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Дата: 06 ноября 1998 (1998-11-06) От: Alexander Bondugin Тема: WDC-A R&S Launch Announcement 12974: PANSAT and Spartan 201 Привет всем! Вот, свалилось из Internet... > COSPAR/ISES WORLD WARNING AGENCY FOR SATELLITES WORLD DATA CENTER-A FOR R & S, NASA/GSFC CODE 633, GREENBELT, MARYLAND, 20771. USA SPACEWARN 12974 COSPAR/WWAS USSPACECOM NUMBER SPACECRAFT INTERNATIONAL ID (CATALOG NUMBER) LAUNCH DATE,UT PANSAT 1998-064B 25520 30 OCTOBER 1998 SPARTAN 201 1998-064C 25520 01 NOVEMBER 1998 [BOTH WERE RELEASED FROM STS 95 ON THOSE DATES.] Dr. JIM THIEMAN FOR DR. JOSEPH H. KING, DIRECTOR, WDC-A-R&S. [PH: (301) 286 7355. E-MAIL: KING@NSSDCA.GSFC.NASA.GOV 04 NOVEMBER 1998 17:00 UT] Further details will be in a forthcoming SPACEWARN Bulletin Dr. Edwin V. Bell, II _/ _/ _/_/_/ _/_/_/ _/_/_/ _/_/ Mail Code 633 _/_/ _/ _/ _/ _/ _/ _/ _/ NASA Goddard Space _/ _/ _/ _/_/ _/_/ _/ _/ _/ Flight Center _/ _/_/ _/ _/ _/ _/ _/ _/ Greenbelt, MD 20771 _/ _/ _/_/_/ _/_/_/ _/_/_/ _/_/ +1-301-286-1187 ed.bell@gsfc.nasa.gov SPACEWARN home page: http://nssdc.gsfc.nasa.gov/spacewarn/ Hа сегодня все, пока! =SANA=

Дата: 06 ноября 1998 (1998-11-06) От: Alexander Bondugin Тема: WDC-A R&S Launch Announcement 12975: PANAMSAT 8 Привет всем! Вот, свалилось из Internet... COSPAR/ISES WORLD WARNING AGENCY FOR SATELLITES WORLD DATA CENTER-A FOR R & S, NASA/GSFC CODE 633, GREENBELT, MARYLAND, 20771. USA SPACEWARN 12975 COSPAR/WWAS USSPACECOM NUMBER SPACECRAFT INTERNATIONAL ID (CATALOG NUMBER) LAUNCH DATE,UT PANAMSAT 8 1998-065A 25522 04 NOVEMBER 1998 Dr. JIM THIEMAN FOR DR. JOSEPH H. KING, DIRECTOR, WDC-A-R&S. [PH: (301) 286 7355. E-MAIL: KING@NSSDCA.GSFC.NASA.GOV 04 NOVEMBER 1998 21:00 UT] Further details will be in a forthcoming SPACEWARN Bulletin Dr. Edwin V. Bell, II _/ _/ _/_/_/ _/_/_/ _/_/_/ _/_/ Mail Code 633 _/_/ _/ _/ _/ _/ _/ _/ _/ NASA Goddard Space _/ _/ _/ _/_/ _/_/ _/ _/ _/ Flight Center _/ _/_/ _/ _/ _/ _/ _/ _/ Greenbelt, MD 20771 _/ _/ _/_/_/ _/_/_/ _/_/_/ _/_/ +1-301-286-1187 ed.bell@gsfc.nasa.gov SPACEWARN home page: http://nssdc.gsfc.nasa.gov/spacewarn/ Hа сегодня все, пока! =SANA=

Дата: 06 ноября 1998 (1998-11-06) От: Alexander Bondugin Тема: John Glenn Will Conduct Tests With Aerogel On STS-95 Привет всем! Вот, свалилось из Internet... Marshall Space Flight Center Space Science News http://science.nasa.gov/newhome/headlines/msad26oct98_1.htm Right Stuff for the Super Stuff John Glenn will conduct tests with a space age super-substance called aerogel on STS-95 October 26, 1998: The coming return of John Glenn to space highlights the differences between how the world looked to Americans in 1962 and how it looks to us in 1998. In 1962, as the first American to orbit the globe, Glenn reflected on the delicate environmental balance that protects life on the pale blue planet from the harsh and forbidding black matte of stars. "Each time around, I noticed a strange phenomenon. The stars shone steady as they neared the horizon. Then they dimmed for a bit. But the stars brightened again before actually setting. They appeared to be passing through a layer of haze about six to eight degrees above the earth and two degrees thick." The haze that Glenn described was the thin line of atmosphere: oxygen to breathe, ozone to shield ultraviolet radiation, and carbon dioxide and methane to trap reflected heat. The gaseous stuff of life. But from orbit, even the Earth's atmosphere acts only as a semi-transparent window to the starlit sky. For Glenn's first orbital flight the mission goal was to return safely. Now 30 years later, he will use space not just as 'the high ground' but as a working laboratory. Glenn and the other astronauts will be making the first run at space-manufacture for a product called aerogel. In the words of early Mercury astronauts 30 year ago, the mission will 'push the envelope' on how aerogel can be improved. If successful, the experiment returns not just more aerogel, but a fundamentally different kind of material, what might be called the first "astrogel." For windows and skylights, the "holy grail" - according to Chemical and Engineering News - is a transparent aerogel. Current aerogels, as produced on the ground, however, are not completely transparent, but instead have a slight blue haze to them. However, space-manufactured aerogel has an improved transparency that could make the substance usable in place of window glass. Aerogel is a remarkable substance. It's the lightest known solid, so much akin to air that it's sometimes called "frozen smoke." Its insulating properties are nothing short of remarkable, protecting virtually anything from heat or cold. It was used by NASA to keep the Sojourner rover warm on the surface of Mars where night time temperatures plunge to -100 degrees. A single one-inch window pane of aerogel is