top menu
bottom menu

FMI / Earth Observation Website

This website will host research-related information about space-research related activites at the Finnish Meteorological Institute in Helsinki.

This page is only maintained in English

For general information about related subjects also in Finnish and Swedish, please see the institute's homepage at http://en.ilmatieteenlaitos.fi

Suomeksi: http://ilmatieteenlaitos.fi

På Svenska: http://sv.ilmatieteenlaits.fi

NASA's Mars Science Laboratory on its way to Mars

The launch of NASA's next major mission to Mars, the Mars Science Laboratory (MSL), now named "Curiosity", took place on Saturday, November 26, at 17:02 Finnish time. Satellite separation and injection into trajectory towards Mars was confirmed at 17:53. On January 11 a major course refinement maneuver was successfully performed putting the spacecraft on a more precise trajectory towards Mars. Arrival at the Gale Crater (coordinates 4.49S, 137.42E) is expected for August 6, 2012. FMI is contributing the pressure and humidity sensor to the environment package REMS. For details see FMI's MSL web page in Finnish with links to English-language Websites for REMS and NASA/MSL

Phobos-Grunt mission towards Mars: Earth re-entry 15.1.

On Tuesday, 8.11. 22:16 Finnish time the Phobos-Grunt sample return mission was launched from Kasachstan into its initial Earth orbit. It did not have any Finnish contribution on board, as the utilization of this launch opportunity for the Finnish/Russian/Spanish Mars MetNet Lander had been canceled in 2010.

After 1.7 orbits the spacecraft should have been inserted into the trajectory towards Mars which did not happen for so far unknown reasons.  Debris of the satellite crashed into the South Pacific off the coast of Chile on January 15, 2012 at 19:45 Finnish time. 

For details see the e.g. RussianSpace web-site.