Дата: 22 апреля 1998 (1998-04-22)
От: Alexander Bondugin
Тема: Announcement Of 3rd Cydonia Observation By MGS
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From the Mars Global Surveyor home page:
http://mars.jpl.nasa.gov/mgs/target/update4-20.html
Announcement of Third Cydonia Observation
20-APR-98 11:00 AM PDT
The Mars Surveyor Operations Project is proceeding with the implementation
of its third and final cluster of targeted imaging at Mars. This cluster
will again target the two Viking Lander sites, a refined Mars Pathfinder
landing site, and a new area in Cydonia.
On Tuesday, April 21st, at 1:43 PM PDT and on Wednesday morning, April 22,
at 1:22 AM PDT, MGS will again attempt to image the sites of the Viking
Landers on two consecutive orbits. Recall that on the first attempt, Viking
1 was slightly outside the camera's field of view. However, on the second
attempt the site was in the image, but it was not possible to see the
lander. The Viking 2 site has been covered with clouds on both previous
attempts.
Then on Wednesday afternoon, April 22 at 1:00 PM PDT, MGS will again attempt
to image the site of the Mars Pathfinder landing. This site was missed on
the two previous attempts.
On Thursday afternoon at 12:17 PM PDT, MGS will again image a portion of the
Cydonia region. Global Surveyor will again target to capture an image of the
features known as "The City". This area contains features identified as
"mounds", "city square", "pyramid" and the "fortress". The image will be
targeted to capture portions of the "pyramid" and the "fortress", as well as
"mounds".
As with the two previous images of the Cydonia region, the camera will be
set to produce an image 1024 pixels wide so that the length of the image can
be maximized to include as many features as possible. With a range from
Cydonia to the spacecraft of 392 kilometers (244 miles), this will enable a
resolution of 3.46 m/pixel (11.4 feet/pixel) and an image 3.5 km (2.2 miles)
in width by 33 km (20.5 miles) in length.
The same probabilities of success of 30% to 50% will apply to each of these
attempts based on navigation uncertainties and spacecraft attitude control
performance. Experience with the first and second clusters of targeted
images has shown that winter weather in the northern hemisphere of Mars at
this time causes haze, dust storms, surface frost and heavy cloud cover to
be significant factors in the success of seeing the targets clearly. The
weather effects are not included in the probability of success estimates.
Results of the Cydonia imaging will be posted on the Internet, in the same
manner as following the first and second observation attempts, at
approximately mid-morning Pacific Time on Friday, April 24th. (When the
playback of data from the spacecraft occurs overnight, as it does in this
case, the image will be released shortly after the opening of business the
following day.) If the landers are within the resulting images and can be
identified, the image(s) containing it (them) will be released.
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=SANA=
Дата: 22 апреля 1998 (1998-04-22)
От: Alexander Bondugin
Тема: NASA Astronomers Find Planet Construction Zone Around Nearby Star
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MEDIA RELATIONS OFFICE
JET PROPULSION LABORATORY
CALIFORNIA INSTITUTE OF TECHNOLOGY
NATIONAL AERONAUTICS AND SPACE ADMINISTRATION
PASADENA, CALIF. 91109. TELEPHONE (818) 354-5011
http://www.jpl.nasa.gov
Contact: Jane Platt
FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE April 21, 1998
NASA ASTRONOMERS FIND PLANET CONSTRUCTION ZONE AROUND NEARBY STAR
NASA astronomers using the new Keck II telescope in Hawaii have
discovered what appears to be the clearest evidence yet of a budding solar
system around a nearby star.
Scientists released an image of the probable site of planet formation
around a star known as HR 4796, about 220 light-years from Earth in the
constellation Centaurus. The image, taken with a sensitive infrared camera
developed at NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory, shows a swirling disc of dust
around the star. Within the disc is a telltale empty region that may have
been swept clean when material was pulled into newly formed planetary
bodies, the scientists said.
"This may be what our solar system looked like at the end of its main
planetary formation phase," said Dr. Michael Werner of JPL, who
co-discovered the region, along with Drs. David Koerner and Michael Ressler,
also of JPL, and Dana Backman of Franklin and Marshall College, Lancaster,
PA. "Comets may be forming right now in the disc's outer portion from
remaining debris."
The discovery was made on March 16 from the giant 10-meter (33-foot)
Keck II telescope atop Mauna Kea, Hawaii. Keck II and its twin, Keck I, are
the world's largest optical and infrared telescopes. Attached to the Keck II
for this observation was the mid-infrared camera, developed by Ressler at
JPL and designed to measure heat radiation.
The four scientists reported their discovery in a submission to
Astrophysical Journal Letters. The disc was discovered independently and
contemporaneously at the Cerro Tololo Observatory in Chile by another team
of scientists, led by Ray Jayawardhana of the Harvard-Smithsonian Center for
Astrophysics, Cambridge, MA, and Dr. Charles Telesco of the University of
Florida, Gainesville.
Koerner of JPL said the finding represents a "missing link" in the
study of how planetary systems are born and evolve. "In a sense, we've
already peeked into the stellar family album and seen baby pictures and
middle-aged photos," Koerner said. "With HR 4796, we're seeing a picture of
a young adult star starting its own family of planets. This is the link
between discs around very young stars and discs around mature stars, many
with planets already orbiting them."
"This is the first infrared image where an entire inner planetary
disc is clearly visible," Werner said. "The planet- forming disc around the
star Beta Pictoris was discovered in 1983 by the Infrared Astronomical
Satellite (IRAS), and also later imaged with the Hubble Space Telescope, but
glaring light from the star partially obscured its disc."
The apparent diameter of the dust disc around HR 4796 is about 200
astronomical units (one astronomical unit is the distance from Earth to the
Sun). The diameter of the cleared inner region is about 100 astronomical
units, slightly larger than our own solar system.
HR 4796 was originally identified as an interesting object for
further study by Dr. Michael Jura, an astronomy professor at the University
of California, Los Angeles. The star, HR 4796, is about 10 million years old
and is difficult to see in the continental United States, but is visible to
telescopes in Hawaii and the southern hemisphere.
The discovery of the HR 4796 disc was made in just one hour of
observing time at Keck, but the JPL team plans to return to Hawaii in June
for further studies. They hope to learn more about the structure,
composition and size of this disc, and to determine how discs around stars
in our galaxy produce planets. They plan to study several other stars as
well, including Vega, which was featured prominently in the movie,
"Contact."
The Harvard/Florida research team that also found the HR 4796 disc
included Drs. Lee Hartmann and Giovanni Fazio of Harvard-Smithsonian Center
for Astrophysics, and Scott Fisher and Dr. Robert Pina of the University of
Florida.
JPL's use of the Keck telescope is supported by NASA's Origins
program, a series of missions to study the formation of galaxies, stars,
planets and life, and to search for Earth-like planets around other stars
that might have the right conditions for life.
