Return-path: X-Andrew-Authenticated-as: 7997;andrew.cmu.edu;Ted Anderson Received: from beak.andrew.cmu.edu via trymail for +dist+/afs/andrew.cmu.edu/usr11/tm2b/space/space.dl@andrew.cmu.edu (->+dist+/afs/andrew.cmu.edu/usr11/tm2b/space/space.dl) (->ota+space.digests) ID ; Sat, 15 Dec 1990 02:57:09 -0500 (EST) Message-ID: Precedence: junk Reply-To: space+@Andrew.CMU.EDU From: space-request+@Andrew.CMU.EDU To: space+@Andrew.CMU.EDU Date: Sat, 15 Dec 1990 02:56:37 -0500 (EST) Subject: SPACE Digest V12 #663 SPACE Digest Volume 12 : Issue 663 Today's Topics: Galileo Update - 12/04/90 Astro-1 Status for 12/09/90 [1252 CST] (Forwarded) Re: Who killed Nuclear Rockets? (was Re: The Next Ten Years In Space) Re: space news from Oct 6 AW&ST Re: Magellan article Magellan Update - 12/11/90 Re: Where is GALILEO? Re: 10th planet? Re: HST images, conversion of FITS data Re: Who killed Nuclear Rockets? (was Re: The Next Ten Years In Space) Re: Another Russian first WUPPE Status for 12/09/90 [AM] (Forwarded) Administrivia: Submissions to the SPACE Digest/sci.space should be mailed to space+@andrew.cmu.edu. Other mail, esp. [un]subscription notices, should be sent to space-request+@andrew.cmu.edu, or, if urgent, to tm2b+@andrew.cmu.edu ---------------------------------------------------------------------- Date: 11 Dec 90 04:12:34 GMT From: julius.cs.uiuc.edu!usc!elroy.jpl.nasa.gov!jato!mars.jpl.nasa.gov!baalke@apple.com (Ron Baalke) Subject: Galileo Update - 12/04/90 GALILEO STATUS REPORT December 4, 1990 The Galileo spacecraft health continues to be excellent. Yesterday, the Command Loss Timer was successfully reset to 3 days, its planned value for this mission phase. Also yesterday, selected engineering electrical heaters were properly configured to provide adequate power margin for the Probe checkout activity. Today, the second in-flight Probe checkout will be performed. The first checkout was performed in late October 1989 several days after launch and was successful. Tomorrow, the VE-11 (Venus-Earth 11) Earth 1 Encounter sequence will be sent to the spacecraft. ___ _____ ___ /_ /| /____/ \ /_ /| | | | | __ \ /| | | | Ron Baalke | baalke@mars.jpl.nasa.gov ___| | | | |__) |/ | | |___ Jet Propulsion Lab | baalke@jems.jpl.nasa.gov /___| | | | ___/ | |/__ /| M/S 301-355 | |_____|/ |_|/ |_____|/ Pasadena, CA 91109 | ------------------------------ Date: 10 Dec 90 19:57:48 GMT From: trident.arc.nasa.gov!yee@ames.arc.nasa.gov (Peter E. Yee) Subject: Astro-1 Status for 12/09/90 [1252 CST] (Forwarded) Astro 1 Mission Report #42 12:52 p.m. CST, December 9, 1990 7/12:02 MET Spacelab Mission Operations Control Marshall Space Flight Center Astro Deputy Mission Scientist Gene Urban reported at this morning's press briefing that efficiency of the "ground-to-space and man-in-the-loop control operation" had risen quite rapidly. The observations reported included both ultraviolet and X-ray targets. "We are doing exactly what we expected and hoped when we started these new observations," Urban stated. Greg Madejski, of the Broad Band X-Ray Telescope team, reported that they had collected some "fantastic" X-ray data. "When I came in for my shift, I got a little birthday gift from my friends, a spectrum of an object that is really, really wonderful to observe," he said. Madejski explained that the spectrum indicated that Parkes 2155-304, an active galaxy known as a BL-Lac object, probably contains a jet of very energetic, hot material directed toward us. Other X-ray observations included Seyfert II objects which provided indirect evidence of an accretion disk surrounding a very massive black hole and clear spectra of the binary X-ray source (or pulsar) Centaurus X-3, which continued to be observed even after the orbiter entered the South Atlantic Anomaly. "We are really excited," concluded Madejski. "Our instrument is performing even better than we expected." Mario Magalhaes, Wisconsin Ultraviolet Photo-Polarimeter Experiment project scientist, was equally enthusiastic. "When you design and build an instrument, you plan for a certain performance level; then actually it is 95, 90 percent of what you expected--if you've designed your instrument