ISRO says that this event highlights the strength of the long-term cooperation in place since 1978 and subsequent renewal in 2002 between two globally significant space research organisations.
| Photo Credit: FILE PHOTO

ISRO says that this event highlights the strength of the long-term cooperation in place since 1978 and subsequent renewal in 2002 between two globally significant space research organisations.
| Photo Credit: FILE PHOTO

The model of a Gaganyaan crew module. Under the Gaganyaan programme, ISRO intends to carry out three un-crewed missions and one crewed mission. The first un-crewed mission is scheduled to take place in 2024-25, and the first crewed mission is scheduled in 2025-27.
| Photo Credit: MURALI KUMAR K

Indian Space Research Organisation (ISRO) and European Space Agency (ESA) signed a Technical Implementing Plan (TIP) document for Ground Tracking Support for India’s Gaganyaan missions. 

The TIP enables the ESA to provide ground station support for Gaganyaan missions, which will ensure continuity in data flow and communication with the Orbital Module for monitoring and orbital operations.

ISRO said that it has a long-standing system of co-operation with the ESA. They have been collaboratively supporting each other in successful accomplishment of several space missions in the past and are committed to collaboration activities in the future. The signing of the TIP is another step forward in the co-operation between ISRO and ESA.

The TIP was signed by Dr Anil Kumar A. K., Director, ISTRAC, on behalf of ISRO, and by Dietmar Pilz, Director of Technology, Engineering and Quality and Director of ESTEC, Netherlands, from ESA, at Satish Dhawan Space Centre (SDSC) on December 4.

The Gaganyaan project envisages demonstration of human spaceflight capability by launching a crew of three members to an orbit of 400 km for a three-day mission and bringing them back safely to Earth by landing in Indian sea waters.

Under the Gaganyaan programme, ISRO intends to carry out three un-crewed missions and one crewed mission. The first un-crewed mission is scheduled to take place in 2024-25, and the first crewed mission is scheduled in 2025-27.

The PSLV-C59/PROBA-3 mission takes off from the Satish Dhawan Space Centre in Sriharikota on December 5, 2024.
| Photo Credit: Ragu R

The Indian Space Research Organisation (ISRO) on Thursday (December 5, 2024) announced that it has successfully launched the PSLV-C59 mission with the European Space Agency’s Proba-3 satellites from Sriharikota in Andhra Pradesh. The two satellites onboard PSLV rocket of Proba-3 mission separated successfully, ISRO said.

“Mission Success! The PSLV-C59/PROBA-3 Mission has successfully achieved its launch objectives, deploying ESA’s satellites into their designated orbit with precision,” ISRO said in a post on X.

“PSLV-C59 has successfully soared into the skies, marking the commencement of a global mission led by NSIL, with ISRO’s technical expertise, to deploy ESA’s groundbreaking PROBA-3 satellites,” it said.

The launch was rescheduled to 4:04 pm on Thursday (December 5, 2024) and a revised countdown was set after sorting out an anomaly detected in the propulsion system of one of the satellites on Wednesday (December 4, 2024), minutes before the launch.

Proba-3 (Project for Onboard Anatomy) consists of two satellites in which two spacecraft would fly together as one, maintaining precise formation down to a single millimetre to study the Corona, the Sun’s outer atmosphere. NewSpace India Ltd, the commercial arm of ISRO has bagged the order from the ESA for the launch.

The mission objective is to demonstrate precise formation flying and two spacecraft – ‘Coronagraph’ and ‘Occulter’ would be launched together in a stacked configuration, ISRO said. ISRO had successfully launched the Proba-1 rocket by the European Space Agency in 2001.

(With PTI inputs)

The European Space Agency’s (ESA) Proba-3 mission will be launched on ISRO’s Polar Satellite Launch Vehicle (PSLV) from the Satish Dhawan Space Centre on December 4.

According to ESA, Proba-3 is the world’s first precision formation flying mission.

“A pair of satellites will fly together, maintaining a fixed configuration as if they were a single large rigid structure in space, to prove formation flying and rendezvous technologies,” states ESA.  

The mission will demonstrate formation flying in the context of a large-scale science experiment. Holding position to a precision of a single millimetre, one Proba-3 spacecraft will line up in front of the other, around 150 m away, to cast its shadow precisely onto the other.

