South Korea launches space rocket carrying satellite

 

South Korea says its third attempt at launching a rocket to put a satellite in space has been a success.

The Korea Space Launch Vehicle-1 (KSLV-1) blasted off from the Naro Space Center at 16:00 (07:00 GMT).

Science Minister Lee Ju-ho said the satellite, which will collect climate data, was in its correct orbit.
The launch comes weeks after North Korea used its own three-stage rocket to place a satellite into orbit, sparking international criticism.

South Korea's 140-tonne rocket, known as Naro, was built in partnership with Russia, which had agreed to work with Seoul for three launch attempts.

Previous launches in 2009 and 2010 failed, and this attempt had been postponed twice for technical reasons.

But officials said Wednesday's launch from the site 480km (298 miles) south of Seoul had gone as planned and that the rocket had reached its target altitude and deployed its satellite.

"After analysing various data, the Naro rocket successfully put the science satellite into designated orbit," Mr Lee told reporters. He said the satellite had detached 540 seconds after launch.

"We now have leapt up a step to become a space-power nation," he said, adding that South Korea would use this "overwhelming moment as a strong, dynamic force" to help drive an independent space programme.

The satellite, called Science and Technology Satellite-2C, is designed to collect climate data. The Yonhap news said it was expected to make contact with its ground station at 05:00 on Thursday, at which point its operators will be able to make the final judgement on whether the launch achieved its goals.
South Korea does already have satellites in space, but they were launched from other countries.

On its first attempt to carry out a launch on its own soil, in 2009, the satellite failed to detach from the rocket in orbit. In 2010, the rocket exploded seconds after take-off.

Pressure for success has increased since North Korea launched a rocket that placed a satellite in orbit on 12 December. It followed the launch by announcing plans for a "high-level nuclear test" and more long-range rocket launches.

The UN said the North Korean launch constituted a banned test of missile technology and voted to extend sanctions against Pyongyang. There have been international calls for Pyongyang not to carry out the nuclear test.

Scientists redefine ‘habitable zone;’ Earth booted out of ‘Goldilocks zone’

Researchers from Penn State University have redefined the “habitable zone” for exoplanets. Interestingly, this new definition has delivered a major hit to Earth’s habitability rating.

An updated model for identifying whether newly discovered exoplanets fall within a habitable zone has been created by the Penn State Department of Geosciences team using the latest data, according to a news release from Penn State. The updated model will help researchers tasked with combing the galaxy for planets that could be capable of having liquid water and sustaining life.

According to the research team, their work is based on a prior model developed by James Kasting, Evan Pugh Professor of Geoscience at Penn State. The updated model will offer researchers a more accurate calculation of where habitable zones around a star can be found.

Comparing new data from the updated model to old estimates made by the previous model, researchers discovered that habitable zones are actually farther away from the stars than previously thought.
“This has implications for finding other planets with life on them,” said Ravi kumar Kopparapu, a lead investigator on the study, in a statement.

For the study, Kopparapu and graduate student Ramses Ramirez used updated absorption databases of greenhouse gases. The databases have more precise information on water and carbon dioxide than previously was available and let the researchers create new estimates from the innovative model Kasting developed 20 years ago.

With the help of super computers at Penn State and the University of Washington, researchers were able to calculate habitable zones around other stars. They note that in Kasting’s model, water and carbon dioxide were not being absorbed as strongly, so the model estimated that the planets had to be closer to the star to be in the habitable zone.

Some planets thought to be in habitable zones may actually be outside the habitable zone, according to estimates from the updated model.

Lowly Dung Beetles Are Insect Astronomers

 

Even the humble dung beetle, its life spent barely an inch above the ground, pushing balls of waste, steers by starlight.

This unsuspected navigational mechanism, described Jan. 24 in Current Biology, is likely not limited to the Scarabaeus satyrus examined by the researchers.

Peering through compound eyes into the darkness of night, insects around the world may be guided by stars.

'It's just another example of how wonderful the animal kingdom is.'

 

“It’s just another example of how wonderful the animal kingdom is, how the most amazing things have evolved,” said biologist Eric Warrant of Sweden’s Lund University, a co-author on the study.

Warrant has studied insect vision for nearly three decades, specializing in the systems used by dung beetles, that taxonomic superfamily of more than 5,000 species, found on every continent but Antarctica and quietly responsible for processing much of the animal world’s waste.

