Return-path: X-Andrew-Authenticated-as: 0;andrew.cmu.edu;Network-Mail Received: from po5.andrew.cmu.edu via trymail for +dist+/afs/andrew.cmu.edu/usr1/ota/space/space.dl@andrew.cmu.edu (->+dist+/afs/andrew.cmu.edu/usr1/ota/space/space.dl) (->ota+space.digests) ID ; Fri, 15 Jul 88 04:10:05 -0400 (EDT) Received: from andrew.cmu.edu via qmail ID ; Fri, 15 Jul 88 04:07:08 -0400 (EDT) Received: by andrew.cmu.edu (5.54/3.15) id for +dist+/afs/andrew.cmu.edu/usr1/ota/space/space.dl; Fri, 15 Jul 88 04:06:16 EDT Received: by angband.s1.gov id AA15819; Fri, 15 Jul 88 01:06:42 PDT id AA15819; Fri, 15 Jul 88 01:06:42 PDT Date: Fri, 15 Jul 88 01:06:42 PDT From: Ted Anderson Message-Id: <8807150806.AA15819@angband.s1.gov> To: Space@angband.s1.gov Reply-To: Space@angband.s1.gov Subject: SPACE Digest V8 #274 SPACE Digest Volume 8 : Issue 274 Today's Topics: Re: Christine McAuliffe Re: Coming to the National Air & Space Museum Re: Recycling Pershing-II's NASA news - Small explorers, Pioneer 10 Mir EVA planned Pegasus Re: Launch Sequence Details ---------------------------------------------------------------------- Date: 14 Jun 88 19:37:52 GMT From: portal!cup.portal.com!David_Zonker_Harris@uunet.uu.net Subject: Re: Christine McAuliffe Try "I touched the Future"...written by a reporter assigned to cover the "Teacher in Space" angle of the mission. He bacame friends of the family and really put together a great book/biography! Enjoy it when you find it! David K Z Harris (aka KB6FVA, aka Zonker) ------------------------------ Date: 13 Jun 88 11:40:47 GMT From: mcvax!ukc!its63b!bob@uunet.uu.net (ERCF08 Bob Gray) Subject: Re: Coming to the National Air & Space Museum In article <684@atux01.UUCP> jlc@atux01.UUCP (J. Collymore) writes: >I am cross-posting this netnews article from comp.sys.mac. >----------------------------------------------------------- >Students Give Museum Visitors A Chance To Launch Rockets [...] >The software will allow museum visitors to see how changing variables such as >thrust, weight and fuel type affect a rocket's ability to overcome gravity and >leave the earth's atmosphere. Once a visitor arrives at a workable design, >the program "launches" the rocket, calculates the maximum altitude it will >reach and compares these results with attempts by other visitors. Exactly this type of system has been running in the Spaceflight gallery in the Science Museum in London for the last two and a half years. You are asked to select number of stages; thrust and fuel type for each stage; and the payload weight. The computer then launches the rocket, and draws the trajectory it would follow. For ease of calculation the Earth is assumed to be flat, but some designs still make it into orbit. :-> Bob. ------------------------------ Date: 13 Jun 88 14:50:39 GMT From: mcvax!ukc!its63b!bob@uunet.uu.net (ERCF08 Bob Gray) Subject: Re: Recycling Pershing-II's In article <855@esunix.UUCP> bpendlet@esunix.UUCP (Bob Pendleton) writes: >From article <8806010951.aa16990@note.nsf.gov>, by fbaube@NOTE.NSF.GOV (Fred Baube): >All Hercules employees are undergoing INF treaty training. Being >taught how to recognize an approach by a spy, where not to talk about >work while eating lunch, that sort of thing. One of the things they But suppose the spies have also been on the course, they would then know not to keep refering to people as "comrade". They would be drinking coke instead of vodka, their party armbands would have been left at home, and they would have been carefully trained not to quote the sayings Lennin or Marx. Of course, if the soviets were really clever, they could always get a sleeping agent elected as a Senator. Information could then be passed as slips of the tongue. >mentioned was that one of the brain damaged Senators from the Pretty, >Great State of Utah, gave a list of all the companies doing classified >work in a thirthy mile radius of the Hercules inspection office to the >local papers, who published it. Thus saving the KGB 1 to 2 years of >effort. If he wasn't a Senator, he'd be doing time. See what I mean... Large numbers of :-> s should be added to the above where appropriate. Most of the Soviet spies who have been discovered are notable only in just how unlikely they were to have been spies. I don't see that the presence of a few carefully monitored Soviet personnel is going to be much of an extra security risk. Bob. ------------------------------ Date: 16 Jun 88 09:05:39 GMT From: sonia!khayo@cs.ucla.edu (Eric Behr) Subject: NASA news - Small explorers, Pioneer 10 ================================================================== NASA ANNOUNCES CONFERENCE FOR SMALL-CLASS EXPLORERS June 14, 1988 RELEASE: 88-79 NASA will conduct a conference to discuss space science research opportunities in the Explorer Program at NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center (GSFC), Greenbelt, Md., June 21, 1988. The Explorer Program is a long-standing NASA program for launching small and moderate-sized space science mission payloads. Dozens of Explorers have been launched, including the Solar Mesospheric Explorer, the Infrared Astronomical Satellite, the Dynamics Explorer, the Active Magnetospheric Particle Tracer Experiment and the International Ultraviolet Explorer, which has produced scientific data for more than 1,400 articles in scientific journals. The new Small-class Explorer Program, to be managed by GSFC's Special Payloads Division, will conduct scientific research in the space science disciplines: astrophysics; space