Today

 Sir Arthur Stanley Eddington

By Gene Major

Today, December 28 marks the birth of English astronomer/mathematician Sir Arthur Stanley Eddington (1882). Sir Eddington worked on understanding the structure of stars and especially for his work on interpreting Albert Einstein's theory of general relativity. Eddington's expedition (on the island of Principe to observe the total solar eclipse of 29 May 1919 and his photographs confirmed that a massive object like the sun can bend starlight due to gravitation, just as Einstein predicted. Eddington went on to discover the mass-luminosity relationship of stars in 1924 through his study of Cepheid variable stars. Eddington died unmarried in 1944. In 2019, Portugal issued a set of stamps honouring the 1919 eclipse expedition that confirmed Einstein's theories of general relativity, as did Sao Tome E Principe.

 PGM-17 Thor Postcard

The PGM-17A Thor was the first operational ballistic missile of the U. S. Air Force (USAF). Named after the Norse god of thunder, it was deployed in the United Kingdom between 1959 and September 1963 as an intermediate-range ballistic missile (IRBM) with thermonuclear warheads. Thor was 65 feet (20 m) in height and 8 feet (2.4 m) in diameter. The Thor and later Delta families of space launch vehicles used boosters derived from the initial Thor missile.

This postcard shows the Thor rocket on a launch pad at Cape Canaveral and is franked with the date November 2. 1959. 

The picture shows a Thor test launch was on May 12 1959 with missile number 187.

JUNO

 JUNO • NASA’s Juno Spacecraft ‘Hears’ Jupiter’s Moon

Dec. 17, 2021

IMAGE:  This JunoCam image shows two of Jupiter's large rotating storms, captured on Juno’s 38th perijove pass, on Nov. 29, 2021. Credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech/SwRI/MSSS 

• An audio track (Audio in post comments) collected during Jupiter mission’s Ganymede flyby offers a dramatic ride-along. It is one of the highlights mission scientists shared in a briefing at American Geophysical Union Fall Meeting.

Sounds from a Ganymede flyby, magnetic fields, and remarkable comparisons between Jupiter and Earth’s oceans and atmospheres were discussed during a briefing today on NASA’s Juno mission to Jupiter at the American Geophysical Union Fall Meeting in New Orleans.

Juno Principal Investigator Scott Bolton of the Southwest Research Institute in San Antonio has debuted a 50-second audio track generated from data collected during the mission’s close flyby of the Jovian moon Ganymede on June 7, 2021. Juno’s Waves instrument, which tunes in to electric and magnetic radio waves produced in Jupiter’s magnetosphere, collected the data on those emissions. Their frequency was then shifted into the audio range to make the audio track.

“This soundtrack is just wild enough to make you feel as if you were riding along as Juno sails past Ganymede for the first time in more than two decades,” said Bolton. “If you listen closely, you can hear the abrupt change to higher frequencies around the midpoint of the recording, which represents entry into a different region in Ganymede's magnetosphere.”

• Continue Reading: https://www.jpl.nasa.gov/.../nasas-juno-spacecraft-hears...

• Juno online at: https://www.nasa.gov/juno

• Credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech/SwRI/MSSS Image processing: Kevin M. Gill CC BY

Viktor Vasiliyevich

 On December 3, 1934, birth of Viktor Vasiliyevich Gorbatko in Ventsy-Zarya in Russia, Soviet cosmonaut selected on March 7, 1960 in the TsPK-1 group.

He participated in three space missions:

-Soyuz 7, from 12 to 17 October 1969.

-Soyuz 24, from February 7 to 25 1977.

-Soyuz 37, from July 23 to July 31, 1980.

He was assigned to the reserve crew for the flights of Soyuz 5, Soyuz 21, Soyuz 23 and Soyuz 31.

He leaves the group of cosmonauts on August 28, 1982 after 30 days 12 hours 47 minutes spent in space.

