ESA's JUICE mission. Credits: ESA/AOES
ESA sets its vision for future with its selection of a mission today in an announcement. The mission is the Jupiter Icy Moons Explorer or JUICE. Check it out.
Sounds exciting, hopefully they can pull it off given the economy, which I’d hope would get better eventually. The mission won’t launch until 2022 and reach Jupiter in 2030 and a lot can happen between now and then.
Gravity Map of Olympus Mons. Click for larger. Image: ESA
The ESA Mars Express spacecraft and the MRO are looking into the interior of Mars. The process is pretty cool!
Five years of Mars Express gravity mapping data are providing unique insights into what lies beneath the Red Planet’s largest volcanoes. The results show that the lava grew denser over time and that the thickness of the planet’s rigid outer layers varies across the Tharsis region.
The measurements were made while Mars Express was at altitudes of between 275-330 km above the Tharsis volcanic ‘bulge’ during the closest points of its eccentric orbit, and were combined with data from NASA’s Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter.
The Tharsis bulge includes Olympus Mons – the tallest volcano in the Solar System, at 21 km – and the three smaller Tharsis Montes that are evenly spaced in a row.
The region is thought to have been volcanically active until 100-250 million years ago, relatively recent on a geological timescale.
The large mass of the volcanoes caused tiny ‘wobbles’ in the trajectory of Mars Express as it flew overhead; these were measured from Earth via radio tracking and translated into measurements of density variations below the surface.
A nice overview of the Bepi Columbo mission to Mercury to be launched in 2015.
It’s a great name too. 
The first flight of ESA’s Vega rocket occurred yesterday.
The payload consisted of two Italian satellites: ASI’s LARES laser relativity satellite and the University of Bologna’s ALMASat-1. Flight VV01 will also carry seven picosatellites provided by European universities: e-St@r (Italy), Goliat (Romania), MaSat-1 (Hungary), PW-Sat (Poland), Robusta (France), UniCubeSat GG (Italy) and Xatcobeo (Spain).
One of Italian satellites aims to put Einstein to the test – this is VERY cool stuff.
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Don’t forget about the Bonus riddle and I’m thinking about having a Second Chance Riddle this Saturday, need to hook up with Marian on this before it’s for sure, but if all goes well.
A good preview of ESA missions with (IMHO) terrible audio quality. I thought it was just the version I was watching but no, they are all the same.
Audio aside, I can’t wait to see that Vega launch coming right up on February 9, the VV01 as it is called is going to carry nine satellites into orbit including seven CubeSats from European universities.
I love the CubeSats. Typically they are a 10 cm cube, that’s 3.9 inches in the US and they weigh in at about 1.33 kg or 2.9 lbs. They give a platform for students to perform space science experiments and exploration. CubeSats have been built by academia as they utilize off-the-shelf electronics. Several companies have built CubeSats including Boeing, builders of “regular” satellites. CubeSats are very popular and provide a nice fit with the ham radio crowd too, of which I am happy to say I belong.
BTW: I’ve been hearing the aurora was very nice last night, I was clouded in so I can’t say. Hard to believe as the K indices were not that high, it could be the reports were originating in very high latitudes though.