The W. M. Keck Observatory is owned and operated by the California
Association for Research in Astronomy, a joint venture between the
University of California, the California Institute of Technology and NASA.
Use of the Keck Observatory for Origins research is managed by JPL for
NASA's Office of Space Science, Washington, DC. JPL is a division of
Caltech.
The research of both teams was supported in large part by the NASA
Origins Program, with additional support to the Harvard/Florida team from
the National Science Foundation, the National Optical Astronomy
Observatories, and the Smithsonian Institution; and with additional NASA
support for the Caltech/JPL-Franklin & Marshall team, including use of the
Keck Observatory.
The Keck II image of HR 4796 is available on the web at
http://www.jpl.nasa.gov/releases/98/hr4796.html . The image and information
on the MIRLIN camera is available at http://cougar.jpl.nasa.gov/mirlin.html
A false-color image of the HR 4796 disc is available at
http://www.astro.ufl.edu/news/ . Information on the Keck Observatory is
available at http://www2/keck.hawaii.edu:3636 . Information on the Origins
program is available at: http://origins.jpl.nasa.gov .
#####
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=SANA=
Дата: 22 апреля 1998 (1998-04-22)
От: Alexander Bondugin
Тема: NASA Hosts Web Chats For "Take Our Daughters To Work Day"
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Brian Dunbar
Headquarters, Washington, DC April 20, 1998
(Phone: 202/358-0873)
John Bluck
Ames Research Center, Moffett Field, CA
(Phone: 650/604-5026)
RELEASE: 98-66
NASA HOSTS WEB CHATS FOR "TAKE OUR DAUGHTERS TO WORK DAY"
Hundreds of thousands of young people from around the globe
are expected to use the Internet to "chat" with prominent women on
April 23, "Take Our Daughters to Work Day."
Ten women will be interviewed via World Wide Web chats
enabled by NASA. During the chats, young people will use
computers to converse with the women by typing questions and
reading responses and dialogue via the World Wide Web.
"We have designed this event to give young people who cannot
otherwise speak with women in the work force the opportunity to
meet on-line and discuss opportunities in a variety of careers,"
said executive producer Tish Krieg of NASA's Ames Research Center,
Moffett Field, CA, where the event will originate. "The women
also will provide insight into the professional and personal
aspects of their lives."
The one-hour web chats will take place on Thursday, April 23,
from 9 a.m. to 7 p.m., EDT. The Internet URL is:
http://quest.arc.nasa.gov/women/intro.html
The women include: Judy Woodruff, Cable News Network anchor;
Jessica Stern, expert on terrorism and weapons of mass
destruction, who was the model for the film "The Peacemaker";
Chitra Divakiruni, novelist and author of the best sellers
"Arranged Marriage" and "Mistress of Spices"; Leslie Ann Jones,
multiple Academy Award winner for film scoring at Skywalker Sound;
Donna Shirley, manager of the Mars Exploration Directorate at
NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory, Pasadena, CA; Kim Polese, Chief
Executive Officer of Marimba, Inc.; Lynda Plettner, professional
dog musher and six-time finisher of the Iditarod race; Loretha
Jones, executive producer of "The Parenthood" weekly television
show; Stephanie Herman, Principal Ballerina and founder of Esprit
de Danse; and Susan Kovalik, author and pioneer in the brain-
compatible learning movement.
Participation is easy. "If you have a personal computer with
Internet access and web browser software, you can log onto the
NASA site to see a schedule, background information about the
women, chat instructions and pre-registration materials. Then, on
April 23, go to the chat room, and follow directions," Krieg said.
"Because the capacity for interactive questions is limited, a
first-come, first-served pre-registration via the Internet is
necessary for youngsters to be able to chat," she said. "All
others can observe the conversations, which will be very
informative and exciting experiences in themselves," she said.
The Daughters' Day virtual event is sponsored by the "Women
of NASA" project, one of many interactive projects provided by
NASA's K-12 Internet Initiative at Ames. The "Women of NASA"
project includes weekly chats with NASA women, said Ames' Learning
Technologies Project manager Karen Traicoff. The Learning
Technologies Project supports Women of NASA and the other projects.
"The overall mission of our projects is to bring NASA into
the classroom," Krieg added. "We sponsor on-line, interactive
Internet activities that connect students with NASA people and
their work. If we can give children opportunities to personally
interact with professionals, then learning becomes an exciting
experience," she said.
The Learning Technologies Project is managed by NASA's High
Performance Computing and Communications Program at NASA
Headquarters, Washington, DC.
-end-
Hа сегодня все, пока!
=SANA=
Дата: 22 апреля 1998 (1998-04-22)
От: Alexander Bondugin
Тема: SJI's Sky and Space Update - April 15, 1998
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SAN JUAN INSTITUTE'S SKY AND SPACE UPDATE
Summary information about the night sky and recent findings and events
in solar system exploration and science. Updated every 2 weeks.
LAST UPDATED: WED. APR. 15, 1998
Prepared by: Dr. Bruce Betts and Andre Bormanis
OBJECTS TO LOOK FOR IN THE NIGHT SKY (MID-NORTHERN LATITUDES)
MERCURY is visible low in the east just before dawn during the last
week of April.
VENUS lies low in the east-southeast before dawn, looking like an
extremely bright star.
JUPITER lies to the lower left of Venus shortly before dawn. On the
morning of Apr. 23, Jupiter lies only half a degree (the diameter of a Full
Moon) from Venus. The crescent Moon lies just two degrees to the lower left
of the planetary pair.
SOUTHERN HEMISPHERE OBSERVERS: Planets located in the southern part of
the sky for northern hemisphere observers will appear higher in southern
hemisphere skies; those in the north will appear lower. Mercury will be
well above the horizon for observers in the Southern hemisphere in the
pre-dawn hours through mid-May.
THE MOON
Last Quarter Moon occurs Apr. 19 at 12:53 p.m. PDT (UT - 7 hours).
New Moon occurs Apr. 26 at 4:41 a.m. PDT.
HUMAN SPACEFLIGHT UPDATE
NEXT SPACE SHUTTLE MISSION
The U.S. space shuttle Columbia is scheduled to lift-off from the
Kennedy Space Center at 11:19 PST on Thursday, Apr. 16. The seven member
crew will conduct experiments that will help scientists better understand
fundamental neurological processes. The Spacelab / Neurolab payload
includes pregnant mice, as well as 1,514 crickets, 135 snails, 152 rats, and
223 fish. The overarching goal of the biological research mission is to
determine how the nervous system of humans and various other animals is
affected by weightlessness.
Understanding how weightlessness changes the nervous system will be crucial
to future plans for lunar colonies and human missions to Mars. The Neurolab
researchers will specifically study how a brain grows in space, and whether
the absence of gravity slows down cell reproduction.
For more information on the space shuttle program, see http://shuttle.nasa.gov.
