The full-day ESA programme started at 9 o'clock with a guided tour of Arktikum, a museum dedicated to the arctic scientific research, e.g. climate change and the history and culture of the Sami people in Lapland. After the tour, we listened to a series of interesting talks about the ESA's Space Situational Awareness programme for Space Weather (to which I contribute as a IT specialist at the Belgian Institute for Space Aeronomy), the Gaia spacecraft that will do accurate parallax (distance) measurements of millions of stars, ... But the most impressive talk came from NASA astronaut Don Pettit. He stayed last year for six months in the International Space Station (ISS) together with the Dutch astronaut André Kuipers. They made more than 500.000 pictures! One of the nicest is "Walking on Air". Young readers of this blog will also remember the video in which Don Pettit announces "Angry Birds in Space".
By noon a bus brought us to a theme park dedicated to Santa Claus. Alain (a friend that I know from public observatory Urania who was also invited) and I visited the friendly man who even spoke some Dutch. After a visit to the souvenir shop and a hearty meal (this time no reindeer, because they were flown away ...) we drove to the Arctic Research Centre in Sodankylä, about 150 kilometers to the north.
Here again we followed some explanations, this time about the field of research at the Arctic Research Centre. We also had an interesting presentation on another ESA programme, namely the monitoring of space debris. It is a big problem in space, especially after a anti-satellite missile test conducted by China in 2007. A Fengyun weather satellite was destroyed, resulting in a cloud of 150.000 debris particles. Now there is a debate going on between specialists if the so-called Kessler point is already passed or not. If so, then by the number of collisions among debris will continue to grow, even if we would no longer launch new satellites. Anyway, space agencies such as ESA will have to find methods to reduce the amount of space debris drastically.
Then we visited one of the EISCAT radars. These radars are used for the study of the magnetosphere and the ionosphere, to unravel the interaction between the Sun and our planet. The movable dish in Sodankylä has a diameter of 32 meters. Very impressive!
After a typical Lappish buffet, we prepared ourselves for the big moment. First we got an explanation about the northern lights in the Aurora House, and then we went outside. It was really cold (about -30°C!) and the observation site was not ideal (the only light, from Sodankylä, was exactly in the north). But nevertheless we saw some (weak) aurora and an incredible starry sky. A nice ending of a great day!
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