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Дата: 02 апреля 1998 (1998-04-02)
От: Alexander Bondugin
Тема: Director Ed Stone Projects A Promising Future For JPL [1/2]
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From The "JPL Universe"
March 6, 1998
Director Stone projects a promising future for JPL
JPL's future has never been stronger and its variety of
challenges never broader, JPL Director Dr. Edward Stone told
Laboratory staff earlier this month in his annual State of
the Laboratory address.
The Laboratory's transition from an organization focused on
one large, innovative mission a decade to one that delivers
several smaller, innovative missions every year "has not been
easy, and it won't be in the future," Stone acknowledged.
"But if it were easy, we wouldn't be asked to do it. We are
asked to do these things because they are hard. That's the
reason the nation, and NASA, need a place like JPL.
"That's what attracts and keeps most of us here," he added.
"Most of us can work elsewhere, and perhaps earn more doing
so. What keeps us here is the challenge and the opportunity
to do what no one has done before--to search for life
elsewhere."
To help achieve success in its series of programs, the Lab
must also continue its development of innovations in
technology and in the implementation of new ways of doing
business, he added. Stone called 1997 one of the most
exciting years in the Laboratory's history. Highlights
included Mars Pathfinder's July 4 landing, marking Earth's
first return to Mars in 21 years; Mars Global Surveyor's
September arrival at the red planet; TOPEX/Poseidon's
monitoring (and continued tracking) of the development of El
Niсo in the Pacific Ocean; Galileo, which finished its
primary mission and began an extended study of Europa; and
Cassini's October launch to Saturn "on schedule, under budget
and full up in specification."
Pledging that 1998 will be "no less exciting," Stone cited
Voyager passing Pioneer 10 on Feb. 17 to become the most
distant human-created object in the solar system. He also
noted that there will be six launches of JPL missions and
instruments over the next 12 months.
JPL's missions are linked by the themes of searching for
evidence of life outside of Earth as well as the discovery of
the origins of galaxies, stars and planetary systems, Stone
said. He called the search for life elsewhere "a shorthand
term for one of the grand themes of what links many of our
programs together."
Stone emphasized that since life has been detected "anywhere
there's water on Earth--whether it's at the bottom of the
ocean; around vents of near-boiling water from the interior
of the Earth; in Antarctica, at near freezing; or in a rock
two miles down--the search for life elsewhere, in a certain
sense, is a search for liquid water elsewhere in the solar
system."
Viking showed scientists the existence of water in Mars'
past. But JPL's Mars program has already begun to step up the
effort dramatically, as evidenced by its planned launches to
the planet every 26 months for the next 10 years or more.
The Laboratory will also aggressively pursue the origins of
life elsewhere in the solar system. Under development are a
half dozen missions that in the next 12 years will reeturn
samples of alien worlds for scientists' analysis: Genesis,
solar wind, 2003 return; Stardust, comet, 2006; the Japanese
MUSES-C, asteroid, 2006; Mars Surveyor, soil and rocks, 2008
and 2010; and Champollion/Deep Space 4, comet, 2010.
In addition, Stone noted that in the last few weeks NASA's
Solar System Exploration Subcommittee proposed launch dates
for several missions in the Outer Planets Program: a Europa
orbiter mission in 2003, Pluto Kuiper Express in 2004 and a
solar probe mission in 2006 or 2007.
While the payoff from the Cassini mission may not be realized
for another six years and more, Stone envisions a possibility
of still further studies. "It's hard for me to imagine that
after the success of studying Saturn and its moon Titan
starting in 2004 we will not want to go back to further
explore this world, which has on its surface layer upon layer
of organic matter produced over millions of years, very much
like our own polar caps have layer by layer records of our
past climate in the layers of ice and snow."
At the same time, Stone said, the Origins program will step
up the search for life beyond the solar system. The series of
missions, which began with Hubble Space Telescope
observations, will continue preparations for the next century
with the development of the Space Infrared Telescope Facility
(SIRTF), the Space Interferometry Mission (SIM) and the Next
Generation Space Telescope.
