... Spacecraft . ... To space by cannon? Finally, the deep space explorers --spacecraft which break away from the Earth's gravity . ... The "Luna" series of the USSR conducted 7 soft landing of unmanned probes, two of them with wheeled robotic "Lunokhods," and two of those missions returned samples to Earth. Others spacecraft have visited the major planets of the Solar system. ... The Mariner series have explored Venus and Mars--and Mariner 10 even reached Mercury, for three separate encounters! ...

... With enough velocity, a spacecraft can break loose from the Earth's gravity and enter an orbit around the Sun, like that of a planet. If it then orbits the Sun with the same period as the Earth--one year--it may keep a fixed position relative to Earth. ... If the distance is just right--about 4 times the distance to the Moon or 1/100 the distance to the Sun--the spacecraft, too, will need just one year to go around the Sun, and will keep its position between the Sun and the Earth. ...

... Galileo Probe . The Galileo spacecraft was designed to study Jupiter's atmosphere, satellites, and surrounding magnetosphere for two years. ... From there, Galileo will spend more than five years traveling to Jupiter, where it will become the first spacecraft to make direct measurements from an instrumented probe within Jupiter's atmosphere. ... This image, taken by the Hubble Space Telescope, shows the predicted site at which the Galileo Probe will enter Jupiter's atmosphere on December 7, 1995. ...

NASA Press Release Text - June 24, 1996 GALILEO READY FOR CLOSE FLYBY OF JUPITER'S BIGGEST MOON Now residing in orbit around Jupiter, NASA's Galileo spacecraft is primed for its first close flyby of Jupiter's largest moon, Ganymede, at 2:29 a.m. EDT on June 27, 1996. ... In the days just before and after the Ganymede flyby, Galileo's other studies will include a search for auroral activity on Jupiter's nightside and observations of other Jovian moons: Io, Europa and Callisto. ...

... Io: Moon Over Jupiter . ... Credit Copyright: Cassini Imaging Team , SSI , JPL , ESA , NASA Explanation: How big is Jupiter's moon Io ? ... Although in the above picture Io appears to be located just in front of the swirling Jovian clouds, Io hurtles around its orbit once every 42 hours at a distance of 420,000 kilometers or so from the center of Jupiter . ... Publications with keywords: Io - Jupiter - cassini spacecraft . Publications with words: Io - Jupiter - cassini spacecraft . ...

... In summer 1994, the biggest news in astronomy was the collision of comet Shoemaker-Levy 9 with Jupiter. During this school year, Jupiter will charge back into the limelight with the arrival of the Galileo spacecraft (see figure 8 ). On Dec. 7, following a tortuous six-year ramble through the solar system, Galileo will begin its two-year mission studying Jupiter and its gaggle of moons. ... Besides the camera, Galileo will carry instruments capable of identifying minerals on Jupiter's moons. ...

Astronotes Armagh Planetarium's Stellar Blog! ... Planets . ... Monthly Sky Notes . ... October . ... By admin October 8, 2010 Posted in: Monthly Sky Notes . A giant from close up: an image made using data from the Cassini probe which flew past Jupiter in 2000. ... As it is so far from us, it takes JupiterтАЩs light a significant time to reach us тАУso when you see Jupiter tonight you are seeing it as it was 35€а minutes in the past. ... Posted October 12, 2010 at 11:15 PM . ... Astronotes . ...

... Tonight's Sky . ... Sky this Month . ... Sky this Week . ... NASA's Dawn spacecraft enters orbit around asteroid Vesta . ... On Saturday, July 16, NASAт??s Dawn spacecraft became the first probe to enter orbit around an object in the main asteroid belt between Mars and Jupiter. ... The data also will help pave the way for future human space missions. т??Today, we celebrate an incredible exploration milestone as a spacecraft enters orbit around an object in the main asteroid belt for the first time,т...

... A wordlwide network of amateur and professional astronomers record and time the mutual eclipses and occultations of the Galilean satellites as accurately as possible. ... Already, the acceleration of Io is evident in the data and continued monitoring through this coming season will help pin down the acceleration of the other three satellites. ... From Dr Apostolos Christou, Armagh Observatory: . ... If you want to know the observing times from your location get it by filling in this form . ...

... More on 51 Peg: . The discovery of a Jupiter--mass planet in orbit around the solar--type star 51Peg has been reported by Michel Mayor and Didier Queloz (Geneva Observatory) on October 6th at the 9th Cambridge workshop on "cool stars, stellar systems, and the sun" held at Florence (Italy). ... Recall that the measurements of radial velocity only yield v sin i which in turn gives us M sin i. For most values of i, sin i will be greater than 0.5 and this gives a mass estimate of 0.5 Jupiter masses. ...