MIR SPACEWALK
Mission Commander Talgat Musabayev, 47, and flight engineer Nikolai Budarin,
44, ventured outside the Russian space station Mir for a spacewalk on
Saturday, Apr. 11, the third of five scheduled for the month of April.
Australian-born NASA scientist Andrew Thomas, 47, manned the controls inside
the station during the cosmonaut's EVA.
Musabayev and Budarin removed and jettisoned a propulsion unit used to
maintain Mir's orientation in space. The station's solar cell arrays must
be correctly aligned with the Sun in order to generate power. The
propulsion unit, which weighs some 1,800 pounds, had been running low on
fuel and then failed completely last Monday. A substitute propulsion unit
was soon brought on-line. A new replacement unit will be installed during
two spacewalks scheduled for later this month. The cosmonauts were also
scheduled to fit an airtight cap over the exhaust vent of one of Mir's
oxygen generating systems, in preparation for a later repair effort. But an
unidentified foam-like substance was discovered covering the cap. Russian
Mission Control told the cosmonauts to postpone this task until the
substance could be identified.
The twelve-year-old Mir space station is expected to remain in orbit at
least another one or two years. NASA has been utilizing Mir as a test bed
for constructing and operating the International Space Station (ISS). The
first element of ISS is scheduled for launch later this year.
For more information on Mir and NASA's involvement in the Mir program,
see http://shuttle-mir.nasa.gov/.
PLANETARY SPACECRAFT UPDATE
STUDENT SPACECRAFT
The Student Nitric Oxide Experiment (SNOE) spacecraft was successfully
launched by a Pegasus XL rocket on Feb. 26.
This is the first mission launched under the auspices of NASA's
University Explorer-Class (UnEx) program, managed by the Universities Space
Research Association (USRA), a private, non-profit space research
organization. The UnEx program funds spacecraft designed and built by
university students under the direction of their professors. The University
of Colorado at Boulder built and operates the spacecraft, with assistance
from Ball Aerospace and the National Center for Atmospheric Research.
SNOE is designed to investigate how variations in solar radiation and
X-ray emission affect the density of nitric oxide in Earth's atmosphere.
For more information on SNOE and other USRA missions, see
http://www.usra.edu/.
MARS LOSES FACE
The U.S. Mars Global Surveyor (MGS) spacecraft recently obtained high
resolution images of the region of Mars called Cydonia, home to the
notorious "face" on Mars imaged by the U.S. Viking orbiter spacecraft in the
mid 1970's.
The MGS Cydonia image shows a rough-hewn field of boulders on a low
plateau that bears little if any resemblance to a human face. The lighting
angle and relatively low resolution of the Viking cameras returned an image
of this feature that bore some similarity to a face staring up at the sky.
It's now clear that the feature is a purely natural assemblage of rocks, and
not the artifact of an ancient Martian civilization, as a small number of
people outside the planetary science community had proposed.
To view an MGS image of Cydonia and the defunct "face," see
http://mars.jpl.nasa.gov/mgs/.
THESE WEEKS IN SPACE HISTORY
APR. 23, 1992: The U.S. Cosmic Background Explorer (COBE) spacecraft
detects the first evidence of structure in the residual radiation left over
from the Big Bang that created the Universe.
APR. 24, 1967: Soviet cosmonaut Vladimir M. Komarov dies as his Soyuz
spacecraft returns to Earth from orbit, the first and so far the only space
explorer to perish during re-entry.
APR. 25, 1990: The Hubble Space Telescope is released into Earth orbit
by the space shuttle Discovery.
RANDOM SPACE FACT
The average distance between stars in the spiral arms of the Milky Way
galaxy is currently estimated to be seven light years, or sixty-six trillion
kilometers. This distance is equal to roughly 443,000 times the distance
between the Earth and Sun.
**********************************************************************
The San Juan Institute (SJI) is a non-profit corporation headquartered
in San Juan Capistrano, CA with divisions there and in Tucson, AZ. SJI
carries out research and education in planetary and Earth sciences and
astronomy, with funding provided by government grants and private donations,
which are always needed. Partial funding for the SSU has been provided by
NASA's Office of Space Science.
San Juan Capistrano Research Institute Ph: 714-240-2010, Fax: 714-240-0482
31882 Camino Capistrano, Suite 107 Email: educate@sji.org
San Juan Capistrano, CA 92675 Web site: http://www.sji.org
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=SANA=
Дата: 22 апреля 1998 (1998-04-22)
От: Alexander Bondugin
Тема: NASA To Support El Nino Prediction Studies With Supercomputers
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Cynthia O'Carroll
Cynthia.M.OCarroll.1@gsfc.nasa.gov April 20, 1998
Goddard Space Flight Center
Office of Public Affairs
(Phone: 301-286-6943)
RELEASE NO: 98-46
NASA TO SUPPORT EL NINO PREDICTION STUDIES WITH ONE OF WORLD'S MOST POWERFUL
SUPERCOMPUTERS
NASA's Seasonal to Interannual Prediction Project (NSIPP) will use an
upgraded CRAY T3E-600 supercomputer at Goddard Space Flight Center,
Greenbelt, Md., to support scientific and computational efforts to predict
seasonal to interannual climate variations. The augmented CRAY T3E will
enable NSIPP to run models capable of predicting phenomena such as El Nino
and its associated atmospheric effects felt in many regions around the
globe.
The NSIPP and a science team of investigators from universities and other
institutions will have access to 512 new processors in the upgraded CRAY
supercomputer at Goddard. The total system of 1,024 processors, 131 billion
bytes of memory and 1.2 trillion bytes of online disk space will perform
nearly 400 billion floating-point operations per second (400 gigaflops) on a
standard benchmark, ranking it among the world's five most powerful
supercomputers.
Goddard's CRAY T3E can do in one second what would take every person in the
United States using hand-held calculators over 40 years to perform.
"We plan to enhance these computational capabilities in support of our Earth
Science objectives and establish Goddard as the lead center for Earth
science supercomputing internationally," said Dr. Ghassem Asrar, NASA
Associate Administrator for Earth Science. "The challenge is to implement
large-scale Earth system models, run them in a timely fashion and then
transfer the technology to the operational agencies such as the National
Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration."
NSIPP scientists will combine comprehensive satellite observations with
global climate models. Since the ocean, with its large heat capacity,
contains the memory of short-term climate variability, the project will
build a new ocean data assimilation system to ingest the satellite data and
provide the initial conditions for predictive model runs. Experimental
predictions using past El Nino events for verification will assess the
ability to forecast future events.
"The new technology will enable us to develop the best system_coupled
climate models and data assimilation system_for taking full advantage of
NASA's satellite observations for this problem," said Dr. Michele Rienecker,
NSIPP's principal investigator. "We will be able to conduct ensembles of
runs to give a realistic statistical characterization of uncertainty in the
forecasts." NSIPP has developed a global general circulation model that
couples models of the oceans, atmosphere, land surface and sea ice. The
parallel model, capable of running on many computer processors, is a product
of research funded by the Earth and Space Sciences Project of NASA's High
Performance Computing and Communications Program.
