MAP
SPACECRAFT SUCCESSFULLY LAUNCHES June 30,2001
NASA Art
MAP
SPACECRAFT SUCCESSFULLY LAUNCHES
AND BEGINS ITS JOURNEY TO DEEP SPACE
A NASA spacecraft set to probe
the far reaches of the Universe soared into
space today.
The Microwave Anisotropy Probe
(MAP) lifted off on schedule at 3:46 p.m.
Eastern aboard a Delta II rocket from Pad B at Space Launch Complex
17, Cape
Canaveral Air Force Station, FL. About 90 minutes later--also
on
schedule--MAP separated from the Delta II third stage, deployed
its solar
arrays and began its journey to answer fundamental questions about
the
history, content, shape and fate of the Universe.
"We're off to a fantastic
start," said Clifton Jackson, MAP Mission Systems
Engineer at NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center, Greenbelt, MD.
"Everything
is looking good so far."
Science observations will begin
once MAP reaches its L2 orbit. L2 is the
second Lagrange point of the Sun-Earth system. L2 is four times
farther
from the Earth than the Moon in the direction opposite the Sun,
or about one
million miles from Earth. MAP is the first spacecraft to use
an orbit
around the L2 point as its observing station.
MAP is currently in a highly
elliptical Earth orbit. In approximately one
month, MAP will execute a gravity-assist swing past the Moon and
then travel
for two months to get to its L2 orbit. This particular trajectory
is
designed to minimize the use of fuel. From L2, MAP will have
an
unobstructed view of the sky, and will be free from near-Earth
disturbances
such as magnetic fields and microwave emission for its two years
of science
observations.
"MAP's launch was exhilarating.
For many, it was the culmination of years
of hard work," said Dr. Charles L. Bennett, MAP Principal
Investigator, also
from Goddard. "MAP is beginning its journey into deep space
to record
microwave light from the early Universe, now no more than a faint
whisper
from 14 billion years ago." The MAP mission is set to answer
important
questions such as: What is the content and structure of the Universe?
How
did the Universe evolve? What is its ultimate fate?
MAP is a partnership between
Goddard and Princeton University, NJ. Science
team members are also located at the University of Chicago, the
University
of California, Los Angeles, Brown University, Providence, RI;
and the
University of British Columbia, Vancouver.
More information on the MAP
mission can be found at the following websites:
http://www.gsfc.nasa.gov/gsfc/spacesci/map/map.htm
http://map.gsfc.nasa.gov
June 30, 2001
U.S. CENTENNIAL OF FLIGHT
COMMISSION AND AIAA'S
EVOLUTION OF FLIGHT CAMPAIGN ANNOUNCE ALLIANCE
The U.S. Centennial of Flight
Commission and the
Evolution of Flight Campaign of the American Institute of
Aeronautics and Astronautics (AIAA) today announced their
partnership to promote upcoming activities and events that
will celebrate the 100th anniversary of powered, controlled
flight in 2003 and the history and future of aviation.
The partnership will capitalize
on the Commission's mandate
to serve as a national and international source of
information about activities to commemorate the centennial of
the Wright Brothers' first powered flight on the sands at
Kitty Hawk, NC, on December 17, 1903, and on AIAA's status as
the world's largest professional/technical aerospace society.
"We look forward to working
closely with the AIAA Evolution
of Flight Campaign in the celebration of the Wright brothers'
achievements and a century of powered flight," said U.S.
Centennial of Flight Commission Chair General John R.
("Jack") Dailey. "This is a wonderful opportunity
for us to
collaborate on engaging the American public and the world in
a renewed appreciation of the technological marvel known as
powered flight. No other innovation in the last century has
so defined our time and initiated such technological advances
as the airplane."
"We are proud of the progress
made in the first century of
flight and look forward to partnering with the U.S.
Centennial of Flight Commission on an international campaign
that will recognize the past and lay the groundwork for the
next 100 years of aerospace innovation," said AIAA Executive
Director Cort Durocher.
The U.S. Centennial of Flight
Commission (COFC) was created
by the U.S. Congress to advise the President, Congress and
federal agencies on the most effective ways to encourage
national and international commemoration of the achievements
of Orville and Wilbur Wright and the centennial of powered
flight. The Commission hopes to generate enthusiasm for the
commemoration by publicizing and fostering programs and
events that will involve, educate and inspire the maximum
number of people. The Web site of the Centennial of Flight
Commission is at:
http://www.centennialofflight.gov
AIAA launched the Evolution
of Flight Campaign in May 1999.
The Campaign's mission is to organize and facilitate a wide
variety of regional, national and international community-
based events, designed to build a greater understanding about
the contributions to society made by all facets of the
aerospace community. More information about the Campaign is
available at:
The six members of the Centennial
of Flight Commission
represent the First Flight Centennial Foundation of North
Carolina; Inventing Flight: Dayton 2003 of Ohio; aeronautical
societies, foundations and organizations outside of Ohio and
North Carolina, represented by the President of the
Experimental Aircraft Association; the Smithsonian
Institution's National Air and Space Museum; the Federal
Aviation Administration; and the National Aeronautics and
Space Administration.
The Evolution of Flight Campaign
operates through a
partnership with The Boeing Company, GE Aircraft Engines,
Lockheed Martin, Northrop Grumman, Pratt & Whitney, Raytheon,
Rockwell Collins and Snecma. Advisors to the Campaign include
retired astronaut Neil A. Armstrong, experimental test pilot
A. Scott Crossfield, and three-time U.S. aerobatic champion
Patty Wagstaff. Additional support to the Campaign is
provided by Aviation Week's Next Century of Flight, the
Challenger Center for Space Science Education, the Dayton Air
Show, the First Flight Centennial Commission, the
International Council of the Aeronautical Sciences, Inventing
Flight: Dayton 2003, The Centennial Celebration and
Microcosm, Inc.
AIAA is the world's largest
professional/technical aerospace
society, leading content provider and information resource,
and principal voice, devoted to the progress of engineering
and science in all aspects of aviation, space and defense --
on behalf of industry, academia and government.
DELTA/MAP LAUNCH WEATHER FORECAST (correction)
Forecast: Late morning thunderstorms
will gradually move inland during the
afternoon. Upper level winds will remain relatively light with
detached
anvil clouds not moving far from parent storms. These thunderstorms
could
have an impact on late morning and early afternoon countdown activities.
After the thunderstorms move inland, the proximity of thunderstorm
anvil
clouds will be a concern.
At 3:46 p.m. on Saturday the forecast is:
Clouds: Scattered at 3,000
and 28,000 feet
Visibility: 7+ miles
Wind: SE/10-12 knots
Temperature: 87 degrees
Relative Humidity: 68%
Probability of launch weather
criteria violation: 40%
Probability with 24 hour delay: 40%
Probability with 48 hour delay: 40%
Sunrise: 6:29 a.m.
Sunset: 8:23 p.m.
Forecast prepared by USAF 45th
Weather Squadron
MAP PRELAUNCH STATUS REPORT
L-1 DAY
The launch of NASA's MAP spacecraft
aboard a Boeing Delta II rocket is on
schedule at this time for a 3:46 p.m. EDT liftoff on Saturday,
June 30.
Loading of storable propellants
aboard the Delta second stage was completed
successfully last night at Pad B on Launch Complex 17.
Also today in the Mission Briefing
Room at KSC, the L-1 day Launch Readiness
Review was successfully completed. A decision was made to load
the Delta
first stage RP-1 fuel beginning at 7 a.m. due to the possibility
of
thunderstorms later in the morning and to provide additional stability
after
rollback of the mobile service tower for this lighter model of
the Delta
vehicle.
Today, the Boeing Delta II
was powered on, the guidance system was updated
with launch azimuth information, the vehicle steering systems
were tested
and the access port in the MAP payload fairing was closed and
sealed.
The mobile service tower will
be retracted from around the vehicle at 9:30
a.m. on Saturday morning. The loading of the Delta first stage
with liquid
oxygen will begin at 1:56 p.m.
The weather forecast for Saturday
calls for a 40% chance of not meeting the
launch weather criteria due to the proximity of thunderstorms
or associated
anvil clouds which must be not closer than ten miles from the
pad. At
launch time, scattered low level and upper level clouds are predicted,
a
temperature of 87 degrees, relative humidity of 68%, and southeasterly
winds
of 10-12 knots. Should launch be postponed for 24 or 48 hours,
the chance
of not meeting the launch weather criteria remains at 40%.
The 12-minute launch window
on Saturday, June 30, extends from 3:46:46 to
3:58:46 p.m.
If necessary, the launch window
on Sunday, July 1, extends from 3:40:11 to
3:52:11 p.m.
SHUTTLE ATLANTIS TO LAUNCH JULY 12 ON MILESTONE FLIGHT
TO DELIVER STATION'S NEW DOORWAY
TO SPACE
Space Shuttle Atlantis will
launch July 12 to carry a
new airlock to the International Space Station. The mission
will bring the orbiting outpost an unprecedented degree of
self-reliance, providing it with a new doorway to space for
maintenance and construction.
Atlantis is scheduled for liftoff
at 5:04 a.m. EDT July 12
from NASA's Kennedy Space Center, FL, at the beginning of an
approximately five-minute launch window. Atlantis' mission,
designated STS-104, will be the fourth shuttle flight this
year and the 10th shuttle mission dedicated to assembly of
the International Space Station.
"This mission will be
a milestone for both the station and
shuttle as we complete a major phase of the station's
assembly," Space Shuttle Program Manager Ron Dittemore said.
"A year ago, I said we would fly the most complex series
of
missions NASA has undertaken since landing on the moon -- now
we're nearing completion of the first phase. The team has
truly done an excellent job to get us here safely,
successfully and on schedule."
Atlantis' mission includes
three spacewalks to install and
outfit the station's new Joint Airlock, including the first-
ever outside spacewalk to originate from the station.
Atlantis' crew will be commanded by Air Force Lt. Col. Steve
Lindsey. Marine Corps Maj. Charlie Hobaugh will serve as
pilot.
The crew also includes astronauts
Mike Gernhardt, Janet
Kavandi and Jim Reilly. Gernhardt and Reilly will perform the
planned spacewalks, while Kavandi operates the shuttle's
robotic arm. The mission will be the second shuttle to visit
the station during the stay of the second station crew --
Commander Yuri Usachev and Flight Engineers Jim Voss and
Susan Helms -- now in their fourth month aboard the complex.
Atlantis is scheduled to land
at the Kennedy Space Center at
12:56 a.m. EDT July 23.
Cassini Weekly Significant Event Report - June 29, 2001
The most recent spacecraft
telemetry was acquired from the Madrid tracking
station on Wednesday, June 27. The Cassini spacecraft is in an
excellent
state of health and is operating normally. Information on the
spacecraft's position and speed can be viewed on the "Present
Position"
web page, http://www.jpl.nasa.gov/cassini/english/where/ .
Recent spacecraft activities
included a Radio and Plasma Wave Science
(RPWS) high frequency receiver calibration and an automatic repair
of
solid state recorder B. An additional test of the Huygens Probe
B-chain
S-band carrier signal was performed this week; Huygens personnel
are
currently analyzing the data returned from this activity. The
Visual and
Infrared Mapping Spectrometer (VIMS) was powered on and initialized
with
flight software and an Instrument Expanded Block (IEB) load in
preparation
for the start of the C27 background sequence. Additionally, a
minisequence
was uplinked to provide a revised IEB load for the Imaging Science
Subsystem (ISS) in preparation for its next observation.
The Cassini Project Science
Group (PSG) meeting was held in Oxford,
England. The PSG endorsed a scenario which permits full retrieval
of
Huygens Probe data. The details of this scenario, which includes
a Titan
flyby at 50,00 to 70,000 km for probe release, will be worked
in the
coming months. Cassini science teams presented science results
from the
Jupiter flyby in December of last year. Plans are under way for
publication of these results in scientific journals. Saturn planning
was
a key focus of the meeting. Highlights included discussions of
the first
10 Titan flybys and numerous icy satellite flybys, and the formation
of
Target Working Teams. These teams will address more detailed tour
issues
such as synergistic observation strategies, data volume, and other
aspects
of planning that are needed for the development of the Science
Operations
Plan. Additionally, personnel from the Uplink Operations Team
provided
the PSG with an overview and led a discussion on science planning
tools.
The C27 Sequence Virtual Team
worked with Integration Test Laboratory
personnel to perform a system test of instrument muting capabilities
in
support of the C27 Huygens Probe mute test. All results were nominal.
The Spacecraft Operations Office
began a series of meetings to update the
Main Engine Trajectory Correction Maneuver block for TCM-18 and
for Tour.
A dedicated test network has
been implemented by the Mission Support &
Services Office which allows testers and system administrators
to
troubleshoot problems, test new software installations, and monitor
performance.
A series of five student workshops
on Cassini were given in workshops
co-sponsored by Sandia National Laboratory and Los Alamos National
Laboratory. A public lecture was also given at the Bradbury Science
Museum in Los Alamos. This outreach activity was targeted at students
throughout the state of New Mexico.
Cassini is a cooperative project
of NASA, the European Space Agency and
the Italian Space Agency. The Jet Propulsion Laboratory, a division
of the
California Institute of Technology in Pasadena, Calif., manages
the Cassini
mission for NASA's Office of Space Science, Washington, D.C.
European Space Agency and NASA Set New Cassini-Huygens Plan
Managers for an international
mission to Saturn have announced a revised
plan to work around a telecommunications problem and avoid loss
of
scientific data after the Cassini
spacecraft releases the Huygens probe to descend to the surface
of Titan,
Saturn's biggest moon, in 2005.
The new plan will change the
planned release date and geometry for the
part of the mission in which the Huygens probe will parachute
into the
thick atmosphere of Titan. The new date will be Jan. 14, 2005,
seven
weeks later than originally planned. The plan will also position
the
Cassini orbiter farther away during that descent.
After six months of analysis
by the European Space Agency (ESA)-NASA joint
Huygens Recovery Task Force, senior management from both agencies
and
members of the Cassini-Huygens scientific community have endorsed
the
mission modifications. The analysis was undertaken after the Huygens
probe
telecommunications problem was identified last autumn.
The Cassini-Huygens mission
was launched in 1997. Engineers last year
identified a design flaw in the Huygens communications system.
Without a
change in flight plans, the Huygens receiver would be unable to
compensate
enough for the Doppler shift in radio frequency between the signal
emitted
by the probe and the one received by the orbiter. A Doppler shift
happens
when the distance between a transmitter and receiver is changing,
and
Cassini originally would have been rapidly approaching Titan during
Huygens' descent. This would have resulted in the loss of important
data
from the probe during its trip through Titan's atmosphere.
When Cassini arrives at Saturn
in July 2004, it will, within the first
seven months, complete three flybys of Titan instead of two as
originally
planned. Then, in February 2005, Cassini will resume the rest
of its
four-year prime mission as originally planned, studying the planet
and its
rings, moons and magnetic environment. The changes to the mission
plan
will use about one-fourth to one-third of Cassini's reserve supply
of
propellant. The reserve supply is carried for unforeseen needs
such as
this and for possible use if the mission were to be extended beyond
2008.
"This recovery plan will
allow us to meet all of the mission's scientific
objectives," said Bob Mitchell, Cassini program manager at
NASA's Jet
Propulsion Laboratory, Pasadena, Calif. "It has the additional
advantage
of giving us a close look at Titan before releasing Huygens."
This week, European Space Agency
Director of Science Professor David
Southwood and NASA Associate Administrator for Space Science Dr.
Edward
Weiler gave the go-ahead for Cassini and Huygens teams to implement
the
recommendations of the Huygens Recovery Task Force.
To ensure that the pioneering
probe returns as much data as possible, the
plan shortens Cassini's first two orbits around Saturn and adds
an
additional orbit that provides the required new geometry for Huygens'
descent to Titan. Cassini's arrival date at Saturn on July 1,
2004,
remains unchanged. However, its first flyby of Titan will now
occur on
Oct. 26, 2004, followed by another on Dec. 13. The Huygens probe
will be
released toward Titan on Dec. 25 for an entry into the moon's
atmosphere
22 days later.
To reduce the Doppler shift
in the signal from Huygens, Cassini will fly
over Titan's cloud tops at an altitude of about 65,000 kilometers
(40,000
miles), more than 50 times higher than formerly planned. The new
plan also
calls for several modifications to ensure maximum efficiency of
the
Huygens communications system. These include pre-heating the probe
to
improve tuning of the transmitted signal, continuous commanding
by the
orbiter to get the best possible performance by the receiver,
and changes
in the probe's on-board software.
Shrouded in an orange haze,
Titan is one of the most mysterious objects in
our solar system. It is the second largest moon (after Jupiter's
Ganymede)
and the only one with a thick atmosphere. The atmosphere excites
scientific interest, since it may resemble that of a very young
Earth.
More information about Cassini-Huygens is available online at:
http://www.jpl.nasa.gov/cassini/
http://sci.esa.int/huygens/
The mission is an international
collaboration of NASA, ESA and the Italian
Space Agency. The Jet Propulsion Laboratory, a division of the
California
Institute of Technology in Pasadena, manages it for NASA's Office
of Space
Science, Washington, D.C.
Mid Day News June 29, 2001
X-38 FREE FLIGHT HALTED BEFORE RELEASE
NASA X-38 program engineers
decided to postpone the seventh free
flight of an X-38 vehicle at about 10:29 this morning. The halt
came
after the X-38, still secured to a wing pylon on NASA's B-52B
mother
ship, was already airborne.
The B-52/X-38 combination returned
to Edwards Air Force Base, Calif.,
where NASA's Dryden Flight Research Center is located.
The mission could be reflown
as early as Monday, said John Muratore,
X-38 program manager.
The halt was called because
of a radio ground equipment problem.
Time needed to rectify this could have exceeded the fuel requirements
for chase aircraft, so the X-38 flight was postponed.
The X-38 is exploring technologies
to enable construction of a Crew
Return Vehicle (CRV) to be used as a "lifeboat" attached
to the
International Space Station. The CRV would be capable of evacuating
a full seven-member space station crew and returning them to earth
on
short notice.
June 29, 2001
Wandering Mystery Planets
The word 'planet' comes from
the Greek word 'wanderer,' but the planets in
our solar system aren't true nomads. They stay close to home,
always
circling the Sun. This week scientists using the Hubble Space
Telescope
may have discovered a class of genuine planetary wanderers. It
seems that
mysterious objects smaller than Jupiter are running loose in globular
cluster M22! Are they planets? No one knows, but astronomers are
planning to find out.
FULL STORY at
http://science.nasa.gov/headlines/y2001/ast29jun_1.htm?list448368
SPACE STATION SENDS BACK FIRST RADIATION DATA
The first series of radiation data collected inside the International Space Station (ISS) has been transmitted from space to scientists on Earth eager to assess its potential biomedical impacts and implications for future research.
The data were collected in May by radiation detectors on the ISS known as thermoluminescent detectors (TLDs). An onboard electronic reader read the data earlier this month and ISS astronaut James Voss transmitted it to scientists on Earth. The TLDs are part of a set of radiation-monitoring hardware known as the Passive Dosimeter System (PDS), which was developed by the Space Station Biological Research Project at NASA Ames Research Center and the Hungarian Space Office. The ability to accurately measure and monitor radiation exposure is important both to crew health and to future scientific research on the ISS.
"This is very good news," exulted project science lead Kristofer Vogelsong of Lockheed Martin Engineering and Sciences at NASA Ames, in the heart of California's Silicon Valley. "The quality of the data indicates that the reader is functioning normally." Space Shuttle Discovery ferried the TLDs to the ISS in March.
The Passive Dosimeter System is a flexible, easy-to-use radiation monitoring system that is available for use by researchers from the U.S. or ISS partner nations. It complements existing dosimeters used in routine ISS operations. The dosimeters can be placed anywhere in the ISS to provide an accurate measurement of the radiation levels at their locations.
Vogelsong said the data indicate that all 12 TLDs currently in use are in perfect condition. The detectors are a third-generation version of dosimeters that flew on the Russian space stations Salyut 7 and Mir, and on the space shuttle.
NASA scientists expect to receive a preliminary interpretation soon of the radiation dose onboard the ISS from the Hungarian Space Office. A complete picture of the space station's radiation environment will not be available until a second type of dosimeter, known as Plastic Nuclear Track Detectors (PNTDs), is returned to Earth on an August space shuttle flight. The data from the TLDs will be combined with the data from the PNTDs and other radiation monitors as part of the Dosimetric Mapping Experiment (DOSMAP) to characterize the space radiation environment on board the space station. The DOSMAP experiment is being conducted by Dr. Guenther Reitz and is managed by the Space and Life Sciences Directorate at NASA's Johnson Space Center, Houston.
The PNTDs -- thin sheets of plastic similar to the material used for some eyeglass lenses -- were delivered to the ISS last April. The PNTD surface becomes pitted with tiny craters as heavy charged ions pass through it. After the detectors are returned to Earth, the plastic will be etched to enlarge the craters, which will be counted and their shapes and sizes analyzed using a microscope. This information is used to improve the accuracy of the radiation dose the TLDs have recorded and to improve the estimate of the biological effects of the radiation. Eril Research, San Rafael, CA, developed and will analyze the PNTDs.
Each TLD, which resembles a fat fountain pen, contains calcium sulfate crystals inside an evacuated glass bulb. The crystals absorb energy from incident ionizing radiation (protons, neutrons, electrons, heavy charged particles, gamma rays and x-rays) as the radiation passes through them. This process results in a steady increase in the energy level of the electrons in the crystal.
"We are happy the Passive Dosimeter System appears to be working well," said PDS payload manager Robert Jackson of Ames. "We expect that support to the DOSMAP experiment will be followed in future years by continued use for many experiments on the space station."
Images of the TLDs are available
at:
http://amesnews.arc.nasa.gov:8080/releases/2001/01images/thermolum/thermolum.html
EUROPEAN SPACE AGENCY AND NASA SET NEW CASSINI-HUYGENS PLAN
Managers for an international
mission to Saturn have
announced a revised plan to work around a telecommunications
problem and avoid loss of scientific data after the Cassini
spacecraft releases the Huygens probe to descend to the
surface of Titan, Saturn's biggest moon, in 2005.
The new plan will change the
planned release date and
geometry for the part of the mission in which the Huygens
probe will parachute into the thick atmosphere of Titan. The
new date will be Jan. 14, 2005, seven weeks later than
originally planned. The plan will also position the Cassini
orbiter farther away during that descent.
After six months of analysis
by the European Space Agency
(ESA)-NASA joint Huygens Recovery Task Force, senior
management from both agencies and members of the Cassini-
Huygens scientific community have endorsed the mission
modifications. The analysis was undertaken after the Huygens
probe telecommunications problem was identified last autumn.
The Cassini-Huygens mission
was launched in 1997. Engineers
last year identified a design flaw in the Huygens
communications system. Without a change in flight plans, the
Huygens receiver would be unable to compensate enough for the
Doppler shift in radio frequency between the signal emitted
by the probe and the one received by the orbiter. A Doppler
shift happens when the distance between a transmitter and
receiver is changing, and Cassini originally would have been
rapidly approaching Titan during Huygens' descent. This would
have resulted in the loss of important data from the probe
during its trip through Titan's atmosphere.
When Cassini arrives at Saturn
in July 2004, it will, within
the first seven months, complete three flybys of Titan
instead of two as originally planned. Then, in February 2005,
Cassini will resume the rest of its four-year prime mission
as originally planned, studying the planet and its rings,
moons and magnetic environment. The changes to the mission
plan will use about one-fourth to one-third of Cassini's
reserve supply of propellant. The reserve supply is carried
for unforeseen needs such as this and for possible use if the
mission were to be extended beyond 2008.
"This recovery plan will
allow us to meet all of the
mission's scientific objectives," said Bob Mitchell, Cassini
program manager at NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory,
Pasadena, CA. "It has the additional advantage of giving
us a
close look at Titan before releasing Huygens."
This week, European Space Agency
Director of Science
Professor David Southwood and NASA Associate Administrator
for Space Science Dr. Edward Weiler gave the go-ahead for
Cassini and Huygens teams to implement the recommendations of
the Huygens Recovery Task Force.
To ensure that the pioneering
probe returns as much data as
possible, the plan shortens Cassini's first two orbits around
Saturn and adds an additional orbit that provides the
required new geometry for Huygens' descent to Titan.
Cassini's arrival date at Saturn on July 1, 2004, remains
unchanged. However, its first flyby of Titan will now occur
on Oct. 26, 2004, followed by another on Dec. 13. The Huygens
probe will be released toward Titan on Dec. 25 for an entry
into the moon's atmosphere 22 days later.
To reduce the Doppler shift
in the signal from Huygens,
Cassini will fly over Titan's cloud tops at an altitude of
about 65,000 kilometers (40,000 miles), more than 50 times
higher than formerly planned. The new plan also calls for
several modifications to ensure maximum efficiency of the
Huygens communications system. These include pre-heating the
probe to improve tuning of the transmitted signal, continuous
commanding by the orbiter to get the best possible
performance by the receiver, and changes in the probe's on-
board software.
Shrouded in an orange haze,
Titan is one of the most
mysterious objects in our solar system. It is the second
largest moon (after Jupiter's Ganymede) and the only one with
a thick atmosphere. The atmosphere excites scientific
interest, since it may resemble that of a very young Earth.
More information about Cassini-Huygens
is available online
at:
http://www.jpl.nasa.gov/cassini/
and at:
http://sci.esa.int/huygens/
The mission is an international
collaboration of NASA, ESA
and the Italian Space Agency. JPL, a division of the
California Institute of Technology in Pasadena, manages it
for NASA's Office of Space Science, Washington, DC.
SHUTTLE ATLANTIS TO LAUNCH
JULY 12 ON MILESTONE FLIGHT TO DELIVER STATION'S
NEW DOORWAY TO SPACE
The Space Shuttle Atlantis
will launch July 12 to carry a new airlock to the
International Space Station, a mission that will bring the orbiting
outpost
an unprecedented degree of self-reliance, providing it with a
new doorway to
space for maintenance and construction.
Atlantis is scheduled for liftoff
at 5:04 a.m. EDT July 12 from the Kennedy
Space Center, the beginning of an approximately five minute launch
window.
Atlantis' mission, designated STS-104, will be the fourth shuttle
flight
this year and the 10th shuttle mission dedicated to assembly of
the
International Space Station.
"This mission will be
a milestone for both the station and shuttle as we
complete a major phase of the station's assembly," Space
Shuttle Program
Manager Ron Dittemore said. "A year ago, I said we would
fly the most
complex series of missions NASA has undertaken since landing on
the moon --
now we're nearing completion of the first phase. The team has
truly done an
excellent job to get us here safely, successfully and on schedule."
Atlantis' mission includes
three space walks to install and outfit the
station's new Joint Airlock, including the first-ever outside
space walk to
originate from the station. Atlantis' crew will be commanded by
Air Force
Lt. Col. Steve Lindsey. Marine Corps Maj. Charlie Hobaugh will
serve as
pilot. The crew also includes astronauts Mike Gernhardt, Janet
Kavandi and
Jim Reilly. Gernhardt and Reilly will perform the planned space
walks. The
mission will be the second shuttle to visit the station during
the stay of
the second station crew - Commander Yuri Usachev and Flight Engineers
Jim
Voss and Susan Helms - now in their fourth month aboard the complex
Atlantis is scheduled to land
at the Kennedy Space Center at 12:56 a.m. EDT
July 23.
Mid day News June 28, 2001
X-38 CREW RETURN VEHICLE PROTOTYPE RESUMES FLIGHT TESTS
Free-flight testing of the
X-38 Vehicle 131R prototype Crew Return
Vehicle for the International Space Station is scheduled to resume
at
NASA Dryden Flight Research Center, Edwards, Calif., on Friday
morning, June 29, 2001.
The X-38 is a prototype "lifeboat"
for the International Space
Station, designed to carry up to seven passengers home from orbit
in
an emergency. The project combines proven technologies -- a shape
borrowed from a 1970s Air Force X-24A lifting body project --
with
some of the most cutting-edge aerospace technology available today,
such as the most powerful electro-mechanical acuators ever used
to
control a spacecraft.
The increasingly complex atmospheric
flight tests of the uncrewed
X-38 are expected to continue at Dryden until 2006.
NASA GIVES STUDENTS "SHARP" EXPERIENCE
NASA and Modern Technology
Systems, Inc., Riverdale, MD,
have selected 208 students to participate in hands-on
research at various NASA field installations. NASA's 2001
Summer High School Apprenticeship Research Program, or SHARP,
not only allows the students to actually participate in
research but pays them a salary as well.
An intensive science and engineering
apprenticeship program,
SHARP is specifically designed to attract and increase
underrepresented students' participation and success rates in
mathematics, science, technology and engineering courses.
SHARP also is used to encourage career paths that help build
a pool of underrepresented science and engineering
professionals in the work place.
SHARP apprentices are selected
from an applicant pool of
approximately 1,200 students nationwide. During their eight-
week apprenticeships, students can conduct meaningful
research and participate in a variety of educational and
professional development activities.
Since its inception in 1980,
approximately 3,114 students
have participated in the program and more than 3,400 NASA
employees have served as SHARP mentors. Although the program
is for underrepresented groups, NASA seeks diversity in all
student support programs. Consequently, all eligible high
school students are encourage to apply to the program.
SHARP is sponsored by NASA's Education Division and
participating NASA field installations. The program is
managed by Modern Technology Systems, Inc.
More information is available at: www.mtsibase.com/sharp
Well, launch of HESSI has
been postponed indefinitely, until the launch
vehicle (er, rocket) gets a clean bill of health. But launch of
MAP is
still on for Saturday, then Genesis a month later. MAP's at
http://map.gsfc.nasa.gov/ , and you can track upcoming launch
dates (for
Space Science and other NASA missions) at
http://www-pao.ksc.nasa.gov/kscpao/schedule/mixfleet.htm
Piercing the heart of a
globular star cluster,
our Hubble Space Telescope
uncovered clues to what could be a strange and unexpected population
of
wandering, planet-sized objects. As much as 10 per cent of the
cluster's
mass could be made up by these objects. More work is needed to
confirm
that they are really there, but if they are, it could yield new
insights
about how stars and planets formed in the early
universe. http://oposite.stsci.edu/pubinfo/PR/2001/20/index.html
TIME magazine recently ran
a cover article on the fate of the universe,
featuring (of course) many results from our missions. Popular
cosmology at
http://www.time.com/time/covers/1101010625/story.html
The operator of the Mars Global
Surveyor's orbiter camera recently
discussed the importance of dust devils and how they are transforming
the
look of Mars. ET tornadoes at
http://www.jpl.nasa.gov/solar_system/features/dust_devil_feature.html
A new robotic explorer, smart enough to know when it's lost
or in trouble
and designed to follow the Sun in a whole new way, is ready to
face its
first test in the harsh elements of the Canadian Arctic, starting
as soon
as July 10. Press release at
ftp://ftp.hq.nasa.gov/pub/pao/pressrel/2001/01-127.txt , and check
out the
project page at http://www.frc.ri.cmu.edu/sunsync/main.html
Jupiter's moon Io is cold
all over, and not much
warmer at it's equator,
where it gets more
sun. Weird. http://www.jpl.nasa.gov/releases/2001/jupiter010622.html
On 10 May, most of the instruments
on board the ESA/NASA Ulysses spacecraft
recorded their highest readings during the ten and a half years
that the
spacecraft has been in orbit. Our raging sun at
http://sci.esa.int/content/news/index.cfm?aid=1&cid=1&oid=27429
Physicists have found the
most convincing evidence yet that neutrinos --
elusive subatomic particles that were thought to have no mass
whatsoever --
have a tiny wisp of heft after all, accounting for a small portion
of the
universe's "missing
mass". http://www.cnn.com/2001/TECH/space/06/19/solar.mystery.ap/index.html
NASA TAPS HOPKINS' APPLIED
PHYSICS LAB TO DEVELOP SOLAR
MISSIONS
NASA's Goddard Space Flight
Center, Greenbelt, MD, has
awarded a contract to Johns Hopkins University's Applied
Physics Laboratory, Laurel, MD, for assigned research,
design, development, mission operations and related
technology development as part of the agency's Sun-Earth
Connection, Living With a Star (LWS) and Solar Terrestrial
Probes (STP) programs.
The cost-plus-fixed-fee, 12-year
contract has a maximum
estimated value of $600 million.
The Sun, the astronomical object
most significant to
humanity, affects the entire geospace region. Because of the
consequences to the Earth of the Sun's dynamic behavior and
the rapidly expanding utilization of the geospace region for
human activities, a thorough understanding of the Sun's
effects has become essential.
The Solar Terrestrial Probes
program is a continuous sequence
of flexible, cost-capped missions designed to study the Sun-
Earth connection. STP missions will obtain information to
answer two fundamental questions: how and why does the Sun
vary, and how do the Earth and planets respond? NASA plans
to begin this unprecedented study of the Sun and its
influence on Earth with the launch of the Thermosphere
Ionosphere Mesophere, Energetics and Dynamics (TIMED) mission
later this year.
The Living With a Star program
will allow comprehensive study
of the cause-and-effect relationships between events at the
Sun and their effects in geospace that influence life on
Earth and humanity's technological systems. The LWS program
will employ a series of spacecraft -- ranging from large and
sophisticated observatories to observe the Sun and track
disturbances originating there, to constellations of small
satellites located in key regions around the Earth to measure
downstream effects.
Living With a Star will quantify
the physics, dynamics and
behavior of the Sun-Earth system over the 11-year solar cycle
and improve understanding of the effects on terrestrial
climate change of solar variability and disturbances. It will
also provide data and scientific understanding required for
advance warning of energetic-particle events that affect
human safety. In addition, LWS will give scientists a
detailed characterization of radiation environments useful in
the design of more reliable electronic components for air and
space transportation systems.
The work will be performed
at Johns Hopkins University
Applied Physics Laboratory in Laurel, MD, as well as selected
contractor facilities.
Living with a Star is part
of the Sun-Earth Connection theme
within the Office of Space Science at NASA Headquarters in
Washington, DC. Goddard Space Flight Center manages the LWS
program for NASA.
More information on the LWS initiative can be found at:
http://lws.gsfc.nasa.gov/lws.htm
June 28, 2001
Exceptional
Service by Young Astronomers
by Bob Gent, Vice-President, Astronomical League
Now in its fourth year, the Horkheimer Award for Exceptional Service
by a
Young Astronomer, recognizes outstanding service by League astronomers
under the age of 19. The League continues to grow at a fast pace,
and with
nearly 260 member societies and approaching 19,000 members this
year, we had
a record number of dedicated young astronomers nominated for this
award.
This year's judges were all past presidents of the Astronomical
League:
Barry Beaman, Orville Brettman, and Jim Fox. The judges had their
work cut
out for them this year. Here are the results for 2001:
First Place: Ryan Hannahoe
Our 2001 winner is Ryan Hannahoe, from Leesport, Pennsylvania,
and he will
be a sophomore in high school this fall. Ryan will receive the
$1,000 cash
award at the ALCON awards banquet on July 28 in Frederick, Maryland.
Ryan is a member of the Berks County Amateur Astronomical Society,
and he is
well known at BCAAS meetings since he serves as his club's program
committee
chair. Ryan can be counted on to always be there to promote astronomical
activities. He has a passion for astronomy, and his enthusiasm
is always
glowing. Over the past year, he volunteered to help organize and
run dozens
of public star parties and events. After hearing of our need for
help with
a League website, Ryan took action. He designed the site for the
2001 joint
astronomical convention (ALCON 2001) which will include meetings
of the
Astronomical League, IOTA, ALPO, and IDA. This is a very impressive
achievement for a high school freshman. Ryan has also given the
Youth
Activities Committee a breath of fresh air with renewed enthusiasm.
He also
developed and runs a new web page to promote "Youth in Astronomy."
Always looking for ways to help the League, Ryan has written several
articles for the Reflector, our quarterly newsletter. He has also
been
instrumental in the fight to preserve the beauty of our night
skies in
Pennsylvania. Ryan has written letters and met with elected officials,
including US Congressmen to discuss how to solve the problems
of light
pollution. A new Pennsylvania light pollution law may soon pass,
and Ryan
has been there every step of the way to help push it along.
Ryan has a long list of awards. He recently completed the construction
of
his 6-inch Newtonian telescope, and last year at Stellafane, Ryan
won first
place in the junior level for telescope making. Ryan has won awards
from
his local astronomy club, and he has competed in the science fair
with his
telescope making project. He has written a paper on telescope
making
techniques. Never leaving any rock unturned, Ryan also started
a new high
school astronomy club which immediately joined the League and
IDA. We could
write a long essay about Ryan's other outstanding achievements.
There is no
doubt why Ryan won this award!
Second Place: Jonathan Casselman
Our second place winner is Jonathan Casselman, a high school graduating
senior from home school in Deer Park, Washington. A member of
the Spokane
Astronomical Society, Jonathan served on the staff for AstroCon
1999 in
Cheney, Washington. You may have seen him there helping keep this
outstanding convention running smoothly.
Jonathan has received a long list of awards, including many impressive
astronomical achievements. He has written numerous articles published
in
astronomy club newsletters, and he has written for the Reflector.
He has
already completed eleven of the Astronomical League observe programs,
including the Herschel 400. He is likely the youngest person ever
to
complete the Herschel 400!
Jonathan has also tackled the problem of light pollution, and
he works with
his utility company on the installation of Hubble Skycaps to control
light
pollution. His report on the "Dark-Sky Preservation Project"
is quite
impressive, and it sets the standard for others to follow. With
people like
Jonathan tackling light pollution, we are in very good hands.
In the words of the Spokane Astronomical Society Vice-President,
Bill
Cotten, "Jonathan's dedication and determination have influenced
adult and
youth members to strive for their own goals and to realize that
it is not
impossible to reach for the stars." We will be hearing more
for this
outstanding young man in his future astronomical endeavors.
Third Place: Jeff Venable
Jeff Venable is the third place winner in the 2001 Horkheimer
Service Award.
Jeff is a member of the Colorado Springs Astronomical Society
(CSAS) and he
will be a senior this fall at Coronado High School in Colorado
Springs,
Colorado. CSAS Vice-President, Chris Earley, writes, "At
16 years of age,
Jeff is more than a mere attendee at our club functions, he is
indeed at the
very core of our club's success. Jeff never backs down from a
challenge, but
rather embraces the opportunity to improve himself and other astronomers.
As
the youngest person to ever serve on our board, Jeff has readily
stepped up
to the plate and assumed additional duties and responsibilities
to bring the
joys of astronomy to everyone in the Colorado Springs community...
Jeff
continually supports the public star parties we hold throughout
the area in
spite of a busy scholastic schedule. Jeff's unique position in
our club as a
young astronomer provides us with new insights on how best to
present
astronomical ideas to the many students in our area." Jeff
is an active
member of the planning committee for the annual four day star
event, "Rocky
Mountain Star Stare," and he is well respected by all.
Mr. Earley concludes his nomination by stating, "I can think
of no person
who better embodies the ideals of this award than Jeff Venable."
Fourth Place: Erik Sogn
Erik Sogn is an award winning, home schooled senior, from Portland,
Oregon.
He is a member-at-large in the Astronomical League and a member
of the Rose
City Astronomers.
Over the past eight years, Erik has spent more than 600 hours
volunteering
at the Oregon Museum of Science and Industry. When he joined as
a volunteer
at the age of ten years, he was the youngest classroom assistant
ever to join
the OMSI team. Every summer, he has taught "Crazy Constellations,"
an
astronomy class for elementary students. Erik writes, "No
matter what my
future career may be, I know I will always volunteer and reach
out to others
with what I know about astronomy. I will always take the time
to help others
find the North Star."
Erik was selected by Stanford University's Education Program for
Gifted
Youth as well as other educational programs for exceptional high
school
students. Last summer, Erik attended the National Summit of Young
Technology
Leaders in Austin, Texas, where he won a special certificate of
achievement.
This honor was reserved for the top one-tenth of one percent of
all high
school students.
Fifth Place: Kimberly Parish
Kimberly Parish, a student at Potter Gray Elementary School in
Bowling
Green, Kentucky, won fifth place in this year's competition. Kimberly
is a
founding member of the Hilltopper Astronomy Club in Bowling Green.
Kimberly is currently enrolled in Astronomy 104 at Western Kentucky
University, where she is the first elementary student ever to
enroll in a
college course at Western. At the mature age of ten, Kimberly
says, "Since
I was little, I've been interested in planets and galaxies, but
at the
university I learn about the different laws, like Newton's..."
Last April, Kimberly was one of only six students from the USA
selected to
attend NASA's "Brightest Stars Space Camp" in Huntsville,
Alabama. While
there, she studied with other bright students selected from international
countries.