“The shade provided by the first spacecraft will cover the fiery face of the Sun so that its faint surrounding ‘coronal’ atmosphere becomes visible. The enigmatic corona – much hotter than the Sun itself – is where space weather originates, a topic of widespread scientific and practical interest,” ESA said. 

It further added that on Earth, scientists must travel the world to position themselves for a brief glimpse of the Sun’s corona lasting just a few minutes at a time during total solar eclipses. However, the new cutting-edge technologies applied to Proba-3 mean that the mission will be able to create ‘solar eclipses on demand.’

Proba-3 instruments will peer closer to the solar rim than was previously possible in space, for up to six hours at a time during each approximately 19-hour orbit around Earth.

Paris:

A spacecraft launched last year will slingshot back around Earth and the Moon next month in a high-stakes, world-first manoeuvre as it pinballs its way through the Solar System to Jupiter.

The European Space Agency’s Juice probe blasted off in April 2023 on a mission to discover whether Jupiter’s icy moons Ganymede, Callisto, and Europa are capable of hosting extra-terrestrial life in their vast, hidden oceans.

The uncrewed six-tonne spacecraft is currently 10 million kilometres (six million miles) from Earth.

But it will fly back past the Moon and then Earth on August 19-20, using their gravity boosts to save fuel on its winding, eight-year odyssey to Jupiter.

Staff at the ESA’s space operations centre in Darmstadt, Germany began preparing for the complicated manoeuvre this week.

Juice is expected to arrive at Jupiter’s system in July 2031.

It will take the scenic route. NASA’s Europa Clipper spacecraft is scheduled to launch this October yet beat Juice to Jupiter’s moons by a year.

Long and winding road

Juice is taking the long way around in part because the Ariane 5 rocket used to launch the mission was not powerful enough for a straight shot to Jupiter, which is roughly 800 million kilometres away.

Without an enormous rocket, sending Juice straight to Jupiter would require 60 tonnes of onboard propellant — and Juice has just three tonnes, according to the ESA.

“The only solution is to use gravitational assists,” Arnaud Boutonnet, the ESA’s head of analysis for the mission, told AFP.

By flying close to planets, spacecrafts can take advantage of their gravitational pull, which can change its course, speed it up or slow it down.

Many other space missions have used planets for gravity boosts, but next month’s Earth-Moon flyby will be a “world first”, the ESA said.

It will be the first “double gravity assist manoeuvre” using boosts from two worlds in succession, the agency said.

Juice will cross 750 kilometres above the Moon on August 19, before shooting past our home planet the following day.

The probe will leave Earth at a speed of “3.3 kilometres a second — instead of three kilometres if we had not added the Moon”, Boutonnet said.

As Juice whizzes past Earth and the Moon, it will use the opportunity to snap photos and test out its many instruments.

Down on Earth, some will be taking photos right back. Some lucky amateur sky gazers, armed with telescopes or powerful binoculars, may even be able to spot Juice as it passes over Southeast Asia.

– ‘Plate of spaghetti’ –

The move has been carefully calculated for years, but it will be no walk in the park.

“We are aiming for a mouse hole,” Boutonnet emphasised.

The slightest error during its slingshot around the Moon would be amplified by Earth’s gravity, potentially creating a small risk that the spacecraft could enter and burn up in Earth’s atmosphere.

The team on the ground will be closely observing the spacecraft — and have 12-18 hours to calculate and adjust its trajectory if needed, Boutonnet said.

He mostly feared a scenario in which the amount of course corrections needed would erase the gains from the double-world slingshot, meaning they would be “doing all this for nothing”.

If all goes well, Juice will head back out into interplanetary space — for a little while at least.

It will first head to Venus for another boost in 2025.

Juice will even fly past Earth twice more — once in 2026, then a final time in 2029 before finally setting off towards Jupiter.

Then comes the really tricky part.

Once Juice arrives at Jupiter, it will use a whopping 35 gravitational assists as its bounces around the planet’s ocean moons.

During this phase, the probe’s trajectory looks like “a real plate of spaghetti”, Boutonnet said.

