Дата: 07 мая 1998 (1998-05-07)
От: Alexander Bondugin
Тема: Planetary Society To Award Second Round Of Asteroid-Discovery Grants
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Planetary Society To Award Second Round of Asteroid-Discovery Grants
Gene Shoemaker Near-Earth Object Grants Encourage
Detection of Potentially Dangerous Comets and Asteroids
The Planetary Society is seeking applications for the second round of
selections for the Gene Shoemaker Near-Earth Object Grants. The purpose of the
grant program is to increase the rate of discovery and follow-up studies of
asteroids and comets in Earth's vicinity by enabling amateur observers,
observers in developing countries, and professional astronomers who, with seed
funding, could greatly increase their programs' contributions to this critical
research.
The deadline for receipt of applications for the second round of selections is
June 30, 1998. Previous awardees will not be considered for the present
selection and applicants for the first round wishing consideration in the
second selection are requested to submit new, updated applications.
Application forms are available on this web site
(http://planetary.org/NEO/neo-guidelines.html).
The Society's NEO Grant Program is coordinated by Daniel D. Durda, an asteroid
researcher at the University of Arizona's Lunar and Planetary Laboratory. An
international advisory group, including noted near-Earth object scientists
Richard Binzel of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Clark Chapman of
the Southwest Research Institute, Andrea Carusi of the Spaceguard Foundation,
and Brian Marsden of the Smithsonian Astrophysical Observatory, will advise
the Planetary Society on the selection of awards for the grants.
Facing the Threat of Comets and Asteroids
Popular awareness of the threat of comet and asteroid impacts has increased
dramatically in recent months with the report of a close approach past Earth
of the asteroid 1997 XF11 in October 2028 and the summer release of the movies
Deep Impact and Armageddon.
Earth lives in a swarm of near-Earth objects of different sizes and orbits.
Scientists have only recently begun to understand the significant contribution
NEOs have made to the evolution of Earth -- and of life on Earth -- just as
impacts from comets and asteroids have contributed to the evolution of all
planets throughout the solar system.
Less than 200 NEOs have been discovered thus far. Scientists estimate that
there are several thousand such NEOs larger than one kilometer and 150,000 to
perhaps 100 million larger than 100 meters in size.
While various astronomical groups and NASA advisory committees have strongly
recommended discovery of these objects be accelerated, government support for
NEO search and follow-up programs remains modest.
"At the current rate of discovery, it would take decades to find a majority of
even the large NEOS," says Planetary Society Executive Director Louis
Friedman.
The Planetary Society hopes that its NEO Grant Program will help map the
potential hazards of the future, allowing humanity to better understand the
threat of cosmic collisions.
The Society is cooperating with the Spaceguard Foundation, a European-based
international organization, to help fund and promote discovery of near-Earth
objects.
Previous Grant Recipients
The first four Gene Shoemaker Near-Earth Object Grants were awarded at the
Celebration of Life service honoring Shoemaker at the US Geological Survey
Flagstaff Field Center on October 11, 1997. The grants, totaling more than
$35,000, were awarded to Gordan Garradd of Australia, Kirill Zamarashkin of
Russia, Walter Wild of the United States, and Bill Holliday of the United
States for upgrades to their programs to search for NEOs.
The Society funds for the NEO Grant Program come from its 100,000 members
worldwide, whose voluntary dues and donations permit targeted support to
research and development programs.
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Дата: 07 мая 1998 (1998-05-07)
От: Alexander Bondugin
Тема: Test Pilots To Testbeds - NASA Cushions Liftoff and Eases Bedsores
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Don Nolan-Proxmire
Headquarters, Washington, DC May 6, 1998
(Phone: 202/358-1983)
RELEASE: 98-77
TEST PILOTS TO TESTBEDS -- NASA CUSHIONS LIFTOFF AND EASES BEDSORES
A foam material developed by NASA researchers to cushion
pilots against the rigors of test flight, and currently in use
aboard the Space Shuttles, is now being successfully sold in
pillows and mattresses by a Lexington, KY, company to treat
disorders ranging from sleeplessness to the more severe illness of
pressure ulcers, commonly known as bedsores.
Tempur-Pedic's products have been cited by the U.S.