Sixth Place: Courtney Hale
Courtney Hale, member of Astronomical League through the American
Association of Amateur Astronomers, is our sixth place winner
for 2001. She
is a 13-year-old and attends Robinson Middle School in Topeka,
Kansas.
Courtney regularly volunteers her time during the open houses
in Crane
Observatory at Washburn University in Topeka, and according to
Brenda
Culberson, the Observatory Director, "She is a devoted young
assistant who is
more dependable than some of my paid assistants. She shows up
in all
temperatures to help with viewing sessions and special events
we conduct."
Courtney presents astronomical information to the general public,
whose
numbers range from 20 to 300 during the sessions. She has also
learned to
run the 110-year-old telescope we use in the observatory as our
main
instrument. During the year of 2000, we had 1225 people attend
open houses
and special viewing events. Courtney assisted in most of the 26
sessions held
last year.
Other young people see her do these things, and they catch her
excitement
for viewing. Courtney has shown people that our youth still have
what it
takes to make it in the sciences.
Award Background
This award is made possible by the generous support of Mr. Jack
Horkheimer.
The award is established to honor of Arthur P. Smith, Jr., the
president of
the Astronomical League from 1964-66. Mr. Smith inspired Mr. Horkheimer
to
become active in astronomy. Each year at the Astronomical League's
convention, the League presents a check for $1,000.00 plus a plaque
to our
first place winning young astronomer. All finalists win a complimentary
membership in the International Dark-Sky Association. The winner
also
receives a complimentary trip to the Astronomical League convention
and
awards banquet.
Any Astronomical League member under the age of 19 on the date
of the
application deadline is eligible to apply. The deadline for the
next
Horkheimer Service Award is March 31, 2002. The award is based
upon service
to the League or to any League society. This service could be
educational
outreach, observing skills at public star parties, or other astronomical
achievements. Young League astronomers are eligible to apply for
the
National Young Astronomer Award, the Horkheimer Service Award,
and the
Horkheimer Planetary Imaging Award. We look forward to seeing
many
nominations and applications for future awards.
Marshall Center researcher
Mark Whorton receives NASA Administrator's
Fellowship
Dr. Mark Whorton, an aerospace
engineer at NASA's Marshall Space
Flight Center in Huntsville, Ala., has been awarded a 2001 NASA
Administrator's Fellowship.
Whorton, who serves in the
Control Systems Group in Marshall's Space
Transportation Directorate, leads research in isolating or minimizing
vibration that could disturb experiments conducted in the low
gravity of
Earth orbit. He serves as principal investigator on the "g-LIMIT"
project,
which uses electromagnetic levitation to isolate highly sensitive
experiments conducted aboard the International Space Station.
Under the NASA Administrator's
Fellowship Program, Whorton will
spend the 2001-2002 school year at Tennessee State University
in Nashville,
conducting research in the Center of Excellence in Automated Space
Science
there. Subsequently, he will embark on a nine- to 15-month NASA
research
assignment to be determined during his tenure at Tennessee State.
The fellowship program is intended
to enhance minority-serving
institutions' efforts to assist NASA research and development
and to give
NASA employees the chance to teach and conduct research at minority
colleges
and universities. The program is administered annually by the
United Negro
College Fund Special Programs Corp. in Washington, D.C.
"I'm extremely pleased
that Mark has been selected for this
fellowship," says Dr. Helen McConnaughey, manager of the
Vehicle & Systems
Development Department and Subsystem & Component Development
Department
within the Space Transportation Directorate. "Mark is one
of our best and
brightest engineers, and through this experience, I'm confident
he will make
valuable contributions as an educator as well as a researcher."
A native of Centre, Ala., Whorton
holds graduate and undergraduate
degrees in aerospace engineering from the University of Alabama
in
Tuscaloosa. He joined NASA's Marshall Center in 1989, providing
mathematic
modeling, control system design and analysis for various space
vehicles, and
in 1995 he led the NASA control systems team responsible for the
first
successful Space Shuttle-based flight test of a microgravity vibration
isolation system. He received his doctorate in aerospace engineering
from
the Georgia Institute of Technology in Atlanta in 1997.
Whorton and his wife Lee reside
in Huntsville with their two
daughters.
For more information about
the NASA Administrator's Fellowship
Program, visit:
http://www.uncfsp.org/nasa/nafp/
Whorton's work on the g-LIMIT project can be found online at:
http://g-limit.msfc.nasa.gov/
Garry Lyles to head propulsion
team for NASA's Space Launch Initiative
Garry M. Lyles has been named manager of the Space Launch
Initiative's Propulsion Project Office at NASA's Marshall Space
Flight
Center in Huntsville, Ala.
In this new position, Lyles will lead the propulsion effort that
will eventually launch a second generation reusable launch vehicle
and
return it to a landing site on Earth. Technology development will
include
reusable propulsion systems involving main engines, main propulsion
systems and auxiliary propulsion systems. The Propulsion Project
Office
also will develop propulsion systems for emergency crew escape
systems.
Lyles most recently was manager of the Advanced Space Transportation
Program Office at Marshall, responsible for developing NASA's
space
transportation and propulsion "roadmaps" for the next
25 years.
Since coming to NASA in 1976, Lyles has held several
propulsion-related positions, including chief engineer for the
Space
Shuttle Main Engine in the Space Transportation Systems Chief
Engineers
Office; chief of the Canoga Park Resident Office for the Space
Shuttle
Main Engine Project Office; and division chief of the Propulsion
Systems
Division of Marshall's Propulsion Laboratory.
He earned his bachelor's degree in mechanical engineering at the
University of Alabama in Tuscaloosa.
Lyles is married to the former Diane Miller and has four children.
NASA's Space Launch Initiative is the key to opening the space
frontier for continued scientific exploration and economic expansion
- by
making space flight affordable and safe for both the government
and
private industry.
Marshall Center leads NASA's efforts in development of space
transportation and propulsion systems and technologies.
June 27, 2001
JOHN F. YARDLEY, HUMAN SPACE FLIGHT PIONEER, DIES
John F. Yardley, a leading
figure in the early days of
human space flight and the Space Shuttle program, died early
Tuesday. He was 76.
"John Yardley was as responsible
as any individual for
getting the Space Shuttle program off the ground. He made
STS-1 happen," said NASA Administrator Daniel S. Goldin.
"His
experience and leadership through NASA's early human space
flight efforts paved the way for his great contributions to
the Space Shuttle program. Two decades later, John's legacy
lives on with each successful Space Shuttle mission."
After three years in the Navy
during World War II, Yardley
began his aerospace career at McDonnell Douglas in 1946.
While at McDonnell Douglas, he worked on cutting-edge human
space flight projects, leading the design team for the
Mercury spacecraft, and serving as Launch Operations Manager
for the Mercury and Gemini spacecraft and later as the
technical director for the Gemini Program.
"In those days, we were
constantly making choices, and
people's lives and the programs depended on them," said Dr.
Christopher C. Kraft Jr., who served as a NASA Flight
Director on the Mercury and Gemini Programs and later went on
to serve as Director of NASA's Johnson Space Center. "Yardley
was always willing to come up with the next idea to overcome
whatever problem we were having. You knew you would get not
just the right answer from him, but the best answer. He was
one of two outstanding program managers in the early days of
human space flight and one of my greatest associates."
NASA awarded Yardley its Public
Service Medal for his
outstanding contributions to the Mercury and Gemini Programs
in 1963 and 1966.
Yardley served as vice president
and general manager of
McDonnell Douglas Astronautics' Eastern Division before
joining NASA in 1974.
At NASA, Yardley served as
Associate Administrator for Manned
Space Flight (later renamed Space Transportation Systems)
where he led the Apollo-Soyuz Test Project and Spacelab, and
was responsible for development and acquisition of the Space
Shuttle, launching a new era in human space flight.
"We have lost one of the
true giants of this nation's space
program," said NASA Astronaut John Young, associate director
(technical) of the Johnson Space Center, Houston, and
commander of the first Space Shuttle flight. "A leader in
the
design and development of the early Mercury and Gemini
spacecraft as well as today's Space Shuttle system, John
Yardley made significant contributions to the program every
step of the way. His vision, talent and dedication helped
ensure that our spacecraft would be safe and that our
missions would be successful."
Yardley returned to private
industry in 1981 following the
first successful Space Shuttle mission to serve as president
of the former McDonnell Douglas Astronautics Co. In 1989, he
retired in St. Louis.
Yardley's wife, Phyllis, four
daughters, one son, one sister,
nine grandchildren and a great-granddaughter survive him.
CATCHING DUST DEVILS ON MARS
NASA's Mars Global Surveyor
spacecraft recently caught
sight of a dust devil dancing across the Martian surface. It's
not the first of the tornado-like weather systems to be found
on Mars, but it's another reminder that Mars is an ever-
changing planet.
Dr. Ken Edgett, a staff scientist
at Malin Space Science
Systems in San Diego, Calif., regularly tracks the dust devils
and other surface features on Mars. As the operator of the
Surveyor orbiter's camera, he is one of the first to see
fascinating images of the red planet. Dr. Edgett recently
discussed the importance of dust devils and how they transform
the look of Mars.
Edgett's conversation and the
latest dust devil pictures
are at: http://www.jpl.nasa.gov/solar_system/features/dust_devil_feature.html
All the World's a Stage ... for Dust
Tune in to a NASA website and
watch giant dust clouds as they ride global
rivers of air, cross-pollinating continents with topsoil and microbes.
This story includes movies of an African dust cloud blowing westward
to
North America in June. It also addresses questions like: Where
does
topsoil for Caribbean islands come from? And, are sneezes in Florida
triggered by allergens from other continents? The answers may
surprise
you!
FULL STORY at
http://science.nasa.gov/headlines/y2001/ast26jun_1.htm?list448368
Piercing the heart of a globular star cluster with its needle-sharp vision, the NASA/ESA Hubble Space Telescope has uncovered tantalising clues to what could potentially be a strange and unexpected population of wandering, planet-sized objects.
In results published this week in NATURE, the international science
journal, Kailash Sahu (Space Telescope Science Institute, Baltimore,
USA) and an international team of colleagues report six unusual
microlensing events inside the globular cluster M22.
Microlensing occurs when a background star brightens momentarily as a foreground object drifts by. The unusual objects thought to cause these events are far too dim to be seen directly, but instead were detected by the way their gravitational field amplifies light from a distant background star in the huge central bulge of our Galaxy. Microlensing has been used before to search for low-mass objects in the disc and halo of our Galaxy, but Hubble's sharp vision is essential to probe the interiors of globular clusters further.
From 22 February to 15 June, 1999, Sahu and colleagues monitored 83,000 stars, detecting one clear microlensing event caused by a normal dwarf star in the cluster (about one-tenth the mass of our Sun). As a result of ravitational lensing, the background star appeared to grow 10 times brighter and then returned to its normal brightness over a period of 18 days.
In addition to the microlensing event caused by the dwarf star, Sahu and his team recorded six even more interesting, unexpectedly brief events where a background star jumped in brightness by as much as a factor of two for less than 20 hours before dropping back to normal brightness. This means that the microlensing object must have been much smaller than a normal star.
These microlensing events were unusually brief, indicating that the mass of the intervening object could be as little as 80 times that of Earth. Objects this small have never before been detected by microlensing observations. If these results are confirmed by follow-up Hubble observations, the bodies would be the smallest celestial objects ever seen that are not orbiting any star.
So what are they? Theoretically they might be planets that were gravitationally torn away from parent stars in the cluster. However, they are estimated to make up as much as 10 percent of the cluster's mass - too numerous to be wandering, 'orphaned' planets.
The results are so surprising the astronomers caution that these preliminary observations must be confirmed by follow-up Hubble observations. If verified, these dark denizens could yield new insights about how stars and planets formed in the early Universe.
"Hubble's excellent sharpness allowed us to make this remarkable new type of observation, successfully demonstrating our ability to see very small objects," says Sahu. "This holds tremendous potential for further searches for dark, low-mass objects."
"Since we know that globular clusters like M22 are very old, this result opens new and exciting opportunities for the discovery and study of planet-like objects that formed in the early Universe", adds co-investigator Nino Panagia (European Space Agency and Space Telescope Science Institute).
"This initial observation shows that our microlensing method works beautifully," states co-investigator Mario Livio (Space Telescope Science Institute).
As microlensing events are brief, unpredictable and rare, astronomers improve their chances of observing one by looking at many stars at once much like a person buying several lottery tickets together. Most microlensing searches have been aimed at the central bulge of our Galaxy or out towards the Magellanic Clouds - the densest observable regions of stars in the sky. In general these surveys cover areas of sky larger than the full Moon and look for foreground objects lying somewhere between us and the background population of stars.
Sahu and his team took advantage of Hubble's superb resolution and narrow field of view to aim the telescope directly through the centre of a globular star cluster lying between Earth and the Galactic bulge. This gave the team a very dense stellar region to probe for drifting low-mass foreground objects and a very rich background field of stars to be lensed. Only Hubble's resolution is sharp enough to actually peer through the crowded centre of the cluster and see the far more distant stars in the galactic bulge. As the lensing objects were part of the cluster, the astronomers also had an accurate distance (8,500 light years) and velocity for these objects.
In a normal lensing event, a background star brightens and dims for a length of time depending on the mass of the lensing body. The short, 'spurious' events seen by the team are shorter than the interval between the Hubble observations, leading to (only) an upper estimate for the mass of an object of one quarter of Jupiter's mass.
To confirm these extraordinary, but tentative results, Sahu and colleagues next plan to monitor the centre of the globular cluster continuously over a seven-day interval. They expect to detect 10 to 25 short-duration microlensing events, which will be well-sampled enough to yield direct measurements of the true masses of the small bodies.
Notes :
The Hubble Space Telescope is a project of international co-operation between ESA and NASA.
Members of the group of scientists involved in these observations are: K. Sahu, S. Casertano, M. Livio, R.Gilliland, M. Albrow, M. Potter (STScI), and N. Panagia (ESA/STScI).
June 26, 2001
ESA's next solar mission attracts Sun followers to Tenerife
The launch date of Solar Orbiter,
ESA's next mission to study the Sun,
should be no later than 2010. This was one of the key messages
to emerge
from the first Solar Orbiter workshop which was held in Tenerife
last
month.
For more on this story go to:
http://sci.esa.int/content/news/index.cfm?aid=1&cid=1&oid=27581
June 25, 2001
This Week on Galileo
June 25 - July 1, 2001
This week the Galileo spacecraft
peeks back out from behind the Sun. For
about the last three weeks, Jupiter, with Galileo in orbit around
it, has
been blocked from view by the Sun. During this period of solar
conjunction,
the radio signal from the spacecraft must pass through the turbulent
atmosphere of the Sun, and interference from solar plasma garbles
the
information, making it unintelligible. But now the angle between
Galileo
and the Sun as seen from Earth is greater than seven degrees,
the noise
level has subsided, and the ones and zeroes of telemetry can once
again be
captured successfully by the ground communications antennas. Normal
cruise
operations for the spacecraft can now continue.
This past Saturday, routine
maintenance was performed on the on-board tape
recorder, and the playback of the stored data resumed. These data
were
acquired during the May 25 flyby of Callisto. On Tuesday, routine
maintenance of the propulsion system is performed.
The Extreme Ultraviolet Spectrometer
(EUV) instrument continues its
two-month-long study of the interplanetary medium. Scheduled for
playback
this week are high-resolution Solid State Imaging (SSI) pictures
of
Callisto, taken just a few minutes after the closest approach
to that
satellite. Stereo images of a domed crater on Callisto are also
slated to
be returned.
For more information on the
Galileo spacecraft and its mission to Jupiter,
please visit the Galileo home page at one of the following URL's:
http://galileo.jpl.nasa.gov
http://www.jpl.nasa.gov/galileo
June 23, 2001
TEMPERATURE MAP OF VOLCANIC MOON IO PRESENTS A PUZZLE
Earth's tropics are hotter
than the polar regions for a
good reason, so scientists are puzzled that the same pattern
doesn't show on Jupiter's moon Io.
A new map of Io's nighttime
surface temperatures comes
from NASA's Galileo spacecraft. Aside from hot spots at
volcanic sites, night temperatures on Io appear to be about
the same near the equator as near the poles even though, as on
Earth, the equator gets more direct sunshine to heat the
surface.
The Io temperature map is available
online at
http://www.jpl.nasa.gov/images/io , and a new, enhanced-color
Galileo image of Europa's icy surface is available at
http://www.jpl.nasa.gov/images/europa . The Europa image
proved useful in a study of the age of that moon's surface by
Dr. Cynthia Phillips of the SETI Institute, Mountain View,
Calif. Captions are posted with the images.
Some 250 scientists meet June
24-30 in Boulder, Colo., to
discuss Io, Europa and other members of the Jupiter system.
Dr. John Spencer, of the Lowell Observatory, Flagstaff, Ariz.,
will describe some possible explanations for Io's odd heat
balance. For example, the poles may have more volcanic
heating than the lower latitudes, or they may be surfaced with
materials that cool off slower at night.
The Jet Propulsion Laboratory,
a division of the
California Institute of Technology in Pasadena, manages
Galileo for NASA's Office of Space Science, Washington, D.C.
For more about Galileo, visit http://galileo.jpl.nasa.gov .
Information about the Jupiter conference is at
http://lasp.colorado.edu/jupiter . Lowell Observatory's home
page is at http://www.lowell.edu .
Cassini Weekly Significant
Events
for 06/14/01 - 06/20/01
The most recent spacecraft
telemetry was acquired from the Goldstone
tracking station on Wednesday, June 20. The Cassini spacecraft
is in an
excellent state of health and is operating normally. Information
on the
spacecraft's position and speed can be viewed on the "Present
Position"
web page, http://www.jpl.nasa.gov/cassini/english/where/ .
Recent spacecraft activities
included two clears of the Attitude and
Articulation Control Subsystem (AACS) high water mark, a Magnetospheric
Imaging Instrument (MIMI) Low Energy Magnetospheric Measurement
Subsystem
exercise, and a Radio and Plasma Wave Science (RPWS) high frequency
receiver calibration. A Periodic Engineering Maintenance activity
was also
conducted, which included exercising the Engine Gimbal Assembly
and
routine maintenance on both the Reaction Wheel Assembly #4 and
Backup ALF
Injector Loader. Additionally, a test of the Huygens Probe S-Band
transmitter was performed, which included checking performance
of both the
A and B chains of the Probe Support Avionics.
The Sequence Virtual Team has
begun preparations for sequence testing in
the Integration Test Laboratory in support of the C27 Probe mute
test.
The Cassini Program Science
Group began a week-long meeting in Oxford,
England. In addition to science discipline working group meetings
and
instrument reports, topics of discussion include progress of the
Huygens
Recovery Task Force and Science Operations Plan development.
The Mission Planning team began
a detailed assessment of Titan flyby
minimum altitudes. Use of reaction wheel and thruster control,
and the
resulting hydrazine consumption are among the topics to be considered.
Cassini is a cooperative project
of NASA, the European Space Agency and
the Italian Space Agency. The Jet Propulsion Laboratory, a division
of the
California Institute of Technology in Pasadena, Calif., manages
the Cassini
mission for NASA's Office of Space Science, Washington, D.C.
NASA'S MAP SPACECRAFT SCHEDULED FOR LAUNCH JUNE 30
The launch of NASA's Microwave
Anisotropy Probe (MAP) is scheduled
for Saturday, June 30. The launch window is 3:46 - 3:56 p.m. EDT.
Liftoff
will occur aboard a Boeing Delta II launch vehicle from Pad B
at Space
Launch Complex 17, Cape Canaveral Air Force Station. Should launch
be
delayed by 24 hours, the launch window is 3:40 - 3:52 p.m. EDT.
Using a scanning method, MAP
will make an accurate, precise, full-sky
picture of cosmic microwave background radiation -- the afterglow
of the Big
Bang. MAP seeks to answer fundamental questions about the formation
and
fate of the universe. Among the questions MAP will attempt to
answer are:
How old is the universe? How and when did the first galaxies form?
Will
the universe expand forever or will it collapse? How rapidly is
the
universe expanding?
PRELAUNCH NEWS CONFERENCE AND MISSION SCIENCE BRIEFING
A prelaunch news conference
is scheduled for Friday, June 29, at 1
p.m. EDT in the NASA-KSC News Center auditorium and will be carried
live on
NASA Television. Participating in the briefing will be:
Chuck Dovale, NASA Launch Manager
NASA Kennedy Space Center, Fla.
Joy Bryant, Delta II Mission
Director
The Boeing Company
Elizabeth Citrin, MAP Project
Manager
NASA Goddard Space Flight Center, Greenbelt, Md.
Joel Tumbiolo, Launch Weather
Officer
Department of the Air Force
Immediately following the prelaunch
news conference, a MAP Mission Science
Briefing will be held. Participating will be:
Dr. Alan Bunner, Director,
Structure and Evolution of the Universe Theme
NASA Headquarters, Washington, D.C.
Dr. Charles Bennett, MAP Principal
Investigator
NASA Goddard Space Flight Center, Greenbelt, Md.
Dr. David Spergel, MAP Science
Team
Princeton University, Princeton, N.J.
ACCREDITATION
Media who wish to cover the
launch of MAP including the prelaunch
news conference and mission science briefing should send a letter
of request
to the NASA-KSC News Center on news organization letterhead. It
should
include name, date of birth, and Social Security number or passport
number.
By close of business Thursday, June 28, letters should be faxed
to
321/867-2692 or addressed to:
MAP Launch Accreditation
NASA XA-E1
Kennedy Space Center, FL 32899
MAP mission badges may be obtained at the NASA-KSC News Center
beginning on
Wednesday, June 27, between 8 a.m. and 4:30 p.m. On launch day,
Saturday,
June 30, MAP mission badges will be available starting at 2:15
p.m. and will
be issued at the Pass & Identification Building on SR 401
outside Gate 1 of
Cape Canaveral Air Force Station.
Departure on launch day from
the Gate 1 Pass & Identification
Building for Press Site 1 will be at 2:30 p.m. A NASA MAP mission
badge is
required for all media covering the launch at Press Site 1. Annual
KSC
badges or other Space Shuttle launch credentials will not be honored
on MAP
launch day. After launch, media may leave unescorted for the return
to Gate
1. At all other times, an escort is required for all other areas
of Cape
Canaveral Air Force Station. For further information on 2001 MAP
launch
accreditation, contact Patti Beck at the NASA-KSC News Center
at
321/867-2468.
REMOTE CAMERAS
Media wishing to establish
remote cameras at the launch pad should
meet at the NASA-KSC News Center at 2:30 p.m. on Friday, June
29, to be
escorted to Space Launch Complex 17.
PRESS SITE OPERATING HOURS
On launch day, Saturday, June
30, the NASA-KSC News Center will be open from
2:00 p.m. - 6:00 p.m.
NASA TELEVISION COVERAGE, "V" CIRCUITS, WEBCAST AND RECORDED LAUNCH STATUS
NASA Television will carry
the prelaunch news conference and mission
science briefing beginning at 1 p.m. EDT on Friday, June 29. On
launch day,
Saturday, June 30, countdown coverage will begin at 2 p.m. EDT.
Coverage
will conclude shortly after spacecraft separation that occurs
approximately
one hour, twenty-five minutes after launch.
NASA SELECTS RESEARCH PROPOSALS
IN CELLULAR AND MACROMOLECULAR BIOTECHNOLOGY
NASA has selected 43 researchers
to receive grants totaling
approximately $27 million over four years to conduct biotechnology
research on Earth and in space. This research will create
knowledge in important areas of biotechnology such as tissue
engineering, gene expression and biosensor technology.
Sponsored by NASA's Office
of Biological and Physical Research,
this research offers investigators the opportunity to take
advantage of the low-gravity environment of space and develop
experiments for the International Space Station.
Twenty-three of the selected
proposals are to conduct research in
cellular biotechnology including projects on tissue engineering,
gene expression and bioanalytical technologies. Twenty of the
selected proposals are to conduct research in macromolecular
biotechnology including projects on challenging problems in
structural biology, artificial biomembranes and membrane proteins.
Fourteen of the selected proposals are for the continuation of
work
currently being funded by NASA, but the majority (29) represent
new
research efforts.
NASA received 225 proposals
in response to its research
announcement in this research area. These proposals were all peer-
reviewed by scientific and technical experts from academia,
government and industry.
A list of the selected principal
investigators, institutions, and
research titles (by state) can be found on the Internet at:
ftp://ftp.hq.nasa.gov/pub/pao/pressrel/2001/01-126a.txt
Alcatel Space, prime contractor for ESA's Herschel and Planck space telescopes.
The largest contract ever in
the history of European space astronomy
has been awarded by the European Space Agency, ESA, to an industrial
consortium led by Alcatel Space Industries (France), for the manufacture
of two ESA astronomy satellites, the Herschel Space Observatory
and
Planck.
For more on this story go to:
http://sci.esa.int/content/news/index.cfm?aid=1&cid=1&oid=27524
June 22, 2001
ARTIFICIAL INTELLIGENCE: IT'S MORE THAN A MOVIE
Engineers at the Jet Propulsion
Laboratory will talk
about the real artificial intelligence work that takes place
at NASA in a live webcast, scheduled for June 29, 2001, at 11
a.m. Pacific Time.
The webcast will feature answers
to questions submitted
in advance via e-mail to our webcast producer.
A link to the live webcast
and the producer's e-mail are
located at http://www.jpl.nasa.gov/webcast/ai .
Dr. Edward Tunstel, lead robotics
engineer on the FIDO
rover, a test model for the twin NASA rovers that will go to
Mars in 2003, will speak about rover autonomy of the past and
future. Dr. Larry Matthies, Supervisor, Machine Vision Group,
will talk about his work on machines with human vision
capability. Barbara Engelhardt and Russell Knight of JPL's
Artificial Intelligence Software Group, will answer questions
on use of artificial intelligence software on future missions.
With detailed instructions
from the scientist back home,
smart machines in space function much like a brain and use
inputs from sensors that are like their eyes and ears to make
decisions. Recently, technology has allowed engineers to
create intelligent machines that function independently.
Long before the movie coming
out next week, smart rovers
such as Sojourner used artificial intelligence to traverse
Mars in 1997. The rover had the decision-making capability to
move around and decide a path for itself without the help of
ground controllers. Artificial intelligence software on
NASA's Deep Space 1 was tested in 1998, and in the fall of
2002, JPL will fly the latest AI software that will command
the mission for a period of three months. This software will
decide which pictures to send back to Earth.
Scientists envision a future
colony of robots exploring a
planet's surface. A whole fleet of ground rovers, aerovers
with flying ability and burrowing, worm-like probes may make
up a cooperative mission. These intelligent robots would work
together and share data to make multiple science measurements.
PACIFIC REMAINS LOCKED IN
THREE-YEAR-OLD PATTERN:
NO EL NINO YET, BUT ONE DUE
While change may be on the
way, the Pacific is still
dominated by the strong, larger-than-El Niño/La Niña
pattern
called the Pacific Decadal Oscillation (PDO), according to the
latest data from the U.S.-French TOPEX/Poseidon satellite
mission, managed by NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory,
Pasadena, Calif. The PDO is a long-term ocean temperature
fluctuation of the Pacific Ocean that waxes and wanes
approximately every 10 to 20 years. "This continuing PDO
pattern of the past three years signals more of the unusually
dry conditions that have afflicted the North American west
coast," said JPL oceanographer Dr. William Patzert.
The new satellite image, available
at
http://www.jpl.nasa.gov/images/earth/pacificocean, also shows
a pulse of warm water traveling toward South America, a
reminder that another El Niño is due in the next year or
so.
El Niños generally return every two to seven years; the
last
one occurred in 1997. This equatorial, eastward-traveling
Kelvin wave (a bulge of warm water) is headed toward South
America at about 140 degrees West longitude. In late July,
when this wave arrives at the west coast of South America,
there should be a modest warming of the eastern Pacific.
Kelvin waves, often seen before an El Niño develops, are
triggered by westerly wind bursts (i.e., winds blowing in the
opposite direction from the normal easterly trade winds) in
the western Pacific. Also, the strength of El Niño's next
appearance could depend on how much the PDO dominates ocean
circulation and temperature patterns over the next few years.
The data were taken during
a 10-day collection cycle
ending June 11, 2001. They show that the near-equatorial ocean
has slowly warmed in the past year and sea levels and sea-
surface temperatures are near normal. Above-normal sea-
surface heights and warmer ocean temperatures (indicated by
the red and white areas) still blanket the far-western
tropical Pacific and much of the north and south mid-
Pacific. Red areas are about 10 centimeters (4 inches) above
normal; white areas show the sea-surface height is between 14
and 32 centimeters (6 to 13 inches) above normal.
In the Western Pacific, the
build-up of heat, first noted
by TOPEX/Poseidon oceanographers more than two years ago, has
outlasted the La Niña of the past few years. See
http://www.jpl.nasa.gov/elnino/20000118.html . This warmth
contrasts with the Bering Sea, Gulf of Alaska and U.S. West
Coast where lower-than-normal sea surface levels and cool
ocean temperatures continue (indicated by blue areas). The
blue areas are between 5 and 13 centimeters (2 and 5 inches)
below normal, whereas the purple areas range from 14 to18
centimeters (6 to 7 inches) below normal.
For now, these latest TOPEX/Poseidon data show that the
entire Pacific basin continues to be dominated by the strong
and stable PDO's characteristic warm horseshoe and cool wedge
pattern. Most recent National Oceanic and Atmospheric
Administration (NOAA) sea-surface temperature data also
clearly illustrate the persistence of this basin-wide pattern.
They are available at
http://psbsgi1.nesdis.noaa.gov:8080/PSB/EPS/SST/climo.html .
"Given the three-year
persistence of the PDO pattern,
there will be a tendency to produce impacts similar to the
past two summers with continuing drought and heat in the
West," said Patzert. "In some parts of the West, this
long-
lasting drought has created considerable pain. In the Pacific
Northwest, water supplies are dangerously low and temperatures
should be up, which will exacerbate the energy crisis and,
like the summer of 2000, we are set up for a very busy summer
and fall fire season," said Patzert.
"Warm oceanic patterns in the North Pacific and tropical
Atlantic suggest a more-active-than-normal hurricane season
for the U.S. East and Gulf Coasts. The only good news in this
is that the Gulf Coast and Florida could sure use the
rainfall, but the danger is that it could come as the recent
costly and painful deluge of tropical storm Allison," said
Patzert.
The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration's
(NOAA) National Weather Service U.S. winter forecast shows
little relief for drought in the West, Southeast and Florida
and a wet summer in the Midwest. NOAA seasonal forecasts can
be found at http://www.noaanews.noaa.gov/stories/s647.htm .
The U.S.-French TOPEX/Poseidon mission is managed by JPL
for NASA's Earth Science Enterprise, Washington, D.C. JPL is a
division of the California Institute of Technology in
Pasadena. More information on TOPEX/Poseidon is available at
http://topex-www.jpl.nasa.gov .
June 20-21, 2001
NOAA SCIENCE ADVISORY BOARD
FOCUSES ON FISH
Fisheries issues will be the
focus of the Department of Commerce's National
Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration's (NOAA) Science Advisory
Board
(SAB) meeting June 26-28 in Santa Cruz, Calif.
"We are bringing together
all the elements within NOAA that deal with
fisheries science issues," said Michael Uhart, SAB executive
director.
"This is also an opportunity for the public to provide input."
Open to the public, the meeting
will be held from 1-5 p.m., June 26 at the
National Marine Fisheries Service Laboratory, 110 Shaffer Road,
Santa Cruz,
Calif.
It will continue from 8 a.m.
to 5 p.m., June 27; and 8 a.m. to 12:30 p.m.,
June 28, at the West Coast Santa Cruz Hotel, 175 West Cliff Drive,
Santa
Cruz, Calif.
Among the topics to be discussed
are the role of academia and other NOAA
partners in fisheries science, challenges of effective fisheries
management
and science practices, NOAA's fisheries science programs, and
aquaculture
guidelines.
Established by the U.S. Congress
in 1997, the Science Advisory Board is the
only federal advisory committee charged with the responsibility
to advise
NOAA's Under Secretary for Oceans and Atmosphere on strategies
for
research, education, and application of science to resource management.
Additional information, including
the times for public comments and
statements, can be found at http://www.sab.noaa.gov
MISSION: STS-104 - 10th
ISS Flight (7A) - Airlock
VEHICLE: Atlantis/OV-104
LOCATION: Pad 39B
TARGET KSC LAUNCH DATE/TIME: NET July 12, 2001 at 5:04 a.m. EDT
TARGET KSC LANDING DATE/TIME: July 23, 2001 at 1:03 a.m.
MISSION DURATION: 10 days and 19 hours and 59 minutes
CREW: Lindsey, Hobaugh, Kavandi, Gernhardt, Reilly
ORBITAL INSERTION ALTITUDE and INCLINATION: 122 nautical miles/51.6
degrees
Shuttle Processing Note: Space
Shuttle Atlantis arrived at Launch Pad 39B at
10:50 a.m. today. Processing continues on schedule for a launch
date no
earlier than July 12.
Launch pad validations are
in work through Friday. The STS-104 flight crew
will participate in Terminal Countdown Demonstration Test activities
late
next week. The launch day dress rehearsal culminates with a simulated
main
engine cutoff on Friday, June 29. Shuttle and Space Station managers
will
assemble at KSC June 28 for the STS-104 Flight Readiness Review.
Payload Processing Note: The
U.S. Airlock will be installed into Atlantis'
payload bay on June 26. The flight crew will conduct final payload
inspections on June 28 prior to closing the payload bay doors
later that day
for flight. The IMAX 3D camera has been delivered to the pad and
will be
installed into the orbiter June 23.
MISSION: STS-105 - 11th
ISS Flight (7A.1) - Leonardo MPLM
VEHICLE: Discovery/OV-103
LOCATION: VAB high bay 3
TARGET KSC LAUNCH DATE/TIME: NET Aug. 5, 2001 at 7:05 p.m.
TARGET KSC LANDING DATE/TIME: Aug. 17, 2001 at about 3:30 p.m.
MISSION DURATION: 11 days, 20 hours and 25 minutes
CREW: Horowitz, Sturckow, Barry, Forrester; (ISS up) Culbertson,
Dezhurov,
Turin; (ISS down) Usachev, Voss, Helms,
ORBITAL INSERTION ALTITUDE and INCLINATION: 122 nautical miles/51.6
degrees
Shuttle Processing Note: Space
Shuttle Discovery remains in VAB high bay 3
undergoing final preparations for rollout to Launch Pad 39A no
earlier than
June 27. Technicians will replace one of the orbiter's
multiplexer-demultiplexers Friday night.
Payload Processing Note: In
the Space Station Processing Facility, leak
checks and heater testing has been conducted on the Leonardo MPLM
as
multi-layer insulation installation continues in work. Leak checks
of the
Common Berthing Mechanism continue this week. The MPLM will be
delivered to
the pad in late July for launch no earlier than Aug. 5.
MISSION: STS-108 - 12th ISS
Flight (UF1) - Raffaello MPLM
VEHICLE: Endeavour/OV-105
LOCATION: Orbiter Processing Facility bay 1
TARGET KSC LAUNCH DATE/TIME: Nov. 29, 2001, at 8:05 p.m.
TARGET KSC LANDING DATE/TIME: Dec. 9, 2001
MISSION DURATION: 10 days
CREW: Gorie, Kelly, Godwin, Tani; (ISS up) Onufrienko, Bursch,
Walz; (ISS
down) Culbertson, Dezhurov, Turin
ORBITAL INSERTION ALTITUDE and INCLINATION: 122 nautical miles/51.6
degrees
Shuttle Processing Note: Routine
orbiter system testing is in work and a
powered down modification period is now under way.
Payload Processing Note: Post-flight
processing of the Raffaello
Multi-Purpose Logistics Module in the Space Station Processing
Facility
continues. Environmental Control and Life Support (ECLSS) checks
also
continue.
MISSION: STS-109 - HST Servicing
Mission 3B
VEHICLE: Columbia/OV-102
LOCATION: OPF bay 3
TARGET KSC LAUNCH DATE/TIME: Jan. 17, 2002
TARGET KSC LANDING DATE/TIME: Jan. 28, 2002
MISSION DURATION: TBD
CREW: Altman, Carey, Grunsfeld, Currie, Newman, Linnehan, Massimino
ORBITAL INSERTION ALTITUDE and INCLINATION: 308 nautical miles/28.5
degrees
Shuttle Processing Note: Technicians
are inspecting the orbiter's chin panel
and nose cap. Standard subsystem testing is ongoing.
Denny Kross, Christopher
Singer named to lead NASA Marshall's Space
Transportation Directorate
Denny Kross has been named
director of the Space Transportation
Directorate at NASA's Marshall Space Flight Center in Huntsville,
Ala.
Christopher Singer has been appointed deputy director for the
directorate.
Kross succeeds Dr. John R.
"Row" Rogacki, who is going to NASA
Headquarters in Washington, D.C., to serve as assistant to the
administrator
of NASA's Office of Aerospace Technology. Singer replaces Dennis
E. Smith,
who was appointed in May to manage the new Second Generation Reusable
Launch
Vehicle Project Office at the Marshall Center.
Under Kross's leadership, the
Space Transportation Directorate at
Marshall will continue to provide world-class propulsion and engineering
expertise to NASA's Space Launch Initiative -- the technology
initiative
intended to lead to the creation of a second generation reusable
launch
vehicle -- as well as the Space Shuttle program. The Space Transportation
Directorate also leads NASA's development of advanced space transportation
systems, in-space propulsion, a Mars ascent vehicle and advanced
propulsion
research.
"In alliance with our
partners and our customers, we will continue
to provide technical, engineering and scientific support in the
areas of
research and technology development that are essential to revolutionizing
space transportation," Kross says.
Prior to his appointment to
the Space Transportation Directorate,
Kross served in Marshall's Engineering Directorate as manager
of the
engineering systems department. During his tenure there, he was
responsible
for leading systems-related engineering services and support functions
for a
variety of NASA programs and projects.
A native of Detroit, Mich.,
Kross is a 1963 graduate of the
University of Michigan in Ann Arbor, where he earned an undergraduate
degree
in aerospace engineering. In 1968, he received a master's degree
in
engineering mechanics from the University of Alabama in Huntsville.
Kross came to NASA in 1967
from the Lockheed Missile and Space Co.
in Palo Alto, Calif. His first position at NASA was as a structural
dynamics researcher in the structures division of the former Propulsion
and
Vehicle Engineering Laboratory. He subsequently held managerial
positions
in the former Astronautics Laboratory and the Systems Dynamics
Laboratory.
During his NASA tenure, Kross
also has served in a number of senior
technical and managerial positions at NASA Headquarters and at
Johnson Space
Center in Houston. From 1987-1988, he led the Space Station Performance
Evaluation division at NASA Headquarters.
He managed the International
Space Station Vehicle Office at the
Johnson Center from 1995-1999 before returning to Huntsville to
resume
leadership duties within the Engineering Directorate at Marshall.
Kross and his wife Linda reside in Huntsville.
Singer, a native of Nashville,
Tenn., previously served NASA's
Marshall Center as chief engineer for the Space Transportation
Directorate.
A 1983 graduate of Christian Brothers University in Memphis, Tenn.,
Singer
earned an undergraduate degree in mechanical engineering.
He joined Marshall in 1983
as a rocket engine specialist in the
Structures and Propulsion Laboratory, and eight years later led
the Liquid
Propulsion team responsible for designing, testing and flight
of large,
liquid-propelled rocket engines such as the Space Shuttle Main
Engine.
In 1992, Singer began a year-long
term at NASA Headquarters in
Washington, D.C., where he was detailed to the Space Shuttle Support
Office
as senior manager for the Space Shuttle Main Engine and External
Tank.
In 1994, Singer returned to
the Marshall Center as technical
assistant to the Space Shuttle Main Engine Project Manager. In
that
capacity, he supervised development and implementation of safety
improvements and upgrades to the Shuttle propulsion components.
Four years
later, he was appointed Space Shuttle Main Engine Chief for Requirements
and
Integration, before taking the chief engineer position within
the Space
Transportation Directorate in early 2000.
Singer, his wife Jody and their three children live in Decatur.
NASA'S TERRA SATELLITE CAPTURES A WORLD OF SUNLIGHT AND HEAT
The beginning of summer is
an annual reminder that our
world is driven by sunlight, and new Terra satellite
measurements show just how much the Sun influences the
Earth's climate system.
