[Launch Alert] Vandenberg Launch Schedule
Brian Webb
[email protected]
Thu, 1 Jan 2004 21:09:05 -0800
LAUNCH ALERT
Brian Webb
Ventura County, California
E-mail: [email protected]
Web Site: http://www.spacearchive.info
Reaching more than 3,370 e-mail addresses worldwide
2004 January 1 (Thursday) 21:05 PST
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VANDENBERG AFB LAUNCH SCHEDULE
As of 2004 January 1
Launch
Time/Window
Date (PST/PDT) Vehicle Pad/Silo
-------- ----------- ---------- --------
JAN 10:00-16:00? EKV Booster Unknown
Test launch of Lockheed-Martin's prototype booster for the EKV
(anti-missile interceptor). Vehicle will fly a ballistic (non-orbital)
trajectory. Launch being conducted for the Missile Defense Agency to
develop a ground-based, midcourse defense system against strategic
missiles. BV-5
FEB 26 Unannounced Taurus SLC-576E
Payload is Taiwan's ROCSAT-2 satellite
MAR Unannounced Minuteman III LF-09
ICBM test launch (non-orbital). Payload is unarmed warheads. Impact
area is in the Reagan Test Site at Kwajalein in the central Pacific.
Glory Trip 184GM
APR 20 ~10:00 Delta II SLC-2W
Payload is NASA's Gavity Probe B satellite
JUN Unannounced Minuteman III LF-10
ICBM test launch (non-orbital). Payload is unarmed warheads. Impact
area is in the Reagan Test Site at Kwajalein in the central Pacific.
Glory Trip 185GM
JUN 20 Unannounced Delta II SLC-2W
Payload is NASA's AURA scientific satellite
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Southern California Astronomical Events
for 2004 January
Time
Date (PST/PDT) Event
-------- --------- -----------------------------
JAN 4 00:00-05:30 Quadrantid Meteor Shower
Observers in dark locations should see several meteors per hour.
http://comets.amsmeteors.org/meteors/showers/quadrantids.html
RASC Observer's Handbook 2004, pg. 220
JAN 7 07:40 Full Moon
Moon rises at sunset and sets at sunrise and is visible all night.
http://aa.usno.navy.mil/data/docs/MoonPhase.html
JAN 14 20:46 Last Quarter Moon
Moon rises at midnight and sets at noon.
http://aa.usno.navy.mil/data/docs/MoonPhase.html
JAN 17 02:00 Mercury Western Elongation
Elusive Mercury attains its greatest angular separation from the Sun
and is visible low in the east at dawn.
Astronomical Almanac - 2004, pg. A3
JAN 17-18 --- Dark Sky Weekend
Best time this month to observe faint objects
JAN 21 13:05 New Moon
Moon passes between the Earth and the Sun and is invisible. Moon
rises at sunrise and sets at sunset.
http://aa.usno.navy.mil/data/docs/MoonPhase.html
JAN 24-25 --- Dark Sky Weekend
Best time this month to observe faint objects
JAN 28 22:03 First Quarter Moon
Moon rises at noon and sets at midnight.
http://aa.usno.navy.mil/data/docs/MoonPhase.html
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WEB SITE UPDATES
The following pages on my web site were recently updated for 2004:
Southern California Astronomical Events
http://www.spacearchive.info/astrosked.htm
Southern California Sun Ephemeris
http://www.spacearchive.info/sundata.htm
Southern California Astronomical Twilight Data
http://www.spacearchive.info/twilightdata.htm
Southern California Moon Ephemeris
http://www.spacearchive.info/moondata.htm
Southern California Mercury Ephemeris
http://www.spacearchive.info/mercurydata.htm
Southern California Venus Ephemeris
http://www.spacearchive.info/venusdata.htm
Southern California Mars Ephemeris
http://www.spacearchive.info/marsdata.htm
Southern California Jupiter Ephemeris
http://www.spacearchive.info/jupiterdata.htm
Southern California Saturn Ephemeris
http://www.spacearchive.info/saturndata.htm
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NASA SPACECRAFT HAS SHIELDS UP
HASA Headquarters News Release
(Washington, D.C. - DEC 31) T-minus 48 hours and counting to a
historic rendezvous, NASA's Stardust spacecraft has officially entered
a comet's coma, the cloud of dust and gas surrounding the nucleus.
Stardust is scheduled to hurtle past comet Wild 2 on January 2, 2004,
at approximately 2:40 a.m. EST.
"Just like in Star Trek we have our shields up," said Tom Duxbury,
Stardust program manager at NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL),
Pasadena, Calif. "The spacecraft has entered Wild 2's coma, which
means at any time we could run into a cometary particle. At 6.1
kilometers per second (approximately 3.8 miles per second), this is no
small event."
