Sentences with phrase «orbiter as»

' The report interprets data from NASA's Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter as evidence that hot springs pumped mineral - laden water directly into this ancient Martian sea.

He then became the principal investigator on the radar experiment on NASA's Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter as well as the co-PI on a radar on an Indian lunar orbiter.

The Beagle 2 lander, which has not yet been attached to the spacecraft, is a big worry because if it fails to separate from the orbiter as the package approaches Mars, both will be lost.

Two hours after its scheduled landing, Schiaparelli was scheduled to establish two - way communication with NASA's Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter as the satellite passed over the planned touchdown site.

Not exact matches

In January this year, it was announced that the lander had been identified in images taken by Nasa's Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter in 2013; these showed the lander as a glinting object, just a few pixels wide, about 5 km from the intended touchdown site.

The Orbiter will also serve as a data relay asset for the 2018 ExoMars mission until the end of 2022.

The Mars Orbiter Camera tracked the changing seasons as the first chill of winter gripped the Northern hemisphere and warm spring winds began shrinking the Southern ice cap.

If all goes as planned, joint European - U.S. projects will yield an orbiter ready for launch in 2016 and two rovers in 2018.

Undergirding this new optimism are reams of data — from Earth - based telescopes as well as Mars orbiters, landers, and rovers — that have slowly painted a much more complete and complicated picture of the Mars environment stretching back billions of years, providing intriguing hints that microbes might have once evolved there, and might yet endure.

Scientists from the University of New Hampshire and colleagues have published comprehensive findings on space - based radiation as measured by a UNH - led detector aboard NASA's Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter (LRO).

Images from the Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter (LRO) spacecraft, released in October, show a pattern of cliffy scarps all across the lunar surface (as shown on the map above, with white dots indicating newly discovered scarps and black dots marking previously known ones).

Those that failed to progress included a proposal to send a spacecraft diving, as Cassini did, into Saturn's atmosphere to study its composition and history, as well as a notional orbiter for Titan and a second plume - diving spacecraft for Enceladus independent of ELSAH.

The space shuttle program has just three launches before the orbiters are retired later this year or early in 2011, and Obama has proposed scrapping the shuttle program's successor, known as Constellation, which was first sketched out by President George W. Bush in 2004.

Ever since 2005, when NASA's Cassini orbiter found plumes of water vapor spilling out of cracks in the south pole of Saturn's icy moon Enceladus, researchers have sought to learn more about the moon's mysterious interior as a possible abode for extraterrestrial life.

It gave crucial context to Cassini's work over the years as the orbiter studied Titan's weather, seasons and even its transient hydrocarbon lakes and seas.

First witnessed in Jupiter's clouds as rare flashes of scattered light by Voyager 1 in its 1979 flyby and observed decades later by the Galileo orbiter, Jupiter's lightning is thought to be an indirect tracer of the planet's water content.

It's crunch time for the ExoMars mission, as its orbiter and lander spring into action ahead of Wednesday's landing

NeMO's most pressing duty, in many eyes, is to take the baton from veteran NASA spacecraft — the 2001 Mars Odyssey as well as the Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter (MRO), which has been on duty since March 2006 — that are at risk of expiring of old age.

With such capacities, the Mars orbiter is ripe for extra assignments such as helping to return precious samples from Mars to Earth or sauntering over and investigating Phobos and Deimos, the planet's two moons.

The techniques will become more important as bigger solar observatories come online, such as the Advanced Technology Solar Telescope to be built in Hawaii later this decade, and the European Space Agency's Solar Orbiter, due to be launched in 2017.

If equipped with radar, NeMO could also serve as a water - witching orbiter.

As it moves closer, the 11 instruments on the orbiter and 10 on the lander will be turned on and checked.

During the 21 August event, NASA's Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter used a system of three cameras to photograph the moon's shadow as it passed near Nashville, ASU Now reports.

Originally an ESA - only lander mission, it was merged with NASA plans in 2009 and ended up as a two - craft mission: the first in 2016 will be an orbiter devoted to atmospheric sampling, followed by a large lander in 2018 which would have the capability to dig below the surface.

«Our well - calibrated UV images will act as a pathfinder for mapping by NASA's 2008 Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter,» says Garvin.

When MRO's mission is complete in November 2008, it will have sent back between 30 and 50 terabits of data — 10 times the output of any previous orbiter and twice as much information as in all the words in the Library of Congress.

