Latest news with #Ariane
CBC
6 days ago
- Science
- CBC
Was it a plane? Was it a UFO? Bright light over Quebec skies captivates stargazers
Social Sharing With eyes turned to the skies, stargazers taking in the Perseid meteor shower on Tuesday night witnessed something out of this world. In a publication on Facebook, the Astrolab du parc national du Mont-Mégantic in Quebec's Eastern Townships, described it as "a magnificent and luminous spiral streaking across the sky at around 10:40 p.m." Several people in the Montreal area also witnessed the strange phenomenon and reached out to CBC News describing a bright light enveloped by a fuzzy halo and warning of a UFO sighting. While it was certainly unusual, it wasn't really an unidentified flying object, but more likely the result of a rocket launch, according to the Astrolab. "It was in all likelihood the second stage of an Ariane 6 rocket which was igniting its engine in order to de-orbit itself after having released the European satellite Metop-SGA1 in a polar orbit," the Facebook post explained. The European Space Agency confirmed on its website that a weather satellite was launched Tuesday evening at 9:37 p.m. local time, from the European spaceport in Kourou, French Guiana — an overseas department of France located in South America. The new satellite is meant to usher in "a new era of weather and climate monitoring from polar orbit." According to astrophysicist Robert Lamontagne, the rocket's orbit is what allowed for the spectacle to be visible in Quebec. Most of the time rocket launches are on an equatorial orbit and so will be visible near the equator, he said. In a polar orbit, the rocket has to go around the earth circling each pole of the planet. "So the the trajectory of that the rocket made it so that from our latitude it could be seen in Montreal or the south of Quebec," he said. But to witness the phenomena, other factors also need to align, according to Lamontagne, including the time of launch and the altitude reached by the rocket. "From our point of view, we were in the dark, the sun was low below the horizon, but the rocket itself was so high that it was still lit by the by the sun," he said. And as the second stage of the rocket re-entered the earth's atmosphere, he said, "it was spinning a little bit, there was exhaust gases coming out from it and that's what people saw in the sky."
France 24
6 days ago
- Climate
- France 24
Ariane 6 launches next-gen weather satellite amid deadly heatwave in Europe
The Ariane 6 rocket on Wednesday blasted off carrying Europe 's next generation satellite for warning against extreme weather events. As many European countries simmer in a deadly heatwave, the European Organisation for the Exploitation of Meteorological Satellites (EUMETSAT) said its MetOp-SGA1 satellite will give "earlier warnings to help protect lives and property from extreme weather". "Metop-SGA1 observations will help meteorologists improve short- and medium-term weather models that can save lives by enabling early warnings of storms, heatwaves, and other disasters, and help farmers to protect crops, grid operators to manage energy supply, and pilots and sailors to navigate safely," the agency added. The rocket carrying the four-tonne satellite took off from France 's Kourou space base in French Guyana. MetOp-SGA1 was to be put into an 800 kilometre (500 mile) high orbit. It will be Europe's first contribution to a US-led programme, the Joint Polar System, putting up satellites orbiting between the north and south poles. Europe's powerful Ariane 6 rocket launches for 3rd time ever 04:03 The six monitoring instruments on the satellite are twice as precise as the agency's existing satellite, IASI. It will monitor ocean and land temperatures, water vapour and greenhouse gases in the atmosphere, the amount of desert dust and cloud cover. "Extreme weather has cost Europe hundreds of billions euros and tens of thousands of lives over the past 40 years – storms like Boris, Daniel and Hans, record heatwaves and fierce wildfires are just the latest reminders," said Phil Evans, EUMETSAT director-general. "The launch of Metop-SGA1 is a major step forward in giving national weather services in our member states sharper tools to save lives, protect property, and build resilience against the climate crisis." The liftoff was the third by Ariane 6 since its inaugural flight in July last year. The Ariane company said that it had 32 launches planned from Kourou in coming years and that it was aiming to carry out nine or 10 launches each year.