During the daytime, dung beetles use the sun’s position as a point of reference. At night, they variously orient themselves by the moon’s bright light or, if the disk is obscured by clouds, by patterns of polarized light in faint moonbeams.

Sometimes the moon is not visible at all, however, and dung beetles don’t use landmarks to orient themselves, raising the question of how they steer in these situations.

Warrant and study leader Marie Dacke, also a Lund University biologist, suspected that they used starlight — an obvious cue, but not one often considered relevant to insect navigation. Indeed, only birds, seals and humans have been proven to steer with stars, with humpback whales and southern cricket frogs as other likely candidates.

To test the notion, Dacke and Warrant analyzed the paths of S. satyrus rolling dung balls inside a circular, high-walled arena on a moonless, starry night.

When the arena was uncovered, the beetles moved in straight lines, as is their instinctive wont. When the arena was covered, however, hiding the stars that were their only possible point of reference, the beetles wandered back and forth in circuitous, seemingly confused routes.

Paths taken by dung beetles able to see the starry sky (left) and with their view of the sky blocked (right). Image: Dacke et al./Current Biology

“They always roll straight. If they don’t roll straight, something is wrong,” said Warrant. “They have to get away from the dung pile as fast as possible, or the balls they roll will be stolen by other beetles.”
The researchers then repeated the experiment inside the Johannesburg planetarium, with the night sky’s constellations projected upon its domed ceiling. Once again, the beetles aimed true if they could see the stars, and wandered in confusion without them.

Dung beetle eyes are not strong enough to discern individual stars, “but they can see the bright streak of light that the Milky Way forms in the sky,” said Dacke.

Warrant speculates that many other insects, especially those that travel long distances at night, also steer by starlight, an ability that would likely have been favored by natural selection over evolutionary time.

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Asked why he studies such an esoteric subject, Warrant noted that the insights gained from dung beetles could have utilitarian benefits — he owns a startup company that uses algorithms derived from nocturnal insect sight to process low-light images — though the simple beauty of fact is a justification in itself.

“It seems fantastic to us,” he said of the dung beetles’ astronomical ability. “It’s nothing we take for granted. It’s something we take for amazing every day we work with them.”

Warrant is also studying a how a certain species of Panamanian bee flies hundreds of feet in pitch-darkness through nighttime jungle, never once bumping into so much as a leaf, finding their hollowed-out stick homes without fail.
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“How they do this is still a mystery,” he said.

World's largest Optical Telescope to be developed by Five-Nation Consortium

New image from ESA’s Herschel space observatory has revealed multiple arcs around Betelgeuse, the nearest red supergiant star to Earth, and scientists analysing the image have suggested that the star and its arc-shaped shields could collide with an intriguing dusty ‘wall’ in 5000 years.

Betelgeuse rides on the shoulder of the constellation Orion the Hunter. It can easily be seen with the naked eye in the northern hemisphere winter night sky as the orange-red star above and to the left of Orion’s famous three-star belt.

Roughly 1,000 times the diameter of our Sun and shining 100,000 times more brightly, Betelgeuse’s impressive statistics come with a cost.

For this star is likely on its way to a spectcular supernova explosion, having already swelled into a red supergiant and shed a significant fraction of its outer layers.

The new far-infrared view from Herschel shows how the star’s winds are crashing against the surrounding interstellar medium, creating a bow shock as the star moves through space at speeds of around 30 km/s.
A series of broken, dusty arcs ahead of the star’s direction of motion testify to a turbulent history of mass loss.

Closer to the star itself, an inner envelope of material shows a pronounced asymmetric structure. Large convective cells in the star’s outer atmosphere have likely resulted in localized, clumpy ejections of dusty debris at different stages in the past.

Nintendo adds classic titles to the Wii U with GamePad Support, starting this spring

During the Nintendo Direct event this morning, Nintendo president Satoru Iwata talked about the upcoming ‘Wii U Virtual Console’ and how titles will be priced, and played. Here are the details.

Nintendo already eluded to the fact that they were bringing classic Nintendo titles from the Nintendo Entertainment System and the Super Nintendo onto the Wii U earlier this year. Today Iwata was prepared to discuss the venture with more details. Starting this spring, Nintendo will bring NES and SNES titles onto the Wii U after a spring Wii U update. This will allow classic titles to be playable both on the Wii U through a TV or on just the GamePad controller.

