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Дата: 20 июля 1998 (1998-07-20) От: Alexander Bondugin Тема: Space Flight, Aviation Programs Receive NASA Software Award Привет всем! Вот, свалилось из Internet... Brian Dunbar Headquarters, Washington, DC July 15, 1998 (Phone: 202/358-0873) RELEASE: 98-124 SPACE FLIGHT, AVIATION PROGRAMS RECEIVE NASA SOFTWARE AWARD NASA has chosen a computer program designed to remotely control Space Station experiments through the Internet and one designed to improve air traffic control as winners of the Agency's 1998 Software of the Year Award. Lee B. Holcomb, NASA Chief Information Officer, and Dr. Daniel R. Mulville, NASA Chief Engineer and Chair of NASA's Inventions and Contributions Board, selected the winners. The award is given annually by the Inventions and Contributions Board to NASA- developed software that has significantly enhanced the Agency's performance of its mission and helped American industry maintain its world-class technology status. One program, called Tempest, was originally developed to support the science experiments on the International Space Station. The commercial quality software is fully documented, installs simply and uses standard World Wide Web browsers to let users operate the experiments. Tempest is considered to be breakthrough and enabling technology, which has spawned new markets and will continue to do so. A study performed for NASA estimated that an extensive commercial market is likely to develop for Web-embedded remote control mechanisms, especially in the automotive, consumer electronics, office products and medical industries. Tempest was written by Maria Babula, Lisa Lambert, Joseph Ponyik and David York of NASA's Lewis Research Center, Cleveland, OH, and Richard A. Tyo, Intel Corp. The second winner, Center TRACON Automation System Software, is a set of three software tools for managing air traffic control systems at major airports. Designed to optimize flight operations, the software analyzes and predicts aircraft paths, creating visual representations of the flow of arriving traffic. It also provides controllers up-to-the second advisories of information to pass on to pilots that will reduce time between landings to the minimum possible. The software has been integrated into the existing radar system at Dallas/Ft. Worth airport. Software displays in the control room supplement the manual air traffic control system. Use of the program saves an average of two minutes per flight, in turn saving money for the airlines and passengers. The Federal Aviation Administration has chosen Center TRACON for immediate implementation into all major airports and estimated its use could save airports as much as $800 million annually. Center TRACON Automation System Software was written by Michelle Eshow and a team of 37 others at NASA's Ames Research Center, Moffett Field, CA. NASA will grant the awards at a special ceremony at the Technology 2008 Conference to be held in Boston, MA, on Nov. 3-5, 1998. The list of winners can be found on the Internet at the URL: http://www.hq.nasa.gov/office/codei/swy98win.html - end - Hа сегодня все, пока! =SANA=

Дата: 20 июля 1998 (1998-07-20) От: Alexander Bondugin Тема: Sky & Telescope News Bulletin - July 17, 1998 Привет всем! Вот, свалилось из Internet... SKY & TELESCOPE'S NEWS BULLETIN JULY 17, 1998 CLOSE-UPS OF GANYMEDE On July 15th, the Jet Propulsion Laboratory released a bevy of new images of Jupiter's largest moon Ganymede taken by the Galileo spacecraft. The pictures show fine details on the icy world, including fresh impact scars and terrain of varying brightness and roughness. Among the more intriguing images was one showing a 150-kilometer-long (90-mile-long) chain of craters. Three such features are known to exist on the satellite, and more than a dozen can be found on the surface of Callisto. Crater chains are believed to arise when a comet or asteroid comes too close to Jupiter and is disrupted by tidal forces produced by its tremendous gravity. The resulting pieces travel closely together, and sometimes wind up hitting something larger -- in this instance, Ganymede, or as in the case of Comet Shoemaker-Levy 9 in July 1994, Jupiter itself. SNAPSHOTS OF THE EARLIEST STELLAR NURSERIES? Two international research teams have just taken a key step toward answering one of cosmology's biggest questions: when did the universe's stars and galaxies turn on? Earlier this year, Cosmic Background Explorer (COBE) measurements showed that many of the universe's earliest stars have evaded even the deepest visible-light surveys. That's because the stars were shrouded by clouds of dust that absorbed their light and turned it into