Numerous safety panels at NASA have reviewed the mission, and have considered outlandish possibilities, such as the tether wrapping itself round the nose of the orbiter or oscillating out of control.

As the comet hurtles through the inner Solar System at around 100,000 km / h, the relative speed between orbiter and comet will remain equivalent to walking pace.

DARMSTADT, GERMANY — The Rosetta orbiter on Wednesday dropped a spidery, three - legged robot the size of a small refrigerator and watched as it tentatively set down on a comet — the first time that the surface of these primordial balls of dust and ice has ever been explored.

Radar data helped locate an approximate position for its final resting spot — somewhere just within the rim of the large crater on the head of the duck - shaped comet, what was once known as landing site «B.» Holger Sierks, principal investigator for the orbiter's camera, was waiting for images to be downloaded to Earth tonight that he thought would contain the lander.

Two are sticking above the tiles, one by 2.8 centimetres (1.1 inches) and the other by as much as 2.2 cm (0.9 inches) near the front of the orbiter.

India was the first nation to successfully reach the Red Planet on its first attempt when the Mars Orbiter Mission (MOM), also known as Mangalyaan, entered orbit in 2014.

Immediately after launch, Japanese astronaut Soichi Noguchi took video of the external tank as it separated from the orbiter while fellow astronaut Andy Thomas snapped digital photographs.

Despite the disappointments, there is a silver lining to this latest dark patch on Mars: The ExoMars program's other main component, a satellite called the Trace Gas Orbiter (TGO) that served as Schiaparelli's mother ship, successfully entered Mars's orbit after deploying the lander.

The remaining vehicle, known as the Galileo orbiter, must adjust its flight path to prevent it following the probe into Jupiter.

The NASA probe would also make close flybys of another Jovian moon, Io, while the ESA orbiter, dubbed Laplace (named for the French mathematician and astronomer), would investigate Callisto as well as Ganymede.

The overall plan, currently known as the Europa Jupiter System Mission, or EJSM, includes a NASA spacecraft dubbed the Jupiter Europa Orbiter (JEO), which would settle into orbit around Europa after conducting a broader tour of the Jovian environs.

«And vice versa, if the NASA orbiter ends up not getting through the process, then the ESA orbiter can go alone and again do fantastic science on its own, as well.»

The shuttle is comprised of three components: the orbiter (the aeroplane - like crew - and cargo - carrying craft that most people think of as the shuttle); a large external tank (ET) that holds the liquid oxygen and liquid hydrogen fuel; and two solid rocket boosters (SRBs) packed with powdered aluminium and rubber fuel.

NASA is planning to send an orbiter to Europa as part of an international fleet of probes slated to explore Jupiter's environs that may even include a landing on the intriguing moon

As Curiosity carries on, researchers plan to analyze soil and sediment samples for organic material and to team up with Mars orbiters to search for methane patterns in the atmosphere.

The daily image downloads from the Mars rover Opportunity — yes, it's still driving around the Red Planet after more than seven years — and the Saturn orbiter Cassini have been so warmly welcomed that missions with less open policies, such as NASA's current Mercury and Vesta orbiters, let alone the European Space Agency's Venus and Mars orbiters, are often subject to harsh criticism.

«Atlantis departing for the last time,» station astronaut said while ringing a bell as the orbiter backed away.

China wrote off its orbiter, a tiny craft called Yinghuo - 1, as a total loss in mid-November.

Planetary scientist David Catling of the University of Washington in Seattle says that the Spirit data, in concert with other detections, such as that from the Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter observed in the Nili Fossae region of Mars, present a strong case for carbonates on Mars.

At the same time as Schiaparelli's descent, the orbiter was performing a crucial «Mars Orbit Insertion» manoeuvre — which it completed successfully.

The Enterprise was named after the starship in Star Trek in response to a flood of pleading fan letters and never flew in space; it was built in 1976 as a prototype to demonstrate that the orbiter could fly and land like an airplane.

NASA's Mars Science Laboratory rover Curiosity appears as a bluish dot near the lower right corner of this enhanced - color view from the High Resolution Imaging Science Experiment (HiRISE) camera on NASA's Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter.

If NOAA's fails, as roughly one out of every 10 do during or right after launch, U.S. civilian polar orbiter coverage might suffer a gap of four years or more.

The joint program's six orbiters would pack in 14 instruments, roughly twice as many as either military or civilian polar orbiters, and save $ 1.8 billion.