To aid the Laboratory in carrying out its challenging Mars,
Outer Planets and Origins programs now and in the future, the
director pointed out that the New Millennium Program is a key
element "to help us invest in, develop and demonstrate the
flight technology we need to do these missions."
"Technical innovations have been our forte for the last four
decades; that's not new," Stone said. "What's new is that we
have to be innovative in an era of faster development and
lower cost."
Stone said he was encouraged by four aspects of technical
innovations recently implemented on Lab:
* Innovative spacecraft technologies, such as X2000, which
has a goal of drastically reducing the size, mass and
power requirements of spacecraft avionics. "Cassini's
dry mass was about 2,000 kilograms; Mars Pathfinder
nearly 1,000 kilograms; the new outer planet spacecraft
will be 150 kilograms--that's the challenge. And 10
years from now, we want it to be 25 kilograms, down
another factor of six."
* Innovative spacecraft operations, such as for Deep Space
1. "Not only does it have solar electric ion drive,
which is an important step in interplanetary navigation,
it will also have autonomous, or on-board
navigation--clearly the next step in being able to fly a
large number of missions is to have the missions be able
to fly themselves. That clearly requires technical
innovation."
* Innovative sensor systems, including New Millennium's
Deep Space 2 project onboard the Mars Polar Lander, in
which probes will be embedded in Mars' surface to
analyze the soil.
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=SANA=
Дата: 02 апреля 1998 (1998-04-02)
От: Alexander Bondugin
Тема: Director Ed Stone Projects A Promising Future For JPL [2/2]
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In addition, Stone added, such sensor innovations are also
necessary on a much larger scale. "Mass to orbit is money.
This also has tremendous significance for commercial
applications--if you spend $1 billion to put a system in
Earth orbit, such as a radar, you have to sell an awful lot
of product commercially to ever get your money back. On the
other hand, if you can put a system up for $100 million, it's
one-tenth the amount of product you have to sell, and
suddenly the commercial possibilities become real.
"So these innovations not only enable the kind of science we
need to have in order to improve the quality of life here on
Earth, it's also enabling us to become a more spacefaring
nation."
* Innovative approaches. "SIRTF in 1990 was 5,700
kilograms, a multibillion dollar program. Now it's been
reduced to 900 kilograms, due to the innovative approach
of putting it in orbit around the sun rather than around
Earth, carrying enough liquid helium so the mission can
last five years rather than three. That is the reason
SIRTF is in the budget and will be launched in
2001--because of an innovative approach of going into
orbit around the sun and changing the entire thermal
environment in which this telescope will operate, which
is at liquid helium temperatures."
Stone also said that both external and internal innovations
in implementation also play key roles in JPL's success.
* Innovative external implementation is typified by JPL's
partnership with Ball Aerospace in developing the
QuikSCAT mission, which will replace the NASA
Scatterometer (NSCAT), lost onboard Japan's ADEOS
satellite last year. Ball's experience in small,
Earth-orbiting spacecraft will help JPL to complete
QuikSCAT in 12 months.
"That's the kind of innovation in external implementation
that will be critical for us to do all that we're being asked
to do within finite dollar and work force resources," Stone
said.
He also noted that three of eight finalists for NASA's Low
Award (equivalent to the Baldridge Award for corporate
business) are companies that worked with JPL on Mars
Pathfinder. In particular, he cited ILC Dover, which
developed Pathfinder's airbags.
"The problem was, we didn't know enough about airbags to
write such specifications; the people who build airbags
didn't know enough about space to be able to respond to any
such specifications had we written them. We formed a working
team that combined our expertise in space with their
expertise in materials and airbag systems to create
collaboratively the system that got Pathfinder on the surface
of Mars last July 4.
"That was a true partnership, and was not the classic way of
dealing with a contractor. It's that kind of mode, of working
with external expertise, that's going to allow us to tap into
the entire capability of this nation to create this program."