USA Today
07-06-2025
- Health
- USA Today
Ariane da Silva's team says big UFC 316 weight miss related to pituitary tumor treatment
Ariane da Silva's team says big UFC 316 weight miss related to pituitary tumor treatment UFC women's flyweight Ariane da Silva stepped on the scale Friday morning closer to the bantamweight division, and her team has since provided a shocking explanation. Da Silva (17-10 MMA, 6-7 UFC) is scheduled to face Wang Cong at UFC 316 (pay-per-view, ESPN, ESPN+) in a preliminary bout at Prudential Center in Newark, N.J., but the fight was in jeopardy of not going forward after the official weigh-in session. Weighing in at 132 pounds, da Silva came in six pounds over the flyweight limit. Cong (7-1 MMA, 2-1 UFC), who made 125 pounds on the nose, would have been justified in refusing the fight, but decided to keep the bout alive. Renato da Silva, Ariane's husband, told MMA Fighting that a poor treatment plan for a benign pituitary tumor led to complications with the weight cut. According to Ariane's coach, the tumor was discovered during further examination after a blood test during fight camp showed abnormal levels of prolactin and cortisol. The team brought in a new nutritionist to deal with the weight cut for UFC 316, but the plan did not work. "We wanted to get the cortisol levels down so it wouldn't affect her health," Renato told MMA Fighting in Portuguese (translated by MMA Fighting). "By controlling the cortisol levels, we wanted to cause as little stress as possible to her body. And the nutritionist opted for a strategy that would have her hold as much as weight as possible until the end, and it was too much for the final days. He doesn't know her as much as I do, and he thought she would be able to do that. "There was a moment this morning she wasn't feeling good. I know her body. There was still something left there to cut, but at the same time, her reactions weren't normal. She wasn't walking right, she was blinking too slow, she had double vision, and couldn't focus, her voice sounded weak. She was giving us dangerous signs as she dropped weight." After contacting the UFC's medical staff, it was determined that attempting to cut the remaining six pounds would be too dangerous, so the weight cut was stopped. The team places some blame on the nutritionist's plan to get Ariane to the flyweight limit. "It was too much (weight) for such a short amount of time," Renato said. "I think that was the mistake by the nutritionist. We trusted the process, and unfortunately, it didn't work. It's a mistake we made. I also made that mistake as a coach, to have believed and tried something different, but my goal is always to take care of the health of Ariane, an athlete and also my wife. I'll always put her health first." Cong accepted the new terms of the fight after weigh-ins, which included 30 percent of da Silva's purse, and the fight changed to a catchweight at 132 pounds.
NDTV
04-06-2025
- Politics
- NDTV
After 50 Successful Years, The European Space Agency Has Some Big Challenges Ahead
This year marks the 50th anniversary of the founding of the European Space Agency (Esa). It has launched spectacularly successful missions, but is different to other space agencies which generally represent one country. Esa is funded by 23 member states and also has cooperation agreements with nations such as Canada. Esa operates cutting edge spacecraft designed to monitor the Earth, as well as space telescopes that study the distant cosmos. It has launched robotic spacecraft to other planets and to objects such as comets. It is also involved in human spaceflight – training European astronauts to work on the International Space Station (ISS). These are hugely successful achievements. But the agency now faces challenges as competition heats up among newer space powers such as China and India. The history of Esa can be traced to events immediately after the second world war, when many European scientists moved to either the US or to the Soviet Union. Many of them realised that projects supported only by a single nation could not compete with those supported by the two big geopolitical players at the time. This motivated the physicists Pierre Auger, from France, and Edoardo Amaldi, from Italy, to propose a European organisation that would carry out space research and would be 'purely scientific'. In 1962, two agencies were created. One of these, the European Launch Development Organisation (ELDO), would concentrate on developing a rocket. The other, the European Space Research Organisation (ESRO), would focus on developing robotic spacecraft. Both were joined together in 1975 to form the European Space Agency. The push to build a European rocket would eventually yield the Ariane launcher, which is operated by the French company Arianespace. The first satellite to be launched under the banner of the newly formed European Space Agency was Cos-B. This spacecraft was designed to monitor a high energy form of radiation called gamma rays, being emitted from objects in space. In 1978, Esa cooperated with Nasa and the UK on the International Ultraviolet Explorer mission. This space telescope was designed to observe the cosmos in ultraviolet light, something that cannot be done from Earth. The agency would later collaborate with Nasa and the Canadian Space Agency on one of the most successful space telescopes of all time: Hubble. Launched in 1990, the Hubble Space Telescope helped confirm the expansion rate of