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Mars Express Heads for the Red Planet

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Mars Express Heads for the Red Planet council & community news instruments, including the the Open University heads up lander, have been checked and the team, which also includes performed as expected. UK researchers from the University scientists are involved in three of Leicester and the Mullard of the seven instruments on the Space Science Laboratory. The mission’s orbiter component. Open University is also • The Mullard Space Science responsible for a key instrument Laboratory and Rutherford – the gas analysis package. Appleton Laboratory are involved with ASPERA, the Mars Exploration energetic neutral atoms Rovers follow analyser, which will look at Mars Express has now been how the solar wind erodes joined by two NASA Mars the Martian atmosphere. Exploration Rovers launched on • University Colleges London 10 June and 7 July. This mission and the Open University are seeks to determine the history involved with HRSC, the of climate and water at two high-resolution stereo colour sites on Mars where conditions Mars Express may have once been favourable to life. Once on Mars, each heads for the red planet rover will navigate itself around obstacles as it drives across the he European Space undergo a delicate but crucial imager, which will image the martian surface. TAgency’s Mars Express operation – releasing the launch entire planet in colour. space probe (Frontiers 16, p.19) clamps fixing the Mars lander, • University College London, Mars Rover was launched aboard a Soyuz Beagle 2 to the spacecraft Queen Mary University of rocket from the Baikonur during the launch so that it was London and the University of Cosmodrome in Kazakhstan on not affected by the launch Bristol are involved with 2 June. The probe deployed its vibrations. The release was a key MARSIS, the subsurface solar panels successfully and step, necessary so that Beagle 2 sounding radar/altimeter, performed manoeuvres to put it can be ejected when the which will search for water in a trajectory that will take it to spacecraft arrives at Mars. beneath the surface of Mars. Mars by late December. The spacecraft is now well on The UK leads the Beagle 2 The spacecraft also had to its way to Mars. The various lander project. Colin Pillinger of Birthday New Council members executive chairman of the nneila Sargent and George National Research Council. She Serco Group. Through Honours AGray have been appointed will provide an international Serco, he has many years of wo PPARC-supported to the PPARC Council, replacing perspective to PPARC Council. experience of working with the Tscientists were recognised Ian Ritchie and Andy Lawrence. Dr Gray has been appointed European Space Agency and in this year’s Queen’s Birthday Professor Sargent has been for 2 years. He was chairman the European Southern Honours List. Brian Foster appointed for four years. She is of NPL Management Ltd (the Observatory, and more (right), who is a member of Professor of Astronomy at the operating company for the recently with CERN. He is the PPARC Council, received California Institute of National Physical Laboratory) currently a member of the an OBE for services to particle Technology (Caltech), director from 1995 to 2002, and was Cabinet Office Security Vetting physics research, while Colin of the Owens Valley Radio also chairman of Regus plc and Appeals Panel. Pillinger (left) was awarded a Observatory and director of CBE for services to the Caltech/JPL Interferometry higher education Science Centre. She has been and to science. President of the American Astronomical Society and chaired NASA’s Space Science 25 Advisory Committee as well as serving on many advisory George committees to the National Anneila Sargent Gray Science Foundation and the Norman Seeff community news he new extension to the The Science Minister Lord Sainsbury UK’s unique underground T is briefed by dark matter researcher facility to detect dark matter in Neil Spooner (left) and Bob Boucher the Universe, situated in the (Sheffield Vice-Chancellor) Boulby salt mine in Yorkshire, was officially opened by Lord interacting massive particles – Sainsbury at the end of April. which may account for the The Science Minister gamely observed anomalous motions donned the requisite luminous of stars and galaxies in orange miner’s overalls and terms of the extra gravity cumbersome safety gear before supplied by the WIMPs’ descending the 1100 metres to invisible mass (Frontiers 12, look around the refurbished p.5, 13, p.21). laboratory. The laboratory has been upgraded with a £3.1 million grant from the New laboratory Department of Trade and Industry’s Joint Infrastructure facilities opened at Boulby Fund (JIF) which has also funded a new service building The sensitive equipment, with a hot, sticky fog of salt Sheffield and Edinburgh, on the surface. The new area which is designed to detect (potash) particles that prickle Rutherford Appleton will eventually house more