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ARCHIVOVANÝ OBSAH
01 ČVC. 2020
Datum vydání
7664
Zobrazení
ESA’s Gaia space observatory is an ambitious mission to construct a three-dimensional map of our galaxy by making high-precision measurements of over one billion stars. However, on its journey to map distant suns, Gaia is revolutionising a field much closer to home. By accurately mapping the stars, it is helping researchers track down lost asteroids.
Gaia’s flight control team at ESA’s ESOC mission control centre in Darmstadt are responsible for making corrections to the spacecraft’s trajectory to keep it in the correct orbit and out of Earth’s shadow. They ensure that Gaia remains one of the most stable and accurate spacecraft ever. On 16 July 2019, the team successfully performed a crucial eclipse avoidance manoeuvre, moving Gaia into the extended phase of its mission and allowing it to keep scanning the sky for several more years.
Okno médií
Using stars to spot asteroids
Gaia charts the galaxy by repeatedly scanning the entire sky. Over the course of its planned mission, it observed each of its more than one billion target stars around 70 times to study how their position and brightness change over time.
The stars are so far from Earth that their movements between images are very small, hence why Gaia has to measure their positions so accurately to even notice a difference. However, sometimes Gaia spots faint light sources that move considerably from one image of a certain region of the sky to the next, or are even only spotted in a single image before disappearing.
To move across Gaia’s field of view so quickly, these objects must be located much closer to Earth.
By checking the positions of these objects against the catalogues of known Solar System bodies, many of these objects turn out to be known asteroids. Some, however, are identified as potentially new detections and are then followed up by the astronomy community through the Gaia Follow-Up Network for Solar System Objects. Through this process, Gaia has successfully discovered new asteroids.
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Lost and found
These direct asteroid observations are important for solar system scientists. However, Gaia’s highly accurate measurements of the positions of stars provide an even more impactful, but indirect, benefit for asteroid tracking.
“When we observe an asteroid, we look at its motion relative to the background stars to determine its trajectory and predict where it will be in the future,” says Marco Micheli from ESA’s Near-Earth Object Coordination Centre. “This means that the more accurately we know the positions of the stars, the more reliably we can determine the orbit of an asteroid passing in front of them.”
In collaboration with the European Southern Observatory (ESO), Marco’s team took part in an observation campaign targeting 2012 TC4, a small asteroid that was due to pass by the Earth. Unfortunately, since the asteroid was first spotted in 2012, it had become fainter and fainter as it receded form Earth, eventually becoming unobservable. Where it would appear in the sky at the time of the upcoming campaign was not well known.
ESA’s Gaia space observatory is an ambitious mission to construct a three-dimensional map of our galaxy by making high-precision measurements of over one billion stars. However, on its journey to map distant suns, Gaia is revolutionising a field much closer to home. By accurately mapping the stars, it is helping researchers track down lost asteroids.
Gaia’s flight control team at ESA’s ESOC mission control centre in Darmstadt are responsible for making corrections to the spacecraft’s trajectory to keep it in the correct orbit and out of Earth’s shadow. They ensure that Gaia remains one of the most stable and accurate spacecraft ever. On 16 July 2019, the team successfully performed a crucial eclipse avoidance manoeuvre, moving Gaia into the extended phase of its mission and allowing it to keep scanning the sky for several more years.
ESA’s Gaia space observatory is an ambitious mission to construct a three-dimensional map of our galaxy by making high-precision measurements of over one billion stars. However, on its journey to map distant suns, Gaia is revolutionising a field much closer to home. By accurately mapping the stars, it is helping researchers track down lost asteroids.
Gaia’s flight control team at ESA’s ESOC mission control centre in Darmstadt are responsible for making corrections to the spacecraft’s trajectory to keep it in the correct orbit and out of Earth’s shadow. They ensure that Gaia remains one of the most stable and accurate spacecraft ever. On 16 July 2019, the team successfully performed a crucial eclipse avoidance manoeuvre, moving Gaia into the extended phase of its mission and allowing it to keep scanning the sky for several more years.
Okno médií
ESA’s Gaia space observatory is an ambitious mission to construct a three-dimensional map of our galaxy by making high-precision measurements of over one billion stars. However, on its journey to map distant suns, Gaia is revolutionising a field much closer to home. By accurately mapping the stars, it is helping researchers track down lost asteroids.
Keeping Earth safe
Gaia’s flight control team at ESA’s ESOC mission control centre in Darmstadt are responsible for making corrections to the spacecraft’s trajectory to keep it in the correct orbit and out of Earth’s shadow. They ensure that Gaia remains one of the most stable and accurate spacecraft ever. On 16 July 2019, the team successfully performed a crucial eclipse avoidance manoeuvre, moving Gaia into the extended phase of its mission and allowing it to keep scanning the sky for several more years.
ESA’s Gaia space observatory is an ambitious mission to construct a three-dimensional map of our galaxy by making high-precision measurements of over one billion stars. However, on its journey to map distant suns, Gaia is revolutionising a field much closer to home. By accurately mapping the stars, it is helping researchers track down lost asteroids.
Dancing with daylight
Gaia’s flight control team at ESA’s ESOC mission control centre in Darmstadt are responsible for making corrections to the spacecraft’s trajectory to keep it in the correct orbit and out of Earth’s shadow. They ensure that Gaia remains one of the most stable and accurate spacecraft ever. On 16 July 2019, the team successfully performed a crucial eclipse avoidance manoeuvre, moving Gaia into the extended phase of its mission and allowing it to keep scanning the sky for several more years.
Okno médií
ESA’s Gaia space observatory is an ambitious mission to construct a three-dimensional map of our galaxy by making high-precision measurements of over one billion stars. However, on its journey to map distant suns, Gaia is revolutionising a field much closer to home. By accurately mapping the stars, it is helping researchers track down lost asteroids.
Gaia’s flight control team at ESA’s ESOC mission control centre in Darmstadt are responsible for making corrections to the spacecraft’s trajectory to keep it in the correct orbit and out of Earth’s shadow. They ensure that Gaia remains one of the most stable and accurate spacecraft ever. On 16 July 2019, the team successfully performed a crucial eclipse avoidance manoeuvre, moving Gaia into the extended phase of its mission and allowing it to keep scanning the sky for several more years.
Okno médií
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