[Launch Alert] (no subject)
Brian Webb
[email protected]
Tue, 30 Sep 2003 18:51:35 -0700
ASTRONOMY/SPACE ALERT FOR SOUTHERN CALIFORNIA
Brian Webb
Ventura County, California
E-mail: [email protected]
Web Site: http://home.earthlink.net/~kd6nrp
Reaching more than 2,290 e-mail addresses worldwide
2003 September 30 (Tuesday) 18:33 PDT
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VANDENBERG AFB LAUNCH SCHEDULE
As of 2003 September 30
Launch
Time/Window
Date (PST/PDT) Vehicle Pad/Silo
-------- ----------- ---------- --------
OCT 15 09:17-09:27 Titan II SLC-4W
Payload is a DMSP military weather satellite
NOV 20 Unannounced Atlas II SLC-3E
Payload is a classified National Reconnaissance Office satellite(s).
NROL-18
NOV 25 Unannounced Taurus SLC-576E
Payload is Taiwan's ROCSAT-2 satellite
DEC 6 17:52:02 Delta II SLC-2W
Payload is NASA's Gravity Probe B scientific satellite
FEB 6 Unannounced Delta II SLC-2W
Payload is NASA's AURA scientific satellite
MAR Unannounced Minuteman III Unannounced
ICBM test launch (non-orbital). Payload is unarmed warheads. Impact
area is in the Reagan Test Site at Kwajalein in the central Pacific.
GT-184-GM
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Southern California Astronomical Events
for 2003 October
Time
Date (PST/PDT) Event
-------- --------- ----------------------------
OCT 2 12:09 First Quarter Moon
http://aa.usno.navy.mil/data/docs/MoonPhase.html
OCT 3 19:06 Lunar Occultation
The Moon occults the star 60 Sagittarii. Star reappears at 19:06. The
disappearance occurs in daylight.
http://www.planetkc.com/bobgraze/2003d.zip
OCT 10 00:27 Full Moon
http://aa.usno.navy.mil/data/docs/MoonPhase.html
OCT 18 05:31 Last Quarter Moon
http://aa.usno.navy.mil/data/docs/MoonPhase.html
OCT 25 03:00 Mercury Superior Conjunction
Mercury is on the far side of the Sun with respect to Earth and is
lost in the Sun's glare. RASC Observer's Handbook 2003, pg. 95
OCT 25 05:50 New Moon
http://aa.usno.navy.mil/data/docs/MoonPhase.html
OCT 25-26 --- Dark Sky Weekend
OCT 26 02:00 Time Change
Standard Time begins. Set clocks back one hour
OCT 31 20:25 First Quarter
Moon http://aa.usno.navy.mil/data/docs/MoonPhase.html
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GALILEO END OF MISSION STATUS
Jet Propulsion Laboratory News Release
(Pasadena, September 21) The Galileo spacecraft's 14-year odyssey came
to an end on Sunday, Sept. 21, when the spacecraft passed into
Jupiter's shadow then disintegrated in the planet's dense atmosphere
at 11:57 a.m. Pacific Daylight Time. The Deep Space Network tracking
station in Goldstone, Calif., received the last signal at 12:43:14
PDT. The delay is due to the time it takes for the signal to travel to
Earth.
Hundreds of former Galileo project members and their families were
present at NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, Calif., for a
celebration to bid the spacecraft goodbye.
"We learned mind-boggling things. This mission was worth its weight
in gold," said Dr. Claudia Alexander, Galileo project manager.
Having traveled approximately 4.6 billion kilometers (about 2.8
billion miles), the hardy spacecraft endured more than four times the
cumulative dose of harmful jovian radiation it was designed to
withstand. During a previous flyby of the moon Amalthea in November
2002, flashes of light were seen by the star scanner that indicated
the presence of rocky debris circling Jupiter in the vicinity of the
small moon. Another measurement of this area was taken today during
Galileo's final pass. Further analysis may help confirm or constrain
the existence of a ring at Amalthea's orbit.