infrared radiation. But COBE couldn't pin down when and where the universe's unseen stars began to shine. Enter SCUBA, the Submillimeter Common User Bolometer Array, which "photographs" the sky's appearance at submillimeter wavelengths from the focal plane of the James Clerk Maxwell Telescope on Mauna Kea. Yesterday's issue of Nature contains SCUBA images of the Hubble Deep Field and two other sky patches in Ursa Major and Canes Venatici. While relatively crude, the images do contain a handful of submillimeter-wave "hot spots," presumably the redshifted glows of star- warmed dust clouds in newborn galaxies. According to their discoverers, the blobs are bright enough to account for a significant fraction of the sky's far-infrared glow (assuming they cover the entire sky in like numbers). The next step -- unambiguously associating the hot spots with galaxies of known redshift -- may require the higher resolution of an orbiting telescope or ground-based interferometer that operates at submillimeter wavelengths. NASA TO OPEN OFFICE FOR HAZARDOUS OBJECTS The commotion from last March's "brush with an asteroid" has generated fallout from NASA. The space agency announced July 14th that the Jet Propulsion Laboratory will be home for the Near-Earth Object Program Office, to be headed by Donald Yeomans. The department will be responsible for detecting, tracking, and studying potentially hazardous comets and asteroids. Its goal is to find at least 90 percent of the estimated 2,000 objects larger than about 1 kilometer in diameter that approach the Earth, and do so by 2010. In addition, according to B. Carl Pilcher, science director for Solar System Exploration in NASA's Office of Space Science, the new office will also take charge of reporting findings to the public, should a potentially hazardous objects be found. NEW MMT UPDATE TO HOG THE ROAD The formerly Multiple-Mirror Telescope atop Mt. Hopkins in Arizona has been out of service since March. The six 1.8-meter mirrors were removed to make room for a single 6.5-meter primary, and modifications to the telescope structure are nearly complete. On July 23rd, the mirror and mirror cell combination will be separated so the mirror cell can be transported to the mountain. The cell weighs 120 metric tons and consists of 100 arms that support the mirror. On the morning of the 27th, the 7.5-meter-wide (25- foot-wide) support mechanism will hog Interstate 19 as it lumbers from Tucson to Amado, Arizona. The mirror itself is to be moved to the mountain in November and aluminized in December, with first light expected shortly thereafter. Astronomical observations will begin early next spring. THIS WEEK'S "SKY AT A GLANCE" Some daily events in the changing sky, from the editors of SKY & TELESCOPE. JULY 19 -- SUNDAY * West Coast telescope users can try to observe the waning crescent Moon occulting the 1st-magnitude star Aldebaran in broad daylight this afternoon. You'll need a very clear, deep blue sky; the Moon and Aldebaran will be in the west, not very high, with the Sun about 48 degrees to their upper left. See the timetable in the January Sky & Telescope, page 97. JULY 20 -- MONDAY * 29th anniversary of the Apollo 11 landing on the Moon. * The waning crescent Moon pairs up with Venus low in the east-northeast during dawn on Tuesday morning. Little Mars is 8 degrees to Venus's lower left. JULY 21 -- TUESDAY * Vega is the brightest star nearly overhead after dark at this time of year. Just face east and look very high up. If your sky is fairly dark, also look for the little triangle-and-parallelogram pattern of the constellation Lyra dangling from Vega, to its lower right. Aside from Vega, Lyra's stars are only as bright as 3rd or 4th magnitude. * Venus shines 0.3 degree north of the 3.7-magnitude star Eta Geminorum Wednesday morning. JULY 22 -- WEDNESDAY * The red long-period variable stars R Bootis, T Ursae Majoris, and W Andromedae should be at their maximum light (7th or 8th magnitude) around this date. JULY 23 -- THURSDAY * Venus is 0.5 degree from 2.9-magnitude Mu Geminorum Friday morning. JULY 24 -- FRIDAY * The brightest star rather low in the south after dark around this time of year is Antares, colored fire-orange. Antares is a red supergiant about 700 times bigger than the Sun. It's about 500 light-years distant. Antares qualifies as the biggest single object that most people can easily see (at least at this time of year). Show it to someone tonight! JULY 25 -- SATURDAY * The thin waxing crescent Moon is low in the west in early dusk, just to the upper left of Regulus and dwindling little Mercury. Try looking for them about 30 minutes after sunset. Spotting all three may be a challenging observation