News / Press Releases
Radio astronomers listen to a swan song from the Moon
European radio astronomers led by a team from the Joint Institute for VLBI in Europe
(JIVE, Dwingeloo, The Netherlands) will monitor radio transmissions
from SMART-1 using a network of radio telescopes located in South
America and Australia. These telescopes, TIGO
(Transportable Integrated Geodetic Observatory, Concepcion, Chile),
ROEN
(Northeastern Space Radio Observatory, Fortaleza, Brazil),
Mt. Pleasant Observatory (Hobart, Australia) and the Australia
Telescope Compact Array (Narrabri, NSW, Australia), will
operate in Very Long Baseline Interferometry (VLBI) mode.
The observation will allow radio astronomers to pinpoint the
exact time and location of the impact and investigate radio-
physical effects of wave propagation in close vicinity to
the Lunar surface.
TIGO, one of the participating telescopes, will send data
to the Data Processing Centre at JIVE for immediate evaluation
as part of the Express Production Real-time e-VLBI Service
(EXPReS) project coordinated by JIVE and funded by the
European
Commission (DG-INFSO).
The data transfer will be
made possible by a close collaboration between several
national and international networks: REUNA (Chile), RedCLARA
(South America), GÉANT2
(Europe) and SURFnet (Netherlands).
The data from all four radio telescopes will be processed at
JIVE using software first developed and used for successful
tracking of the European Space Agency’s Huygens Probe during
its descent through Titan's atmosphere in January 2005.
In May 2006, the Medicina radio telescope
in Italy and Metsähovi
radio telescope in Finland observed SMART-1
to test the feasibility of the VLBI setup. JIVE also
successfully coordinated an observing test with TIGO and
Fortaleza in June, the first ever spacecraft tracking
conducted at these two telescopes. These were further
verified by a July 2006 test using the Westerbork Synthesis
Radio Telescope (WSRT) in the Netherlands.
Successful tracking of the SMART-1 spacecraft before and
during impact will validate observation from ground stations
for future lunar and planetary missions, such as China’s
Chang’e-1 lunar orbiter due to launch in 2007.
Leonid Gurvits from JIVE leads the team of radio
astronomers tracking SMART-1: "SMART-1 offers a unique
opportunity to verify observing strategies developed by
JIVE scientists for future VLBI tracking of interplanetary
missions. In this sense, SMART-1 fulfils its destiny as a
demonstrator of new space technologies and paves the way
for exciting future endeavours in the Solar System."
About JIVE
About EXPReS
# # #
Contact:
Kristine Yun, Public Outreach Officer
Notes to editors:
The Australia Telescope is funded by the Commonwealth of
Australia for operation as a National Facility managed by CSIRO,
Australia's Commonwealth Scientific and Industrial Research Organisation.
Links:
DWINGELOO, The Netherlands (31 August 2006) -- Early morning on Sunday,
3 September 2006, the European spacecraft SMART-1 will complete its
three year mission with a controlled impact to the surface of the Moon.
The Joint Institute for VLBI in Europe (JIVE,
www.jive.nl) was
established as a scientific foundation in December 1993.
JIVE’s mandate is to support the operations of the European
VLBI Network (EVN) in the widest sense. The major activity
has been the development, construction and successful
operation of the EVN Data Processor, a powerful supercomputer
that combines the signals from radio telescopes located
across the planet, creating one huge telescope of inter-
continental dimensions. Using this technique of Very
Long Baseline Interferometry (VLBI), astronomers can
make detailed images of cosmic radio sources, providing
astronomers with the clearest, highest resolution view of
some of the most distant and energetic objects in the Universe.
Express Production Real-time e-VLBI Service
(EXPReS, www.expres-eu.org),
is a three-year project funded by the European Commission with
the objective of creating a distributed, large-scale astronomical
instrument of continental and intercontinental dimensions.
This electronic Very Long Baseline Interferometer (e-VLBI)
is achieved using high-speed communication networks operating
in real-time and connecting together some of the largest and
most sensitive radio telescopes on the planet. EXPReS is
coordinated by JIVE, the Joint Institute for VLBI in Europe
(www.jive.nl), which is hosted by
ASTRON, the Netherlands Foundation for Research in Astronomy
(www.astron.nl), in Dwingeloo.
Dr Leonid Gurvits
Joint Institute for VLBI in Europe (JIVE)
+31 521-586514 (office)
+31 529-015149 (mobile)
lgurvits@jive.nl
Express Production Real-time e-VLBI Service (EXPReS)
Joint Institute for VLBI in Europe
+31 521-596500
kyun@jive.nl
www.expres-eu.org