The first observations, from
March 2000 to May 2001, of the
Clouds and the Earth's Radiant Energy System (CERES)
instruments aboard Terra are the most accurate global
radiation or energy measurements ever and include the first
complete year of such essential data since 1987. These new
CERES data, available at NASA Langley Research Center's
Atmospheric Sciences Data Center, Hampton, VA, capture
incoming and outgoing energy over the whole planet and
provide new insights into climate change.
"The new data will play
a critical role in narrowing the
uncertainties in predictions of future climate change,
especially for the undefined role of the Earth's cloudiness,"
said Bruce Wielicki, a CERES principal investigator at
Langley, where the CERES mission is managed.
For scientists to understand climate, they must also
determine what drives the changes within the Earth's
radiation balance. CERES measured some of these changes over
the last year, producing new images that represent data
collected twice per day over the whole planet. CERES captured
the May 2001 heat wave that swept across the southwestern
United States. Temperatures soared to as high as 109 F in
parts of California, setting new records.
The recent U.S. heat wave is
only one example of outgoing
energy from the Earth. Everything, from an individual person
to the Earth as a whole, emits energy. As Earth absorbs solar
energy, it warms up. To keep our planet at an overall
hospitable temperature, the Earth must emit some of this
warmth, or energy, into space.
Earth's outgoing energy has
two components: thermal radiation
emitted by the Earth's surface and atmosphere, as in last
month's heat wave, and solar radiation reflected back to deep
space by the oceans, lands, aerosols and clouds.
It is the balance, which scientists
refer to as the Earth's
"radiation budget," between the incoming energy from
the Sun
and outgoing energy back to space that determines Earth's
temperature and climate. This balance is controlled by both
natural and human-induced changes, giving scientists a wide
range of questions to study.
Even though CERES has the ability
to capture short-term
changes like the recent heat wave, "the real power of the
CERES data will come from the analysis that integrates CERES'
highly accurate measurement of energy with other measurements
from Terra of the individual components of the climate
system," Wielicki said.
The international CERES team
is now completing an integration
of satellite data over the entire planet from space-borne
instruments on seven different spacecraft to test the
accuracy of global climate models, a task never before
attempted. This will allow a new picture of the energy
balance from the top of the atmosphere, all the way down to
the surface of the Earth. Analyzing how well climate models
compare to CERES will tell the researchers which areas most
closely illustrate the Earth's natural responses.
"CERES Terra is providing
an unprecedented observational
basis, at just the time when major progress in understanding
our environment by theory and climate modeling is taking
place," said Leo Donner, a CERES science team member and
climate modeler at the National Oceanic and Atmospheric
Administration's Geophysical Fluid Dynamics Laboratory,
Princeton University, Princeton, NJ.
The Terra spacecraft is part
of NASA's Earth Science
Enterprise, a long-term research effort being conducted to
determine how human-induced and natural changes affect our
global environment.
Additional information is available on the Internet at:
http://asd-www.larc.nasa.gov/ceres/ASDceres.html
http://visibleearth.nasa.gov/Sensors/Terra/CERES.html
NATIVE AMERICAN EDUCATORS GO BACK TO SCHOOL AT NASA
A group of 17 elementary and
secondary school teachers
from Native American reservations in New Mexico and Arizona are
learning about some of NASA's most exciting missions. During a
two-week educational workshop ending June 22, teachers from
four different school districts are learning how to involve
their students in the wonders of space exploration while
preserving and celebrating their rich Native American
traditions. Participating schools are:
Wallace Elementary, Parker,
Arizona
Santa Clara Day School, Española, New Mexico
San Juan Elementary, San Juan Pueblo, New Mexico
San Felipe Pueblo Elementary, San Felipe, New Mexico
The workshop, hosted by NASA's
Jet Propulsion Laboratory,
Pasadena, Calif., at the JPL Educator Resource Center in
Pomona, Calif., brings together two different worlds that view
the stars differently. For one, the stars are a source of
spiritual guidance, and for the other they are a means to learn
more about age-old questions such as "Where did we come from?"
and "Are we alone?"
"Our role is to help these
teachers come up with a plan
that they can take back to their classroom," said Gene Vosicky,
administrator for the JPL Educator Resource Center. "The
plan
takes into consideration all of their needs. Together, we work
to answer questions and figure out ways to incorporate space
science and technology into their curriculum."
The primary goal of the workshop
is to develop an action
plan that supports standards-based teaching and learning in
mathematics, science, technology and geography. Scientists,
educators and engineers from JPL serve as guest speakers.
Tours of a botanical garden, an observatory and NASA Dryden
Flight Research Center, Edwards, Calif., are also part of the
workshop.
The program is part of a NASA
Educational Workshop aimed
at providing educators with an opportunity to observe NASA's
state-of-the-art research and development through direct
interaction with NASA scientists, engineers, technicians, and
educational specialists at NASA centers. Locally, educators
from elementary through college levels receive assistance and
resources on America's space program at the NASA/JPL Educator
Resource Center. They also see first-hand a model state-of-
the-art classroom complete with rotating stations that can be
integrated into a science curriculum back in their own
classrooms. JPL is managed for NASA by the California Institute
of Technology in Pasadena.
Today Earth and Mars will
experience their closest encounter in a dozen
years. Stargazers won't want to miss the Red Planet blazing bright
in the
midnight sky.
FULL STORY at
http://science.nasa.gov/headlines/y2001/ast21jun_1.htm?list448368
Expedition Two Crew
After an extensive engineering analysis, International Space Station
Program managers Tuesday gave the green light to proceed with
the launch of Atlantis no earlier than July 12 to deliver the
6.5-ton Joint Airlock to the orbiting complex.
The decision to launch Atlantis in July came after several reviews in which teams of engineers from NASA, the Canadian Space Agency and its prime robotics contractor MD Robotics concluded that a communications error between the Canadarm2,s shoulder pitch joint and the arm,s main computer commanding unit was attributable to an intermittent problem with a computer chip in the joint,s electronic system and not a problem with joint itself.
As a result, Canadian engineers are completing the development of a software patch to be uplinked to Canadarm2 which will "tell the arm to ignore similar erroneous communications from the chip which might occur as the arm moves the Airlock from Atlantis, cargo bay for its installation onto the Unity module. The arm is, in reality, functioning perfectly in both its prime and redundant modes for all seven joints since the one and only communications dropout occurred several weeks ago in the shoulder pitch joint,s redundant string of electronics.
Expedition Two Flight Engineers Jim Voss and Susan Helms are scheduled to complete a second dress rehearsal of the Airlock installation task Thursday using the arm in its prime mode. The arm performed perfectly in its backup mode last week during an initial dry run.
With the arm having been declared in good shape and ready to support Airlock installation operations, Shuttle Program managers ordered Atlantis to roll to Launch Pad 39-B at the Kennedy Space Center Thursday morning. The rollout today was postponed due to lightning in the area overnight. Managers will meet at KSC on June 28 in the traditional Flight Readiness Review to set a firm launch date for Atlantis.
Discovery, also in the Vehicle Assembly Building, remains on track to roll out to Launch Pad 39-A next week to support a launch no earlier than August 5 on the STS-105 mission to deliver the Expedition Three crew to the ISS and to bring food, clothing and logistical supplies to the outpost.
Expedition Two Commander Yury Usachev, Voss and Helms continued a variety of science investigations this with more than 17 hours of experiment work budgeted for the crew. Oversight from the ground is handled by the Payload Operations Center at NASA,s Marshall Space Flight Center in Huntsville, AL, except for the Human Research Facility, which is monitored and controlled from the Telescience Support Center (TSC) at the Johnson Space Center, Houston. For details on ISS science, visit the following website: http://www.scipoc.msfc.nasa.gov.
The International Space Station
is orbiting at an altitude averaging 240 miles (385 km). The next
ISS Status Report will be issued Wednesday, June 27, or as mission
events warrant.
MEDIA BRIEFING TO DISCUSS NEXT SPACE SHUTTLE MISSION
A space shuttle mission to
deliver a key component that will enable
astronauts to conduct spacewalks on the Earth-orbiting International
Space Station will be the subject of briefings on Monday, June
25, from
NASA's Johnson Space Center, Houston.
Designated mission STS-104,
Space Shuttle Atlantis is scheduled for
launch no earlier than July 12 to carry a 6.5-ton Joint Airlock
to the
station. The airlock will permit astronauts to perform spacewalks
using
either American or Russian spacesuits without the presence of
a visiting
space shuttle.
During three spacewalks, shuttle
crewmembers will install the airlock
along with four high-pressure oxygen and nitrogen tanks. This
shuttle
mission will be the 10th assembly mission to the International
Space
Station and will mark the completion of the second phase of the
construction of the growing complex.
The briefings will begin with
an overview of the space station program
at 8 a.m. CDT, concluding with the space shuttle crew news conference
beginning at 2 p.m. CDT.
Round-robin interviews with
all five crew members will follow the joint
crew conference, for reporters in attendance at Johnson, and by
phone
for those who make advance arrangements. The round-robin interviews
will
not be televised. Space may be limited. Reporters planning to
attend the
briefings and participate in the round-robin interviews must contact
the
Johnson Space Center newsroom at 281/483-5111 by close of business
Friday, June 22, 2001.
NASA Television is available
on GE-2, Transponder 9C, at 85 degrees West
longitude, vertical polarization, with a frequency of 3880 MHz,
and
audio of 6.8 MHz.
STS-104 PREFLIGHT BRIEFINGS JUNE 25, 2001 (all times are CDT)
8 a.m. INTERNATIONAL SPACE
STATION (ISS) OVERVIEW Tommy Holloway, ISS
Program Manager Bob Cabana, ISS Deputy Manager for International
Relations
9 a.m. STS-104 MISSION OVERVIEW
Paul Hill, STS-104 Lead Flight Director
Mark Kirasich, STS-104 ISS Lead Flight Director
11 a.m. NASA TELEVISION VIDEO FILE (from NASA Headquarters)
11:30 a.m. JOINT AIRLOCK BRIEFING
Hubert Brasseaux, STS-104 Launch
Package Manager Peggy Guirgis, STS-104 Joint Airlock EVA Systems
Lead
Christine Tyrell, Lead ISS Environmental Systems Officer
1 p.m. STS-104 SPACEWALK BRIEFING
Allen Flynt, Acting Manager, EVA
Project Office Oscar Koehler, STS-104 Lead EVA Officer
2 p.m. STS-104 CREW NEWS CONFERENCE
Steve Lindsey, Commander Charlie
Hobaugh, Pilot Mike Gernhardt, Mission Specialist 1 (MS 1) Janet
Kavandi, Mission Specialist 2 (MS 2) Jim Reilly, Mission Specialist
3
(MS 3)
3 p.m. ROUND-ROBIN INTERVIEWS
(NOT SEEN ON NASA TV)
June 19, 2001
MARS ODYSSEY MISSION STATUS
NASA's 2001 Mars Odyssey spacecraft
is in excellent
health as engineers continue to check out and evaluate the
performance of its systems and science instruments during its
early cruise phase.
Friday morning, June 15, flight
controllers successfully
conducted a visible imaging calibration test of the thermal
emission imaging system by pointing the instrument at a star,
Menkent, and taking several pictures. Those data were
transmitted to Earth during the weekend. Also last week,
engineers began a process of heating the gamma ray
spectrometer detector in order to erase radiation damage that
has naturally occurred to the detector thus far during cruise.
The detector will then be in an optimal state to collect
science data once the gamma sensor head door is opened later
this month.
Earlier this month, engineers
successfully tested the UHF
radio system by sending and receiving data via the 46-meter
UHF antenna at Stanford University in California. The team is
continuing to review the data from those tests and plans to
conduct additional tests this week.
The Deep Space Network has
taken several measurements
using the delta differential one-way range measurement, a
technique that uses two ground stations to determine the
angular position of the spacecraft relative to the known
position of a quasar. The measurements provide the navigation
team with an additional source of information, adding
confidence to their estimates of the Odyssey flight path.
Currently, Odyssey is 26.6
million kilometers (16.5
million miles) from Earth, traveling at a speed of 27.6
kilometers per second (about 61,900 miles per hour) relative
to the Sun.
The Mars Odyssey mission is
managed by the Jet Propulsion
Laboratory for NASA's Office of Space Science, Washington,
D.C. JPL is a division of the California Institute of
Technology in Pasadena. The Odyssey spacecraft was built by
Lockheed Martin Astronautics, Denver. The thermal emission
imaging system is provided by Arizona State University, the
gamma ray spectrometer is provided by the University of
Arizona.
Ulysses encounters massive coronal ejection from the Sun
On 10 May, most of the instruments
on board Ulysses recorded
their highest readings during the ten and a half years that
the spacecraft has been in orbit. The cause was a spectacular
coronal mass ejection (CME) which had left the Sun three days
previously, heading towards the position in space that Ulysses
was occupying at the time.
For more on this go to:
http://sci.esa.int/content/news/index.cfm?aid=1&cid=1&oid=27429
June 18, 2001
NASA JOINS FEDERAL AGENCIES IN ECOSYSTEM STUDIES
NASA plans to join other federal
agencies in a unique
network of organizations dedicated to providing research,
technical assistance and education to federal land
management, environmental and research agencies and their
potential partners.
The network of Cooperative
Ecosystems Studies Units, or
CESUs, creates and maintains cooperative efforts among
federal agencies and universities to share resources and
expertise. On June 19, NASA will become the tenth federal
agency to join this CESU Network.
The CESU Network also encourages
professional development of
federal scientists and works to manage federal science
resources efficiently and cost-effectively.
Media representatives are invited
to attend NASA's signing of
the Memorandum of Understanding at the American Association
for the Advancement of Science (AAAS), June 19, 4:45 p.m.
EDT.
The AAAS is located at 1200
New York Avenue, NW, Washington,
DC.
LONG DURATION SPACE TRAVEL EFFECTS ON HUMANS NOTED AT CONFERENCE
Machines, rockets and computers
are ready for space voyages longer than a
year, but can human beings endure the psychological and physical
challenges
of long-duration space travel?
These problems, potential answers
and ongoing research are the focus of an
international conference of experts, "Human Systems 2001,"
to be held June
20 - 22 at the Nassau Bay Hilton, next to NASA's Johnson Space
Center,
Houston.
"Very little is known
about how well the 'human element' will stand up to
the rigorous demands of an 18-month mission to Mars," said
Patricia
Cowings, who studies "human factors" at NASA's Ames
Research Center in
California's Silicon Valley. "Several international teams
of scientists
have devoted themselves to the investigation of potential biomedical
and
behavioral problems those space explorers might encounter, and
to the
development of solutions to those problems."
Use of underwear that contains
sensors to non-invasively monitor human
stress and performance, 3-D motion tracking, exoskeletons to augment
human
performance and robot-human interactions are some of the diverse
subjects
that scientists will cover during the conference.
Cowings is slated to make two
presentations. At 1:30 p.m. CDT on Wednesday,
June 20, she and colleague William Toscano of NASA Ames will discuss
"Improving operational readiness on Earth and in space: Autogenic
Feedback
Training Exercise." Autogenic, or self-produced, feedback
training involves
teaching people to voluntarily control bodily functions, such
as those of
the heart and stomach, that normally are not controlled by a person's
free
choice. Autogenic feedback training can enable space travelers
to learn to
prevent or minimize motion sickness and other conditions experienced
by
some astronauts during weightlessness.
The researchers measure brain
waves, the heart's electric current,
electrical resistance of body tissues, breathing and body movements
with
"space undergarments" worn by human experimental subjects.
Recently, four
air traffic controllers wore the space underwear when they participated
in
a simulation at NASA Ames of a major U.S. airport's operations.
-more-
-2-
"We considered air traffic
controllers (ATCs) to be a very good model for
space crews, as their jobs involve such elements as 'sustained
vigilance'
and 'critical decision making tasks,' which have very real consequences
to
the lives of air passengers and crews," said Cowings. "What's
happening to
the physiology of these people as they work through difficult
shifts and
rotating work schedules? What can we learn from ATCs that could
benefit
long-duration space crews?" she asked.
Toscano and Cowings also will
present at 2:45 p.m. CDT, June 20, when they
will talk about how scientists can measure people in real-world
situations
to determine their readiness for space travel, which countermeasures
will
help people to cope with psychological and physical stresses and
how
researchers can measure whether or not countermeasures worked
well.
Other NASA-Ames presenters
on June 20 include Albert Ahumada, whose talk,
"Modeling the Human Visual System in Displays," is scheduled
for 10:00 a.m.
CDT.
"When we talk to someone,
what we say depends on what we know about that
person (our model of them) and how they react to what we say.
Advanced
visual displays will behave this way when presenting visual information,"
said Ahumada. "They will have a model of the observer's visual
system that
will let them format the data for the individual viewer, and they
will
watch the viewer's eyes to see whether data appears to be getting
through."
At 10:50 a.m., CDT Jeffrey
McCandless and Robert McCann of Ames will speak
about "Human Factors Issues for the Updated Cockpit Displays
of the Space
Shuttle." In addition, McCandless and McCann will present,
"Human Factors
Issues in the Design of Next Generation Spacecraft," at 3:55
p.m. CDT.
Ames researcher Dr. Leonard Trejo will present a "poster"
session entitled
"Using Electroencephalograph (EEG) to Detect and Monitor
Mental Fatigue."
An EEG is a device that records brain signals.
On Thursday, June 21, NASA
Ames speaker Zann Gill will present "Webtank
Assessment; Performance in Web-based Collaborative Learning Environments"
at 4:45 p.m. CDT.
Friday, June 22 Ames presenters
include Trejo, Kevin Wheeler and Charles
Jorgensen, who will speak about "Multimodal Neuroelectric
Interface
Development" at 10:00 a.m. CDT. In recent experiments, the
trio was able
to simulate landing a jetliner at San Francisco International
Airport using
human nerve signals picked up by a "wrist bracelet"
implanted with dry
electrodes. The sensors read muscle nerve signals as the pilot
makes the
gestures needed to land a computer-generated aircraft.
"This is a fundamentally
new way to communicate with machines -- another
way to talk with our mechanical world," said Jorgensen, head
of the
neuroengineering laboratory at Ames. "This new technology
is significant in
that neuroelectric control of computers can replace computer keyboards,
mice and joysticks for some uses."
At 11:15 a.m. Ames' Trejo also
will present "Using EEG to Detect and
Monitor Mental Fatigue."
The Institute for Advanced
Interdisciplinary Research (IAIR), Houston,
organized the conference. IAIR's members include NASA, the National
Space
Biomedical Research Institute, the National Institute of Occupational
Safety and Health, the U.S. Coast Guard Research and Development
Center and
other agencies. A complete listing of all conference presentations
and
additional information about human systems is available on the
Internet at:
http://www.human.systems.org
Human Systems 2001 events are
open to conference participants and reporters.
NASA Science News for June 18, 2001
African dust that crosses the
Atlantic Ocean and brings beautiful sunsets
to Florida also carries potentially harmful bacteria and fungi,
a new
study shows.
FULL STORY at
http://science.nasa.gov/headlines/y2001/ast18jun_1.htm?list448368
BRIEFING SET FOR THURSDAY TO
DISCUSS SPACE STATION ACTIVITIES
With the current International
Space Station crew
marking 100 days in space this past weekend, NASA managers
are scheduled to discuss the crew's recent and upcoming
activities during a briefing, Thursday, June 21 at 3 p.m.
EDT.
The briefing will cover recent
activities with the station's
Canadarm2 robotic arm, the crew's preparation for upcoming
visits by Space Shuttle crews, scientific research on the
station and the homestretch of the crew's five-month flight.
Station Commander Yury Usachev
and Flight Engineers Jim Voss
and Susan Helms are scheduled to return to Earth in mid-
August aboard a Space Shuttle, which also will bring a new
crew to the station.
Participants in the briefing
will be Flight Director John
Curry and Increment Two Scientist John Uri.
The briefing, originating from
NASA's Johnson Space Center,
Houston, TX, will be carried live on NASA Television and will
feature multi-center question and answer capability from
participating NASA centers.
X-43A MISHAP INVESTIGATION UPDATE
The board investigating the
June 2 X-43A mission loss
continues to meet at NASA's Dryden Flight Research Center at Edwards,
Calif. Root cause of the mishap has not yet been found.
Robert W. Hughes, chairman
of the investigation board, said
the team at Dryden expects to join other team members already
at the
Orbital Sciences Corp. facility in Chandler, Ariz., by June 24.
That
is where the Pegasus booster rocket used with the X-43A was built.
The investigation board has
released the NASA B-52B mother
ship as well as NASA Dryden's control rooms for other duties,
Hughes
said. These assets had been isolated since the mishap to permit
the
board to study them in detail.
The X-43A mission, first in
a series of three, was lost
moments after the X-43A and its Pegasus booster rocket were released
from the wing of the B-52 carrier aircraft. After Pegasus rocket
ignition, the combined booster and X-43A deviated from its flight
path. It was then deliberately terminated with an explosive charge,
causing the X-43A and Pegasus to fall into a cleared Navy sea
range
off the coast of California.
The X-43A is designed to be
the first scramjet-powered
vehicle, capable of attaining speeds as high as Mach 10.
NASA's Langley Research Center
at Hampton, Va., leads the
X-43A program, with flight operations conducted by NASA Dryden.
Microcraft, Inc., of Tullahoma, Tenn., built the 12-foot-long
X-43A
vehicle. The mishap investigation team includes representatives
from
NASA centers including Dryden, Langley, Marshall (Alabama), Goddard
(Maryland), Kennedy (Florida), plus all of the contractor elements.
***MARS DESERT RESEARCH STATION TO DEBUT AT KENNEDY SPACE CENTER
The Mars Desert Research Station
(MDRS) will be exhibited at Kennedy
Space Center visitor's complex this summer, prior to being moved
to a
permanent location in the American Southwest. The MDRS. represents
the second in a planned series of four analog stations which will
be
used for research into Mars mission operations and for outreach
to
the general public.
Along with the hab itself,
The Mars Society has prepared an extensive
exhibit detailing tools and concepts for exploration of Mars.
Space
Artist Bob Murray has created an inspirational mural to enhance
the
exhibit, illustrating the transformation of a first human outpost
into a true Mars settlement. The exhibit will also include a mars
base diorama, created by noted space modeler Kevin Atkins, and
include interactive exhibits, such as one offering visitors the
opportunity to attempt mechanical assembly while wearing simulated
spacesuit gloves. As a special attraction, for an hour once a
day the
communication center in the exhibit tent will give visitors the
opportunity to communicate with the Mars explorers who will be
operating out of the Flashline Mars Arctic Research Station on
Devon
Island this summer. All communication will include time delays
precisely matching that which would be involved in radio
transmissions to Mars' current position. Mars Society member
volunteers and personnel from the sponsoring unions will staff
the
exhibit.
The Mars Society exhibit will
run from July 1st through the Labor Day
weekend. The Kennedy Space Center visitor's complex is open from
9:00 a.m. to 7:00 p.m. every day. In addition to the Mars Society
exhibit, the center provides a fascinating tour of rocket and
space
related history. The visitor's center receives up to 12,000 visitors
per day, so we are thrilled to be a part of this exciting venue.
For more information on the
MDRS. exhibit, contact mzubrin@aol.com.
To become a sponsor of the Mars Desert Research Station, contact
Dr.
Robert Zubrin, The Mars Society Inc., P.O. Box 273, Indian Hills,
CO
80454.
Construction of the MDRS. has
been sponsored by the Mars Society, the
International Pipe fitters Union and the Musk Foundation. The
Mars
Society. is proud to welcome its newest sponsor, the Sheet Metal
Worker's International Association. .
***SHEET METAL WORKERS BECOME MARS DESERT RESEARCH STATION SPONSORS
The Sheet Metal Workers International
Association (SMWIA) has become
the newest major sponsor of the Mars Society's Mars Desert Research
Station. Founded in 1888, the SMWIA has about 160,000 members.
Together with the United Association of Plumbers and Pipefitters
(UA)
the SMWIA sponsorship brings to over half a million the number
of
skilled union men and women represented in the Mars Desert Research
Station project.
SMWIA president Michael Sullivan
and General Secretary Treasurer
A.T. "Ted" Zlotopolski explain their mission thus: "From
tinsmiths to
high tech specialists, sheet metal workers have plied their skills
long before our founding members organized this union on January
25,
1888 in Toledo, Ohio. We have established and improved our reputation
for skilled work that benefits society in the places where people
work, live, play, and pray. We reach for new avenues in our constant
pursuit for a better quality of life for all working persons."
Commenting on the SMWIA sponsorship,
Mars Society president Robert
Zubrin said; "In the aerospace industry, when a project moves
from
concept to reality, we say it has moved to the stage of `cutting
metal.' Well, the sheet metal workers are the people who actually
cut
the metal. Together with other skilled working men and women like
the
plumbers and pipefitters, they are the people who make dreams
real.
We are delighted to have them on our team."
For more information about
the sponsorship from the SMWIA contact Ted
Kuczynski, tkuczynski@sheetmetal-iti.org. For information from
the
Mars Society, contact info@marssociety.org.
***MARS SOCIETY ROVER PROJECTS MOVE AHEAD
The Mars Society, continuing
its unprecedented, widespread effort to
involve everyone in the future of Mars exploration, announced
June 15
that it will continue to fund three teams for their efforts to
develop Mars analog rovers. All three teams will have a working
model of their vehicle ready for this fall's research season,
some at
the Mars Desert Research Station in the American Southwest.
A rover analog is designed
to look like a rover which could function
on the Mars surface, without the high cost of complete fidelity.
Analogs allow research into the mechanics of operations such as
suiting up, traversing distances with someone outside, storing
1 week
of supplies for two people, and coordinating long distance explorers
with those at a Mars base.
The contest started last year
in an effort to jump-start research
into mobility on the Red Planet. Teams presented their design
at the
Mars Society conference in August. Three teams, Michigan, Toronto,
and Australia were selected to receive funds (US$5,000) to start
work
on their rover. Now, at the halfway point, The Society is convinced
that their progress warrants additional funding.
The Michigan Team is building
a living space that they will mount on
a surplus military vehicle. They are partnered with many industries
in their industrial state, and have minimized the out-of-pocket
cost
for development. This fabrication will serves as a prototype for
another rover they will build in the coming year. The larger rover
will be built on a custom frame, drive train, and suspension system.
Across the border, in Toronto,
a partnership of schools is working on
their rover. Placed on frame of a moving van, and integrated into
the cab, their vehicle relies on simplicity of design and
availability of parts for their vehicle in case of trouble in
the
field.
Across the ocean, the Australian
team incorporated their rover into
the Operation Red Centre project countrywide. They procured a
four
wheel drive van, and are stripping it down to its frame. Next,
they'll place a new shell on it, giving it all the amenities of
home,
although smaller.
The North American teams plan
to have their rovers on display at the
Mars Society convention at Stanford University in Palo Alto, CA
from
Aug 23-26. More information is available from Tom Hill, project
manager (hillkid@earthlink.net) or
http://www.marssociety.org/projects/rover.
***DUTCH MARS SOCIETY CONFERENCE A GREAT SUCCESS
Mars Living Planet, the first
symposium organized by the Dutch
chapter of the Mars Society, was a tremendous success. Around
150
people gathered in the Auditorium of Delft University of Technology
on June 2nd 2001. Visitors came from all over the country and
also
from Belgium and from as far as Poland. Erwin Kroll, the Dutch
National weatherman, started the series of lectures with a Martian
weather report. Mauro Messerotti gave a further introduction to
the
Red Planet, by means of his animations and stills. The highlight
of
his talk was a movie previously shown on Italian television, which
was accompanied by music generated by the conversion of the used
digital Elevation Models. Messerotti also offered a peek in the
kitchen by simulating a session rendering a three dimensional
view of
the Mars surface with VistaPro software and Viking data. Other
renderings done by Kees Veenenbos, with Terragen and Global Surveyor
data, were shown during breaks.
John Karemaker, researcher
at the University of Amsterdam, gave an in-
depth and somewhat disquieting account of all hazards long distance
Space travelers are confronted with: by zero-gravity health effects.
The only real solution, it seems, is in creating artificial gravity,
like the tether-system proposed in the Mars Direct plan.
After lunch, attention focused
on the European efforts to study
Mars. Don McCoy, responsible for the assembly, integration and
verification of Mars Express, Europe's first interplanetary probe,
spoke about the general objectives of the project and the techniques
used to achieve them. The ESA-spacecraft, scheduled for launch
on
June 1st 2003, has a wide variety of instruments on board, such
as a
High Resolution Stereo Camera, an Infrared and Visible Spectrometer
and a Sub-surface Sounding Radar/Altimeter. Mars Express also
carries a British lander, the four leaf clover-shaped Beagle 2,
that
should touch down in Isidis Planitia to look for signs of water
and
life. Con McCarthy, principal system engineer for the Beagle 2,
spoke
about the experiments to be carried out on board that little
spacecraft. The most noticeable instrument aboard the Beagle 2
is a
mole, designed to take samples from nearby rocks. The third ESA-
speaker, Didier Schmitt, head of the organization's Life Sciences
Unit, talked about the European plans for planetary research beyond
2003. Those ideas, though still in a schematic phase, are quite
ambitious and include a sample return mission and even research
in
preparation for a manned mission to Mars.
Following the ESA speakers,
Robert Zubrin presented Mars Direct, his
proposal for a cost-effective manned Mars mission. Chris McKay,
working at NASA Ames Research Center, then talked about "Life
on
Mars past and future". According to McKay, there's strong
evidence
that Mars once was a warm and wet planet, much like Earth in its
early days. Life, either related to terrestrial life forms or
representing a true "second genesis" may have flourished
there.
Research in the Antarctic and other cold and dry locations on
Earth
may provide clues to how that life might have survived the change
in
Martian climate. A question of equal importance is whether it
might
be possible to restore habitable conditions on the Planet. The
whole
series of lectures took more than one hour longer than foreseen
but
the attention of the audience never wavered. "Mission control",
the
symposium taskforce of the Dutch chapter, looks back at a very
inspiring event, after which organizing the 2002 European Mars
Society Convention definitely looks feasible.
The symposium caused a wave
of attention for Mars in both old and new
media. John Karemaker, one of the speakers, was interviewed in
NCRV's "Plein Publiek" on radio AM 747 and Mars Society
Netherlands
board member Artemis Westenberg appeared in AVRO's "1 in
de middag"
on radio 1. During the symposium-day most of the speakers were
interviewed by the Dutch World Service.
Among the major National and
regional newspapers that paid attention
to the event were De Volkskrant, the Haagsche Courant and Het
Parool.
The Haagse Courant borrowed our slogan "Voorwaarts Mars!"
(on to
Mars) as a headline. Govert Schilling wrote an extensive article
for
the front page of De Volkskrant's science section of June 2nd.
Schilling, who in the past often criticized human Space flight,
this
time wrote an almost poetic review about Zubrin's and McKay's
dreams: "Mars will be a living Planet. A dream? Still. But
you've got
to start somewhere."
Apart from websites specializing
in Space flight and science, like
Astronet and Astronova, also major internet-portals like Planet
internet and World Online picked up the story of "Mars -
Living
Planet"; the latter even published the complete Founding
Declaration
of the Mars Society. Another new media that during the weeks before
the symposium attracted the attention of the public to the Red
Planet
were the large master-screens in the Shopping Gutter, Rotterdam's
famous shopping Mall. More than a million shoppers were treated
to
animation composed of renderings by Kees Veenenbos.
***MARS SCOUT MISSIONS CHOSEN
The ten most promising mission
concepts of the 43 proposed to NASA
for possible launch to Mars in 2007 as part of the "Scout"
program
were selected last week to receive funding for six months of
continued studies.
Included in the ten concepts
selected for study are missions to
return samples of Martian atmospheric dust and gas, networks of
small
landers, orbiting constellations of small craft, and a rover that
would attempt to establish absolute surface ages of rocks and
soils.
NASA plans to evaluate the ten innovative concepts using rapid
six-
month studies as a means for jump-starting the identification
of new
Mars Scout missions that will compete for a possible launch in
2007.
The proposals were submitted to NASA's Mars Exploration Program
in
the Office of Space Science in Washington, DC, in response to
a call
for proposals in March 2001. Those selected will receive up to
$150,000 each for the study.
The Mars Scout program was
originally proposed in 1998 by the Mars
Society, which at its Founding Convention resolved on a campaign
to
create a "Mars Discovery" program, through which university-industry-
government teams with innovative concepts for low-cost Mars
exploration missions could propose them for funding through an
open
competitive process. This open competition of ideas, the Mars
Society
maintained, would lead to a much more dynamic and creative program
that one entirely run top-down by a central planning committee
closed
to outside ideas. Starting in the Fall of 1998, Mars Society chapters
visiting with their congressmen in local district offices brought
the
call for a Mars Discovery program to numerous lawmakers. At a
workshop held in Washington DC in March 2000, Mars Society leaders
succeeded in making the establishment of such a competitive "Mars
Discovery" program the workshop's leading recommendation,
and shortly
afterwards, the recommendation was published in Space News in
the
form of an op-ed by Mars Society president Robert Zubrin. In the
summer of 2000, the idea was embraced by NASA and publicly announced
as part of the new Mars program by then program manager Scott
Hubbard
in October 2000.
Commenting on the selection,
Mars Society president Robert Zubrin
said "These mission concepts are illustrative of the wealth
of
powerful creative ideas that abound throughout the Mars exploration
community. It is a shame that funding constraints will prevent
the
execution of more than a couple of them. The Mars Scout program
needs
to be doubled."
The selected mission concepts,
and the Principal Investigators, are:
* SCIM (Sample Collection for Investigation of Mars): Professor
Laurie Leshin, Arizona State University, Tempe. This innovative
mission would sample atmospheric dust and gas using aerogel and
use
a "free-return trajectory" to bring the samples back
to Earth.
* KittyHawk: Professor Wendy Calvin, University of Nevada- Reno.
A
mission involving three gliders would explore the composition
and
stratigraphy of the walls of Valles Marineris in ways not possible
for orbiters and landers.
* Urey: Dr. Jeff Plescia, U.S. Geological Survey, Flagstaff, AZ.
A
surface rover would allow the absolute ages of geological materials
to be remotely determined for the first time on any planet.
* MACO (Mars Atmospheric Constellation Observatory): Professor
Robert
Kursinski, University of Arizona, Tucson. A network of micro-
satellites as a constellation around Mars would characterize the
3-D
structure of the atmosphere, giving a new look at Martian
climatology.
* Artemis: Professor David Paige, University of California, Los
Angeles. Three small landers and micro-rovers on the Martian surface,
with two directed to the polar regions, would explore the surface
and
shallow subsurface for water, organic materials and climate.
* MEO (Mars Environmental Observer): Dr. M. Janssen, NASA's Jet
Propulsion Laboratory (JPL), Pasadena, CA. This science orbiter
would
intensively explore the role of water, dust, ice and other materials
within the Martian atmosphere to understand parts of the hydrologic
cycle.
* Pascal: Dr. Rob Haberle, NASA's Ames Research Center, Moffett
Field, CA. A network of 24 weather stations on the Martian surface
would provide more than two years of continuous monitoring of
humidity, pressure and temperature and other measurements.
* Mars Scout Radar: Dr. Bruce Campbell, Smithsonian Institution's
National Air and Space Museum, Washington, DC. An orbiter mission
would use Synthetic Aperture Radar (SAR) imaging to map the surface
geomorphology and very shallow subsurface (three to five meters
deep), to detect buried water channels and other features.
* The Naiades: Dr. Bob Grimm, Blackhawk GeoServices, Golden, CO.
Four
landers will explore for subsurface liquid water using a novel
low-
frequency sounding method.
* CryoScout: Dr. Frank Carsey, JPL. This mission, designed to
use
heated water jets to descend through Martian polar ice caps, could
potentially probe to depths of tens to hundreds of meters while
measuring composition and searching for organic compounds.
A special symposium on plans
for Scout missions will be held at the
Mars Society Convention at Stanford University, August 23-26,
2001.
*** HAKLUYT PRIZE WINNER ANNOUNCED
The winners of the 2001 Hakluyt
prize for the best letter written by
students to world leaders advocating a humans-to-Mars initiative
have
been announced.
First place goes to Bridget
Gallaway of Portland, Oregon. Bridget
just graduated from high school and will be attending college
in
Texas next fall. Bridget wrote to the heads of state of 26
countries, to Pope John Paul II, and to all the members of the
Science committees of the US House and Senate about the need to
inspire the human spirit with the dream of a Martian civilization.
As Bridget put it to the world's elites;
"I am an 18-year old college
student and I am writing to you because
I need your help with a goal to which I am dedicating the rest
of my
life. It is an endeavor that will catapult the human race into
an era
of discovery, excitement, and achievement a manned mission to
Mars
"Mars is the new frontier,
with the potential to reawaken human
hopes, dreams, and opportunities. The exploration of our solar
system
can tell us much about who we are, where we come from, and the
innumerable possibilities of where we might go.
"It is part of the human
psyche to learn, explore, create a better
life and to survive... It is only through the colonization of
Mars
that these needs will be fulfilled. I cannot imagine anything
more
noble than helping to insure the survival of the human race.
"I firmly believe that
the development of Mars and beyond will be the
greatest undertaking in human history. I am excited about my own
personal involvement. However, one more aerospace engineer will
not
take us to Mars. I sincerely hope that you will join me and others
in
this quest. Please be an advocate for future generations by leading
your nation in joining this effort.
"Our world is old and
tired. The human spirit is stagnating under the
burden of existence without direction. But within each of us is
the
ancient spirit that drove us to tame the natural elements, conquer
the seven seas, and settle every continent. That same spirit will,
with your help, take us to the stars."
Bridget will be given an all-expenses
paid trip to the Mars Society
convention in August where she will present her letter at the
annual
Mars Society banquet. She will also be given a top quality Bushnell
telescope.
Second place winner was fifteen-year-old
Steve Melnyk of Winnipeg,
Canada. Steve, who wrote to members of the Canadian and United
States government, emphasized the historical importance of
exploration. Third place is awarded to John Hills of West Yorkshire,
United Kingdom. John wrote to heads of state, focusing on
underdeveloped countries, with an emphasis on the benefits of
an
international effort to colonize Mars. Steve and John will each
receive a great Bushnell telescope.
Bushnell binoculars will go
to our fourth and fifth place winners,
Matthew Simonson, Washington D.C. and Denise Murphy, Canada. Runners-
up Chris Guerin, Channel Islands, UK, Tanya Harrison, Washington
State, and Yohan Carlyle Denzil Ferreira, Sri Lanka, will receive
Mars Society memberships/renewal and prizes.
The Hakluyt prize is named
after Richard Hakluyt, the tireless
pamphleteer whose writings convinced Queen Elizabeth I and the
circle
around her to take the policy decisions that led to the British
settlement of North America. Previous first place winners of the
contest were Adrian Hon, of Liverpool England (1998), Katie Harris,
of Georgetown Ontario (1999), and Felix Dance, of Melbourne,
Australia (2000).
Thanks to all of the young
people who participated in this year's
letter writing campaign.
Bridget Galway can be reached at bgal13@juno.com.
***CONVENTION NEWS
Conference Registration Fees to Increase July 1st.
The deadline for reduced registration
is fast approaching. After
June 30th, full registration fee, including membership, increases
from $180 to $240. You can register quickly and securely with
your
Visa/MC, Discover or American Express card through our website
-
www.marssociety.org.
Dormitory Rooms
Dormitory registration will
close July 31st. At this point there are
fewer than 30 double beds remaining. If you have reserved a double
bed and wish to specify your roommate, write to mzubrin@aol.com.
The
floors in the Stanford dorms are segregated by gender, so couples
will not be able to share a double room. There are still plenty
of
single rooms available. Check in for the dorm room is Wednesday,
August 22 after six p.m. and check out is Sunday by noon. A $75
refundable key deposit will be required at check in.
Vendors and Displays
We are accepting reservations
for Vendors and Displays at the
convention and have already reserved several tables. Space is
very
limited this year. If you wish to set up a display, please contact
mzubrin@aol.com so we can reserve your space. Remember, chapters
and
task force groups are not charged to display at the conference.
Abstract Deadline Extended
In response to many requests,
the deadline for submitting abstracts
for presentation at the convention has been extended to July 15th.
The range of sessions planned should provide opportunity for members
involved all sorts of areas to present their ideas. This year
we
will have presentations from our rover teams, a youth seminar,
a Mars
Scout mission session, a terraforming panel, the Mars Desert Research
Station and Denver Mission Control teams, an education track and
much
more. Plenary speakers include the German Mars Balloon Mission
team,
award winning science fiction authors Kim Stanley Robinson and
Greg
Benford, former NASA Associate Administrator for Exploration Mike
Griffin, Exobiologist Imre Freeman, Flashline Station crew members,
leaders of the JPL 2003 Mars Exploration Rover Mission team, the
Mars
Society's "Green Team" Environmental Outreach group
and many more.