equivalent to the insulation provided by 32 windows panes of glass (R-20 to R-32 insulation factors). Truly, aerogel would make a perfect window except for one thing: it's not perfectly transparent. Aerogel made on Earth is permeated with tiny, irregular pores that make aerogel hard to see through. There is evidence that the irregularities are diminished when the substance in manufactured in weightless conditions. Hence the experiment on STS-95. Astronauts will actually manufacture some aerogel in orbit and see what happens. If aerogel could be made transparent it could revolutionize household windows. By some estimates, aerogel costs 3 times the price of glass, but glass manufacturing costs are only about 10% of the purchase price for windows, so aerogel window manufacturing might still carry a large profit margin. Aerogel at a Glance * Aerogel is only 3 times denser than air. * Its index of refraction is 1 - 1.05. * It was used to insulate Sojourner during the Mars Pathfinder mission. * The first silica aerogels were manufactured in space in April 1996 on a Conquest rocket. * A 1 inch pane of Aerogel has the same insulating power as 32 panes of ordinary glass. Aerogel may also have a role to play in keeping the atmospheric line clear, the thin air gap that Glenn described more than 35 years ago. By reducing home heating costs aerogel could reduce global energy needs and minimize the pollutants that inevitably come with energy production. Science Magazine (1998) listed next-generation window technology as a critical point in the US obligations to meet its international global warming commitments prescribed by the late 1997 Kyoto Conference resolutions. The Kyoto Conference set international standards for a 5-10% cut in carbon budgets. This is considered impossible by some economists without triggering an economic recession. Under the agreement, carbon percentage allotments are proposed as tradable items and can be bought by industrialized countries from less industrialized societies, in effect a stock market trading on smog. New technology could offer a way out. As an example, the December 1997 issue of Today's Homeowner magazine listed NASA aerogel research ("Super Stuff") in its cover story entitled "Best New Products for 1998." The article concludes: "The potential market for a clear aerogel is enormous, considering that window heat loss accounts for up to 30 percent of energy lost from a home. A well-designed aerogel window could lower heating and cooling costs by a comparable figure". Reduced industrial waste is another long-term target of aerogel research. Not only is aerogel of scientific interest to reduce the energy load, but also to capture waste and polluting gases before they reach the atmosphere. The industrial group, The Attia Applied Science, Incorporated (TAASI), concluded in 1996: "The market for the aerogel absorbents is potentially vast. In principle, wherever alcohol and fossil fuels are used, aerogel absorbents In 1998, the scientific quest to reduce the haze continues, both with deeper environmental study and in some small part, a remarkable semi-transparent window insulator called aerogel. Glenn's flight will be the first attempt by space scientists to improve the transparency of aerogel and thus clear the view. During the STS-95 mission astronauts will test whether aerogel made in the weightlessness of space is more transparent than aerogel made here on Earth. As progress continues, the use of clear insulation betters the chances that over coming generations even the atmospheric haze will not cloud our views of the stars. Hа сегодня все, пока! =SANA=

Дата: 06 ноября 1998 (1998-11-06) От: Alexander Bondugin Тема: Parkes telescope puts 1000 pulsar runs on the board (Forwarded) Привет всем! Вот, свалилось из Internet... Commonwealth Scientific and Industrial Research Organisation Australia Ms Rosie Schmedding (02) 6276-6520 Mobile (0418) 622-653 Fax (02) 6276-6821 Media Release: Ref 98/259 5 November 1998 PARKES TELESCOPE PUTS 1000 PULSAR RUNS ON THE BOARD A team using CSIRO's Parkes radio telescope has just found the thousandth pulsar known to science. The telescope holds the international record for having discovered the largest number of these small spinning stars since the first was found in 1967. The new survey is clocking them up more than ten times faster than any previous search, anywhere -- about one for each hour the telescope is used -- and has already found more than 200. "This is thanks to the power of a new instrument on the telescope, the multibeam system, which has slashed the time it takes to scan the sky," said co-leader of the pulsar team, CSIRO's Dr Dick Manchester. Even surveys like this can find only a fraction of the 300,000 pulsars thought to live in our Galaxy. "Many have signals that are too weak to pick up, or their beams are not