Department of Veterans Affairs as "very effective for the
treatment and prevention" of bedsores and "very comfortable" to
patients. Both the Veterans Affairs Department and the National
Institutes of Health have purchased hundreds of Tempur-Pedic
products for use in their pain management and ulcer treatment
programs. Bedsores, which can be fatal if left untreated, cost
the Medicare and Medicaid programs almost $2 billion annually for
treatment of wheelchair-bound, nursing home and hospital patients.
The one millionth pillow produced by the company, Tempur-
Pedic, will be presented by its CEO, Robert Trussell, to NASA
Administrator Daniel S. Goldin, on Wednesday, May 6, at 5 p.m. EDT
in the NASA Headquarters Auditorium, 300 E Street, SW, Washington, DC.
Administrator Goldin said, "This NASA technology designed to
protect astronauts and pilots is now being used to help the
elderly, the disabled and hospital patients. NASA is deeply
committed to transferring our unique knowledge to improve the
quality of life for all Americans." Tempur-Pedic's Trussell
added, "We have taken NASA's space-age material and developed it
into 'body-friendly' bedding, which distributes pressure more
evenly throughout the spine, joints and other parts of the body."
Tempur-Pedic's pillows, mattresses and other products made
from Temper Foam have billions of self-ventilating memory
molecules that slowly react to body heat and weight. It was first
developed by NASA's Ames Research Center, Moffett Field, CA, for
use in aircraft test-pilot seats and to protect airline passengers
in crashes. Temper Foam was recently inducted into the United
States Space Foundation's Space Technology Hall of Fame, Colorado
Springs, CO.
NASA actively encourages commercialization of its
technologies. To learn more about NASA innovations,
commercialization efforts and the Agency's technology transfer
programs, interested parties can call 1-800-678-6882 or access the
NASA Commercial Technology Network web page at URL:
http://nctn.hq.nasa/gov/
Tempur-Pedic can be contacted by telephoning 1-800-886-6466
or at the web address:
www.tempurpedic.com
-end-
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Дата: 07 мая 1998 (1998-05-07)
От: Alexander Bondugin
Тема: National Space Society Calls for President to Act on ISS
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CONTACT: Karen Rugg
(202) 543-1900, ext. 77
NATIONAL SPACE SOCIETY DELIVERS CALL TO PRESIDENT TO BE
PART OF SOLUTION FOR SPACE STATION, NOT PART OF PROBLEM
(Washington, DC) -- May 6, 1998 -- Today, just before the start of a full
House Science Committee hearing on the International Space Station (ISS), the
National Space Society delivered a letter to President Clinton urging his
Administration to step forward, establish a relationship with the new Russian
cabinet and work with the U.S.'s international partners to resolve funding and
construction schedule problems in the ISS program.
"The Clinton Administration won credit for bringing Russia into the ISS
partnership back in 1993," said NSS Executive Director Pat Dasch. "Since
then, it appears as if the Administration has been sitting on the sidelines
while a series of problems -- some in NASA's control and many not -- have
developed. It is now incumbent upon the White House to step onto the playing
field and provide the necessary leadership to deal with Russian delays."
She adds, "NASA scientists and engineers are not the people to do this, only
the Administration has the international diplomatic resources that can be
brought to bear on the situation. Postponing the inevitable will increase
costs to America's taxpayers, weaken our nation's space program and sully our
relationships with the international partners."
The International Space Station is necessary to learn how to keep astronauts
healthy in space over long periods of time. The station will facilitate the
commercial development of low Earth orbit and pave the way for human
exploration of other worlds. Research aboard the station holds the promise of
improving life on Earth in different ways -- from increasing the production of
scarce drugs from plants and microorganisms, to improving fuel efficiency, and
creating new and better materials.
The National Space Society, founded in 1974, is an independent, nonprofit
space advocacy organization headquartered in Washington, DC. Its 23,000
members and 90 chapters around the world actively promote a spacefaring
civilization. Information on NSS and space exploration is available at
<http://www.nss.org/>.
