May 7, 2014

New satellite images of the Netherlands

Filed under: Photography,Science by Orangemaster @ 3:10 pm

imagesentine

This image over the coast line of the Netherlands is one of the early radar scans taken by the Sentinel-1A satellite, launched by the European Space Agency (ESA) on 3 April, which is said to be able to provide imagery under any weather conditions, day or night.

You can see Amsterdam on the centre-right side of the image, and in the lower part there’s Rotterdam, with its huge port extending to the left. As well, “Sentinel-1’s radar will also be used for monitoring changes in agricultural land cover – important information for areas with intensive agriculture like the Netherlands”.

(Link: phys.org, Photo: ESA)

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January 16, 2012

Eleven-year-old Tijmen from Gelderland gets satellite named after him

Filed under: Art by Branko Collin @ 2:32 pm

The European Union is working together with the European Space Agency to launch it’s own global positioning system called Galileo. In total 18 satellites will be launched, and they will named after children from the member states who won a drawing competition.

According to Eindhoven’s Dagblad, the lucky Dutch kid who will see his name immortalized is the 11-year-old Tijmen van der Kraaij from the village of Winssen in Gelderland, just West of Nijmegen. He won his prize with a drawing of the fair space ship TMN4VK (shown above) which seems like a cross between the Space Shuttle, the Soyuz and the rocket from Tintin—surely the best of three worlds.

(more…)

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August 5, 2009

André Kuipers to stay half a year in space

Filed under: Science by Branko Collin @ 10:19 am

André Kuipers has been to space before, but according to De Telegraaf (Dutch) this time the Amsterdam medical doctor is scheduled for a half year stay on the ISS as part of expedition 30/31. He should be launched to the space station in a Soyuz TMA space craft (seats three) in December 2010.

Kuipers went to space before as an ESA astronaut on a 10-day trip in 2004 on top of a Soyuz rocket. He was the second Dutch astronaut, following in the footsteps of Wubbo Ockels. I remember his launch rekindled my interest in space exploration back then, and I am only a jaded 41- year-old. Imagine how Dutch kids will respond to seeing a countryman in space.

(Photo: NASA)

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