involved, quickly finding an answer to this question was a matter of professional pride. We had to - and would - crack the problem with HiFi as soon as humanly possible, but we also had to take the time to be thorough."

Like most space equipment, Hifi has redundant electronics and the instrument is now using its reserve LCU. Measures have also been put in place to ensure another cosmic ray event cannot initiate the same failure sequence.

While Hifi was down, its observing time was used by Herschel's two other instruments - Pacs and Spire - to return stunning new images of the far-infrared and sub-millimetre (radio) Universe.

They will now reciprocate by giving HiFi 50% of the sky time in the next few months.

"We will go into a priority science programme," Dr Helmich told BBC News.

"We do not fear that the LCU will misbehave again but we have lost redundancy in our electronics and so we want to do the most important science observations first.

"One of the first targets will be [star forming regions in] Orion. We expect tens of thousands of [spectral] lines to be seen by HiFi that will all need interpretation."

The Herschel mission is expected to last about three years before the superfluid helium that drives its cooling system boils away. At that point, the instruments' detectors will lose their sensitivity.

Nasa picks three in space contest

The three finalists focus on the Moon, Venus, or an asteroid

The US space agency Nasa has selected three projects as finalists for its next celestial mission.

The projects aim to either probe the atmosphere and surface of Venus, return an asteroid fragment to Earth, or send back rocks from the Moon's south pole.

The proposals are part of the New Frontiers programme, designed to carry out frequent, low-cost missions.

Nasa has provided funding for a fuller analysis of the projects, with a winner to be selected in mid-2011.

The cost of the winning project must not exceed $650m (£410m) and must be ready to launch by the end of 2018.

These limits are in keeping with the New Frontiers programme's principles of funding focused, short-term, and comparatively cheap space science missions.

The three proposals are:

• The Surface and Atmosphere Geochemical Explorer, or Sage, would gather information about Venus' atmosphere during the descent of a lander, which would then scratch at the planet's surface to determine its chemical and mineral composition in detail.
• The Origins Spectral Interpretation Resource Identification Security Regolith Explorer, or Osiris-Rex, would initially orbit an asteroid, landing on it to collect about 60g of material that would be returned to Earth.
• The Lunar South Pole-Aitken Basin Sample Return Mission would land near the Moon's southern pole, returning about a kilogram of material that scientists believe has risen from the moon's interior to the surface.

Each team has been given $3.3m (£2.1m) to further flesh out the details of their proposals over the coming year.

"These are projects that inspire and excite young scientists, engineers and the public," said Ed Weiler, associate administrator for Nasa's Science Mission Directorate.

"These three proposals provide the best science value among eight submitted to Nasa this year."

The proposal that is eventually chosen will form the third mission in the New Frontiers programme.

The first, New Horizons, was launched in 2006 and is bound for a Pluto fly-by in 2015. The second, dubbed Juno, will be the first craft to orbit Jupiter from pole to pole after it launches in August 2011.

 Global Digital Elevation Model

 

This Global Digital Elevation Model, or GDEM, is a product of the Advanced Spaceborne Thermal Emission and Reflection Radiometer (ASTER), a joint program of NASA and Japan's Ministry of Economy, Trade and Industry. The image was released on June 29, 2009, and was created by processing and stereo-correlating the 1.3 million-scene ASTER archive of optical images, covering Earth's land surface between 83 degrees North and 83 degrees South latitudes. The GDEM is produced with 98-feet postings, and is formatted as 23,000 one-by-one-degree tiles. In this colorized version, low elevations are purple, medium elevations are greens and yellows, and high elevations are orange, red and white.

With its 14 spectral bands from the visible to the thermal infrared wavelength region and its high spatial resolution of 50 to 300 feet, ASTER images Earth to map and monitor the changing surface of our planet. ASTER is one of five Earth-observing instruments launched Dec. 18, 1999, on NASA's Terra satellite.

The broad spectral coverage and high spectral resolution of ASTER provides scientists in numerous disciplines with critical information for surface mapping and monitoring of dynamic conditions and temporal change.

 Global Digital Elevation Model

 

This Global Digital Elevation Model, or GDEM, is a product of the Advanced Spaceborne Thermal Emission and Reflection Radiometer (ASTER), a joint program of NASA and Japan's Ministry of Economy, Trade and Industry. The image was released on June 29, 2009, and was created by processing and stereo-correlating the 1.3 million-scene ASTER archive of optical images, covering Earth's land surface between 83 degrees North and 83 degrees South latitudes. The GDEM is produced with 98-feet postings, and is formatted as 23,000 one-by-one-degree tiles. In this colorized version, low elevations are purple, medium elevations are greens and yellows, and high elevations are orange, red and white.

