[Launch Alert] Vandenberg AFB Launch Schedule
Launch Alert
launch-alert at mailman.qth.net
Tue Jan 1 12:41:52 EST 2013
LAUNCH ALERT
Brian Webb
Ventura County, California
launch-alert-editor at earthlink.net
www.spacearchive.info
2013 January 1 (Tuesday) 09:37 PST
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VANDENBERG AFB LAUNCH SCHEDULE
As of 2013 January 1
Launch
Time/Window
Date (PST/PDT) Vehicle Pad/Silo
---------- ----------------- ------------- --------
JAN-MAR To be announced GBI ---
A Ground-based Interceptor will be launched to assess vehicle design
changes. This missile defense-related flight does not involve an
intercept attempt.
FEB 11 10:04-10:48 Atlas V SLC-3E
Vehicle will launch NASA's Landsat Data Continuity Mission
Spring To be announced GBI ---
Missile defense test. A Ground-based Interceptor will be launched from
Vandenberg in an attempt to intercept a target launched from Kwajalein
in the central Pacific.
APR To be announced Atlas V SLC-3E
Vehicle will launch the GeoEye 2 commercial Earth-imaging satellite
NET APR 28 19:29:57-19:34:57 Pegasus XL Offshore
Payload is NASA's Interface Region Imaging Spectrograph (IRIS)
satellite. Vehicle will be air dropped from an L-1011 jumbo jet flying
offshore. The aircraft will be staged from Vandenberg AFB.
APR-JUN To be announced Falcon 9 SLC-4E
Vehicle will launch the Cassiope satellite for the Canadian Space
Agency
The above schedule is a composite of unclassified information
approved for public release from government, industry, and other
sources. It represents the Editor's best effort to produce a schedule,
but may disagree with other sources. Details on military launches are
withheld until they are approved for public release. For official
information regarding Vandenberg AFB activities, go to
http://www.vandenberg.af.mil.
All launch dates and times are given in Pacific Time using a 24-hour
format similar to military time (midnight = 00:00, 1:00 p.m. = 13:00,
11:00 p.m. = 23:00, etc.).
The dates and times in this schedule may not agree with those on other
online launch schedules, including the official Vandenberg AFB
schedule because different sources were used, the information was
interpreted differently, and the schedules were updated at different
times.
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NASA RESEARCHERS STRIKE SCIENTIFIC GOLD WITH METEORITE
NASA Ames Research Center News Release
2012 December 20
MOFFETT FIELD, Calif. - Scientists found treasure when they studied a
meteorite that was recovered April 22, 2012 at Sutter's Mill, the gold
discovery site that led to the 1849 California Gold Rush. Detection of
the falling meteorites by Doppler weather radar allowed for rapid
recovery so that scientists could study for the first time a primitive
meteorite with little exposure to the elements, providing the most
pristine look yet at the surface of primitive asteroids.
An international team of 70 researchers reported in today's issue of
³Science² that this meteorite was classified as a Carbonaceous-Mighei
or CM-type carbonaceous chondrite and that they were able to identify
for the first time the source region of these meteorites.
"The small three meter-sized asteroid that impacted over California¹s
Sierra Nevada came in at twice the speed of typical meteorite falls,"
said lead author and meteor astronomer Peter Jenniskens of the SETI
Institute, Mountain View, Calif., and NASA's Ames Research Center,
Moffett Field, Calif. "Clocked at 64,000 miles per hour, it was the
biggest impact over land since the impact of the four meter-sized
asteroid 2008 TC3, four years ago over Sudan."
The asteroid approached on an orbit that still points to the source
region of CM chondrites. From photographs and video of the fireball,
Jenniskens calculated that the asteroid approached on an unusual
low-inclined almost comet-like orbit that reached the orbit of
Mercury, passing closer to the sun than known from other recorded
meteorite falls.
"It circled the sun three times during a single orbit of Jupiter, in
resonance with that planet," Jenniskens said. Based on the unusually
short time that the asteroid was exposed to cosmic rays, there was
not much time to go slower or faster around the sun. That puts the
original source asteroid very close to this resonance, in a low
inclined orbit.
"A good candidate source region for CM chondrites now is the Eulalia
asteroid family, recently proposed as a source of primitive C-class
asteroids in orbits that pass Earth," adds Jenniskens.
After the asteroid broke up in the atmosphere, weather radar briefly
detected a hailstorm of falling meteorites over the townships of
Coloma and Lotus in California. This enabled a rapid recovery that
permitted the most pristine look yet at a CM-type carbonaceous
chondrite.
"This was the first time a rare carbonaceous chondrite meteorite was
recovered based on such weather radar detection," said Marc Fries of
the Planetary Science Institute in Tucson, Arizona, who pioneered the
use of this technique. "Meteorites were found mostly under the radar
footprint."
Of the estimated 100,000-pound asteroid, less than two pounds was
recovered on the ground in the form of 77 meteorites. The biggest was
205 grams. Some of the key meteorites discussed in this work were
found by volunteer search teams led by Jenniskens.
"The entire Ames community really came together in the search for
these meteorites. People work at NASA because they love science and
that was very evident when we saw the overwhelming response of
volunteers from Ames wanting to be a part of this,² said Ames Center
Director S. Pete Worden.
