With a size of 10 metres wide, 20 metres long and 6 metres high, the ALMA antenna transporter is a real colossus. (c) ESO

The transporter was named 'Otto' in honour of Otto Rettenmaier, the owner of the Scheuerle company. "The rather unusual move to name a vehicle is a recognition of the remarkable achievement these unique machines represent," said Hans Rykaczewski, the European ALMA Project Manager. "Their sizes alone would justify using superlatives to describe them. But they are also outstanding as they will operate at 5000 metres altitude, where the air is rare, and they have to be able to place 115-ton antennas with a precision of a few millimetres," he added.

"The ALMA antenna transporters are the proof of the excellence of our staff and of our ability to build heavy vehicles that are at the limits of the possible," said Otto Rettenmaier. "Never in the history of our company have we had to comply with such exceptional requirements on material and techniques as we had to do with these machines. We are proud as a company to have been able to contribute with such an exceptional piece of technology for astronomical research."

The ALMA Project, in which ESO leads the construction and the operations on behalf of Europe, is a giant, international observatory currently in construction on the high-altitude Chajnantor site in Chile, which will be composed initially of 66 high-precision telescopes, operating at wavelengths of 0.3 to 9.6 mm. The ALMA antennas will be electronically combined and provide astronomical observations which are equivalent to a single large telescope of tremendous size and resolution.

ExoMars, which is scheduled to launch in 2013, is the first mission in the European Space Agency’s Aurora programme to explore Mars and the Moon. It will search for traces of past and present life on Mars and gather information the Martian environment in preparation for future missions.   The ExoMars rover will carry a comprehensive suite of instruments dedicated to exobiology research. The rover will be able to travel several kilometres during its nominal lifetime of 6 months and analyse samples from with in surface rocks and from the subsurface, down to a depth of 2 metres.(credit: © University of Wales, Aberystwyth)

In simulations, now being backed up by laboratory tests in the “Mars Yard”
at the University of Wales, Aberystwyth, the rover first builds up a three-dimensional model of its surroundings and then analyses each rock for surfaces suitable for drilling. The rover can then calculate the adjustments needed to position its chassis, robotic arm and instruments to acquire the sample.

Dr Dave Barnes, who is presenting results at the European Planetary Science Congress in Potsdam on Monday 20th August, said, “This system allows the rover to do more than find nice flat areas to drill. The versatility of our system and its ability to pinpoint the best site to take samples, even from complex micro-features on rocks, could be vital when looking for evidence of exobiology.”

In recent Mars missions, up to 40% of operations time has been taken up with defining, planning, rehearsing, scheduling and uploading every move that the rover makes on the surface of Mars. For NASA’s Mars Exploration Rovers, three Martian days can elapse between a target being identified and the rover actually acquiring the sample. The autonomous systems developed by the Aberystwyth team should bring that time for ExoMars down to less than one Martian day.

Comet nuclei are considered the most pristine bodies in the Solar System. Consequently, studies of comet nuclei shed an essential light on the processes occurring in the very initial stages of the Solar System formation and on the role they could have played for the origin of life on Earth.

Observations of the comet using the 8.2 m-ESO Very Large Telescope (VLT) show an irregularly-shaped object that is about 4.6 kilometres in diameter with a rotational period of 12 hours 49 minutes. Ms Cecilia Tubiana, who will be presenting results at the second European Planetary Science Congress
(EPSC) in Potsdam on Tuesday 21st August, said, “These observations were taken when the comet was approaching the furthest point from the Sun in its orbit. Rosetta will rendezvous with the comet in 2014 at a distance of about 600 million kilometres from the Sun. While a quite detailed portrait of the comet at small heliocentric distance has been drawn, a profound description of Rosetta’s target comet at large heliocentric distance is missing.”

A team of scientists, led by the Max Planck Institute for Solar System Research, observed the comet’s nucleus in June 2004, May and August 2006 and July 2007, when the comet was at least 680 million kilometres from the Sun.
Surprisingly, although the comet was not active, they found that a faint dust trail is visible in the images of the comet, extending more than 500 000 km along the comet’s orbital path. Ms Tubiana said, “We believe that this dust trail is composed of large grains that the comet shed over the
many times it has travelled along this path.

An artist’s impression of HD 189733b and its star (credit: ESA - C. Carreau)

‘Extra-solar’ planets are those outside our Solar System and more than 200 have been discovered orbiting stars close to our own Sun. The planet with water in its atmosphere is known as HD 189733b, and orbits a star in the constellation of Vulpecula the Fox, which is 64 light years from the Sun. HD 189733b is known as a “transiting planet” because it passes directly in front of its star, as viewed from the Earth.

The researchers, led by Dr Giovanna Tinetti of the European Space Agency and UCL’s Department of Physics & Astronomy, found that as HD 189733b passes in front of its ‘sun’, it absorbs starlight in a way that can only be explained by the presence of water vapour in its atmosphere. This is the first time that astronomers have been able to confirm that water is present on an extra-solar planet.