physics; and upper atmosphere science. The Small-class Explorer Program will consist only of the smaller missions characterized by the scope and capability of investigations conducted on spacecraft launched by Scout-class launch vehicles. Because one purpose of the Small-class Explorer Program is to provide a rapid execution of scientific investigations, the proposed missions should take no more than 3 years from initiation to launch. NASA will launch up to two missions per year allocating an average of $30 million in developmental costs for each mission. The development phase of the initial mission is planned to commence in the second half of fiscal year (FY) 1989, with tentative plans to launch in early FY 1992. The selected investigators will have exclusive use of the scientific data from the mission for a period of 12 months after receipt of the data. After this period, guest observer programs and data analysis and interpretation will be supported through other programs. ================================================================== PIONEER 10 CONTINUES SOLAR SYSTEM EXPLORATION AND DISCOVERIES June 13, 1988 Pioneer 10, the first spacecraft to leave the solar system, is the most distant human-made object in existence. The Pioneer explorer continues to make discoveries about the Sun's influence in the local interstellar medium, called the heliosphere, and to seek the boundary between this and the true interstellar gas. Pioneer 10 continues its search for gravity waves and a possible 10th solar system planet. Today, Pioneer 10 has spent 5 years beyond the orbit of the outermost solar system planet Pluto, some 4 billion, 175 million miles from the Sun. Radio signals, moving with the speed of light at 186,000 miles per second, now take 12 hours and 26 minutes to travel from Earth to the explorer spacecraft and back. Launched in 1972, Pioneer 10 was the first spacecraft to cross the Asteroid Belt, fly by Jupiter and return pictures, chart Jupiter's intense radiation belts, measure the mass of its four planet-sized moons, locate the giant planet's magnetic field and discover that Jupiter is predominantly a liquid planet. Its primary mission, originally scheduled for 21 months, was accomplished by December 1973. At that point, scientists reprogrammed Pioneer for an indefinite mission to explore the outer solar system and beyond. Perhaps the most important finding about the outer solar system concerns the extent and characteristics of the heliosphere. Pioneer 10 continues to measure the "solar wind," the million-mile-per-hour flow of charged atomic particles boiling off the sun's surface, forming the sun's tenuous atmosphere. Scientists had predicted in 1956 the modulation (alteration) of galactic cosmic rays out past the orbit of Jupiter, indicating a heliosphere presence out that far. The probe is now almost nine times that distance and has not yet reached the boundary of the solar heliosphere. And, the sun's direct influence continues to be strong. A number of scientists believe that this boundary may be as far away as 9.3 billion miles. Several scientists, including Dr. James Van Allen, one of Pioneer's principal investigators and discoverer of the Earth's radiation belts, and Dr. Darrell Judge, University of Southern California, also a Pioneer investigator, suggest that the heliosphere varies in size with solar activity and is nearly spherical in shape. Because of this, they think Pioneer 10 may break through the boundary of the solar atmosphere and pass into interstellar space in the next 1 to 3 years. There the spacecraft could directly measure the interstellar gas, which so far has not been possible. Pioneer 10 has found that the sun strongly influences the heliosphere characteristics as far away as 4 billion miles. Scientists are finding major variations keyed to its cycle, such as outward traveling shocks that accelerate charged particles. The sun changes a great deal during this cycle. The number of sunspots -- the enormous and violent magnetic storms on the solar surface -- varies radically, as does the shape of the sun's magnetic field and movements in the hot gases surrounding the corona, the outer portion of the sun. The coronal material has sparse areas called "coronal holes" located around the sun's two magnetic poles. When the sun approaches its most active phase, solar maximum, these coronal holes creep toward the solar equator by extending "tongues" 10 or 20 degrees wide in longitude. During the solar minimum, the holes retreat back to the poles. Pioneer 10 and other closer-in spacecraft are measuring the "high speed streams" in the solar wind whose source is the movement of the coronal holes. Pioneer 10 found that other changes are triggered by movements of a vast electromagnetic structure called the current sheet, which bisects the sun's field. Particles slow down as this sheet "flaps" toward them. Pioneer also has made new findings on cosmic rays entering our portion of the Milky Way. Cosmic rays are high velocity sub- atomic particles from our galaxy. Normally, the number of these particles inside the heliosphere varies with the solar cycle, and large amounts of low energy cosmic rays were found to flow in from the galaxy during the recent low point of activity on the sun. This may suggest that Pioneer is approaching the heliosphere boundary where the solar influence stops. The possible existence of a 10th planet at the outer fringes of the solar system may be determined by measuring minute changes