There was great news for previous Virtual Console customers, all of the titles that you purchased on the Wii will be heavily discounted if you want to play them on the Wii U. Nintendo stated that NES games will be priced between $4.99 and $5.99 but will only cost previous Virtual Console customers $1. If you are more interested in SNES games, they will be priced between $7.99 and $8.99 and will only cost $1.50 if you had the game on the Wii Virtual Console.

Mars: 'Strongest evidence' planet may have supported life, scientists say

 

Minerals found underground on Mars are the "strongest evidence yet" that the planet may have supported life, according to new research.

The team, led by the Natural History Museum in London and the University of Aberdeen, said the ingredients for life could have been in a zone up to 5km down for much of the planet's history.

They used data from the US space agency (Nasa) and European Space Agency (Esa).

Nature Geoscience has published the research.

Joseph Michalski Natural History Museum The team said the research backed up the existing theory that Mars could have supported life due to micro-organisms hidden beneath the surface.

 

They said that when meteorites strike the surface of Mars, they act as natural probes, bringing up rocks from far below.

The McLaughlin Crater is described as one such area of interest in the study.

Dr Joseph Michalski, lead author and planetary geologist at the Natural History Museum, said: "We don't know how life on Earth formed but it is conceivable that it originated underground, protected from harsh surface conditions that existed on early Earth.

"However, the early geological record of Earth is poorly preserved so we may never know what processes led to life's origin and early evolution.

"Whether the Martian geologic record contains life or not, analysis of these types of rocks would certainly teach us a tremendous amount about early chemical processes in the solar system.

"In this paper, we present a strong case for exploring the subsurface, as well as the surface.

"But I don't personally think we should try to drill into the subsurface to look for ancient life. Instead, we can study rocks that are naturally brought to the surface by meteor impact and search in deep basins where fluids have come to the surface."

NASA Sends Mona Lisa to the Moon on a Laser Ride

Man-in-the-Moon, meet humankind's most enigmatic Earthly smile, courtesy of NASA.
The U.S. space agency's Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter (LRO) scientists this week beamed an image of the Mona Lisa from Earth to the Moon-orbiting spacecraft's Lunar Orbiter Laser Altimeter (LOLA) instrument, NASA said Thursday.
Calling the feat "the first anyone has achieved one-way laser communication at planetary distances," LOLA principal investigator David Smith of MIT said, "In the near future, this type of simple laser communication might serve as a backup for the radio communication that satellites use. In the more distant future, it may allow communication at higher data rates than present radio links can provide."
NASA researchers sent the digital image of Leonardo da Vinci's iconic painting nearly 240,000 miles from its Next Generation Satellite Laser Ranging (NGSLR) station at the Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Md. to the LRO.

Doing so required the LOLA team to break up the Mona Lisa image into a 152 pixel-by-200 pixel array, with each pixel "converted into a shade of gray, represented by a number between zero and 4,095" and transmitted individually by laser pulse, LOLA scientist Xiaoli Sun said.

"Because LRO is already set up to receive laser signals through the LOLA instrument, we had a unique opportunity to demonstrate one-way laser communication with a distant satellite," Sun added.

The LOLA team was able to transmit the image "at a data rate of about 300 bits per second," NASA said. The Mona Lisa image actually piggybacked on routine laser pulses sent to the LRO and sending it didn't interfere "with LOLA's primary task of mapping the moon's elevation and terrain and NGSLR's primary task of tracking" the lunar satellite, according to the space agency.

The Mona Lisa, an oil on a poplar wood panel measuring just 30 inches by 21 inches, is arguably the most famous work of art in existence. Though its subject has been debated by art historians, it is believed to be a portrait of Lisa Gheradini, a Florentine woman in her mid-20s when she sat for Da Vinci around the turn of the 16th century.

Over the centuries, the painting has been stolen and recovered, reframed and given extensive preservation treatments, parodied, replicated, and served up as plot point in novels. It currently resides in the Louvre in Paris.

For more, check out NASA's video explaining how it tramsmitted the Mona Lisa to the LRO below.