pointing towards us," explained Dr Manchester. The survey is an international collaboration between astronomers from the University of Manchester, UK; the CSIRO Australia Telescope National Facility; the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, USA; and the Osservatorio Astronomico di Bologna, Italy. A pulsar is the collapsed core of a massive star, only 20 kilometres across, born when the original star explodes at the end of its life. Like an egg, a pulsar has a hard external crust covering a fluid interior. This fluid 'neutron matter' is so dense that a piece the size of a sugar cube has a mass of 100 million tonnes. Deep in the pulsar's innards the density is so great that matter may exist only as exotic subatomic particles. A pulsar is ringed by a strong magnetic field. Electrons flung around by the field put out a beam of radio waves. As a pulsar spins, its beam sweeps repeatedly over the Earth and is seen as a pulsating radio signal. Just as biologists hunt for new species to build up a picture of the Earth's biodiversity, astronomers hunt for new pulsars to understand 'astrodiversity'. "There are many different types of pulsar, and we have only a few examples of some types," said Dr Manchester. "One of the main aims of the survey is to find more examples of these rare types and perhaps other types not even known or anticipated at present." "In this survey's first hundred pulsars we found one orbiting another neutron star -- this is only the sixth such object known." "Most of all we'd like to find a pulsar orbiting a black hole, to test ideas about black-hole physics. Theories predict that one pulsar in a thousand should be in such a system," he said. "We are particularly interested in young pulsars," said team member Professor Vicky Kaspi of Massachusetts Institute of Technology. "Their signals tend to glitch -- show sudden changes -- which is a sign of a 'starquake' taking place, and we can use this to study their interiors." "As well, some young pulsars could be counterparts of high-energy X-ray and gamma-ray sources. We've detected many such sources but can't identify them with any particular objects." The more pulsars we find, the better we can understand how they are born and evolve. "We think most of the pulsars in the Galaxy are weak. Not many of these have been found, and so our current estimates of how many pulsars exist and how often they are born are rather uncertain," said Dr Manchester. Studying a large population of pulsars also means we can better understand what makes them 'tick'. "Like people, pulsars are all individuals -- they have different signal characteristics," said Dr Manchester. "We want to get beyond those idiosyncrasies to understand how pulsars actually emit their signals." And beyond this is the very question of what pulsars are. "The centre of a pulsar is denser than an atomic nucleus," said Dr Manchester. The equations that describe pulsar matter put a limit on how fast a pulsar can spin without it breaking apart. The fastest pulsar we know of spins around 600 times a second. If we found one spinning faster -- say, at 1200 times a second -- that would better pin down what pulsars are made of." Signals from distant pulsars also reveal the conditions in the depths of the Galaxy, said Dr Fernando Camilo of the University of Manchester. "The space between the stars is threaded through with magnetic fields and invisible giant clouds of electrons," he explained. "These blur pulsar signals that travel through them. From the nature of the blur we can reconstruct the conditions in space. Already our survey has doubled the known number of really distant pulsars -- those more than 20 000 light-years from the Sun -- which are going to allow us to probe out to those distances." A network of particularly 'fast-ticking' pulsars could even help us to 'see' gravity waves, says Professor Matthew Bailes of Swinburne University of Technology, who is doing another pulsar search with the Parkes telescope. The pulsars would be like ocean buoys that rise and fall as a wave passes by. "A passing gravity wave would slightly alter the time the pulsar's signal takes to reach us," said Professor Bailes. The team members of the Parkes multibeam pulsar survey are: Professor Andrew Lyne, Dr Fernando Camilo, Ms Nuria McKay and Mr Dan Sheppard, Jodrell Bank Observatory, University of Manchester; Professor Vicky Kaspi and Mr Froney Crawford, Massachusetts Institute of Technology; Dr Nichi D'Amico, Osservatorio Astronomico di Bologna; and Dr Dick Manchester and Dr Jon Bell, CSIRO Australia Telescope National Facility. The Parkes radio telescope is operated by the CSIRO Australia Telescope National Facility. For more information, contact: Dr Dick Manchester CSIRO Australia Telescope National Facility Tel: (02) 9372-4313 (bh), (02) 9449-4534 (ah), Fax (02) 9372-4310 E-mail: rmanches@atnf.csiro.au Professor Vicky Kaspi Department of Physics and Center for Space Research, MIT Tel: +1 617-253-5169, Fax: +1 617-253-0861 E-mail: vicky@space.mit.edu Dr Fernando Camilo University of Manchester, UK Tel: +44-1477-571-321, Fax: +44-1477-571-618 E-mail: fc@jb.man.ac.uk Andrew Yee ayee@nova.astro.utoronto.ca Hа сегодня все, пока! =SANA=

Дата: 06 ноября 1998 (1998-11-06) От: Alexander Bondugin Тема: Make Your Own Balloon-Powered Asteroid Nanorover Привет всем! Вот, свалилось из Internet... Make a Balloon-powered Nanorover! Roving a mini-"planet" calls for a "mini-rover." The Japanese are sending a spacecraft to Asteroid 4660 Nereus in 2002. With the spacecraft will be a sample return vehicle and a little rover just a couple of inches high. The "nanorover" ("nano" meaning very tiny) is designed and built by the U.S. National Aeronautics and Space Administration's Jet Propulsion Laboratory. The rover will explore the surface of the asteroid and take pictures. You can build a nanorover too. Try this one, made from three styrofoam meat trays. This project is a little bit hard, so you might want to ask a grown-up or big brother or sister to do it with you. Instructions for building your own nanorover is available here: http://spaceplace.jpl.nasa.gov/muses1.htm Hа сегодня все, пока! =SANA=

Дата: 06 ноября 1998 (1998-11-06) От: Alexander Bondugin Тема: First Rotation Period of a Kuiper Belt Object Measured (Forwarded) Привет всем! Вот, свалилось из Internet... ESO Education and Public Relations Dept. Text with all links is available on the ESO Website at URLs: http://www.eso.org/outreach/press-rel/pr-1998/phot-41-98.html ESO Press Photo 41/98 For immediate release: 5 November 1998 First Rotation Period of a Kuiper Belt Object Measured News from ESO Workshop on Minor Bodies in the Outer Solar System An ESO Workshop on Minor Bodies in the Outer Solar System (ESO MBOSS-98) was held at the ESO Headquarters in Garching, Germany, during November 2-5, 1998. Among these objects, the newly discovered Kuiper Belt Objects (KBO's) outside the orbit of planet Neptune (also known as Trans-Neptunian Objects) are of particular interest, but the meeting was also concerned with distant comets and some of the small moons of the outer planets. During these four days, about 50 specialists from all parts of the world, observers as well as theoreticians, had a very fruitful discussion about this rapidly expanding research field. In particular, they identified some of the crucial questions for which answers are required in order to advance our overall picture of the formation, evolution and interaction of these distant bodies. Specific plans were made for collaborative studies of the outer Solar System during the coming years. The workshop served to review and discuss current knowledge of all minor bodies beyond the asteroid belt, as well as their origins and inter-relationships. Special emphasis was placed on the optimal use of next-generation observational facilities, such as the ESO Very Large Telescope (VLT) at the Paranal Observatory (Chile) and the Keck telescope at Mauna Kea (Hawaii, USA). The participants enthusiastically identified several front-line observational investigations that will take full advantage of these powerful astronomical facilities. Kuiper Belt Objects The Kuiper Belt is a zone outside the orbits of Neptune and Pluto in which icy solar system objects were expected to be present; the first was found in 1992. Since then, more than 70 KBO's have been found in orbits between approximately 30 AU and 50 AU from the Sun (4.5 to 7.5 x 10^9 km). One of them (designated 1996 TL66) even reaches a distance of 135 AU (20 x 10^9 km, i.e. 4.5 times the heliocentric distance of Neptune) when it is farthest away. It is estimated that there may be at least 100,000 KBO's larger than 100 km. These objects probably represent the remnants of a much larger population of such objects, formed in the early phase of the solar system, some 4.5 billion years ago. Gravitational effects from the outer planets Neptune and Uranus and collisions soon reduced their numbers. The outermost planet Pluto is most probably the largest member of this class of objects. Because of their large distance, and despite their significant size, 100 - 500 km diameter, they are all very faint and can only be observed with large telescopes. Except for their orbits, little is known about most of them, although recent observations have shown that they have different colours, ranging from rather blueish to red. According to current ideas, the short period comets observed in the inner solar system come from the Kuiper Belt and their kilometre-size "dirty snowball" nuclei are simply small KBO's. First rotational period of a KBO measured at La Silla Among the highlights of this workshop was the