even with binoculars. THIS WEEK'S PLANET ROUNDUP MERCURY is disappearing into the glow of sunset. Early in the week, scan for it with binoculars very low in the west about 30 minutes after the Sun goes down. Mercury is to the lower right of Regulus; don't confuse the two! VENUS shines brightly (magnitude -3.9) low in the east-northeast during dawn. MARS is emerging from the glow of sunrise to the lower left of Venus. It's faint (magnitude +1.6), so binoculars will help. JUPITER rises around 11 p.m. daylight saving time. It's the brilliant "star" (magnitude -2.7) shining in the southeastern sky during early morning hours and high in the south at dawn. Jupiter is at the Pisces-Aquarius border. SATURN (in eastern Pisces) rises around 12:30 a.m. It's the dimmer "star" (magnitude +0.2) far to Jupiter's lower left during the night's latest hours. It's almost directly left of Jupiter by morning twilight. (The two planets appear about 35 degrees apart, 3 or 4 fist-widths at arm's length.) URANUS and NEPTUNE, magnitudes 5.7 and 7.8 respectively, are in Capricornus, well up in the south-southeast by midnight. See the finder chart in the May Sky & Telescope, page 96. PLUTO, magnitude 13.7, is near the Ophiuchus-Scorpius border in the south right after dark. See the finder chart in the May Sky & Telescope, page 97. The charts for Uranus, Neptune, and Pluto are also at http://www.skypub.com/whatsup/urnepl98.html. (All descriptions that relate to the horizon or zenith are written for the world's midnorthern latitudes. Descriptions that also depend on longitude are for North America. Eastern Daylight Time, EDT, equals Universal Time minus 4 hours.) More details, sky maps, and news of other celestial events appear each month in SKY & TELESCOPE, the essential magazine of astronomy. See our enormous Web site at http://www.skypub.com/. Clear skies! SKY & TELESCOPE, P.O. Box 9111, Belmont, MA 02478 * 617-864-7360 (voice) Copyright 1998 Sky Publishing Corporation. S&T's Weekly News Bulletin and Sky at a Glance stargazing calendar are provided as a service to the astronomical community by the editors of SKY & TELESCOPE magazine. Widespread electronic distribution is encouraged as long as these paragraphs are included. But the text of the bulletin and calendar may not be published in any other form without permission from Sky Publishing (contact permissions@skypub.com or phone 617-864-7360). Illustrated versions, including active links to related Internet resources, are available via SKY Online on the World Wide Web at http://www.skypub.com/. In response to numerous requests, and in cooperation with the Astronomical League (http://www.mcs.net/~bstevens/al/) and the American Association of Amateur Astronomers (http://www.corvus.com/), S&T's Weekly News Bulletin and Sky at a Glance are available via electronic mailing list too. For a free subscription, send e-mail to skyline@gs1.revnet.com and put the word "join" on the first line of the body of the message. To unsubscribe, send e-mail to skyline@gs1.revnet.com and put the word "unjoin" on the first line of the body of the message. SKY & TELESCOPE, the Essential Magazine of Astronomy, is read by more than 200,000 enthusiasts each month. It is available on newsstands worldwide. For subscription information, or for a free copy of our catalog of fine astronomy books and products, please contact Sky Publishing Corp., P.O. Box 9111, Belmont, MA 02478-9111, U.S.A. Phone: 800-253-0245 (U.S. and Canada); 617-864-7360 (International). Fax: 617-864-6117. E-mail: custserv@skypub.com. SKY Online: http://www.skypub.com/. Clear skies! Hа сегодня все, пока! =SANA=

Дата: 20 июля 1998 (1998-07-20) От: Alexander Bondugin Тема: Maryland Firm Chosen To Provide Test Support For Laboratory At NASA's Subject: Maryland Firm Chosen To Provide Test Support For Laboratory At NASA's Привет всем! Вот, свалилось из Internet... Jennifer McCarter Headquarters, Washington, DC July 17, 1998 (Phone: 202/358-1639) Jerry Berg Marshall Space Flight Center, Huntsville, AL (Phone: 256/544-6540) RELEASE: C98-i MARYLAND FIRM CHOSEN TO PROVIDE TEST SUPPORT FOR LABORATORY AT NASA'S MARSHALL SPACE FLIGHT CENTER LB&B Associates, Inc. of Columbia, MD, a small, minority, woman-owned business, has been selected for award of a contract to provide test operations support for the Science and Engineering Directorate of NASA's Marshall Space Flight Center, Huntsville, AL. The contract will start with a one-year basic period, followed by four one-year options, which may be exercised at NASA's discretion. If all options are exercised, the contract would be worth as much as $30,930,739. The work to be performed under the contract includes technician support to operate and maintain the test facilities in the propulsion laboratory at Marshall. Proposals for this work were solicited nationally. The procurement was handled under the Small Business Administration program limiting competition to qualified small and disadvantaged businesses. Seven proposals in total were received. These services were previously provided by Consolidated Industries Inc., Huntsville, AL. -end- Hа сегодня все, пока! =SANA=