Black hole collision may have irradiated Earth in eighth century

A powerful gamma ray burst caused by a collision of two black holes or neutron stars may have irradiated the Earth in the eighth century, researchers claim.

 
The crashing together of the two bodies could have released an intense burst of energy in the form of gamma rays lasting as little as two seconds

A study last year found unusually high levels of the isotope carbon-14 in ancient rings of Japanese cedar trees and a corresponding spike in beryllium-10 in Antarctic ice.

The readings were traced back to a point in AD 774 or 775, suggesting that during that period the Earth was hit by an intense burst of radiation, but researchers were initially unable to determine its cause.

Now a separate team of astronomers have suggested it could have been due to the collision of two compact stellar remnants such as black holes, neutron stars or white dwarfs.

The crashing together and subsequent merger of the two bodies could have released an intense burst of energy in the form of gamma rays lasting as little as two seconds, they said.

It's life, but not as we know it - Red Plant

Martian minerals 'strongest evidence yet' of life on the red planet - and it could still be there

• Red Planet could have hosted microorganisms
• McLaughlin Crater holds traces of water altered minerals
• Findings could reveal clues about life on Earth

Martians may well have existed, and still be on the red planet - but not in any recognisable form, British scientists said today.
Scientists believe the discovery of minerals below the Red Planet's surface is the 'strongest evidence yet' it may have supported life.
But far from hosting little green men, our celestial neighbour was likely inhabited by simple microorganisms.

The huge McLaughlin Crater created by a meteorite which smashed into the surface of Mars, has been shown to reveal signs of life

Layers with Carbonate Content Inside McLaughlin Crater on Mars This view of layered rocks on the floor of McLaughlin Crater shows sedimentary rocks that contain spectroscopic evidence for minerals formed through interaction with water

Go fishing! Scientists amazed by ancient river on Mars

Mars is still an amazing planet, but billions of years ago, it must have been something even more remarkable. The Mars Express spacecraft has produced a stunning new image of a massive riverbed that was once filled with water providing more evidence of the rich, and watery history of the Red Planet.
 
 LOS ANGELES, CA (Catholic Online) - Scientists are very interested in Mars for two reasons. First, the planet was once wet with large quantities of water flowing over the surface, but today it appears to be much drier. Certainly, nearly all of the surface water is gone, both evaporating into space and seeping into the frozen ground. What little remains is locked in the polar caps and in pockets of underground ice. Why this happened, and what are the implications for Earth is an important question, if we can answer this, then we can better understand the Earth.

The second reason is to ask if Mars can support human colonization sometime in the future. If water still exists on Mars, then where can it be found and can it be extracted to support colonization? It is thought by scientists that at some point, the future of humanity lies amongst the stars. To prepare the way, pioneering work must be done. This is part of that work.

Incidentally, the search for life is more of a secondary quest, with the best hopes being that some form of microbial life once existed on the planet during its warmer, wetter past. However, the likelihood of such a discovery varies from virtually nil to almost certain depending on which scientists are asked and their perspective on the data. Nonetheless, this is not the primary focus on Mars.

The great "river-like structure" as scientists describe the canyon in the image, is Reull Vallis, a broad, dry river flanked by ancient bluffs. Measurements suggest the river would have been 4 miles wide and as much as 1,000 feet deep, meandering for 900 miles before empyting into the vast primeval Hellas basin.

The river, like any other on Earth, was fed by smaller tributaries, which also appear in the high-resolution photographs. They also say the region shows evidence that it was once covered with glaciers.

Water likely flowed though Reull Vallis somewhere around 3.5 to 1.8 billion years ago, before Mars finally became a dry planet. Mars didn't become dry all at once, but gradually lost its surface moisture and became cold over a long period spanning millions to billions of years. Why this happened remains a mystery.

For scientists, seeing that Mars had a more Earth-like climate than previously thought encourages them to redouble their research. Dedicated as ever, they hope to decipher to the silent testament of Mars's dry rivers and to learn what they have to say about Earth's future. 

Mars Rover Ready to Dig In

After months of trial runs, NASA's Curiosity rover is ready to scratch the surface of Mars, positioning itself this week to drill into the crust of the red planet and wildcat for evidence of life for the first time.

NASA's Curiosity rover is ready to scratch the surface of Mars. What do scientists expect to find, and what challenges lie ahead for the mission? Robert Lee Hotz reports on The News Hub. Photo: AP.