"This system upgrade can be seen as an Agency commitment to scaleable
parallel computing for operational supercomputing," said Lee Holcomb, NASA
Chief Information Officer. "It culminates more than 20 years of NASA
investment in parallel computing technology development."
Climate models divide the globe into a grid of layered columns, solving the
relevant equations in each column layer and then assembling the full
results. With 512 processors, NSIPP will be able to use a finer grid
resolution than possible so far, with a column 1/2-degree wide (or 30 miles
over the continental United States) in the atmosphere model, for example.
"We know that model resolution impacts the ability to simulate the ocean as
well as the atmosphere and land surface in a realistic manner," Rienecker
said.
The CRAY T3E upgrade is occurring in two stages, with 384 processors
installed in March and 128 processors scheduled for availability in May. A
next-generation parallel supercomputer is planned for the year 2000.
Additional NSIPP information may be obtained on the World Wide Web at the
URL:
http://nsipp.gsfc.nasa.gov/
Earth and Space Sciences Project details are at the following URL:
http://esdcd.gsfc.nasa.gov/ESS/
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=SANA=
Дата: 22 апреля 1998 (1998-04-22)
От: Alexander Bondugin
Тема: STARDUST Update - April 17, 1998
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STARDUST Status Report
April 17, 1998
Ken Atkins
STARDUST Project Manager
Assembly, Test, and Launch Operations (ATLO) activities: The pre-ATLO
testing of the Cometary & Interstellar Dust Analyzer (CIDA) was completed
and the flight electronics box has been installed on the spacecraft. The
navigation camera was delivered, bench-tested including full camera
functional and end-to-end data flow testing and installation is planned for
today. The ATLO Test Unit (ATU) aerogel collector, partially loaded with
examples of flight quality aerogel, was delivered to Lockheed Martin. The
ATU is a pathfinder for handling and contamination control procedures to be
used on the flight unit later this year. These deliveries signal that all
flight instrument electronics are delivered to ATLO with significant
interface testing behind them. Good progress was also achieved this week on
spacecraft avionics, holding schedules for deliveries next week.
Outreach: Live video hook up between JPL and the National Science Teachers
Conference in Las Vegas, Nevada allowed a full schedule of Question & Answer
interactions with Teachers visiting the Challenger Center's booth in the
exhibit hall on Friday. Project personnel at JPL took half-hour segments in
the Stardust JPL Mission Support Area (MSA).
For more information on the STARDUST mission - the first ever comet sample
return mission - please visit the STARDUST home page:
http://stardust.jpl.nasa.gov
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=SANA=
Дата: 22 апреля 1998 (1998-04-22)
От: Alexander Bondugin
Тема: SpaceView Update - 15 April 1998 [1/7]
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S P A C E V I E W S U P D A T E
1998 April 15
http://www.spaceviews.com/1998/0415/
*** Top Stories ***
Countdown Begins for Shuttle Mission
Cosmonauts Perform Mir Repair Spacewalks
NASA Releases New "Face on Mars" Images
*** Technology ***
Pegasus and Proton Launch Spacecraft
Cause of Ariane 502 Problem Pinpointed
Software Problems Delay Earth Observing Satellite
Space Station Node Named "Unity"
*** Policy ***
Congressmen Say Station Delays Likely
NASA Considering Government Loan Guarantees for RLV Makers
New Plans for NEO Funding and Announcement Protocols
*** Science ***
Galileo Finds New Jovian Ring
ISO Finds Water on Titan
White Dwarf Discovery Sets New Limits on Supernovae
*** CyberSpace ***
The Astrobiology Web
Russian Space Web
Dragon in Space
Asteroid 1997 XF11
*** Space Capsules ***
SpaceViews Event Horizon
Other News
Editor's Note: Thanks to everyone who has turned in the annual survey:
we've received over 250 responses to date, filled with a lot of great ideas
and suggestions. If you haven't submitted yours yet, you're welcome to do
so, or you can fill out the Web version of the survey at
http://www.spaceviews.com/survey98.html . Thanks!
Jeff Foust -- jeff@spaceviews.com
Editor, SpaceViews
*** Top Stories ***
Countdown Begins for Shuttle Mission
NASA started the countdown for shuttle mission STS-90 early
Monday, April 13, as crews began last-minute preparations for Thursday's
launch of Columbia on a two-week life sciences mission.</P>
Columbia is scheduled to launch from Kennedy Space Center's Pad
39-B at 2:19pm EDT (1819 UT) Thursday, April 16. The countdown for the
mission started at 2am EDT (0600 UT) Monday. The mission is slated to
last 16 days, with the option of an additional day if conditions on
board the shuttle permit.
Forecasts for April 16 show excellent weather conditions, with
no change of rain. Meteorologists predict a 0% chance that weather
would delay an April 16 launch, a chance that increases to 40% for a
Friday, April 17 or Saturday, April 18 launch.
The STS-90 mission, also known as Neurolab, will explore the
effects of weightlessness on the human nervous system. The seven-person
crew will conduct experiments in the Spacelab module in the shuttle's
cargo bay will investigate space adaptation syndrome (spacesickness),
the adaptation of the central nervous system to microgravity, and the
development of nervous systems in weightlessness.
Nine countries have contributed 31 experiments for the mission,
which will be the last for the Spacelab module. The module, developed
by the European Space Agency, is being phased out as the International
Space Station comes on line.
NASA officials are also reportedly considering reflying the
shuttle on the same Neurolab mission this summer, to fill in gaps in the
schedule caused by delays with the International Space Station and the
shuttle launch of the AXAF satellite.
The mission is commanded by Richard Searfross, with Scott Altman
serving as pilot. Three mission specialists are on the crew, including
payload commander Richard Linnehan, Kathryn Hire, and Canadian Space
Agency astronaut Dafydd Rhys Williams. Two payload specialists, Jay
Clark Buckey, Jr. and James Pawelczyk, round out the crew.
The crew also got a chance to speak with President Bill Clinton
before the launch. Clinton visited the Johnson Space Center in Houston
on April 14 and called the shuttle crew, who arrived in Florida Monday
afternoon.
In a speech at JSC, Clinton praised NASA for keeping "its feet
grounded in fiscal discipline." He also lauded Senator John Glenn, who
will be flying on a shuttle mission in late October.
The mission will be the 90th shuttle mission since April 1981,
and the 25th for Columbia, the fleet's oldest orbiter.
Hа сегодня все, пока!
=SANA=
Дата: 22 апреля 1998 (1998-04-22)
От: Alexander Bondugin
Тема: SpaceView Update - 15 April 1998 [2/7]
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Cosmonauts Perform Mir Repair Spacewalks
Two Russian cosmonauts on the Russian space station Mir
performed three spacewalks in early April to shore up a damaged solar
panel and begin the replacement of an attitude control thruster.
