Medicina(BO) and Noto(SR) radiotelescopes The Smart-1 spacecraft is the first
European mission to conduct an observational scientific program about
the moon. It was lunched on 27 September 2003 from the European
spaceport in French (Guyane). It was captured by the moon gravity in
November 2003 and it will end its voyage on 3 September 2006 when
hitting the lunar surface. Contacts Smart-1
experiment live ! Monday august 28th 2006
The team works on hardware-software system at VLBI after last calculus tests were performed. Last details are defined. The Smart-1 signal, at the beginning, does not seem to be in the expected region of the sky. Thursday august 29th 2006 The SMART-1 S-band signal captured by Medicina radiotelescope! The
tests will continue waiting for the next occultation.
Wednesday august 30th 2006 After a heavy work morning, the observations begin at 15:00 UT. Smart-1 spacecraft looms up on the screen with two beautiful lateral lobes. Radioastronomers win the fight against coordinates. The work will not stop. Thursday 31 august 2006 The observations start at 12:15 U.T. Smart-1 signal looms up on the screen since the first hours of the evening, displaying its presence on 2,2 GHz band frequency. During the experiment, Noto and Medicina radioastronomers follow Smart-1 successfully, despite of its high speed. The experiment goes on... Friday september 1st, 2006 Medicina and Noto radiotelescopes continue to get new records from the spacecraft. Waiting for the impact becomes spasmodic. Saturday
september 2nd , 2006
News from here. Today Smart-1 will not generate lunar radio occultations visible from Italy. After instruments calibration and scheduling Noto observation, the last part of the experiment begins at 18:00 U.T. Sunday september 3rd , 2006 The impact has come. Smart-1 spacecraft fell in “Excellence lake” at 05:42 U.T, 30° below the horizon, hiding to our eyes. However, data recorded in "total power" are hundreds and hundreds Gigas of disc memory. Only the analysis will show us if the predictions about the existence of a lunar ionosphere was correct. The work starts now... http://www.esa.int/esaCP/SEMJSBZ7QQE_Italy_0.html http://www.esa.int/SPECIALS/SMART-1/index.html Thanks ing. Stelio Montebugnoli, dott.ssa Simona Righini, ing. Beppe Maccaferri, ing. Francesco Schillirò |
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