###
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Дата: 07 мая 1998 (1998-05-07)
От: Alexander Bondugin
Тема: JPL Evening Lectures Highlight Icy and Fiery Space Destinations
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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 May 5, 1998
JPL EVENING LECTURES HIGHLIGHT ICY AND FIERY SPACE DESTINATIONS
Three varied solar system locations--the Sun, Pluto and
Jupiter's moon Europa--will be featured in two free public
lectures on Thursday, May 14 at 7 p.m. in JPL's von Karman
Auditorium, and on Friday, May 15 at 7 p.m. in The Forum at
Pasadena City College. Seating is limited and will be on a first-
come, first-served basis.
The lectures, entitled "Ice & Fire: Traveling to Difficult
Solar System Destinations," will feature the three planned
missions of the Outer Planets/Solar Probe project. The three are
Europa Orbiter, a mission to look for evidence of liquid oceans
on Jupiter's icy moon, Europa; Solar Probe, which will travel
closer to the Sun than any previous spacecraft; and Pluto-Kuiper
Express, which will fly by Pluto and its moon Charon, and
possibly into the Kuiper Disk, the cold, dark outer fringes of
our solar system. The three missions are tentatively scheduled
for launch between 2003 and 2007
The lectures will be presented by Robert Staehle, deputy
manager for the Outer Planets/Solar Probe project. Staehle
previously served as Ice and Fire Preprojects manager. His space
exploration career began when his student experiment "Bacteria
Aboard Skylab" flew on the first American space station. With his
aeronautical and astronautical engineering background, Staehle
worked on the Voyager mission and contributed to lunar and
planetary exploration studies. He learned from a variety of
industries how to cut mission development costs and lead time
dramatically, knowledge well-suited to the goals of the Outer
Planets/Solar Probe missions.
Please note that the lectures on Deep Space 1, originally
scheduled for May 14 and 15, have been rescheduled for August 20
at JPL and August 21 at PCC. The speaker will be Dr. Marc Rayman,
chief mission engineer and deputy mission manager.
This lecture is part of the von Karman Lecture Series
sponsored monthly by the JPL Media Relations Office. A web site
on the lecture series is located at
http://www.jpl.nasa.gov/lecture. For directions and other
information, call the Media Relations Office at (818) 354-5011.
#####
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Дата: 07 мая 1998 (1998-05-07)
От: Alexander Bondugin
Тема: Most Powerful Explosion Since The Big Bang Challenges Gamma Ray Burst
Subject: Most Powerful Explosion Since The Big Bang Challenges Gamma Ray Burst
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Donald Savage
Headquarters, Washington, DC May 6, 1998
(Phone: 202/358-1547)
Bill Steigerwald
Goddard Space Flight Center, Greenbelt, MD
(Phone: 301/286-5017)
Robert Tindol
California Institute of Technology, Pasadena, CA
(Phone: 626/395-3631)
RELEASE: 98-75
MOST POWERFUL EXPLOSION SINCE THE BIG BANG CHALLENGES GAMMA RAY BURST THEORIES
A recently detected cosmic gamma ray burst released a
hundred times more energy than previously theorized, making it the
most powerful explosion since the creation of the universe in the
Big Bang.
"For about one or two seconds, this burst was as luminous
as all the rest of the entire universe," said Caltech professor
George Djorgovski, one of the two principal investigators on the
team from the California Institute of Technology, Pasadena, CA.
The team measured the distance to a faint galaxy from which
the burst originated at about 12 billion light years from the
Earth. The observed brightness of the burst despite this great
distance implies an enormous energy release. The team's findings
appear in the May 7 issue of the journal Nature.
The burst was detected on Dec. 14, 1997, by the
Italian/Dutch BeppoSAX satellite and NASA's Compton Gamma Ray
Observatory satellite. The Compton observatory provided detailed
measurements of the total brightness of the burst, designated GRB
971214, while BeppoSAX provided its precise location, enabling
follow-up observations with ground-based telescopes and NASA's Hubble Space
Telescope.
"The energy released by this burst in its first few seconds
staggers the imagination," said Caltech professor Shrinivas
Kulkarni, the other principal investigator on the team.
The burst appears to have released several hundred times
more energy than an exploding star, called a supernova, until now
the most energetic known phenomenon in the universe. Finding such
a large energy release over such a brief period of time is
unprecedented in astronomy, except for the Big Bang itself.
"In a region about a hundred miles across, the burst
created conditions like those in the early universe, about one
millisecond (1/1,000 of a second) after the Big Bang," said Djorgovski.
This large amount of energy was a surprise to astronomers.
