It's Rocket Science, Baby! @Best0fScience

Uploaded December 2009 | Updated September 2026, 3 weeks ago

facebook.com/ScienceReason ... Ariane 30th anniversary: 30 years of Ariane - a success story.

On 24 December 1979, Ariane made its first flight from French Guyana marking the beginning of 30 years of success and giving Europe a guaranteed independant access to Space.

With Ariane ESA could develop its own programmes in many different domains: Telecommunications, Earth Observation, Satellites, Science and Exploration. With Ariane Europe was the pionneer in the civil launch space market, with the creation of Arianespace, which is now the world leading space transportation company.

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Arianespace powers on with 30 years of launches

24 December 1979: The new European launcher lifted off from the South American launch site at Kourou, French Guyana, with thundering engines a day of enormous importance for the entire European space effort. This was the first time that the member states of the European Space Agency (ESA) launched their own rocket into space the foundation stone of the extraordinary success story of the Ariane launcher system.

The German Institute of Aviation and Spaceflight Research and Development (Deutsche Forschungs- und Versuchsanstalt für Luft- und Raumfahrt; DFVLR), the forerunner of todays DLR (Deutsches Zentrum für Luft- und Raumfahrt), played an essential role in the story. It was at the Institutes testing facility near Heilbronn that the Viking rocket engines were tested and qualified.

This historic first launch was a milestone in commercial space flight, but the road to success was beset with innumerable hurdles and stumbling blocks. Understandably enough, there was little need for rocket science in post-war Germany. The first seed for a future rocket programme was sown at the end of the fifties in Baden-Württemberg.

Rocket researcher Eugen Sänger established the Rocket Engine Research Institute (Forschungsinstitut für Physik der Strahlantriebe) in Stuttgart, which later set up a test facility in the Harthäuser Forest near Heilbronn. In autumn 1962, the first tests were conducted using the new engine test stands for what was still a national rocket programme. Test stand P2 was already able to test engines with a thrust of 100 tons.

Learn more: dlr.de/en/desktopdefault.aspx/tabid-1/86_read-21578

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Credits:
• http://www.esa.int/
• ESA/CNES/Arianespace - Chris Hein
• Edited by: Best0fScience/WissensMagazin
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$Global Warming Facts http://www.facebook.com/ScienceReason ... NASA Global Warming Facts: 2009 - Second Warmest Year on Record; End of Warmest Decade Please SUBSCRIBE to Science & Reason: • http://www.youtube.com/Best0fScience • http://www.youtube.com/ScienceTV • http://www.youtube.com/FFreeThinker Global climate change ... NASAs eyes on the Earth: A warming world - global temperature update ... piecing together the temperature puzzle. Each year, scientists at NASAS Goddard Institute for Space Studies analyze global temperature data. The past year, 2009, tied as the second warmest year since global instrumental temperature records began 130 years ago. Worldwide, the mean temperature was 0.57°C (1.03°F) warmer than the 1951-1980 base period. And January 2000 to December 2009 came out as the warmest decade on record. • http://climate.nasa.gov/warmingworld 2009 was tied for the second warmest year in the modern record, a new NASA analysis of global surface temperature shows. The analysis, conducted by the Goddard Institute for Space Studies (GISS) in New York City, also shows that in the Southern Hemisphere, 2009 was the warmest year since modern records began in 1880. Although 2008 was the coolest year of the decade, due to strong cooling of the tropical Pacific Ocean, 2009 saw a return to near-record global temperatures. The past year was only a fraction of a degree cooler than 2005, the warmest year on record, and tied with a cluster of other years — 1998, 2002, 2003, 2006 and 2007 1998 and 2007 — as the second warmest year since recordkeeping began. Theres always an interest in the annual temperature numbers and on a given years ranking, but usually that misses the point, said James Hansen, the director of GISS. Theres substantial year-to-year variability of global temperature caused by the tropical El Niño-La Niña cycle. But when we average temperature over five or ten years to minimize that variability, we find that global warming is continuing unabated. January 2000 to December 2009 was the warmest decade on record. Throughout the last three decades, the GISS surface temperature record shows an upward trend of about 0.2°C (0.36°F) per decade. Since 1880, the year that modern scientific instrumentation became available to monitor temperatures precisely, a clear warming trend is present, though there was a leveling off between the 1940s and 1970s. The near-record temperatures of 2009 occurred despite an unseasonably cool December in much of North America. High air pressures in the Arctic decreased the east-west flow of the jet stream, while also increasing its tendency to blow from north to south and draw cold air southward from the Arctic. This resulted in an unusual effect that caused frigid air from the Arctic to rush into North America and warmer mid-latitude air to shift toward the north. Of course, the contiguous 48 states cover only 1.5 percent of the world area, so the U.S. temperature does not affect the global temperature much, said Hansen. In total, average global temperatures have increased by about 0.8°C (1.5°F) since 1880. Thats the important number to keep in mind, said Gavin Schmidt, another GISS climatologist. In contrast, the difference between, say, the second and sixth warmest years is trivial since the known uncertainty — or noise — in the temperature measurement is larger than some of the differences between the warmest years. Decoding the Temperature Record: Climate scientists agree that rising levels of carbon dioxide and other greenhouse gases trap incoming heat near the surface of the Earth and are the key factors causing the rise in temperatures since 1880, but these gases are not the only factors that can impact global temperatures. • http://www.giss.nasa.gov/research/news/20100121/ .$