Cosmonauts Talgat Musabayev and Nikolai Budarin were slated to
fix a damaged solar panel on the Spektr module on an April 1 spacewalk,
but ran into difficulties. The cosmonauts took much longer than
expected to set up support equipment, including handrails and foot
holds, on the exterior of the station, that had been left behind by
previous spacewalkers.
Musabayev and Budarin ran out of time on the April 1 spacewalk
and could not begin the repairs to the solar panel. Those repairs took
place successfully on an April 6 spacewalk. However, the cosmonauts
were called in early when mission control erroneously reported a failure
with an attitude control thruster which controllers believed had run out
of fuel.
That thruster module, the VDU, was the subject of the next
spacewalk April 11. Musabayev and Budarin walked out to the module,
mounted on the Sofora boom that extends from the Kvant module, and
detached the module, whose fuel supplies were running low. The module
was allowed to float free of the station, and will eventually burn up in
the Earth's atmosphere.
Two additional spacewalks, scheduled for April 17 and 22, are
planned to attach a new VDU control module to replace the old one. The
new module was brought up to Mir on a Progress spacecraft last month.
While the cosmonauts ran into problems in their early
spacewalks, it appeared to Russian mission controllers that the two
spacewalkers were working much better by the April 11 spacewalk. "Since
this is their third spacewalk, they've started to feel comfortable,"
Viktor Blagov, deputy chief of mission control, said.
During all three spacewalks American astronaut Andy Thomas
remained within Mir, watching over the station's systems and filming the
spacewalks. There are no plans for Thomas to participate in upcoming
spacewalks.
NASA Releases New "Face on Mars" Images
Preliminary analysis of an image of the Cydonia region of Mars,
returned on Monday, April 6, by the Mars Global Surveyor (MGS)
spacecraft, shows that a feature dubbed the "Face on Mars" little
resembles a human face.
A raw image of the Cydonia region was placed on the Mars Global
Surveyor Web site at 1:30pm EDT (1730 UT). The raw image showed very
little detail, but a contrast-enhanced image released at 4:45pm EDT
(2045 UT) showed additional surface features.
One prominent feature in the MGS image superficially resembles
one seen in Viking images in the 1970s that many considered to be
similar to a human face. However, the high-resolution MGS image showed
few details in the feature that resembled a face, unlike the
lower-resolution Viking data.
A small but vocal group of people had claimed the face, as seen
in Viking images under specific image processing routines, was evidence
that an alien civilization had once inhabited Mars and constructed the
face. Some claimed that NASA and other government agencies had acted to
cover up the data.
Some of those who believed the face was real claimed the data
returned by MGS was inconclusive. "It's like looking at a TV with a
bunch of snow on it," Richard Hoagland, author the book "The Monuments
of Mars", told the Associated Press. "There's all kinds of random
speckles. The damn thing is as noisy as hell."
However, Hoagland's Web site, the "Enterprise Mission", had
links to enhanced and rectified versions of the MGS images at JPL which
he claimed showed similarities to the original Viking images.
NASA officials had no comment about the new images. Given the
possibility of targeting errors, some thought it possible that the
region featured in the new MGS image is not the same as that seen in the
Viking data. However, the correlation of craters and other features
seen in both the MGS and Viking data makes that unlikely.
MGS is also expected to return high resolution images of the
Viking 2 and Mars Pathfinder landing sites. An attempt to image the
Viking 1 landing site missed the site by just 150 meters (500 feet). A
second attempt to image that landing site will be made April 12.
*** Technology ***
Pegasus and Proton Launch Spacecraft
A Pegasus booster launched a solar science satellite in early
April while the Russian Proton booster returned to duty by launching
seven more Iridium satellites.
The Transition Region and Coronal Explorer (TRACE) spacecraft
was launched by a Pegasus XL off the coast from Vandenberg Air Force
Base, California, at 9:42pm EST April 1 (0242 UT April 2). The
spacecraft successfully entered a 650-km (400-mi.) polar orbit.
TRACE will spend the next year studying the Sun's corona, its
outer atmosphere. The $39 million satellite will join several other
spacecraft that monitor the Sun, including the U.S.-European Solar and
Heliospheric Observatory (SOHO) and the Advanced Coronal Explorer (ACE).
One question scientists hope TRACE will be able to answer is the
temperature structure of the Sun's corona. Temperatures in the corona
reach several million degrees, compared to the 6,000 degree Celsius
(10,800 degree Fahrenheit) temperature of the surface.
A Proton booster lifted off from Baikonur, Kazakhstan, at
10:13pm EDT April 6 (0213 UT April 7). The seven Iridium satellites it
carried were successfully placed into orbit about 90 minutes later.
The Proton launch was the first since a late December launch of
an Asian communications satellite. That launch met with failure when
the Proton's Blok-DM upper stage shut down after only 1 second into a
planned two-minute firing, stranding the satellite into an unusable
orbit.
The success of the Proton launch means that 63 functioning
Iridium satellite are now in orbit. Two more launches, a Chinese Long
March 2 booster with 2 satellites and a Delta 2 with 5 satellites, are
scheduled to complete the constellation later this month. Another Delta
2 is being held in reserve for a May launch should one of the earlier
launches fail.
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Дата: 22 апреля 1998 (1998-04-22)
От: Alexander Bondugin
Тема: SpaceView Update - 15 April 1998 [3/7]
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Cause of Ariane 502 Problem Pinpointed
European engineers have pinpointed the cause of a problem with
last October's launch of the heavy-lift Ariane 5 booster that placed a
test satellite into an orbit lower than planned, the European Space
Agency reported April 8.
Ariane 502, launched October 30 of last year, suffered from
excessive roll torque near the end of its launch sequence. The
additional torque shut down the main Vulcain engine prematurely,
stranding its payload of two test satellites in an orbit slightly lower
than planned.
Engineers believe roughness in the interior surface of the
Vulcain engine caused the main exhaust jet to spiral, creating the
torque. They reached this conclusion after a series of test firings of
a Vulcain engine on a test stand.
Investigators had previously narrowed the cause of the roll
torque to engine surface roughness or a break in one of the rods that
attached the exhaust lines of the engine to the nozzle. The test
firings showed evidence for the roll torque even when all the rods were
in place, ruling out rod breakage as a cause.
ESA officials said they plan to solve the problem by
repositioning the turbine exhausts in the Vulcain engine. Engineers had
already developed a separate attitude control unit to counter any roll
torques; ESA officials said the new unit will remain in place despite
the fix to the main engine.
The repairs are not expected to change the launch date of the
next Ariane 5 launch. Ariane 503, the final qualification flight, is
scheduled for launch in July. After that launch the heavy-lift booster
will be placed into commercial service by Arianespace, which currently
operates the highly-successful series of Ariane 4 boosters.
In January, Arianespace officials announced plans to order up to
50 Ariane 5 boosters to serve its commercial launch business early next
decade, as it phases out its Ariane 4 boosters.
