Science and Space

space and astronomy articles.

Smart Report Card of SMART-1

SMART-1(Small Missions for Advanced Research in Technology), launch on 27 September 2003, is doing well. The first phase, testing of primary solar-electric propulsion and of a miniaturised payload for cruise science experiments, telecommunications and spacecraft navigation, is successfully completed.

So far, the SMART-1 ion engine has operated for about 3300 hours and covered a distance of some 78 million kilometres, with only 52 kilograms of propellant. With this successful demonstration, SMART-1 is paving the way for future deep-space missions, using a solar- electric engine as primary propulsion.

For the first time, SMART-1 has used very short radio waves (called Ka band at 32 Gigahertz, with the KaTE instrument) to communicate with Earth. These enable far more information to be transmitted over deep space than the commonly used frequencies and in a shorter period of time.

Another SMART-1 achievement is the successful testing of a laser communication link experiment with ESA’s optical ground station in Tenerife, Canary Islands in February of this year. This laser technology, in which Europe is a leader, has already been applied to telecommunications satellites, but this was the first time a laser link had been used to communicate with a distant, rapidly moving spacecraft.

With all these achievements to celebrate after its first year in space, SMART-1 is now preparing for the next big milestone, the lunar capture which is expected to take place less than two months from now.

SMART-1 is Europe’s first lunar mission and will perform a detailed scientific study of the Moon.

posted by: kyawoo at 20:58 | link | comments |
unmanned missions, space science, moon

Comments: