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Дата: 11 января 1999 (1999-01-11)
От: Alexander Bondugin
Тема: SpaceViews - 1 January 1999 [1/6]
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S P A C E V I E W S
Issue 1999.01.01
1999 January 1
http://www.spaceviews.com/1999/01/
*** News ***
NEAR Thruster Abort Delays Eros Rendezvous
Private Investors to Keep Mir in Orbit, Russia Says
SOHO in Safe Mode
Shuttle Chief Warns About Safety of Orbiters
Lunar Prospector in Lower Orbit
Nozomi Spacecraft on Its Way to Mars
Contradictory Findings on Accelerating Universe
NASA Gives AXAF Observatory New Name
Ariane, Long March, Proton Launches Successful
SpaceViews Event Horizon
Other News
*** Articles ***
Shooting for the Moon
Editor's Note: With this issue we are changing our publishing schedule.
Instead of sending out issues twice a month, we will be sending out issues
four times a month, on the 1st, 8th, 15th, and 22nd of each month. This
will serve you in two ways. By publishing more frequently the news
articles you receive will be more timely. Also, by spreading out the
content normally found in each issue into more issues, we'll make the size
of each issue more manageable, especially for those users whose mail
accounts place limits on the size of mail messages. As always, each issue
and the latest news are available on our Web site, http://www.spaceviews.com.
If you have any questions or comments about this change, please contact me
at jeff@spaceviews.com.
-- Jeff Foust
Editor, SpaceViews
*** News ***
NEAR Thruster Abort Delays Eros Rendezvous
An aborted thruster firing by the Near Earth Asteroid
Rendezvous (NEAR) spacecraft on December 20 will delay the
spacecraft's arrival at the asteroid Eros by over a year.
NEAR was scheduled to fire its thrusters for 20 minutes at 5
pm EST (2200 UT) December 20, the first of four thruster burns that
would have put the spacecraft in orbit around Eros by mid-January.
However, contact with NEAR was lost around the time of the thruster
burn and not reestablished for more than one day.
When contact with NEAR was reestablished, controllers found
that the burn had been aborted. Engineers believe the burn was
aborted when certain safety limits in the spacecraft's autonomous
control system were violated during the settling burn, a brief firing
of attitude control thrusters before the main thruster burn.
The delay in reestablishing contact with NEAR meant that the
other thruster burns necessary for a January arrival at Eros could not
be carried out. On December 30 NASA announced plans for a thruster
burn on January 3 that will put NEAR into an orbit that will bring it
back to Eros in mid-February of 2000.
While disappointed with the delay arriving at Eros, mission
managers were able to offer something of a consolation prize to
scientists and others involved with the mission. NEAR performed a
flyby of Eros on December 23, passing within 4,100 km (2,500 mi.) on
December 23.
NEAR returned about 1,100 images of the asteroid during the
flyby, showing features as small as 500 meters (1,650 feet) across.
NEAR's infrared spectrometer and magnetometer also collected data on
the composition of Eros and the existance of any magnetic fields
around the asteroid.
"The abort lost us time but the flyby gave us valuable
information about Eros' shape and mass that we wouldn't have had --
information that will help us during our orbital phase a little more
than a year from now," NEAR project manager Thomas Coughlin said.
Private Investors to Keep Mir in Orbit, Russia Says
Private investors have been found to keep the Russian space
station Mir in orbit through the year 2001, officials with the company
that operates the station announced Wednesday, December 23.
Yuri Semionov, president of the Energia company, refused to
name the investors or the amount of money they were contributing.
Russian officials have previously said that it costs $20 million a
month to operate Mir, so the deal could be worth up to $720 million.
Semionov has asked the Russian government to draft guarantees
for the investment, and that the funding agreement would be signed as
soon as those guarantees were ready.
Energia officials and Russian cosmonauts have said on many
occasions that Mir could continue to operate through 2001, despite
past problems with the station and plans to deorbit the station in
mid-1999.
"It is purely a political question that there is pressure for
us to get rid of Mir as soon as possible," veteran cosmonaut Anatoly
Solovyov told Reuters in November. "It is clear why. Who has the
station? We do."
In November the Russian Space Agency asked NASA to change the
plane of the orbit of the International Space Station to that of
Mir's, to enable easy movement of equipment of even entire modules
from Mir to ISS. Russia later dropped the request when NASA showed no
interest in supporting it.
Any plans to keep Mir in orbit beyond mid-1999 could endanger
Russia's participation in the International Space Station. American
analysts and NASA officials have questioned Russia's ability to
maintain both Mir and ISS given the country's serious economic
problems. Also, any effort to prolong Mir's life in orbit may violate
signed ISS agreements between the United States and Russia.
SOHO in Safe Mode
Just two months after the Solar and Heliospheric Observatory
(SOHO) spacecraft had fully recovered from earlier serious problems,
the spacecraft entered a safe mode late Monday, December 21, possibly
from the failure of the last working gyro.
Spacecraft controllers report that SOHO entered a safe mode at
12:49 pm EST (1749 UT) December 21. Preliminary indications are that
the sole working gyro on the spacecraft had failed.
If true, and the gyro cannot be restored, it may be difficult
to impossible for the spacecraft to resume normal operations. No
further information on the spacecraft status was available from
mission control.
A message posted on the SOHO Web site late Tuesday, December
22, stated that no scientific observations will be performed with SOHO
until software to permit gyroless observations can be uploaded. No
date was set for observations to resume.
Scientists and engineers had just celebrated the complete
restoration of SOHO in October, when after nearly four months of
effort they were able to bring SOHO back to normal after an accident
crippled the spacecraft.
SOHO started tumbling June 24, a problem traced to the human
error by ground controllers when they tried using a switched-off gyro
to orient the spacecraft. SOHO remained out of contact until early
August. Engineers worked to bring SOHO's systems back online, stop
the tumbling, and check out the scientific instruments.
Although many predicted that only some of SOHO's instruments
could be brought back online, all instruments were eventually
restored. "I tip my hat to the engineers who built this spacecraft
and these sensitive but robust instruments," Bernhard Fleck, the ESA
project scientist for SOHO, said in October.
The joint NASA/ESA SOHO spacecraft was launched in December
1995. It completed its primary mission in April 1998 and entered an
extended mission to monitor the Sun as it entered the peak of its
11-year activity cycle.
Hа сегодня все, пока!
=SANA=
Дата: 11 января 1999 (1999-01-11)
От: Alexander Bondugin
Тема: SpaceViews - 1 January 1999 [2/6]
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Shuttle Chief Warns About Safety of Orbiters
The manager of NASA's space shuttle program has expressed
concern about a number of recent incidents that affected the safety of
shuttle orbiters and has reminded the shuttle workforce to be more
vigilant about safety.
In a memo dated November 20 but published publicly earlier
this week on the NASA Watch Web site, shuttle manager Tommy Holloway
noted three incidents within the past 13 months that could have led to
serious accidents with the shuttle.
"History tells us that all major events are preceded by a
number of smaller, less significant, and less observed events which
provided insight and avoidance opportunities," Holloway said in the
memo to shuttle workers. "As we observe these events, we realize the
importance of being alert for these 'wake- up' calls and of taking
timely action to respond to them."
The first of the three incidents took place in November 1997,
when the shuttle Atlantis was ferried from Florida to
California atop a 747 for upgrades. A washer for one of the bolts
used to secure the shuttle was missing. According to Holloway only
"the high level of structural margin in the design" prevented an
accident that could have destroyed the shuttle and 747 and killed the
747 flight crew.
In June, a pressure sensor for one of the main engines on the
shuttle Discovery failed 20 seconds into the flight. A broken
piece of test equipment inadvertently left in place was later blamed
for the failure. Had the sensor failed later in the launch, Holloway
said, the engine could have shut down, forcing an abort and a landing
attempt in Spain or North Africa.
In October, the door to the drag chute compartment fell off
seconds before Discovery lifted off on flight STS-95. The door
bounced off one of the main engines nozzles after it fell off; had it
done so differently it could have damaged the nozzle and even caused
an "uncontained failure" of the engine.
Holloway followed up the report of the near-accidents with
eight pieces of advice for shuttle workers, ranging from sharing
information with coworkers to taking time to do the job right.
"Cutting corners and hurrying to do a job are sure ways to fail," he
warned. "If you don't think you have the time to do it right, take
time out!"
"We are in for a very challenging and dynamic period,"
Holloway said, noting that the shuttle will be called upon for the
assembly of the International Space Station, among other planned
missions. "Learning from history, I believe that rigorous application
of these steps will decrease the probability of a Space Shuttle
incident to improbable."
Lunar Prospector in Lower Orbit
Flight controllers have recently maneuvered the Lunar
Prospector spacecraft into a new lower orbit, in preparations for
putting the spacecraft into a very low orbit for detailed studies of
the lunar <b style="color:black;background-color:#66ffff">surface</b>.
On December 19 controllers fired Lunar Prospector's thrusters
to move the spacecraft from its previous 100-km (62-mi.) orbit into a
lower 40-km (25-mi.) orbit above the lunar <b style="color:black;background-color:#66ffff">surface</b>. There were no
problems reported with the maneuver.
Prospector's new orbit will be a temporary one. In January
the orbit will be further lowered by controllers, eventually placing
the spacecraft into an orbit 25-30 km (16-19 mi.) above the Moon. That
maneuver will end Prospector's year-long primary mission and begin its
extended mission.
During the extended mission, expected to last into mid-1999,
Prospector will conduct high-resolution studies of regions of the
Moon. Those studies will include efforts to better define the regions
of the lunar poles where water ice may be hidden.
During the extended mission scientists will also continue to
study the Moon's magnetic field, including detailing regions of the
Moon with unusually strong magnetic fields. Spacecraft instruments
will also study the composition of the moon with greater resolution.
"Lunar Prospector's instruments have gathered such superior
data that we have far exceeded our primary mission objectives," said
Sylvia Cox, Lunar Prospector mission manager. "This success raises our
expectations about getting an even closer look at the lunar <b style="color:black;background-color:#66ffff">surface</b>,
collecting data at higher resolutions, and gaining further insights
about our closest celestial neighbor."
The extended mission will end when Prospector runs out of fuel
needed to maintain its orbit through the Moon's notoriously "lumpy"
gravitational field. The spacecraft will then crash to the <b style="color:black;background-color:#66ffff">surface</b>.
Nozomi Spacecraft on Its Way to Mars
The Japanese spacecraft Nozomi completed last week a series of
Earth and Moon swingbys needed to send the spacecraft towards Mars,
but extra propellant needed to complete the gravity assists may affect
the future of the mission.
Nozomi entered a trans-Mars trajectory with a 7-minute
thruster burn during an Earth flyby early December 20. That flyby had
been preceded by lunar flybys September 24 and December 18.
Mission officials expressed concern about two
course-correction thruster firings on December 21. The burns were
longer than expected to compensate for "insufficient acceleration"
during the Earth flyby. The impact those extra burns on the rest of
the mission are under investigation.
Nozomi, Japanese for "hope", is the first mission to Mars by
anyone other than the United States or the former Soviet Union/Russia.
the $80-million spacecraft will orbit the Red Planet and study its
magnetic fields, atmosphere, and ionosphere. The spacecraft is
scheduled to arrive at Mars in October 1999.
Nozomi was launched July 4 on a Japanese M-V booster. The
booster is not powerful enough to launch the spacecraft on a direct
Mars trajectory, so controllers used a series of gravity assists and
thruster burns to build up velocity. At the time of launch the
spacecraft was named "Planet-B"; it received its current name shortly
after launch.
Contradictory Findings on Accelerating Universe
The discovery that the expansion of the universe may be
accelerating, and not slowing down as once thought, was named the top
science story of 1998 by the journal Science Thursday, December 17.
However, data released just one day later contradicts those
earlier findings by showing that the universe's expansion is slowing
down as predicted by theory.
Work by two separate international research groups showed that
the rate of expansion of the universe appears to be accelerating.
Astronomers measured the Doppler redshift of distant supernovae and
compared the light with similar, nearby supernovae to determine the
distances to the distant objects, and hence the expansion rate.
Most astronomers believed that the results would show that the
rate of expansion had decreased since the Big Bang some 15-20 billion
years ago. Instead, they found that the rate of expansion was
increasing, meaning galaxies were flying away from each other at
higher rates now than ever before. It also means that there is far
less mass than necessary to ever stop the expansion.
The results have strong implications for theories of the Big
Bang. Inflation theory, the leading theory to explain the sudden
growth of the universe a tiny fraction of a second after the Big Bang,
requires a universe with just enough mass to stop its expansion, or
more than what recent observations show.
The acceleration also implies that an unknown force is at work
to cause galaxies to speed up. A leading explanation is the
"cosmological constant", a term introduced into general relativity by
Albert Einstein to prevent the expansion of the universe, which his
theories predicted. Einstein later retracted the constant, calling it
his "greatest blunder."
Jeffrey Peterson, an astronomer at Carnegie Mellon University,
announced at an astrophysics conference in Paris December 18 findings
that contradicted earlier results using data from the Viper Telescope,
an submillimeter-wavelength telescope located in Antarctica.
Peterson reported that observations of distant gas clouds
showed that their angular size -- about one-half of a degree of arc --
was exactly that predicted for a universe whose rate of expansion is
slowing as predicted by inflation theory.
"These findings indicate that the material of the universe was
given just the right kick by the Big Bang to expand forever, never
collapsing, but also never becoming so dilute that gravity can be
ignored," Peterson said.
"This delicate balance is hard to understand unless inflation
theory, or something akin to it, is correct," he concluded.
Hа сегодня все, пока!
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Дата: 11 января 1999 (1999-01-11)
От: Alexander Bondugin
Тема: SpaceViews - 1 January 1999 [3/6]
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NASA Gives AXAF Observatory New Name
NASA's Advanced X-Ray Astrophysics Facility (AXAF), now
scheduled for launch in April of 1999, will be named after a famed
astronomer, the space agency announced Monday, December 21.
AXAF will now be known as the Chandra X-Ray Observatory after
Subrahmanyan Chandrasekhar, a late Nobel-winning astrophysicist.
Chandrasekhar was known to friends and colleagues as "Chandra", a word
that also means "Moon" or "luminous" in Sanskrit.
"Chandrasekhar made fundamental contributions to the theory of
black holes and other phenomena that the Chandra X-ray Observatory
will study," said NASA administrator Dan Goldin. "His life and work
exemplify the excellence that we can hope to achieve with this great
observatory."
Chandrasekhar was born in India and moved to the United States
in the mid-1930s, when he joined the faculty of the University of
Chicago. He won the Nobel Prize in physics in 1983 for work completed
much earlier in his career on the physical processes that control the
structure and evolution of stars. He remained at the University of
Chicago until his death in 1995.
"Chandra's work on the mass limit of white dwarfs really set
the stage for our understanding of violent events in the evolution of
stars," said Chicago astronomy professor Peter Vandervoort. "His work
lays the foundation for the modern understanding of neutron stars and
black holes that will come from the data collected by the Chandra
Observatory."
The name was selected from among 6,000 entries submitted by
students and teachers from all 50 states and 61 countries. Fifty-nine
entires suggested the name Chandra; of those, two people, an Idaho
student and a California physics teacher, won trips to see the Chandra
Observatory launch.
That launch has now been scheduled for no earlier than April
8, 1999, NASA announced the same day as the new name for the
telescope. The Chandra Observatory will be carried into orbit on the
shuttle Columbia on mission STS-93.
The launch, once scheduled for August 1998, was pushed back to
December a year ago because of problems with the assembly and testing
of the spacecraft. The launch was delayed again in October because of
electrical problems with the spacecraft and plans to conduct a
thorough review of the spacecraft before shipping it to Florida from
the California facilities of TRW, assemblers of the spacecraft.
The April launch date is contingent on shipping the spacecraft
to Florida on or before January 28 and a successful independent review
in mid-February of the spacecraft's control center in Cambridge,
Massachusetts.
When launched, the Chandra Observatory will fly in a
highly-elliptical orbit that will permit X-ray observations free from
the Earth's atmosphere, which absorbs X-rays, and the Van Allen
radiation belts, which also interfere with observations. It will
provide observations of X-ray sources, including black holes and
supernovae, 25 times sharper than previous X-ray missions.
Ariane, Long March, Proton Launches Successful
Launches of satellites ranging from replacement Iridium
satellites to Russian global positioning satellites on three different
boosters were successful in late December.
A Long March LM-2C/SD lifted off at approximately 6:30 am EST
(1130 UT) Saturday, December 19, from the Taiyuan launch center in
eastern China. Its payload, two Iridium satellites, successfully
reached orbit shortly after launch.
The satellites will be placed in plane 2, one of 6 orbital
planes used by Iridium satellites. The two satellites will serve as
on-orbit replacements for the existing satellites in the plane. The
constellation of 66 operational satellites entered commercial service
November 1, providing cellular phone service to nearly any point on
the Earth.
An Ariane 42L lifted off at 8:08 pm EST Monday, December 21
(0108 UT December 22) from the Ariane launch facility in Kourou. The
launch, the second one this month and the 11th overall this year, was
a success and its payload, the PAS-6B comsat for PanAmSat, was placed
into orbit.
PAS-6B will be used to provide direct TV services to Latin
America. Half of its 32 Ku-band transponders will be used to provide
broadcasting for Brazil while the other half will be used for the rest
of Latin America.
A Proton with a Blok-D upper stage lifted off from Baikonur
Cosmodrome in Kazakhstan December 30 at 1:35 pm EST (1835 UT). The
launch placed three Uragan satellites, named Kosmos 2362, 2363, and
2364, into orbit.
The three satellites will form part of Russia's Glonass
(Global Navigation Satellite System), similar to the United States'
Global Positioning System. The three satellites launched Wednesday
will all orbit in the same plane 19,000 km (11,780 mi.) above the
Earth. The Glonass system now has 21 of the 24 satellites necessary
for full operations.
SpaceViews Event Horizon
January 3 Delta 2 launch of the Mars Polar Lander spacecraft,
from Cape Canaveral, Florida at 3:21 pm EST (2021 UT)
January 3 Near Earth Asteroid Rendezvous (NEAR) spacecraft
thruster burn
January 13 Atlas 2AS launch of the JCSAT-6 comsat, from Cape
Canaveral, Florida at 7:40 pm EST (0040 UT Jan. 14)
January 14 Delta 2 launch of the Argos, Sunsat, and Oersted
satellites from Vandenberg AFB, California, at
5:58 am EST (1058 UT)
Hа сегодня все, пока!
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Дата: 11 января 1999 (1999-01-11)
От: Alexander Bondugin
Тема: SpaceViews - 1 January 1999 [4/6]
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Other News
SpaceDev, JPL Deal: In a first-of-its-kind deal, SpaceDev, the first
commercial space exploration company, has signed a contract with JPL
to study the use of NASA's Deep Space Network (DSN) for a planned
SpaceDev mission, the company announced December 15. Under the
contract, JPL's Telecommunications and Mission Operations Directorate
(TMOD) will start the process of allocating time on the DSN for
SpaceDev's Near Earth Asteroid Prospector (NEAP) mission, scheduled
for launch in 2001 for a mid-2002 rendezvous with the asteroid Nereus.
SpaceDev officials said even though the mission is not scheduled for
launch for more than two years, planning needs to start now. "The
34-meter DSN dishes we'll need for communicating with NEAP also
supports other numerous deep-space missions, so now is the time to
make our needs known to JPL and get into the queue," said Rex
Ridenoure, SpaceDev's chief mission architect.
More X-34 Test Flights: NASA and the Orbital Sciences Corporation
(OSC) have reached an agreement to add an additional 25 test flights
for the X-34, a pathfinder for future reusable launch vehicles, while
ground has been broken on what may become a new test site for the
vehicle. In a December 18 announcement, NASA said it would exercise an
option in an existing contract with OSC for an additional 25 test
flights of the X-34. Under the original contract only two test
flights were budgeted, but all parties had assumed additional test
flights would occur. Initial test flights of the X-34 are scheduled to
occur above the White Sands Missile Range in New Mexico. Future
tests, though, may be based at other locations, including Florida's
Kennedy Space Center, which broke ground on a servicing facility for
RLVs December 18.
Carbon in the Universe: One of the key ingredients for the formation
of life -- complex organic molecules -- may be commonplace in the
interstellar medium, two scientists recently reported. In the December
18 issue of the journal Science, Thomas Henning of the
Astrophysikalisches Institut in Jena, Germany and Farid Salama of NASA
Ames Research Center reported that the unique spectral signature of
interstellar dust may be explained by one class of exotic carbon
molecules, called polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons (PAHs). PAHs were
also detected in the <b style="color:black;background-color:#ffff66">Martian</b> meteorite ALH 84001, and were once piece
of evidence to support the claim that the meteorite was proof of past
<b style="color:black;background-color:#ffff66">Martian</b> life.
Quasars and Galaxy Collisions: New radio telescope data has linked
quasar activity with galaxy collisions, explaining why some quasars
are seen in relatively nearby galaxies, astronomers reported Tuesday,
December 29. Scientists mapped the distribution of hydrogen gas around
three galaxies between 670 and 830 million light-years away from
Earth, using the Very Large Array (VLA) radio telescope in New Mexico.
In all three cases the hydrogen appeared to have been disrupted by an
encounter with another galaxy. An encounter, in the form or a close
approach or a collision, would disrupt the hydrogen gas in the galaxy.
That gas would then become fuel for the quasar, which most astronomers
now believe to be supermassive black holes in the center of galaxies.
U.S. Participates in Solar Mission: American scientists will
participate in a Japanese mission to study the Sun, NASA announced
December 23. The space agency selected three investigations by
American scientists for the Solar-B spacecraft, scheduled for launch
in 2004. The spacecraft will feature a 50-cm (19.7-inch) telescope
capable of making magnetic field measurements in features as small as
110 km (70 mi.) across, 10 times better than previous spacecraft or
ground-based telescopes.
*** Articles ***
Shooting for the Moon
by Andrew J. LePage
Introduction
As the first full calendar year of the Space Age was winding
down, American and Soviet teams were pushing hard to be the first to
reach the Moon. Between August and early December of 1958, the two
countries had each made three attempts to launch lunar probes (see
"The First Race to the Moon" in the August 1998 issue of SpaceViews).
The three Soviet attempts were unsuccessful due to problems with their
newly developed Moon rocket, the 8K72. The first three American
probes, originally part of a USAF effort to send spacecraft into lunar
orbit that was transferred to NASA, at best only made it into
ballistic trajectories that brought them no where near their target.
While these three USAF-sponsored lunar probes were unsuccessful, NASA
hoped that the last pair of Pioneer probes developed by teams at JPL
(Jet Propulsion Laboratory) under William Pickering and ABMA (Army
Ballistic Missile Agency) under Wernher von Braun would fare much
better.
Pioneer 3
The Pioneer lunar probes designed by JPL were much more modest
than those built by either STL (Space Technology Laboratory) for the
USAF or the Soviet Union's E-1 probe. These tiny, conical probes
weighed just six kilograms (13 pounds) each and were instrumented to
survey the radiation environment in cis-lunar space. The diminutive
size of these probes were the direct result of the limited payload
capability of their launch vehicle. Developed by von Braun's team at
ABMA, the Juno II was cobbled together from modified components of the
Jupiter IRBM and the high-speed solid rocket assembly used by the Juno
I that launched America's first satellite (see "Explorer: America's
First Satellite" in the February 1998 issue of SpaceViews). The
design was hardly optimum for the task but it could still just barely
send a usable payload to the Moon. Given the desperation in the
United States at the time, almost anything would be attempted to beat
the Soviets to any significant goal in space.
The first of the JPL/ABMA lunar probes, Pioneer 3, lifted off
from Pad 5 at the Atlantic Missile Range at 12:45 AM on December 6,
1958 - the first anniversary of the disastrous Vanguard TV-3 failure.
While at first the launch looked good, a review of the telemetry
showed that the Jupiter AM-11 booster had cut-off 3.7 seconds early
and that the trajectory was lower than planned. Like its
predecessors, Pioneer 3 failed to escape the Earth. Early telemetry
from Pioneer 3 also indicated that its despin mechanism failed to
operate as intended leaving the probe spinning at the launch rate of
415 rpm instead of the slower 11 rpm required for the mission.
Pioneer 3 reached a peak altitude of only 102,300 kilometers
(63,580 miles) before it burned up over what was then French
Equatorial Africa 38 hours and six minutes after launch. Despite the
failure, Pioneer 3 still made useful measurements that confirmed the
extent of Earth's Van Allen radiation belt and discovered a second
belt between 16,000 and 64,000 kilometers (10,000 and 40,000 miles)
above the Earth. While scientifically important, it still did not
make up for the fact that yet another American spacecraft failed to
reach the Moon.
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Дата: 11 января 1999 (1999-01-11)
От: Alexander Bondugin
Тема: SpaceViews - 1 January 1999 [5/6]
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The "Dream" Probe
Despite the growing pains experienced during the first 8K72
launches and lagging development of its larger sister Moon rocket, the
8K73, Korolev's team of engineers were quickly climbing the learning
curve enabling them to build more reliable and higher performance
machines based on the adaptable R-7 ICBM. One such change was to load
the Blok E third stage of the 8K72 with a denser grade of kerosene
than that used by the core and strap-on boosters thus increasing the
stage's fuel load. These and other refinements now allowed the 8K72
to loft over 360 kilograms (790 pounds) into a direct ascent, 34-hour
long trajectory towards a lunar impact. Over the coming months these
enhancements would doom the increasingly redundant and troubled 8K73
development program.
Originally limited to an estimated mass of 170 kilograms (375
pounds), the E-1 probe nicknamed "Lunik" by its builders (a moniker
that was later applied by the West to all early Soviet lunar probes)
could now afford to gain some weight. The E-1 was a 1.2 meter (4
foot) in diameter, polished aluminum-alloy sphere with a pressurized
interior designed to maintain a temperature of 20 C (68 F). It
contained all the sensitive electronic equipment including the
transmitter, instruments, and batteries to power it all for about 60
hours. Its impressive suite of scientific instruments included a
magnetometer mounted on a one-meter long boom, a piezoelectric
micrometeorite detector, and devices to detect and characterize
various types of cosmic radiation. The fattened E-1 No. 4 weighed in
at about 192 kilograms (423 pounds).
Instead of wasting the unused payload capability of the 8K72,
it was decided that the Blok E escape stage would carry another 169
kilograms (372 pounds) of scientific and radio-equipment to supplement
Lunik's measurements. Included was a package to vaporize 1 kilogram
(2.2 pounds) of sodium to produce a short-lived artificial comet on
the way to the Moon. Originally suggested by Soviet astronomer Iosef
Shklovsky, this experiment would yield interesting insights into
Earth's outer magnetosphere and serve as a tracking aid.
As the world rang in 1959, 8K72 serial number B1-5 was rolled
out onto its pad at the NIIP-5 test range in snow covered steppes of
Kazhakastan. Under the rocket's nose was 361.3 kilograms (795.6
pounds) of payload including the E-1 No. 4 Lunik probe. At 8:00 PM
Moscow Time on January 2, 1959 the giant Moon rocket lifted off in the
Soviets' fourth attempt to reach the Moon. Unlike the previous
flights, this time the first two stages did not suffer any major
malfunctions allowing the Blok E stage to push its cargo towards the
Moon.
Initial tracking of the probe and escape stage indicated that
everything worked and that escape velocity had been achieved for the
first time. Lunik, now officially named "Mechta" (Russian for "Dream"
but later in history retroactively designated "Luna 1"), was on its
way to the Moon. Eight hours after launch at an altitude of about
120,000 kilometers (75,000 miles) over the Indian Ocean, the spent
Blok E released a fluorescent cloud of sodium vapor that expanded to
650 kilometers (400 miles) across in five minutes before disappearing
from sight. Visible from most of the Eastern Hemisphere, this
spectacle was proof that the Soviets were on the way to the Moon.
Despite the initial flurry of excitement, careful tracking
indicated that the escape stage had imparted slightly too much speed
causing the probe to miss the Moon. On January 4, 34 hours after
launch, Lunik passed within 6,000 kilometers (3,700 miles) of the Moon
on its way into solar orbit. Even though it failed to hit the Moon,
the probe's instruments worked perfectly and returned useful data on
the cis-lunar environment for the first time. The Soviet press,
however, trumpeted the flight as a total success with the first close
pass by the Moon and the first man made planet in orbit of the Sun.
Mechta was tracked until 62 hours after its launch on January
5, 1959. At a range of about 500,000 kilometers (300,000 miles), the
probe's batteries finally gave out ending a less than successful but
fruitful mission. The partial success of Mechta's mission provided
enough fuel for the Soviet propaganda machine to allow Korolev the
time he needed to analyze the mission's results and plan the next
step. In the mean time, another apparent space first for the Soviet
Union along with the immense size of the payload weighed heavily on an
increasingly nervous West.
America's Reply
The success of the Soviet Lunik probe had an incredible impact
on NASA. Under increasing pressure, von Braun needed to make his
second - and last - shot at the Moon a success. Except for some
additional lead shielding on one of the Geiger-Muller tubes, the 6.1
kilogram (13.4 pound) Pioneer 4 was identical to its unsuccessful
predecessor. The tiny probe was finally sent on its way by Juno II
Round AM-14 at 1:45 AM on March 3, 1959.
A slightly longer than planned burn of the second stage along
with a nearly nominal performance of the other stages guaranteed this
time that Pioneer 4 had surpassed escape velocity. But calculations
based on early tracking of the receding probe quickly showed that this
excess velocity and the inevitable aiming errors conspired to place
Pioneer 4 on a trajectory that would not pass within 32,000 kilometers
(20,000 miles) of the Moon as planned. Instead it would pass the Moon
at a distance of 60,000 kilometers (37,300 miles) or around 35 lunar
radii - a wide miss by any measure.
Two days after launch, Pioneer 4 passed the orbit of the Moon
and continued to relay its measurements back to the 85-foot (26-meter)
tracking antenna at JPL's Goldstone Station. After 82 hours of
operation, the probe's batteries were finally exhausted as Pioneer 4
passed a range of 655,000 kilometers (407,000 miles) on its way into
solar orbit. Engineers were confident that they could have tracked
Pioneer 4 out to a range of 1.1 million kilometers (700,000 miles) if
the batteries had not given out. But despite the new data returned by
the probe and the setting of a long distance communications record,
the American public still worried about the Soviet Union's growing
lead in space and America's feeble attempts to catch up.
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Impact at Last
Even though the flight of Mechta had generated a lot of
propaganda, the goal of actually hitting the Moon was still
unachieved. After a six month hiatus, Korolev and his team were ready
to try again. The next probe would be a modified version of the
original designated E-1A. Based on experience with Lunik,
improvements were made to the instruments and the antenna housing. The
first of these improved probes, E-1A No. 5, was set to be launched on
8K72 serial number I1-7 on July 16, 1959.
Because the fuel tanks of the Blok E escape stage were
mistakenly filled with a lighter grade of kerosene, launch was
postponed while the tanks were emptied and flushed. Two days later
the first of the modified Lunik probes was on its way. But unlike the
previous launch, this ascent would not pass without incident. About
153 seconds into the mission, the gyrohorizon in the rocket's guidance
system failed. Unable to sense its attitude, the uncontrolled rocket
and its payload were destroyed by range safety.
After a short review to determine the cause of the failure and
correct it, 8K72 serial number I1-7A was rolled out onto the pad for
an attempt to launch the 390.2 kilogram (859.2 pound) E-1A No. 6
payload on September 9, 1959. This attempt was timed to take place
just before Krushchev's tour of the United States which was set to
start on September 15. A successful mission would give the Soviet
Premier a valuable propaganda tool. But the first attempt was aborted
a half a second before lift off when the core's engine failed to
attain full thrust. The rocket was removed from the pad and its
payload was quickly transferred to a backup launch vehicle. On
September 12, 8K72 serial number I1-7B successfully lifted off and
finally sent a second Soviet probe towards the Moon.
Radio tracking and sightings of the sodium vapor cloud
released by the escape stage six hours after launch at a distance of
156,000 kilometers (97,000 miles) confirmed that the "Second Cosmic
Rocket" had not only escaped the Earth but was on course for a lunar
impact. At 12:02:24 AM Moscow Time on September 14, 1959 what would
one day become known as Luna 2 impacted the Moon at about 30 north
latitude on the lunar prime meridian near the crater Archimedes at a
speed of 3.3 kilometers (2.1 miles) per second. While observations by
Eastern Bloc astronomers of a dust cloud kicked up by the impact were
unconfirmed by the West, the radio dish at Jodrell Bank tracked the
Soviet lunar probe as it accelerated towards the <b style="color:black;background-color:#66ffff">surface</b> independently
confirming Korolev's feat. The Soviet Union had another space first.
The importance of this near bulls eye shot was not lost on
leaders in the West. Not only were the Soviets the first to actually
hit the Moon, they had the technology needed to hit any target near
(and presumably on) the Earth. But with this new milestone attained,
Korolev quickly turned to beat the Americans again to the next goal:
Securing the first images of the unseen farside of the Moon.
Bibliography
Nicholas Johnson, Handbook of Soviet Lunar and Planetary Exploration,
Univelt, 1979
Andrew J. LePage, "The Great Moon Race: In the Beginning...", EJASA,
Vol. 3, No. 10, May 1992(available at
http://www.seds.org/pub/info/newsletters/ejasa/1992/jasa9205.txt)
Robert Reeves, The Superpower Space Race, Plenum Press, 1994
Timothy Varfolomeyev, "Soviet Rocketry that Conquered Space Part 2:
Space Rockets for Lunar Probes", Spaceflight, Vol. 38, No. 2, pp.
49-52, February 1996
Timothy Varfolomeyev, "Soviet Rocketry that Conquered Space Part 3:
Lunar Launchings for Impact and Photography", Spaceflight, Vol. 38,
No. 6, pp. 206-208, June 1996
Author
Drew LePage is a physicist and freelance writer specializing in
astronomy and the history of spaceflight. He can be reached at
lepage@visidyne.com.
This has been the January 1, 1999, issue of SpaceViews.
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S P A C E V I E W S
Issue 1999.01.08
1999 January 8
http://www.spaceviews.com/1999/0108/
*** News ***
Mars Polar Lander Launched
NEAR Engine Burn Completed
Funding Problems Delay Kistler Plans
Arianespace Considers Launching Soyuz Rockets
Galaxy Collisions More Common Than Once Thought
Superflares May Rock Sun-like Stars
New Evidence for Small Comets Published
SpaceViews Event Horizon
Other News
*** Book Reviews ***
Probability 1
Genesis: The Story of Apollo 8
Cosmic Adventure
*** NSS News ***
Upcoming Boston NSS Events
Boston NSS December Meeting Summary
*** News ***
Mars Polar Lander Launched
A mission to study the <b style="color:black;background-color:#ffff66">Martian</b> climate and look for water in
the south polar regions of the Red Planet lifted off successfully
Sunday afternoon, January 3.
A Boeing Delta 2, carrying the Mars Polar Lander (MPL)
spacecraft, lifted off from Cape Canaveral at 3:21 pm EST (2021 UT).
The third stage of the Delta 2 injected MPL into a Mars-bound
trajectory, and MPL separated from the booster 42 minutes after
launch.
One day earlier it appeared likely that weather would delay
the launch, as clouds and rain were forecast for launch time. However,
the cold front associated with the poor weather passed through earlier
in the day.
MPL is scheduled to land in the south polar regions of Mars,
near the southern ice cap, in December 1999. The spacecraft will be
the fourth to land on Mars and the first to land in the polar regions.
The science performed by the spacecraft will focus on climate
and water. An instrument package known as the Mars Volatiles and
Climate Surveyor (MVACS) will characterize the geology and atmosphere
of the landing site and take samples of the soil around the lander to
look for evidence of water.
Other instruments on MPL include a laser "sounder" that will
detect and study atmospheric clouds and hazes, a descent imager that
will take pictures while the spacecraft is landing, and a microphone
supplied by the Planetary Society that will be the first effort to
listen to any noises caused by the wind or other phenomena on the Red
Planet.
Hitchhiking their way to Mars on MPL are the two microprobes
of the Deep Space 2 mission. The two probes will separate from the
main spacecraft shortly before arriving at Mars, and crash into the
planet. The probes will then burrow up to two meters (6.6 feet) into
the <b style="color:black;background-color:#66ffff">surface</b>, while a radio transmitter remains on the <b style="color:black;background-color:#66ffff">surface</b>.
The probes, designed to last on battery power just 1-3 days,
will search for subsurface water and transfer that data to the radio
transmitter on the <b style="color:black;background-color:#66ffff">surface</b>. The transmitter will then relay the data
to the orbiting Mars Global Surveyor spacecraft for transmission to
Earth.
Mars Polar Lander is the second of two NASA Mars missions to
be launched in the current Earth-Mars launch window, which opens only
every 26 months. Mars Climate Orbiter lifted off December 11 and will
arrive at the Red Planet in September.
NEAR Engine Burn Completed
The Near Earth Asteroid Rendezvous (NEAR) spacecraft
successfully completed a thruster firing Sunday, January 3, that will
put the spacecraft on course for a February 2000 rendezvous with the
asteroid Eros.
NEAR's main bipropellant engine fired for 24 minutes starting
around 12 pm EST (1700 UT). NEAR project officials said that
preliminary reports indicate that the engine burn was a success.
The accuracy of the burn will be confirmed by NASA's Deep
Space Network within the next day. Engineers will then plan any small
thruster firings needed in the next 1-2 weeks to correct any
deviations from the intended trajectory.
The engine firing increased the spacecraft's speed by 3,380
km/hr (2,100 mph) so that NEAR can catch back up with the
faster-moving Eros. Eros passed by the spacecraft December 23 and is
now 910,100 km (565,650 mi.) from NEAR.
The thruster burn will place NEAR into an orbit that will
allow it to rendezvous again with Eros in February 2000, 13 months
later than originally planned. An aborted thruster firing on December
20 prevented NEAR from going into orbit around Eros as planned this
month.
Mission officials still believe NEAR will be able to complete
all its science objectives. In addition, data collected during the
December 23 flyby will provide basic information about the asteroid
useful later in the mission.
"The abort lost us time but the flyby gave us valuable
information about Eros' shape and mass that we wouldn't have had --
information that will help us during our orbital phase a little more
than a year from now," NEAR project manager Thomas Coughlin said.
Funding Problems Delay Kistler Plans
Funding problems related to the Asian economic crisis have
delayed Kistler Aerospace's plans to build an Australian launch site
and test its reusable launch vehicle, company and Australian officials
said Monday, January 4.
In an article in the Tuesday, January 5 issue of the Adelaide
newspaper The Advertiser, Kistler officials said no major construction
work has been done on a planned spaceport in Woomera in the state of
South Australia since a ceremonial groundbreaking in July.
Company spokesman Roger Henning told The Advertiser that
difficulties raising funds from investors in Asia, major backers of
the company, is to blame for the delays. "Anybody doing business with
Asia is in the same position," he said, adding that funds are "slow
coming through, but that doesn't mean they won't come through."
Kistler has hoped to complete the launch facility by the end
of 1998 and hold its first test launch of its K-1 reusable launch
vehicle in early 1999. But company officials now say it's unlikely
any launch will occur before 2000.
The news is a blow to South Australian officials, who had
hoped Kistler would help revitalize Woomera, a former missile test
site that also hosted a few space launches.
Rob Kerin, acting premier of South Australia, told The
Advertiser that he plans to meet with Kistler officials later this
month to discuss the status of the launch site and is "very confident"
the project will proceed.
Kerin said the state government had pledged an undisclosed
amount of government money to help build the spaceport, but those
funds would not be released until the project began. The launch site
project is estimated to cost about A$73 million (US$45 million).
Kistler plans to use the Woomera site for its K-1 rocket, a
two-stage unmanned reusable launch vehicle currently under
development. The K-1 will be able to place up to 5,000 kg (11,000
lbs.) into low Earth orbit. The company, with offices in Washington
state and California, also plans to develop a launch site in Nevada.
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Arianespace Considers Launching Soyuz Rockets
The French aerospace company Arianespace is considering
launching Russian Soyuz rockets along with its popular Ariane
boosters, the head of the company said Wednesday, January 6.
At a year-opening breakfast meeting January 6, Arianespace
chairman and CEO Jean-Marie Luton said the company is investigating
the possibility of launching Soyuz rockets from its launch site in
Kourou, French Guiana.
Discussion is still in preliminary stages, Luton said. It
would cost between $100 and $300 million to modify a launch site at
Kourou for the Soyuz, and take at least two years, he said.
Arianespace is currently a partner in Starsem, a company that
markets the Soyuz booster to Western markets. Starsem's partners
include the French company Aerospatiale, the Russian Space Agency, and
Russia's Samara Space Center. Starsem's customers include Globalstar
and the European Space Agency, who plans to launch its Cluster II
solar science satellites on Soyuz.
The Soyuz would allow Arianespace to gain a larger share of
the growing market for low-Earth orbit (LEO) communications launches
like Globalstar. Its Ariane 4 and 5 boosters hold a large share of
the market for geostationary orbit satellites but have yet to play a
role in the LEO market.
Launching Soyuz rockets from Kourou could also alleviate
problems launching from Russia. The first Starsem launch of
Globalstar satellites has reportedly been delayed while American and
Russian officials work out revised launch agreements between the two
countries that permit the launch of Western payloads on Russian
boosters.
Despite its interest in the Soyuz, Arianespace continues to
emphasize its Ariane 4 and 5 boosters. Luton said 13 or 14 launches
are planned for the company in 1999, including the first three
commercial Ariane 5 launches. the first of the Ariane 5 launches is
scheduled for this spring, carrying the Eutelsat W4 and Indonesian
Telekom 1 satellites into geostationary orbit.
Luton said the company plans to increase the capacity of the
Ariane 5 to dealing with the growing sizes of GEO comsats. The
capacity of the Ariane 5 will grow to 6,500 kg (14,300 lbs.) in 2001
and eventually to 11,000 kg (24,200 lbs.) in 2005-2006.
The company had profits of about 10 million euros ($11.7
million) on revenue of 1.07 billion euros ($1.25 billion), Luton said.
Galaxy Collisions More Common Than Once Thought
Collisions between galaxies may be more common that previously
thought and may play a key role in shaping the universe, astronomers
reported Wednesday, January 6.
Iowa State University astronomer Russ Lavery reported that he
and colleagues, studying archived images from the Hubble Space
Telescope, found far more ring galaxies -- products of galaxy
collisions -- than expected.
"We have looked at about 100 Hubble images and we expected to
find maybe one ring galaxy among them," said Lavery, speaking at a
meeting of the American Astronomical Society in Austin, Texas.
"Instead we've identified 20 ring galaxies."
Lavery said the ring galaxies were spread out randomly in
space, with more seen at greater distances, and hence earlier times in
the history of the universe. This suggests to Lavery that
"collisional galaxies have played a major role in determining the
types of galaxies we observe around us today."
The increased rate of galaxy collisions evidence from the
Hubble data may explain the abundance of another kind of galaxy,
elliptical galaxies. These galaxies are thought to form from the
merger of two other galaxies. Lavery said that if galaxy collisions
were more commonplace than once thought, then mergers should also be
more common, helping to explain the number of elliptical galaxies seen
by astronomers.
Lavery plans to examine about 500 more Hubble images to obtain
a representative survey of the entire sky. The high resolution of the
Hubble is required for this survey because many of the distant ring
galaxies are too small to be resolves as such using groundbased
telescopes.
Superflares May Rock Sun-like Stars
Stars like the Sun, but likely not the Sun itself, may
generate massive "superflares" that could threaten life on orbiting
planets, astronomers reported Wednesday, January 6.
Astronomers form Yale University, Indiana University, and the
Space Telescope Science Institute reported evidence that nine Sun-like
stars have generated massive solar flares 100 to 10 million times more
powerful than a typical solar flare.
Such a flare would be powerful enough to burn out all orbiting
satellites and generate aurorae visible all the way to the Earth's
equator, according to Yale astrophysicist Bradley Schaefer. "But the
primary damage would come from high energy radiation, which would
react in the Earth's upper atmosphere to destroy the protective ozone
layer for several years, thereby exposing the Earth's <b style="color:black;background-color:#66ffff">surface</b> to
harmful ultraviolet radiation with subsequent collapse of the food
chain."
Such superflares occur about one a century on some Sun-like
stars, according to evidence collected by Schaefer and colleagues.
However, the Sun is not thought to be among those stars that generate
superflares.
That may be due to the method by which superflares are thought
to be generated, according to Yale's Eric Rubenstein. He believes the
interaction between the magnetic fields of a star and a
closely-orbiting Jovian planet could generate the powerful
superflares.
"A similar process would be a physical system composed of,
say, rubber bands twisted together," Rubenstein said. "When the
elastic bands are released, they suddenly snap and fly off. The energy
is released and channeled into propelling the rubber bands instead of
producing light."
In our solar system, Jupiter orbits too far from the Sun to
interact in such a way, and the magnetic fields of the inner planets
are far too weak to generate superflares.
While none of the stars observed to generate superflares have
close planetary or stellar companions, Jupiter-sized planets have been
discovered in very close orbits around other Sun-like worlds. Such
stars would be likely candidates for superflare activity, Rubenstein
and Schaefer believe.
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New Evidence for Small Comets Published
The leading proponent of the theory that thousands of
house-sized comets strike the Earth each day has published new data
which he claims supports his theory.
Louis Frank, a space physicist at the University of Iowa,
published new data from the Polar spacecraft in the January 1 issue of
the Journal of Geophysical Research (JGR) that shows that instrumental
errors are not the cause of the "atmospheric holes" Frank believes are
created by small comets impacting the Earth's atmosphere.
"What critics of the small comet theory were analyzing was
instrument noise," Frank said. "If you strip away the noise from the
data, as they properly should have done, what remains clearly
validates the reality of atmospheric holes."
Using an "automated mathematical formula" to filter out
instrument noise, Frank and colleague John Sigwarth found that the
holes increased in size and frequency when observed at lower altitudes
in Polar's elliptical orbit around the Earth and vary in number based
on the time of day and the season.
Frank believes the holes, so named because of their dark
appearance in ultraviolet images of the Earth, are water vapor clouds
caused by the disintegration of small comets about 3-6 meters (20-30
feet) in diameter in the Earth's upper atmosphere. The Polar
spacecraft has also returned images of bright trails at ultraviolet
and visible wavelengths thought to be caused by the emission of oxygen
and hydroxyl (OH) ions from these comets.
"Our most recent paper is the only comprehensive paper on this
topic and shows, without reasonable doubt, that the atmospheric holes
are indeed a real phenomenon," Frank said.
However, much of the scientific community, already critical of
Frank's work, may be unconvinced by this latest work. Many of the
results in the JGR paper were presented by Frank at the spring meeting
of the American Geophysical Union (AGU) in Boston in May 1998, and
were sharply criticized by other scientists in attendance.
In addition, a number of other papers published in the last
year have attacked the small comet theory on a number of fronts, from
problems with the instrument to the lack of other observations of
small comet impacts on the Earth or Moon.
Frank has promoted the small comet theory since 1986, based on
similar data from the Dynamics Explorer 1 satellite. He first
presented results from the Polar spacecraft at the spring 1997 AGU
meeting.
SpaceViews Event Horizon
January 14 Delta 2 launch of the Argos, Sunsat, and Oersted
satellites from Vandenberg AFB, California, at 5:58
am EST (1058 UT)
January 26 Athena 1 launch of the ROCSAT-1 satellite from Cape
Canavewral, Florida, at 7:34 pm EST (0034 UT Jan. 27)
January 30 Proton launch of the Telstar-6 communications
satellite from Baikonur, Kazakhstan.
Other News:
Extended Mir Stay: Russian cosmonaut Sergei Avdeyev will likely spend
an extra three months on Mir, Reuters reported January 5. Avdeyev
will remain on Mir because the next crew to come to Mir, scheduled for
launch in February or March, will including two guest cosmonauts,
leaving room on the Soyuz capsule for only one replacement cosmonaut.
Avdeyev and new cosmonaut Viktor Afanasyev would remain on Mir until
the middle of the year, when the station is scheduled to reenter the
Earth's atmosphere, pending any decision to extend Mir's life.
Ghost Galaxies and Dark Matter: New evidence suggests that the
universe may be filled with small "ghost" galaxies that may partially
explain the missing matter problem. These galaxies have few bright
stars, but are thought, based on studies of the distribution and
motion of the visible stars, to contain many more dwarf stars too dim
to be seen. Such ghost galaxies "may outnumber all of the luminous
galaxies combined" according to John Kormendy of the University of
Hawaii and may thus account for "a significant portion" of the
universe's missing matter.
Launch Study: The launch sites at Cape Canaveral, Florida, will need
to be operated more like an airport and take into account the needs of
commercial operators if they are to maintain a significant share of
the global launch market, an independent study published in the
January 7 issue of the newspaper Florida Today reported. The study
concluded that many private companies feel they take a back seat to
NASA and Defense Department launches from the Cape. The study
suggested streamlining and modernizing procedures to increase launch
rates and flexibility for commercial operators.
Mars Movie: A TV movie about the first private human mission to Mars
is being prepared, Variety reported January 6. "The <b style="color:black;background-color:#ffff66">Martian</b> Race" is
being written by Gregory Benford (author of "Cosm" and "In the Ocean
of Night", among other books) and Michael Cassutt (author of "Missing
Man"). Production company Mandalay Television Pictures said no
network deal has yet been reached, but the company hopes to have the
movie ready by December, when the Mars Polar Lander touches down on
the Red Planet. The producers and writers plan "scrupulous scientific
accuracy" for the movie, including working with NASA's Mars
Exploration Office.
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*** Book Reviews ***
by Jeff Foust
Probability 1: Why There Must Be Intelligent Life in the Universe
by Amir D. Aczel
Harcourt Brace, 1998
hardcover, 230pp., illus.
ISBN 0-15-100376-9
US$22/C$31
The Drake Equation -- the estimate of the number of worlds with
intelligent life capable of communication in the galaxy, based on
factors ranging from the number of stars in the galaxy to the
estimated lifetime of an intelligent species -- has been the subject
of debate for decades. Scientists and others have manipulated the
equation to show that intelligent life must either be commonplace or
nonexistent, depending on their beliefs. However, even the most
pessimistic Drake Equation calculations show that intelligent life
must exist elsewhere in the universe, according to Amir Aczel's book
"Probability 1"
The title of the book comes from Aczel's surprisingly simple
statistical calculations using probabilities from the Drake Equation,
and require only a couple of pages of text and a single equation near
the end of the book. The rest of the book leads up to this calculation
by providing background on the Drake Equation, studies of extrasolar
planets and SETI searches, and a host of other issues. Aczel, a
mathematics professor, also includes a primer on statistics relevant
to the book.
While much of the background material will be old hat for those
already familiar with the field, and is not otherwise distinctive, his
conclusions are novel but are firmly rooted in his analysis. For
anyone looking for new evidence that we are almost certainly not alone
in the universe, "Probability 1" will be an excellent read.
Genesis: The Story of Apollo 8
by Robert Zimmerman
Four Walls Eight Windows, 1998
hardcover, 300pp., illus.
ISBN 1-56858-118-1
US$25.95
It was just over 30 years ago that humans broke free of the Earth's
gravity for the first time, as the three-man crew of Apollo 8 orbited
the Moon on Christmas, 1968. That accomplishment was huge at the time,
but today is forgotten by the later success of Apollo 11 or the drama
of Apollo 13. Robert Zimmerman refreshes our memories with a detailed
account of the mission in "Genesis".
Zimmerman weaves several threads throughout the book. The primary
story, of course, is a detailed account of the mission itself, from
launch to splashdown. Zimmerman provides extensive coverage of the
mission, including Frank Borman's illness and the debate over who took
the famous "Earthrise" photo while they orbited the Moon. The book
also discusses how the astronauts' wives and other family members
handled the stresses of the mission.
Zimmerman breaks off from the mission narrative to go into several
other areas. Some, like the biographies of the astronauts and the
history of the Space Race to that point, make sense. However, other
threads, including a history of the Berlin Wall and the tale of a
Vietnam helicopter pilot, seem disconnected from the main story line.
They're obviously an effort to discuss the Cold War tensions and
societal unrest of 1968, but don't fit together with the rest of book.
However, if one ignores those problems and focuses on the core of the
book, the reader will find a detailed, compelling account of the first
manned mission to orbit the Moon.
Cosmic Adventure: A Renegade Astronomer's Guide to Our World and Beyond
by Bob Berman
William Morrow, 1998
hardcover, 255pp., illus.
ISBN 0-688-14495-0
US$25/C$34
As the title suggests, Bob Berman takes an adventurous and somewhat
offbeat look at astronomy, the universe, and sundry topics in "Cosmic
Adventure". The book is a collection of essays on various topics that
are about or tied to astronomy in various degrees, from the astronomy
one can do from an airplane window seat to the gases that make up our
and other planetary atmospheres. Berman calls upon his own eclectic
pursuits, from building his own home to motorcycling across Asia for
three years, to liven up his essays. While sometimes his essays seem
to stray a little too far off topic, they are overall an enjoyable and
engaging read.
*** NSS News ***
Upcoming Boston NSS Events
Thursday, January 14, 7:30 pm
Discuss the top space events of all time in a special roundtable
discussion. What's the most important space event of 1998? Of the
1990s? Of the Space Age? Share your thoughts and ideas with others
at this special meeting.
[Note: The talk on fractal antennae and space applications scheduled
for January will be rescheduled for February or a later date.]
Unless otherwise specified, Boston NSS Meetings are held on the first
Thursdays of every month at 545 Main Street (Technology Square), 8th
floor, Cambridge, near the Kendall/MIT stop on the Red Line. Free
parking is available.
check the Boston NSS Web site (http://www.spaceviews.com/boston/) for
more information about these upcoming speakers.
Hа сегодня все, пока!
=SANA=
Дата: 11 января 1999 (1999-01-11)
От: Alexander Bondugin
Тема: SpaceViews - 8 January 1999 [5/5]
Привет всем!
Вот, свалилось из Internet...
Boston NSS December Meeting Summary
by Lynn Olson
Frank White has recently brought out a second edition of his
book, The Overview Effect, which discusses the change in human
consciousness produced by going out into space. For the December
meeting of the Boston Chapter of the National Space Society he
discussed the changes that have occurred between the two editions.
What has changed from 1987 to 1998. White was surprised and
encouraged at the changes in this relatively short time.
Then, there had been 25 successful shuttle flights and no
flights for two years. Now there have been over 100 flights. Then,
there was a commitment to a space station which was almost totally a
US project. Now the station is very international, with the Russians
heavily involved. Will the putting in place of the second piece of
the space station (tomorrow) be one of the significant dates in
history?
Then, the first civilian in space had died on the Challenger
and it was proclaimed that space was no place for ordinary people.
Now John Glenn has flown in space again at the age of 77 and Barbara
Morgan, backup "Teacher in Space" has been taken into the astronaut
program, a decision announced the same day as the Glenn decision.
Then, Glenn's first orbital flight was a distant memory. Now, Glenn's
second flight took place as the second edition of the book came out.
Then, space exploration as the creation of a planetary
civilization was considered far out. Now it is accepted. Getting
excited in a spiritual "soft" way about space was only beginning to be
accepted. Now it is quite accepted. Then the report from the
Commission on Space was not treated seriously. Now the ideas in it
are mainstream.
The challenge now for the space movement is to be seen as a
movement. The media is still covering space as a program, a
government project, rather than a movement propelled by people. The
civil rights struggle in the sixties was covered by the media as a
movement. Two differences with the were charismatic leadership
(Martin Luther King) and the struggle between good and evil.
Astronaut Bonnie Dunbar has said, "I am doing this [space] because I
am following my heart." This spirit is essential to forming a
movement.
This has been the January 8, 1999, issue of SpaceViews.
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