“What we’re doing with the Earth-Moon system is a joke in comparison,” he added.

 

(Except for the headline, this story has not been edited by NDTV staff and is published from a syndicated feed.)

The European Space Agency (ESA) on Saturday released a satellite picture of day and night split in half on Earth’s surface. The image posted on X, formerly Twitter, shows the crossing of the Sun in the celestial equator in the sky and bringing autumn to the Northern Hemisphere. Sharing the picture, the space agency wrote, “Winter is coming. Day and night are split in half today, as the Sun crossed the celestial equator in the sky at 07:50 BST/08:50 CEST marking the autumn equinox in the Northern Hemisphere. This #Meteosat image was taken at 09:00 BST/10:00 CEST this morning.”

Winter is coming

Day and night are split in half today, as the Sun crossed the celestial equator in the sky at 07:50 BST/08:50 CEST marking the autumn equinox in the Northern Hemisphere.

This #Meteosat image was taken at 09:00 BST/10:00 CEST this morning (pic: EUMETSAT) pic.twitter.com/t7oUI36ai4

— ESA (@esa) September 23, 2023

Since being shared, the post has amassed a lot of reactions from social media users.

“This is an interesting post !” said a user.

“Incredible,” said another person.

“The autumn equinox has begun in the Northern Hemisphere. Shown here, a grand image of Earth from Meteosat in space with Africa, Europe, and the Middle East positioned to the front,” commented another user.

A person added, “Amazing; I had no idea the countries of the world were drawn onto the Earth like that.”

As per Space.com, Autumn began astronomically in the Northern Hemisphere and spring started in the Southern Hemisphere. “The sun is currently migrating south, having spent the previous six months shining directly on the northern half of our planet. So, at the official start time of autumn, the sun would appear directly overhead from a ship in the Laccadive Sea, positioned on the equator, 170 miles (275 kilometres) northeast of Addu City in the Maldives,” the website said. 

The Earth’s axis is tilted either towards or away from the sun for the majority of the year. It follows that the planet’s northern and southern portions receive different amounts of warmth and light from the sun. The Earth’s axis and orbit align at the equinox, distributing sunlight equally to both hemispheres.

Two Latin words that signify equal and night make up the word equinox. This is due to the fact that on the equinox, day and night are almost equal in length. However, depending on where you are on the planet, one may get a few some extra minutes.

Aditya L1 onboard the PSLV-C57 the Satish Dhawan Space Centre in Sriharikota on September 1, 2023 on the eve of its launch. Photo: X/@ISRO via PTI

The European Space Agency (ESA) which had provided crucial support to ISRO to monitor the Chandrayaan-3’s health, will also be supporting Aditya-L1, providing deep space communication services to the mission.

“ESA’s global network of deep space tracking stations and use of internationally recognised technical standards allows us to help our partners track, command and receive data from their spacecraft almost anywhere in the solar system,” said Ramesh Chellathurai, ESA service manager, and an ESA cross-support liaison officer for ISRO.

Mr. Chellathurai added that for the Aditya-L1 mission, ESA is providing support from all three of its 35-metre deep space antennas over Australia, Spain and Argentina, as well as support from the Kourou station in French Guiana and coordinated support from the Goonhilly Earth Station in the UK.

Ground services

ESA said that it was the main provider of ground station services for Aditya-L1. ESA stations will support the mission from beginning to end: from the critical ‘Launch and Early Orbit Phase’, throughout the journey to L1, and then to send commands to and receive science data from Aditya-L1 for multiple hours per day over the next two years of routine operations.

The space agency added that from April to December 2022, ESA and ISRO teams had worked together intensively to evaluate ISRO’s strategy for operating the Aditya-L1 and challenge their new orbit determination software.

“With its experience flying and even rescuing missions at the Lagrange points, ESA was in the perfect position to help ISRO improve their new orbit determination software and demonstrate that it has the fidelity and accuracy that the organisation needs in order to operate a spacecraft at a Lagrange point for the first time,” said ESA flight dynamics expert Frank Budnik.

While pulses inflation hardened in July, other protein sources such as milk (8.6%) and meat and fish also reported higher inflation last month. Image for representation purpose only. File
| Photo Credit: Shiv Kumar Pushpakar

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