The Ariane 5 was developed by ESA during the 1990s at an
estimated cost of $8 billion. The first Ariane 5 launch, Ariane 501,
failed less than 40 seconds after launch in June 1996 when a attitude
control computer on the system failed because of a software bug.
Software Problems Delay Earth Observing Satellite
The launch of the first satellite of NASA's Earth Observing
System will likely be delayed by several months because of problems with
ground control software, NASA officials announced Friday, April 10.
NASA officials reported significant performance problems with
ground control software designed to command and control EOS spacecraft
and enable them to perform their scientific functions. The software is
part of the Earth Observing System Data and Information System (EOSDIS),
the overall ground system responsible for the spacecraft.
The problems with the software, which are still being studied,
will probably delay the launch of the first EOS spacecraft, AM-1,
previously scheduled for launch from Vandenberg Air Force Base,
California, this July. NASA said that the launch would likely be
delayed until the end of the year.
The report came after testing of the final version of the
software, delivered to NASA by contractor Lockheed Martin March 31.
Engineers found that problems noted in previous versions of the software
had not been corrected, and new problems introduced, mostly in the form
of sluggish, poor performance and improper implementation of decision
rules.
Project managers are continuing to examine the problem while
studying alternatives. "We're concurrently looking at commercial
off-the-shelf technology that was not available when this software
system initially was designed," said Arthur "Rick" Obenschain, project
manager for EOSDIS. "If for some reason the current software problems
can't be fixed, we have a backup plan."
The software is being developed by Lockheed Martin under
subcontract to Raytheon Information Systems Company. As of last
February the software had cost $27.5 million.
Space Station Node Named "Unity"
The first docking node of the International Space Station will
be named "Unity", NASA officials reported late Wednesday, April 8.
The news came a day after a space station schedule circulated on
the Internet, with the name "Unity" listed for Node 1. The NASA Watch
Web site, which posted the schedule, originally speculated that Unity
might be the new name for the entire station.
The node, previously known as Node 1, is scheduled for launch
this July, although it's now likely that the launch will be delayed
until September to accommodate delays with other aspects of the station,
such as the Service Module, and to balance NASA's shuttle launch
schedule. The node will be used to connect key station modules,
including the Russian-built Functional Cargo Block and American-built
habitation and laboratory modules.
"Unity makes sense in the actual function of the node as well as
in its symbolism," NASA spokesman James Hartsfield told Florida Today.
"As a building block, it will unite station modules from Russia and the
United States, joining former Cold War adversaries as allies striving to
expand the reach of humanity and improve the lives of all people."
Hartsfield said NASA plans to name other modules of the station
as they approach launch, much as each module on the Russian space
station Mir has its own individual name. Future names may be selected
in contests involving students.
The International Space Station itself has no other name. NASA
officials indicated no plans to provide the station with a new name any
time in the foreseeable future.
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Дата: 22 апреля 1998 (1998-04-22)
От: Alexander Bondugin
Тема: SpaceView Update - 15 April 1998 [4/7]
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*** Policy ***
Congressmen Say Station Delays Likely
Two Congressmen returning from a trip to Russia last week said
the Service Module, a key Russian-built component of the International
Space Station, will likely be delayed three months to early 1999,
Florida Today reported April 11.
Congressmen James Sensenbrenner (R-WI) and Eddie Bernice Johnson
(D-TX) said Russian officials told them during a trip to Moscow that the
launch of the Service Module would be pushed back from December 1998 to
March 1999.
If true, the delay would solidify plans to delay the launches of
the first two components of the station, the Russian-built but
U.S.-funded FGB module, and the U.S.-built Unity module, formerly known
as Node 1. Those two modules were slated for launches in June and July,
respectively, but are likely to be pushed back to August and September.
The Service Module was planned for an April 1998 launch, several
months after the launch of the FGB and Node 1 elements of the station.
However, the launch date slipped last year from April to December as
Service Module construction fell behind schedule, in part because of
funding problems.
No formal announcement of the delay has been reported, and none
is expected before next month. NASA plans to report on the status to
Congress by May 15. A meeting between NASA and Russian Space Agency
officials is scheduled for later this month to discuss the status of the
module.
"We've been talking with the Russians for some time, and we are
well aware that they are behind schedule, but until we have this meeting
we can't say exactly what the status is," NASA spokesperson Debra Rahn
told Florida Today.
NASA Considering Government Loan Guarantees for RLV Makers
NASA officials are considering proposing a set of incentives,
ranging from promises to purchase launch services to loan guarantees, to
support the private development of reusable launch vehicles (RLVs),
Space News reported last week.
William Claybaugh, business advisor to the deputy associate
administrator for space transportation technology at NASA, told Space
News that the agency is considering a number of incentives to support
RLVs that would require government backing but "may not necessarily cost
the government anything," he said.
Among Claybaugh's proposals include promises by NASA to purchase
a specific number of RLV flights, tax credits, and underwriting
commercial loans or subsidizing the interest rates on those loans.
Those proposals would reduce the perceived risk in the project
and lower the interest rates, making more capital available, according
to Gary Payton, NASA's deputy associate administrator for space
transportation technology.
A study last year by the Aerospace Corporation showed that
commercial RLV builders could expect to invest no more than about $1
billion in a new project, requiring either outside investment or
government funding. The finding raised concerns about the future of
VentureStar, the full-scale follow-on to the X-33, which has an expected
development cost of about $5-6 billion.
While NASA's proposals of loan guarantees and other incentives
appear targeted specifically at Lockheed Martin, developer of the
VentureStar, Claybaugh said any incentives would be available to other
companies developing RLVs.
Claybaugh was skeptical that any company could develop an RLV
that provided low-cost access to space solely on commercial funding.
"If a company has to pay back all the development costs on a commercial
basis, [it is] not going to be able to hit the $1,000 per pound cost
target," he told Space News.
New Plans for NEO Funding and Announcement Protocols
NASA plans to establish a new office for near-Earth asteroid
detection studies and more than double funding for searches, while
encouraging astronomers to find better ways to communicate the discovery
of any potentially hazardous objects among themselves before announcing
it publicly.
Space News reported last week that NASA plans to establish a new
office within the next few weeks dedicated to coordinating efforts to
search for more near-Earth objects (NEOs), as well as study the objects
from the Earth and from spacecraft.
NASA is earmarking $3 million for NEO research, more than double
the $1.3 million spent last year. The money will support expanded
efforts to search for new NEOs and follow up on existing discoveries.
At the same time, NASA is trying to get the astronomical
community to work together to better communicate any discoveries of
potentially hazardous NEOs among themselves first, before making any
announcements publicly.
A new set of guidelines finalized by the space agency last week
and reported in the April 12 issue of the Washington Post, require that
"no hazard or threat prediction statements will be released with
verification and consensus," the Post reported.
