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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

ESTCube-1 launched on May 7 2013

Artistic illustration of ESTCube-1
Artistic illustration of ESTCube-1; credit University of Tartu, ESTCUBE team, author Erik Kulu

On 7 May 2013 (6.5. 23:06 local time) the Estonian Student Satellite Program satellite ESTCube-1 was launched successfully aboard a Vega carrier rocket from Kourou. The satellite is now in its planned orbit. This morning the Tartu ground station was able to receive the satellite's beacon signal. On board the satellite is an electric solar wind sail (e-sail) which was invented by FMI's scientist Pekka Janhunen. During an ESTCube-1 flight, 10 meters of 20–50 micrometer thick e-sail wire, sometimes referred to as "Heytether," is deployed from the satellite. The deployment of the Heytether is detected by a decrease of the satellite's rotation speed or an on-board camera.

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On February 27 the first data from the Mars rover Mars Science Laboratory/Curiosity were released to the public via the Planetary Data System, covering the first 89 sols of operation. Among the data are the REMS pressure data collected by the FMI-provided pressure sensors. Details to the mission, the instruments and the data themselves can be accessed via the http://pds-geosciences.wustl.edu/missions/msl/index.htm. Further processed data are planned for release on March 20.

NASA's current major mission to Mars, the , now named "Curiosity", landed successfully on Mars August 6 at 08:31 Finnish time. FMI is contributing the pressure and humidity sensor to the environment package REMS. For details see FMI's MSL web pagepressure sensor data were published by NASA August 23.

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Eight years ago, on http://www.esa.int/Our_Activities/Space_Science/Cassini-Huygens/Cassini-Huygens_mission_facts landed successfully on the surface of the Saturn moon Titan. This was the first time that a man-made probe landed on a solar system body beyond the inner planets. On board was the FMI-built Pressure Profile Instrument (PPI) as part of the http://sci.esa.int/science-e/www/object/index.cfm?fobjectid=31193&fbodylongid=737, monitoring the Titan atmosphere during the probe's descent towards the moon's surface.

As a consequence of this successful mission, the Finnish pressure sensor was invited to be part of the subsequent Mars missions , - Mars Science Laboratory, ESA's ExoMars EDM isntrument package - DREAMS (internal)Dust Characterisation, Risk assessment and Environment Analyser on the Martian Surface (ExoMars/DREAMS), and NASA's http://insight.jpl.nasa.gov/home.cfm missions, the latter two scheduled for launch in 2016.

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The Radiation Belt Storm Probes (RBSP)