To protect Stardust against the blast of expected particles and rocks
as it travels approximately 300 kilometers (186 miles) from the Wild 2
nucleus, the spacecraft rotated, so it is flying in the shadow of its
"Whipple Shields". The shields are named for American astronomer Dr.
Fred L. Whipple. In the 1950s, he came up with the idea of shielding
spacecraft from high-speed collisions with bits and pieces ejected
from comets.
The system includes two bumpers at the front of the spacecraft, which
protect Stardust's solar panels, and another shield protecting the
main spacecraft body. Each of the shields is built around composite
panels designed to disperse particles as they impact. Blankets of
Nextel ceramic cloth that dissipates and spreads debris augment them.
Stardust has traveled approximately 3.7 billion kilometers
(approximately 2.3 billion miles) since its February 7, 1999 launch.
It is closing the gap with Wild 2 at 22,000 kph (approximately 13,640
mph).
On Jan. 2, Stardust will fly through the halo of dust and gas that
surrounds the nucleus of comet Wild 2. While large portions of the
spacecraft will be hidden behind Whipple shields, others are designed
to endure the celestial sandblasting as they collect, analyze and
store samples. The Stardust spacecraft will return to Earth in January
2006, and its sample return capsule will make a soft landing at the
U.S. Air Force Utah Test and Training Range. The collected microscopic
particle samples of comet and interstellar dust will be taken to the
planetary material curatorial facility at NASA's Johnson Space Center,
Houston, for analysis. Stardust's cometary and interstellar dust
samples may help provide answers to fundamental questions about the
origins of the solar system. More information about the Stardust
mission is available on the Internet, at:
http://stardust.jpl.nasa.gov
Stardust is part of NASA's Discovery Program of low-cost, highly
focused science missions. It was built by Lockheed Martin Space
Systems, Denver, and is managed by JPL for NASA's Office of Space
Science, Washington. JPL is a division of the California Institute of
Technology in Pasadena, Calif. The principal investigator is astronomy
professor Donald E. Brownlee of the University of Washington in
Seattle.
For information about NASA and other agency missions on the Internet,
visit:
http://www.nasa.gov
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NASA COMET HUNTER CLOSING ON QUARY
Jet Propulsion Laboratory News Release
(Pasadena, Calif. - DEC 30) Having trekked 3.2 billion kilometers (2
billion miles) across cold, radiation-charged and interstellar-dust-
swept space in just under five years, NASA's Stardust spacecraft is
closing in on the main target of its mission -- a comet flyby.
"As the saying goes, 'We are good to go,'" said project manager Tom
Duxbury at NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory, Pasadena, Calif. "There
are significant milestones ahead that we need to achieve before we
reach the comet on Jan. 2, but we have a great team of engineers and
scientists that have trained hard for this moment, and we have a
spacecraft that is in great shape."
All this intense earthly preparation is directed at Wild 2 (pronounced
Vilt 2), a ball of dirty ice and rock, about as big as 20 Titanics
laid end-to-end. Discovered in 1978, Wild 2 orbits the Sun once every
6.39 years on a trajectory that carries it nearly as close to the Sun
as Mars is, and as far away from the Sun as Jupiter.
On Jan. 2 at 11:40:35 am PST, the 5.4-kilometer-wide (3.3-mile) comet
will sail past the 5-meter-long (16-foot) Stardust spacecraft at a
distance of about 300 kilometers (186 miles) and at a relative speed
of 21,960 kilometers per hour (13,650 miles per hour). The plan is
thus because Stardust is a sample return mission.
"In recent decades, spacecraft have passed fairly close to comets and
provided us with excellent data," said Dr. Don Brownlee of the
University of Washington, principal investigator for the Stardust
mission. "Stardust, however, marks the first time that we have ever
collected samples from a comet and brought them back to Earth for
study."
Clad for battle behind specially designed armored shielding, Stardust
will document its passage through the hailstorm of comet debris with
two scientific instruments that will scrutinize the size, number and
composition of dust particles in the coma - the region of dust and gas
surrounding the comet's nucleus. Along with these instruments, the
spacecraft's optical navigation camera will be active during the flyby
and should provide images of the dark mass of the comet's nucleus.
Data from all three will be recorded onboard Stardust and beamed back
to Earth soon after the encounter.
The chain of events began nine days out from the comet when Stardust
deployed its "cometary catcher's mitt," a tennis-racket-shaped
particle catcher of more than 1,000 square centimeters (160 square
inches) of collection area filled with a material called aerogel. Made
of pure silicon dioxide, like sand and glass, aerogel is a thousand
times less dense than glass because it is 99.8 percent air. The
high-tech material has enough "give" in it to slow and stop particles
without altering them radically.