At this time, over a hundred
abstracts dealing with every aspect of
exploring and settling Mars from science and technology to politics
and ethics- have been received. The convention promises to be
another
intellectual feast. To present a paper yourself,
send your 300 word abstract to mzubrin@aol.com. Notification of
acceptance will begin in early July. If you have special scheduling
needs, let us know as soon as possible.
Matching Donor Program at Convention
For the second year, board
member Eric Tilenius will be matching
donations collected during the four days of the convention. Last
year, thanks to the generosity of Eric and the Mars Society members,
we raised over $75,000 during the conference. Those funds were
used
to support the F.M.A.R.S. field research season this year, the
international analog rover teams, expanded outreach and educational
activities, improved administration, and the launching of the
Mars
Desert Research Station project. So come to the convention and
have
your donations doubled!
For further information, visit
our website at www.marssociety.org
Or contact us at info@marssociety.org.
June 17, 2001
FREE LECTURES FOCUS ON PAST AND FUTURE OF TELESCOPE
The intriguing past and out-of-this-world
future of the
telescope will be explored in a pair of free lectures
sponsored by NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena. The
first lecture will also be broadcast over the Internet.
Both lectures are open to the
public and will start at 7
p.m. The first will be held at JPL on Thursday, June 21, and
the other at Pasadena City College on Friday, June 22.
"From Galileo to Gossamer:
400 Years of Telescope
Technology," will examine the trials, tribulations and
successes of telescope builders who worked on improving the
brilliant idea of a Dutch spectacle-maker, Hans Lippershey,
credited as the first to separate two lenses in a tube. News
of the invention rocked the scientific minds of the time,
including that of Galileo Galilei, who effectively studied how
to improve the device. More importantly, he was the first to
point the new invention toward the sky, something humans have
been doing ever since.
The speakers are Artur B. Chmielewski,
manager of the
Large Telescope Concept Office, and Mark Dragovan, a JPL
senior scientist and inventor of many novel telescope designs.
They will explain how scientists are working to improve the
400-year old technology by avoiding the mistakes of the past
and by exploiting new ideas that promise fast improvements.
Using inflatable material and thin, film-like lenses, so-
called gossamer technology, they are working on concepts for
space-based construction and launching of telescopes as big as
a tennis court.
Lecture seating is on a first-come,
first-served basis.
The lecture at JPL will be held in the von Karman Auditorium,
4800 Oak Grove Dr., in Pasadena, off the Oak Grove Drive exit
of the 210 (Foothill) Freeway. For directions to JPL, see
http://www.jpl.nasa.gov/about_JPL/directions.html .
Information on the webcast
is at
http://www.jpl.nasa.gov/events/lectures/jun01.html .
On Friday, the lecture will
be held in Pasadena City
College's Forum at 1570 E. Colorado Blvd. For more
information, call (818) 354-0112.
Find information on the von
Karman lecture series at
or call JPL's
Public Services Office at (818) 354-0112.
JPL is managed for NASA by
the California Institute of
Technology in Pasadena.
PINATUBO: 10 YEARS AFTER THE BIG ONE
On June 15, 1991, Mt. Pinatubo
blew its top in one of the most
violent volcanic events of the century. Residents of island
of Luzon in the Philippines continue to live with the effects
of this massive eruption that dumped tons of debris on the
volcano's flanks. During monsoon rains, this debris can be
turned into rivers, or lahars, of corrosive ash that strip the
land of vegetation and harden into concrete-like structures.
Images using data from NASA's
airborne imaging radar
instrument AIRSAR show the volcano's western side where most
of these pyroclastic flows occurred and how the landscape has
changed between 1996 and 2000.
They are available at
http://www.jpl.nasa.gov/images/earth/volcano/ .
AIRSAR flies aboard a NASA
DC-8 based at NASA's Dryden Flight
Research Center, Edwards, Calif. Built, managed and operated
by the Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL), Pasadena, Calif.,
AIRSAR is part of NASA's Earth Science Enterprise program.
More information about AIRSAR
is available at
http://airsar.jpl.nasa.gov/ .
JPL is a division of the California
Institute of Technology in
Pasadena.
June 16, 2001
JAMES R. HEALD NAMED DIRECTOR, SPACEPORT ENGINEERING AND TECHNOLOGY AT KSC
James R. Heald has been named
director of the Spaceport Engineering
and Technology organization at Kennedy Space Center (KSC), effective
June
11, 2001.
In this position, Heald is
responsible for leading the center's
efforts for integrated engineering and spaceport technology development.
Also, he will lead KSC's spaceport engineering and technology
organizational
efforts in building KSC into a premier spaceport science and engineering
organization.
Prior to joining NASA, Heald
served 26 years in the U. S. Air Force.
His most recent assignment was as vice commander, Air Force Research
Laboratory, Wright-Patterson Air Force Base, Ohio. There, he played
a key
role in directing the Air Force's science and technology program.
Heald is a distinguished graduate
of the U.S. Air Force Academy,
Colorado Springs, Colo., earning a bachelor degree in computer
science and
mathematics in 1975. Upon graduation, he was commissioned as a
second
lieutenant. He received a master's degree in computer science
from
University of California at Los Angeles in 1976.
He is a distinguished graduate
of the U.S. Air Force Test Pilot School,
Edwards AFB, Calif., distinguished graduate, Air Command and Staff
College,
Maxwell, AFB, Ala., and an outstanding graduate of the Air War
College.
Heald is rated as a master
navigator and has logged over 2300 hours of
flying time in more than 30 different types of aircraft. He served
as the
director of student training, U.S. Air Force Test Pilot School,
Edwards AFB,
Calif., from July 1989-July 1991. Prior to his assignment at
Wright-Patterson, AFB, Ohio, he served as commander, 46th Operations
Group,
Air Force Development Test Center, Eglin AFB, Fla.
Heald is a native of Fort Leavenworth,
Kan. He is married to the former
Patricia K. McCollum of Scottsdale, Ariz . They have two adult
children,
Mike and Greg.
Cassini Weekly Significant
Events
for 06/07/01 - 06/13/01
The most recent spacecraft
telemetry was acquired from the Goldstone
tracking station on Tuesday, June 12. The Cassini spacecraft is
in an
excellent state of health and is operating normally. Information
on the
spacecraft's position and speed can be viewed on the "Present
Position"
web page at ( "http://www.jpl.nasa.gov/cassini/english/where/" ) .
The Visual and Infrared Mapping
Spectrometer (VIMS) team successfully
completed four tests of modified flight software (FSW) on the
instrument
testbed using the VIMS Ground Support Equipment. Commands from
the four
tests were translated into a single set of commands for testing
in the
Integration and Test Laboratory (ITL). That testing exercised
73
combinations of parameters while doing regression and new capability
testing. Results were posted on the Telemetry Delivery System
for use by
Multimission Image Processing Laboratory (MIPL) during their testing
of
VIMS Ground Software in MIPL. Those results are under analysis.
An Imaging Science Subsystem
(ISS) flight software glitch related to the
numbering of Instrument Expanded Blocks led to powering down the
instrument as a precautionary measure. A patch will be uploaded
as part of
a planned mini-sequence next week.
The ISS team completed analysis
of ITL tests with the ISS engineering
models to verify documented IEB load sizes and other behavior.
The
results will be influence the current FSW upgrades and will aid
in
documenting the ISS response to certain conditions. Modifications
and
tests of the new ISS flight software continue on the IO instrument
testbed.
The Sequence Team held both
a simulation coordination meeting and
simulation walk-through in support of ITL testing for C27, and
the tests
executed successfully later in the week. There was also a preliminary
Sequence Change Request approval meeting in support of the C27
Preliminary
Sequence Integration and Validation phase.
An Atmospheres Working Group
teleconference was held to discuss the
possible trajectory changes proposed by the Huygens Recovery Task
Force.
An Apoapsis Splinter Group teleconference was held to work the
integration
issues associated with the apoapsis periods in the Tour.
System Engineering (SE) distributed
the Verification and Validation plan
for review pending signature.
The Mission Planning Team delivered
the Mission Plan, Rev. M, to the
Cassini Electronic Library, and reviewed trade studies across
all Cassini
elements in the Mission Planning forum to organize, prioritize
and assign
responsibility for those studies to the appropriate element.
Cassini Uplink Operations supported
the X2000/Advanced Technology and
Autonomy for the Future program, providing a large test file for
testing
of a new "smart" board X2000 is testing for onboard
processing or routing
of command files. X200 needed a file with a large number of Command
Link
Transmission Units to check performance, which Cassini was able
to supply.
Mission Support & Services
Office (MSSO) is working with Cassini Security,
JPL Security, and Building 230 Management in developing a Remedy-based
tool for Space Flight Operations Facility (SFOF) access status.
MSSO is
collecting information and requirements from Building 230 Management
and
will do the same with JPL Security at a later date. Cassini benefits
from
participating in this activity by helping to define and understand
the
rules and requirements for SFOS access with the goal of minimizing
building access delays and improve physical security monitoring.
MSSO ACE command procedure
has been updated to reflect the Program's
dependence upon institutionally-provided AFS servers. This update
includes an advisory message for users of the system.
The SE team presented the Ground
System software inventory and
classification status at the Cassini Design Team meeting. All
the Ground
System software classifications have been reviewed, with the majority
of
the program classifications accepted and further discussion planned
for
the few remaining programs. The required types of documentation
for each
classification level was discussed, and initial coordination made
for
reviewing the documentation for each program.
Outreach personnel represented
Cassini at a workshop in Charleston, South
Carolina that focused on the use of existing and future NASA materials
in
classrooms for the visually and hearing impaired. Cassini Outreach
also
spoke to 225 students, teachers, and parents participating in
the U. S.
Aerospace Challenge rocketry competition in Holland, Michigan.
Cassini is a cooperative project
of NASA, the European Space Agency and
the Italian Space Agency. The Jet Propulsion Laboratory, a division
of the
California Institute of Technology in Pasadena, Calif., manages
the Cassini
mission for NASA's Office of Space Science, Washington, D.C.
Cassini Outreach
Cassini Mission to Saturn and Titan
Jet Propulsion Laboratory
California Institute of Technology
National Aeronautics and Space Administration
Hidden Oceans Could Still Support Life
Could life thrive where the
Sun never shines? The
answer to this unorthodox question bears directly on
the tantalizing possibility that life exists in the
hidden, perpetually dark oceans that are thought to
shroud some of Jupiter's moons, most prominently
Europa.
Recent work by Christopher
Chyba (SETI Institute) and
Kevin Hand (Stanford University) suggests that there
may be ways to nourish biology on watery environments
where the Sun's rays don't penetrate. The two
researchers have published their work in the June 15
issue of Science.
"Most surface life on
Earth - on land or in the seas
- depends on photosynthesis," notes Chyba. "The first
link in the food chain is chlorophyll's conversion of
sunlight into chemically stored energy. But imagine
an ocean on Europa, a huge, bottled-up body of water
capped with miles of ice. Photosynthesis isn't going
to work there. Nonetheless, there are other ways to
make a metabolic living in those dark seas."
Recent results from NASA's
Galileo spacecraft have
strongly suggested the presence of subsurface oceans
not only on Europa, but also its sister moons,
Callisto and Ganymede. Since liquid water is usually
considered a prerequisite for the development of
life, these nearby worlds are intriguing locales to
search for extraterrestrial biology.
However, more than water is
required. An energy
source is necessary to support life. Chyba and Hand
point out that this is usually obtained by
oxidation-reduction reactions in which two substances
(for example, carbon and oxygen) bond to share an
electron, releasing energy during the reaction. An
important oxidizing agent in Earth's oceans is
molecular oxygen (O2), the product of photosynthesis.
But one would expect this to be in short supply in
the inky abysses of the Jovian moons.
However, Chyba and Hand note
that Europa's icy
exterior is routinely bombarded with high-speed
particles accelerated in Jupiter's magnetosphere.
When they slam into the Europan ice, they form
oxidants such as H2O2 and O2. If, as could be the
case, this surface food supply eventually gets
churned into the ocean below, it could provide
sustenance to a substantial biomass.
"We can't be certain at
this point whether the
oxidants would actually make it into the water, even
over geological time scales," says Chyba. "But if
not, there are other mechanisms that might be a
source for molecular oxygen in the oceans."
One of these is the radioactive
decay of a potassium
isotope 40K, which would be present in both the ice
crust and the liquid water. The decay splits water
molecules and produces O2. Although the quantity of
oxidant produced in this way is less than could be
supplied by the surface effects of charged particles,
it would still be enough to support a biosphere.
"Obviously, we don't know
if life exists on these
moons," Chyba emphasizes, "but at least we can say
that if the oceans are there, the compounds that
could supply energy for life seem likely to be
present."
JSC OPEN HOUSE 2001 SET FOR AUGUST 25
For the sixth consecutive year,
NASA,s Johnson Space Center will open
its doors to the public for its annual Open House event. For one
full
day, Saturday, Aug. 25, visitors will have an opportunity to meet
JSC,s
workers, see how they plan and conduct human space flight missions
and
learn about NASA technologies that are used on Earth every day.
Open House, which begins at
9 a. m. and ends at 5 p. m., is free to the
public. Visitors may enter the center through three gates not
normally
open to the public on NASA Road One just east of Saturn Lane,
on Space
Center Boulevard near Bay Area Boulevard, and on Space Center
Boulevard
near NASA Road One. Parking in JSC lots is available at no charge.
"Open House is a rare
and valuable opportunity for the community to come
inside our gates and see how the space program works," said
Roy Estess,
Center Director (Acting). "For many people, this is a once
in a lifetime
chance to meet astronauts in person, see mission control or hold
a piece
of space hardware in their hands. Likewise, it's a wonderful opportunity
for the people here, many of whom have dedicated their careers
to make
space travel a reality, to share their passion with our neighbors."
Exhibits and hardware from
JSC,s various programs will be featured in
more than 19 buildings throughout the center. In addition, tours
will be
provided of the Sonny Carter Training Facility, where astronauts
train
for space walks in the largest indoor pool in the world, as well
as
Ellington Field, where NASA training jets, Shuttle Training Aircraft
and
the KC-135 weightless trainer are based.
Visitors will be able to see
Mission Control where both the Space
Shuttle and International Space Station flight control rooms are
operating. This facility is the nerve center for human space flight
operations.
In Building 9, at the Space
Vehicle Mockup Facility, visitors can see a
full-size model of the first and only reusable spacecraft ever
built
the Space Shuttle. Also housed in Building 9 are the full-size
modules
of the International Space Station, a U.S.- led, international
project
involving five space agencies and 16 nations in the most complex
engineering project ever undertaken.
NASA Astronauts will be on
hand throughout the day to provide autographs
at JSC and Ellington Field. Food, beverages and souvenirs will
be
available for purchase as well.
Other facilities used for research
in advanced technologies involving
composite materials, plant growth, life support systems, global
positioning systems and physiological studies will be open to
the
public.
There will be educational activities
for children and opportunities to
be photographed beside real space hardware and hands-on interactive
activities involving the Internet.
JSC,s Open House coincides
with the annual Ballunar Liftoff Festival, a
three day event sponsored by local communities and held on the
NASA
grounds. The festival includes more than 100 hot air balloons,
midway
rides, games, skydiving exhibitions and other displays. There
will be an
admission charge for the Ballunar Liftoff Festival.
Additionally, transportation
is available from Houston METRO. Designated
METRO shuttle pick up locations include Baybrook Mall on I-45
South or
the Bay Area Park and Ride lot on Bay Area Blvd. in Clear Lake.
Adults
ride for $2. Children 11 and under ride free.
For more information about
JSC,s Open House, call 281-244-5312 or visit
the JSC website at http://openhouse.jsc.nasa.gov/
June 15, 2001
MICROBES AND THE DUST THEY
RIDE IN ON
MAY POSE HEALTH RISK
Potentially hazardous bacteria
and fungi catch a free ride
across the Atlantic, courtesy of North African dust plumes.
NASA-funded researchers who made the discovery believe the
stowaway microbes might pose a health risk to people in the
western Atlantic region.
Dale Griffin, Virginia Garrison,
and Eugene Shinn of the U.S.
Geological Survey (USGS) and Jay Herman of NASA's Goddard
Space Flight Center, Greenbelt, MD, outline their findings in
a paper titled "African Desert Dust in the Caribbean
Atmosphere: Microbiology and Public Health." The paper will
be
published June 14 in the journal Aerobiologia.
"The National Institute
of Health's National Institute of
Allergy and Infectious Diseases identifies airborne dust as
the primary source of allergic stress worldwide," stated
Shinn. "The identification of microbes in transported dust
is important as they may be a source of respiratory stress and
disease above and beyond that caused by exposure to
particulate matter."
African dust has produced red-tinged
sunsets in south Florida
for years. The dust comes every year during northern Africa's
dry season, when storm activity in the Sahara Desert region
generates clouds of dust. The dust, originating from fine
particles in the arid topsoil, is transported into the
atmosphere by winds and may be carried more than 10,000 feet
high into the atmosphere by easterly trade winds. Typically,
it takes 5 to 7 days for the dust clouds to cross the Atlantic
Ocean and reach the Caribbean and Americas.
"The dust events are cyclical,"
Griffin said. "Studies by
other researchers have shown that from February to April, the
winds bring an estimated 280,000 tons per event to 13 million
tons per year to the Northeastern Amazon Basin. From June to
October the winds shift and typically bring dust to North and
Central America and the Caribbean."
During the peak of the dust
season in July 2000, Garrison
collected samples of airborne pollutants and dust daily on the
island of St. John in the Virgin Islands and sent them to the
USGS laboratory in St. Petersburg, FL, for microbial analysis
by Griffin. He compared his results with satellite
observations tracking dust clouds from North Africa. The air
samples with high levels of microbes were collected on the
days that NASA's Total Ozone Mapping Spectrometer satellite
instrument observed the African dust sweeping into the region,
indicating that the microbes had been transported from Africa.
"In the week it takes
for North African dust to cross the
Atlantic some of the microbes die because of exposure to
ultraviolet (UV) rays of the Sun," said Griffin. "However,
microbes in the cracks and crevasses of dust particles may be
shielded from UV. We also believe that the upper altitudes of
the dust clouds deflect harmful UV rays, shielding microbes at
lower altitudes as they are transported across the Atlantic
Ocean. Additionally, when dust clouds move over open water in
lower latitudes, the moderate temperatures and high humidity
are known to enhance microbial survival."
Florida receives more than
50 percent of all microbe-laden
African dust that reaches the United States. Over the last 25
years, dust quantities reaching Miami have increased during
periods of African drought. The U.S. Environmental Protection
Agency says these tiny dust particles can penetrate deep into
your airways and react with lung tissue. Herman said. "During
major dust episodes reaching Florida, there could be a
correlation with increased respiratory problems."
In addition to the dust itself,
even small concentrations of
fungal spores can trigger allergic reactions. A study by M.E.
Howitt of the Queen Elizabeth Hospital in Barbados documented
a 17-fold increase in asthma attacks in Barbados between 1973
and 1996, corresponding with the increase in African dust
transport to the region.
Fungi and bacteria that survive
the trans-Atlantic journey in
dust include bacterial or fungal cultures that do not produce
disease mixed with species that do produce disease in both
humans and plants.
NASA's Earth Science Enterprise
Environment and Health Program
at Goddard, a cooperative program with local, state, and
federal and international institutions funded this research.
The initiative uses NASA remote-sensing satellites and other
data to investigate the connections between the world's
environmental conditions and human health. More information
about this research and images can be found on the Internet
at:
http://www.gsfc.nasa.gov/gsfc/earth/toms/microbes.htm
http://coastal.er.usgs.gov/african_dust/
MISSION: STS-104 - 10th ISS Flight (7A) - Airlock
VEHICLE: Atlantis/OV-104
LOCATION: Vehicle Assembly Building (VAB)
TARGET KSC LAUNCH DATE/TIME: NET July 12, 2001 at 5:04 a.m. EDT
TARGET KSC LANDING DATE/TIME: July 23, 2001 at about 1 a.m.
MISSION DURATION: 10 days and 20 hours
CREW: Lindsey, Hobaugh, Kavandi, Gernhardt, Reilly
ORBITAL INSERTION ALTITUDE and INCLINATION: 122 nautical miles/51.6
degrees
Shuttle Processing Note: Space
Shuttle Atlantis is mated to the external
tank and solid rocket boosters in VAB high bay 1. Routine powered
up health
checks are in work today and final preparations are under way
for roll out
to Launch Pad 39B no earlier than Tuesday morning. The decision
to roll is
predicated on resolution of the International Space Station robot
arm issue.
The STS-104 launch will occur no earlier than July 12.
Payload Processing Note: The U.S. Airlock remains in the pad's
payload
changeout room. No work on the Airlock is scheduled until Atlantis
is
delivered to the pad. The Airlock will be installed in the orbiter's
payload
bay on or about June 25. An interface verification test is tentatively
scheduled for June 29 and the payload bay doors will be closed
for flight
July 8. The IMAX 3D camera, currently in the Operations and Checkout
building, will be delivered to the pad and installed into the
orbiter
following rollout.
MISSION: STS-105 - 11th ISS Flight (7A.1) - Leonardo MPLM
VEHICLE: Discovery/OV-103
LOCATION: Vehicle Assembly Building (VAB)
TARGET KSC LAUNCH DATE/TIME: NET Aug. 5, 2001 at 7:05 p.m.
TARGET KSC LANDING DATE/TIME: Aug. 17, 2001 at about 3:30 p.m.
MISSION DURATION: 11 days, 20 hours and 25 minutes
CREW: Horowitz, Sturckow, Barry, Forrester; (ISS up) Culbertson,
Dezhurov,
Turin; (ISS down) Usachev, Voss, Helms,
ORBITAL INSERTION ALTITUDE and INCLINATION: 122 nautical miles/51.6
degrees
Shuttle Processing Note: Orbiter
Discovery moved into the VAB yesterday
morning and last night was mated to the external tank and boosters
in VAB
high bay 3. The Shuttle Interface Test begins Monday and roll
out to Launch
Pad 39A is currently scheduled for June 25. The processing flows
for STS-105
and STS-104 are expected to be finalized early next week.
Payload Processing Note: In
the Space Station Processing Facility, aft
access closure to the Leonardo Multi-Purpose Logistics Module
(MPLM) was
completed June 7. Leak checks and heater testing was conducted
last Friday,
while multi-layer insulation installation continues in work. A
leak check of
the Common Berthing Mechanism is being conducted today. The MPLM
is
scheduled to be delivered to the pad in late July.
MISSION: STS-108 - 12th ISS Flight (UF1) - MPLM
VEHICLE: Endeavour/OV-105
LOCATION: Orbiter Processing Facility bay 1
TARGET KSC LAUNCH DATE/TIME: Nov. 29, 2001
TARGET KSC LANDING DATE/TIME: Dec. 9, 2001
MISSION DURATION: 10 days
CREW: Gorie, Kelly, Godwin, Tani; (ISS up) Onufrienko, Bursch,
Walz; (ISS
down) Culbertson, Dezhurov, Turin
ORBITAL INSERTION ALTITUDE and INCLINATION: 122 nautical miles/51.6
degrees
Shuttle Processing Note: Technicians
complete thruster replacement work on
Endeavour's reaction control system. Routine orbiter system testing
is in
work and a powered down modification period begins tomorrow.
Payload Processing Note: In the Space Station Processing Facility,
the
Raffaello Multi-Purpose Logistics Module (MPLM) was released from
its
previous mission (STS-100) post-mission processing this week.
Environmental
Control and Life Support (ECLSS) checks will begin next week as
will
post-mission weight and center-of-gravity checks.
MISSION: STS-109 - HST Servicing Mission 3B
VEHICLE: Columbia/OV-102
LOCATION: Orbiter Processing Facility bay 3
TARGET KSC LAUNCH DATE/TIME: Jan. 17, 2002
TARGET KSC LANDING DATE/TIME: Jan. 28, 2002
MISSION DURATION: TBD
CREW: Altman, Carey, Grunsfeld, Currie, Newman, Linnehan, Massimino
ORBITAL INSERTION ALTITUDE and INCLINATION: 308 nautical miles/28.5
degrees
Shuttle Processing Note: Columbia's
freon coolant loops have undergone
standard servicing work and sample testing is now in work. Technicians
are
preparing for orbiter ammonia system leak and functional testing
this week.
FREE FLIGHTS, PLANE PULL, CLASSIC CARS FEATURED AT MOFFETT
FIELD
A full day of activities, including free flights aboard a variety of privately owned aircraft, an opportunity to pull a 150,000-pound jet aircraft 12 feet in the fastest time and a classic car display will be featured at Moffett Field on Saturday, June 16.
Sponsored by the Santa Clara County Law Enforcement Torch Run, the third annual "Airplane Pull" will begin with registration at 8 a.m. Approximately 4,000 participants and spectators are expected to attend the Airplane Pull, which benefits Special Olympics in Santa Clara County. Last year, more than $20,000 was raised from the one-day event. Twenty-three-member Plane Pull teams compete against each other to pull a United Airlines Boeing 727 a distance of 12 feet in the shortest amount of time. The competition will begin at 9 a.m. and continue until 2 p.m.
Starting at 10 a.m., the Experimental
Aircraft Association (EAA) Aviation Foundation's Young Eagles
will offer free flights over Moffett Field for youths ages 8 to
17. The event is designed to educate young people about airplanes
and help them discover career opportunities in aviation. EAA pilots
volunteer their time to support this activity and bring with them
35 aircraft for the youths to ride. The flights, which are designed
to provide a motivational aviation experience for the youths,
will continue until 3 p.m.
"The Young Eagles program is trying to reach out to children
who want to spread their wings and conquer the sky. This event
will provide Bay Area kids with a unique opportunity to fly on
small and medium-sized airplanes side-by-side with real pilots,"
said Young Eagles program coordinator Ron Palermo. "The local
EAA chapter is excited about the opportunity to hold this Young
Eagles event at an historic place like Ames, so well known for
its aviation research and strong community ties." NASA Ames
Research Center is hosting the events as part of its community
outreach program.
Also featured during the day will be a display of approximately 50 classic cars representing several local car clubs, demonstrations and displays of law enforcement equipment, musical entertainment and refreshments. Gates will open at 7:30 a.m. Admission is free to all events and no pets will be allowed. Visitors are urged to enter Moffett Field via the Ellis Street gate and proceed to Hangar 1, where free parking will be available.
Further information about the
Young Eagles is available at www.eaa62.org, and about the Plane Pull by calling
Tiffany Lloyd Lofton or Sgt. Danny Acosta at (408) 267-2734.
SATELLITES REVEAL HAWAII'S LONG TAIL OF WIND AND WATER
The Hawaiian Islands trigger
an extraordinary interaction
between wind and ocean that extends thousands of miles. This
island effect is much larger than has ever been observed by
scientists before.
Using data from Earth-observing
satellites, researchers
discovered a narrow, eastward-flowing ocean current that
extends nearly 5,000 miles from Asia to Hawaii. While
scientists have known of an eastward current off Asia for some
years, this new research shows such a current could possibly
have aided the islands' early settlers, thought to have sailed
from the Far East.
The scientists' report appears
in the June 15 issue of the
journal Science.
"Our study shows how tiny
islands, barely visible on a world
map, can affect a long stretch of Earth's largest ocean,"
said
Dr. Shang-Ping Xie, University of Hawaii's International
Pacific Research Center and Meteorology Department, Honolulu.
"The Pacific could only be sketchily observed with ship-based
instruments; advanced satellite technology, however, is
changing all this and giving us fascinating new images of this
ocean."
"According to conventional
theories and observations, the wind
wakes caused by islands should dissipate within approximately
300 kilometers (180 miles) downstream and should not be felt
in the western Pacific," said Dr. Timothy Liu, NASA's Jet
Propulsion Laboratory (JPL), Pasadena, CA. "But we were able
to observe a pattern that stretches more than 3,000 kilometers
(1,800 miles) in the atmosphere and the ocean from the western
side of the Hawaiian Islands to beyond Wake Island in the
western Pacific."
Liu concluded, "This pattern,
never recognized before, is a
narrow but long break in the steady Pacific trade winds and
the north equatorial current. It is triggered by the high
Hawaiian Islands and sustained by positive ocean-atmosphere
feedback."
In their paper, "Far-Reaching
Effects of the Hawaiian Islands
on the Pacific Ocean-Atmosphere," the authors describe a
chain
of events that begins when the steady westward trade winds and
north equatorial current encounter the volcanically formed
Hawaiian Islands standing tall in the middle of the Pacific
Ocean. The islands force the winds to split, creating areas of
weak winds behind the islands and strong winds on the islands'
flanks. Individual wakes form behind the islands, but these
merge into a broader wake about 150 miles to the west.
The winds associated with this
broader wake spawn a narrow
eastward countercurrent that draws warm water from west to
east. When the winds encounter these warm surface waters, they
rise with convection. Cooler winds move in to feed the rising
air, creating a rotating effect and reinforcing the current.
The current, in turn helps drive the winds, setting up a
positive feedback between ocean and atmosphere that continues
for thousands of kilometers to the west.
The study shows that the surface
winds react to sea-surface
temperature variations as small as a few tenths of one degree,
indicating climate sensitivity much higher than has been
previously thought. This new knowledge of ocean-atmosphere
interplay will help improve climate models used to predict
phenomena like El Nino and global warming.
For their paper, Xie and his
colleagues used data from NASA's
QuikScat satellite, the European Remote Sensing satellites and
the U.S.-Japan Tropical Rainfall Measuring Mission (TRMM).
The SeaWinds on QuikScat project
is managed for NASA's Earth
Science Enterprise by JPL. NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center,
Greenbelt, MD, manages TRMM.
June 14, 2001
XMM-Newton peers into a stellar coffin
Astronomy is a painstaking
discipline, requiring time and patience.
Yet once in while, a string of discoveries using different telescopes
occur in the same domain, each following hot on the heels of one
another.
Now, XMM-Newton adds the latest chapter to the story of IC443,
one of
the most studied supernova remnants.
For more on this story go to:
http://sci.esa.int/content/news/index.cfm?aid=1&cid=1&oid=27343
BRIGHTER, REDDER MARS TO ILLUMINATE SUMMER NIGHTS
Hold on to your hats and keep
a pair of binoculars handy:
After a 26-month sprint around the track of the solar system,
we are about to lap Mars again.
Today, the red planet is in
"opposition," an event that
puts Earth between Mars and the Sun. On June 21, Mars will be
at its closest distance from Earth since 1988, a mere 67.3
million kilometers (approximately 42 million miles). All
summer long, Mars will be brighter than usual, particularly
for sky-watchers in the southern United States and those in
the Southern Hemisphere.
On average, Mars is 50 percent
farther from the Sun than
Earth is. Because of its tighter orbit, Earth passes Mars
every couple of years. The reduced distance between the two
planets and better solar illumination angle give Earthlings
the best Mars-viewing opportunity. Through October, Mars will
be easy to spot looking south, especially around midnight. The
better view will be reserved for those living in the Southern
Hemisphere, with Mars high in the sky. In the Northern
Hemisphere, Mars will be low on the horizon. The more south
the observer is, the higher the red planet will appear in the
sky.
For centuries these favorable
observing conditions have
excited human imagination, providing closer views and new
details and features. Now with better tools and the same
hunger for discovery, NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory is
still paying close attention to Mars' position to launch
spacecraft at the most favorable opportunity to save fuel and
time. Taking advantage of the upcoming alignment will be the
2001 Mars Odyssey orbiter, the most recent mission to the red
planet, which was launched April 7 and will arrive October 23,
2001.
To understand the mechanics
of timing launches to Mars,
Dr. E. Myles Standish, a JPL astronomer who specializes in
studies of planetary positions, compares Earth and Mars to two
cars on different nearly circular tracks. The car on the
shorter inside track is going faster, getting ahead of the one
on the outside, and eventually catching up with it and
overtaking it.
"If you were in the car
on the inside track and wanted to
throw a ball to someone in the car on the outside, you can do
it only at certain times: you have to throw the ball outward
at a specific time before your car has caught up with the
outside one, and you have to aim at a spot ahead of the
outside car. It is very similar with spacecraft," Standish
said.
While Martian opposition occurs
every other year, the
minimum distance between the two planets is not always the
same because of the elliptical orbits of the two bodies,
particularly Mars. However, this is not a major concern for
mission planning.
"The distance between
the two planets is important, but
it doesn't matter nearly as much as the timing, which is
crucial," Standish said.
The next Mars opposition will
be in August 2003, when the
two planets will be the closest they ever been in at least
5,000 years, approximately 55.7 million kilometers (34.6
million miles). At that time, NASA will send two JPL-built
rovers to Mars, each capable of exploring distances greater
than the Sojourner rover of Mars Pathfinder fame.
For more information about
Mars exploration, log on to
http://mars.jpl.nasa.gov .
New pictures illustrating Mars
opposition are available
at
http://www.msss.com/mars_images/moc/opposition_6_2001/
JPL manages the Mars Exploration
Program for NASA's
Office of Space Science, Washington D.C. JPL is a division of
the California Institute of Technology in Pasadena.
NASA SELECTS FIRST MARS SCOUT CONCEPTS FOR FURTHER STUDY
The 10 most promising mission
concepts of the 43
proposed to NASA for possible launch to Mars in 2007 were
selected today to receive funding for six months of continued
studies.
Included in the 10 concepts
selected for study are
missions to return samples of Martian atmospheric dust and
gas, networks of small landers, orbiting constellations of
small craft and a rover that would attempt to establish
absolute surface ages of rocks and soils.
NASA plans to evaluate the
10 innovative concepts using
rapid six-month studies as a means for jump-starting the
identification of new Mars Scout missions that will compete
for a possible launch in 2007. The proposals were submitted to
NASA's Mars Exploration Program in the Office of Space Science
in Washington, D.C., in response to a call for proposals in
March 2001. Those selected will receive up to $150,000 each
for the study.
"These Scout concepts
embody the spirit I first thought
about more than one year ago and will enable us to explore the
diversity of Mars in new ways," said Dr. Ed Weiler, NASA's
associate administrator for space science. Weiler selected the
10 winners on the basis of overall scientific merit and
potential for implementation under a total mission cost cap of
$300 million.
"All of us in the Mars
Program are thrilled with the
response by the community with such incredible ideas," said
Dr. Jim Garvin, lead scientist for the Mars Exploration
Program at NASA Headquarters. "These 10 mission concepts
provide revolutionary new vantage points and tools for
exploring the new Mars that has emerged from the observations
of the Mars Global Surveyor."
"The Mars Scouts are a
vital element of the restructured
Mars program and are intended to complement the science
objectives of the core missions -- Mars Exploration Rovers,
Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter and Mars Sample Return," said
Dr.
Firouz Naderi, the Mars program manager at NASA's Jet
Propulsion Laboratory. "Perspective investigators were
encouraged to propose diverse spacecraft platforms for their
science, including orbiters, landers, rovers, airplanes and
aerobots."
Next year, NASA plans to initiate
a competition for small
Scout missions to the red planet to broadly involve the
scientific and aerospace communities in the Mars Exploration
Program. "We have used this opportunity to be as inclusive
as
possible to engage the broadest possible cross-section of the
community," said Orlando Figueroa, Mars Program director
at
NASA Headquarters. The 10 concepts selected today will not be
given any advantage in that competition.
The selected mission concepts,
and the principal
investigators, are:
- Sample Collection for Investigation
of Mars: Dr. Laurie
Leshin, Arizona State University, Tempe. This innovative
mission would sample atmospheric dust and gas using aerogel
and use a "free-return trajectory" to bring the samples
back
to Earth.
- KittyHawk: Dr. Wendy Calvin,
University of Nevada, Reno.
A mission involving three gliders would explore the
composition and stratigraphy of the walls of Valles Marineris
in ways not possible for orbiters and landers.
- Urey: Dr. Jeff Plescia, U.S.
Geological Survey,
Flagstaff, Ariz. A surface rover would allow the absolute ages
of geological materials to be remotely determined for the
first time on any planet.
- Mars Atmospheric Constellation
Observatory: Dr. Robert
Kursinski, University of Arizona, Tucson. A network of
microsatellites as a constellation around Mars would
characterize the 3-D structure of the atmosphere, giving a new
look at Martian climatology.
- Artemis: Dr. David Paige, University of California, Los
Angeles. Three small landers and microrovers on the Martian
surface, with two directed to the polar regions, would explore
the surface and shallow subsurface for water, organic
materials and climate.
- Mars Environmental Observer:
Dr. Michael Janssen, JPL.
This science orbiter would intensively explore the role of
water, dust, ice and other materials within the Martian
atmosphere to understand parts of the hydrologic cycle.
- Pascal: Dr. Rob Haberle,
NASA's Ames Research Center,
Moffett Field, Calif. A network of 24 weather stations on the
Martian surface would provide more than two years of
continuous monitoring of humidity, pressure and temperature
and other measurements.
- Mars Scout Radar: Dr. Bruce
Campbell, Smithsonian
Institution's National Air and Space Museum, Washington, D.C.
An orbiter mission would use synthetic aperture radar imaging
to map the surface geomorphology and very shallow subsurface
(three to five meters deep, or about 10 to 16 feet), to detect
buried water channels and other features.
- The Naiades: Dr. Bob Grimm,
Blackhawk GeoServices,
Golden, Colo. Four landers would explore for subsurface
liquid water using a novel low-frequency sounding method.
- CryoScout: Dr. Frank Carsey,
JPL. This mission, designed
to use heated water jets to descend through martian polar ice
caps, could potentially probe to depths of tens to hundreds of
meters, or yards, while measuring composition and searching
for organic compounds.
For more information about
Mars Exploration see
http://mars.jpl.nasa.gov .
JPL manages the Mars Exploration
Program for NASA's
Office of Space Science, Washington, DC. JPL is a division of
the California Institute of Technology.
Expedition Two Crew
As the Expedition Two crew approaches 100 days in space, work
to gain confidence in the operation of the station,s robotic arm
to support the installation of the Joint Airlock continues.
Friday marks 100 days in space for the three crewmembers, Commander Yury Usachev, and Flight Engineers Jim Voss and Susan Helms, since launch on March 8 to replace the Expedition One crew.
Meanwhile, plans are in place for a complete checkout of the station,s robotic arm, called Canadarm2, on Thursday to check all of the positions through which it will be maneuvered to support the installation of the next pressurized component the Joint Airlock scheduled for launch aboard Space Shuttle Atlantis about July 12 from the Kennedy Space Center, FL.
The scheduled 4-hour checkout, set to begin about 10 a.m. Central time, effectively will serve two functions. First, the operation will verify the arm,s ability to support the Airlock installation on the Unity module of the station. Second, to continue to investigate the reason for an intermittent loss of communication between the arm,s shoulder pitch joint and its computer commanding unit. A diagnostic software patch has been loaded in the station,s onboard computers to attempt to obtain additional data on the arm,s operation.
Meanwhile, shuttle and station managers have elected to delay the rollout of Atlantis to the launch pad while the robotic arm troubleshooting continues. At present, the rollout is scheduled for Tuesday to support a launch around 4 a.m. Central on July 12. The option still exists to postpone the mission until September and fly Discovery to the station first on the STS-105 flight no earlier than August 5 to deliver the Expedition Three crew as a replacement for Expedition Two.
This week has been the busiest so far aboard the station for science investigations with more than 25 hours of experiment work budgeted for the crew. Oversight from the ground is handled by the Payload Operations Center at NASA,s Marshall Space Flight Center in Huntsville, AL, except for the Human Research Facility, which is monitored and controlled from the Telescience Support Center (TSC) at the Johnson Space Center, Houston. For details on ISS science, visit the following website: http://www.scipoc.msfc.nasa.gov.
The International Space Station
is orbiting at an altitude of around 240 miles (385 km). The next
ISS Status Report will be issued Wednesday, June 20, or as mission
events warrant.
VETERAN SHUTTLE COMMANDER RETIRES
Astronaut Brian Duffy (Col.,
USAF), a veteran of four Shuttle flights,
has retired from the astronaut corps to accept a senior management
position in the private sector space industry. Duffy will retire
from
the U.S. Air Force at the end of June.
"Brian, in his time here
at NASA, made tremendous contributions to our
programs, both as an astronaut and as a senior manager,"
said Director
of Flight Crew Operations, Jim Wetherbee. "We are sorry to
see him go,
but wish him the best in his new endeavors and are fortunate he'll
be
working still in the space program."
