The Cosmic Mirrorof News events across the Universe |
Compiled and written by Daniel Fischer, Skyweek - older "Mirrors" in the Archive - and find out what the future might bring! The latest issue! |
Current mission news: MGS (science!) + Cassini + Galileo + Prospector |
The Mars Climate Observer has launched!It was delayed for one day because of a minor software problem, but today the newest Mars mission (see last Update) made it into space during the first brief launch window at 18:45 UTC. There would have been further launch opportunities for another 2 weeks, until Dec. 25th. "T+plus 47 minutes. SPACECRAFT SEPARATION. NASA's Mars Climate Orbiter is headed for the Red Planet!", reports FLORIDA TODAY Space Online in its 'live' coverage: "The spacecraft has successfully separated from the Delta rocket's third stage. MCO is due to arrive at Mars on Sept. 23 after a 9-month cruise through interplanetary space."The delay had been caused by a review of Mars Climate Orbiter software designed to protect against hardware failures on the spacecraft: It had uncovered a flaw that project engineers decided to fix before launch. The problem involved a device called a charge control unit, which regulates the flow of charge from the spacecraft's solar arrays to the battery. If the primary charge control unit were to fail during the mission, the battery could be overcharged and fail before the spacecraft's fault protection software was able to detect the error and command a swap to the backup charge control unit. The fix was simple. |
SpaceViews on the launch, the Fla. Today Launch Journal and NASA on the delay. Stories from CNN of Dec. 9 and 11, BBC of the 11th and ABC of the 9th. Mars Missions in general: ABC ( Mars Index) |
Astronauts visit the ISSIt doesn't have the space station-like feel of Mir yet: There are no huge numbers of cables and tubes running through the modules, which are pretty much empty. But it was a historic moment nonetheless when the Endeavour astronauts floated into Unity and Zarya for the first time yesterday. Commander Bob Cabana and Russian Cosmonaut Sergei Krikalev opened the hatch to the U.S.-built Unity connecting module at 19:54 UTC Thursday and floated into the new 'embryonic' station together that had been tended from the outside by two long EVA's before.The rest of the crew followed and began turning on lights and unstowing gear in the roomy hub to which other modules will be connected in the future. Each passageway within Unity was marked by a sign leading the way into tunnels to which new modules will be connected. About an hour later Cabana and Krikalev opened the hatch to the Russian-built Zarya control module, which will be the nerve center for the station in its embryonic stage. Joined by Pilot Rick Sturckow and Mission Specialists Jerry Ross, Jim Newman and Nancy Currie, Cabana and Krikalev hailed the historic entrance into the International Space Station. Ross and Newman went right to work in Unity, completing the assembly of an early S-band communications system that will allow flight controllers in Houston to send commands to Unity's systems and to keep tabs on the health of the station with a more extensive communications capability than exists through Russian ground stations. The astronauts also conducted a successful test of the videoconferencing capability of the early communications system. Furthermore, Krikalev and Currie replaced a faulty unit in Zarya which controlled the discharging of stored energy from one of the module's six batteries. The battery had not been working properly in its automatic configuration, but the new unit was functioning normally shortly after it was installed. (Adapted from STS-88 Status Report # 17) |
Station powered up, boosted to higher orbit: Status Report #13 and a story from CNN. The 2nd EVA: Status Report #15, a story from CNN, and a lot of pictures. Visiting the ISS: Status Report #17 and stories from CNN (another one), BBC, ABC and SpaceViews. All Status Reports of the ISS and STS-88. |
New distance record for quasars, but not the highest zIt doesn't beat the distance records set by ordinary galaxies by any means: There the redshift limit has moved past 6 recently (see Update #104 ). But a couple of very distant quasars discovered during the course of the Sloan Digital Sky Survey is giving valuable information on the behavior of the 'central engines' of some galaxies in the early cosmos. Using data from only the first months of the initial shakedown operation of new sky-mapping technology, the Sky Survey has already discovered three of the four most distant quasars currently known, with redshifts of 5.0, 4.9 and 4.75. The old record for quasars was 4.89.Remarkably, the Sky Survey telescope at Apache Point Observatory in southern New Mexico unveiled the three quasars during an early stage of its commissioning, after examining just a narrow slice of the sky - the first one percent of its planned sky coverage. Only a portion of that data has so far been analyzed. Members of the team were still calibrating instruments, building data archives, and installing a new monitor telescope when the discovery data were taken in September, just months after first light. The ultimate goal of the Sky Survey is to map one quarter of the sky and create a systematic, three-dimensional picture of the universe 100 times larger than in previous surveys. The Survey team will first create a digital image of the sky in five colors, using the most complex astronomical camera ever built, mounted on a 2.5 meter telescope built for the survey. From the digital images, astronomers will choose the million brightest galaxies and use a specially designed spectrograph to measure the redshifts of the million brightest galaxies, 600 at a time. The redshifts will allow scientists to determine the distances to these million galaxies - adding the third dimension. The Survey will also find redshifts for 100,000 quasars. |
SDSS Press Release Stories from CNN, BBC (which didn't know about the galaxies with higher z!) and ABC. SDSS Homepage |
In a Nutshell: A Russian rocket has launched two small satellites, one from the SARSAT program and a Swedish science satellite (also reported by CNN). / Deep Space One has completed its engine burn on Dec. 8. / And seismic observations have finally proven that the Earth's core is solid iron.
Compiled and written by Daniel Fischer