signals from elusive subatomic the face. The mine actually Laboratory, and Imperial sensitive versions of the particles which could make up stretches for 5 kilometres under College London, as well as experiments, and possibly other most of the Universe’s mass is the North Sea. international participants) projects that would benefit housed in a specially designed In striking contrast, the regularly check the operation from a subterranean location area at the bottom of the laboratories themselves are and the data coming from the that protects them from cosmic working mine. Before reaching clean, bright areas with good three world-leading dark matter rays and other background the laboratory, you have to pass ventilation. Here, members of experiments – NAIAD, ZEPLIN 1 radiation. along a series of rather the UK Dark Matter and DRIFT. These are trying to Nina Hall intimidating dark tunnels filled Collaboration (Universities of detect WIMPs – weakly Royal re-birth for the Lovell Telescope rince Charles visited Jodrell The Prince of Wales was operational life of only 10 PBank Observatory at the end shown the new telescope years. “The fact that it is of April to commemorate the control and observing rooms, still in constant use, and ‘re-birth’ of the Lovell Telescope and was told about the work of now better than at any following its major upgrade the Observatory by its Director, time in its history, is a funded by the Joint Andrew Lyne, and Peter truly magnificent Infrastructure Fund (JIF) and Wilkinson and Philip Diamond. achievement!,” he said. administered by PPARC. He also met teachers and Having seen the The £2.5 million upgrade saw students from the Catholic telescope at close the total replacement of the High School in Chester who quarters, Prince Charles surface and the installation of a were making observations with took part in the opening new, high-precision, drive one of the smaller telescopes. ceremony. He was system. Together, they will The Observatory has helped welcomed by Manchester allow it to operate over a the school in its successful University’s Chancellor, four-times greater range of bid to become a specialist Anna Ford, and made an Prince Charles at Jodrell Bank with Director frequencies so enabling Science College. in-depth speech in reply to Andrew Lyne (right) and Sir Bernard Lovell exciting new science to be A highlight of his visit was that by the Vice-Chancellor carried out. It will also be able meeting Sir Bernard Lovell, who Sir Martin Harris. Following his relayed over the public address to play a significantly greater inspired the building of the unveiling of a commemorative system to signal the end of 26 role in the 217-kilometre telescope some 50 years ago. plaque, his final act was to what had been a great event in MERLIN array and the European He told the Prince that when initiate a move of the telescope the life of the Observatory. VLBI (Very Large Baseline completed in 1957 it had been to the pulsar B0329+54 whose Ian Morison Interferometer) network. expected to have an 0.7 second-period pulses were E-mail: [email protected] Philip Williams 1939 – 2003 he solar-terrestrial physics Tcommunity was saddened Gemini Observatory/GMOS-S Commissioning Team Hubble Heritage Team/STScI/AURA/NASA to learn of the sudden death in The galaxy group HCG87 imaged with GMOS-S (left) compared with a similar image taken by the Hubble Space Telescope Cardiff of Professor Phil Williams at the age of 64. Images from new After an early scientific career constellation Capricornus. in radioastronomy, Phil Williams Gemini spectrograph Further upgrades to GMOS- was appointed to the staff of the South are planned including an University of Wales, Aberystwyth rival view from space Integral Field Unit (IFU), as for in 1967. He quickly became emini’s second multi- During commissioning, the GMOS-North, and they will interested in incoherent scatter Gobject spectrograph, new imaging spectrograph, begin commissioning in early radar, being involved in early GMOS-South, capable of without the help of adaptive 2004 (Frontiers 14, p.7). Built by work on developing the obtaining hundreds of spectra optics, captured images of the University of Durham, it technique. He made significant in one ‘snapshot,’ has just astronomical objects, which are uses more than 1000 optical contributions to solar-terrestrial finished undergoing among the sharpest ever taken fibres, tipped at each end with physics, and played key roles in commissioning on the 8-metre from the ground. The image microscopic lenses, to dissect an establishing and directing the Gemini South Telescope at reveals remarkable details, object under study. This gives EISCAT project (see p.16). Cerro Pachón, Chile. The twin previously seen only with the GMOS a 3-D view of the target, Phil spent several years in telescopes, Gemini North on Hubble Space Telescope, of the in which each pixel in the image Scandinavia on secondment as Hawaii and Gemini South, now Hickson Compact Group 87 is replaced by a spectrum.
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