LIVE: Zenit-2SB launch with Spektr-R - July 18, 2011

[Cbased]

http://www.engineeringnews.co.za/article/south-africa-set-to-join-space-radio-astronomy-programme-2011-09-23

"It is now almost certain that South Africa will soon join the Russian-led international Radioastron space telescope consortium. South Africa is expected to sign the agreement late this month or next month."

"South Africa is expected to use the new 15 m dish at the Hartebeesthoek Radio Astronomy Observatory (HartRAO), west of Pretoria, to participate in Radioastron. The 15 m dish was originally the XDM prototype dish for the Karoo Array Telescope (KAT, now MeerKAT) programme, but has been converted into an operational radio telescope to complement HartRAO’s main instrument, the 26 m dish."

[Prober]

Looks like a major update on the Spektr-R

Maybe someone can translate some of this?   It looks very good.

http://www.federalspace.ru/main.php?id=2&nid=19328

[ykpoi]

Maybe someone can translate some of this?   It looks very good.

Mostly boring.

http://www.federalspace.ru/img/news/2012_07_18_s1_10.JPG

18 jul 11 - start
23 jul 11 - reflector opening
29 jul 11 - space telescope and Plazma-F (additional experiment) work begin
sept 11 - flight tests begin, first telescope tests
oct 11 - flight tests ends
nov 11 - data channel tests, test for parametrs of telescope
15 nov 11 - first VLBI session
dec 11 - tests and calibration of telescope in VLBI regime
jan 12 - first science observation (Early Science Program begins)
feb 12-jan 13 - Early Science Program

http://www.federalspace.ru/img/news/2012_07_18_s1_13.JPG

First year:
- 100+ VLBI observations
- 30+ antenna alignments
- 400+ control sessions (2000 hours)

http://www.federalspace.ru/img/news/2012_07_18_s2_04.JPG

period: 8,5 days
perigee: 67 000 km
apogee (max interferometer base): 282 000 km
orbit inclination: 81 deg

http://www.federalspace.ru/img/news/2012_07_18_s2_11.JPG

First mapping of quasar 0716+714.
Base: 1.5-4.5, 5.5, 7, 15 Earth diametrs. Wave length: 6cm.

http://www.federalspace.ru/img/news/2012_07_18_s2_12.JPG

Quasar OJ287 - the biggest double black hole 18x10^9, 14x10^7 mass of sun).
Period 12 years, observation 6 apr 2012 Spektr-R-Effelsberg (Germany). Wave length: 6cm, base 7,2 earth diameters.

http://www.federalspace.ru/img/news/2012_07_18_s2_14.JPG

Pulsar 0950+08 (flow blinks). 25 jan 2012 / 92 cm / Spectr-R-Arecibo (USA) / 17 Earth diams.

http://www.federalspace.ru/img/news/2012_07_18_s2_17.JPG

quantitative results:
- 29 observations of active galaxy centres
- observation of 9 pulsars (neutron stars)
- 6 sources of maser lines in the regions of star formation and planetary systems

Earth telescopes: Russia, Ukraine, Australia, GB, Germany, Spain, Italy, Netherlands, USA, Japan, India.

http://www.federalspace.ru/img/news/2012_07_18_s3_01.JPG

Plazama-F instruments:
BMSV - analyser of sun wind
MEP - sun & space rays detector
SSNI-2 - collecting and storage data device.

http://www.federalspace.ru/img/news/2012_07_18_s3_02.JPG

Plazma-F goal: monitoring of sun wind and space weather
Results: registred few emissions of sun plazma that resulted magnetic storms (last 14 jul 2012)

http://www.federalspace.ru/img/news/2012_07_18_s3_03.JPG

Plazma-F science goal: study small-scale structure of solar wind (resolution up to 32 msec)
Results:
- solar wind consists of thin interacting jets
- solar wind energy balance depends of intensity of wind turbulence

[Star One]

Just a minor point but why do we hear so little about this satellite, you get various bits of coverage of the other observatories up there, but this one very little if anything?

[ykpoi]

Just a minor point but why do we hear so little about this satellite, you get various bits of coverage of the other observatories up there, but this one very little if anything?

I'm not sure, but it was some problems (about calculating orbital parameters and other), so main science program is not still started. The last newsletter of the project: http://www.asc.rssi.ru/radioastron/news/news_en.pdf

[Prober]

Just a minor point but why do we hear so little about this satellite, you get various bits of coverage of the other observatories up there, but this one very little if anything?

The concept is great, and it looks like a it would be good for the taxpayers as well.

[Star One]

Just a minor point but why do we hear so little about this satellite, you get various bits of coverage of the other observatories up there, but this one very little if anything?

I'm not sure, but it was some problems (about calculating orbital parameters and other), so main science program is not still started. The last newsletter of the project: http://www.asc.rssi.ru/radioastron/news/news_en.pdf

Well now it has got going & finished testing it will hopefully garner some greater coverage now. Just seems a shame to ignore an observatory such as this.

[jcm]

Just a minor point but why do we hear so little about this satellite, you get various bits of coverage of the other observatories up there, but this one very little if anything?

VLBI is hard work. It's not like taking an image with Hubble. Going from the raw data from Spektr-R and the participating ground based telescopes and syncing them up ('correlating' the signals)  requires careful calibration. You're doing interferometry -
if you don't have the spacecraft position exactly right to within a fraction of a wavelength then you don't have a result. And the result isn't a picture exactly, it's a few Fourier components of the Fourier transform of a picture. So even once they do have results, presenting it in a public-friendly form is a challenge. And there isn't a legacy of comparable previous missions to build on, so they will be confronting a bunch of new data analysis challenges.  I'd note that you probably haven't seen that much data from ground based radio telescopes either - this subfield has only recently moved towards public data archives, its history grew from physics departments playing with WW2 radars and the mindset has been much more like physics lab experiments where you publish the science paper but the raw data stays in your lab notebook.


As an analogy, the Planck satellite launched in 2009 has returned some nice images of clusters of galaxies, but its main science product - the data on the microwave background - is much harder to get out of the data and we're still waiting for that (soon, soon..) How soon you see product from a mission, and how much, depends a lot on the type of mission. On Chandra we were able to do reasonable science within a few months, but only because we'd dealt with very similar data on previous missions.

[hop]

There was an item on the NRAO site about Radioastron today
https://science.nrao.edu/enews/5.8/index.shtml#radioastron

Edit:
I forget there was a thread in the science section for this mission http://forum.nasaspaceflight.com/index.php?topic=27335.15

[eeergo]

Very unfortunate news about the orbital remainders of this Fregat:

https://twitter.com/18SPCS/status/1259200117296386055

[eeergo]

https://twitter.com/RussianSpaceWeb/status/1367246293702078467

:\ Damn.

[Sam Ho]

Gabbard diagram of that breakup, from the Orbital Debris Quarterly News

https://orbitaldebris.jsc.nasa.gov/quarterly-news/pdfs/odqnv25i1.pdf