the universe and showed that black holes are at the cores of almost all galaxies. Hubble's stunning images also changed the way that many people saw the universe. Esa funded one of the original instruments on the space telescope, the Faint Object Camera, and provided the first two solar arrays. The space agency is also a partner on the revolutionary James Webb Telescope, which launched in 2021. Esa contributed two of the telescope's instruments: the Near-Infrared Spectrograph (NirSpec) and the Mid-Infrared Instrument (Miri). Solar System Missions Esa has also launched pioneering missions to other planets and objects in our solar system. The first of these was the Giotto comet explorer. This robotic spacecraft flew past Halley's comet in 1986 and was successfully woken up in 1992 to study a comet called Grigg-Skejllerup. A second successful cometary mission followed when the Rosetta spacecraft entered orbit around Comet 67P/Churyumov-Gerasimenko in 2014. Rosetta despatched a lander called Philae to touch down on the comet's surface. Rosetta has been my favourite of all Esa achievements, simply due to the pure audacity of attempting to land on an object whose shape and composition was until then only sparsely known. In order to 'land' on an object with low gravity, Philae was to have deployed harpoons that would attach the lander to the surface. These systems did not work, but the overall mission was a success, leading to high levels of engagement from the public. Besides comets, Esa launched one of the most successful missions to the red planet: Mars Express. The spacecraft entered orbit around Mars in 2003 and has played a key role in enhancing understanding of our planetary neighbour. It is expected to continue working until at least 2034. Mars Express also carried the ill-fated British Beagle 2 spacecraft to Mars. This was supposed to land in 2003, but contact was never established with the probe, which is presumed to have been damaged while touching down. In 2005, Esa's Huygens spacecraft landed on Titan, Saturn's largest moon. This was the furthest from Earth that a spacecraft has ever landed. These are all outward facing missions, but Esa has also had major success with projects to study what's going on here on Earth. These include the Envisat satellite, which operated from 2002-2012, and the Sentinel series of spacecraft, which have operated from 2014 to the present. These have helped map agriculture and forests, understand the Earth's climate, track ice, and monitor atmospheric ozone. In addition, the Galileo navigation satellites are providing a high precision alternative to GPS. Esa is also a major player in human spaceflight, having been a partner in the International Space Station project since 1993. It has built sections of the ISS, including the Columbus laboratory, launched in 2008, and the Cupola viewing window, which gives astronauts panoramic views of Earth. The agency's astronauts regularly spend time on the ISS as crew and could even fly to the Moon under Nasa's Artemis programme. Since the 1990s, Esa has frequently collaborated with Nasa – often very successfully. However, this relationship has also faced challenges. In the wake of the financial crisis, for example, Nasa cancelled its participation in several collaborative missions with Esa. Under a proposed Nasa budget this year, the US space agency may again cancel its involvement with the joint Nasa-Esa Mars Sample Return mission. Esa's Future Times have changed in the space industry since Esa's founding 50 years ago. Major countries such as China, India and Japan all have their own space programmes. Esa faces considerable financial pressures to compete with them. Nevertheless, Esa is working on strengthening its space exploration and launch capabilities through the use of a commercial space port in Norway. It has also put together a long-term strategy for 2040. This document highlights important areas where Esa can play a major role, including protecting Earth and its climate, continued missions to explore space and also efforts to boost European growth and competitiveness. All this should strengthen and secure the agency for the future. Through a mixture of developing its own missions and collaborating with other agencies and commercial partners on others, Esa should be a major player in space exploration for decades to come. (Author: , Lecturer in Astronomy, Nottingham Trent University) (Disclosure statement: Daniel Brown does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.)
Spectator
19-05-2025
- Politics
- Spectator
French Guiana is the perfect place for a supermax prison
So that you don't have to, I've conducted a reconnaissance of French Guiana where the French justice minister is to build a strict regime, maximum-security prison to warehouse France's most dangerous criminals. I've been there a couple of times as a guest of the French space agency, which occasionally conducts launches of the Ariane rocket from Kourou. You fly in from Paris over virgin rainforest and can see the enormous space base on the descent. It's the hand of man on the face of God. French Guiana has a veneer of French civilisation. You can buy decent baguettes. There's a Carrefour supermarket. But it's essentially an anachronism of French colonialism. Europeans run the spaceport and local government. There are industrious Indochinese, descendants of the families who were exiled there after the fall of Dien Bien Phu in 1954, who run much else.
