The next MEPCO is coming ... to Bulgaria, in early August, 1999!
For details on this astronomical conference just before the total solar eclipse click here!

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Did you miss the big Mongolia Expedition Report of Nov. 27?

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New: every page on two servers, in Europe and the U.S.!

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Update # 112 of Dec. 4th, 1998, at 21:30 UTC

First ISS Assembly Mission underway Getting Endeavour off the ground was tricky enough: It only worked this morning on the 2nd try, after the launch window was missed by less than 2 seconds yesterday (a Master Alarm in the cockpit had confused the launch team). But the really hard work - for the STS-88 crew - will begin now: They have to find Zarya, grab it with the robot arm and connect it to Unity. And then, during three EVA's, they have to connect many cables etc. between the two station elements. The crew has been training for the 13-day flight for the last 2 years. The first step will be to lift Unity out of Endeavour's aft payload pay - a tough operation because the module is very wide and almost fills the bay - and to position it over the orbiter's docking system to which it will be mated. After that's done, the final approach to Zarya follows - from an inconvenient angle that's forced upon the orbiter because it mustn't block Zarya's communications link with the Russian controllers. Once Zarya is within 20 meters of Endeavour, the crew will lose direct sight of the spacecraft and will have to rely on payload bay cameras. The three EVA's after the docking between Zarya and Unity are needed to turn them into functional elements - this is so critical that one of the non-EVA astronauts has even been trained as a possible substitute should one of the EVA specialists become ill! Some 40 cables have to be strung between the modules, an antenna has to be installed (so that they can use the TDRSS satellites), and supplies will be brought into the embryonic station. It will also be photographed in great detail, to document its aging over the next 15 years. (AW&ST Nov. 30, 1998, p. 63-66)	Endeavour launch coverage by ABC, BBC, CNN, Spacer.com and SpaceViews Hintergründe (in German) Other STS-88 passengers: Mightysat, and a student experiment. "Mir: Terror in Space" with interesting links (esp. the Linenger interview).
Big trajectory correction for Cassini NASA's Cassini spacecraft successfully completed a long-planned 90-minute firing of its onboard rocket engine on Dec. 2nd, setting the spacecraft on course for a second flyby of Venus - the next major milestone on Cassini's long trajectory to Saturn. During the so-called "Deep Space Maneuver" Cassini's main rocket engine fired for 90 minutes. "The performance of the spacecraft and the team in performing this maneuver was just perfect, we couldn't have asked for anything better," said Bob Mitchell, Cassini's program manager. Mission engineers said the engine firing went exactly as planned, slowing the spacecraft by close to 450 meters per second relative to the Sun. Cassini's speed went from 67,860 kilometers per hour at the start of the maneuver to 66,240 km/h at the end of the engine firing. All of Cassini's systems remain in excellent condition. The maneuver adjusted the angle of the spacecraft's flight path relative to Venus' orbit so that Cassini will achieve the maximum velocity boost from Venus' gravity during the June flyby of that planet. The firing was one of two long burns of the engine over the entire course of the mission; when Cassini reaches Saturn in July 2004, the engine will burn for about the same amount of time to brake the spacecraft into orbit around the ringed planet. (Adapted from a Dec. 3 Mission Status Report)	Cassini's Homepage Report on the successful firing. Where is Cassini now?
Astronomy satellite to launch tonight? After the first launch attempt was scrubbed on Dec. 2nd, tonight is the 2nd opportunity for the Submillimeter Wave Astronomy Satellite. SWAS is a NASA SMEX (small explorer mission) mission and will be the first sub-millimeter radiotelescope in space. It will survey dense molecular clouds within our galaxy in low lying atomic and molecular transitions that are difficult or even impossible to observe from the ground. The five selected atomic and molecular lines between 487 and 557 Ghz belong to important astrophysical species: molecular oxygen, atomic carbon, carbon monoxide and water (2 lines). SWAS will determine whether water and/or the oxygen molecule are hidden reservoirs of oxygen in the interstellar medium and confirm the role of these species as dominant coolers in dense molecular clouds. It should supply key information about the abundance of these species for chemical models in the clouds and therefore explore the structure and photochemistry of the UV-illuminated surface of molecular clouds. SWAS will be launched with a Pegasus vehicle into an orbit of about 600 km altitude at 65 deg. inclination. The telescope is a 54 X 68 cm diameter off-axis Cassegrain telescope. The experiment uses a pair of passively cooled (150 K) subharmonically pumped Schottky diode mixers as submillimeter receivers. The two IF-bands are combined and fed to an acousto-optical spectrometer (AOS), where the signals of all lines are detected simultanously. The AOS is designed for 1 MHz channel spacing within the range of 1400 MHz to 2800 MHz. This corresponds to a velocity channel resolution of 0.6 km/s. (Adapted from the Cologne website.)	SWAS: Homepage, another homepage, and yet another homepage. From the Cologne, Germany, team that provided the satellite's spectrometer: SWAS infos, the AOS, Homepage. Story on the delay. Want more sub-mm astronomy? How about the HHT alias SMTO where progress is also being made.

In a Nutshell: Students of the Hands-On Universe program have discovered a Kuiper Belt Object! / After some troubles, not unusual with this kind of technology, Deep Space One's ion engine is now working perfectly. The s/c has also been imaged with the 5 m Hale telescope.

Galileo lost most of its data at the latest Europa fly-by because it went into a safemode. Now it is working again and sending whatever data it got. From earlier observations there is even more evidence for liquid water beneath Europa's frozen crust.

There are lots of news on solar-terrestrial connections from the AGU Fall Meeting. / The 50+ astronomical VLT images have now been sorted by topic for everyone's convenience. / This month's Hubble Heritage pic: NGC 253. / And a 90 cm robotic telescope becomes available for the public, while a 2 m robotic telescope could be ready in 2001.

Have you read the the previous issue?!
All other historical issues can be found in the Archive.

This Cosmic Mirror has been visited times since it was issued.

Compiled and written by Daniel Fischer
(send me a mail to [email protected]!), Skyweek