In his most recent mission,
STS-92 in October 2000, Duffy commanded a
crew that continued assembly of the International Space Station
by
attaching the Z1 Truss and a pressurized mating adapter to the
vehicle.
Previously, Duffy commanded STS-72 in 1996 and served as pilot
in his
first two missions, STS-45 in 1992 and STS-57 in 1993. He logged
more
than 40 days in space.
Duffy, looking forward to his
new role in support of the space program,
said, "I've been honored to have been a part of the NASA/JSC
team for
the last sixteen years. I've learned that the success of the program
is
a direct result of the people who dedicate themselves to safely
flying
missions. They make the very difficult look very easy."
For complete biographical information
on Duffy , or any astronaut, see
the NASA Internet biography homepage at URL:
http://www.jsc.nasa.gov/Bios/
-END-
June 13, 2001
NEW FACILITY TO IMPROVE AIRBORNE TELESCOPE'S CLARITY
A NASA airborne observatory's images of space will be sharper and more precise, thanks to a new mirror coating facility being installed at the agency's Ames Research Center, Moffett Field, CA.
Constructed of stainless steel, the mirror coating facility resembles a huge pressure cooker. It measures approximately 4.3 meters (14 feet) in diameter, stands about 4.9 meters (16 feet) high, and weighs 10 metric tons (22,000 pounds). Scientists will use it periodically to recoat the 2.7-meter (106.3-inch) diameter telescope's primary mirror in NASA's Stratospheric Observatory For Infrared Astronomy (SOFIA). Installation of the new coating facility in the SOFIA Mission and Operations Center at Ames, located in the heart of California's Silicon Valley, will take several weeks. The coating facility supplier is Chart, Inc., Westborough, MA.
"We're very pleased that this critical, unique element of SOFIA's ground support system has arrived here at Ames," said SOFIA Project Manager Chris Wiltsee. "This facility will play a major role in the future missions of SOFIA."
Scientists require SOFIA's
sophisticated telescope be kept immaculately clean in order to
ensure accurate astronomical observations. "Once a year,
we will use the mirror coating facility to replace the high-precision
coating on the telescope's mirror," explained Eric Becklin,
chief scientist with Universities Space Research Association (USRA),
NASA's prime contractor for the SOFIA project. As needed, the
top of the stainless steel vacuum chamber will be lifted off and
SOFIA's mirror will be lowered into the chamber, where it will
receive a delicate coating of aluminum that is about one 300th
the thickness of a human hair. The total amount of aluminum that
will coat the 60-square foot mirror surface is roughly equivalent
to the quantity of aluminum that may be found in about one fourth
of an average soda can.
The coating process involves vaporizing aluminum. Inside the facility's
chamber is a filament array system containing more than 60 tungsten
filaments. These are similar to the filaments inside many light
bulbs, but much larger, and are connected to a high-current, low-voltage
power supply. Before beginning the coating process, the old coating
on the mirror is chemically stripped away and the bare glass is
thoroughly cleaned. A worker enters the chamber and hangs several
strips of very pure aluminum on each filament.
The mirror assembly is then lowered into the chamber and everything but the mirror's front surface is shielded with special materials. After the top is reinstalled, powerful pumps remove air from the chamber to create a near vacuum. Next, the filaments are electrified, and the resulting heat generated within them vaporizes the aluminum. The vaporized aluminum then adheres to the unshielded mirror's surface, thereby providing it with a thin aluminum coating. To minimize the build-up of dust on the mirror surface that could damage the coating or otherwise degrade scientific performance, scientists also will use pressurized carbon dioxide gas to clean the mirror once a week. A special wand-shaped nozzle condenses the gas into "snow" as it flows onto the mirror.
"Using the wand, the spray is directed across the surface of the mirror at a glancing angle," explained Patrick Waddell, USRA's associate director of the SOFIA Mission and Support Group. "The carbon dioxide snowflakes carry the dust away." Although this dramatically slows down the need for coating, the mirror will continue to degrade, according to Waddell. To further help keep it clean, workers periodically will also gently wash the telescope's mirror with a water-based liquid.
SOFIA's astronomical observations will be conducted at an altitude of about 41,000 feet aboard a modified Boeing 747SP aircraft operated and maintained by United Airlines. While using airborne telescopes is not new, SOFIA will be the world's largest and most powerful, considerably larger and more sophisticated than its predecessor, the Kuiper Airborne Observatory that was based at Ames from 1971 to 1995.
NASA awarded a $484.2 million contract to Universities Space Research Association, Columbia, MD, in December 1996, to acquire, develop and operate SOFIA. Other team members include Raytheon Aircraft Integration Systems, Waco, TX; United Airlines, San Francisco; the University of California, Los Angeles, Berkeley and Santa Cruz, CA; the Astronomical Society of the Pacific, San Francisco; the SETI Institute, Mountain View, CA; and Sterling Federal Systems, Redwood City, CA. SOFIA's complex telescope is being developed by DLR, the German Aerospace Center, located in Bonn. The specifications for the mirror coating facility were developed by NASA Ames with assistance from USRA and the University of California Observatories in Santa Cruz, CA.
Annual operating costs of SOFIA
are anticipated to be about $40 million. SOFIA's first test flight
is currently scheduled in October 2003 at Raytheon's Waco, TX,
flight facility. SOFIA is scheduled to arrive at Ames in May 2004
for final testing preparatory to full-scale operations starting
in late 2004. Further information about SOFIA is available on
the SOFIA web site, located at: http://sofia.arc.nasa.gov
NASA NAMES NELSON KEELER
INDEPENDENT VERIFICATION
AND VALIDATION FACILITY DIRECTOR
Nelson H. Keeler has been selected
as the new director for
NASA's Independent Verification and Validation (IV&V) Facility
located in Fairmont, West Virginia. His appointment is effective
as of June 18, 2001.
In his new assignment, Keeler
will be responsible for the
overall management of the facility that was established in 1993
as part of an agency-wide strategy to provide the highest
achievable levels of safety and cost-effectiveness for mission
critical software.
Keeler is a native of Connecticut.
He graduated with a
bachelor's degree in Engineering from the United States Coast
Guard Academy (USCG) and was commissioned as an officer in 1963.
He received his aviator's wings in 1965 and amassed over 6,000
pilot hours during his career, principally flying search and
rescue, and law enforcement missions. In 1970, Keeler received
his master's degree in Electrical Engineering from the U.S. Air
Force Institute of Technology.
When not in a flying assignment,
Keeler served as an avionics
engineer, radio navigation researcher, information resource
management systems engineer and program manager. He was a
commander of a USCG Air Station and the service's only Research
and Development Center. His work at the center resulted in the
award of a Legion of Merit medal and recognition both nationally
and internationally.
At the conclusion of his Coast
Guard career, Keeler joined NASA,
first serving in the Space Station Freedom program and then in
the Office of Space Flight's Advanced Launch Technology and
Advanced Flight Systems programs.
Keeler then left NASA for private
industry, first working for
Stanford Telecommunications as its Navigation Department
Manager, and then to GTECH Corporation as Projects Director,
before returning to NASA in his new assignment as IV&V director.
NASA TO "MAP"
BIG BANG REMNANT
TO SOLVE UNIVERSAL MYSTERIES
The Microwave Anisotropy Probe
(MAP), scheduled for
launch June 30, will journey into deep space on a voyage to
explore some of the deepest mysteries of the cosmos.
Scientists hope to determine
the content, shape, history, and
the ultimate fate of the universe, by constructing a full-sky
picture of the oldest light. MAP is designed to capture the
afterglow of the Big Bang, which comes to us from a time well
before there were any stars, galaxies or quasars. Patterns
imprinted within this afterglow carry with them the answers
to mysteries such as: What happened during the first instant
after the Big Bang? How did the Universe evolve into the
complex patterns of galaxies that we see today? Will the
Universe expand forever or will it collapse?
To answer these questions,
MAP's measured pattern of the Big
Bang's afterglow, like a fingerprint, will be compared
against the unique fingerprint pattern predicted by each
cosmic scenario to find the right match. "We are tremendously
excited about this mission because it will help answer basic
questions that people have been asking for ages," said Dr.
Charles L. Bennett, Principal Investigator for the MAP
mission at NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center, Greenbelt, MD.
"MAP's unprecedented accuracy and precision will allow us
to
determine the nature and destiny of the universe."
According to the Big Bang theory,
the universe began about 14
billion years ago as an unimaginably hot and dense fog of
light and exotic particles. The Universe has since
continuously expanded and cooled. The whole Universe is
bathed in the afterglow light from the Big Bang. The light
that is now reaching us has been traveling for about 14
billion years, thus allowing us a look back through time to
see the early Universe.
"The cosmic microwave
light is a fossil," says Professor
David T. Wilkinson, Princeton University, Princeton, NJ.
"Just as we can study dinosaur bones and reconstruct their
lives of millions of years ago, we can probe this ancient
light and reconstruct the Universe as it was about 14 billion
years ago."
MAP views the infant universe
by measuring the tiny
temperature differences within the extraordinarily evenly
dispersed microwave light, which now averages a frigid 2.73
degrees above absolute zero temperature. MAP will resolve the
slight temperature fluctuations, which vary by only
millionths of a degree. These temperature differences point
back to density differences in the young Universe, where
denser regions gave way to the vast web-like structure of
galaxies that we see today.
A great deal of effort over
the past 35 years has gone into
measurements of the afterglow light from the Big Bang. In
1992, NASA's Cosmic Background Explorer satellite discovered
tiny patterns, or "anisotropy," in its full-sky picture
of
the light. Balloon-borne and ground-based experiments have
further advanced our knowledge. The upcoming MAP full-sky
picture, to be made with unprecedented accuracy and
precision, will dramatically revolutionize our view of the
Universe.
MAP required an extraordinary design to achieve its accurate
and precise measurement capability. "Nothing has ever been
built like it before," said Dr. Edward Wollack, a science
team member at Goddard. "To measure the cosmic glow reliably
to a part in a million, to millionths of a degree has been
the grand challenge. That's like measuring the weight of a
cup of sand down to the resolution of a single grain."
About a month after its launch
on a Delta II rocket from Cape
Canaveral, FL, MAP will swing past the Moon, boosting its
orbit to the second Lagrange Point, or L2. This is the first
time a spacecraft will be in orbit around the L2 point. The
Italian-French mathematician Josef Lagrange discovered five
special points in the vicinity of two orbiting masses where a
third, smaller mass can orbit at a fixed distance from the
larger masses. L2 is four times further than the Moon in the
direction away from the Sun and requires very little fuel to
maintain orbit.
After a three month journey,
MAP will begin to chart the
faint microwave glow from the Big Bang. It will take about 18
months to build up a full-sky picture and perform the
analysis. The MAP hardware and software were produced by
Goddard and Princeton. Science team members are also located
at the University of Chicago, IL; the University of
California, Los Angeles; Brown University, Providence, RI;
and the University of British Columbia, Vancouver. MAP, an
Explorer mission, cost about $145 million. More information
is available on the Internet at:
http://www.gsfc.nasa.gov/gsfc/spacesci/map/map.htm
http://map.gsfc.nasa.gov
MAP SPACECRAFT PRESS OPPORTUNITY SET FOR FRIDAY, JUNE 15
NASA's Microwave Anisotropy
Probe (MAP), to be launched later this month,
will be featured in a news media opportunity at Kennedy Space
Center on
Friday, June 15, at 1:30 p.m.
Using a scanning method, MAP
will make an accurate, precise, full sky
picture of cosmic microwave background radiation, the afterglow
of the Big
Bang. MAP seeks to answer fundamental questions about the formation
and fate
of the universe. Among the questions MAP will attempt to answer:
How old is
the universe? How and when did the first galaxies form? Will the
universe
expand forever or will it collapse? How rapidly is the universe
expanding?
For this event, standard clean room protocol will be observed.
Those
planning to attend are requested to wear long pants. Shorts or
tank tops are
not permitted. Closed-toe shoes are also required. Clean room
attire (bunny
suits) will be furnished. Quality control personnel may request
cleaning of
photographic equipment with alcohol wipes that will be provided.
No suede,
leather or vinyl attire or accessories are permitted. Please do
not wear
perfume, cologne or makeup. No graphite pencils, food, tobacco,
lighters,
matches, or pocketknives will be permitted inside the clean room.
Electronic flash photography is permitted. The lighting in the
facility is
mercury vapor.
The MAP spacecraft is highly
sensitive to radio frequency (RF)
transmissions. Therefore, for this spacecraft showing, no cellular
telephones, pagers, or two-way radios can be allowed inside the
SAEF-2 clean
room.
KSC annual badges will be in
effect for this event. Those needing
accreditation should contact the NASA News Center at 321/867-2468
by the
close of business Thursday, June 14. Departure for SAEF-2 will
be at 1:30
p.m. on Friday, June 15.
MAP is scheduled to be launched
on June 30 at 3:46 p.m. aboard a Boeing
Delta II rocket from Pad 17-B on Cape Canaveral Air Force Station.
Additional information on the
MAP mission can be found at:
http://www.gsfc.nasa.gov/gsfc/spacesci/map/map.htm
June 12, 2001
"Are there other universes out there?" - an interview with Rod Davies, astronomer
The third in the Planck series
of Interviews with prominent scientists,
is published today. In it, Rod Davies reflects on his long career
as a
cosmologist, and considers future prospects in the field.
Read the interview at:
http://sci.esa.int/content/doc/ef/27119_.htm
Planck is an ESA mission which
aims to find out how the Universe began,
or at least to bring us much closer to understanding how it all
started.
The Interviews with prominent scientists, section on the Planck
web site
aims to explain what is currently known (and not known) about
the
beginning of the Universe by means of interviews with experts
in the
field of cosmology.
Previous interview are at:
http://sci.esa.int/structure/content/index.cfm?aid=17&cid=3511
The 'ins and outs' of Cluster's celestial dance
Some 100 scientists and engineers
gathered last week at the
European Space Technology Research Centre (ESTEC) in the Netherlands
for the 36th Cluster Science Working Team (SWT) meeting. They
were
greeted with the news that the four Cluster spacecraft - Rumba,
Salsa,
Samba and Tango - are now dancing in a new formation around the
Earth.
For more on this story go to:
http://sci.esa.int/content/news/index.cfm?aid=1&cid=1&oid=26713
WHEN GLOOM BLOOMS IN JUNE,
IS CATALINA EDDY THE REASON FOR THE SEASON?
The elusive swirl of breezes
called the Catalina Eddy,
responsible for helping cool the Los Angeles basin, is
captured in a new animation of sea-surface winds measured by
the SeaWinds instrument on NASA's QuikScat satellite. During
the hot, dry summer months these gentle winds are welcomed
because they direct the offshore marine layer toward the Los
Angeles basin. Because the flow is more onshore than normal,
this cooling oceanic influence of the eddy has been described
as nature's purifier or air-conditioner for Los Angeles. The
animation is online at:
http://www.jpl.nasa.gov/videos/earth/california
Beta-SP copies of the video
are available for
broadcasters by calling Xaviant Ford at (818) 353-4484.
While the Catalina Eddy, an
atmospheric vortex or eddy
with a counter-clockwise rotation pattern, can occur in the
California Bight (the open ocean bay formed by the bend in the
coast between Point Conception to the north and San Diego to
the south) at any time of the year, it is most often seen
during May and June. It can develop when the winds from the
northwest along the Southern California coast are stronger
than normal and interact with the local coastal and land
topography, turning inland and creating a vortex.
Only about 200 kilometers (120
miles) in diameter, the
Catalina Eddy has not been well measured by scientists. The
eddy is actually too small to appear in current weather
forecast models and is sometimes too shallow to have a strong
influence on the cloud structure viewed by weather satellites.
But in this animation, the high-resolution capability of the
SeaWinds instrument has visualized its complete circulation.
This capability allows scientists to study these smaller-scale
wind events that can have such a profound impact on local
climate.
The SeaWinds on QuikScat project
is managed for NASA's Earth
Science Enterprise by NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory, Pasadena,
Calif. More information about SeaWinds is available online at
http://winds.jpl.nasa.gov/missions/quikscat/quikindex.html .
JPL is a division of the California
Institute of
Technology in Pasadena.
The Biggest Explosions in the Solar System
Solar flares have vexed astronomers
since they were discovered nearly a
century and a half ago. The powerful explosions do things we simply
don't
understand. NASA's upcoming HESSI mission might finally solve
the riddle
of flares by making x-ray and gamma-ray pictures of the eruptions.
What
we learn could have down-to-Earth benefits and shed light on mysterious
happenings far outside the solar system.
FULL STORY at
http://science.nasa.gov/headlines/y2001/ast12jun_1.htm?list448368
NASA'S JPL LICENSES TECHNOLOGY
TO MAP EARTH
A new radar mapping technology
designed to generate high-
resolution, three-dimensional maps of Earth beneath foliage
and other vegetation has been licensed by NASA's Jet
Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, Calif., to EarthData
International, Inc., Fresno, Calif.
This will be the first system
that will be able to map above,
through and below the vegetation canopy, providing important
information such as data about landslides that are overgrown with
vegetation.
The National Imagery and Mapping
Agency (NIMA), in conjunction
with JPL and EarthData International, Inc., showcased the
Geographic Synthetic Aperture Radar (GeoSAR) mapping system to
an audience of congressional sponsors and potential military and
civilian users of GeoSAR map products during an open house held
at the Signature Aviation Hangar, Ronald Reagan National Airport,
Washington, D.C., on Friday, June 8.
"A special feature of
the GeoSAR system will be its ability to
acquire three-dimensional images of Earth's surface through a
technique called interferometry," said Dr. Scott Hensley,
the
system developer at JPL. "Because GeoSAR uses radar, the
system
will be able to operate both day and night, under almost any
weather condition."
JPL designed and constructed
the radar systems and the
processing software, which was licensed to EarthData
International, Inc., a mapping and remote sensing company, from
the California Institute of Technology in Pasadena, which manages
JPL for NASA. After the system is fully tested, EarthData plans
to use this license to provide GeoSAR mapping services on a
commercial basis to both military and civilian clients.
Building on JPL's years of
leadership and experience in the
field of interferometric radar remote sensing, the GeoSAR team
concluded that the most promising way to measure Earth beneath
the trees is to use a combination of X-band and P-band (UHF)
radar waves. The shorter wavelength X-band radar measures near
the tops of the trees, while the longer wavelength P-band (UHF)
radar penetrates the foliage. Using data from the dual-frequency
radar, the GeoSAR system can produce high-resolution elevation
models with precise vertical accuracies to 1 to 5 meters (3 to
16
feet).
The GeoSAR system can allow
the military to rapidly map vast
areas where limited data exist from other sources. Other
federal, state and local government agencies as well as private
sector organizations also may use GeoSAR data to better
understand seismic change in forested areas, assess forest fire
damage or measure timber volumes and biomass. The data will also
help in land use planning, environmental protection, flood plain
management and other geographic analyses.
The program, which is managed
by NIMA, will undergo a
yearlong test period. During this test period, using
EarthData's Gulfstream-II aircraft, JPL and EarthData, with
NIMA support, will collect GeoSAR imagery and data over sites
in California, the Eastern United States, the Northwest,
Alaska and South America. These data collections will enable
JPL to refine the data processing algorithms. NIMA
anticipates the system will be commercially operational by
late 2002.
The Defense and Civil Programs
Office at JPL is responsible
for the collaboration between JPL and EarthData. The
collaboration is just one of several JPL programs designed to
bring the benefits of the space program to American industry.
JPL is the lead U.S. center for robotic exploration of the
solar system.
More information about the
GeoSAR system is available
online at
http://southport.jpl.nasa.gov/html/projects/geosar/geosar.html
MISSION: STS-104 - 10th ISS Flight (7A) - Airlock
VEHICLE: Atlantis/OV-104
LOCATION: Vehicle Assembly Building (VAB)
TARGET KSC LAUNCH DATE/TIME: NET July 7, 2001 at 7:03 a.m. EDT
TARGET KSC LANDING DATE/TIME: July 18, 2001
MISSION DURATION: 10 days and 20 hours
CREW: Lindsey, Hobaugh, Kavandi, Gernhardt, Reilly
ORBITAL INSERTION ALTITUDE and INCLINATION: 122 nautical miles/51.6
degrees
Shuttle Processing Note: Space
Shuttle Atlantis will not roll out to Launch
Pad 39B Tuesday morning. Instead, the Shuttle will remain in the
VAB while
International Space Station managers continue to evaluate repair
options for
the station's robot arm. Atlantis remains targeted for a launch
date no
earlier than July 7.
MISSION: STS-105 - 11th ISS Flight (7A.1) - Leonardo MPLM
VEHICLE: Discovery/OV-103
LOCATION: OPF bay 2
TARGET KSC LAUNCH DATE/TIME: No earlier than August 5, 2001
TARGET KSC LANDING DATE/TIME: August 16, 2001
MISSION DURATION: 11 days
CREW: Horowitz, Sturckow, Barry, Forrester; (ISS up) Culbertson,
Dezhurov,
Turin; (ISS down) Usachev, Voss, Helms,
ORBITAL INSERTION ALTITUDE and INCLINATION: 122 nautical miles/51.6
degrees
Shuttle Processing Note: All
orbiter compartments aboard Discovery have been
closed out, and today weight and center of gravity testing is
in work.
Technicians begin orbiter transportation system preparations today
also.
Discovery will be ready to roll over to the Vehicle Assembly Building
as
early as Wednesday, June 13.
(KSC Space Shuttle Processing Status Report 6/11/01)
MISSION: STS-108 - 12th ISS Flight (UF1) - MPLM
VEHICLE: Endeavour/OV-105
LOCATION: Orbiter Processing Facility bay 1
TARGET KSC LAUNCH DATE/TIME: Nov. 29, 2001
TARGET KSC LANDING DATE/TIME: Dec. 9, 2001
MISSION DURATION: 10 days
CREW: Gorie, Kelly, Godwin, Tani; (ISS up) Onufrienko, Bursch,
Walz; (ISS
down) Culbertson, Dezhurov, Turin
ORBITAL INSERTION ALTITUDE and INCLINATION: 122 nautical miles/51.6
degrees
Shuttle Processing Note: Endeavour's
orbital maneuvering system pod
functional tests are in work. Workers are preparing to replace
one of the
orbiter's reaction control system thrusters this week. Actuator
testing on
main engine No. 2 is complete.
MISSION: STS-109 - HST Servicing Mission 3B
VEHICLE: Columbia/OV-102
LOCATION: Vehicle Assembly Building high bay 4
TARGET KSC LAUNCH DATE/TIME: Jan. 17, 2002
TARGET KSC LANDING DATE/TIME: Jan. 28, 2002
MISSION DURATION: TBD
CREW: Altman, Carey, Grunsfeld, Currie, Newman, Linnehan, Massimino
ORBITAL INSERTION ALTITUDE and INCLINATION: 308 nautical miles/28.5
degrees
Shuttle Processing Note: Columbia's
freon coolant loop No. 1 underwent
routine servicing last week. Orbiter subsystem testing continues.
June 11, 2001
NASA's Genesis spacecraft,
planned for launch next month, will be
featured in a news media opportunity on Wednesday, June 13, at
9:30 a.m.
Genesis will capture a piece
of the Sun -- a sample of the ions and elements
in the solar wind -- and bring the samples back to Earth so that
scientists
can study the exact composition of the Sun and probe the solar
system's
origin. By studying the solar wind, scientists will find clues
to the
formation of the solar system as we know it today.
In 2004, Genesis' samples will
return to Earth in a spectacular helicopter
capture. As the sample return capsule parachutes to the ground
in Utah's Air
Force Test and Training Range, specially trained helicopter pilots
will
catch it. The samples will then be analyzed to provide a "Rosetta
Stone" of
solar material for comparing the Sun's original ingredients to
those of the
planets and other solar system bodies.
During the press opportunity,
media will be taken to KSC's Payload
Hazardous Servicing Facility (PHSF) to view the Genesis spacecraft
with
fully deployed solar arrays. Before entering the high bay, Chet
Sasaki,
Genesis Project Manager from the Jet Propulsion Laboratory and
Richard
Bennett, Missions Systems Engineer from Lockheed Martin will give
a short
presentation on the role of the spacecraft. Genesis spokespersons
will then
be available inside the PHSF high bay for questions and interviews
about the
spacecraft and its mission.
Before entering the high bay
clean room area, media must submit to a routine
security search of camera and utility bags. Due to clean room
requirements,
media planning to attend are requested to wear long pants and
closed-toe
shoes. No shorts, tank tops or sandals can be permitted. Media
will don
clean room attire (bunny suits) that will be provided. No suede,
leather or
vinyl attire or accessories are permitted. Participants are asked
not to
wear makeup or lotions.
Quality control personnel will request photographers to clean
camera
equipment with alcohol wipes and place accessories in special
plastic bags
which will be provided. No food, chewing gum, tobacco, lighters,
matches,
pocket knives or pencils will be permitted inside the clean room.
Electronic flash photography
and wireless microphones are permitted. The
lighting in the facility is high-pressure sodium (orange).
TENTH ANNIVERSARY OF THE ERUPTION FELT AROUND THE WORLD
The explosion of the Mt. Pinatubo
volcano on June 15, 1991, was the largest
volcanic eruption the world had seen in nearly a century. In addition
to
the widespread destruction that the volcano wrought on the Philippine
island of Luzon, Mt. Pinatubo's impact was felt around the world.
Global average temperatures
cooled for more than a year after the eruption
due to the massive injection of dust and gases into the upper
atmosphere.
With the Mt. Pinatubo eruption, the global effects of volcanoes
on climate
were captured in detail for the first time by a suite of Earth-observing
satellites.
"By combining satellite
information with other measurements from airplanes
and the Earth's surface, we were able to monitor the Pinatubo
impact on the
upper atmosphere for many years after the eruption," said
Phil Russell of
NASA Ames Research Center, located in California's Silicon Valley.
"We
measured the initial increase in particle sizes and the subsequent
return
to pre-eruption values many years later."
June 9, 2001
Cassini Weekly Significant
Events
for 05/31/01 - 06/6/01
The most recent spacecraft
telemetry was acquired from the Goldstone
tracking station on Wednesday, June 6. The Cassini spacecraft
is in an
excellent state of health and is operating normally. Information
on the
spacecraft's position and speed can be viewed on the "Present
Position"
web page at ( "http://www.jpl.nasa.gov/cassini/english/where/"
) .
Recent spacecraft activities
included an Attitude Control Subsystem (ACS)
high water mark clear, a CDS error log clear, a Reaction Wheel
Assembly
(RWA) momentum unload, and an ACS Catbed Heater test. For this
test the
heaters on both thruster branches were powered on to verify that
the SCO
thermal heating model was correct. The test executed nominally.
In
addition, the Radio Frequency Subsystem began solar conjunction
testing.
The tests began on Thursday May 31 and will continue through the
end of
superior conjunction in the first week in June. For these tests
commands
are uplinked at 250 and 500 bits per second. The results will
help the
Spacecraft Operations Office (SCO) plan for Saturn Orbit Insertion,
which
occurs near superior conjunction.
Sequence development is under
way for the Probe S-band carrier signal test
to be carried out during C26 in mid June. All inputs from SCO,
RSS and
the Probe have been received. The sequence products will be released
for
review at the end of this week with a command approval meeting
set for the
following week.
The Huygens Recovery Task Force
held a two day meeting in Noordwijk, the
Netherlands. Excellent progress is being made in finding a solution
for
the relay link problem, and a summary report will be made to the
full PSG
at the Oxford meeting later this month.
The C28 SPVT Project Briefing
was given by Science Planning. The project
has approved the integrated plan for implementation. Science turns
on
thrusters needed to accomplish interplanetary cruise fields and
particles
data collection will be performed at slower turn rates in order
to
minimize hydrazine usage. The current sequence has four 90 degree
and one
<1 degree turns on thrusters to accomplish these measurements.
Working group meetings and
telecons were held for the Titan Orbiter
Science Team (TOST), the Satellite Orbiter Science Team (SOST),
the
Atmosphere Working Group (AWG), and the Rings Working Group (RWG).
The
TOST focused on finalizing the integration of the first 10 Titan
flybys
and preparation of the TOST report to the Planetary Science Group
(PSG).
The TOST is looking for PSG approval of these plans at the Oxford
meeting
to be held on June 18-22.
Instrument Operations (IO)
and the Multi Mission Image Processing
Laboratory processed and delivered 238 ISS Photometric Calibration
and
Dark Frame images produced in the C26 sequence.
Mission Planning activities
this week included kick off of a task to
assemble and manage the propellant budget for cruise and tour,
completion
of Revision M of the Mission Plan, and publication of the "Mission
Plan
Quick Reference Guide." The reference guide is being published
for the
first time and is a very useful document providing all the updated
tables
and charts from revision M of the Mission Plan. Both documents
will soon
be available from the Cassini Electronic Library (CEL).
Mission Assurance and Systems
Engineering signed off the updated Anomaly
Reporting Plan. This plan documents the process by which Cassini
uses the
Institutional Problem Reporting System for anomaly documentation,
resolution, corrective action, and verification. The Program recently
approved changes to the existing process and has begun using the
updated
process.
Revision G of the Cassini Anomaly
Response Operations Plan has been signed
off. The document will be available from the CEL next week.
More than 20 scientists presented
preliminary results from last winter's
Jupiter flyby during meetings of the American Geophysical Union
in Boston
this week. Among them were sixteen scientific papers about Cassini
results from that encounter. Cassini flew past Jupiter in December
2000
for a gravity assist to reach Saturn. Researchers took the opportunity
to
study the giant planet from different vantage points by also using
NASA's
Galileo spacecraft, plus other spacecraft and ground-based telescopes,
in
coordination with Cassini's Jupiter observations. A list of the
papers
presented is available at
http://agu.org/cgi-bin/sessions?meeting=sm01&part=P51A&maxhits=100
More information about the
joint Cassini and Galileo studies of Jupiter is
available at http://www.jpl.nasa.gov/jupiterflyby .
Cassini is a cooperative project
of NASA, the European Space Agency and
the Italian Space Agency. The Jet Propulsion Laboratory, a division
of the
California Institute of Technology in Pasadena, Calif., manages
the Cassini
mission for NASA's Office of Space Science, Washington, D.C.
Cassini Outreach
Cassini Mission to Saturn and Titan
Jet Propulsion Laboratory
California Institute of Technology
National Aeronautics and Space Administration
June 8, 2001
SMOKE ON THE PENINSULA
When the Shiveluch volcano
erupted on Monday night, the
diligent "zoom lens" on NASA's Terra spacecraft, the
Advanced
Spaceborne Thermal Emission and Reflection Radiometer (ASTER),
was watching. It captured a thermal image of the erupting
volcano on the Russian peninsula of Kamchatka. Known for its
volcanic activity, the area is closely monitored because it
lies along major aircraft routes between North America and the
Asia.
The ASTER image is available
at
http://www.jpl.nasa.gov/images/earth/volcano .
The image shows the hot active
lava dome complex, a
debris avalanche or hot ash deposit and a 25-kilometer (15-
mile) ash plume trailing to the west.
More information on ASTER is
available at
http://asterweb.jpl.nasa.gov .
The Terra spacecraft, the flagship
of a fleet of
satellites dedicated to understanding our global environment,
is part of NASA's Earth Sciences Enterprise, a long-term
research program dedicated to understanding how human-induced
and natural changes affect our world. JPL is managed by the
California Institute of Technology in Pasadena.
SOHO-11: From Solar Min
to Max: Half a Solar Cycle with SOHO
- A Symposium dedicated to Roger M. Bonnet -
Date: 11-15 March 2002
Venue: Congress Center in Davos, Switzerland
Info: http://www.pmodwrc.ch/conferences/conferences.html
Objective of the Workshop:
The twelve instruments on board
the SOHO spacecraft have been observing
the Sun, the corona, and the heliosphere from the Sun-Earth Lagrange
point, L1, since 1996. Observations cover the entire ascending
part of
activity cycle 23, from the minimum in 1996 through its maximum
in
2000, allowing research of activity-related variations spanning
from
the deep interior to the heliosphere.
The wide range of diagnostic
tools offered by the different instruments
allow an unprecedented study of the interrelation between different
activity mechanisms. Combining observations from different instruments
and comparing with theoretical studies, a better understanding
of the
underlying mechanisms is now possible. This is not only important
for
the advancement of solar physics, but also a necessary ingredient
in
the study of the influence of a varying Sun on the Earth's environment
and climate.
This workshop will present
the current knowledge about our varying
star, and provide a platform for inter-experiment exchange of
scientific results and their interpretation, stimulating
cross-fertilization among the different areas of solar physics
representing the SOHO experiments. Participation is anticipated
from
the wider SOHO community and scientists from related solar and
astrophysics fields.
Format of the Workshop:
We will have invited talks
of 40 minutes, contributed oral
presentations of 20 minutes and posters. They are organized in
topical
sessions covering the solar core to the heliosphere at 1 AU with
no
parallel sessions. There will be enough room for all posters to
be
presented throughout the meeting. Topical poster sessions will
be
scheduled with either an introduction by a rapporteur or very
short
presentations by the authors and enough time to view and discuss
the
posters.
The Workshop will start on
Monday 11 March 2002 at 14h00 and end on
Friday 15 March 12h00. There will be a welcome Reception on Monday
evening and a Symposium Dinner on Thursday night.
Scientific Organizing Committee:
The SOC is composed of the
twelve SOHO PIs (Jean-Loup Bertaux, Peter
Bochsler, Jean-Pierre Delaboudiniere, Claus Fröhlich, Alan
Gabriel,
Richard Harrison, Russ Howard, John Kohl, Horst Kunow, Phil Scherrer,
Jarmo Torsti, Klaus Wilhelm) and the two Project Scientists (Bernhard
Fleck and Joe Gurman) and is chaired by Claus Fröhlich.
Experience the future of
space travel
'Starship 2040' exhibit launches campaign to share NASA's futuristic
ambitions
On June 12, NASA's newest "space"
vehicle will dock on Capitol Hill,
throw open its airlocks and invite the public to tour a passenger
spacecraft
as it might look a short four decades from now.
And though "Starship 2040"
isn't designed to escape Earth's gravity,
space transportation officials from NASA's Marshall Space Flight
Center in
Huntsville, Ala., expect the experience to send visitors' imaginations
straight into orbit.
Housed in a 48-foot (14.6-meter)
trailer, the traveling exhibit is
designed to share NASA's vision of what commercial spaceflight
might be like
within the next 40 years. Visitors board the "ship"
and move through a
fully realized mock-up of the control, passenger and engineering
compartments, where they'll gain insight into technologies that
eventually
will make such an out-of-this-world experience as routine as air
travel.
Starship 2040 will be open
to the public on the 300 block of South
Capitol Street from 9 a.m. to 5 p.m. EDT June 12 and 9 a.m. to
2 p.m. June
13. The guided tour is free to everyone and the exhibit is fully
handicapped accessible.
All the innovations suggested
aboard the exhibit -- automated
vehicle health monitoring systems, high-energy propulsion drive,
navigational aids and emergency and safety systems -- are based
on concepts
and technologies now being studied at NASA Centers and partner
institutions
around the nation.
Audio effects -- engine noises,
computer and crew voices -- filter
down from hidden speakers inside the exhibit, adding to the realistic
ambience of the experience.
Starship 2040 previously visited
the nation's capital in May, as
part of NASA's annual Turning Goals into Reality conference, and
has since
made public stops at NASA's Goddard Space Center in Greenbelt,
Md., and
Langley Research Center in Hampton, Va. The exhibit next heads
to
Charlotte, N.C., for a weeklong stop-over (June 16-22) at Discovery
Place, a
multimedia science, nature and space museum. Future state tours
are in the
works.
For more information about
the Starship 2040 exhibit and a complete
listing of upcoming tour dates, visit:
More about NASA Space Transportation
Programs
NASA is the nation's premier agency for development of Space
Transportation systems, including technologies that will enable
future-generation reusable launch vehicles. Such systems -- the
keys to a
real Starship 2040 -- require revolutionary advances in critical
aerospace
technologies, from thermal, magnetic, chemical and propellantless
propulsion
systems to new energy sources such as space solar power or antimatter
propulsion. These and other advances are now being studied, developed
and
tested at NASA field centers and partner institutions all over
the nation.
NASA and its partners also
seek innovative materials and processes
technologies, investigating ways to develop safer, stronger and
more durable
engines, vehicles, structures and components to handle the immense
power of
these futuristic propulsion systems.
The Marshall Center leads all
these efforts, aimed at enabling
dramatic improvements in the safety, cost and reliability of future
space
transportation systems.
For more information about
NASA Space Transportation Systems, visit:
http://www.spacetransportation.com
Expedition Two Crew
Expedition Two Commander Yury Usachev and astronaut Jim Voss performed
their first spacewalk on the International (ISS) on Friday, completing
all of their scheduled tasks smoothly and ahead of schedule.
Usachev and Voss entered the small, spherical transfer compartment at the forward end of the Zvezda Service Module to begin the first spacewalk at the ISS without the presence of a shuttle. They removed a hatch at the bottom (Earth-facing part) of the compartment to open it to the vacuum of space and officially begin the spacewalk at 9:21 a.m.
After lashing the hatch cover to the top of the compartment, they replaced it with a docking cone assembly that had been temporarily stowed on a transfer compartment wall. Using a rotating handle, they secured it firmly with the twelve roller-like hatches around its perimeter at 9:40 a.m., marking the official end of the spacewalk. With help from fellow crewmember Susan Helms, who stayed in the Zarya module and helped coordinate the spacewalk, the activity went very quickly. The 19-minute spacewalk had been expected to take 30 to 40 minutes. The docking cone was installed to prepare for the arrival of the Russian docking compartment, scheduled for later this year.
Meanwhile, managers have postponed
the launch of the Space Shuttle Atlantis on the
STS-104 mission to no earlier than July 7. Atlantis will take
the Joint Airlock to the ISS. The ISS,s new Canadarm2 will be
used to install the airlock, and engineers are continuing to troubleshoot
an intermittent problem in the arm,s secondary power and control
string. They also continue to try to evaluate why brakes in the
arm,s wrist joint came on without being commanded during an earlier
test run.
The STS-105 flight of Discovery, taking the Expedition Three crew to the ISS and returning the Expedition Two crew to Earth, will be launched no earlier than Aug. 5.
The next ISS status report will be issued on Wednesday, June
13, or as events warrant.
ESO Press Photos 21a-f/01
Aurorae and Volcanic Eruptions
Thermal-IR Observations of Jupiter and Io with ISAAC at the VLT
Summary
Impressive thermal-infrared
images have been obtained of the giant planet
Jupiter during tests of a new detector in the ISAAC instrument
on the ESO
Very Large Telescope (VLT) at the Paranal Observatory (Chile).
They show in particular the
full extent of the northern auroral ring and
part of the southern aurora.
A volcanic eruption was also
imaged on Io, the very active inner Jovian
moon.
Although these observations
are of an experimental nature, they
demonstrate a great potential for regular monitoring of the Jovian
magnetosphere by ground-based telescopes together with space-based
facilities. They also provide the added benefit of direct comparison
with the terrestrial magnetosphere.
PR Photo 21a/01: ISAAC image
of Jupiter (L-band: 3.5-4.0 _m).
PR Photo 21b/01: ISAAC image of Jupiter (Narrow-band 4.07 _m).
PR Photo 21c/01: ISAAC image of Jupiter (Narrow-band 3.28 _m).
PR Photo 21d/01: ISAAC image of Jupiter (Narrow-band 3.21 _m).
PR Photo 21e/01: ISAAC image of the Jovian aurorae (false-colour).
PR Photo 21f/01: ISAAC image of volcanic activity on Io.
Addendum: The Jovian aurorae and polar haze.
Aladdin Meets Jupiter
Thermal-infrared images of
Jupiter and its volcanic moon Io have been
obtained during a series of system tests with the new Aladdin
detector in
the Infrared Spectrometer And Array Camera (ISAAC), in combination
with
an upgrade of the ESO-developed detector control electronics IRACE.
This
state-of-the-art instrument is attached to the 8.2-m VLT ANTU
telescope
at the ESO Paranal Observatory.
The observations were made
on November 14, 2000, through various filters
that isolate selected wavebands in the thermal-infrared spectral
region [1].
They include a broad-band L-filter (wavelength interval 3.5 -
4.0 _m) as
well as several narrow-band filters (3.21, 3.28 and 4.07 _m).
The filters
allow to record the light from different components of the Jovian
atmosphere
(mostly greenhouse gases and aerosols) and the appearance of the
giant
planet is therefore quite different from filter to filter.
At the time of these observations,
Jupiter was 610 million km from the Earth
and 755 million km from the Sun. The angular size of its disk
was 48 arcsec,
or about 40 times smaller than that of the full moon.
