15 Feb 2006 14:42

Operations and Archiving

The European Payload Operation System (EPOS) co-ordinates the operations for the seven European instruments on TC-1 and TC-2 and is running smoothly. The new contract for the extension of EPOS, starting 1 January 2006, is being signed by RAL. ESOC acquired on average about 3 hours of data per day using the VILSPA 2 ground station and covered around 80% of the passes. The rest of the passes were acquired by the Chinese stations in Shanghai and Beijing.

Science Highlights

On 27 December 2004, radiation from the biggest starquake on a neutron star ever recorded reached Earth. Unique data obtained by Double Star TC-2 and Cluster satellites have shown the first observational evidence of cracks in the neutron star crust, during the initial phase of the starquake. The intensity of this major peak was hundreds of times stronger than any other observed so far (only two other giant flares have been recorded in the past 35 years). For the first 200 ms it saturated almost all instruments on satellites equipped to observe γ-rays. Although designed to study the Earth's magnetosphere, the PEACE instruments onboard Double star TC-2 and Cluster satellites performed unsaturated observations of this initial flare rise and decay. This result, published in the Astrophysical Journal, will help to discriminate between current theories on the physical origin of such massive starquakes.