well. WUPPE has been a little more sensitive, in fact, than we expected it to be." He reported that overnight the team had observed 100 percent of the time it was supposed to observe. Accomplished during the preceding hours were an important calibration procedure, a study of interstellar dust in the Milky Way galaxy, a white dwarf star, a quasar, and the Seyfert galaxy also observed by the X-ray team. The latter, NGC 1068, was described by Magalhaes as the most highly polarized object that the Wisconsin telescope has measured thus far. "Im really amazed. It's an impressive amount of data that's been collected, thanks again to this collective work of the people on the ground...and finally to that very special and important link which is the Payload Specialist. All is going very, very well for WUPPE and for science." ------------------------------ Date: 10 Dec 90 21:22:52 GMT From: usc!cs.utexas.edu!news-server.csri.toronto.edu!utzoo!henry@ucsd.edu (Henry Spencer) Subject: Re: Who killed Nuclear Rockets? (was Re: The Next Ten Years In Space) In article <1990Dec10.190334.8310@watdragon.waterloo.edu> jdnicoll@watyew.uwaterloo.ca (Brian or James) writes: > I dimly recall a Donald Kingsbury article on a high thrust >nuclear rocket called (I think) 'Jumbo' or 'Dumbo'... >... Anyone have anything concrete on this? Dumbo. See Kingsbury's "Notes on Nuclear Rockets". Basically, Dumbo was a somewhat more radical concept than NERVA, and lost out to it when funding got tight. -- "The average pointer, statistically, |Henry Spencer at U of Toronto Zoology points somewhere in X." -Hugh Redelmeier| henry@zoo.toronto.edu utzoo!henry ------------------------------ Date: 10 Dec 90 04:18:06 GMT From: zephyr.ens.tek.com!tektronix!sequent!crg5!szabo@beaver.cs.washington.edu (Nick Szabo) Subject: Re: space news from Oct 6 AW&ST In article <1990Dec9.234706.9029@zoo.toronto.edu> henry@zoo.toronto.edu (Henry Spencer) writes: >In article <20657@crg5.UUCP> szabo@crg5.UUCP (Nick Szabo) writes: >>... What goes around comes around, astronaut fans. We are entering >>a new era where the funding proportions for "manned" stunts and real >>exploration and industry will be reversed, leading to a new Space Age... > >Not if the Planetary Society has its way, since one of their big priorities >is the biggest and most short-sighted manned stunt in the history of space >travel: the one-shot international manned Mars mission. Obvious observation #1: There is no way anybody is going to fund a $400 billion Mars mission when NASA can't even launch a lousy space station and the Soviet empire is crumbling. But talking about it makes for dramatic political rhetoric (and gives Dan Quayle something harmless to do :-) Obvious observation #2: The Planetary Society is dominated by the people who did Voyager, Viking, etc. that explored most of the solar system using the crumbs falling off of Apollo. Straightforward deduction: What a better way to get more crumbs than promote a Mars mission? NASA or LLNL (take your pick, LLNL hasn't gotten around to launching SDI either) take another 10 years to underestimate cost, misdesign and remisdesign a hopeless chemical Mars mission. Meanwhile, JPL gets to design and launch a new generation of probes, first to Mars, then everywhere else when folks start realizing what a failure the manned program is. A higher-tech repeat of Apollo, with the manned part cancelled before it leaves the CAD. With instruments orders of magnitude better than those on Voyager, we gather an unprecedently huge amount of data for a starving generation of planetary scientists. It's a perfect strategy, and hopefully the death of Fred will alleviate the need for this kind of politics. But until then, IMHO the Planetary Society is a group of geniuses trying to get the best they can out of a bloated, scientifically illiterate bureaucracy, and doing a pretty good job considering the odds. -- Nick Szabo szabo@sequent.com "We live and we learn, or we don't live long" -- Robert A. Heinlein The above opinions are my own and not related to those of any organization I may be affiliated with. ------------------------------ Date: 11 Dec 90 14:02:26 GMT