The ISAAC instrument
The ISAAC multi-mode instrument
is capable obtaining images and spectra in
the near-to-mid infrared wavelength region from 1 - 5 _m. It is
equipped
with two state-of-the-art detectors, a Hawaii array (1024 x 1024
pix2; used
in the 1.0 - 2.5 _m spectral region) and an Aladdin InSb array
also with
1024 x 1024 pix2, and sensitive over the entire 1 - 5 _m region,
but for
the time being only used for the 3-5 _m region.
Observations in the thermal-IR
wavelength region with the Aladdin array
rely on the 'chopping' technique. It consists of tilting the telescope's
lightweight 1.1-m secondary mirror back and forth ('tip-tilt')
about once
per second. This basic technique allows to subtract the strong
infrared
emission from the sky by also observing an area adjacent to the
object
area -- the difference is then the radiation from the object.
Without this method, the strong
and rapidly variable sky emission -- that
originates in all layers of the terrestrial atmosphere -- and
also the
thermal emission from the telescope would render infrared observations
of
faint celestial objects impossible. 'Chopping' is further combined
with
'nodding', i.e. moving the telescope in the direction opposite
to the
direction of the 'chop' in order to achieve better cancellation
of residual
sky emission.
Thanks to the very good stability
provided by the VLT tip-tilt system and
excellent seeing conditions, the image resolution obtained on
these images
is about 0.39 arcsec in the L-band. The field-of-view is 72 x
72 arcsec2 (1
pixel = 0.07 arcsec) -- this corresponds to 1.5 times the size
of Jupiter's
disk in November 2000. No other infrared astronomical instrument
working at
these wavelengths is capable of producing so sharp images over
such a large
field-of-view.
Some of these images are shown
below. They were prepared and analysed by
Jean Gabriel Cuby (ESO-Chile), Franck Marchis (CFAO/University
of
California, Berkeley, USA) and Renée Prangé (Institut
d'Astrophysique
Spatiale, Orsay, France).
Thermal-IR Views of Jupiter
ESO PR Photo 21a/01 ESO PR Photo 21b/01
ESO PR Photo 21c/01 ESO PR Photo 21d/01
Caption: ESO PR Photos 21a-d/01
show a series of thermal-infrared images
of Jupiter, obtained by the ISAAC multi-mode instrument at the
8.2-m VLT
ANTU telescope on Paranal on November 14, 2000; the Universal
Time (UT)
of each exposure is indicated. They demonstrate the dramatically
different
appearance of Jupiter's disk and the aurorae when viewed through
different
thermal-IR imaging filters (see the text). Note also the motion
of the
moon Io (left). The contrast in these and the following photos
have been
enhanced to better show the faint details in the aurorae. Technical
information about these photos is available below.
The above images were obtained
in different wavebands. The appearance of the
planet depends on whether the filter corresponds to a spectral
band in which
auroral emission lines dominate over the polar haze continuous
emission (for
details, read the Addendum), e.g. in the narrow-band (NB) filters
at
wavelength 3.28 _m (Photo 21c/01) and 3.21 _m (Photo 21d/01).
In the filter bands where this
is not the case, the contrast between the
auroral ring and its surroundings is less prominent, as in the
broad-band
L-filter that covers the wavelength interval 3.5 - 4.0 _m; (Photo
21a/01)
and in the narrow-band filter at 4.07 _m (Photo 21b/01).
There is also a dramatic difference
in the brightness of Jupiter's
atmospheric clouds. This effect is linked to the degree of absorption
of
the sunlight by a methane layer that varies very much with wavelength.
For
instance, the spectral band at 3.28 _m (Photo 21c/01) is at the
edge of a
strong methane absorption band and the disk therefore appears
very dark at
this particular wavelength.
As explained above, the chopping
technique must be applied to perform these
observations. It is achieved by moving the 1.1-m secondary mirror
of the
ANTU telescope in the direction perpendicular to Jupiter's axis
of rotation.
The dark circles that cover the right part of the images of the
planet are
due to the fact that the chop throw is limited to 30 arcsec only.
While this
is quite sufficient for observations of other, smaller objects,
it is less
than Jupiter's angular diameter at the time of these observations
(48
arcsec). For that reason, the image of the planet is subtracted
from itself
at the right edge.
The bright spot to the left
of the planet is Io, the innermost of the large
moons. Its shadow on Jupiter is well visible on Photo 21b/01 (4.07
_m) and
Photo 21d/01 (3.21 _m). The dark spot to the right on the images
is a
'negative' image of Io, caused by the chopping and image subtraction.
Note that Io is moving towards
the right during the observations. At the
time of the observations, the rotation axis of Jupiter was tilted
about
3 deg towards the Earth so that the North Pole is well visible.
Moreover,
the magnetic axis is inclined 9.6 deg to the rotation axis. Thus
the
northern auroral ring is fully on the Earth-facing hemisphere,
while the
coresponding southern ring is barely visible at the lower limb
of the
planet.
The auroral ring
ESO PR Photo 21e/01
Caption: ESO PR Photo 21e/01
shows the Jovian aurorae, in particular the
northern ring (here shown in yellow/orange) as well as the "polar
haze"
(blue). The visibility of the various features has been enhanced
by the
use of false-colours. The moon Io is visible to the left.
Photo 21e/01 is a false-colour
combination of the images presented in PR
Photos 21a-d/01, now showing the full disk after careful correction
for
the 'shadowing effects' of the chopping process, as explained
above.
The auroral oval is well visible
all the way around the pole. The visibility
on the far side is enhanced because of the grazing angle of view:
near the
limb, the apparent brightness increases since the line of sight
passes along
a longer section of the emitting layer, whereby the number of
emitting atoms
in these directions increases. On the contrary, it more difficult
to detect
the faint ring at lower latitudes on the day-side disc, where
the path
length is shorter.
In fact, the front part of
the auroral oval has never before been observed
from the ground -- so far it was only seen with the Hubble Space
Telescope
(HST). The present photo therefore highlights ISAAC's excellent
image
quality and high stability. Note also that it has been possible
to resolve
two separate arcs on the right side of the ring; this is normally
only
possible by means of observations from space.
Another interesting property
of this image is the extension of the polar
haze, here seen in blue colour. A comparison with the rotation
(yellow
arrow) and magnetic (white arrow) axes shows that the polar haze
is
centered on the rotation axis whereas its source, the auroral
ring, is
centered on the magnetic axis.
This observation therefore
suggests the following interpretation: the atoms
and molecules that make up the polar haze are continuously created
at the
footprint of the auroral magnetic field lines, i.e., below the
auroral
rings. They spread over both polar regions, much more so in longitude
than
in latitude. This bears witness to the important role of the zonal
winds in
the Jovian atmosphere (blowing along the same latitude) in transporting
the
haze material, much stronger than that of the meridional winds
(along the
same longitude), even at the high latitudes of the auroral region.
Jupiter's
rapid rotation (about 10 hours per revolution) obviously plays
an important
role in this.
A volcanic eruption on Io
ESO PR Photo 21f/01
Caption: ESO PR Photo 21f/01
shows a small area of an image obtained
through a narrow-band filter centered at 4.07 _m. The bright object
is
the Jovian moon Io; its image is further enlarged to the left.
A strong
asymmetry is evident, with the Tvashtar hot spot well visible
in the
upper right quadrant.
Io, the innermost major satellite
of Jupiter is one of the most remarkable
bodies in the solar system. Volcanic activity on its surface was
first
discovered by the NASA Voyager 1 and 2 spacecraft during fly-by's
in 1979.
This is attributed to internal heating caused by tidal effects
between
Jupiter, Io and the other Galilean satellites. Apart from the
Earth, Io
is the only other body in the solar system that is currently volcanically
active. The volcanism on this moon is the main source of electrically
charged particles (plasma) in the magnetosphere of Jupiter.
A bright polar feature is visible
on several ISAAC images of Io, obtained
through a narrow-band filter at 4.07 _m, cf. PR Photo 21f/01.
In this
waveband, the effect of reflected sunlight is negligible and the
image
resolution is the best. Applying a basic filtering algorithm,
the sharpness
of this image was further enhanced. The recorded emission is found
to
correspond to the Tvashtar hot spot that was discovered by NASA
Infrared
Telescope Facility (IRTF) in November 1999 and observed simultaneously
by
the Galileo spacecraft during its I25 flyby.
Such outbursts normally have
a short lifetime, less than 1 month, and a very
high temperature, more than 1000 K (700 C). However, the Tvashtar
outburst
is quite anomalous and has lasted more than one year. The temperature
has
been estimated at about 1000-1300 K (700-1000 C); this range is
typical for
silicate-based volcanism observed on the Earth.
The Galileo spacecraft observed
the onset of this eruption, and twice again
this year. Monitoring of this event by means of ground-based telescopes,
as
here with ISAAC at the VLT or by the ADONIS Adaptive Optics system
on the
ESO 3.6-m telescope at La Silla, gives the astronomers a most
welcome
opportunity to follow more closely the temperature evolution of
the
eruption and hence provides excellent support to the space observations.
The forthcoming arrival on
Paranal of NAOS (the adaptive optics system for
the VLT) and CONICA (the connected IR camera equipped with an
Aladdin
detector) will lead to a significant improvement of the achievable
image
quality. It will be employed for a large variety of astronomical
programmes
and will, among others, allow the detection and frequent monitoring
of a
large number of hot spots on the surface of Io.
Note
[1]: ISAAC registers (infrared)
electromagnetic radiation at wavelengths
between approx. 1.0 and 5.0 _m which we sense as heat. The human
eye
registers electromagnetic radiation (light) at shorter wavelengths,
from
about 0.4 to 0.7 _m.
Technical information about the photos
PR Photos 21a-d/01 are based
on on-target exposures lasting a total of 30
sec (L-band), 44 sec (4.07 _m), 58 sec (3.28 _m) and 58 sec (3.21
_m),
respectively. The real observing time is twice as much, with half
of the
time spent in the off-target chop position. The fields shown measure
72 x 72 arcsec2; 1 pixel = 0.07 arcsec. PR Photo 21e/01 is a colour-coded
combination of these four exposures. North is up and East is left.
Addendum: About the Jovian aurorae and polar haze
Aurorae Borealis and Aurorae
Australis ('Northern and Southern Lights') are
observed on Earth as well as on Jupiter. They appear as wavy curtains
of
light that follow the magnetic field lines at high latitude and
they
surround tring of light. The light is produced by the impact of
energetic
charged particles (electrons or ions lost by the magnetosphere)
onto the top
of the atmosphere where they excite the atmospheric atoms and
molecules,
mainly atomic (H) and molecular hydrogen (H2).
While the emissions that are
excited directly by particle collisions are
radiated in the visible and the ultraviolet regions of the spectrum,
it was
discovered at the beginning of the 1990's that the auroral rings
may also be
detected in the infrared (IR) region of the spectrum. The reasons
for this
are also known. The auroral particles excite or ionize the atoms
(and ions)
in the atmosphere, creating in some areas large numbers of H3+
ions. They
also generate a huge amount of thermal energy -- in fact, the
total energy
deposited in the Jovian aurorae is about 10**14 watts, or 1000
times more
than in a typical terrestrial aurora. H3+ ions are capable of
radiating
their energy in narrow spectral lines in the infrared part of
the spectrum
near 2 - 4 _m wavelength and, as shown by the present ISAAC images,
this
radiation can be detected with ground-based telescopes.
The importance of monitoring
Jovian auroral emissions is that it allows to
measure the activity of the Jovian magnetosphere and -- with the
help of
magnetic field models -- to map in detail the auroral structures
and the
motion of energetic particles in the magnetosphere. The capability
to
perform such studies from the ground with a quality approaching
that from
space now promises dramatic improvement in our understanding of
Jovian
auroral processes and, equally important, the possible to compare
them
with those on the Earth.
There are other light emission
mechanisms on Jupiter than the aurorae.
Clouds are present in Jupiter's stratosphere that efficiently
reflect the
sunlight and which are responsible for the overall brightness
of Jupiter's
disk. In addition, the polar regions are covered by a 'haze' which
is
particularly bright in infrared light. The very nature and the
origin of
this haze is still quite puzzling, although it is now generally
agreed
that it is a by-product of the auroral activity.
It has been suggested that
the polar haze may at least partly consist of
heavy hydrocarbon molecules, polymers and/or aerosols that are
produced
where incoming energetic particles from the magnetosphere enter
the upper
atmospheric layers. Alternatively, the amount of energy deposited
in the
auroral atmosphere is so large that violent upward winds are produced
that
carry atoms and molecules from the deep atmosphere into the stratosphere.
While discrete narrow emission lines dominate the auroral infrared
spectrum,
the polar haze emits at all wavelengths (a spectral 'continuum').
Contrary their Jovian counterparts,
terrestrial Aurorae are directly related
to solar activity. Since it is now near the maximum in the 11-year
cycle,
terrestrial aurorae are unusually frequent and intense, and may
also be
visible at lower geographical latitudes than normal.
June 7, 2001
NASA Gives Official Nod
To First Mercury Orbiter MissionASA GIVES OFFICIAL
NOD TO FIRST MERCURY ORBITER MISSION
NASA has given the first Mercury orbiter mission the go-ahead
to move into full-scale spacecraft development -- setting up the
first trip to the Sun's closest neighbor in more than a
generation.
MESSENGER, short for MErcury Surface, Space ENvironment,
GEochemistry, and Ranging, will launch in March 2004 and orbit
Mercury for one Earth-year beginning in April 2009.
"MESSENGER is the most complex and challenging Discovery-class
mission we have ever attempted, and our goal is to do something
never before attempted," said Dr. Jay Bergstralh, chief scientist
for NASA's Solar System Exploration Division in NASA's Office
of
Space Science in Washington, D.C. "Conducting a year-long
mission
to orbit a planet only 36 million miles from the Sun for
relatively low cost is an amazing concept, and we have selected
a
top-flight team to build and fly this mission."
Dr. Sean C. Solomon of the Carnegie Institution of Washington
(D.C.) is the mission's principal investigator and lead scientist.
The Johns Hopkins University Applied Physics Laboratory (APL)
in
Laurel, MD, manages the mission for NASA's Office of Space Science
and will design, build and operate the MESSENGER spacecraft.
Preliminary work on the mission began 18 months ago.
MESSENGER will be only the second spacecraft to visit Mercury.
Mariner 10 flew past it three times in 1974 and 1975 but gathered
data on less than half the planet.
MESSENGER's seven scientific instruments -- including a camera,
laser altimeter, magnetometer and several spectrometers -- will
globally image Mercury for the first time. It also will collect
unprecedented information on the composition and structure of
Mercury's crust, its geologic history, the nature of its thin
atmosphere and active magnetosphere, and the makeup of its core
and polar materials.
"This is an opportunity to complete the detailed exploration
of
the inner solar system, on a planet where we've never even seen
half the surface," Solomon said. "We've had many exciting
missions
to Mars and Venus that yielded new theories about the processes
that shaped the inner planets, and for 25 years now Mercury has
clearly stood out as a place where major questions remain to be
answered. Mercury is that last piece of the puzzle."
Among questions MESSENGER's science team will investigate: Why
is
Mercury -- the densest planet in the solar system -- mostly made
of iron metal? Why is it the only inner planet besides Earth with
a global magnetic field? How can the planet closest to the sun,
with daytime temperatures soaring past 850 degrees Fahrenheit
at
its equator, have what appears to be ice in its polar craters?
Solomon said unlocking Mercury's secrets will help us understand
the forces that shaped Earth and the other terrestrial (rocky)
planets.
MESSENGER's five-year voyage includes two flybys of Venus and
two
flybys of Mercury, "gravity assists" that will help
the spacecraft
tune its path and match Mercury's quick, elliptical orbit around
the sun. The mission team will also use pictures and data from
the
Mercury flybys to refine the orbit study.
Once in orbit MESSENGER has to deal with the intense heat at
Mercury, where the sun is up to 11 times brighter than on Earth.
But MESSENGER's instruments will operate at room temperature
behind a sunshield made of the same ceramic material that protects
parts of the space shuttle. The spacecraft will also pass only
briefly over the hottest parts of the planet's surface, limiting
the instruments' exposure to reflected heat.
The $256 million MESSENGER mission is the seventh in NASA's
Discovery Program of lower-cost, scientifically focused space
flights and the third Discovery project managed by APL. The
mission cost figure does not include the launch vehicle and
mission operations. Information about the Discovery program is
available at:
http://discovery.nasa.gov/
The MESSENGER science team taps expertise from APL; University
of
Colorado, Boulder; University of Arizona, Tucson; Southwest
Research Institute, Boulder, CO; NASA's Goddard Space Flight
Center, Greenbelt, MD; University of Michigan, Ann Arbor;
Washington University, St. Louis, MO; University of California,
Santa Barbara; Brown University, Providence, RI; Northwestern
University, Evanston, IL; and Massachusetts Institute of
Technology, Cambridge. GenCorp Aerojet, Sacramento, CA, and
Composite Optics Inc., San Diego, CA, are working with APL to
build the spacecraft. NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory, Pasadena,
CA, will provide navigation support for the mission.
More information on MESSENGER is available at:
http://messenger.jhuapl.edu
Animation of MESSENGER's journey to Mercury is available at:
http://messenger.jhuapl.edu/animations.html
NASA AWARDS COOPERATIVE
AGREEMENTS
TO HELP STRENGTHEN STATES' RESEARCH CAPABILITIES
NASA competitively selected
35 meritorious, peer-reviewed
research proposals under the Experimental Program to Stimulate
Competitive Research, or EPSCoR. The 3-year performance-based
awards
cover 19 states at a total cost of $6.6 million, subject to
appropriation in future years.
What makes the EPSCoR program
unique is its goal to target states of
modest research infrastructure. EPSCoR provides funding to assist
states in developing a more competitive research base within their
selected academic institutions.
In addition to the research
awards, each of the NASA EPSCoR states
will receive awards of $125,000 for core funding for research
infrastructure development. The funding enables researchers to
initiate technical discussions and onsite visits with NASA
researchers and allows the states to become more competitive for
future NASA research opportunities.
"For the first time in
the history of NASA EPSCoR, we are making
awards to proposals whose research directly supports NASA's research
needs", said Frank Owens, Director, NASA Education Division.
"These
awards will continue to contribute to the academic research efforts
of the universities and to the state priorities, while also directly
contributing to NASA's mission."
EPSCoR began in 1993 after
NASA saw the need to strengthen the
research capability of states that previously had not participated
equably in competitive aerospace research activities.
EPSCoR also works closely with
the states' NASA Space Grant College
and Fellowship Programs to help improve the opportunities for
science, mathematics, engineering and technology education. For
a
list of research and core funding awards on the internet, go to:
http://calspace.ucsd.edu/epscor/contents.html
Where No Telescope Has Gone Before
Whenever astronomers see the
sky for the first time in a new part of the
electromagnetic spectrum, they inevitably spot something they
didn't
expect -- from black holes to pulsars to planet-forming disks,
there's
always a surprise. Now NASA astronomers have captured the first
focused
images of any astronomical object at hard x-ray wavelengths. The
eye-opening advance will finally reveal what the hard x-ray sky
looks like
in crisp detail -- and perhaps uncover a new batch of astronomical
wonders.
FULL STORY at
http://science.nasa.gov/headlines/y2001/ast07jun_1.htm?list448368
Mars Express to investigate Phobos
Phobos, the tiny innermost
moon of Mars, is to come under unprecedented
scrutiny after Europe's mission to Mars goes into orbit around
the
Red Planet late in 2003. Mars Express is due to pass within 3000
km of
the 22 km diameter moon a few hundred times during its two-year
nominal
mission lifetime.
For more on this story:
http://sci.esa.int/content/news/index.cfm?aid=1&cid=1&oid=27328
BRIEFING JUNE 12 TO DISCUSS
HOW UPCOMING MISSION
WILL UNLOCK SECRETS OF EARLY UNIVERSE
A briefing on the scientific
goals of the upcoming
Microwave Anisotropy Probe (MAP), a NASA mission that seeks to
determine the history, content, shape and fate of the Universe,
is scheduled for 1 p.m. EDT, Tuesday, June 12.
The session will be carried
live on NASA Television and will
originate from the James E. Webb auditorium at NASA
Headquarters, 300 E St., SW, Washington, DC.
To determine the nature and
destiny of the Universe, MAP will
make a full-sky map of the temperature from the oldest light in
the Universe, the afterglow of the Big Bang. MAP is scheduled
to
launch June 30 aboard a Boeing Delta II rocket from Cape
Canaveral, FL.
The briefing participants will
be:
- Dr. Alan Bunner, Science Director, Structure and Evolution of
the Universe, NASA Headquarters, Washington, DC
- Elizabeth Citrin, MAP Project Manager, NASA Goddard Space
Flight Center, Greenbelt, MD
- Dr. Charles Bennett, MAP Principal Investigator, Goddard
- Dr. David Spergel, Astronomy Professor, Princeton University,
Princeton, NJ
Two-way question-and-answer
capability will be available at
participating NASA centers. NASA TV is broadcast on GE-2,
transponder 9C, C-Band, located at 85 degrees West longitude.
The frequency is 3880.0 MHz. Polarization is vertical and audio
is monaural at 6.8 MHz. The event will be webcast live at:
NASA Marshall scientists capture historic, first focused high-energy X-ray images of astronomical objects
Opening a new X-ray window
to the universe
NASA Marshall scientists capture historic, first focused high-energy
X-ray
images of astronomical objects
Using a telescope containing
unique X-ray mirrors, a team from
NASA's Marshall Space Flight Center in Huntsville, Ala., has obtained
the
world's first focused high-energy X-ray images of any astronomical
object.
"This is the first step toward opening the high-energy, or
'hard,'
X-ray spectrum for high sensitivity exploration," said Dr.
Brian Ramsey,
lead scientist for the High Energy Replicated Optics (HERO) project.
"
Every time a new wavelength region of the electromagnetic spectrum
is opened
with more sensitive instruments there are surprises and new discoveries.
Until now, the only images obtained in this spectral region have
been
collected by non-focusing detectors with much lower sensitivity."
Focusing -- concentrating the
X-rays onto a very small area of a
detector, such as a telescope does -- prevents the signal from
being
overwhelmed by the background noise. This has never been accomplished
in
observations of the high-energy X-ray spectrum, until now.
"The ability to collect
focused hard X-ray images has the potential
of allowing us to observe objects in the heavens which are 10
to 100 times
fainter than those which can be detected with current instruments,"
Ramsey
said. "This development gives us new eyes - enabling new
understanding
about our violent universe."
The HERO team launched the
experimental telescope on May 23, 2001,
from Fort Sumner, N.M., using a 40 million cubic-foot (1.1 million
cubic-meter) balloon that carried the payload to an altitude of
128,000 feet
(39,000 meters). At this altitude, the telescope is above 99.7
percent of
Earth's atmosphere, which absorbs X-rays and many other wavelengths
of
electromagnetic radiation.
During its 24-hour flight,
Ramsey and his team used the telescope to
study cosmic X-ray sources including the Crab Nebula and the Cygnus
X-1
binary star system.
The telescope collected the
images using six X-ray reflecting
mirrors fabricated at the Marshall Center. The mirrors, a special
type
called "grazing incidence," are nested cylinders with
extremely smooth inner
surfaces that reflect high-energy X-rays at very shallow angles.
The mirrors were made with
a replication technique using a special
nickel alloy developed at the Marshall Center. Replication employs
reusable
forms, called mandrels, to make telescope mirrors that require
no final
finishing. With replication, multiple mirror shells can be made
from a
single master. Without replication, X-ray mirrors must be custom-made,
one
at a time.
Since the 1970s, X-ray telescopes
have collected images at low X-ray
energies, sometimes called "soft" X-rays. The most sensitive
soft-X-ray
telescope is NASA's Chandra X-ray Observatory, managed by the
Marshall
Center.
"This is an historic breakthrough,"
said Martin Weisskopf, project
scientist for Chandra. "Collecting the very first focused
hard X-ray images
of cosmic X-ray sources is an exciting milestone for X-ray astronomy
as a
whole."
The full planned HERO science
payload, scheduled for completion in
2003, will consist of 240 mirrors, which will provide approximately
50 times
greater sensitivity than this year's proof-of-concept mission.
The HERO
project has been funded by NASA's Office of Space Science in Washington,
D.C.
The HERO payload was built
in house at the Marshall Center. Jeffery
Apple of Marshall's Science Systems Department is the lead engineer.
Marshall's Space Science Department, Science Systems Department,
and Space
Optics Manufacturing and Technology Center together with the University
of
Alabama in Huntsville and Raytheon ITSS in Lanham, Md., all contributed
to
this success.
SATURN'S 'TILTED' RINGS REVEAL MYSTERIOUS COLOR VARIATIONS
Composite images of Saturn's rings, taken by NASA's Hubble Space Telescope, have revealed mysterious color variations that hint that the rings could be made of materials from the outer solar system. These new findings are important because scientists have long questioned whether the rings originated around Saturn, like the planet's retinue of icy moons, or elsewhere.
The Hubble images, captured by a team of scientists between 1996 and 2000, show Saturn's rings from beneath in a wide-open or "tilted" viewpoint from Earth, as the planet's Northern Hemisphere swings from autumn toward winter. When seen edge-on, Saturn's rings, which are only some tens of meters thick, nearly disappear from view. The composite images, which were released today by the Hubble Heritage program, can be accessed at: http://heritage.stsci.edu
"The color of the ring material can help tell us what the rings are made of and will help decipher their origin," said Dr. Jeff Cuzzi, of NASA's Ames Research Center and a member of the Hubble team. The color variations indicate that different materials make up the rings. The distribution of the materials provides information about the processes that shaped the rings, he explained.
"Most people don't know that Saturn's rings aren't white but have a faint salmon color, which hints that a few percent of complex organic molecules are mixed in with the water ice the rings are mostly made of," Cuzzi said. Saturn's seven small icy moons don't have such a reddish color, but many icy objects in the frozen reaches of the outer solar system do, he explained. This leads scientists to suspect that, unlike the moons, the rings were formed from an outer solar system object. This object, they think, careened too close to Saturn and -- like comet Shoemaker-Levy 9 in 1994 -- was torn apart by the massive planet's gravity, leaving a trail of debris.
Over 100 Hubble images were analyzed in eight different colors that cover, and go beyond, the range of human vision. They include violet, blue, green and red in the visible range and ultra-violet and infrared in the non-visible range.
Cuzzi also has shown that there appear to be at least two unknown materials mixed with the rings' water ice, and that the way these materials are distributed in the rings is unlike anything seen on the surfaces of nearby planets or satellites. For example, in some rings the color gets redder closer to Saturn, and in others, the color trend reverses in the middle of the ring. In some places, the color gets redder where the concentration of particles increases, and in other places it gets redder where the concentration of particles decreases. Scientists hope to explain these variations in terms of how the composition of the ring material was initially distributed, and how it has evolved with time.
The Hubble data also show that the ring color changes with viewing angle. The best explanation, said Dr. Francois Poulet of NASA Ames, who is working with Cuzzi, is that the ring particles are actually lumpy aggregates of particles, with many more deep shadows than the relatively smooth surface of a moon or asteroid. The lit parts of the "lumpy" surface partly illuminate the shadows with their reddish color, so the rings appear redder as more shadows are seen.
Cuzzi believes that observations like these, while not currently understood, eventually will provide insights into the processes by which Saturn's ring structure was formed and continues to evolve. He noted that the Cassini spacecraft, which recently passed Jupiter en route to a four-year tour of the Saturn system starting in July 2004, carries several instruments that will provide much finer detail and greatly improve the ability to identify these non-icy constituents in the rings and the structure of the particles. The Cassini mission also includes an atmospheric entry probe into the organic smog-shrouded moon Titan, which might have lakes or seas of liquid ethane on its frigid surface.
Cuzzi's collaborators include Drs. R. French of Wellesley College, L. Dones of Southwest Research Institute, Mark Showalter of Stanford University, and Paul Estrada of Cornell University.
The Space Telescope Science Institute (STScI) is concurrently issuing a news release on the data, "A Change of Seasons On Saturn." It can be accessed, together with electronic images, animation and additional information, at: http://oposite.stsci.edu/pubinfo/pr/2001/15
NASA's Hubble Space Telescope
is a project of international cooperation between NASA and the
European Space Agency.
MISSION: STS-104 - 10th ISS Flight (7A) - Airlock
VEHICLE: Atlantis/OV-104
LOCATION: Vehicle Assembly Building (VAB)
TARGET KSC LAUNCH DATE/TIME: NET July 7, 2001 at 7:03 a.m. EDT
TARGET KSC LANDING DATE/TIME: July 18, 2001
MISSION DURATION: 10 days and 20 hours
CREW: Lindsey, Hobaugh, Kavandi, Gernhardt, Reilly
ORBITAL INSERTION ALTITUDE and INCLINATION: 122 nautical miles/51.6
degrees
Shuttle Processing Note: Pending
resolution of the International Space
Station's robot arm problem, managers are now targeting a launch
of Space
Shuttle Atlantis no earlier than July 7. The launch date move
allows
additional time for Space Station managers to develop a repair
plan for the
arm and preserves the earliest possible launch date.
Shuttle workers completed the
Shuttle Interface Test yesterday and are
powering up the Shuttle vehicle today. Managers have scheduled
an additional
leak test on the solid rocket booster separation motors and that
work will
be performed Friday. VAB high bay 1 work platforms will be retracted
Saturday in preparation for Atlantis' roll to the launch pad no
earlier than
June 12.
Payload Processing Note: The
U.S. Airlock remains in the pad's payload
changeout room. No work is scheduled until Atlantis is delivered
to the pad.
The Airlock will be installed in the orbiter's payload bay about
four days
after Atlantis arrives at the pad. The IMAX 3D camera, currently
in the
Operations and Checkout building, will be delivered to the pad
and installed
into the orbiter following rollout.
MISSION: STS-105 - 11th
ISS Flight (7A.1) - Leonardo MPLM
VEHICLE: Discovery/OV-103
LOCATION: Orbiter Processing Facility bay 2
TARGET KSC LAUNCH DATE/TIME: No earlier than Aug. 5, 2001
TARGET KSC LANDING DATE/TIME: Aug. 16, 2001
MISSION DURATION: 12 days
CREW: Horowitz, Sturckow, Barry, Forrester; (ISS up) Culbertson,
Dezhurov,
Turin; (ISS down) Usachev, Voss, Helms,
ORBITAL INSERTION ALTITUDE and INCLINATION: 122 nautical miles/51.6
degrees
Shuttle Processing Note: Technicians
have closed-out orbiter Discovery's aft
engine compartment. Orbital maneuvering system and reaction control
system
tests are complete and final preparations for rollover to the
VAB are in
work. Managers expect Discovery to be ready for rollover as early
as June
12.
Payload Processing Note: Experiment
and supply rack installations on the
Leonardo Multi-Purpose Logistics Module (MPLM) in the Space Station
Processing Facility are complete. Aft access closure to the MPLM
was reset
for today. Leak checks and heater testing will be conducted Friday.
The
delivery date of the MPLM to the pad is under review.
MISSION: STS-108 - 12th ISS Flight (UF1) -Raffaello MPLM
VEHICLE: Endeavour/OV-105
LOCATION: Orbiter Processing Facility bay 1
TARGET KSC LAUNCH DATE/TIME: Nov. 29, 2001
TARGET KSC LANDING DATE/TIME: Dec. 9, 2001
MISSION DURATION: 10 days
CREW: Gorie, Kelly, Godwin, Tani; (ISS up) Onufrienko, Bursch,
Walz; (ISS
down) Culbertson, Dezhurov, Turin
ORBITAL INSERTION ALTITUDE and INCLINATION: 122 nautical miles/51.6
degrees
Shuttle Processing Note: Endeavour's
orbital maneuvering system pod checks
continue this week. Workers are preparing to replace one of the
orbiter's
reaction control system thrusters next week. Technicians are also
testing
an actuator on main engine No. 2.
MISSION: STS-109 - HST Servicing Mission 3B
VEHICLE: Columbia/OV-102
LOCATION: Orbiter Processing Facility bay 3
TARGET KSC LAUNCH DATE/TIME: Jan. 17, 2002
TARGET KSC LANDING DATE/TIME: Jan. 28, 2002
MISSION DURATION: TBD
CREW: Altman, Carey, Grunsfeld, Currie, Newman, Linnehan, Massimino
ORBITAL INSERTION ALTITUDE and INCLINATION: 308 nautical miles/28.5
degrees
Shuttle Processing Note: Orbiter
Columbia's payload bay doors are open.
Freon coolant loop No. 1 will undergo servicing on Monday. Subsystem
testing is work also.
DEAF STUDENTS TO STUDY SCIENCE AT NASA AMES RESEARCH CENTER
Deaf students and their hearing counterparts from two Indiana high schools will take part in a hands-on science and technology learning experience next week at NASA's Ames Research Center.
The twelve students and two teachers will visit Ames, in the heart of California's Silicon Valley, as part of an annual experiential field trip that uses the study of space as a motivational learning tool. An anonymous benefactor has provided funding for the trip.
"These unique, hands-on field trips bring exciting, relevant space exploration learning experiences to students in Indiana," said Bonnie McClain, NASA's life sciences outreach projects manager. "These experiences also allow students to relate science concepts learned in the classroom to real-world applications."
The group will include six students from the Indiana School for the Deaf (ISD) in Indianapolis and six from the Indian Creek High School in Trafalgar, IN. "We want to demonstrate that science can be a common bond that unites students in learning, and that transcends all boundaries and barriers," said ISD science teacher Teresa Huckleberry. The Indian Creek High School students, led by science teacher Carol Piety, have been studying American Sign Language so they can communicate with the deaf students. The two groups also have participated in several joint science projects.
The theme of this year's field trip is "Adapting to Unique Environments." Activities at Ames will highlight the role of sensory systems such as sight, hearing and touch, and the use of technology, in helping humans adapt to unique environments such as space. Students and their teachers will learn first-hand how NASA research into the fundamental processes of the sensory system helps scientists understand how the human body perceives and adapts to different environments, and why this is important to space exploration.
Ames scientists also will help the students realize how technology can be used to "extend" the senses. NASA research in advanced technologies is finding applications in remote sensing, accurate communication of information in varied forms to multiple locations, and the direction of medical procedures from locations far from the patient.
"Deaf students depend on technology to open windows of knowledge and networks of communication for them that would not be possible otherwise," Huckleberry said. "All the students will learn about how technology can increase the ability to erase boundaries of physical limitations and provide ways to express emotions in new ways." Technology also can transcend the boundaries of a "culturally normal" way of thinking and open minds to new viewpoints, added Piety.
Student activities June 11 and 12 will focus on space life sciences at Ames. Students will learn about how sensory systems adapt to new environments, how visual perception changes in space and experience a working fundamental biology laboratory. On June 14, they will visit Ames' flight simulators and learn about remote-sensing technology. Activities on June 15 will focus on the International Space Station and astrobiology.
The students also will spend a day scuba diving in Monterey Bay, experiencing for themselves one of Earth's "unique environments," to which all divers' sensory systems must adapt. Huckleberry noted that achieving their open-water dive certification helped the students better understand differences between Earth's gravity and the microgravity of space. NASA astronauts typically train underwater for as many as 10 hours in preparation for each hour of their spacewalks.
McClain said the students are
looking forward to an exciting experience at Ames, and to serving
as role models for other students. "A primary goal of this
project is to reach other students with the message that all students,
regardless of any self-thought, physical or socially-perceived
limitations, can learn," said McClain. "By using space
biology as a motivational tool, boundaries can be erased and high
aspirations can be set and achieved."
NASA LEAR JET DAMAGED, CREW APPARENTLY UNINJURED
A NASA Lear Jet Model 24 flight
research support aircraft was heavily
damaged today during a landing at the Southern California Air
Logistics Base, formerly George Air Force Base near Victorville,
Calif., while on a flight originating from the NASA Dryden Flight
Research Center, Edwards, Calif. The incident occurred at about
11:50 a.m.
The three-man crew, two NASA
crew members and a U.S. Air Force
Academy cadet undergoing flight surgeon training, escaped apparent
injury.
No other aircraft were involved.
There were no injuries to personnel
on the ground, and no damage to property on the ground.
The aircraft was accomplishing
a touch-and-go landing at the time of
the incident. The aircraft was heavily damaged after contacting
the
runway and departing the pavement.
An interim investigation team
has been formed to determine the cause
of the incident.
The aircraft is a Model 24
corporate class, high altitude, high
performance jet powered by two General Electric jet engines
delivering a maximum thrust of 2,950 lbs. each.
The Lear Jet is an economical,
quick-response research support
aircraft, capable of take-off and landings at many small to medium
size airports closed to larger heavier aircraft. Capable of flying
1,500 nautical miles, at an altitude of 45,000 feet, it can support
an experimental payload of 1,200 lbs.
June 6, 2001>NASA
SELECTS TWO INVESTIGATIONS FOR
PLUTO-KUIPER BELT MISSION FEASIBILITY
STUDIES
In the first step of a potential two-step process, NASA has
selected two proposals for detailed mission feasibility studies
as
candidates for a Pluto-Kuiper Belt (PKB) mission to explore the
only planet in our Solar System yet to be visited by a spacecraft
from Earth.
The President's FY 2002 budget request does not contain development
funding for a Pluto mission. The Congress requested that NASA
not
do anything precipitous which would preclude the ability to develop
a Pluto-Kuiper mission until the Congress could consider it in
the
context of the FY 2002 budget. If funding is provided in the FY
2002 budget and either proposal is ultimately selected, the Agency
could down-select a proposal for development to ultimately fly
a
spacecraft to Pluto and beyond. If a PKB mission is developed,
would be in the 2004-2006 time frame and the spacecraft
would arrive at Pluto before 2020.
"The PKB mission represents a possible opportunity to visit
the
only planet not yet explored by spacecraft," said Dr. Colleen
Hartman, Pluto Program Director in NASA's Office of Space Science,
Washington, DC. "It's really an opportunity to, in a sense,
look
into a deep-freeze of history which could tell us how our Solar
System evolved to what it is today, including the precursor
ingredients of life."
Each team will receive $450,000 to conduct a three-month concept
study. At the end of the three months, NASA will thoroughly
evaluate program content and technical, schedule and cost
feasibilities of both proposals to determine if either is
selectable.
The two selected proposals were judged to have the best science
value among the five proposals submitted to NASA in April 2001
in
response to the Pluto-Kuiper Belt Mission Announcement of
Opportunity. Each selected investigation will work with the Office
of Space Science at NASA Headquarters to finalize the design of
the
spacecraft and its accommodation of the instrument sets.
The selected investigations are:
Pluto and Outer Solar System Explorer (POSSE). Dr. Larry Esposito,
Principal Investigator, University of Colorado, Boulder, will
lead
a team including the following major participants: NASA's Jet
Propulsion Laboratory (JPL), Pasadena, CA; Lockheed Martin
Astronautics, Denver; Malin Space Science Systems, Inc., San Diego;
Ball Aerospace Corp., Boulder, CO; and University of California,
Berkeley.
New Horizons: Shedding Light on Frontier Worlds. Dr. S. Alan Stern,
Principal Investigator, Southwest Research Institute, Boulder,
CO,
will lead a team including the following major participants: Johns
Hopkins University Applied Physics Laboratory, Laurel, MD; Ball
Aerospace Corp.; Stanford University, Palo Alto, CA; NASA's Goddard
Space Flight Center, Greenbelt, MD; and JPL.
Both proposals are for complete missions, including launch vehicle,
spacecraft and science instrument payload. Both address the major
science objectives defined in the original announcement. Each
proposal includes a remote sensing package that includes imaging
instruments, a radio science investigation, and other experiments
to characterize the global geology and morphology of Pluto and
Charon, map their surface composition, and characterize Pluto's
neutral atmosphere and its escape rate.
Pluto is a different kind of planet. It is not a rocky planet
like
Earth, Mars, Mercury or Venus, or a gas giant like Jupiter, Saturn,
Uranus or Neptune. It is a Kuiper Belt Object, a class of objects
composed of material left over after the formation of the other
planets, which has never been exposed to the higher temperatures
and solar radiation levels of the inner solar system.
It is known that Pluto has large quantities of ices of nitrogen,
and simple molecules containing combinations of carbon, hydrogen
and oxygen that are the necessary precursors of life. These ices
would be largely lost to space if Pluto had come close to the
Sun.
Instead they remain on Pluto as a representative sample of the
primordial material that set the stage for the evolution of the
Solar System as it exists today, including life.