The new guidelines, which affect only NASA-funded researchers
(which make up most of the NEO search community) also require that NASA
be informed of the discovery of any NEO discovery that could pose a
threat to the Earth at least 24 hours before that announcement is made
public.
The new protocols come a month after the announcement that
asteroid 1997 XF11 would pass within 30,000 mi (50,000 km) of the Earth
in 2028, and had a small chance of hitting the planet. Within a day new
data, recovered from 8-year-old images of the asteroid, showed that the
asteroid would in fact pass no more than 600,000 mi. (950,000 km) of the
Earth.
NASA officials and scientists alike regard the media frenzy
which surrounded the announcements as a fiasco. Criticism and ridicule,
from everyone from late-night talk-show hosts to New York Times
columnist William Safire, rained down on the astronomical community as a
result.
Carl Pilcher, acting director of solar system exploration at
NASA, told the Post that eventually everyone got the right answer.
"Unfortunately," he said, "the announcement occurred at the beginning
rather than the end of this procedure. That is not acceptable."
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Дата: 22 апреля 1998 (1998-04-22)
От: Alexander Bondugin
Тема: SpaceView Update - 15 April 1998 [5/7]
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*** Science ***
Galileo Finds New Jovian Ring
Scientists analyzing data from the Galileo spacecraft have
discovered a new ring of interplanetary and interstellar dust orbiting
the planet Jupiter.
Data from a dust collector on Galileo, correlated with computer
simulations, provided evidence for the extremely tenuous ring of dust
particles orbiting 1.1 million km (700,000 mi.) from Jupiter, University
of Colorado at Boulder scientists reported in the April 3 issue of the
journal Science.
The ring consists of tiny dust particles, between the size of
0.6 and 1.4 microns, that have been captured by Jupiter's powerful
magnetic field. "If these particles are just the right size, they lose
energy to the magnetosphere and are captured in the ring," CU research
associate Joshua Colwell said.
The dust comes from sources both within the solar system and
outside it. The ring is so tenuous, Colwell said, than only one photon
in a billion passing through the ring would collide with a dust grain,
making it virtually impossible to detect the ring visually.
Instead, scientists used a special dust collector, a bowl-shaped
detector with a charged grid over the top, to sense the dust. As dust
hits the bowl it vaporizes, creating a small cloud detected by the grid.
Scientists found the ring was orbiting Jupiter in a retrograde
motion, the direction opposite of Jupiter's other rings and moons. The
reason for this retrograde motion was unclear.
Jupiter may not be the only planet with a tenuous dust ring. "I
suspect we may wind up seeing something similar at Saturn" when the
Cassini spacecraft arrives there in 2004, Colwell said.
ISO Finds Water on Titan
A European orbiting infrared observatory, at the end of its
mission, has found evidence for water on Saturn's largest moon, Titan,
among other discoveries announced Tuesday, April 7.
A team of European scientists, using data collected by the
Infrared Space Observatory (ISO), has detected traces of water vapor in
the atmosphere of Titan. Emissions of infrared radiation were seen in
ISO observations at wavelengths of 39 and 44 microns, a signature of
water molecules.
"Water vapor makes Titan much richer," said Athena Coustenis of
Paris Observatory, co-leader of the team that conducted the observations
last December. "Now that we believe we've found it, we can expect to
better understand the organic chemistry taking place on Titan and also
the sources of oxygen in the Saturnian system."
The finding suggests that Titan has all the ingredients
necessary for the formation of life, like the early Earth. Some
scientists suggest Titan has been preserved in this early condition,
before the formation of life, by its cold temperatures more than nine
times farther from the Sun than the Earth.
The discovery was among several released by European Space
Agency officials on Tuesday. Other ISO observations announced include
the formation of stars in the Orion Nebula, collisions of galaxies, and
the discovery of distant galaxies seen through holes in dust clouds in
our own galaxy.
The announcements come near the end of ISO's mission. The
spacecraft's instruments are cooled by liquid helium to temperatures
near absolute zero, to make them more sensitive to faint infrared
signals. ISO's supply of liquid helium ran out on April 8.
ISO was launched on an Ariane 4 booster in November 1995.
Expected to last through May of 1997, the mission was extended by
careful use of the spacecraft, conserving its limited supply of liquid
helium and propellant. ISO operations on the ground are expected to
continue for about three years after the spacecraft mission ends, as
data collected by the spacecraft is reprocessed and archived for use by
the international astronomical community.
ESA will now turn its attention to two future infrared
spacecraft missions. The FIRST spacecraft will observe the sky at long
infrared wavelengths, while the Planck mission will study the cosmic
microwave background at a much higher resolution than NASA's Cosmic
Background Explorer (COBE) mission did in the early 1990s.
White Dwarf Discovery Sets New Limits on Supernovae
The discovery a bright new white dwarf in a nearby star cluster,
seen in a Hubble Space Telescope image, has planed new limits on how
large stars can become without ending their lives in a massive supernova
explosion.
Rebecca Elson and Steinn Sigurdsson of Cambridge University
found the white dwarf during an archival search of Hubble images of the
star cluster NGC 1818, located in the nearby Large Magellanic Cloud,
164,000 light years away.
The white dwarf they found was exceptional because it was still
very hot and bright, indicating it had formed recently after the burnout
of a massive giant star. By linking the white dwarf to existing massive
stars in the cluster, they estimated the white dwarf had originally been
a star about 7.6 times as massive as the Sun.
The discovery sets new limits on how large a star can be before
exploding in a supernova. Astrophysicists had believed stars with
masses as low as 6 to 10 times that of the Sun would explode as a
supernova, leaving hind only a small but massive neutron star, pulsar (a
rotating neutron star), or black hole.
White dwarves, on the other hand, are the end state for less
massive stars, who blow off most of their mass in a series of red giant
expansion phases, as the stars use up the nuclear fuel in their cores.
*** CyberSpace ***
The Astrobiology Web
A few years ago, the concept of "astrobiology" -- the study and
search for extraterrestrial life -- was almost laughable. Today, with
evidence suggesting primitive life once existed on Mars, increasing
evidence for conditions within Jupiter's moon Europa that could support
life, and the discovery of planets around other stars, including some
like our Sun, the field is gaining considerable respect. Explore the
various facets of astrobiology at The Astrobiology Web ("Your Online
Guide to the Living Universe"), a site devoted to the subject recently
endorsed by the National Space Society. This site has a wealth of
information on the subject and links to related resources elsewhere on
the Web on this fascinating subject.
http://www.astrobiology.com/
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Дата: 22 апреля 1998 (1998-04-22)
От: Alexander Bondugin
Тема: SpaceView Update - 15 April 1998 [6/7]
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Russian Space Web
The Russian Space Web features detailed information about the
rockets and launch facilities used by the Soviet Union and Russia since
shortly after World War II. At this site you can read in detail the
development of Russian rocket, from the V-2-derivative R-1 rocket
through the historic R-7 rocket and on to the N-1 moon rocket, Energia,
and others. The Baikonur and Kapustin Yar launch sites are among the
facilities discussed on this Web site. The site requires the use of the
Shockwave Freehand plug-in (not the usual Shockwave plug-in, but still
available for free from the Macromedia Web site) to display some
detailed, interactive diagrams of rockets and maps of launch sites. A
unique and useful Web resource on the Soviet and Russian rocket
programs!