After months of tests, NASA's Curiosity rover is settling down to the serious business of planetary exploration, positioning itself to drill into the crust of the red planet for the first time. WSJ's Robert Lee Hotz reports.

Scientists at the National Aeronautics and Space Administration's Jet Propulsion Laboratory in California said Tuesday that they have targeted a fine-grained fractured slab of bedrock for the rover's first drilling attempt—a tricky procedure made all the more difficult by the complexities of the rover.
In a milestone for planetary exploration, researchers expect to extract and remotely analyze a mineral sample from the interior of Mars beginning in about two weeks. Scientists hope the specimen—its chemistry unsullied by the harsh surface conditions—will reveal whether conditions on the cold, arid world were once favorable for life.
"We will go into the sequence of rocks that are the brightest prospects for telling us about the early habitability of Mars," said mission project scientist John Grotzinger at the California Institute of Technology. "We are at a very sweet spot to do that."
The spacecraft voyaged 352 million miles to reach Mars this past August, but its next critical step will be measured in fractions of an inch. The rover's drill can chip about 2 inches into the interior of Mars to extract a small spoonful of powdered rock for analysis in an onboard chemistry kit. The effort may take six weeks or more. Researchers want to ensure the rock won't break the drill bit and that the mineral sample won't be contaminated by machinery as the rover scoops it onboard.
"Drilling into a rock to collect a sample will be this mission's most challenging activity since the landing. It has never been done on Mars," said Mars Science Laboratory project manager Richard Cook.
In the months since Curiosity's landing, the mission has mostly generated waves of rumor about life-related chemistry on the distant world that, one by one, mission scientists debunked as they made their findings public. So far, they have detected no traces of methane in the Martian air, no unequivocal chemical evidence of water on Mars today, and no native organic compounds that would indicate that life had once been present.

What they are finding in Gale Crater, where the rover landed, is an arid landscape of wind-swept badlands that in some ways seems hauntingly like Earth. Wheeling across the uneven terrain at 1.5 inches per second, the rover has recorded panoramic vistas that often resemble the Mojave Desert. It spotted rounded pebbles that scientists believe were likely shaped by an ancient ankle-deep, fast-flowing stream. Its chemical sensors detected basalt rocks that could have been lifted from a Hawaiian lava flow.
By all accounts, engineers are finding the $2.5 billion Curiosity rover—the most complex spacecraft ever landed on another planet—more difficult to operate than anticipated. The 1-ton, nuclear-powered vehicle totes 11 instruments, from a laser to a robotic whisk broom designed to sweep samples clear of the Martian dust. Even as routine a task as extending the craft's heavy mobile arm has proved tricky because the craft can more easily overbalance than engineers had estimated.
"It is a complicated beast," said Rob Manning, chief engineer for the Mars Science Laboratory, as the Curiosity craft's overall mission is called. "Everything is taking longer than we had hoped."
Even so, the mission's 425 scientists are feasting on data. "Scientifically, it is fantastic," said NASA planetary soil scientist Doug Ming at the Johnson Space Center in Texas, who helps run the rover's X-ray spectroscopy apparatus. So far, the craft has beamed back 18,226 images and nearly 10 gigabytes of raw information about the planet's geology, mineral chemistry, soil composition, and atmosphere. In five months of prospecting, scientists have thoroughly analyzed three air samples and three soil samples. The researchers also have tested 100 rocks and soil specimens by blasting them with the rover's laser and then scrutinizing the vaporized material.
In all, the rover has traveled 2,312 feet from where it touched down on Aug. 5. Recently it rolled by a sinuous set of dark-colored rocks that NASA scientists named "Snake River," before parking itself in a shallow flat depression called Yellowknife Bay.
There, the rover's cameras and sensors revealed a range of rocks that may have been formed by water, including veins, nodules, cross-bedded layering, and a lustrous pebble embedded in sandstone.
NASA officials named the rocky outcrop chosen for drilling after John Klein, a former Mars Science Laboratory deputy project manager who died in 2011.

"We are now less than a mile from where we landed yet the geology is intensely diverse," said space scientist Roger Wiens at the Los Alamos National Laboratory in New Mexico, who is principal investigator for the rover's laser sensor. "It is a scientist's dream."

