ksuadminFebruary 9, 2021 11
This Tuesday (9th), between 12.14 p.m. and 12.41 p.m., the Al-Amal probe (Hope in Arabic) from the United Arab Emirates will activate its propellants to put itself into orbit around Mars. If the maneuver is successful, the country will be the fifth entity to successfully reach the red planet after the United States, Russia (then the Soviet Union), Europe (united under the European Space Agency) and India. Follow live from 12 noon with the Sternbote.
The spacecraft was launched on July 20 by a Japanese HIIA rocket. It was the first of three missions launched to Mars last year, followed by China’s Tianwen-1 (July 23) and American Mars 2020 (July 30), and it’s also the first to make the planet red reached .
ksuadminFebruary 15, 2021 11
The dream of directly visualizing planets like Earth outside of the solar system got a little closer with a new technique developed by an international group of astronomers. As a demonstration, they have used it to study the Alpha Centauri system (which is closest to us, 4.3 light-years from here) and may already have found a planet there.
The project, called NEAR (English acronym for New Lands in the Alfa Centauri region) involved installing updates for one of the VLT instruments, the Very Large Telescope, in Chile. The mid-infrared camera received a new coronograph that blocks the light of the imaginary stars and thus enables the observation of less bright objects in their surroundings. In addition, it was used in conjunction with one of the VLT telescopes with a malleable secondary mirror that compensates for image distortion caused by atmospheric turbulence in real time.
ksuadminFebruary 9, 2021 7
Following the success of the orbital insertion maneuver this Tuesday (9th), the Al-Amal probe (Hope in Arabic) from the United Arab Emirates is already in orbit around Mars. This made the country the fifth unit after the USA, Russia (then the Soviet Union), Europe (united under the European Space Agency) and India to successfully reach the red planet.
The spacecraft was launched on July 20 by a Japanese HIIA rocket. It was the first of three missions launched to Mars last year, followed by China’s Tianwen-1 (July 23) and American Mars 2020 (July 30), and it’s also the first to make the planet red reached .