in Pioneer 10's flight path. In 1978, astronomers have suggested the presence of a new planetary body since Pluto was found to be too small to explain past irregularities in the orbits of planets Uranus and Neptune. Pioneer 10 and its twin, Pioneer 11, are excellent indicators of the gravitational pull of celestial objects. Because the spacecraft are spin stabilized, they generate almost no forces of their own that would affect their straight-line flight path. Thus, large, nearby masses, exerting gravitational forces, should easily be observed by changes in Pioneer 10's flight trajectory. Thus far, NASA scientist John Anderson has found no evidence of any uncharted planetary bodies. Despite this lack of evidence, Anderson and others strongly believe that the huge volume of past measurements, made by many eminent observers, showing irregularities in the orbits of Uranus and Neptune are too widespread and consistent to be discarded. They suggest that whatever perturbed the outer planets between 1800 and 1900 has now "gone away." It could well be an object whose orbit is tilted at a high angle to the plane of the solar system. These gravitational anomalies are no longer observed because the object is currently too far away or too high above the planets to affect either Pioneer or the outer planets. Anderson and other researchers have suggested places to look for this planet-sized body, and a number of groups are searching these regions of space. Tracking the Pioneer 10 also provides scientists with an opportunity to detect "gravity waves," predicted by Einstein's General Theory of Relativity. In theory, infrequent and enormously powerful cataclysmic events, such as collisions between entire galaxies or two massive black holes, would "rattle" the entire universe, producing gravity waves. A number of university research groups around the world have been using elaborate equipment to search for gravity waves for well over a decade. None so far has been found. Gravity waves may be especially easy to detect in the extremely long wavelengths (one to four billion miles) that both Pioneers are in position to measure, but neither Pioneer has yet found such waves. Gravity waves would dwarf the longest radio waves, the largest waves commonly measured on Earth, which span only hundreds or thousands of feet. Recent improvements in the NASA ground stations are expected to allow communications with Pioneer 10 to continue until the range approaches 6 billion miles, more than twice the prelaunch estimates. Project manager Richard O. Fimmel expects that NASA will be able to track Pioneer 10 until the craft's power source limits communications toward the end of the 1990's. Scientists believe that both Pioneers 10 and 11 will travel among the stars virtually forever because the vacuum of interstellar space is so empty. Pioneer 10 and Pioneer 11 have long since passed the region of greatest potential danger, which occurred at the Jupiter and Saturn encounters. Both Pioneers 10 and 11 carry an easily-interpreted graphic message in the event an intelligent life form may capture either spacecraft on its journey. Engraved on a gold-anodized aluminum plaque, the message features a drawing of a man and a woman, a diagram of our solar system and a map depicting our solar system with reference to galactic "lighthouses," known as pulsars. ================================================================== Eric ------------------------------ Date: 16 Jun 88 13:33:15 GMT From: cfa!cfa250!kaa@husc6.harvard.edu (Keith Arnaud x57400) Subject: Mir EVA planned A colleague in England tells me that an EVA is planned for the end of the month to repair the Utrecht/Birmingham X-ray telescope on Kvant. The replacement detector was sent up on a Progress a few weeks ago and the rest of the parts for the operation went up in the luggage of the cosmonauts on the recent Soyuz. Happy Bloomsday, Keith -- Keith Arnaud | uucp : noao!cfa!cfa200!kaa Center for Astrophysics |bitnet : kaa@cfa2 60 Garden Street | arpa : kaa@cfa200.harvard.edu Cambridge MA 02138 | span : 6676::kaa ------------------------------ Date: 16 Jun 88 20:50:57 GMT From: hplabsb!dsmith@hplabs.hp.com (David Smith) Subject: Pegasus Since no one else has, I thought I'd point out the article on p.10 of US News & World Report for June 13. It said that Orbital Sciences Corp. and Hercules Aerospace announced a plan to develop Pegasus, a 50-foot stub-winged rocket. Air launched from a B-52 or converted airliner at 40,000 ft., it would put an 850-pound payload into a 250 mile high orbit. Expected to fly in mid-1989, at $6 million per launch. Some years ago, the Air Force tested air launch of a Minuteman from a C-5. Anyone know how that went (like, how did the C-5 respond to the c.g. change as the rocket rolled out the back)? * David Smith HP Labs dsmith@hplabs.hp.com * To forestall flamage, I suppose I must add that this is not intended as a criticism of Pegasus, which could be launched like an X-15. -- David Smith HP Labs dsmith@hplabs.hp.com ------------------------------ Date: 16 Jun 88 22:54:31 GMT From: aplcen!rkolker@mimsy.umd.edu (5915) Subject: Re: Launch Sequence Details A pretty good sequence is in the report of the Challenger Commission (I think in the first volume...don't have it handy). Another useful document would be an ascent checklist from any flight...If you ask Houston real nice, they'll probably give you one. ++rich ------------------------------ End of SPACE Digest V8 #274 *******************