presentation of a detailed portrait of a Kuiper-Belt Object, designated as 1996 TO66. It was discovered in October 1996 by a group of astronomers from the University of Hawaii, during a survey aimed at discovering KBO's. It is one of the brightest trans-neptunian objects known to date; its magnitude is 21.2, i.e. it is about 1.5 million times fainter than the faintest stars visible by naked eye. A group of European astronomers [1] used the ESO 3.6-m New Technology Telescope (NTT) at the La Silla observatory during 6 nights in August and October 1997 to obtain very accurate observations of 1996 TO66, while is was at a distance of about 45 AU. ESO Press Photo 41/98 Image and brightness variation of Kuiper Belt Object "1996 TO66" The top panel shows a composite image of the Kuiper Belt Object 1996 TO66 (round image at the center), totalling 4 hours of exposure with the EMMI multi-mode instrument at the 3.6-m New Technology Telescope (NTT) at La Silla. During the exposure, the object moved with respect to the background stars; this motion was compensated for and the KBO therefore appears as a point, while the images of background stars are trailed. The bright, nearly horizontal line that crosses the entire field is the light trail left by a geostationary satellite in orbit around the Earth, that crossed the field of view during one of the exposures (this also serves to illustrate a specific problem of modern astronomy -- that of increasing "light pollution" from artificial satellites illuminated by the Sun). The lower panel is the composite "light-curve" of 1996 TO66, showing its brightness ("red magnitude") variations with time (in hours). The dots and the corresponding "error bars" represent the actual measurements from several nights and their uncertainties, while the solid line is a mathematic fit through these points. It was used to determine the rotation period of 1996 TO66 as about 6 hours and 15 minutes. During these nights, they took over 50 images of the object through different optical filters; on each of these, they carefully measured its brightness. The resulting "light-curve", cf. ESO PR Photo 41/98, i.e. the change of brightness with time, shows a clear variation with a period of a little over 6 hours. This is caused by rotation of the object. It is the first time it has been possible to determine a rotation period of any KBO. From the mean brightness of 1996 TO66, it was estimated that the diameter is of the order of 600 km. This corresponds to just under one third of the size of the outermost planet Pluto, making 1996 TO66 one of the largest known KBO's. The light-curve also indicates that the object is somewhat elongated (one axis is at least 10% larger than the others), and that the surface may possibly have some darker and brighter regions. Implications This first measurement of the rotation period of a KBO is important: as 1996 TO66 is a comparatively large body, it is most likely that the rotation period has not changed much since its formation, 4.5 billion years ago. This is one more precious piece of information to our still very sparse knowledge about the processes that took place when our solar system was formed. Interestingly, (2060) Chiron, a minor planet in orbit between Saturn and Uranus that is thought to have originally come from the Kuiper Belt, also rotates with a period near 6 hours. A comparison of 1996 TO66's brightness as measured through different optical filters, indicates that it is of a grey-blue colour, similar to that of Pluto's moon, Charon, and also the KBO 1996 TL66. Very little is still known about the physical nature of the KBO's. They are so remote and faint that their study, even with large telescopes, is near the observational limits of what is possible. Nevertheless, new results like these now pave the way towards a better understanding of the current population of minor bodies in the outer reaches of our solar system. When more observations of KBO's with large telescopes like the VLT become available during the next years, it is expected that trends in their measured physical properties (e.g. rotational state, surface properties) will emerge. This will in turn permit more specific conclusions about the structure of the proto-planetary disk and the processes by which the planets and the KBO's were formed. Note: [1] The group consists of Olivier Hainaut, Catherine Delahodde and Hermann Boehnhardt (ESO La Silla) and Elisabetta Dotto and Maria Antonietta Barucci (Observatoire de Paris). This is the caption to ESO PR Photo 41/98. It may be reproduced, if credit is given to the European Southern Observatory. Copyright ESO Education & Public Relations Department Karl-Schwarzschild-Strasse 2, D-85748 Garching, Germany Andrew Yee ayee@nova.astro.utoronto.ca Hа сегодня все, пока! =SANA=

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