* Innovations in internal implementation. As evidence of
successful innovations inside of JPL, Stone praised the
efforts of the seven teams that won Process Improvement
Awaards last year, citing two as examples.
The Procurement Requisition Direct Entry Team, comprised of
Francine Fisher and Virginia Kemp of Section 623, created a
streamlined, online procurement system that saves time and
about $170,000 a year for the Lab. "I asked them," Stone
said, 'What is the biggest challenge you had in doing this?'
The answer was breaking away from the way it was always
done."
The Electronic Parts Acquisition Team improved the
procurement of space-qualified electronic parts. It created
an online system that includes 200,000 parts that can be
ordered and received in two days. It's estimated that the new
system will save JPL $800,000 a year.
"Ed Svendsen, the team leader, had a wonderful way of
describing the challenge," Stone said. "He called it
'Shrugging off the dead hand of tradition.'"
"Tradition is important where it is a key to your success,"
Stone offered. "But it can be an inhibitor when it's getting
in the way of changes you need to make.
"I often get asked 'Why can't we slow down the pace of
change, put it on hold for awhile?' We've been at this
internal change process for five years, but we're still not
where we need to be to cope with faster, better, cheaper
without burning out everyone in the process," he added.
That's an indication, Stone told the audience, of how
difficult innovations in implementation are. In the next six
months, the Develop New Products process and New Business
Solutions Project will roll out a new set of systems on Lab.
"We all have to resist the dead hand of tradition so that we
can remain the best in the world at what we do."
Stone also said JPL has played a very important role in
"setting up the circumstances" that have led to the nation's
reinvestment in NASA's program. "We have made deals and have
stuck to them," he said. "We do what we say we're going to
do; we don't go back and ask for more.
"It's not an accident that space science has grown in the
last two years in the president's budget," he added. "This is
a result of clear strategic planning and leadership on the
part of NASA Administrator Dan Goldin and clear leadership on
the part of Wes Huntress. Their leadership has made it
possible for the administration to send to Congress last year
the first increase in the science budget in years, and this
year to send back a budget with a still larger increase in
the out years for space science."
In answer to an audience question, Stone said JPL is still on
target for a work force in 2000 of around 5,000 people. "It's
been a very painful five years in terms of the downsizing
we've gone through, but fortunately the end is in sight. We
should concentrate our work force on doing the really
critical, innovative things--and finding our partners in
universities, industry and other federal labs--to help us do
the rest of the program.
"We still have some downsizing left to go, but once we get
there the Lab will be in very good shape. I think NASA
understands that where we're going to end up in a couple of
years is where we we're going to stay. That's the end of it;
we've done our job."
Stone recalled the recent 40th anniversary of Explorer 1--the
JPL mission that launched the United States into the Space
Age--and stressed that all space missions since then "have
been fueled by innovations here at the Lab."
"The first 40 years were extremely exciting for JPL; the next
40 can be even more so. It will be hard, will require
innovation and will be unpredictable, but if anyone can do
it, we can, and that's the reason we've been asked to do it."
Hа сегодня все, пока!
=SANA=
Дата: 02 апреля 1998 (1998-04-02)
От: Alexander Bondugin
Тема: Mars Global Surveyor Imaging Schedule Announced
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MEDIA RELATIONS OFFICE
JET PROPULSION LABORATORY
CALIFORNIA INSTITUTE OF TECHNOLOGY
NATIONAL AERONAUTICS AND SPACE ADMINISTRATION
PASADENA, CALIF. 91109. TELEPHONE (818) 354-5011
http://www.jpl.nasa.gov
Contact: Diane Ainsworth
FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE March 31, 1998
GLOBAL SURVEYOR SCHEDULES IMAGING OPPORTUNITIES FOR VIKING,
PATHFINDER, CYDONIA REGIONS OF MARS
The Mars Global Surveyor project has resumed scientific
observations of the surface of Mars and has scheduled
opportunities to image four selected sites: the Viking 1 and 2
landing sites, the Mars Pathfinder landing site and the Cydonia
region.