Flights targeted for 2017 and 2021

 

NASA, Europeans uniting to send space capsule to moon, flights targeted for 2017 and 2021

APE CANAVERAL, Fla. –  NASA is teaming up with the European Space Agency to get astronauts beyond Earth's orbit.
Europe will provide the propulsion and power compartment for NASA's Orion crew capsule, officials said Wednesday. This so-called service module will be based on Europe's supply ship used for the International Space Station.

'You don't design a car to just go to the grocery store.'

- NASA's human exploration chief, Bill Gerstenmaier

Orion's first trip is an unmanned mission in 2017. Any extra European parts will be incorporated in the first manned mission of Orion in 2021.
“Space has long been a frontier for international cooperation as we explore,” said Dan Dumbacher, deputy associate administrator for Exploration System Development at NASA Headquarters in Washington. “This latest chapter builds on NASA’s excellent relationship with ESA as a partner in the International Space Station, and helps us move forward in our plans to send humans farther into space than we’ve ever been before.”
NASA's human exploration chief, Bill Gerstenmaier, said both missions will be aimed at the vicinity of the moon. The exact details are being worked out; lunar fly-bys, rather than landings, are planned.
NASA wants to ultimately use the bell-shaped Orion spacecraft to carry astronauts to asteroids and Mars. International cooperation will be crucial for such endeavors, Gerstenmaier told reporters.
The United States has yet to establish a clear path forward for astronauts, 1 1/2 years after NASA's space shuttles stopped flying. The basic requirements for Orion spacecraft are well understood regardless of the destination, allowing work to proceed, Gerstenmaier said.
"You don't design a car to just go to the grocery store," he told reporters.
Getting to 2017 will be challenging, officials for both space programs acknowledged. Gerstenmaier said he's not "100 percent comfortable" putting Europe in such a crucial role. "But I'm never 100 percent comfortable" with spaceflight, he noted. "We'll see how it goes, but we've done it smartly."
The space station helped build the foundation for this new effort, he said.
Former astronaut Thomas Reiter, Europe's director of human spaceflight, said it makes sense for the initial Orion crew to include Europeans. For now, though, the focus is on the technical aspects, he said. NASA will supply no-longer-used space shuttle engines for use on the service modules.
“NASA’s decision ... is a strong sign of trust and confidence in ESA’s capabilities, for ESA it is an important contribution to human exploration,” said Thomas Reiter, ESA director of Human Spaceflight and Operations.
Reiter put the total European contribution at nearly $600 million.
Orion originally was part of NASA's Constellation program that envisioned moon bases in the post-shuttle era. President Barack Obama canceled Constellation, but Orion was repurposed and survived.
A test flight of the capsule is planned for next year; it will fly 3,600 miles away and then return.

Europe and US agree details for Orion astronaut spacecraft

 

An artist's impression of the Orion capsule attached to its European-built service module

Continue reading the main story

The US and Europe have cemented their plan to work together on the Americans' next-generation capsule system to take humans beyond Earth.

The Orion vehicle is being built to carry astronauts to the Moon, asteroids and Mars, but it will need a means to propel itself through space.
Europe has now formally agreed to provide this technology.
Space agency executives have just signed an "implementing agreement" to cover the legal aspects of the work.
The first flight of Orion with its European-built "service module" will take place in 2017.
This demonstration will be unmanned and will see Orion go around the back of the Moon before returning to Earth for an ocean splashdown.
If all goes well, a crew is expected to repeat the feat in about 2021. The venture would echo the famous Apollo 8 mission of 1968.
The service module is the unit that sits directly behind the capsule and provides the propulsion, power, temperature control, as well as holding the astronauts’ supplies of water and air.
"This is a new page in the transatlantic co-operation," said Thomas Reiter, the director of human spaceflight and operations at the European Space Agency (Esa).
"This is the first time that Esa is involved in the critical path for a human transportation system. It is a fantastic perspective for the future, taking humans beyond low-Earth orbit to new destinations for exploration," he told BBC News.
The current plan calls for Europe to build the prototype module for 2017 and a number of components that would be needed for the second vehicle in 2021, although a formal go-ahead to complete this additional model is some years off.
A clear subtext, of course, is that Europe hopes this initial deal will develop into a long-term relationship, and that this will increase the chances of its astronauts joining their American colleagues on missions into deep space.