From: prism!mb7@gatech.edu (Michael Begley) Subject: Re: Magellan article >Included in the Post report was evidence of volcanism >reported at the meeting. This included unexpected smooth >areas on the Venus surface, vast expanses without craters. >Rapid volcanic resurfacing could hold the answer to the >riddle that craters are not being found in the process of being >resurfaced. I would have thought that the surface would not show craters simply due to erasion from weather. Wouldn't thousands of years of winds tend to smooth and fill the smaller craters? Would a denser atmosphere than Earth result in faster erosion? Is the principal cause of erosion on Earth attributed to water and rain only? -- Michael Begley Georgia Tech Research Institute Internet: mb7@prism.gatech.edu ------------------------------ Date: 11 Dec 90 21:43:29 GMT From: usc!elroy.jpl.nasa.gov!jato!mars.jpl.nasa.gov!baalke@ucsd.edu (Ron Baalke) Subject: Magellan Update - 12/11/90 MAGELLAN STATUS REPORT December 11, 1990 The Magellan spacecraft is in good health and performing nominally. All seven STARCALS (star calibrations) since yesterday were successful with attitude updates averaging less than 0.015 degree. There were no commands sent to the spacecraft yesterday, but later today the M0346 mapping command sequence will be sent. This 4-day command sequence is the last sequence containing full length mapping passes as we go into the occulted mapping phase of the mission. From December 14 until January 28, part of the playback phase of each orbit will be occulted by Venus. To adjust for the shorter playback time available, the length of the mapping passes are shortened. During the first eight days of occulted mapping, the pass is shortened by 6.5 minutes. At the peak of apoapsis occultation the mapping passes will be shortened by about 9 minutes. The so-called "occultation gap" will be split between the northern and southern extremes of the image swaths. The total area which will be lost is about 1% of the Venus surface. The gaps is expected to be filled-in between August 15 and September 28 1991, during the Extended Mission Cycle 2. The radar sensor continues its excellent performance, but the tape recorder tracks A1 and A3 are exhibiting an exponential rate of deterioration. Various corrective actions are being studied. ___ _____ ___ /_ /| /____/ \ /_ /| | | | | __ \ /| | | | Ron Baalke | baalke@mars.jpl.nasa.gov ___| | | | |__) |/ | | |___ Jet Propulsion Lab | baalke@jems.jpl.nasa.gov /___| | | | ___/ | |/__ /| M/S 301-355 | |_____|/ |_|/ |_____|/ Pasadena, CA 91109 | ------------------------------ Date: 11 Dec 90 19:25:54 GMT From: mintaka!spdcc!ima!dirtydog!suitti@bloom-beacon.mit.edu (Stephen Uitti) Subject: Re: Where is GALILEO? ...and besides, I have this idea that Galileo is gonna feel lonely, and will be back to visit again... Stephen. suitti@ima.isc.com ------------------------------ Date: 11 Dec 90 21:35:01 GMT From: usc!cs.utexas.edu!ptolemy!rsb@ucsd.edu (Richard S. Brice) Subject: Re: 10th planet? In article <1990Dec6.165931.836@zoo.toronto.edu>, henry@zoo.toronto.edu (Henry Spencer) writes: > > The chances of a tenth outer planet are not too bad, although evidence for > it is slim to nonexistent. (A very careful reassessment of observations > of the orbit of Neptune by some folks at JPL concluded that there are no > unexplained perturbations.) Precise ranging of the Pioneers and Voyagers > have already put tight bounds on it, however: it has to be small, a long > way out, well away from the ecliptic, or some combination. Are their strong reasons for believing that planets could not have been formed (or captured) in orbits well away from the ecliptic? If not, are there good ways of searching for such planets that are both far out and well away from the ecliptic? ------------------------------ Date: 11 Dec 90 21:30:47 GMT From: lib!mdaali.cancer.utexas.edu!cyn@tmc.edu (Cyndi Smith) Subject: Re: HST images, conversion of FITS data In article <2513@cod.NOSC.MIL> zimmer@cod.NOSC.MIL (Thomas L. Zimmerman) writes: > The Portable Greymap tools of PBM+ have a conversion tool to go from > FITS to portable grey map (pgm). A variety