Three opportunities to image each of the four sites using
the spacecraft's high-resolution camera will take place over the
next month, beginning on April 3 at 1:58 a.m. Pacific time, when
Global Surveyor passes over the Viking 1 landing site. The
spacecraft will next pass over the Viking 2 landing site at 1:37
p.m. Pacific time on April 3. On April 4, Global Surveyor will
try to image the now-silent Mars Pathfinder spacecraft at 1:16
a.m. Pacific time. It will then capture a portion of the
Cydonia region of Mars, location of the so-called "Face on Mars,"
on April 5 at 12:33 a.m. Pacific time.
Attempts to rephotograph the sites will occur during two
additional opportunities falling about nine days apart. A
detailed schedule of the imaging attempts is listed below.
Uncertainties in both the spacecraft's pointing and the knowledge
of the spacecraft's ground track from its navigation data will
provide only a 30- to- 50-percent chance of capturing the images
of each site.
All of the selected targets are located south of Global
Surveyor's periapsis, or point of closest approach to the Martian
surface. Shortly before the spacecraft reaches this point, the
Global Surveyor spacecraft will rotate slightly so that when it
nears the selected target, the camera's field-of-view will sweep
across the target as the spacecraft flies south and rises away.
The spacecraft will begin transmitting to Earth data stored
on its onboard solid-state recorders about seven hours after the
images are acquired, concluding about three hours later.
Currently it takes radio signals from Mars Global Surveyor about
20 minutes to travel from the spacecraft to Earth.
Data will be received at one of NASA's Deep Space Network
tracking stations at Goldstone, CA, near Madrid, Spain or near
Canberra, Australia, and then sent by satellite to NASA's Jet
Propulsion Laboratory, Pasadena, CA. There the images, along with
all of the rest of Global Surveyor's science and engineering
data, are placed in the project database for access by flight
controllers. This process takes only seconds for each bit of
data. Consequently, the image data will not be available be on
the ground until about 10.5 hours after they are acquired. Data
received overnight will not be retrieved until 9 a.m. Pacific
time on the following workday.
When image data are retrieved by camera operators, the
information is assembled into "raw" images. Raw images may
contain data errors or drop-outs introduced by noise in the
telecommunications channel between the spacecraft and the ground,
as well as very slight picture element variations inherent in the
camera. This data processing takes about 30 minutes.
Raw images will posted on three web sites: JPL's Mars news
site at http://www.jpl.nasa.gov/marsnews , the Mars Global
Surveyor project home page at http://mars.jpl.nasa.gov , and
NASA's Planetary Photojournal site at
http://photojournal.jpl.nasa.gov . Information identifying the
acquisition time, predicted center latitude and longitude of the
target location, and the local solar time will accompany these
images. Contrast enhancement will be performed by JPL's
Multimission Image Processing Laboratory and posted on World Wide
Web a few hours later. The Global Surveyor project home page
also contains spacecraft orbital velocity and distance to the
planet in real time.
Images of the Viking and Mars Pathfinder landing sites will
not be posted until image enhancement and identification of the
vehicles have been completed, because the small spacecraft will
be at the limits of the camera's resolution. This process will
take about 24 hours.
Mars Global Surveyor is part of a sustained program of Mars
exploration known as the Mars Surveyor Program. The mission is
managed by the Jet Propulsion Laboratory for NASA's Office of
Space Science, Washington, DC. JPL's industrial partner is
Lockheed Martin Astronautics, Denver, CO, which developed and
operates the spacecraft. JPL is a division of the California
Institute of Technology, Pasadena, CA.
Mars Global Surveyor Imaging Schedule
First opportunity
Approximate
Orbit Internet
Date Time (UTC/Pacific) Number Target Posting
4-3-98 09:58/1:58 a.m. 216 Viking Lander 1 April 6
4-3-98 21:37/1:37 p.m. 217 Viking Lander 2 April 7
4-4-98 09:16/1:16 a.m. 218 Mars Pathfinder April 7
4-5-98 08:33/12:33 a.m. 220 Cydonia April 6 (mid-a.m.)
