Podcasts about european space operations centre

Professor Caitriona Jackman is an Irish space scientist and head of the planetary magnetospheres group at the Dublin Institute for Advanced Studies and was among those at the European Space Operations Centre in Darmstadt, Germany, for the launch of ESA's Jupiter Icy Moons Explorer mission, or “JUICE”. She joins Jonathan to discuss the mission and what she and her colleagues hope to learn.

Who controls space? What is rocket science, and is it really leading edge like the cliché suggests? And if more and more industrial players – think SpaceX and others – are going into space, how should their activities be regulated? On today’s episode of The Thoughtful Technospain, we look at technology tensions around – space science and satellite technology. How can we make space and its use beneficial for all? To help us answer these questions, I’m joined by Franz Newland, he’s assistant professor in Earth & Space Science & Engineering at York University. Before joining York, Franz worked for 15 years in the space industry. He worked for COM DEV as Mission Engineering Manager in Cambridge, Ontario, and Terma as the lead training instructor and simulation team manager for the ATV Control Centre in Toulouse, France as well as providing spacecraft simulation development and support for Terma to the European Space Operations Centre in Darmstadt, Germany. His research interests include: Orbit determination techniques Spacecraft operations and simulation Small spacecraft missions Engineering education Franz is a Professional Engineer in Ontario, and a Chartered Engineer in the UK.

The European Space Agency's Rosetta mission to 67P/Comet Churyumov-Gerasimenko reached its most dramatic moment on 12th November. BBC News correspondent Jonathan Amos has covered the event for a special edition of Radio 4's 'Frontiers' programme. In August, the Rosetta spacecraft was the first to go into orbit around a comet; its images of the extraordinarily rugged landscape of this 4 kilometre space mountain of ice and space dust have already left everyone awestruck. Previous missions have been fleeting fly-bys. On the day of the landing the orbiting mothercraft released a small robotic probe, named Philae, to fall and land on the cometary surface. It will be the first to sample and analyse directly the make-up of a comet, and photograph a comet's landscape from an explorer's eyeview. Jonathan Amos presents 'Frontiers' from mission control at the European Space Operations Centre in Germany on the day of the landing. The probe's deployment is not the final stage of the Rosetta mission. The mothercraft will accompany Comet C-G for the next year as both approach the Sun and then turn back out into deep space. Rosetta will be making measurements all the way as the comet's icy nucleus heats up and produces its great tail of gas and dust. Flying Rosetta as the comet becomes florid will also be a tricky business. Comets are widely believed to be made of material unchanged since the planets came into existence, 4.5 billion years ago. They represent the original stuff of which planets were built. The Rosetta orbiter's and lander's findings may well tell us whether comets brought water and life's chemical ingredients to get life started on Earth. Jonathan talks to mission scientists and other comet experts about why they want to study comets in such detail and what Rosetta should tell us about comets in their own right as the most spectacular and most enigmatic objects in the solar system. Producer: Andrew Luck-Baker.

This lecture, delivered by Paolo Ferri, Head of Mission Operations Department at the European Space Operations Centre within the European Space Agency, introduces the Rosetta mission and its scientific objectives, describing also the spacecraft, its payload and its lander.

Asteroid Steins belongs to the rare, largely unknown intermediate E-class, very bright and probably with a much-weathered surface. Steins' orbit was only known from ground observations, so Rosetta is conducting Europe's first-ever optical tracking campaign, providing highly accurate position data to Flight Dynamics specialists who are planning a series of trajectory corrections for an accurate fly-by. For over a year, Rosetta scientists and leading asteroid experts have been planning this encounter, and all the probe's science instruments will be active at some point in the fly-by. Reception of the first images is expected at the European Space Operations Centre some two hours after the encounter on 5 September 2008.ESApod video programme

SMART-1's instruments have been sending back brilliant new pictures of the Moon and have been looking for clues to how the Moon was formed - perhaps in a collision between the young Earth and another planet, billions of years ago. Telescopes on Earth hope to catch the final moments of the mission as SMART-1 impacts the Moon.At the European Space Operations Centre in Darmstadt the mission controllers use SMART-1's small controlling thrusters in a clever way to make sure it crashes where astronomers can see the impact.So even as it meets its doom, SMART-1 will put on a show for watchers on the Earth.ESApod video programme