He died on May 17, 2017 in Moscow.

By Astrophilatelie Martin

Covers and stamps

 Covers and stamps Space meeting on July 17, 1975 Apollo/ Soyuz mission USA/ USSR. Kingdom of Laos.

By Astrophilatelie Martin

post office issued

 The French post office issued a stamp on July 22, 2019 for the 50th anniversary of man's first steps on the moon. Stamp valued at 1.30 Euros depicting Buzz Aldrin next  to the US flag on the moon.

First day cover and postcards with philatelic stamp city of Toulouse and insert with philatelic stamp city of Paris.

By Astrophilatelie Martin

Japanese NASDA cover

59th Japanese NASDA cover commemorating this time the International Microgravity Laboratory 2 (IML-2) mission flown on the Space Shuttle mission STS-65 in 1994.

Solar Eclipse

Bulgaria Solar Eclipse issue stamps from 2020 and 1999

By Nicholas Steggall 

X-Ray astronomy satellite

 Spektr-RG is an X-Ray astronomy satellite `Спектр-РГ,. also called Spectrum-X-Gamma, SRG, SXG) is a Russian–German high energy astrophysics space observatory which was launched on July 13. 2019.  It follows on from the Spektr-R satellite telescope launched in 2011.

This 2020 stamp from Russia shows the Spektr-RG.

By Nicholas Steggall

Herschel Observatory

This November, ESA's Mars Express spacecraft carried out a series of experimental communication tests with the Chinese rover (CNSA) Zhurong Mars. Mars Express successfully captured the data sent "blindly" by the rover and relayed it to Earth, where it was sent to Zhurong's team in China.

13:07 CET, November 7, Utopia Planitia.

The Zhurong rover, commanded by the Tianwen-1 orbiter, points its radio towards the Martian sky. At any moment, ESA's Mars Express will begin to pass overhead. Zhurong begins to transmit a signal into space. There is no way to know if the message is received.  Mars landing vehicles and rovers collect data that helps scientists answer fundamental questions about geology, the atmosphere, the surface environment, the history of water, and the potential for life on the Red Planet. To bring this knowledge back to Earth, they first transmit the data to a spacecraft orbiting Mars. These orbiters then use their much larger and more powerful transmitters to "transmit" the data across space to Earth. "Normally, an orbiter like ESA's Mars Express first sends a hail signal to a rover as a 'hello'," says James Godfrey, director of operations for the Mars Express spacecraft. "The rover then sends a response to establish stable communications and initiate the two-way exchange of information. But this depends on the compatibility of the rover's radio system with that of the orbiter." Since Mars Express broadcasts its "hello" signal using communication frequencies other than those received by the Chinese rover Zhurong Mars, two-way communication is not possible. But in the other direction, Zhurong can transmit a signal using a frequency that Mars Express can receive. Relay radio on Mars Express has a mode that allows for this one-way communication ("blind" communication where the sender cannot be sure that their signal is being received), but until now the technique had not been tested on the spacecraft.  In November, ESA's Mars Express and CNSA's Zhurong teams carried out a series of experimental communications tests in which Mars Express used this "blind" mode to listen for signals sent by the Zhurong Rover.  The experiments culminated in a successful test on November 20. "Mars Express has successfully received the signals sent by the rover and our colleagues from the Zhurong team have confirmed that all data has reached Earth in very good quality," says ESA's Gerhard Billig. "We look forward to further testing in the future to continue testing and further improving this method of communication between space missions." Data transmitted by Mars Express reached Earth at ESA's ESOC space operations center in Darmstadt, Germany, via communication antennas in deep space.  From there, this data was sent to Zhurong's team at the Beijing Aerospace Flight Control Center, which confirmed the test's success.

 

Soyuz 16

 Soviet stamp Soyuz 16 mission from December 2 to 8, 1974. Rehearsal for the Apollo-Soyuz flight ASTP.

By Astrophilatelie Martin