"Most of the theoretical models proposed to explain these bursts
cannot explain this much energy," said Kulkarni. "However, there
are recent models, involving rotating black holes, which can work.
On the other hand, this is such an extreme phenomenon that it is
possible we are dealing with something completely unanticipated
and even more exotic."
Gamma-ray bursts are mysterious flashes of high-energy
radiation that appear from random directions in space and
typically last a few seconds. They were first discovered by U.S.
Air Force Vela satellites in the 1960s. Since then, numerous
theories of their origin have been proposed, but the causes of
gamma-ray bursts remain unknown. The Compton observatory has
detected several thousand bursts so far.
The principal limitation in understanding the bursts was
the difficulty in pinpointing their direction on the sky. Unlike
visible light, gamma rays are exceedingly difficult to observe
with a telescope, and the bursts' short duration exacerbates the
problem. With BeppoSAX, scientists now have a tool to localize
the bursts on the celestial sphere with sufficient precision to
permit follow-up observations with the world's most powerful
ground-based telescopes.
This breakthrough led to the discovery of long-lived
"afterglows" of bursts in X-rays, visible and infrared light, and
radio waves. While gamma-ray bursts last only a few seconds,
their afterglows can be studied for several months. Study of the
afterglows indicated that the bursts do not originate within our
own galaxy, the Milky Way, but rather are associated with
extremely distant galaxies.
Both BeppoSAX and NASA's Rossi X-ray Timing Explorer
spacecraft detected an X-ray afterglow. BeppoSAX precision led to
the detection of a visible light afterglow, found by a team from
Columbia University, New York, NY, and Dartmouth College, Hanover,
NH, including Professors Jules Halpern, David Helfand, John
Torstensen, and their collaborators, using a 2.4-meter telescope
at Kitt Peak, AZ, but no distance could be measured from these
observations.
As the visible light from the burst afterglow faded, the
Caltech team detected an extremely faint galaxy at its location,
using one of the world's largest telescopes, the 10-meter Keck II
telescope at Mauna Kea, Hawaii. The galaxy is about as faint as
an ordinary 100 watt light bulb would be as seen from a distance
of a million miles.
Subsequent images taken with the Hubble Space Telescope
confirmed the association of the burst afterglow with this faint
galaxy and provided a more detailed image of the host galaxy.
The Caltech team succeeded in measuring the distance to
this galaxy, using the light-gathering power of the Keck II
telescope. The galaxy is at a redshift of z=3.4, or about 12
billion light years distant (assuming the universe to be about 14
billion years old).
From the distance and the observed brightness of the burst,
astronomers derived the amount of energy released in the flash.
Although the burst lasted approximately 50 seconds, the energy
released was hundreds of times larger than the energy given out in
supernova explosions, and it is about equal to the amount of
energy radiated by our entire Galaxy over a period of a couple of
centuries. Scientists say it is possible that other forms of
radiation from the burst, such as neutrinos or gravity waves,
which are extremely difficult to detect, carried a hundred times
more energy than that.
NASA is planning two missions to further investigate gamma-
ray bursts: the High Energy Transient Experiment II (HETE II),
scheduled to launch in the fall of 1999, and the Gamma Ray Large
Area Space Telescope (GLAST), scheduled to launch in 2005. HETE
II will be able to precisely locate gamma-ray bursts in near real-
time and quickly transmit their locations to ground-based
observatories, permitting rapid follow-up studies. GLAST will
detect only those gamma-ray bursts that emit the highest energy
gamma rays, and will be able to locate them with sufficient
precision to permit coordinated observations from the ground.
Because not much is known about the bursts at these high energies,
the observations may permit researchers to choose among competing
theories for the origin of gamma-ray bursts.
- end -
NOTE TO EDITORS: Images of the GRB 971214 field are available
at:
FTP://PAO.GSFC.NASA.GOV/newsmedia/GRB/
Information on the BeppoSAX spacecraft is available at:
http://www.sdc.asi.it/
Information on the Compton Gamma Ray Observatory is available at:
http://cossc.gsfc.nasa.gov/cossc/descriptions/cgro.html
Information on Gamma Ray Bursts is available at:
http://cossc.gsfc.nasa.gov/cossc/nasm/VU/overview/bursts/bursts.html
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