http://www.concentric.net/~agzak/homepage.html
Dragon in Space
While there are countless Web sites dedicated to information
about NASA, and a fair number of sites focused on Soviet and Russian
space efforts, there's little online about the Chinese space program,
even as they become a major player in commercial launches, and perhaps
soon human spaceflight. "Dragon in Space" is a detailed unofficial Web
site about Chinese space efforts, including Chinese space news, a
gallery of rocket and satellite photos, and links to other Chinese space
resources online. This site is a valuable tool for anyone looking for
more information about Chinese space efforts.
http://www.geocities.com/CapeCanaveral/Launchpad/1921/
Asteroid 1997 XF11
Asteroid 1997 XF11 was regarded by some as a "Doomsday
Asteroid"... for about a day, until new data revised its closest
approach distance from 50,000 km to nearly 1,000,000 km. However, if
you check out this Web site, you'll find that the asteroid never had
much chance of hitting Earth in the first place, due to the orientation
and shape of its error ellipse. There's a good deal of other
information about this asteroid, including ephemerides, tables of close
approaches the asteroid will make to Earth in the coming decades, and
more.
http://ssd.jpl.nasa.gov/ca_97xf11.html
*** Space Capsules ***
SpaceViews Event Horizon
April 16 Launch of the shuttle Columbia on STS-90, Neurolab
mission, at 2:19pm EDT (1819 UT).
April 17 Mir spacewalk
April 17-19 Space Access '98 conference, Scottsdale, AZ
April 22 Mir spacewalk
April 23 Delta II launch of 4 Globalstar satellites from Cape
Canaveral, Florida, at 6:54pm EDT (2254 UT)
April 26-30 Space 98 conference, Albuquerque, NM
April 26 Delta II launch of 5 Iridium satellites from Vandenberg
Air Force Base, California, at 7:14pm EDT (2314 UT)
April 28 Ariane 4 launch of two satellites from Kourou, French
Guiana
May 21-25 1998 International Space Development Conference,
Milwaukee, WI
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Дата: 22 апреля 1998 (1998-04-22)
От: Alexander Bondugin
Тема: SpaceView Update - 15 April 1998 [7/7]
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Other News
What's in a Name? Lockheed Martin announced April 8 that two new
versions of the Atlas 2 booster, the Atlas 2AR and Atlas 2ARC, would be
getting new names. The 2AR will become the Atlas 3A and the 2ARC the
Atlas 3B. Both rockets use the Russian-developed RL-180 engine for its
lower stage; the Atlas 3A uses a single RL-10 engine in its Centaur
upper stage while the 3B uses 2 RL-10s in a stretched version of the
Centaur. The Atlas 3A will be ready for launches starting in 1999, and
the 3B version in 2000.
Different Directions in Launch Vehicles: Two companies are taking very
different directions in commercial launch vehicle development, based on
recent announcements. Beal Aerospace, a new Texas company founded by
banker Andrew Beal, plans to spend $250 million to develop a series of
inexpensive expendable booster that will be built in Texas and launched
from an island in the Caribbean. Beal, who announced the project last
month, said the plan to develop uncomplicated, inexpensive boosters made
obvious sense to him. "I for the life of me can't understand why this
hasn't been done before," he said. Meanwhile, an article in Aviation
Week earlier this month pieced the veil of secrecy surrounding the
efforts of Space Access LLC, a company developing a reusable launch
vehicle. Space Access's design involves a two-stage design, utilizing
an "ejector ramjet" in a first-stage aircraft that flies to Mach 6
before delivering a reusable second-stage spacecraft that flies into
orbit and delivers its payload. Beal plans its first launch for early
2000 while Space Access is planning test flights in 2001.
EarthWatch Retrenches: EarthWatch, the commercial remote sensing company
whose initial satellite was lost a few days after launch last December,
is canceling its follow-up mission to focus on a more advanced
satellite, company official report. Work on Early Bird 2, a replacement
for the Early Bird 1 satellite that failed, has been canceled in favor
of pushing ahead on Quick Bird 1, an advanced satellite capable of
providing one-meter resolution imaging. The company plans to use a $29
million insurance claim on Early Bird 1 to start development. Early
Bird 1 failed when a faulty GPS unit drained the spacecraft's battery.
EarthWatch will face stiff competition from Aerial Images, an American
company which obtained high-resolution images from a Russian satellite
that returned to Earth after completing its imaging mission April 3.
The Russian-American joint venture, which includes Microsoft as a
partner, will distribute the images via the Internet.
Mir Crew Awards: Russian President Boris Yeltsin gave awards April 10
to the cosmonauts on the last two crews to the Mir space station.
Vasily Tsibliev, who commanded Mir last year when it suffered from
various problems, including the collision of a Progress supply craft
with Spektr, received an Order for Services to the Fatherland, Third
Class. His crewmate, Alexander Lazutkin, won the Hero of the Russian
Federation gold star, Russia's highest military honor. Pavel
Vinogradov, flight engineer on the next Mir crew, won the same award as
Lazutkin, while Anatoly Solovyov, Vinogradov's commander, won an Order
for Services to the Fatherland, Second Class. Yeltsin also awarded
Orders of Friendship to NASA Mir astronauts Michael Foale and David
Wolf.
In Brief: The Global Positioning System (GPS) was inducted into the U.S.
Space Foundation's Space Technology Hall of Fame April 9, during the
organization's National Space Symposium in Colorado Springs. Started in
1978 to aid military navigation, civilian uses of GPS have grown
dramatically in recent years... The American Geophysical Union and NASA
are teaming up for a contest to name the first Earth Observation System
satellite, now planned for launch late this year. The contest is open
to students in grades 8 through 12 and runs through May 29; the winner
gets a free trip to see the launch of the spacecraft. Full information
is available on the AGU Web site, http://earth.agu.org/eos_am/.
This has been the April 15, 1998, issue of SpaceViews Update.
SpaceViews Update is also availble on the World Wide web from the
SpaceViews home page:
http://www.spaceviews.com/
or via anonymous FTP from ftp.seds.org:
/pub/info/newsletters/spaceviews/update/980415.txt
For editorial questions and article submissions for SpaceViews or
Spaceviews Update, contact the editor, Jeff Foust, at jeff@spaceviews.com.
For questions about the SpaceViews mailing list, please contact
spaceviews-approval@ari.net.
____ | "SpaceViews" (tm) -by Boston Chapter
// \ // | of the National Space Society (NSS)
// (O) // | Dedicated to the establishment
// \___// | of a spacefaring civilization.
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