Дата: 20 июля 1998 (1998-07-20) От: Alexander Bondugin Тема: Mars Surveyor 98 Update - July 17, 1998 Привет всем! Вот, свалилось из Internet... 1998 MARS SURVEYOR PROJECT STATUS REPORT July 17, 1998 John McNamee Mars Surveyor 98 Project Manager Orbiter integration and test activities are proceeding on schedule. The Mars Color Imager (MARCI) has been calibrated and reinstalled on the orbiter. Optical chopper assembly reinstallation on the Pressure Modular InfraRed Radiometer (PMIRR) is scheduled for July 27. The orbiter pre-ship review is scheduled for August 14. Another incident occurred on the lander spacecraft during integration and test activities. A technician incorrectly mated a power source to the launch umbilical (T0) data line. Preliminary analysis indicates that no damage occurred, however more detailed analysis and testing is underway to confirm that is the case. The Project has ordered a stand down on further test activities until an internal review on July 17 provides the approval to proceed with power on testing of the lander. Other actions implemented in response to incidents which have occurred in recent weeks follow: 1) Quality assurance and test conductor staffing on the floor during all lander and orbiter test operations will be increased, 2) Project Manager approval will be required for any individual working in excess of 20 hours overtime, 3) Test Department refresher training will be conducted, 4) Project test requirements will be scrubbed and reduced to the essentials required for shipment to the Cape and launch. The start of landed thermal balance testing has been rescheduled for July 22. For more information on the Mars Surveyor 98 mission, please visit our website: http://mars.jpl.nasa.gov/msp98/ Hа сегодня все, пока! =SANA=

Дата: 20 июля 1998 (1998-07-20) От: Alexander Bondugin Тема: Galileo - Countdown To Europa Привет всем! Вот, свалилось из Internet... GALILEO - COUNTDOWN TO EUROPA July 17, 1998 It is now 3 days and 12 hours to the Galileo spacecraft's next encounter with Europa. A special Countdown to Europa home page is now available on the Galileo Home Page: http://www.jpl.nasa.gov/galileo/countdown/ Launched in October 1989, Galileo entered orbit around Jupiter in December 1995, and completed its primary 2 year orbital tour around the solar system's largest planet. Galileo has embarked on a two-year extended mission, called Galileo Europa Mission (GEM). During GEM, Galileo will make 8 close flybys of Europa, four flybys of Callisto, and two close encounters with Io provided the spacecraft is still alive. The fifth encounter for GEM is scheduled for Europa on July 21, 1998 at 05:07 UT. With a diameter of 3,138 km, Europa is slighty smaller than our own Moon and is the smoothest object in the solar system. On Galileo's previous encounters with Europa, evidence of a possible ocean were found, including the discovery of ice volcanoes (none active), probable icebergs, and salt deposits on the surface. Galileo will continue its attempt to find additional evidence of a liquid ocean underneath Europa's icy crust and look for signs of active volcanism on the moon's young surface. On the upcoming encounter, the spacecraft will pass by Europa at a distance of 1,837 km, which is 111 times closer than Voyager's closest approach. Galileo will also take in observations of Jupiter, Ganymede and Io during this encounter. Highlights of the Countdown to Europa home page: o A virtual flyby of Europa with computer-generated approach images of Jupiter and Europa displayed at the top of the home page. These images are all updated every 5 minutes. o Live Doppler plots of Galileo spacecraft radio signal as it received on Earth. Watch the gravity of Europa change the frequency of the radio signal in real-time. The Doppler plots will be updated every minute on encounter day (July 21). o Flyby animation of the Europa 16 flyby. o Daily Galileo status reports reporting on the Europa 16 encounter. o Fact sheets and Europa, Callisto and Io. o A detailed timeline of events and sequences that the spacecraft will perform for the Europa 16 encounter. o Voyager 1 & 2 images of Callisto, Ganymede, Europa and Io. o Hubble Space Telescope images of the Galilean satellites. o Pioneer 10 & 11 images of Callisto, Ganymede, Europa and Io. Ron Baalke Galileo Webmaster ___ _____ ___ /_ /| /____/ \ /_ /| Ron Baalke | baalke@kelvin.jpl.nasa.gov | | | | __ \ /| | | | Jet Propulsion Lab | ___| | | | |__) |/ | | |__ Pasadena, CA | Two wrongs don't make a right, /___| | | | ___/ | |/__ /| | but two Wrights made an |_____|/ |_|/ |_____|/ | airplane. Hа сегодня все, пока! =SANA=

