Published 16:17 IST, December 18th 2019
European satellite launch company delays CHEOPS mission due to glitch
European Arianespace delayed the launch of a brand new spacecraft designed to look for alien planets alongside four other satellites due to a technical glitch.
- World News
- 3 min read
European satellite launch company Arianespace has delayed the launch of a brand new spacecraft designed to look for alien planets alongside four other satellites due to a technical error with the rocket supposed to carry the spacecraft. According to reports, the Soyuz rocket was expected to launch the CHEOPS mission that has the objective to find exoplanets and four other satellites from the Guiana Space Center. However, 85 minutes before the scheduled launch, a glitch led to the launch being aborted.
CHEOPS MISSION
Spokesperson fo the Arianespace said that The Soyuz rocket's automatic launch sequence for Flight VS23 witnessed a glitch prior to the launch on December 17. The representatives of the company said that a new launch date is yet to be finalized. According to reports, the CHEOPS spacecraft will be used to analyse and study star systems that are already known to host exoplanets. The aim of the mission is to keep in mind discoveries that have been made in the past to have a much better understanding of alien planets revolving around distant stars.
Human hibernation in deep space missions?
In a different incident, a team of scientists is studying the possibility of Human Hibernation for deep space exploration missions. The ESA's (European Space Agency) SciSpacE team grouped at the Concurrent Design Facility to understand the basic concept of human hibernation for long deep space missions and also to understand how such a task would affect or influence the overall design of a space mission.
The fact that deep space exploration missions beyond the moon has been accomplished with the help of satellites and cameras, attempting human hibernation in space missions would be a difficult task. The Concurrent Design Facility's team looked into and extensively researched the impact of human hibernation on the space mission design. The CDF team took the Mars mission as their primary reference model wherein 6 human beings will be sent to Mars and back to Earth within a span of 5 years.
They looked into how real-life crew hibernation would influence space design, using focused on some known advantages of hibernation of human beings for space travel by stating an example that a small space capsule could be used if the crew was hibernating in their long journey to Mars.
(With inputs from agencies)
Updated 16:35 IST, December 18th 2019