If a PKB mission is developed, it will be a Principal Investigator-
led investigation, bringing together teams from academia, industry,
NASA Centers and other communities, and will be developed following
the highly successful management philosophy of the Discovery
Program.
NASA's traffic control system
for interplanetary spacecraft is bracing for a
furry of activity in deep space.
June 6, 2001 -- On April 28, 2001, a weak radio signal reached
Earth from
beyond the orbit of Pluto. It was NASA's Pioneer 10 spacecraft,
struggling
to communicate with ground controllers, its message riding on
a radio signal
that registered just a billionth of a trillionth of a watt.
How do you listen to a transmission that couldn't make a lightbulb
glow in a
billion years? It's all in a day's work for NASA's extraordinary
Deep Space
Network (DSN).
The DSN is a global system for communicating with interplanetary
spacecraft.
The largest and most sensitive scientific telecommunications system
in the
world, it also performs radio and radar astronomy observations
for the
exploration of the solar system and the universe.
"Communicating with missions in deep space is difficult,"
said Joseph
Statman, Manager of the Deep Space Mission System Engineering
Office at
NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL). "It requires extremely
large
antennas, huge transmitters and very sensitive receivers."
The DSN consists of three clusters of antennas spaced approximately
120
degrees apart around the world: at Goldstone, in California's
Mojave Desert;
near Madrid, Spain; and near Canberra, Australia. "The strategy
here is, no
matter where the spacecraft is, you're always in contact with
it," explained
Statman. Each complex is situated in semi-mountainous, bowl-shaped
terrain
to shield against radio frequency interference.
DSN locations in Spain, Australia, and California are approximately
120
degrees apart in longitude, which enables continuous observation
and
suitable overlap for transferring the spacecraft radio link from
one complex
to the next.
The centerpiece of every DSN facility is an enormous 70-meter
diameter
antenna (230-foot) capable of tracking spacecraft more than 16
billion
kilometers (10 billion miles) from Earth. Arrayed around that
dish is an
assortment of 34-meter, 26-meter, and 11-meter antennas. The 26-meter
antennas feature a double-axis astronomical mount that allows
them to point
low on the horizon to pick up fast-moving, Earth-orbiting satellites
as soon
as they come into view. These can track at up to three degrees
per second.
DSN antennas communicate with far-flung spacecraft at radio frequencies
of
2.2 GHz, 8.4 GHz, and 32 GHz. For comparison, the lowest frequency,
2.2 GHz,
is about the same as radio waves that cook food inside household
microwave
ovens.
All of the antennas communicate directly with the Deep Space Operations
Center at JPL in Pasadena, CA. The center staff directs operations,
transmits commands and oversees the quality of spacecraft telemetry
and
navigation data delivered to network users.
NASA recently announced it's upgrading the DSN to handle a surge
in
interplanetary traffic.
"We're getting ready for a crunch period beginning in November
2003," said
Rich Miller, head of planning and commitments at JPL. That's when
the U.S.,
Europe and Japan all will have missions arriving at Mars. These
include
NASA's 2003 Mars Exploration Rovers, the ESA Mars Express Mission,
and the
Japanese Nozomi spacecraft. At the same time Stardust and Deep
Space 1 will
be encountering comets and a third comet mission named "CONTOUR"
will
launch. And, of course, other ongoing missions will have continuing
communications needs.
"[These new] missions all happen to lie in the same part
of the sky," said
Statman, who described the area where the spacecraft will cluster
as a slice
of the sky with Mars in the middle. "We need to track them
but we don't have
enough antennas."
Madrid will receive a new 34-meter antenna that will increase
available
spacecraft-tracking time by about 105 hours per week when Mars
is in view.
The Madrid complex's current capacity is 315 hours.
"The tracking capacity is proportional to the number of antennas
at each
location," said Statman. "At the moment, Madrid is the
most crucial site for
an upgrade simply because we need more tracking time there."
Goldstone already supports as many as 420 hours per week of deep
space
communication, a figure that will balloon to 525 hours when an
existing
antenna comes online in 2003. "Both the Japanese and the
Europeans have
tracking antennas in Australia," says Statman, so they can
help with the
communications load at that longitude.
As part of the upgrade, older hardware and software systems will
be phased
out and replaced with ones that are more reliable and, in some
cases,
automated. Also, Madrid and Canberra will receive processing equipment
that
will allow operators to combine signals from multiple on-site
antennas,
increasing their sensitivity to distant transmissions. Goldstone
can already
do that.
Every bit of extra sensitivity is welcome, says Statman. The total
signal
power arriving at a network antenna from a spacecraft transmitting
from the
outer solar system is 20 million times weaker than the power level
from a
modern digital watch battery!
Teasing out faint signals from space probes isn't all the DSN
does -- it's a
powerful scientific instrument in its own right. The Goldstone
70-meter
antenna, for example, doubles as a powerful solar system radar.
It captures
radar images of planets and passing asteroids, searches for water
on the
Moon, and helps pick landing sites on Mars. Together, the three
DSN
facilities along with other antennas around the world form a powerful
Very
Long Baseline Interferometer that can peer into the hearts of
quasars,
measure Earth's continental drift -- even test general relativity.
Astronomers used the Goldstone radar to image near-Earth asteroid
1999 KW4
when it passed by Earth last month. They discovered the space
rock was a
binary!
Not bad for a bit of moonlighting!
NASA's Deep Space Network truly is an international treasure,
and it's about
to become even better. For more information about DSN and its
ongoing
upgrades, please visit the Deep Space Network home page from JPL
( http://deepspace.jpl.nasa.gov ).
X-43A MISHAP INVESTIGATION BOARD CONVENES
NASA today convened a board
to determine the cause of
Saturday's loss of the first X-43A unpiloted hypersonic research
aircraft.
Gathering at NASA's Dryden
Flight Research Center, Edwards CA,
the board consists of members from other agency centers,
including:
- Robert Hughes, chairman, Marshall Space Flight Center,
Huntsville, AL
- John J. Deily, Goddard Space Flight Center, Greenbelt, MD
- Joseph J. Lackovich Jr., Kennedy Space Center, FL
- Victoria A. Regenie, Dryden Flight Research Center
- Luat T. Nguyen, Langley Research Center, Hampton, VA
The mated X-43A and its booster
rocket went out of control about
eight seconds after ignition of the Pegasus motor during the
June 2 launch over the Pacific Ocean off the California coast.
The booster was intentionally destroyed using onboard flight-
termination explosives, and fell safely in a cleared Navy sea
range. There were no injuries and no damage to other aircraft
or
property.
This mission was the first
of three flights to demonstrate an
airframe-integrated, "air-breathing" propulsion system
design,
called a scramjet, which so far has only been tested in ground
facilities, such as wind tunnels.
Star factory near galactic center bathed in high-energy X-rays
Near the crowded core of the
Milky Way galaxy, where stars shine so
brightly and plentifully that planets there would never experience
nighttime, astronomers have found a new phenomenon: a cauldron
of
60-million-degree gas enveloping a cluster of young stars.
Professor Farhad Zadeh of Northwestern
University and his
collaborators used NASA's Chandra X-ray Observatory to trace the
gas around
the Arches cluster, a well-studied region of star formation that
is home to
some of our Galaxy's largest and youngest stars.
"This is the first time
we have seen a young cluster of stars
surrounded by such a halo of high-energy X-rays," said Zadeh
in a press
conference at the American Astronomical Society in Pasadena, Calif.
"This
supports theoretical predictions that stellar winds from massive
stars can
collide with each other and generate very hot gas."
Massive stars, newborn stars,
and stellar winds have long been known
to emit X-rays. The Chandra results are significant because they
identify
this new type of mechanism of colliding winds to generate X-rays
as
energetic as those seen in distant starburst galaxies, which are
known for
their furious pace of star production.
The Arches cluster is about
25,000 light years from Earth and only
about 1 to 2 million years old. It is also less than 100 light
years from
what is thought to be a supermassive black hole in the center
of our Galaxy.
The cluster contains 150 hot, young stars, known as "O"
stars, concentrated
within a diameter of one light year, making it the most compact
cluster
known in the Milky Way galaxy.
The density of stars makes
the region in and around the Arches
cluster a microcosm of what is likely occurring in starburst galaxies.
"The
Arches cluster is one of the best 'local' analogues of starburst
galaxies --
the most prodigious stellar nurseries known," said Casey
Law of the
Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics. "Yet the Arches
cluster is in
our backyard, not millions of light years away."
Starburst galaxies are known
for creating huge hot bubbles of gas
that escape from the galaxy. In a similar way, Chandra observations
of the
Arches clusters may provide clues to the origin of a much larger
cloud of
hot gas known to exist in the center of the galaxy.
"Our data suggest that
the gas within the Arches cluster may get so
hot that it escapes from the cluster," said Cornelia Lang
of the University
of Massachusetts. "The Arches and other clusters like it
may contribute to
the reservoir of mysterious hot gas long observed near the Milky
Way."
Zadeh and collaborators intend
to search for X-ray emission from
other clusters of stars near the Galactic center and compare this
to newer,
longer Chandra observations of the Arches cluster.
Chandra observed Arches cluster
region with its Advanced CCD Imaging
Spectrometer (ACIS). The research team for this investigation
also included
Casey Law and Antonella Fruscione from the Harvard-Smithsonian
Center for
Astrophysics; Cornelia Lang and Daniel Wang from University of
Massachusetts; Mark Wardle of the University of Sydney, Australia;
and
Angela Cotera from University of Arizona.
The ACIS X-ray camera was developed
for NASA by Penn State and MIT.
NASA's Marshall Space Flight Center in Huntsville, Ala., manages
the Chandra
program. TRW, Inc., Redondo Beach, Calif., is the prime contractor
for the
spacecraft. The Smithsonian's Chandra X-ray Center controls science
and
flight operations from Cambridge, Mass.
Images associated with this
release are available on the World Wide
Web at:
http://chandra.harvard.edu
AND
http://chandra.nasa.gov
June 5, 2001
MIT researchers seek ocean on Jupiter's moon through its sounds
CAMBRIDGE, Mass. -- Acoustic
techniques used by Massachusetts Institute
of Technology researchers to explore the Arctic Ocean may help
determine
whether there is a vast liquid ocean under the ice blanketing
Jupiter's
moon, Europa.
MIT researchers report June
5 at the Chicago meeting of the Acoustical
Society of America that they may be able to use a technique similar
to
ultrasound or the sonar navigation used by bats and dolphins to
gather
information about Europa.
MIT ocean engineering professor
Nicholas C. Makris said that implanting
soda-can-sized sensors in Europa's icy exterior could provide
researchers
with information on the temperature and structure of the planet.
Current
sensor technology makes it possible to detect even tiny motions,
and there
is evidence that massive ice fractures on Europa's surface occur
daily.
While such an experiment may
be a decade or more away, this unconventional
approach to planetary exploration would have to begin to be developed
now,
Makris said. An array of geophones on the icy surface could simultaneously
localize discrete events such as fractures and determine the moon's
ice-layer thickness as well as the thickness of a potential ocean
layer.
SEARCHING FOR WATER
Europa may be the only entity
in our solar system besides Earth that
contains a great deal of water, researchers say, and this mission
would
represent the first time ocean scientists have been involved in
planetary
exploration.
Gravity and magnetic data collected
by the NASA Galileo Orbiter over the
past five years have provided increasing evidence that an ocean
exists
underneath Europa's uniform, 10- to 100-kilometer thick coat of
ice. The
possible ocean on Europa may contain more liquid water than all
the oceans
on Earth combined.
Magnetic studies have indicated
that there must be a conducting layer in
Europa. A salty ocean would fit the bill. Researchers hope to
discover
whether Europa is made up entirely of mushy ice or if it contains
an ocean.
Where there is water, there may be life.
USING SOUND TO "SEE"
Pictures of the planet show
odd, cusp-shaped cracks in the surface. Europa's
numerous fractures and ridges are believed to have formed in response
to
tidal deformations generated by the moon's slightly eccentric
85-hour orbit
around Jupiter.
Inspired by evidence for these
regularly occurring ice fractures, the MIT
researchers propose probing Europa's interior by deploying an
array of
surface microphones that listen to naturally occurring sound.
Knowledge
of ice mechanics suggests that these propagating fractures would
generate
significant acoustic energy in the frequency range 0.1-100 Hz.
Studying the ice sounds would
allow researchers to see if there was a
connection between the moon's orbital period and the ice fractures,
which
occur on Europa once every 30 seconds. Meteors impact Europa about
once a
month and these also could be used as sound sources.
AN ARCTIC EXPLORATION
MIT researchers led by Makris,
Doherty Professor of Ocean Utilization in
MIT's Department of Ocean Engineering, have used sound-based techniques
to
explore the Arctic Ocean. By inserting vibration-sensitive hydrophones
in
the water, researchers used ambient sound to listen for changes
in noise
levels. They found that noise levels increased when winds and
currents put
stresses on the ice.
"Noise levels are like
a thermometer for stress on the ice," Makris said.
"The ice is very sensitive and conducive to sound."
Sound waves made by
large fractures go through the ice and penetrate into the ocean.
These low-frequency sound waves,
akin to those created by whales, get
trapped and can propagate hundreds of kilometers through the water.
Even
if they can't be heard, instruments can pick up their vibrations
from a
distance.
In addition to Makris, the
research team includes ocean engineering
postdoctorate associates Aaron M. Thode and Michele Zanolin and
graduate
students Sunwoong Lee, Purnima Ratilal and Joshua Wilson.
This work is funded by the
Office of Naval Research. Makris is the Secretary
of the Navy/Chief of Naval Operations Scholar of Oceanographic
Sciences.
METHOD UNCOVERED IN MADNESS OF BLACK HOLE AND NEUTRON STAR ERUPTIONS
In the fiery machinery of the
night sky, where neutron stars and black
holes wrapped in binary systems can flare and burst randomly,
astronomers have uncovered a predictable mathematical pattern
in the X-
ray light emitted over time.
Drs. Patricia Boyd and Alan
Smale of NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center
in Greenbelt, MD, have followed the history of X-ray emission
from three
binary star systems over the last several years and uncovered
a unifying
concept: The number of days between the low points of emission
in each
binary system is random yet always based on multiples of a single
constant number.
The scientists say this never-before-seen
pattern reflects the physics
of how matter swirls about and finally pours onto a neutron star,
a star
composed of nuclear matter that has collapsed under its own gravity,
or
into a black hole. They present their findings today at the 198th
Meeting of the American Astronomical Society in Pasadena, CA.
"Neutron stars and black
holes can be simultaneously predictable and
random, like a dice roll," said Boyd. "After many rolls,
statistics tell
us something about the dice, that they each have six unique sides.
Likewise, in binary star systems, we see that lengths of the long
variations (the dice rolls) can be characterized over time by
the
dynamics of the two stars (the shape and numbers on the dice)."
To obtain an uninterrupted
history of a binary star system, the
scientists used an instrument aboard NASA's Rossi X-ray Timing
Explorer
called the All-Sky Monitor (ASM). The ASM has assembled a continuous,
five-year digital record of nearly all local star systems known
to
flicker in X-ray radiation.
Black holes and neutron stars
often reside in binary star systems,
sharing an orbit with a healthy, hydrogen-burning star. Sometimes,
when
the orbits bring the two companions close together or when the
healthy
star flares, gravity pulls gas from the healthy star toward the
black
hole or the neutron star. The journey, arduous enough for the
gas to
glow hot in X-ray radiation, follows a path called an accretion
disk.
Because a black hole is invisible and a neutron star is so tiny
(only
10-20 kilometers across), astronomers best learn about these objects
from the dynamics of the very visible accretion disk.
Boyd and Smale have uncovered
a new tool to probe the physics of the
accretion disk, one that combines the predictability of geometry
and the
randomness of disk disturbances. Their subjects are two probable
black
holes, Cygnus X-3 and LMC X-3, and one neutron star, Cygnus X-2.
Cygnus X-2 has an orbital period,
or length, of 9.8 days. Boyd and Smale
found that the time between minimum X-ray brightness is always
a whole-
number multiple of 9.8 -- for example 77.7 days, 58.8 days or
49 days,
which are 8, 6 and 5 times 9.8. One cannot predict what multiple
will
come next; this is random. The orbital period and the presence
of whole-
number multiples, though, are constant.
Long-term variations in LMC
X-3 and Cygnus X-3 follow the same general
rule: The lengths of the variations are always a whole number
multiplied
by a constant. Finding similar behavior in such different systems
implies that the mechanism for disk disturbances must be tied
to
something as predictable as a clock.
What could cause such clockwork
in a chaotic, flaring system? The
clumpiness and angle of the accretion disk may be one factor.
Scientists
believe that accretion disks can be warped and tilted from the
plane
where the two stars orbit. Gravity makes a tilted disk wobble
like a
spinning top. If a clump in the accretion disk passed between
the two
stars as the disk wobbled, the increased gravitational forces
might set
off the mechanism that disrupts the accretion disk.
The theoretical details of
weaving together both random and predictable
behavior have yet to be worked out. "The interplay between
periodic and
random components in these systems is a puzzle," said Smale.
"Future ASM
data will either show the pattern to continue or reveal an even
more
complex behavior."
Boyd and Smale work within
Goddard's Laboratory for High Energy
Astrophysics through their appointments by the University of Maryland,
Baltimore County, and the Universities Space Research Association,
respectively. The ASM was built by the Massachusetts Institute
of
Technology, Cambridge.
Additional information, illustrations
and animation are available on the
Internet at:
http://rxte.gsfc.nasa.gov/docs/xte/xhp_new.html
SPACE STATION SPACEWALK BRIEFING SET FOR THURSDAY
NASA officials will discuss
plans for the first spacewalk by an
International Space Station crew during a briefing on Thursday,
June 7,
at 2 p.m. EDT, from the Johnson Space Center, Houston.
Briefing participants will
include flight director John Curry, space
walk officer Cindy Begley and scientist John Uri.
Station Commander Yury Usachev
and Flight Engineer Jim Voss will perform
an internal spacewalk beginning at 10:30 a.m. EDT, Friday June
8. The
planned 35-minute spacewalk, will relocate a station component
in
preparation for the arrival of a future Russian component. An
internal
spacewalk involves an astronaut working inside a component exposed
to
the vacuum of space, but not venturing outside a spacecraft.
NASA TV coverage of the spacewalk will begin at 10 a.m. EDT Friday;
however, no live television of the spacewalk is expected. The
briefing
will be carried live on NASA Television with multi-center question-and-
answer capability from participating NASA centers.
Chandra sees wealth of black
holes in star-forming galaxies
NASA's Chandra X-ray Observatory has found new populations of
suspected
mid-mass black holes in several starburst galaxies, where stars form and
explode at an unusually high rate. Although a few of these objects had been
found previously, this is the first time they have been detected in such
large numbers and could help explain their relationship to star formation
and the production of even more massive black holes.
At the 198th meeting of the American Astronomical Society in Pasadena,
Calif., three independent teams of scientists reported finding dozens of
X-ray sources in galaxies aglow with star formation. These X-ray objects
appear point-like and are ten to a thousand times more luminous in X-rays
than similar sources found in our Milky Way and the M81 galaxy.
"Chandra gives us the ability to study the populations of individual bright
X-ray sources in nearby galaxies in extraordinary detail," said Andreas
Zezas, lead author from the Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics team
that observed The Antennae, a pair of colliding galaxies, and M82, a
well-known starburst galaxy. "This allows us to build on earlier detections
of these objects and better understand their relationship to starburst
galaxies."
Kimberly Weaver, of NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Md.,
lead scientist of the team that studied the starburst galaxy NGC 253,
discussed the importance of the unusual concentration of these very luminous
X-ray sources near the center of that galaxy. Four sources, which are tens
to thousands of times more massive than the Sun, are located within 3,000
light years of the galaxy core.
"This may imply that these black holes are gravitating toward the center of
the galaxy where they could coalesce to form a single supermassive black
hole," Weaver suggested. "It could be that this starburst galaxy is
transforming itself into a quasar-like galaxy as we watch. In NGC 253,
Chandra may have found the causal connection between starburst activity and
quasars."
Chandra detected variability and a relatively large ratio of high- to
low-energy X-rays in these sources - two characteristics of superheated gas
falling into black holes. When combined with extreme luminosities, this
tells astronomers that some of these objects must have masses many times
greater than ordinary stellar black holes, if they radiate energy uniformly
in all directions.
Scenarios for the formation of such "intermediate-mass" black holes include
the direct collapse of a single, massive cloud of gas into a black hole, or
the coalescence of a cluster of stellar black holes, but no uniformly
accepted model exists.
An alternative possibility, mentioned by Giuseppina Fabbiano of the
Harvard-Smithsonian team, is that the X-rays from such highly luminous
sources are beamed toward us -- perhaps by a funnel formed by the infalling
matter. This would imply that the mass of the underlying black hole is only
about ten times the mass of the Sun, in line with the known black hole
sources in our galaxy. In this event, they would represent a short-lived
but common stage in the evolution of black holes in close binary star
systems. Long-term monitoring of the very luminous X-ray sources should
distinguish between these possibilities.
Andrew Ptak, led a team from Carnegie-Mellon University in Pittsburgh, Pa.,
and Penn State University, University Park, Pa., that used Chandra data to
survey 37 galaxies. Ptak's team found that 25 percent of galaxies, which
were chosen for their suspected central supermassive black holes and areas
of star formation, had these very luminous X-ray sources. The team plans to
expand their survey with Chandra to assess the probability of finding these
very bright X-ray sources in other types of galaxies.
NASA's Marshall Space Flight Center, Huntsville, Ala., manages the Chandra
program for the Office of Space Science, Washington, DC. TRW, Inc., Redondo
Beach, Calif., is the prime contractor for the spacecraft. The Smithsonian's
Chandra X-ray Center controls science and flight operations from Cambridge,
Mass.
Images associated with this release are available on the World Wide Web at:
AND
June 4, 2001
PEGASUS/HESSI LAUNCH POSTPONED
The launch of NASA's High Energy
Solar Spectroscopic Imager (HESSI)
spacecraft aboard an air-launched Orbital Sciences Corporation
Pegasus
XL launch vehicle scheduled for June 7 has been postponed.
Engineers are working to determine
if there are any associated
technical issues between the X-43A mission failure at Edwards
Air Force
Base, CA, which occurred Saturday, June 2, and the Pegasus XL
vehicle
awaiting launch at Cape Canaveral Air Force Station, FL.
A new launch date on or about
June 12 is targeted. Orbital's L-1011
aircraft, with the Pegasus/HESSI vehicle attached, will remain
at Cape
Canaveral Air Force Station.
VISUALLY IMPAIRED STUDENTS TOUCH THE STARS WITH NEW HUBBLE BOOK
Students who in the past have
not been able to experience some of
NASA's spectacular discoveries now have a unique opportunity to
touch
the stars.
Some of the most majestic space
images from NASA's Hubble Space
Telescope are now part of a special Braille book that combines
tactile
illustrations with striking images of planets, star clusters and
nebulae, as viewed by Hubble.
The book, "Touch the Universe:
A NASA Braille Book of Astronomy," is
the brainchild of Bernhard Beck-Winchatz, an astronomer and faculty
member at DePaul University, Chicago. He undertook the project
to allow
visually impaired students the same opportunities as those who
are
sighted to engage themselves in space science.
Teaming up with astronomer
and author Noreen Grice, Beck-Winchatz
developed this much-needed space science resource book for the
blind
with a $10,000 Hubble Space Telescope grant for education programs.
In 1999, Grice published "Touch
The Stars," a book with touchable
pictures based on drawings of constellations, comets, galaxies
and
other astronomical objects. "I was fascinated by Grice's
book,"
recalled Beck-Winchatz. "I thought it would be intriguing
to create
similar tactile pictures based on real Hubble Space Telescope
images,
but I didn't think this could possibly be a new idea. There are
10
million visually impaired people in the United States; it seemed
outrageous that these resources would not be available before
now."
Grice, who is based in Boston,
originally began experimenting with
techniques to make astronomy more accessible for the visually
impaired
more than 15 years ago after having observed a group of blind
visitors
at the Charles Hayden Planetarium in Boston. Ever since that
experience, she has worked on ways to make science more accessible
to
the blind and other people with physical challenges.
To allow both blind and sighted
readers to enjoy the Hubble images in
"Touch the Universe," Grice developed clear tactile
overlays for each
image. The overlays were sent to Benning Wentworth, a science
teacher
and astronomy enthusiast at the Colorado School for the Deaf and
the
Blind in Colorado Springs. His students evaluated each image for
clarity and provided important suggestions for needed changes.
"Based on the students'
comments, I was able to revise the images and
make aluminum master plates," said Grice. With the final
plates,
plastic overlays were produced in a heat vacuum, or thermoform,
machine. The tactile thermoform pages, placed in front of the
color HST
images, make these images accessible to readers of all visual
abilities.
The book is for middle school
students, high school students, and
adults alike and is expected to attract the attention of mainstream
educators, a number of whom already use Grice's first tactile
book in
science classes. Four hundred copies will be printed in the first
run,
and the book will sell for slightly above production cost so earnings
can offset future updates and production of a second edition.
For Beck-Winchatz, helping
to create such a valuable resource tool has
been rewarding. "Scientists often live in ivory towers,"
said Beck-
Winchatz. "It is only through partnerships like this that
we get to
share what we are doing. However, educational endeavors like this
one
require money. The grants for education from NASA's Office of
Space
Science allow us to branch out of pure science and use some of
the
results of research to affect the lives of the general public,
and in
this case, the blind and visually impaired."
Photos of students from the
Colorado School for the Deaf and Blind
examining images from "Touch the Universe" are available
on the
Internet at:
http://analyzer.depaul.edu/ttu
These Weeks on Galileo
June 4 - 24, 2001
Galileo, the spacecraft, is
now settling into a 3-week-long period of
extreme rest, even while Galileo, the flight team, is gearing
up in
planning for the next flyby in early August. On Monday, June 4,
the
spacecraft enters a period called solar conjunction. Each year
there comes
a time when Jupiter, with Galileo in orbit around it, appears
to pass
behind the Sun. On Monday, the angle between the Sun and Galileo
with Earth
at the apex shrinks to less than 7 degrees. At this point, even
in the best
of circumstances, the noise from the solar atmosphere interferes
with the
radio signal from Galileo, making reception of the science and
engineering
data doubtful. This year in particular, with the Sun reaching
the time in
its activity cycle called solar maximum, the interference is particularly
bad, and some of our planned data return has already been lost
in the
noise. On Wednesday, June 13, the apparent separation between
Galileo and
the Sun as seen from Earth reaches its minimum of a third of a
degree.
So for now, the spacecraft
systems have been battened down and prepared for
the long dry spell. The routine maintenance activities are complete,
the
playback of data from the on-board tape recorder is paused, and
the
computer routines that look for regular communications from Earth
have been
told not to expect any messages for the duration. There is no
increased
risk to the spacecraft during this time, but our inability to
see what's
going on makes us wary of performing any activities.
The sole exceptions to this
enforced quiet are for the Extreme Ultraviolet
Spectrometer (EUV) instrument, and passive support of a radio
science
experiment. EUV is continuing to look for variations in the Sun's
output by
looking for light reflected off of interplanetary hydrogen gas.
This is a
simple task, however, which only involves storing the science
data in
buffer areas of computer memory. Radio science investigators in
Germany
take this opportunity to study the way the radio signal is affected
by its
journey through the Sun's atmosphere. This provides information
about the
structure, content, and dynamics of the gases streaming out from
the Sun.
This study relies on the primary radio signal itself, not on the
correct
reception of the ones and zeros which are the meat and potatoes
of the
remaining science telemetry.
MISSION: STS-104 - 10th ISS Flight (7A) - Airlock
VEHICLE: Atlantis/OV-104
LOCATION: Vehicle Assembly Building (VAB)
TARGET KSC LAUNCH DATE/TIME: NET July 2, 2001 at 9:02 a.m. EDT
TARGET KSC LANDING DATE/TIME: July 13, 2001 at 5:03 a.m.
MISSION DURATION: 10 days, 20 hours and 1 minute
CREW: Lindsey, Hobaugh, Kavandi, Gernhardt, Reilly
ORBITAL INSERTION ALTITUDE and INCLINATION: 122 nautical miles/51.6
degrees
Shuttle Processing Note: Pending
resolution of the International Space
Station's robot arm problem, managers are targeting a launch of
Space
Shuttle Atlantis no earlier than July 2. Orbiter Atlantis has
been mated to
the external tank and solid rocket boosters in VAB high bay 1.
Final
support connections are being made today and the Shuttle Interface
Test is
scheduled for Tuesday and Wednesday of this week. Atlantis will
roll out to
the launch pad no earlier than June 11 with first motion at 2
a.m.
Payload Processing Note: The
U.S. Airlock remains in the pad's payload
changeout room. No work is scheduled until Atlantis is delivered
to the pad.
The IMAX 3D camera, currently in the Operations and Checkout building,
will
be delivered to the pad and installed into the orbiter following
rollout.
MISSION: STS-105 - 11th ISS Flight (7A.1) - Leonardo MPLM
VEHICLE: Discovery/OV-103
LOCATION: Orbiter Processing Facility bay 2
TARGET KSC LAUNCH DATE/TIME: No earlier than Aug. 5, 2001
TARGET KSC LANDING DATE/TIME: Aug. 16, 2001
MISSION DURATION: 11 days
CREW: Horowitz, Sturckow, Barry, Forrester; (ISS up) Culbertson,
Dezhurov,
Turin; (ISS down) Usachev, Voss, Helms,
ORBITAL INSERTION ALTITUDE and INCLINATION: 122 nautical miles/51.6
degrees
Shuttle Processing Note: Technicians
are working to closeout orbiter
Discovery's aft engine compartment. Routine tests of the orbital
maneuvering system and reaction control system flight controls
are scheduled
this week. Managers plan to transfer Discovery to the VAB June
12. Once
there, the orbiter will be mated to the external tank and solid
rocket
boosters in VAB high bay 3.
Payload Processing Note: Experiment
and supply rack installations on the
Leonardo Multi-Purpose Logistics Module (MPLM) in the Space Station
Processing Facility were completed last week. Aft access closure
to the MPLM
is tentatively set for late today. Leak checks and heater testing
will be
conducted later this week. The MPLM is scheduled to be delivered
to the pad
June 29.
MISSION: STS-108 - 12th ISS Flight (UF1) -Raffaello MPLM
VEHICLE: Endeavour/OV-105
LOCATION: Orbiter Processing Facility bay 1
TARGET KSC LAUNCH DATE/TIME: Nov. 29, 2001
TARGET KSC LANDING DATE/TIME: Dec. 9, 2001
MISSION DURATION: 10 days
CREW: Gorie, Kelly, Godwin, Tani; (ISS up) Onufrienko, Bursch,
Walz; (ISS
down) Culbertson, Dezhurov, Turin
ORBITAL INSERTION ALTITUDE and INCLINATION: 122 nautical miles/51.6
degrees
Shuttle Processing Note: Endeavour's
orbital maneuvering system pod checks
continue and checks of the orbiter's power reactant storage and
distribution
system are under way. Technicians are also testing the main engine
thrust
vector control system.
MISSION: STS-109 - HST Servicing Mission 3B
VEHICLE: Columbia/OV-102
LOCATION: Orbiter Processing Facility bay 3
TARGET KSC LAUNCH DATE/TIME: Jan. 17, 2002
TARGET KSC LANDING DATE/TIME: Jan. 28, 2002
MISSION DURATION: TBD
CREW: Altman, Carey, Grunsfeld, Currie, Newman, Linnehan, Massimino
ORBITAL INSERTION ALTITUDE and INCLINATION: 308 nautical miles/28.5
degrees
Shuttle Processing Note: Orbiter
Columbia was powered up for testing last
Friday. Subsystem testing is now in work and the payload bay doors
will be
opened tomorrow.
June 3, 2001
Cassini Weekly Significant
Events
for 05/24/01 - 05/31/01
The most recent spacecraft
telemetry was acquired from the Goldstone
tracking station Tuesday May 29. The Cassini spacecraft is in
an excellent
state of health and is operating normally. Information on the
spacecraft's position and speed can be viewed on the "Present
Position"
web page at ( "http://www.jpl.nasa.gov/cassini/english/where/" ) .
Recent spacecraft activities
included a Radio and Plasma Wave Science
(RPWS) High Frequency Receiver (HFR) calibration, a high water
mark clear,
and an Attitude and Articulation Control Subsystem (AACS) Reaction
Wheel
Assembly (RWA) Slow Time Memory Readout. The D7.4 modules file
was
successfully uplinked to the spacecraft with confirmation that
all four
module programs registered as expected. Periodic Instrument Maintenance
(PIM) operations were performed for the Ultraviolet Imaging Spectrograph
(UVIS), Imaging Science Subsystem (ISS), Composite Infrared Spectrometer
(CIRS), Visual and Infrared Mapping Spectrometer (VIMS), and RADAR
instruments, with initial indications showing nominal execution.
ISS
performed both a photometric calibration and a dark frames activity.
Additionally, AACS performed a Reaction Control Subsystem (RCS)
Catbed
Heater test to verify an AACS thermal heating model. Initial results
show
good agreement.
The Radio Science (RS) Ka-Band
Translator (KaT) was powered-on for Solar
Conjunction Experiment (SCE) testing, after having been off since
the
first Gravitational Wave Experiment (GWE) system test completed
earlier
this month. While previous testing had developed a successful
procedure to
achieve and maintain the KaT at a good operating state, telemetry
during
recent activities with the KaT and S-Band Translator (SBT) on
simultaneously showed that the KaT was not operating properly
with the SBT
powered-on. The KaT was power-cycled according to the new procedure
but
still failed to operate properly. The RS team powered off the
SBT and then
allowed the Radio Frequency Instrument Subsystem bay to reach
a stable
thermal point. The KaT was power-cycled again, after which it
attained a
good operating state. The KaT will remain powered-on for the duration
of
the SCE testing, and the KaT behavior studied further
The Sequence Virtual Team (SVT)
completed the Subsequence Generation Phase
for C27 Sequence development with all instrument teams and engineering
subsystems delivering their populated command subsequences. The
SVT has
begun the Preliminary Sequence Integration and Validation phase
for C27
Sequence development, and released the integrated sequence late
this week.
The Mission Support & Services
Office (MSSO) Verification and Validation
(V&V) test network is up and running.
A "Cassini Export Compliance
and Security Requirements" meeting was held.
This meeting was co-produced by the Office of Legislative and
International Affairs and MSSO/Computer Security. The primary
objective of
the meeting was to explain the current U.S. Export rules, regulations,
and
security requirements including International Traffic in Arms
Regulation
(ITAR) and Export Administration Regulations (EAR), and how those
regulations affect the Cassini Flight Team specifically and JPL
employees,
US nationals, and foreign nationals in general.
The Project Science Group (PSG)
meeting agenda was released for the
upcoming meeting to be held in Oxford, England late June.
The Uplink Operations (ULO)
team distributed MSS D7.6 Module Functionality
Review materials in support of a pending review. ULO also presented
a
proposal for the first delivery of the Solid State Recorder (SSR)
Management Tool (SMT), which includes a summary of initial requirements
to
be met and capabilities to be provided by the SMT.
System Engineering (SE) held
a preliminary Delivery Coordination Meeting
(DCM) to ensure that the ULO/MSS delivery of the Science Opportunity
Analyzer tool is ready to be installed on the OPSNET and on the
Science
Operations and Planning Computers (SOPCs). Issues regarding ITAR,
testing
and configuration were discussed; everything was found to be in
order and
the final DCM is scheduled for later this week.
SE also signed three Software
Interface Specifications (SISs) to support
the Maneuver Automation Tool. While each SIS had already existed,
some
minor modifications and additions were required.
Cassini is a cooperative project
of NASA, the European Space Agency and
the Italian Space Agency. The Jet Propulsion Laboratory, a division
of the
California Institute of Technology in Pasadena, Calif., manages
the Cassini
mission for NASA's Office of Space Science, Washington, D.C.
Cassini Outreach
Cassini Mission to Saturn and Titan
Jet Propulsion Laboratory
California Institute of Technology
National Aeronautics and Space Administration
Jupiter Particles' Escape Route Found
Jupiter's magnetosphere, an
ionized-gas bubble encasing the planet, is
lopsided and leaky, with an unexpected abundance of high-energy
particles
bleeding out of one side, according to recent measurements by
NASA's
Cassini spacecraft.
Those escaping electrons and
ions might be riding magnetic field lines
that are attached to Jupiter at one end and waving loose on the
other,
unlike more common lines that loop between Jupiter's north and
south
hemispheres closer to the planet.
Deciphering the process could
advance understanding of the protective
magnetic field around Earth, as well as the much greater one around
Jupiter, said Dr. Dennis Matson, Cassini project scientist at
NASA's Jet
Propulsion Laboratory, Pasadena, Calif. Jupiter's magnetosphere
is so
vast that if it shined at wavelengths visible to the eye, it would
appear
from Earth to be two to three times wider than the disc of the
Sun, even
though it is more than four times as far away.
"The dusk flank of Jupiter's
magnetosphere is a surprising contrast to
the dawn flank," said Dr. Stamatios (Tom) Krimigis, a Cassini
scientist
who heads the space department of the Johns Hopkins University's
Applied
Physics Laboratory, Laurel, Md. Cassini spent most of January
and
February skating along the magnetosphere's dusk flank, which is
on the
side of the planet turning away from the Sun. Other spacecraft,
such as
Voyager, previously sampled the opposite flank, corresponding
to Jupiter's
dawn side.
Cassini was flying past Jupiter
last winter for a gravity boost to reach
Saturn. Researchers grabbed the opportunity to study the giant
planet from
different vantage points by also using NASA's Galileo spacecraft,
which is
orbiting Jupiter, plus other spacecraft and ground-based telescopes,
in
coordination with Cassini's Jupiter observations. More than 20
scientists
are presenting some preliminary results from that campaign during
meetings
of the American Geophysical Union in Boston this week.
The electrons Cassini caught
escaping may answer a puzzle. Scientists had
figured that some electrons were getting out of Jupiter's magnetosphere,
sometimes even reaching Earth's neighborhood, but they didn't
know the
primary route. "It appears we've found where they're coming
from,"
Krimigis said.
Dr. John Clarke of the University
of Michigan, Ann Arbor, used a movie
taken by NASA's Hubble Space Telescope of Jupiter's auroras while
Cassini
and Galileo were monitoring Jupiter's magnetosphere and the solar
wind, a
flow of particles speeding away from the Sun and deflected around
the
magnetic fields of planets. Clarke said that movements of the
auroral
glows indicate which features in them are linked to the magnetosphere,
because they follow the rotation of the magnetic field, and which
are
linked to solar-wind effects, because their positions stay oriented
with
respect to the direction toward the Sun.
The timing and location of
one patch of auroral brightening captured by
Hubble corresponded to a pulse of electrons detected by Galileo
in the
magnetosphere. That pulse appears to have been a type that also
occurs in
Earth's magnetosphere, said Dr. Barry Mauk of Johns Hopkins University's
Applied Physics Lab, Laurel, Md., team member on the energetic
particle
detector experiment on Galileo. "Energy builds up in the
system, pulling
the magnetic field lines outward like rubber bands, but eventually
these
rubber bands can snap back toward the planet," Mauk said.
The snapping
back brings an injection of high-energy electrons, he said.
Having Galileo inside Jupiter's
magnetosphere at the same time Cassini was
just outside of it in the solar wind gave scientists a chance
to see
whether such injections are triggered by fluctuations in the solar
wind,
as can happen at Earth. No obvious solar wind event corresponded
to the
injections seen by Galileo. "It appears injections can happen
without
being externally stimulated," Mauk said.
The solar wind does appear
to have tipped features of Jupiter's
magnetosphere northward part of the time during the Galileo and
Cassini
joint studies, said Dr. Margaret Kivelson of the University of
California,
Los Angeles, principal investigator for Galileo's magnetometer
instrument.
That gave Galileo a taste of conditions that are usually farther
south,
and it found that magnetic field lines there twist differently
than they
do near the equatorial plane.
"It's as if a hula dancer
had a skirt made of ribbons that fly out as she
twirls, but at one layer the ribbons twirl in one direction and
at a
different layer they twirl in the other direction," Kivelson
said.
