Wednesday, December 18, 2013

Today will launch advanced spacecraft Gaia - SayberCekyuriti.Ru


/ / CyberSecurity.ru / / – The European Space Agency plans to hold today the launch of its new research unit Gaia, worth about 740 million euros. This high cost of the device due to its ambitious goals: it will have to explore the “billions” of stars, in particular to make them accurate maps, and determine the distance to them.

In ESA say that Gaia will allow us to get a “first realistic picture of the Milky Way. ” In addition, scientific equipment unit can detect many previously unknown space objects. Start Russian carrier rocket “Soyuz” with Gaia held on board at 6:12 am local time, or at 13:12 MSK. The launch will be hold from Kourou in French Guiana.

As part of the launch vehicle Gaia will remain for 40 minutes after the start, after which it must undock. Ultimately, the telescope must be raised to a height of 1.5 million kilometers above the Earth. This flight is a total of Gaia take about a month. In ESA say that the development of Gaia conducted about 20 years.

designing apparatus engaged evropeyskeaya Astrium, which told that the machine should be run at least until 2020. By the time he will give to the earth about 1 petabyte of valuable information.

originally planned that Gaia will be launched in late November. However, the start was delayed due to a failure on another satellite, which is already working in space. The fact that Gaia shares some components with the machine that has the technical problems.

main objective of Gaia – the creation of high-precision three-dimensional map of our Milky Way galaxy, constantly watching the stars and identifying their disposition relative to other objects in galaxy. In addition, Gaia will study the physical properties of stars, including their temperature, luminosity and composition. Ultimately, these data should help in understanding the evolution of the Milky Way. Gaia will explore the stars with solar orbits, sitting on 1.5 million miles ahead of the Earth’s orbit in what is called the second Lagrange point.

spacecraft will rotate slowly and through the use of two telescopes he explores the entire visible part of the celestial sphere, creating a picture with a resolution of about 2 billion pixels.

Recently, researchers tested the so-called solar panel system, 10.5-meter diameter Gaia will protect from solar ultraviolet radiation hard, and to prevent heating apparatus to body Gaia has always had the same temperature – minus 110 degrees. Also partially shield equipped with solar panels.


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