With its 14 spectral bands from the visible to the thermal infrared wavelength region and its high spatial resolution of 50 to 300 feet, ASTER images Earth to map and monitor the changing surface of our planet. ASTER is one of five Earth-observing instruments launched Dec. 18, 1999, on NASA's Terra satellite.

The broad spectral coverage and high spectral resolution of ASTER provides scientists in numerous disciplines with critical information for surface mapping and monitoring of dynamic conditions and temporal change.

The Dark Side of Carbon

 As interest in Earth's changing climate heats up, a tiny dark particle is stepping into the limelight: black carbon. Commonly known as soot, black carbon enters the air when fossil fuels and biofuels, such as coal, wood, and diesel are burned. Black carbon is found worldwide, but its presence and impact are particularly strong in Asia.

Black carbon, a short-lived particle, is in perpetual motion across the globe. The Tibetan Plateau's high levels of black carbon likely impact the region's temperature, clouds and monsoon season.

Saturn's moon has 'ice volcanoes'

Titan's volcanoes ooze cold slurry rather than molten lava

Titan, the haze-shrouded moon of Saturn, displays tantalising evidence of ice volcanoes.

Two regions of Titan have been seen recently, by the Cassini spacecraft, to undergo clear changes in brightness.

This activity, and radar images hinting at flow-like structures, suggest the presence of volcanoes, scientists say.

Rather than erupting molten rock, Titan's "cryovolcanoes" are thought to ooze a slurry made of water ice, ammonia and methane.

There are suggestions that these frigid lava flows could be as much as 200m thick.

"Cryovolcanism is a process that many people have modelled in theory and shown to be viable in the outer Solar System on an object of Titan's size," said Bob Nelson from the US space agency Nasa's Jet Propulsion Laboratory.

Researchers working on the Cassini mission argued their case here at the American Geophysical Union's Fall Meeting.

Reflectance glory

Early flybys of Titan by the US-European spacecraft spotted intriguing surface features that suggested the presence of cryovolcanism, but the thick atmosphere that shrouds this enigmatic world has always made definitive statements tricky.

The evidence, however, is mounting.

Cassini scientists can now point to distinct changes in brightness and reflectance at two separate locations in Titan's equatorial region.

The changes were picked up by Cassini's Visible and Infrared Mapping Spectrometer instrument on flybys from July 2004 to March 2006.

In one of the two regions, the reflectance of the surface surged upward and remained higher than expected. In the other region, the reflectance shot up, but then declined.

The Cassini spacecraft spotted the suspected volcanoes in different regions

Cassini's radar - an instrument that can pierce the thick atmosphere to map the surface, at low resolution - sees lobe-like features at the two locations. Their thickness, about 200m, is consistent with a cyrovolcanic flow interpretation.

"These flows would come out as a thick slurry," said Dr Rosaly Lopes, a Cassini radar team investigation scientist. "They can be thick because cryomagma would be viscous, similar to lava flows on Earth."

Scientists say they also have evidence that ammonia frost is sometimes present at one of the two sites. The ammonia was evident only at times when the region was inferred to be active.

"Ammonia is a material that many thought would be in Titan's interior but not found on the surface," explained Dr Nelson.

"So the finding of ammonia on the surface for temporary periods of time strongly implies materials from the interior are being transported and fused on to the surface."

Sceptical view

Titan's thick atmosphere makes observing the planet's surface difficult

Scientists like the idea of cryovolcanism because it is one way to explain why so much methane is retained in Titan's atmosphere.

Without some means of replenishment, the moon's original methane content should have been destroyed long ago by the Sun's ultraviolet light.

Not all scientists are convinced by the latest assessment, however.

Jeffrey Moore, a Nasa planetary geologist independent of the Cassini mission, told the meeting: "The flow-like features we see on the surface may just be icy debris that has been lubricated by methane rain and transported down-slope into sinuous piles like mudflows."

Dr Nelson countered: "Scepticism is part of the evolution of a scientific finding but logic dictates that we start looking at things in certain ways when certain patterns start falling together."

Approaching Marquette Island

 NASA's Mars Exploration Rover Opportunity took this picture of a rock informally named 'Marquette Island' as it approached the rock for investigations that have suggested the rock is a stony meteorite.

Opportunity used its navigation camera to record this image during the 2,056th Martian day, or sol, of the rover's mission on Mars (Nov. 5, 2009).

The dark-toned rock stood out so prominently in more distant views on earlier sols that the rover team referred to it as 'Sore Thumb' before assigning the Marquette name in accord with an informal naming convention of choosing island names for the isolated rocks that the rover is finding as it crosses a relatively barren plain on its long trek from Victoria Crater toward Endeavour Crater.