Jupiter's moon Io has its own
auroras, which Cassini captured in images
taken while Io was in Jupiter's shadow. "We could see that
bright blue
emissions near the equator move around in a way that tells us
their
source," said Dr. Paul Geissler of the University of Arizona,
Tucson. The
electron flow causing gases to glow there comes from an electrical
current
running between Io and Jupiter, he said. A new color movie clip
of the
images is available at:
http://www.jpl.nasa.gov/jupiterflyby
http://www.jpl.nasa.gov/images/jupiter
http://ciclops.lpl.arizona.edu/
http://www.jpl.nasa.gov/cassini
In addition, Io's volcanoes
put out about a ton per second of gases such
as oxygen and sulfur. These are spun out of Jupiter's magnetosphere
and
form a "Jovian nebula" that extends tens of millions
of kilometers or
miles away from Jupiter, Krimigis found with one of Cassini's
sensors. "We
have even detected sulfur dioxide a long way from Jupiter,"
he said.
More information about the
joint Cassini and Galileo studies of Jupiter
is available at http://www.jpl.nasa.gov/jupiterflyby . JPL, a
division of
the California Institute of Technology in Pasadena, manages Cassini
and
Galileo for NASA's Office of Space Science, Washington, D.C. Cassini
is a
joint project of NASA and the European Space Agency. The Space
Telescope
Science Institute in Baltimore, Md., manages Hubble.
Crescents Slice the Darkness in "Farewell Jupiter" Picture by Cassini
Jupiter shines as a crescent,
with a much smaller crescent moon Io by
its side, in a color picture taken by NASA's Cassini spacecraft
looking
back at the Jupiter after flying past it five months ago.
That "farewell, Jupiter"
image plus a color movie clip of glowing features
on Io during an eclipse are now available online from NASA's Jet
Propulsion Laboratory, Pasadena, Calif., at
http://www.jpl.nasa.gov/images/jupiter
and from the Cassini Imaging
Science team at the University of Arizona,
Tucson, at
http://ciclops.lpl.arizona.edu/ .
The eclipse movie is being
presented at meetings of the American
Geophysical Union in Boston today. In the sequence of images used
to
create it, Cassini caught Io's auroras in motion and detected
emissions at
previously unknown wavelengths. Red glows from oxygen atoms and
blue glows
from sulfur dioxide molecules in the images, along with thermal
glows from
hot lava at several active volcanoes.
Cassini passed its closest
to Jupiter on Dec. 30, 2000, gaining a
gravitational boost for reaching its main destination, Saturn,
in 2004.
More information about joint studies of Jupiter by Cassini and
NASA's
Galileo spacecraft, which has been orbiting Jupiter for more than
five
years, is available at http://jpl.nasa.gov/jupiterflyby .
Cassini is a cooperative project
of NASA, the European Space Agency and
the Italian Space Agency. JPL manages the Cassini and Galileo
missions for
NASA's Office of Space Science, Washington, D.C. JPL is a division
of the
California Institute of Technology in Pasadena.
June 2, 2001
PUBLIC INVITED TO FREE LECTURE ON THE SEARCH FOR LIFE
Are we alone in the universe?
That tantalizing question
will be addressed in a free, public lecture by the director of
JPL's Center for Life Detection, Dr. Kenneth Nealson, on
Monday, June 4, during the semi-annual American Astronomical
Society meeting at the Pasadena Conference Center.
The lecture, "Searching
for Life in the Universe:
Lessons from the Earth," will feature Nealson discussing
ways
we can apply our knowledge of how life evolves and thrives on
Earth to our search for life elsewhere. The lecture begins at
7:30 p.m. in Room C101-105 of the Pasadena Conference Center,
300 East Green Street, Pasadena, California.
At best, the search for life
beyond our own planet is an
inexact science. Recent studies of microbes on Earth have
convinced scientists that life is tougher and more persistent
than we might have imagined 20 years ago. If life can survive
in hostile environments on Earth, such as in boiling, toxic
thermal vents on the ocean floor, might it also be found in
unlikely niches on other planets?
In addition, the discovery
of dozens of planets around
far-off suns has triggered even more speculation about
possible alien life.
Nealson will explain the challenges
of looking for life
beyond our planet while avoiding the assumption that life
elsewhere would be like Earthly life. More information on JPL
and NASA research efforts in this area are available at
http://origins.jpl.nasa.gov/astrobiology/astrobiology.html .
More information on the American
Astronomical Society
meeting is available at http://www.aas.org .
JPL is a division of the California
Institute of
Technology in Pasadena.
X-43A RESEARCH AIRCRAFT DESTROYED AFTER IN-FLIGHT ANOMALY
A NASA X-43A hypersonic unpiloted
research aircraft was destroyed
today while on a flight originating from the Dryden Flight Research
Center, Edwards, Calif.
Following pre-launch countdown
and separation from the B-52, a
malfunction occurred five seconds in to the boost phase that caused
the Hyper-X stack (Hyper-X vehicle and booster) to depart from
controlled flight. The debris impacted within the pre-cleared
range
impact area in the Pacific Ocean.
The mishap occurred at 1:45 p.m. PDT.
There was no damage to property
on the ground, and there were no
injuries and no damage to the carrier aircraft. A team of qualified
personnel is being formed to investigate the cause of the mishap.
This mission was the first
of three flights to demonstrate an
airframe-integrated, "air-breathing" propulsion system
design called
a scramjet, which so far has only been tested in ground facilities,
such as wind tunnels.
A ramjet operates by subsonic
combustion of fuel in a stream of air
compressed by the forward speed of the aircraft itself, as opposed
to
a jet engine where a compressor section compresses the air. The
scramjet is a ramjet engine in which the airflow through the whole
engine remains supersonic. The fuel for the X-43A is hydrogen.
Unlike a rocket that must carry
its own oxygen for combustion, an
air-breathing engine scoops oxygen from the atmosphere. Without
the
need to carry oxygen, an air-breathing engine powered vehicle
can
carry more payload than a rocket-powered propulsion vehicle. The
X-43
will use the body of the aircraft to form critical elements of
the
engine with the forebody acting as the intake for the airflow
and
using the aft section as the nozzle.
The X-43A is a 12-foot-long,
unpiloted research vehicle. The booster
accelerates the X-43A until it separates at a predetermined altitude
and velocity to fly a pre-programmed trajectory. Two more research
flights are planned--one flight at Mach 7 and one at Mach 10.
Following the separation, the X-43A will conduct aerodynamic and
propulsion experiments until it impacts into the Pacific Ocean.
NASA Langley Research Center,
Hampton, Va., has overall management of
the program and leads the technology effort. NASA Dryden Flight
Research Center is the lead for both flight operations and flight
research. Dryden engineers are working closely with their colleagues
from Langley and industry.
MARS MISSION UPDATE VIA WEBCAST
Mars scientists from NASA's
Jet Propulsion Laboratory,
Pasadena, Calif., will give the latest report about the 2001
Mars Odyssey mission, now en route to the mysterious red
planet, in a webcast available for viewing starting June 7,
2001 at 11 a.m. Pacific Time.
JPL scientist Dr. Claudia Alexander
will host the
webcast, which will feature answers to questions submitted in
advance, along with interesting images and cool animations of
Mars.
Dr. Roger Gibbs, the 2001 Odyssey
Mars spacecraft
manager, will answer questions on the mission's progress and
how the spacecraft will perform 'aerobraking' in the Martian
atmosphere. Dr. Jeff Plaut, the mission's deputy project
scientist, will talk about the science the team hopes to
accomplish while Odyssey orbits Mars.
To submit questions, visit
http://www.jpl.nasa.gov/webcast/mars_odyssey .
A link to the webcast is located
at
http://www.jpl.nasa.gov .
The Mars Odyssey mission is
managed by the Jet Propulsion
Laboratory for NASA's Office of Space Science, Washington,
D.C. JPL is a division of the California Institute of
Technology in Pasadena. The Odyssey spacecraft was built by
Lockheed Martin Astronautics, Denver, Colo.
June 1, 2001
DR. ABE SILVERSTEIN, EARLY
ARCHITECT OF THE APOLLO MOON
LANDING, DIES
Dr. Able Silverstein, a leading
figure in 20th century
aerospace engineering and director of NASA Lewis Research
Center from 1961 to 1969, now the John H. Glenn Research
Center Lewis Field, Cleveland, OH, died early today. He was
92.
Dr. Silverstein began his career
with NASA's predecessor, the
National Advisory Committee for Aeronautics (NACA), at its
Langley Research Center in Hampton, VA, in 1929. In 1943, he
transferred to the NACA Laboratory in Cleveland, where he
performed pioneering research on large-scale ramjet engines.
After World War II, Silverstein
conceived, designed and
constructed the first U.S. supersonic propulsion wind tunnel.
The 10 foot by 10 foot Supersonic Wind Tunnel is still
operational at Glenn, which supported the development of
supersonic aircraft.
In 1958, Dr. Silverstein moved
to NACA Headquarters in
Washington, DC, where he helped create and then directed
efforts leading to the Mercury space flights. He later named
and laid the groundwork for the Apollo missions that put the
first man on the Moon.
"NASA has lost a true
founding member. Early in my career, I
had the opportunity to work with Dr. Silverstein. He was a man
of vision and conviction," said NASA Administrator Daniel
S.
Goldin. "His effective leadership, both at Headquarters and
at
Lewis, directly contributed to the ultimate success of
America's unmanned and human space programs, and his
innovative, pioneering spirit lives on in the work we do
today."
When he returned to Cleveland
to become Director of NASA
Lewis, Dr. Silverstein was a driving force behind the creation
of the Centaur launch vehicle, particularly the hydrogen-
oxygen upper stage propulsion system. Dr. Silverstein
demonstrated that liquid hydrogen was light, powerful and safe
enough to use for rocket propulsion, thus getting the nation's
space program off the ground.
In 1997, Silverstein received
the prestigious Guggenheim Medal
for his "technical contributions and visionary leadership
in
advancing technology of aircraft and propulsion performance,
and foresight in establishing the Mercury and Gemini manned
space flight activities."
"NASA Glenn is an outstanding
Center because of Abe's
leadership when NASA was a growing organization. He was an
exceptionally talented engineer whose pioneering work paved
the way to many successes," said Glenn Center Director Donald
J. Campbell. "He was by far the cornerstone for many of the
accomplishments at Glenn."
Additional information regarding
the career of Dr. Silverstein
is available on the Internet at:
http://history.nasa.gov/bioso-s.html#silverstein
http://ctd.grc.nasa.gov/history/abe.html
NASA CLIMATE MODELING SPURS NEXT COMPUTING REVOLUTION
NASA would like to examine
our home planet just as
scientists study living cells under a microscope or an atom in
an accelerator. NASA wants to understand how nature's energy
is transformed and used by Earth, and the role it plays in
global climate change.
Advanced computing systems
are the only tools we have to model
our planet as a whole interactive system to mimic nature's
behavior. NASA's Earth Science Enterprise is dedicated to
developing computer models that will unlock the secrets to how
natural and human-induced changes impact our global
environment.
Unlike atoms and cells, which
can be studied in the
laboratory, the only effective way to study the inner workings
and future course of our environment is through advanced
computer modeling capabilities, which will show global climate
change through computation of massive and complex mathematical
relationships.
"Through math and science,
and the advancement of our computer
capabilities, we can unlock the mysteries of our planet's life
cycle," said Dr. Ghassem Asrar, Associate Administrator for
the Office of Earth Sciences, NASA Headquarters, Washington,
DC.
"Currently, we model the
climate system in a degree by degree,
latitudinal and longitudinal grids, allowing us to examine
global and continental atmospheric and oceanic conditions,"
Asrar said. "That resolution lets us see what is happening
in
the current and near term climate system, but not in the long
run and why change is happening, and the consequences of such
change at local levels."
"Today we're announcing
the selection of nine proposals that
span across all of NASA that we expect to mature into advanced
computing systems that will be robust enough to handle massive
amounts of data every second -- the kind of platforms that
will be able to incorporate vast amounts of Earth Sciences
data in 'living' models of our global climate, yet able to
resolve regional and perhaps local phenomena such as severe
storms and hurricanes," Asrar added.
"These computer models
will incorporate factors such as
chemistry of the atmosphere and the physics of clouds and the
variability in the Sun's radiation that reaches Earth.
Increasing our computer capabilities into an advanced
interface that allows for multi-discipline scientific models
to operate together in a coherent, interoperable computing
environment is the only way we can achieve the nation's goal
of understanding long-term global climate change. The
selection of these proposals will take us down the path toward
improving both weather and climate predictive capabilities by
three to five times over our current computing power.
"We need to make a leap
from today's segmented and
evolutionary systems to a unified, revolutionary pathway into
the future of advanced computing," Asrar concluded.
NASA's efforts initiated here
constitute a direct response to
recommendations made recently by the National Research Council
(NRC) in its report Improving the Effectiveness of U.S.
Climate Modeling. In this study, the NRC states that efforts
in climate modeling need to be linked together and with
related efforts in the broader research community through a
common infrastructure. The selected efforts, which constitute
the combined efforts of scientists within NASA, other
government agencies and the academic community, should greatly
facilitate this needed component of the overall effort.
The connection between NASA's
efforts and those of the other
federal agencies that constitute the U.S. Global Change
Research Program also is crucial to the improvement of the
nation's climate modeling capability. A recent USGCRP report,
"High-End Climate Science: Development of Modeling and Related
Computing Capabilities," also made the argument for the
development of a software infrastructure to support climate
research such as has been initiated here by NASA.
NASA has selected nine proposals
in response to an Agency-wide
solicitation titled "Increasing Interoperability and
Performance of Grand Challenges Applications in the Earth,
Space, Life and Microgravity Sciences," announced in 2000.
The
proposals selected will now have their costs negotiated, with
science teams expected to finish a joint-framework policy by
2003.
NASA has committed $18 million
to this development phase, with
the expectation that the first advanced Earth System Models
will begin production in 2004. Additional tasks selected in
response to this announcement cover a broad variety of topics
in Earth and space science. NASA will subsequently announce
individual team selections and award values this fall.
JUPITER PARTICLES' ESCAPE ROUTE FOUND
Jupiter's magnetosphere, an
ionized-gas bubble encasing
the planet, is lopsided and leaky, with an unexpected
abundance of high-energy particles bleeding out of one side,
according to recent measurements by NASA's Cassini spacecraft.
Those escaping electrons and
ions might be riding
magnetic field lines that are attached to Jupiter at one end
and waving loose on the other, unlike more common lines that
loop between Jupiter's north and south hemispheres closer to
the planet.
Deciphering the process could
advance understanding of
the protective magnetic field around Earth, as well as the
much greater one around Jupiter, said Dr. Dennis Matson,
Cassini project scientist at NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory,
Pasadena, Calif. Jupiter's magnetosphere is so vast that if
it shined at wavelengths visible to the eye, it would appear
from Earth to be two to three times wider than the disc of the
Sun, even though it is more than four times as far away.
"The dusk flank of Jupiter's
magnetosphere is a
surprising contrast to the dawn flank," said Dr. Stamatios
(Tom) Krimigis, a Cassini scientist who heads the space
department of the Johns Hopkins University's Applied Physics
Laboratory, Laurel, Md. Cassini spent most of January and
February skating along the magnetosphere's dusk flank, which
is on the side of the planet turning away from the Sun. Other
spacecraft, such as Voyager, previously sampled the opposite
flank, corresponding to Jupiter's dawn side.
Cassini was flying past Jupiter
last winter for a gravity
boost to reach Saturn. Researchers grabbed the opportunity to
study the giant planet from different vantage points by also
using NASA's Galileo spacecraft, which is orbiting Jupiter,
plus other spacecraft and ground-based telescopes, in
coordination with Cassini's Jupiter observations. More than 20
scientists are presenting some preliminary results from that
campaign during meetings of the American Geophysical Union in
Boston this week.
The electrons Cassini caught
escaping may answer a
puzzle. Scientists had figured that some electrons were
getting out of Jupiter's magnetosphere, sometimes even
reaching Earth's neighborhood, but they didn't know the
primary route. "It appears we've found where they're coming
from," Krimigis said.
Dr. John Clarke of the University
of Michigan, Ann Arbor,
used a movie taken by NASA's Hubble Space Telescope of
Jupiter's auroras while Cassini and Galileo were monitoring
Jupiter's magnetosphere and the solar wind, a flow of
particles speeding away from the Sun and deflected around the
magnetic fields of planets. Clarke said that movements of the
auroral glows indicate which features in them are linked to
the magnetosphere, because they follow the rotation of the
magnetic field, and which are linked to solar-wind effects,
because their positions stay oriented with respect to the
direction toward the Sun.
The timing and location of
one patch of auroral
brightening captured by Hubble corresponded to a pulse of
electrons detected by Galileo in the magnetosphere. That pulse
appears to have been a type that also occurs in Earth's
magnetosphere, said Dr. Barry Mauk of Johns Hopkins
University's Applied Physics Lab, Laurel, Md., team member on
the energetic particle detector experiment on Galileo. "Energy
builds up in the system, pulling the magnetic field lines
outward like rubber bands, but eventually these rubber bands
can snap back toward the planet," Mauk said. The snapping
back
brings an injection of high-energy electrons, he said.
Having Galileo inside Jupiter's
magnetosphere at the same
time Cassini was just outside of it in the solar wind gave
scientists a chance to see whether such injections are
triggered by fluctuations in the solar wind, as can happen at
Earth. No obvious solar wind event corresponded to the
injections seen by Galileo. "It appears injections can happen
without being externally stimulated," Mauk said.
The solar wind does appear
to have tipped features of
Jupiter's magnetosphere northward part of the time during the
Galileo and Cassini joint studies, said Dr. Margaret Kivelson
of the University of California, Los Angeles, principal
investigator for Galileo's magnetometer instrument. That gave
Galileo a taste of conditions that are usually farther south,
and it found that magnetic field lines there twist differently
than they do near the equatorial plane.
"It's as if a hula dancer
had a skirt made of ribbons
that fly out as she twirls, but at one layer the ribbons twirl
in one direction and at a different layer they twirl in the
other direction," Kivelson said.
Jupiter's moon Io has its own
auroras, which Cassini
captured in images taken while Io was in Jupiter's shadow. "We
could see that bright blue emissions near the equator move
around in a way that tells us their source," said Dr. Paul
Geissler of the University of Arizona, Tucson. The electron
flow causing gases to glow there comes from an electrical
current running between Io and Jupiter, he said. A new color
movie clip of the images is available at
http://www.jpl.nasa.gov/images/jupiter and at
http://ciclops.lpl.arizona.edu/ .
In addition, Io's volcanoes
put out about a ton per
second of gases such as oxygen and sulfur. These are spun out
of Jupiter's magnetosphere and form a "Jovian nebula"
that
extends tens of millions of kilometers or miles away from
Jupiter, Krimigis found with one of Cassini's sensors. "We
have even detected sulfur dioxide a long way from Jupiter,"
he
said.
More information about the
joint Cassini and Galileo
studies of Jupiter is available at
http://www.jpl.nasa.gov/jupiterflyby . JPL, a division of the
California Institute of Technology in Pasadena, manages
Cassini and Galileo for NASA's Office of Space Science,
Washington, D.C. Cassini is a joint project of NASA and the
European Space Agency. The Space Telescope Science Institute
in Baltimore, Md., manages Hubble.
HESSI SPACECRAFT TO STEAL
EXPLOSIVE SOLAR
SECRETS WITH X-RAY VISION
A new NASA spacecraft will
soon be studying gigantic
explosions in the atmosphere of the Sun with a unique kind of
X-ray vision, producing the first high-fidelity color movies
of solar flares in their highest energy emissions.
"The Sun has a trick that nobody totally understands,"
said
Dr. Richard Fisher, Chief of the Laboratory for Astronomy and
Solar Physics at NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center,
Greenbelt, MD. "It can take magnetic energy and turn it into
a stunningly powerful blast of heat, light and radiation.
NASA's High Energy Solar Spectroscopic Imager (HESSI) will
finally unlock the secrets of the initiation and onset of
flares."
HESSI is scheduled to take off June 7 at 9 a.m. EDT from Cape
Canaveral Air Force Station, FL aboard a Stargazer L-1011
aircraft. The Stargazer cradles HESSI under its belly, stored
inside A Pegasus rocket. At 10:05 a.m. EDT, the aircraft
should release the Pegasus and deliver the spacecraft to its
circular orbit 373 miles above the Earth, inclined at 38
degrees to the equator.
Within the gigantic flare explosions,
magnetic fields twist,
snap and recombine, blasting particles to almost the speed of
light, firing solar gas to tens of millions of degrees. This
action causes the solar atmosphere to sizzle with high-energy
X-rays and gamma rays and accelerate proton and electron
particles into the solar system. Radiation and particles from
solar flares sometimes affect orbiting spacecraft,
interfering with communications and astronaut activities.
In order to understand what
triggers a solar flare and how it
explosively releases energy, scientists must identify the
different kinds of particles being accelerated, locate the
regions where the acceleration occurs and determine when the
particles get accelerated. The most direct tracer of these
accelerated particles is the X-ray and gamma ray radiation
that they produce as they travel through the solar
atmosphere.
To understand the physical
processes and conditions inside
flares, HESSI will create images in gamma rays and the
highest energy X-rays emitted by the flare. These images will
be the first to simultaneously measure the location and
energy content of radiation from the flare material. This
kind of data is expected to improve predictability of flare
occurrence at the Sun and the subsequent consequences we
experience here on Earth. Using the Sun as a laboratory,
where such high-energy events take place, will provide
scientists insight into interpreting similar high-energy
activity that originate elsewhere in the universe.
Because HESSI has the finest
angular and spectral resolution
of any hard X-ray or gamma ray instrument ever flown in
space, it will enable researchers for the first time to look
at the development of high-energy reactions in flares.
Powerful X-rays and gamma rays penetrate all materials, to
some extent, and cannot be easily focused, so researchers are
using another technique to form images. HESSI's sole
instrument - an imaging spectrometer - will construct a flare
image from patterns of light and shadows produced by high-
energy radiation that passes through the telescope's grids
while the spacecraft rotates. Using this new method, HESSI is
expected to gather data on thousands of flares during its
two-to-three-year mission.
Working together with other
solar spacecraft - Yohkoh, the
Solar and Heliospheric Observatory (SOHO), Geostationary
Operational Environmental Satellites (GOES) and the
Transitional Regional and Coronal Explorer (TRACE) for flare
radiation, and Wind, the Advanced Composition Explorer (ACE),
Ulysses, and Voyager for particle detection HESSI will
provide vital insight into the impulsive energy release and
particle acceleration processes at the Sun.
The HESSI mission costs about
$85 million, which includes the
spacecraft, launch vehicle, mission operations and data
analysis. NASA's Office of Space Science, Headquarters,
Washington, DC, provided funding for HESSI, and the Explorers
Program Office at Goddard provides management and technical
oversight for the mission.
For more information on the
Internet about the spacecraft and
science mission, go to:
http://hesperia.gsfc.nasa.gov/hessi
http://hessi.ssl.berkeley.edu/
HUBBLE UNVEILS A GALAXY IN
LIVING COLOR
A rainbow of colors is captured
in the center of a
magnificent barred spiral galaxy, as witnessed by the three
cameras of NASA's Hubble Space Telescope.
The color-composite image of
the galaxy NGC 1512 was
created from seven images taken with the JPL-designed and
built Wide Field and Planetary Camera 2 (WFPC-2), along with
the Faint Object Camera and the Near Infrared Camera and
Multi-Object Spectrometer. Hubble's unique vantage point high
above the atmosphere allows astronomers to see objects over a
broad range of wavelengths from the ultraviolet to the
infrared and to detect differences in the regions around newly
born stars.
The new image is online at
http://oposite.stsci.edu/pubinfo/pr/2001/16 and
http://www.jpl.nasa.gov/images/wfpc .
The image reveals a stunning
2,400 light-year-wide circle
of infant star clusters in the center of NGC 1512. Located 30
million light-years away in the southern constellation of
Horologium, NGC 1512 is a neighbor of our Milky Way galaxy.
With the Hubble data, a team
of Israeli and American
astronomers performed one of the broadest, most detailed
studies ever of such star-forming regions. Results will appear
in the June issue of the Astronomical Journal. The team
includes Dr. Dan Maoz, Tel-Aviv University, Israel and
Columbia University, New York, N.Y.; Dr. Aaron J. Barth,
Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics, Cambridge, Mass.;
Dr. Luis C. Ho, The Observatories of the Carnegie Institution
of Washington; Dr. Amiel Sternberg, Tel-Aviv University,
Israel; and Dr. Alexei V. Filippenko, University of
California, Berkeley.
The Space Telescope Science
Institute, Baltimore, Md.,
manages space operations for the Hubble Space Telescope for
NASA's Office of Space Science, Washington, D.C. The
Institute is operated by the Association of Universities for
Research in Astronomy Inc., for NASA under contract with
NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center, Greenbelt, Md. The Hubble
Space Telescope is a project of international cooperation
between NASA and the European Space Agency. JPL is a division
of the California Institute of Technology in Pasadena.
Additional information about
the Hubble Space Telescope
is online at http://www.stsci.edu . More information about
the Wide Field and Planetary Camera 2 is at
http://wfpc2.jpl.nasa.gov/tp:
CRESCENTS SLICE THE DARKNESS
IN "FAREWELL JUPITER" PICTURE BY
CASSINI
Jupiter shines as a crescent,
with a much smaller
crescent moon Io by its side, in a color picture taken by
NASA's Cassini spacecraft looking back at the Jupiter after
flying past it five months ago.
That "farewell, Jupiter"
image plus a color movie clip of
glowing features on Io during an eclipse are now available
online from NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory, Pasadena,
Calif., at
http://www.jpl.nasa.gov/images/jupiter
and from the Cassini Imaging
Science team at the University of
Arizona, Tucson, at
http://ciclops.lpl.arizona.edu/ .
The eclipse movie is being
presented at meetings of the
American Geophysical Union in Boston today. In the sequence of
images used to create it, Cassini caught Io's auroras in
motion and detected emissions at previously unknown
wavelengths. Red glows from oxygen atoms and blue glows from
sulfur dioxide molecules in the images, along with thermal
glows from hot lava at several active volcanoes.
Cassini passed its closest
to Jupiter on Dec. 30, 2000,
gaining a gravitational boost for reaching its main
destination, Saturn, in 2004. More information about joint
studies of Jupiter by Cassini and NASA's Galileo spacecraft,
which has been orbiting Jupiter for more than five years, is
available at http://jpl.nasa.gov/jupiterflyby .
Cassini is a cooperative project
of NASA, the European
Space Agency and the Italian Space Agency. JPL manages the
Cassini and Galileo missions for NASA's Office of Space
Science, Washington, D.C. JPL is a division of the California
Institute of Technology in Pasadena.
GENESIS SPACECRAFT ARRIVES IN FLORIDA FOR JULY LAUNCH
NASA's Genesis spacecraft,
to be launched aboard a Boeing
Delta II vehicle on July 30, arrived today at Florida's
Kennedy Space Center from Denver, Colo. aboard a U.S. Air
Force C-17 aircraft.
Genesis will capture a piece
of the Sun -- a sample of
the ions and elements in the solar wind -- and bring the
samples back to Earth so that scientists can study the exact
composition of the Sun and probe the solar system's origin. By
studying the solar wind, scientists will find clues to the
formation of the solar system as we know it today. Genesis is
managed by NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory, Pasadena, Calif.,
and the spacecraft was built by Lockheed Martin Astronautics,
Denver, Colo.
In 2004, Genesis' samples will
return to Earth in a
spectacular helicopter capture. As the sample return capsule
parachutes to the ground in Utah's Air Force Test and Training
Range, specially trained helicopter pilots will catch it. The
samples will then be analyzed to provide a "Rosetta Stone"
of
solar material for comparing the Sun's original ingredients to
those of the planets and other solar system bodies.
Information on the mission is available at
http://genesismission.jpl.nasa.gov/ .
The spacecraft will be processed
for launch in the
Kennedy Space Center's Payload Hazardous Servicing Facility.
Processing will begin with a functional test, an electrical
systems test of the spacecraft and deployment of the solar
arrays. A test on June 7 will verify the spacecraft's
communications systems and radio links to NASA's Deep Space
Network space telecommunications system. Science instrument
operations tests are scheduled June 11, and on June 12 the
solar arrays will be cleaned and stowed for launch. Loading
of the spacecraft's hydrazine propellant is scheduled for the
week of June 22, and a spin-balance test will follow on June
29.
Genesis will be mated to a
Star 37 upper stage booster on
July 17 before being transported to Space Launch Complex 17
the following day. Once mated to the Delta II, a spacecraft
functional test will be performed. The payload fairing is to
be installed around Genesis on July 25. Stacking of the
Boeing Delta 7326 launch vehicle at Pad 17-A is scheduled to
begin on June 12. Launch is scheduled for July 30 at 12:36
p.m. EDT.
Genesis is part of NASA's Discovery
Program of
competitively selected, low-cost solar system exploration
missions with highly focused science goals. Chester Sasaki of
JPL is project manager, and Dr. Donald Burnett of the
California Institute of Technology in Pasadena is the
principal investigator. JPL is a division of Caltech.
//CASSINI CAPTURES LIGHT SHOW ON JUPITER'S MOON, IO, DURING
ECLIPSE
The Cassini spacecraft, passing
through the Jupiter system on Jan. 1, 2001,
en route to Saturn, recorded a sequence of images showing Jupiter's
moon Io
glowing in the darkness of the giant planet's shadow.
University of Arizona planetary
scientist Paul Geissler presented a color
version of this "movie" today at the American Geophysical
Union meeting in
Boston. The movie shows details of moon's visible aurorae that
solve some of
the puzzles presented by the Galileo spacecraft observations,
Geissler said.
The new animation is available
online from the Cassini Imaging Science team
at the University or Arizona, Tucson, at
http://ciclops.lpl.arizona.edu/ciclops/images_jupiter.html
and from NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory, Pasadena, Calif., at
http://www.jpl.nasa.gov/images/jupiter
Little was known about these
dazzling light shows before the Galileo
spacecraft arrived at the Jupiter system in late 1995. Galileo
pictures of
Io in eclipse showed a colorful display of red, greenish and blue
emissions
bright enough to be seen with the naked eye. These glows are due
to various
gases in Io's tenuous atmosphere that are excited by electrical
currents,
much like the Aurora Borealis on Earth.
Galileo could send back only
a few snapshots because of its nonfunctional
radio antenna, and these pictures were taken in only six colors,
so it was
impossible to be sure of the exact composition of the glowing
gases. From
ground-based telescopes and Hubble Space Telescope observations
it was
believed that the red glow was caused by neutral atomic oxygen
and that
sodium was the source of the greenish glow. The blue glow was
unidentified,
but suspected to be sulfur dioxide.
Although the Cassini spacecraft
did not come as close to Io as did the
Galileo spacecraft, Cassini could stare at Io for two hours at
a time and
record sequences of images ("movies") of entire eclipses,
Geissler said.
Cassini's camera is also sensitive to shorter wavelengths than
is Galileo's
camera, and it could record more colors using different filters.
Cassini
caught Io's aurorae in motion and detected emissions at previously
unknown
wavelengths. Both red atomic oxygen and blue molecular sulfur
dioxide
emissions are seen in the Cassini images, along with thermal glows
from hot
lava at several active volcanoes.
The motion of the aurorae suggests
that the visible emissions are powered by
electrical currents that connect Io to Jupiter, similar to the
ultraviolet
aurorae seen on Io by the Hubble Space Telescope. A volcanic plume
erupting
on the opposite side of Io can just be detected over the moon's
north pole.
This eruption left an enormous red ring around the volcano Tvashtar,
seen
erupting by both Galileo and Cassini, Geissler noted. These results
tell us
more about the patchy atmosphere of Io and the electrical currents
that
excite the visible emissions, he added.w
GENESIS SPACECRAFT ARRIVES AT KSC FOR LATE JULY LAUNCH
NASA's Genesis spacecraft,
to be launched aboard a Boeing Delta II
vehicle on July 30, arrived at 3:30 a.m. today at the Kennedy
Space Center
(KSC) Shuttle Landing Facility from Denver, Colo., aboard an Air
Force C-17
aircraft. The spacecraft was later transported to the Payload
Hazardous
Servicing Facility (PHSF) in KSC's industrial area and installed
into the
cleanroom, where it will be processed for launch.
Genesis will capture a piece
of the Sun: a sample of the ions and
elements in the solar wind and bring the samples back to Earth
so that
scientists can study the exact composition of the Sun and probe
the solar
system's origin. By studying the solar wind, scientists will find
clues to
the formation of the solar system as we know it today.
Genesis' samples will return
to Earth in a spectacular helicopter
capture. As the sample return capsule glides to the ground in
Utah's Air
Force Testing and Training Range, specially trained helicopter
pilots will
catch it. The samples will then be analyzed to provide a basis,
a solar
matter "Rosetta Stone," for comparing the solar nebula's
composition to
those of the planets and other solar system bodies.
Now that the Genesis spacecraft
is at KSC, processing will begin with a
functional test, an electrical systems test of the entire spacecraft
and the
solar arrays will be deployed. This will be followed on June 7
with a Deep
Space Network compatibility test to verify the spacecraft's communications
systems and the radio links associated with the worldwide network
of
tracking stations.
Beginning June 11, Science
Performance Tests will begin. These tests will
verify that all of the science instruments will operate as designed.
On June
12, the solar arrays will have a final cleaning and be stowed
for launch.
Upon completion of this activity, the spacecraft will be ready
for hydrazine
propellant loading activities scheduled the week of June 22. A
spin-balance
test will follow on June 29.
Finally in the PHSF, Genesis
will be mated to a Star 37 upper stage booster
on July 17 before being transported to Space Launch Complex 17
the following
day. Once mated to the Delta II, a spacecraft functional test
will be
performed. The payload fairing is to be installed around Genesis
on July 25.
Stacking of the Boeing Delta
7326 launch vehicle began at Pad 17-A is
scheduled to begin on June 12. Launch is scheduled for July 30
at 12:36 p.m.
EDT.
The Jet Propulsion Laboratory,
Pasadena, Calif., manages NASA's Genesis
project. Lockheed Martin Astronautics, Denver, Colo., built the
Genesis
spacecraft.
FOR STUDENTS INTERESTED
IN SCIENCE,
THE SKY IS NO LONGER THE LIMIT
High school students from across
the country will soon
see their year of hard work pay off by preparing their
experiments for launch into space.
Eight student teams and their
teacher advisors will journey
to the NASA Goddard Space Flight Center's Wallops Flight
Facility, Wallops Island, VA, after having their experiments
chosen for space flight through the NASA Student Involvement
Program (NSIP) flight opportunities competition.
NSIP is a national program
that links students directly with
NASA's diverse missions of research, exploration and
discovery. Students have the opportunity to learn science by
doing science.
"The purpose of the competition
is to provide high school
students an opportunity to take what they have learned in the
classroom and apply it to the real world environment," said
Lynn Marra, NSIP Officer at NASA Headquarters, Washington,
DC. "We hope that the students involved in the flights see
it
as a positive experience and pursue careers in science and
engineering."
Shortly after sunrise on June
6, the students will see their
experiments fly aboard a single-stage NASA Orion sounding
rocket to an altitude of more than 28 miles. The experiments
will descend by parachute to a water impact in the Atlantic
ocean off the coast of Wallops Island, where they will be
recovered and returned to the students that day for analysis.
Four of the student teams will
converge on Wallops during the
first week of June to participate in the final activities to
prepare their experiments for the sounding rocket flight. The
experiments will investigate materials for future space
flight vehicles, study the efficiency of electric motors
during rocket flight, measure atmospheric constituents and
gather data on the sounding rocket flight environment for a
musical composition.
"Sounding rockets are
an excellent education tool," said
Bobby Flowers, chief of the Sounding Rockets Program Office
at Wallops. "Under NSIP, high school students are able to
design and build at low cost an experiment for sounding
rocket flight in one school year. In addition, after the
launch they get almost immediate feedback on the success of
their experiment. It's very gratifying to see the excitement
of these students as they see their hard work pay off."
During the second week of June
the other four teams will be
at Wallops to integrate their experiments in a Space
Experiment Module (SEM) for flight on a future Space Shuttle
mission. The students will work with Wallops personnel in the
Space Shuttle Small Payloads Office to test their experiments
before the projects are integrated with the carrier for
flight.
Students will also have an
opportunity to tour the Wallops
facility, participate in activities on microgravity and
rocketry, and give presentations on their experiments to NASA
managers, engineers and scientists.
Various activities during the
two weeks, including the launch
of the sounding rocket, will be webcast. These activities
will be posted by June 1 at the following web site:
http://www.wff.nasa.gov/pages/video_schedule.html#launch
For additional information on the NSIP program, visit:
The NSIP flight opportunities
is supported through the NASA
Headquarter's Offices of Human Resources and Education, Space
Flight and Space Science.
NEAR-EARTH ASTEROID IS TWO CHUNKS IN ONE
The clearest radar pictures
of a near-Earth double
asteroid system were taken by astronomers last week using
NASA's Goldstone radar telescope, revealing clues to the
system's current structure but raising questions about its
origin and future.
A team of astronomers studied
images that show the trail
of the smaller component orbiting a larger object, made with
the Goldstone radar, a 70-meter (230-foot) antenna in
California's Mojave Desert. The asteroid, 1999 KW4, came
within five million kilometers of Earth (over 3 million miles)
on Friday, May 25.
"This system, 1999 KW4,
is the third binary near-Earth
asteroid pair revealed by radar, but this is the first time
we've been able to image the system over a complete orbit of
one component around the other," said Dr. Steven Ostro of
NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory, Pasadena, Calif., leader of
the team that made the discovery. "Goldstone was able to
track
the asteroid for up to eight hours daily for a week. Then we
made close-up images of each component using the Arecibo
telescope in Puerto Rico, which is not as fully steerable but
is much more powerful."
The images can be seen at
http://echo.jpl.nasa.gov/~ostro/kw4_press.tif
.
The radar team also included
Dr. Lance Benner and Jon
Giorgini of JPL, Dr. Jean-Luc Margot of the California
Institute of Technology, Pasadena, and Dr. Michael Nolan of
Arecibo Observatory, Arecibo, Puerto Rico.
"The asteroid pair 1999
KW4 is classified a Potentially
Hazardous Asteroid because eventually its path through space
could intersect Earth. However, the radar measurements, which
are accurate to 15 meters (about 49 feet), indicate there is
no significant chance of 1999 KW4 colliding with Earth for at
least a thousand years," said Giorgini. He said the larger
component is spheroidal and roughly 1.2 kilometers (three-
quarters of a mile) in average diameter, while the smaller
component is asymmetrical and roughly one-third as large.
"1999 KW4 is one of fewer
than two dozen known asteroids
whose orbits cross the orbits of Mercury, Venus and Earth,"
said Benner. "However, the only known solar system bodies
that
get closer to the Sun and have a more steeply inclined orbit
than 1999 KW4 are comets, so perhaps this object is an extinct
comet nucleus."
"Our first look at the
images suggests an orbital period
of roughly 16 hours," said Margot. Later, detailed analysis
of all the radar data will determine very precisely the
period, which is the time it takes the smaller object to orbit
the larger one. Using the laws of celestial mechanics, the
team will measure the objects' masses and densities, which
will tell what they are made of and how porous they are. For
single asteroids, that kind of information can only be
obtained by sending a spacecraft close to the body, and so
most asteroids' densities, compositions and meteorite
associations are not well known. "Yet this kind of
information is the key to understanding relationships between
meteorites, near-Earth asteroids, main-belt asteroids and
comets," said Margot.
"This might be the first
discovery of an ex-comet's
density," said Dr. Don Yeomans, head of NASA's Near Earth
Object program office at JPL. Three known objects are
officially designated both an asteroid and a comet.
"The existence of binary
near-Earth asteroids raises
perplexing questions about their origins," said Nolan.
"Nobody understands exactly how binary asteroid systems
formed, or even how stable the current binary systems are,
that is, how they might evolve, with the two components either
separating completely or collapsing onto one another to form a
contact binary. The theoreticians really have their work cut
out for them now." Nolan said that the near-Earth binary
systems might have formed during certain kinds of collisions.
Or, if they came from loosely bound, unconsolidated piles of
rubble instead of solid rocks, binary asteroids might have
formed during close passages by Earth when gravity pulls them
apart.
The first binary asteroid was
found in August 1993 when
NASA's Galileo spacecraft took pictures of asteroid Ida and
revealed its tiny moon Dactyl.
Current statistics suggest
that at least several percent
of the near-Earth asteroids are binaries. Ostro said that the
existence of binary asteroids on potentially hazardous orbits
means that we have to start figuring out how to maneuver
spacecraft close to such objects.
"Robotic spacecraft, and
eventually people, are destined
to go to such objects someday, either for defense against one
of them, to exploit mineral resources, to satisfy our
curiosity about what they're like close-up or simply for the
adventure of exploring a diminutive double world," Ostro
said.
JPL is a division of the California
Institute of
Technology in Pasadena.