"We haven't lost a spacecraft, we've gained a steppingstone into the
future of space exploration," said Dr. Torrance Johnson, Galileo
project scientist.
The spacecraft was purposely put on a collision course with Jupiter
because the onboard propellant was nearly depleted and to eliminate
any chance of an unwanted impact between the spacecraft and Jupiter's
moon Europa, which Galileo discovered is likely to have a subsurface
ocean. Without propellant, the spacecraft would not be able to point
its antenna toward Earth or adjust its trajectory, so controlling the
spacecraft would no longer be possible. The possibility of life
existing on Europa is so compelling and has raised so many unanswered
questions that it is prompting plans for future spacecraft to return
to the icy moon.
Galileo was launched from the cargo bay of Space Shuttle Atlantis in
1989. The exciting list of discoveries started even before Galileo
got a glimpse of Jupiter. As it crossed the asteroid belt in October
1991, Galileo snapped images of Gaspra, returning the first ever
close-up image of an asteroid. Less then a year later, the spacecraft
got up close to yet another asteroid, Ida, revealing it had its own
little "moon," Dactyl, the first known moon of an asteroid. In 1994
the spacecraft made the only direct observation of a comet impacting a
planet -- comet Shoemaker-Levy 9's collision with Jupiter.
The descent probe made the first in-place studies of the planet's
clouds and winds, and it furthered scientists' understanding of how
Jupiter evolved. The probe also made composition measurements designed
to assess the degree of evolution of Jupiter compared to the Sun.
Galileo made the first observation of ammonia clouds in another
planet's atmosphere. It also observed numerous large thunderstorms on
Jupiter many times larger than those on Earth, with lightning strikes
up to 1,000 times more powerful than on Earth. It was the first
spacecraft to dwell in a giant planet's magnetosphere long enough to
identify its global structure and to investigate the dynamics of
Jupiter's magnetic field. Galileo determined that Jupiter's ring
system is formed by dust kicked up as interplanetary meteoroids smash
into the planet's four small inner moons. Galileo data showed that
Jupiter's outermost ring is actually two rings, one embedded within
the other.
Galileo extensively investigated the geologic diversity of Jupiter's
four largest moons: Ganymede, Callisto, Io and Europa. Galileo found
that Io's extensive volcanic activity is 100 times greater than that
found on Earth. The moon Europa, Galileo unveiled, could be hiding a
salty ocean up to 100 kilometers (62 miles) deep underneath its frozen
surface containing about twice as much water as all the Earth's
oceans. Data also showed Ganymede and Callisto may have a
liquid-saltwater layer. The biggest discovery surrounding Ganymede
was the presence of a magnetic field. No other moon of any planet is
known to have one.
The prime mission ended six years ago, after two years of orbiting
Jupiter. NASA extended the mission three times to continue taking
advantage of Galileo's unique capabilities for accomplishing valuable
science. The mission was possible because it drew its power from two
long-lasting radioisotope thermoelectric generators provided by the
Department of Energy.
"The mission was a testimonial to the persistence of NASA even through
tremendous challenges. It was a phenomenal mission," said Sean
O'Keefe, NASA administrator.
JPL, a division of the California Institute of Technology in Pasadena,
manages the Galileo mission for NASA's Office of Space Science,
Washington, D.C. JPL designed and built the Galileo orbiter, and
operated the mission.
Additional information about the Galileo mission and its discoveries
is available online at:
http://www.jpl.nasa.gov/galileo-legacy and
http://galileo.jpl.nasa.gov http://galileo.jpl.nasa.gov/ .
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OLD CALTECH TELESCOPE YIELDS NEW SCIENCE
Caltech News Release
(Pasadena, September 22) Meet Sarah Horst, throwback. The planetary
science major, a senior at the California Institute of Technology,
spent six months engaged in a bit of old-time telescope observing. The
work led to some breakthrough research about Saturn's moon Titan, and
indirectly led to funding for a new telescope at Caltech's Palomar
Observatory.
