Scientists Losing Hope of Reviving French Telescope

Hello reader!

It follows one communicates published in the day (01/04), in the website "www.spaceflightnow.com", noting that Scientists losing hope of reviving French telescope.

Duda Falcão

Scientists Losing Hope of

Reviving French Telescope

BY STEPHEN CLARK

SPACEFLIGHT NOW

Posted: January 4, 2013

Scientists are losing optimism in the recovery of a French planet-hunting space telescope that suddenly stopped producing science data in November.

Credit: CNES

Artist's concept of the CoRoT satellite

The CoRoT mission's science instrument, comprised of a 10.6-inch telescope and a wide-field visible camera, stopped returning data Nov. 2. Engineers analyzing the problem blame the anomaly on a radiation-triggered disruption in communication between the instrument and the spacecraft's main computer.

Attempts to restart the instrument have been unsuccessful, according to Annie Baglin, CoRoT principal investigator from the Paris Observatory.

Baglin told Spaceflight Now the problem is likely in the instrument. The spacecraft is functioning normally as it orbits more than 550 miles above Earth.

CoRoT stands for the Convection, Rotation and Planetary Transits mission. The project is led by CNES, the French space agency.

CoRoT's instrument was designed with primary and redundant data chains. One of the data processing units failed in March 2009, leaving the payload completely reliant on a backup chain.

Both data unit glitches occurred after CoRoT passed over the South Atlantic Anomaly, a region of heightened radiation caused by a dip in the inner Van Allen radiation belt, which funnels energetic protons into the path of satellites in low Earth orbit.

CNES tried reviving the instrument in December after rebooting the entire satellite on a backup data bus, but the workaround did not work, according to Malcolm Fridlund, CoRoT project scientist at the European Space Agency, a partner in the mission.

Fridlund said there is evidence the instrument's data processing unit is working. Telemetry shows a temperature rise in the unit's electronics box each time engineers try a restart, but no science data comes down to Earth.

Baglin and Fridlund said CNES engineers are studying other ways to recover the CoRoT instrument, but the scientists acknowledged the mission's outlook is bleak.

"It is very unlikely that we will recover operations," Fridlund said. "CoRoT has been a great success, but it was a pity it failed because three days before the failure, the mission had just been extended a second time, and we have a very exciting program for this. But C'est la vie as they say in France."

CoRoT, which marked the sixth anniversary of its launch last week, was the first space mission dedicated to searching for planets circling other stars. CoRoT's telescope looks for exoplanets by measuring tiny dips in the brightness of stars caused by a planet passing in front of it.

The mission was designed to last two-and-a-half years, but CNES had extended operations until 2016 a few days before the Nov. 2 anomaly.

Credit: ESO/L. Calcada

Artist's concept of CoRoT-7b, the first
rocky exoplanet discovered by CoRoT

Since starting its science mission in 2007, scientists have used CoRoT to discover 34 new exoplanets. Five more planet candidates are close to being confirmed, Fridlund said.

Astronomers still need to do more analysis to confirm about 200 more planet candidates observed by CoRoT, according to CNES.

CoRoT discovered the first rocky planet beyond the solar system in 2009. The planet, named CoRoT-7b, is located 480 light-years from Earth and orbits its parent star every 20 hours. The planet is nearly five times as massive and 70 percent larger than Earth, leading astronomers to believe its surface is solid.

But CoRoT-7b is so close too close to its star to support life. Temperatures on the day side of the planet may reach 3,600 degrees Fahrenheit, according to astronomers.

NASA's Kepler observatory, which features a larger telescope and a more powerful camera, has so far found 105 confirmed planets and more than 2,000 potential new worlds still requiring follow-up study.

Officials have not released the final 18 months of CoRoT's science data, so astronomers could find more planets credited to the French mission, Fridlund said.

Fonte: Site www.spaceflightnow.com

Comentário: Lamento saber que o CoRoT já era, mas uma hora isso tinha de acontecer, pois o mesmo já tinha ultrapassado em muito o seu tempo de vida previsto. A missão CoRot que contou com uma participação significativa de pesquisadores brasileiros (o Brasil contribuiu com a utilização da estação receptora de dados de Natal, a participação de até 5 engenheiros/cientistas brasileiros na elaboração do "software" de calibração, correção instrumental e redução de dados e na participação de cientistas brasileiros nos grupos de trabalho para definição, observação e análise preparatória das estrelas que seriam observadas) foi um tremendo sucesso, fazendo grandes descobertas nas áreas de detecção e estudo de oscilações estelares (Astrossismologia) e na procura de planetas extra-solares, em particular planetas telúricos. Existem notícias ainda não confirmadas que devido ao sucesso da participação brasileira na missão existe a possibilidade desses pesquisadores brasileiros participarem de outras missões, como a futura Missão PLATO. Vale informar que o satélite CoRoT (COnvection, ROtation & Planetary Transits) fez parte do programa de pequenos satélites da agência espacial francesa CNES. Com peso total de 600 kg, ele utilizou uma plataforma PROTEUS (CNES-Alcatel) de órbita baixa (850 km), sendo lançado da Base de Kourou em dezembro de 2006, visando cumprir uma missão de três anos. A carga útil do CoRot foi composta por um telescópio afocal de 270 mm, uma câmera de grande campo (~10° de raio, no céu), equipada com quatro detectores CCD (2048 x 2048 pixels) e eletrônica de controle, processamento e transmissão de dados. O satélite media 4,20 x 2,00 metros aproximadamente. Foi colocado numa órbita inercial polar, que permite a observação de zonas do céu livres de eclipses pela terra por cerca de 150 dias ininterruptos, o que constituiu com isso um dos grandes trunfos do experimento. Participaram da missão laboratórios franceses e de vários países europeus, contribuindo para a carga útil ou para o segmento solo. O satélite foi dedicado à sismologia estelar (análise de pulsações não-radiais das estrelas) e à procura de exoplanetas. Para isso, o experimento fez fotometria estelar de altíssima precisão (D F/F ~10^-6), que aliada a longos períodos de medidas em cada região do céu, permitiu atingir-se a resolução em frequência de 0,1m Hz, e detectar, pela primeira vez na história da Humanidade, planetas do tamanho da Terra, passando em frente aos respectivos discos estelares. Além de vários centros de pesquisa franceses, participam da missão espacial COROT a ESA, a DASA, o Research Space Science Departement do ESTEC (Holanda) e laboratórios científicos dos seguintes países europeus: Alemanha, Áustria, Bélgica, Espanha e Itália.