Second opportunity
Approximate
Orbit Internet
Date Time (UTC/Pacific) Number Target Posting
4-12-98 15:23/ 8:23 a.m. 235 Viking Lander 1 April 14
4-13-98 03:01/ 8:01 p.m. 236 Viking Lander 2 April 15
4-13-98 14:40/ 7:40 a.m. 237 Mars Pathfinder April 15
4-14-98 13:57/ 6:57 a.m. 239 Cydonia April 14 (mid-p.m.)
Third opportunity
Approximate
Orbit Internet
Date Time (UTC/Pacific) Number Target Posting
4-21-98 20:45/1:45 p.m. 254 Viking Lander 1 April 23
4-22-98 08:23/1:23 a.m. 255 Viking Lander 2 April 24
4-22-98 20:02/1:02 p.m. 256 Mars Pathfinder April 24
4-23-98 19:18/12:18 p.m. 258 Cydonia April 24 (mid-a.m.)
#####
Hа сегодня все, пока!
=SANA=
Дата: 02 апреля 1998 (1998-04-02)
От: Alexander Bondugin
Тема: Announcement of the creation of Espas, the European Space Society
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Espas press release #001(uk) 1998-04-01
Announcement of the creation of Espas, the European Space Society
*****************************************************************
The purpose of Espas, the European Space Society, is to further the
exploration, commercialization, industrialization and colonization of
outer space, the Moon, Mars and other suitable celestial bodies.
The first step towards this goal is to provide information about past,
current and future space activities to all citizens of Europe in the
five major languages of the European Union (German, French, English,
Italian, Spanish) and if requested in other languages as well.
This will improve the acceptance of the idea of space exploration,
commercialization, industrialization and colonization by the general
public of Europe and other continents.
To achieve this goal we need your support!
We need short introducing essays about the different aspects of
space-flight, like:
- manned space projects (Mercury, Apollo, Salyut, etc.)
- national space programs (USA, USSR, China, etc.)
- space launch centers (KSC, Baykonur, Kourou, etc.)
- space agencies (NASA, NASDA, ESA, etc.)
- interplanetary exploration (Luna, Voyager, Mars Pathfinder, etc.)
- communication satellites (Intelsat, Astra, Iridium, etc.)
- other satellites (HST, GPS, Spot, etc.)
- space launchers (Delta, Soyuz, Ariane, etc.)
- technology of space-flight (Propulsion, orbital mechanics, etc.)
- celestial bodies (Moon, Mars, Asteroids, etc.)
- important persons (Tsiolkovsky, von Braun, Gagarin etc.)
- future space missions (NEAP, Rosetta, Mars Surveyor, etc.)
- disadvantages of space-flight (Plutonium, bone-loss in zero-G, etc.)
- companies (Aerospatial, Dasa, Boeing, etc.)
- FAQs (Shuttle to the Moon, Mars face, faked Moon landing, etc.)
- future of space-flight (tourism, CATS, Manned Mars Mission, etc.)
- lots of other things...
If you want to write or if you have already written a short article
about one of these topics, please send it to Espas. It will be
translated into the different European languages (by human beings) to
offer interested people, who do not understand enough English to read
the already available information, a first introduction to the various
aspects of space-flight. Each page will contain links to other
web-pages for further reading about the topic.
The information pages of Espas would also be a FAQ for the sci.space.?
newsgroups.
Please visit the preliminary homepage of Espas at
http://espas.home.pages.de/ and take part in our survey.
We are awaiting your comments and are hoping for your support for
Espas.
Best regards!
Luca Coren, Trieste, Italy
Peter Culak, Bratislava, Slovakia
Jens A. Lerch, Frankfurt, Germany
Juha Unkila, Tampere, Finland
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=SANA=
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