Horst, 21, was looking for a part-time job in the summer of her
sophomore year, and was hired by Mike Brown, an associate professor
of planetary astronomy. Brown and graduate student Antonin Bouchez
knew there had been previous evidence of "weather" on Titan in the
form of clouds. But that evidence was elusive. "Someone would look
one year and think they saw a cloud, then look the next year and not
see a cloud," explains Brown. "What we were after was a way to look
at Titan, night after night after night."
The problem, of course, is that all of the large telescopes like Keck
are incredibly busy, booked by astronomers from around the world who
use the precious time for their own line of research. So Brown and
Bouchez knew that obtaining large amounts of time for a single
project like this was not going to happen.
The solution: Use an old teaching telescope--the hoary 14-inch
Celestron telescope located on top of Caltech's Robinson Lab--to do
cutting edge science that couldn't be done at the largest telescopes
in the world, in Hawaii.
Though the power of the Robinson telescope is weak, and light
pollution from Pasadena strong, which prevents imaging the actual
clouds, the light reflecting from clouds could be imaged (the more
clouds, the more light that's reflected). All that was needed was
someone who could come night after night and take multiple images.
Enter Horst, the self-described "lowly undergraduate." For months,
Horst spent her evenings in Robinson. "I did the setup, which
involved a wheel that contained four light filters," she explains.
Each filter would capture a different wavelength of light. Software
switched the filters; all she had to do, says Horst, was to orientate
and focus the telescope.
Now, modern-day astronomers have it relatively easy when using their
telescope time. Sure they're up all night, but they sit on a
comfortable chair in a warm room, hot coffee close at hand, and do
their observing through a computer monitor that's connected to a
telescope.
Not Horst. She did it the old way, in discomfort. "A lot of times in
December or January I'd go in late at night, and it would be
freezing," says Horst, who runs the 800-meter for the Caltech track
team. "I'd wrap myself up in blankets." Horst spent hours in the
dark, since the old dome itself had to be dark. "I couldn't even
study," she says, "although sometimes I tried to read by the light of
the moon."
A software program written by Bouchez plotted the light intensity
from each image on a graph. When a particular image looked promising,
Bouchez contacted Brown. As a frequent user of the Keck Observatory,
which is powerful enough to take an image of the actual clouds, Brown
was able to call colleagues who were using the Keck that night and
quickly convince them that something exciting was going on. "It only
took about ten minutes to get a quick image of Titan," says Brown.
"The funny part was having to explain to them that we knew there were
clouds because we had seen the evidence in our 14-inch telescope in
the middle of the L.A. basin."
The result was "Direct Detection of Variable Tropospheric Clouds Near
Titan's South Pole," which appeared in the December 19 journal
Nature. It included this acknowledgement: "We thank . . . S. Horst
for many nights of monitoring Titan in the cold."
The paper has helped Brown obtain the funding to build a new 24-inch
custom-built telescope. It will be placed in its own building atop
Palomar Mountain, on the grounds of Caltech's existing observatory.
It's also roboticized; Brown will control the scope from Pasadena via
a computer program he has written.
He'll use it for further observation of Titan and for other imaging,
as well, such as fast-moving comets. "Most astronomy is big," notes
Brown; "big scopes looking at big, unchanging things, like galaxies.
I like to look at changing things, which led to this telescope."
What really made this project unique, though, according to Brown, is
the Robinson scope. "Sarah was able to do something with this little
telescope in Pasadena that no one in the world, on any of their
larger professional telescopes on high, dark mountaintops, had been
able to do," he says. "Sometimes a good idea and stubbornness are
better than the largest telescope in town."
For Horst, while the work wasn't intellectually challenging--"a
trained monkey could have done it," she says with a laugh--it was,
nonetheless, "a cool project. Everything here is so theoretical and
tedious, and so classroom orientated. So in that way it was a nice
experience and reminded me what real science was about."
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IF YOU THOUGHT THAT WAS A CLOSE VIEW OF MARS, JUST WAIT
Jet Propulsion Laboratory News Release
(Pasadena, September 23) As Earth pulls away from Mars after last
month's close approach, NASA is developing a spacecraft that will take
advantage of the next close encounter in 2005. That spacecraft, Mars
Reconnaissance Orbiter, will make a more comprehensive inspection of
our planetary neighbor than any previous mission.