... S.P. KOROLEV ROCKET AND SPACE CORPORATION ENERGIA . ... OAO RSC "Energia" . ... Company's History . ... Martian Mission . Cosmonauts . ... The orbital flight of Vostok spacecraft piloted by cosmonaut comrade GAGARIN continues. 9 hours 52 minutes . According to data received from onboard Vostok spacecraft at 9 hours 52 minutes, Moscow Time, cosmonaut pilot major Gagarin flying over South America sent the following message: "The mission progresses smoothly, I feel well". 10 hours 15 minutes . ...

. The XMM-Newton website has moved to the following location: . http://www.cosmos.esa.int/web/xmm-newton

... A small yet powerful planning and scheduling toolkit has been built for the Submillimeter Wave Astronomy Satellite ( SWAS ) Small Explorer spacecraft. ... The simple design, minimal resource requirements and easy extensibility of the SWAS planning and scheduling toolkit should make it useful for other space astronomy missions. ... The relatively severe time and manpower constraints for the development of the SWAS Planning and Scheduling toolkit have forced it to remain small and simple. ...

... Jupiter is our Solar System?s very own superhero. The giant planet is two and a half times more massive than all the rest of the planets in our Solar System combined. And with great mass, comes great gravity. With the power of super-strong gravity, Jupiter plays a heroic role in our Solar System, protecting life on Earth. ... Unfortunately, we have found lots of solar systems with massive planets that lie close to their star, but not so many that lie far away, like Jupiter. ...

LIPSKIY-RODIONOVA' LUNAR ANTIPODES AS PRECURSORS OF A REGULAR WAVE PLANETOLOGY G.G.Kochemasov IGEM of the Russian Academy of Sciences, Moscow, Russia kochem@igem.ru / Fax: (009)(095)230 21 79 The first observations of the lunar far side allowed to compare it with the near side and draw very important conclusions in the very beginning of planetary studies based on spacecrafts. ... Celestial bodies are dichotomic. ... The concept of celestial bodies includes Sun (a star) as one of them. ...

... The force F of gravity between two objects of mass m and M, whose centres are a distance r apart, is given by Newton's famous equation: [pic], where G = 6.67(10-11 N m2 kg-2, and F is measured in Newtons. So, the force in orbit Fo is weaker than the force on the Earth's surface F0 by the ratio: [pic] where the radius of the Earth is 6,400 km, and the orbit is 1000 km above the Earth's surface. ... Energy Considerations Another way to see all this is to consider the energy of an object in orbit. ...

GRANAT is the Russian x-ray sattelite launched to the high apogee orbit (200,000 km) and operated almost for 10 years (1989 -1999) , carrying out four major instruments: French SIGMA coded-mask hard x-ray telescope (30-1000 keV), Soviet ART-P coded-mask telescope (2??-60?? keV), all-sky monitor WATCH (6-150 keV), and a gamma-burst detector PHEBUS . ... Since September 1994, GRANAT is in the survey mode. ... Explore pages devoted to individual GRANAT instruments (including main scientific results): . ...

... In spite of the fact that the orbit assumes a zero gravity (the scientists count on it by growing super-clean crystals and other materials impossible on the earth), in fact, none spacecraft provides such conditions. ... This question is answered by the device developed by SSAU scientists - Micro-acceleration Compensation Space System (MCSS). ... Then, the computer will give commands to the magnets that compensate micro-accelerations. ... Tags: 'photon-m4' mcss . ... SAMARA STATE AEROSPACE UNIVERSITY...

... 8, ``Celestial Mechanics'', 2002 The Lyapunov spectra in spin--orbit dynamics V. V. Kouprianov, I. I. Shevchenko Pulkovo Observatory, St. Petersburg, Russia We study the problem of the chaotic rotation of a minor planetary satellite around its mass center, in the planar and spatial settings. ... The rest of the satellites in our set rotate regularly in synchronous resonance; but, in any case, each of them had passed through the stage of chaotic rotation. ...

... They are concerned with Attitude Control System of the spacecraft, satellite visibility from tracking stations, limits on the satellite autonomous operations during the orbit, and needs for auxiliary operations with the spacecraft. ... Among the operational constraints the most important one is the number of programmed slews per orbit, which determines the maximum number of radio sources to be observed during one orbit. ... System temperature (K) . ... Progress of the RadioAstron Project in Pictures...