"The samples we will collect are extremely small, 10 to 300 microns in
diameter, and can only be adequately studied in laboratories with
sophisticated analytical instruments," said Brownlee. "Even if a ton
of sample were returned, the main information in the solids would
still be recorded at the micron level, and the analyses would still be
done a single grain at a time."
After the sample has been collected, the collector will fold down into
a return capsule, which will close like a clamshell to secure the
sample for a soft landing at the U.S. Air Force's Utah Test and
Training Range in January 2006. The capsule, holding microscopic
particles of comet and interstellar dust, will be taken to the
planetary material curatorial facility at NASA's Johnson Space Center,
Houston, Texas, where the samples will be carefully stored and
examined.
Scientists believe in-depth terrestrial analysis of cometary samples
will reveal a great deal not only about comets but also related to the
earliest history of the solar system. Locked within the cometary
particles is unique chemical and physical information that could
provide a record of the formation of the planets and the materials
from which they were made.
Stardust, a project under NASA's Discovery Program of low-cost, highly
focused science missions, was built by Lockheed Martin Space Systems,
Denver, and is managed by the Jet Propulsion Laboratory for NASA's
Office of Space Science, Washington, D.C. JPL is a division of the
California Institute of Technology in Pasadena.
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NASA'S MARS & COMET MISSION COVERAGE
Note to Editors
(Washington, D.C. - DEC 30) On Jan. 3, NASA's Mars Exploration Rover
Project will deliver the first mobile laboratory to the surface of
Mars. The rover will perform robotic geological fieldwork that may
reveal a history of water on Mars. On Jan. 2, 2004, NASA's Stardust
spacecraft will have a close encounter with comet Wild 2, deploying a
collector to catch particles for return to Earth.
NASA's first rover, Spirit, will arrive at Mars at approximately 11:35
p.m. EST Jan. 3. Information about the Mars Exploration Rover mission
is available online at:
http://www.jpl.nasa.gov/news/press_kits/merlandings.pdf
Press conferences will be conducted at JPL starting today on the
Stardust and Mars missions. Information about both missions is
available at:
http://www.jpl.nasa.gov
Briefing Schedule (ALL TIMES EST):
Today:
- News briefing, Stardust pre-flyby overview, 2 to 3 p.m.
Friday, Jan. 2
-- News briefing, Mars science overview, 11:30 a.m. to 12:30
p.m.
-- Live coverage of Stardust flyby, 2 p.m.
-- News briefing, Mars rover mission overview, 12:30 to 1:30
p.m.
-- News briefing, Stardust flyby, 6 to 7 p.m.
Saturday, Jan. 3
-- News briefing, Spirit landing status, 3 to 4 p.m.
-- News briefing, Mars program overview, 6 to 7 p.m.
-- Live Mars rover mission coverage begins, 9:45 p.m.
-- Spirit Mars landing, NET 11:35 p.m.
Sunday, Jan. 4
-- News briefing, Spirit landing, 12:30 to 1:30 a.m.
-- Other news briefings, times TBD
NASA TV will provide extensive mission coverage. NASA TV is available
on AMC-9, transponder 9C, C-Band, located at 85 degrees west
longitude. The frequency is 3880.0 MHz. Polarization is vertical, and
audio is monaural at 6.80 MHz. TV schedule:
http://www.nasa.gov/multimedia/nasatv/MM_NTV_Breaking.html
Visit the multimedia "M2K4" Mars mission Web site for photos, videos
and extensive information about NASA's quest to explore the dangerous
and mysterious red planet:
http://www.nasa.gov/externalflash/m2k4/frameset.html
JPL, a division of the California Institute of Technology, Pasadena,
manages the Mars Exploration Rover project for NASA's Office of Space
Science, Washington.
For information about NASA and agency missions on the Internet, visit:
http://www.nasa.gov
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ION ENGINE UNDER CONSIDERATION FOR JUPITER MISSION PASSES TEST
Jet Propulsion Laboratory News Release
(Pasadena, Calif. - DEC 23) A new ion propulsion engine design, one of
several candidate propulsion technologies under study by NASA's
Project Prometheus for possible use on the proposed Jupiter Icy Moons
Orbiter mission, has been successfully tested by a team of engineers
at NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory, Pasadena, Calif.
The event marked the first performance test of the Nuclear Electric
Xenon Ion System (Nexis) ion engine at the high-efficiency,
high-power, and high-thrust operating conditions needed for use in
nuclear electric propulsion applications. For this test the Nexis
engine was powered using commercial utility electrical power. Ion
engines used on the proposed Jupiter Icy Moons Orbiter spacecraft
would draw their power from an on-board space nuclear reactor. The
ion engines, or electric thrusters, would propel the orbiter around
each of the icy worlds orbiting Jupiter -- Ganymede, Callisto and
Europa -- to conduct extensive, close-range exploration of their
makeup, history and potential for sustaining life.
