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Japan Today
5 days ago
- Science
- Japan Today
How two satellites are mimicking total solar eclipses in space
This image provided by the European Space Agency shows the Sun's corona captured by the Proba-3 pair of spacecraft on May 23, 2025, in the visible light spectrum, with the hair-like structures revealed using a specialized image processing algorithm. (ESA/Proba-3/ASPIICS/WOW algorithm via AP) By MARCIA DUNN A pair of European satellites have created the first artificial solar eclipses by flying in precise and fancy formation, providing hours of on-demand totality for scientists. The European Space Agency released the eclipse pictures at the Paris Air Show on Monday. Launched late last year, the orbiting duo have churned out simulated solar eclipses since March while zooming tens of thousands of miles (kilometers) above Earth. Flying 492 feet (150 meters) apart, one satellite blocks the sun like the moon does during a natural total solar eclipse as the other aims its telescope at the corona, the sun's outer atmosphere that forms a crown or halo of light. It's an intricate, prolonged dance requiring extreme precision by the cube-shaped spacecraft, less than 5 feet (1.5 meters) in size. Their flying accuracy needs to be within a mere millimeter, the thickness of a fingernail. This meticulous positioning is achieved autonomously through GPS navigation, star trackers, lasers and radio links. Dubbed Proba-3, the $210 million mission has generated 10 successful solar eclipses so far during the ongoing checkout phase. The longest eclipse lasted five hours, said the Royal Observatory of Belgium's Andrei Zhukov, the lead scientist for the orbiting corona-observing telescope. He and his team are aiming for a wondrous six hours of totality per eclipse once scientific observations begin in July. Scientists already are thrilled by the preliminary results that show the corona without the need for any special image processing, said Zhukov. "We almost couldn't believe our eyes,' Zhukov said in an email. 'This was the first try, and it worked. It was so incredible.' Zhukov anticipates an average of two solar eclipses per week being produced for a total of nearly 200 during the two-year mission, yielding more than 1,000 hours of totality. That will be a scientific bonanza since full solar eclipses produce just a few minutes of totality when the moon lines up perfectly between Earth and the sun — on average just once every 18 months. The sun continues to mystify scientists, especially its corona, which is hotter than the solar surface. Coronal mass ejections result in billions of tons of plasma and magnetic fields being hurled out into space. Geomagnetic storms can result, disrupting power and communication while lighting up the night sky with auroras in unexpected locales. While previous satellites have generated imitation solar eclipses — including the European Space Agency and NASA's Solar Orbiter and Soho observatory — the sun-blocking disk was always on the same spacecraft as the corona-observing telescope. What makes this mission unique, Zhukov said, is that the sun-shrouding disk and telescope are on two different satellites and therefore far apart. The distance between these two satellites will give scientists a better look at the part of the corona closest to the limb of the sun. "We are extremely satisfied by the quality of these images, and again this is really thanks to formation flying' with unprecedented accuracy, ESA's mission manager Damien Galano said from the Paris Air Show. © Copyright 2025 The Associated Press. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed without permission.
Japan Today
05-06-2025
- Science
- Japan Today
Private Japanese lunar lander heads toward moon touchdown
By MARCIA DUNN A private lunar lander from Japan is closing in on the moon, aiming for a touchdown in the unexplored far north with a mini rover. The moon landing attempt by Tokyo-based company ispace on Friday Japan time is the latest entry in the rapidly expanding commercial lunar rush. The encore comes two years after the company's first moonshot ended in a crash landing, giving rise to the name Resilience for its successor lander. Resilience holds a rover with a shovel to gather lunar dirt as well as a Swedish artist's toy-size red house that will be lowered onto the moon's dusty surface. Long the province of governments, the moon became a target of private outfits in 2019, with more flops than wins along the way. Launched in January from Florida on a long, roundabout journey, Resilience entered lunar orbit last month. It shared a SpaceX ride with Firefly Aerospace's Blue Ghost, which reached the moon faster and became the first private entity to successfully land there in March. Another U.S. company, Intuitive Machines, arrived at the moon a few days after Firefly. But the tall, spindly lander face-planted in a crater near the moon's south pole and was declared dead within hours. Resilience is targeting the top of the moon, a less forbidding place than the shadowy bottom. The ispace team chose a flat area with few boulders in Mare Frigoris or Sea of Cold, a long and narrow region full of craters and ancient lava flows that stretches across the near side's northern tier. Once settled with power and communication flowing, the 2.3-meter Resilience will lower the piggybacking rover onto the lunar surface. Made of carbon fiber-reinforced plastic with four wheels, ispace's European-built rover — named Tenacious — sports a high-definition camera to scout out the area and a shovel to scoop up some lunar dirt for NASA. The rover, weighing just five kilograms, will stick close to the lander, going in circles at a speed of less than one inch (a couple centimeters) per second. Besides science and tech experiments, there's an artistic touch. The rover holds a tiny, Swedish-style red cottage with white trim and a green door, dubbed the Moonhouse by creator Mikael Genberg, for placement on the lunar surface. Takeshi Hakamada, CEO and founder of ispace, considers the latest moonshot 'merely a steppingstone,' with its next, much bigger lander launching by 2027 with NASA involvement, and even more to follow. 'We're not trying to corner the market. We're trying to build the market,' Jeremy Fix, chief engineer for ispace's U.S. subsidiary, said at a conference last month. 'It's a huge market, a huge potential." Fix noted that ispace, like other businesses, does not have 'infinite funds' and cannot afford repeated failures. While not divulging the cost of the current mission, company officials said it's less than the first one which exceeded $100 million. Two other U.S. companies are aiming for moon landings by year's end: Jeff Bezos' Blue Origin and Astrobotic Technology. Astrobotic's first lunar lander missed the moon altogether in 2024 and came crashing back through Earth's atmosphere. For decades, governments competed to get to the moon. Only five countries have pulled off successful robotic lunar landings: Russia, the U.S., China, India and Japan. Of those, only the U.S. has landed people on the moon: 12 NASA astronauts from 1969 through 1972. NASA expects to send four astronauts around the moon next year. That would be followed a year or more later by the first lunar landing by a crew in more than a half-century, with SpaceX's Starship providing the lift from lunar orbit all the way down to the surface. China also has moon landing plans for its own astronauts by 2030. © Copyright 2025 The Associated Press. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed without permission.
Japan Today
07-05-2025
- Science
- Japan Today
Private Japanese lunar lander enters orbit around moon ahead of June touchdown
This photo provided by ispace in January 2025 shows the Resilience lunar lander. By MARCIA DUNN A private lunar lander from Japan is now circling the moon, with just another month to go before it attempts a touchdown. Tokyo-based ispace said Wednesday morning its Resilience lander entered lunar orbit. 'The countdown to lunar landing has now officially begun,' the company said in a statement. SpaceX launched Resilience with U.S.-based Firefly Aerospace's lunar lander in January. Firefly got there first in March, becoming the first private outfit to successfully land a spacecraft on the moon without crashing or falling over. Another American company, Intuitive Machines, landed a spacecraft on the moon a few days later, but it ended up sideways in a crater. Now it's ispace's turn. It's targeting the first week of June for Resilience's touchdown. The company's first lander crashed into the moon in 2023. The lander holds a mini rover equipped with a scoop to gather lunar dirt for analysis as well as other experiments. © 2025 The Associated Press. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed without permission.