of tools in the package > can then be used to create an output file in a format you find more > palitable. Anyone know if/where this is available for Macintosh? Thanks. Cyndi Smith an12349@mdaali.cancer.utexas.edu My opinions are MINE, I tell you, MINE, MINE, MINE, MINE, MINE! ------------------------------ Date: 11 Dec 90 17:25:02 GMT From: sdd.hp.com!news.cs.indiana.edu!msi.umn.edu!cs.umn.edu!sialis!orbit!pnet51!schaper@ucsd.edu (S Schaper) Subject: Re: Who killed Nuclear Rockets? (was Re: The Next Ten Years In Space) 4 ************************************************************************** Zeitgeist Busters! UUCP: {amdahl!bungia, uunet!rosevax, chinet, killer}!orbit!pnet51!schaper ARPA: crash!orbit!pnet51!schaper@nosc.mil INET: schaper@pnet51.cts.com ------------------------------ Date: 9 Dec 90 23:51:27 GMT From: usc!cs.utexas.edu!news-server.csri.toronto.edu!utzoo!henry@ucsd.edu (Henry Spencer) Subject: Re: Another Russian first In article yamauchi@cs.rochester.edu (Brian Yamauchi) writes: > Skylab 1 got delivered to the Australians in pieces. Skylab 2 is in the > NASM. (Yes, there was a second one.) > >I always thought that one was a mock-up -- are you saying it could >have been an operational station? ... Yes. Originally, briefly, there were plans to fly both. Then Skylab 2 got demoted to being a backup. Apart from perishables, some bits and pieces that got cannibalized for the shuttle program, component aging, and tourist wear and tear, the one in the NASM is still flight-ready. The NASM people were quite proud, in the beginning, that apart from perishable supplies their Skylab was *precisely* as it would have been flown. -- "The average pointer, statistically, |Henry Spencer at U of Toronto Zoology points somewhere in X." -Hugh Redelmeier| henry@zoo.toronto.edu utzoo!henry ------------------------------ Date: 9 Dec 90 23:49:46 GMT From: trident.arc.nasa.gov!yee@ames.arc.nasa.gov (Peter E. Yee) Subject: WUPPE Status for 12/09/90 [AM] (Forwarded) WUPPE Status Report No. 15 AM, Sunday, Dec. 9, 1990 Spacelab Operations Control Center Marshall Space Flight Center Huntsville, AL The University of Wisconsin telescope aboard the Space Shuttle columbia acquired three high-priority targets for the WUPPE science team last night. Those targets included HD 25443, a very hot star seen at great distance through much interstellar matter; HD 37903, a B main sequence star used by WUPPE as an interstellar medium probe; and G70D8247, a magnetic white dwarf. HD 25443, observed for 38 minutes, was a critical WUPPE observation. Because it is known from optical observations to be highly polarized, it can be used by the WUPPE science team to calibrate the data taken from all the WUPPE observations of the Astro 1 mission. As a result, researchers can have far more confidence in the precision of the polarization measurements made by the Wisconsin telescope. HD 37903 is a very bright star and was used by WUPPE to shine through interstellar gas and dust. It was observed for 38 minutes. Measurements of this star, in combination with measurements of other stars, will help astronomers map the polarization that occurs at the shorter ultraviolet wavelengths. Polarization -- the tendency of light waves to vibrate in a preferred orientation -- can be used to determine more about the chemical makeup of interstellar matter and processes that occur in the interstellar medium. G70D8247 is a magnetic white dwarf that has been extensively observed in the optical. That data, in combination with WUPPE data, should permit the development of a reliable model for this star. It was observed by WUPPE last night for 42 minutes. Magnetic white dwarfs are of interest to WUPPE astronomers because their strong magnetic fields -- stronger than any magnetic field that could be created on Earth -- polarize light. The WUPPE science team considered last night's observations to be some of the best WUPPE observations of the Astro 1 mission. Ground command operations are becoming more efficient, allowing astronomers to push the WUPPE instrument toward its full capabilities. ------------------------------ End of SPACE Digest V12 #663 *******************