Дата: 20 июля 1998 (1998-07-20) От: Alexander Bondugin Тема: Cassini Update - July 17, 1998 Привет всем! Вот, свалилось из Internet... CASSINI SIGNIFICANT EVENTS FOR WEEK ENDING 07/17/98 Spacecraft Status: The most recent Spacecraft status is from the DSN tracking pass on Thursday 07/15, over Goldstone. The Cassini spacecraft is in an excellent state of health and has successfully completed execution of the C8 sequence. The C9 sequence is now onboard and is executing nominally. Inertial attitude control is being maintained using the spacecraft's hydrazine thrusters (RCS system). The spacecraft continues to fly in a High Gain Antenna-to-Sun attitude. It will maintain the HGA-to-Sun attitude, except for planned trajectory correction maneuvers, for the first 14 months of flight. Communication with Earth during early cruise is via one of the spacecraft's two low-gain antennas; the antenna selected depends on the relative geometry of the Sun, Earth and the spacecraft. The downlink telemetry rate is presently 40 bps. Spacecraft Activity Summary: On Thursday, 07/11, maintenance was performed on the SSR Flight Software Partitions. This activity, performed approximately every 2 weeks, repairs any SSR double bit errors (DBEs) which have occurred in the code-containing portions of the Flight Software partitions during the preceeding period. Also on Thursday, the RTE-158 data mode was enabled on the spacecraft, an autonomous thermal control (ATC) limit was adjusted to reduce the operating temperature of the pressurant control assembly (PCA) by a few degrees, and the CDS on-line Reset Counters were zeroed out. The enabling of the 158bps data mode provides an intermediate data rate between the already-enabled rates of 40bps and 948 bps. An opportunity will come in Fall of '98 to increase the downlink data rate from 40bps to 158bps, prior to the date at which the telecom link will support the higher 948bps rate. On Wednesday, 07/15, four activities took place. First, the Accelerometer Scale Factor was updated, based on pre-Launch measurements, in preparation for two Main Engine burns planned for the Fall of '98. Following this, a housekeeping activity was performed which reads out a set of AACS Attitude Estimator (ATE) measurements not available in regular engineering telemetry. This ATE telemetry allows ground controllers to track the normal functioning of the attitude estimator software onboard the spacecraft. The readout is scheduled approximately every 2-4 weeks, over an available DSN telemetry pass. Next, an AACS Fault Protection Log maintenance activity was performed. This realtime activity, scheduled approximately every two months over an available command/telemetry pass, clears the AACS "high water marks", reads out any items stored in the AACS fault protection (FP) log, then clears the log. Finally, the Solid State Recorder (SSR) record and playback pointers were reset. This housekeeping activity, done approximately weekly, maximizes the amount of time that recorded engineering data is available for playback to the ground should an anomaly occur on the spacecraft. Upcoming events: Activities scheduled for the week of 07/17 - 07/23 include: Periodic Instrument Maintenance and an SSR Pointer reset on 07/22. Hа сегодня все, пока! =SANA=

Дата: 20 июля 1998 (1998-07-20) От: Alexander Bondugin Тема: * SpaceNews 20-Jul-98 * Привет всем! Вот, свалилось из Internet... SB NEWS @ AMSAT $SPC0720 * SpaceNews 20-Jul-98 * BID: $SPC0720 ========= SpaceNews ========= MONDAY JULY 20, 1998 SpaceNews originates at KD2BD in Wall Township, New Jersey, USA. It is published every week and is made available for non-commercial use. * OSCAR-11 NEWS * UoSAT-OSCAR-11 experienced a potential problem at the end of June after a long period of uneventful operation. The telemetry status blocks showed that the magnetorquer firing counters had stopped incrementing, and the spin period was steadily increasing, implying that the satellite rotation was slowing down. Normally the Z counter increments at about ten counts per day, and the minus spin counter about five counts per day. These firings maintain the spin period at around 360 seconds (one revolution every six minutes), and keep the satellite pointing towards the earth. The Z-axis counter got stuck at 1024 and the minus spin counter got stuck at 486. After si