For starters, it will examine landscape details as small as a coffee
table with the most powerful telescopic camera ever sent to orbit a
foreign planet. Some of its other tools will scan underground layers
for water and ice, identify small patches of surface minerals to
determine their composition and origins, track changes in atmospheric
water and dust, and check global weather every day.
"We're reaching an important stage in developing the spacecraft," said
James Graf, project manager for Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter at NASA's
Jet Propulsion Laboratory, Pasadena, Calif. "The primary structure
will be completed next month." The structure weighs 220 kilograms (484
pounds) and stands 3 meters (10 feet) tall. At launch, after gear and
fuel are added, it will support over 2 tons.
Also next month, the mission's avionics test bed will be assembled for
the first time and put to use for testing of flight software.
Workers at Lockheed Martin Space Systems, Denver, have already
assembled the spacecraft structure and will later add instruments
being built for it at the University of Arizona, Tucson; at Johns
Hopkins University Applied Physics Laboratory, Laurel, Md.; at the
Italian Space Agency, Rome; at Malin Space Science Systems, San Diego,
Calif.; and at JPL.
"In several ways, Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter will advance NASA's
follow-the-water strategy for Mars exploration," said Dr. Richard
Zurek, project scientist for the mission.
Current surveys of Mars' surface composition have found less evidence
of water-related minerals than many scientists anticipated after
earlier discoveries of plentiful channels that were apparently carved
by water flows in the planet's past. A spectrometer on the
Reconnaissance Orbiter is designed to identify some different types of
water-related minerals and to see smaller-scale deposits. "Instead of
looking for something as big as the Bonneville Salt Flats, we can look
for something on the scale of a Yellowstone hot spring," Zurek said.
Probing below Mars' surface with penetrating radar, Reconnaissance
Orbiter will check whether the frozen water that NASA's Mars Odyssey
spacecraft detected in the top meter or two (yard or two) of soil
extends deeper, perhaps as accessible reservoirs of melted water.
Above the surface, an atmosphere-scanning instrument will monitor
changes in water vapor at different altitudes and might even locate
plumes where water vapor is entering the atmosphere from underground
vents, if that's happening on Mars.
Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter will stream home its pictures and other
information using the widest dish antenna and highest power level ever
operated at Mars. "The amount of data flowing back to Earth from Mars
will be a giant leap over previous missions. It's like upgrading from
a dial-up modem for your computer to a high-speed DSL connection,"
Graf said.
The Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter will lay the groundwork for later Mars
surface missions in NASA's plans: a lander called Phoenix selected
last month in a competition for a 2007 launch opportunity, and a
highly capable rover called Mars Science Laboratory being developed
for a 2009 launch opportunity. The orbiter's high-resolution
instruments will help planners evaluate possible landing sites for
these missions both in terms of science potential for further
discoveries and in terms of landing risks. The orbiter's
communications capabilities will provide a critical transmission relay
for the surface missions.
Advantageous opportunities to launch Mars missions come in a rhythm of
about every 26 months, shortly before each time Earth overtakes Mars
in the two planets' concentric tracks around the Sun. NASA's two Mars
Exploration Rovers and the European Space Agency's Mars Express
mission were launched during the three months preceding Earth's most
recent passing of Mars on Aug. 27. The Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter
team has its work cut out for it to have the spacecraft ready for
launch on Aug. 10, 2005, which is about 10 weeks before the next
close approach.
JPL, a division of the California Institute of Technology in Pasadena,
manages the Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter project for NASA's Office of
Space Science, Washington, D.C.
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GLOSSARY
DMSP Defense Meteorological Satellite Program
GT- Glory Trip. Name given to strategic missile test launches
(GT-183GB, etc.)
JPL Jet Propulsion Laboratory
LF- Launch facility. A missile silo (such as LF-10).
PDT Pacific Daylight Savings Time
PST Pacific Standard Time
SLC- Space Launch Complex. A launch pad (SLC-2W for example).