"On the very first day of performance testing, the Nexis thruster
demonstrated one of the highest efficiencies of any xenon ion thruster
ever tested," said Dr. James Polk, the principal investigator of the
ion engine under development at JPL.
The test was conducted on December 12, in the same vacuum chamber at
JPL where earlier this year, the Deep Space 1 flight spare ion
thruster set the all time endurance record of 30,352 hours (nearly 3.5
years) of continuous operation. The Nexis engine operated at a power
level of over 20 kilowatts, nearly 10 times that of the Deep Space 1
thruster, which enables greater thrust and ultimately higher
spacecraft velocities for a given spacecraft mass. It is designed to
process two metric tons of propellant, 10 times the capability of the
Deep Space 1 engine, and operate for 10 years, two to three times the
Deep Space 1 thruster life.
Team members working on the Nexis engine also helped develop the first
ion engine ever flown on NASA's highly successful Deep Space 1
mission, which validated 12 high-risk advanced technologies, among
them the use of the first ion engine in space.
"The Nexis thruster is a larger, high performance descendant of the
Deep Space 1 thruster that achieves its extraordinary life by
replacing the metal, previously used in key components, with advanced
carbon based materials," said Tom Randolph, the Nexis program manager
at JPL. "The thruster's revolutionary performance results from an
extensive design process including simulations using detailed computer
models developed and validated with the Deep Space 1 life test, and
other component test data."
Unlike the short, high-thrust burns of most chemical rocket engines
that use solid or liquid fuels, the ion engine emits only a faint blue
glow of electrically charged atoms of xenon - the same gas found in
photo flash tubes and in many lighthouse bulbs. The thrust from the
engine is as gentle as the force exerted by a sheet of paper held in
the palm of your hand. Over the long haul though, the engine can
deliver 20 times as much thrust per kilogram of fuel than traditional
rockets.
Key to the ion technology is its high exhaust velocity. The ion engine
can run on a few hundred grams of propellant per day, making it
lightweight. Less weight means less cost to launch, yet an
ion-propelled spacecraft can go much faster and farther than any other
spacecraft.
"This test, in combination with the recent test of the High Power
Electric Propulsion ion engine at NASA's Glenn Research Center, is
another example of the progress we are making in developing the
technologies needed to support flagship space exploration missions
throughout the solar system and beyond," said Alan Newhouse, director,
Project Prometheus. "We have challenged our team with difficult
performance goals and they are demonstrating their ability to be
creative in overcoming technical challenges."
NASA's Project Prometheus is making strategic investments in space
nuclear fission power and electric propulsion technologies that would
enable a new class of missions to the outer Solar System, with
capabilities far beyond those possible with current power and
propulsion systems. The first such mission under study, the Jupiter
Icy Moon Orbiter would launch in the next decade and provide NASA
significantly improved scientific and telecommunications capabilities
and mission design options. Instead of generating only hundreds of
watts of electricity like the Cassini or Galileo missions, which used
radioisotope thermoelectric generators, the Jupiter Icy Moons Orbiter
could have up to tens of thousands of watts of power, increasing the
potential science return many times over.
Development of the Nexis ion engine is being carried out by a team of
engineers from JPL; Aerojet, Redmond, Wash.; Boeing Electron Dynamic
Devices, Torrance, Calif.; NASA's Marshall Space Flight Center,
Huntsville, Ala.; Colorado State University, Fort Collins, Colo.;
Georgia Institute of Technology, Atlanta, Ga.; and the Aerospace
Corporation, Los Angeles, Calif.
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TIME FORMAT
All times in this newsletter are given in Pacific Time using a 24-hour
format similar to military time. Under this system, regular time is
expressed as follows:
24-hour
Regular Time Format
--------------------- -------
12:00 a.m. (midnight) 00:00
6:00 a.m. 06:00
12:00 p.m. (noon) 12:00
6:00 p.m. 18:00
No distinction is made between Pacific Standard Time and Pacific
Daylight Time.
For assistance in converting military time to regular time, go to:
http://www.spacearchive.info/military.htm
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GLOSSARY
~ Approximately
BV- Booster Verification test. A booster test launch (BV-5 for
example).
EKV Exoatmospheric Kill Vehicle. The anti-missile interceptor
for the Ground-Based Midcourse Defense system designed to
destroy missiles in space during the middle (midcourse)
portion of their trajectory.
EST Eastern Standard Time
Glory Trip Name given to strategic missile test launches
JPL Jet Propulsion Laboratory
kph Kilometers per hour
LF- Launch facility. A missile silo (such as LF-10)
mph Miles per hour
NET No earlier than
PDT Pacific Daylight Time
PST Pacific Standard Time
RASC Royal Astronomical Society of Canada
SLC- Space Launch Complex. A launch pad (SLC-2W for example).
TBD To be determined