ESA

A stunning sapphire and gold casket is the latest addition to the LISA Pathfinder flight hardware collection. Designed to house the LISA Technology Package proof masses the casket is now undergoing experiment characterisation tests in Italy.

Herschel is the first space facility dedicated to the submillimetre and far-infrared, and will be operated as a multiuser astronomical observatory that will provide observation opportunities to the entire astronomical community. This workshop is targetted to an audience of Key Programme users.

The thermal balance and thermal vacuum (TBTV) test campaign for the Planck spacecraft has been completed. During this campaign the spacecraft and payload were subjected to near-flight conditions inside a thermal vacuum chamber at the Centre Spatiale de Liège (CSL) test facilities. Over the course of about five weeks the spacecraft and payload were cooled down to operational temperatures. The extremely low operational temperature required for the HFI instrument was achieved on 22 July 2008 when the HFI bolometers reached 0.1 K (see Figure 1).

The main goals of this conference are to assess our current knowledge of solar activity to prepare for observations of the new major activity expected from the beginning of Carrington Cycle 24, and to encourage effective observations of this activity.

A recent model of the emission from ultra-magnetized neutron stars (magnetars) shows great promise in offering a unified view of the high energy emission from these objects. This is reported by Nanda Rea and colleagues in a recent issue of the Astrophysical Journal. The results are based on the systematic analysis of data collected with XMM-Newton and INTEGRAL.

An IXO science meeting will be held on 28-29 January, 2009 in Cambridge, MA, USA, at the Royal Sonesta Hotel. Members of the scientific community are invited to participate. The meeting will focus on preparing for the upcoming U.S. Decadal Survey, and will feature presentations by the Science Definition Team, the Instrument Working Group, the Telescope Working Group, and the ESA, JAXA and NASA projects. There will be updates on the mission configuration from both the recent ESA Concurrent Design Facility (CDF) effort as well as the latest developments in the NASA Mission Studies. The overall science goals of the IXO mission will be discussed and the status of preparing the science case for submission to the Decadal Survey presented. Please see the mission web sites ( http://ixo.gsfc.nasa.gov/ and http://sci.esa.int/ixo) which will be updated shortly with details of the meeting, or contact Mike Garcia ( mgarcia@cfa.harvard.edu ).

The NASA/ESA Hubble Space Telescope has taken the first visible light snapshot of a planet circling another star.

The Herschel spacecraft is now installed in the Large Space Simulator (LSS) at ESTEC ready for thermal balance and thermal vacuum tests. This is the final system test in the environmental test campaign series.

LISA Pathfinder has successfully completed a series of tests devised to characterise the shocks that the spacecraft will experience at launcher separation and when the science and propulsion modules separate upon reaching the operational orbit at L1.

The goal of the workshop is to bring together experts in modeling and observations of the Mars atmosphere and climate system. The martian atmosphere has shaped the planet's history and surface and may have created climatic conditions that were suitable for sustaining surface liquid water and possibly life in the past. The study of the martian atmosphere is also of great interest for studies of comparative meteorology, in order to better understand Earth's atmosphere and to improve our knowledge of the martian environment for future robotic and human missions.

The meeting will review the current status of magnetic field measurements and their implications in the light of the recent physical theories and numerical modeling that address the fundamental scales and processes in the highly magnetized turbulent plasma. Another motivation for this meeting is the commemoration of the Centenary of the discovery of the Evershed effect at Kodaikanal, India in 1909.

Ulysses has forever changed the way scientists view the Sun and its effect on the surrounding space. In the November 2008 issue of the ESA Bulletin Richard Marsden and Nigel Angold consider the epic voyage of this remarkable spacecraft.

European companies and institutes active in the space sector are invited to attend an Industry Space Day during which the programme of work for the Cosmic Vision 2015-2025 Technology Plan will be presented. This Industry Space Day takes place on 21 November 2008 at the European Space Research and Technology Centre, ESTEC, Noordwijk, The Netherlands.

- Cape Canaveral Lunar Declaration - Approximately 200 International Lunar Explorers gathered at the 10th ILEWG Conference on Exploration and Utilization of the Moon (ICEUM10) co-sponsored by the International Lunar Exploration Working Group (ILEWG), NASA Lunar Exploration Analysis Group (LEAG), Space Resources Roundtable (SRR) and the Lunar and Planetary Institute, from 27 to 31 October, at Cape Canaveral, Florida, US. The conference engaged scientists, engineers, industry and organizations in the review of recent activities and the coordinated preparation of the next steps on the Moon.

The fifth European Space Weather Week (ESWW) is held in Brussels and will discuss recent advances in both scientific and applications based domains and how these advances relate to user needs. It will also provide an opportunity to discuss the Space Weather community's contribution to possible future ESA action in the area of Space Situational Awareness. New data, tools and techniques will also be discussed and demonstrated during the workshop with a view to aiding the transition between new scientific results and user-oriented space weather services.

The Hubble Space Telescope is back in business with a snapshot of the fascinating galaxy pair Arp 147.

Just over three weeks after the previous fly-by of Enceladus, Cassini will again fly by this Saturnian moon, passing at an altitude of 197 kilometres. Cassini will approach Enceladus on a fast, inclined trajectory over the northern hemisphere and will depart over the southern hemisphere. The closest approach occurs on 31 October at 17:14:51 UT over latitude 28° S and longitude 97° W.

CoRoT has unambiguously detected solar-like oscillations in three main sequence stars. All three stars are of main spectral type F, with a significantly higher effective temperature than our Sun. These results are a milestone for the CNES/ESA CoRoT mission and in general for studies of stellar interiors through asteroseismology.

XMM-Newton, ESA's X-ray observatory, has re-established communication contact with Earth, showing that the spacecraft is safe and fully under control. The news was confirmed this morning by the mission control team at ESA's European Space Operations Centre (ESOC) in Darmstadt, Germany.

During last weekend ESA lost contact with its XMM-Newton X-ray observatory. Many space agencies and organisations are now joining forces trying to fix the problem: a feeble radio signal has been heard, and ground-based observations confirm that the spacecraft is intact.