'Boat' could explore Saturn moon

Ligeia Mare covers about 100,000 sq km in Titan's high north

A daring proposal to try to put a "boat" down on a sea of Saturn's moon Titan is about to be submitted to Nasa.

The scientific team behind the idea is targeting Ligeia Mare, a vast body of liquid methane sited in the high north of Saturn's largest moon.

The concept will be suggested to the US space agency for one of its future mission opportunities that will test a novel power system.

It would be the first exploration of a planetary sea beyond Earth.

"It is something that would really capture the imagination," said Dr Ellen Stofan, from Proxemy Research, who leads the study team.

"The story of human exploration on Earth has been one of navigation and seafaring, and the idea that we could explore for the first time an extraterrestrial sea I think would be mind-blowing for most people," she told BBC News.

Dr Stofan, who is also an honorary professor at University College London, has been describing her group's idea here at the American Geophysical Union's (AGU) Fall Meeting, the world's largest annual gathering of Earth scientists.

Low cost

The Cassini mission currently in orbit around Saturn has confirmed the haze-shrouded moon Titan to be an extraordinary place.

Great lakes exist on its surface, fed by rivers that wash down valleys whenever it rains.

In many respects, it resembles Earth and the way it cycles water between the surface and the atmosphere, except in the frigid temperatures of Titan it is not water but liquid hydrocarbons that are in constant circulation.

Scientists got a few brief hours worth of data back from Titan's land surface in 2005 when the Huygens probe touched down in an equatorial region of the moon.

Now a number of those same researchers are desperate to go back for a longer-lived stay, but to investigate this time the huge pools that contain methane, ethane, propane and probably many other types of hydrocarbon (carbon-rich) compounds.

The Titan Mare Explorer (TiME) has already been under study for about two years. It is envisaged as a relatively low-cost endeavour - in the low $400m range.

It could launch in January 2016, and make some flybys of Earth and Jupiter to pick up the gravitational energy it would need to head straight at the Saturnian moon for a splash down in June 2023.

The scientists have a couple of seas in mind for their off-world maritime research vessel. Ligeia Mare and Kraken Mare are both about 500km across.

Earth relevance

The primary objective of the mission would be to determine the precise chemistry of one of these lakes; but also to do meteorology, to help scientists better understand how the "methane-ologic cycle" on Titan actually works.

"The key instrument is a mass spectrometer because you want to know what the lake is made of, but we also want to do things like depth-sounding," said Dr Stofan.

"We suspect from Cassini radar data that the lakes are many metres deep, but we'd love to know the overall shape of the lake basins.

A flash of sunlight reflected off Kraken Mare Enlarge Image

"Other instruments would test different properties of the lake which would give you a handle on how the density of the liquid varied as the craft drifted along."

According to team-member Dr Ralph Lorenz, what we learn from Titan's lakes could be relevant here on Earth.

It would give scientists the opportunity to study shared climate processes at work under very different conditions.

"If we have models that will work on Earth and on Titan then we can be much more confident that those models understand the fundamentals of what's going on," explained the researcher from the Johns Hopkins University Applied Physics Laboratory.

"The photogenic appeal and the mystique of exploring a sea on another world speak for themselves, but there is a genuine practical application to do with the science that will help us address problems here on Earth."

Mission sequence

Pictures will be essential, though. The Huygens lander sent back a vista of orange pebbles - one of the most iconic images in Solar System exploration history. A view from the surface of a methane lake, looking towards the shore would be just as amazing.

Nasa and Esa (European Space agency) are currently considering a joint multi-billion-dollar mission to the outer planets, but they have the Jupiter system and not Saturn as their next priority.

Huygens pictured icy pebbles

If TiME is to make it off the launch pad it will have to grasp one of the smaller mission opportunities that Nasa periodically offers, such as the one it runs under its Discovery Class programme. Bids for this opportunity will be invited in the coming months.

The agency will be considering mission concepts that can carry an Advanced Stirling Radioisotope Generator (ASRG). This is a plutonium-driven device that produces power far more efficiently than the traditional Radioisotope Thermoelectric Generators (RTGs) used hitherto on space missions, such as on Cassini.

ASRGs would give TiME sufficient energy to support a very capable instrument suite and a direct-to-Earth communications system to get its data home. The generators - TiME would carry two - could conceivably sustain several years of service on the lake surface.

Whatever the outcome of the Discovery competition - and there will be many bids from other mission hopefuls - Dr Lorenz believes the scientific case for going to Titan is compelling, and he envisages the orangey moon becoming a popular destination in the decades ahead.

"I think the range of science questions that there are there, and the methodologies and types of vehicle that we use to address that science, is going to follow very much the Mars model - we'll have one mission building on the success of another and exploring different questions," he told BBC News.

"Hopefully, TiME will just be the first of many exciting missions to Titan."