"The meteorite was a jumbled mess of rocks, called a regolith breccia,
that originated from near the surface of a primitive asteroid," said
meteoriticist Derek Sears of NASA Ames. NASA and the Japanese space
agency (JAXA) have plans to target asteroids similar to the one
recovered at Sutter¹s Mill. The Sutter's Mill meteorite provides a
rare glimpse of what these space missions may find.
"NASA's robotic OSIRIS-REx mission is currently being prepared to
bring back a pristine sample of an asteroid named 1999 RQ36," said
co-author and mission co-investigator Scott Sandford of NASA Ames. "In
addition, Sutter's Mill has the same reflective properties as
near-Earth asteroid, 1999 JU3, the mission target of the Hayabusa 2
sample return mission currently being prepared by the Japanese space
agency, JAXA."
The rapid recovery resulted in the detection of compounds that quickly
disappear once a meteorite lands on Earth. Mike Zolensky, a
mineralogist at NASA¹s Johnson Space Flight Center, Houston, was
surprised to detect the mineral oldhamite, a calcium sulfide, known in
the past to disappear from contact with water by simply breathing on
it.
"This mineral was known before mainly from rare enstatite chondrites,"
said Zolensky, "and its presence in the regolith breccia could mean
that primitive and highly evolved asteroids collided with each other
even at early times when the debris accumulated that now makes the
meteorite matrix."
A wide array of carbon-containing compounds was detected that quickly
reacted with water once in the Earth's environment. It is thought that
the carbon atoms in our body may have been brought to Earth by such
primitive asteroids in the early stages of our planet¹s history.
"Amino acids were few in this meteorite because this particular
meteorite appears to have been slightly heated in space before it
arrived at Earth," said Danny Glavin of NASA¹s Goddard Space Flight
Center, Greenbelt, Md.
It appears that different parts of the meteorite had a different
thermal alteration history. Heating also removed some of the water
that used to move salts around in the asteroid.
"Samples collected before it rained on the meteorite fall area still
contained such salts," said George Cooper of NASA Ames, "but Sutter's
Mill was less altered by water in the asteroid itself than other CM
type meteorites."
"Only 150 parts per billion of Sutter's Mill was actual gold," said
co-author and cosmochemist Qing-zhu Yin of U.C. Davis, Davis, Calif.,
"but all of it was scientific gold. With 78 other elements measured,
Sutter's Mill provides one of the most complete records of elemental
compositions documented for such primitive meteorites."
For more information about the NASA Lunar Science Institute, visit:
http://lunarscience.arc.nasa.gov
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EIGHTH LANDSAT SATELLITE ARRIVES AT LAUNCH SITE
Kennedy Space Center News Release
2012 December 20
GREENBELT, Md. -- An oversized semi-trailer truck carrying NASA's
Landsat Data Continuity Mission (LDCM) has arrived at its launch site
at Vandenberg Air Force Base in California in preparation for launch.
This NASA and U.S. Geological Survey mission will continue a 40-year
record of measuring change on the planet from space.
LDCM is the eighth satellite in the Landsat series, which began in
1972. It will extend and expand global land observations that are
critical in many sectors, including energy and water management,
forest monitoring, human and environmental health, urban planning,
disaster recovery and agriculture.
Following final tests, the LDCM satellite will be attached to an Atlas
V rocket and launched into space Feb. 11, 2013. Built and tested by
Orbital Sciences Corp., LDCM left their Gilbert, Ariz., facility on
Dec. 17.
"LDCM builds on and strengthens a key American resource: a
decades-long, unbroken Landsat-gathered record of our planet's
natural resources, particularly its food, water and forests," said
Jim Irons, Landsat project scientist at NASA's Goddard Space Flight
Center in Greenbelt, Md.
LDCM carries two instruments, the Operational Land Imager (OLI) built
by Ball Aerospace & Technologies Corp. in Boulder, Colo., and the
Thermal Infrared Sensor (TIRS) built by NASA Goddard.
"Both of these instruments have evolutionary advances that make them
the most advanced Landsat instruments to date and are designed to
improve performance and reliability to improve observations of the
global land surface," said Ken Schwer, LDCM project manager at NASA
Goddard.
OLI will continue observations in the visible, near infrared, and
shortwave infrared portions of the electromagnetic spectrum and
includes two new spectral bands, one of which is designed to support
monitoring of coastal waters and the other to detect previously hard
to see cirrus clouds that can otherwise unknowingly impact the signal
from the Earth's surface in the other spectral bands. TIRS will
collect data in two thermal bands and will thus be able to measure
the temperature of the Earth's surface, a measurement that's vital to
monitoring water consumption, especially in the arid western United
States.
NASA and the U.S. Department of the Interior through the U.S.
Geological Survey (USGS) jointly manage the Landsat program. After
launch and the initial checkout phase, USGS will take operational
control of the satellite; will collect, archive and distribute the
data from OLI and TIRS; and will rename the satellite as Landsat 8.
The LDCM data will be freely and openly available through the USGS
data system.
NASA's Launch Services Program at Kennedy is responsible for launch
management. United Launch Alliance is the provider of the Atlas V
launch service.
For more information, please visit:
http://www.nasa.gov/Landsat
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TIME FORMAT
All times in this newsletter are given in Pacific Time using a 24-hour
format based on 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:
www.spacearchive.info/military.htm
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