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

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The Cosmic Mirror is on vacation til early March - in Australia!
Events anticipated until then: an annular solar eclipse on Feb. 16, the next crew launches to Mir on the 20th, and the satellite WIRE launches on the 26th.

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Update # 121 of February 9th, 1999, at 18:00 UTC

Stardust launched to comet Wild 2 The first NASA mission solely dedicated to a comet and the first-ever sample return mission to a target beyond the orbit of the Moon has begun: While Stardust had missed the first instantaneous launch opportunity on Feb. 6th, the launch took place on the second try, at 21:04 UTC on Feb. 7th. For the next 24 months Stardust will make an orbit around the Sun, get a gravity assist from Earth on Jan. 15, 2001 - that saves a lot of fuel - and then head for the comet. The encounter will take place on Jan. 1, 2004, when the comet "runs over" the Discovery spacecraft from behind with 6.1 km/s - fast by human standards, but much slower than the Halley encounters of 1986. While the camera snaps pictures of the comet's nucleus that promise 6-10 meters resolution at closest approach, a Cometary Impact Dust Analyser (CIDA) measures the composition of dust particles striking the spacecraft and another system counts their number, Stardust will expose its aerogel collector to the dust stream. While the particles will heat up to thousands of degrees when they penetrate the aerogel, they will still be preserved well - and another two years later, Stardust delivers the collection (plus interstellar dust collected during cruise) to Earth. A capsule will separate from the s/c, enter Earth's atmosphere with 12.8 km/s and come down in Utah with a parachute, on January 15, 2006, at 3 a.m. local time. The analysis of the few thousand collected dust particles with sizes larger than 15 microns will take years.	Homepage of Stardust Where Stardust came from and previews from JPL and NASA. What is aerogel? Germany's role: CIDA - a Press Release, the instrument's Homepage and related links. Stories from ABCNEWS, BBC and CNN. Launch pictures Florida Today's coverage
MGS: The aerobraking is over! NASA's Mars Global Surveyor spacecraft will soon begin its primary mapping mission after it successfully fired its main rocket engine on Feb. 4th and raised its orbit completely out of the Martian atmosphere to end the aerobraking phase of the mission. At that time the farthest point in the spacecraft's orbit had dropped to 450 km above the Martian surface. During the next two weeks, the spacecraft's closest approach to Mars will slowly drift south until it has moved into a circular Sun-synchronous orbit, in which the spacecraft will cross the Martian equator at about 2 a.m. local solar time. When Global Surveyor arrived at Mars in September 1997, it initially entered a looping, elliptical orbit around the planet that has been gradually circularized through aerobraking. Its winged solar panels supply most of the surface area that slowed the spacecraft by a total of more than 1 200 m/s during the entire aerobraking phase. Since the start of aerobraking, Surveyor's orbit around Mars has shrunk from an initial elliptical orbit of 45 hours to the now nearly circular orbit taking less than two hours to complete. Flight controllers will again fire the spacecraft's main engine on February 18 and perform a final "transfer to mapping orbit" burn, which will lower MGS's closest approach over Mars from 405 km to ca. 379 km. Mapping will begin in early March.	Press Release on the end of aerobraking. Related story: NASA's FY 2000 budget is out, and it includes a revival of the proposal for a Mars Airplane for 2003 (also discussed here)! More 'minor' bodies news: The size of asteroid Eros has been determined from NEAR images: a Press Release, a picture and a BBC story.
SOHO is back, the 2nd time For the second time in six months, engineers have revitalised ESA's orbiting solar observatory SOHO, and have also set a space record. The spacecraft had gone into a self-protection mode (called Emergency Sun Reacquisition or ESR) on December 21st, when the last of its three gyroscopes failed. Having lost a fundamental orientation system, SOHO continually fired onboard jets to keep its sensors pointed toward the sun. To stop the rapid depletion of hydrazine fuel, over the last month software was prepared that enabled SOHO to work without gyroscopes, starting February 2nd. The satellite is now reprogrammed to ignore faulty information from the gyroscopes and to use its startracker for orientation. To turn in space and stay locked on the Sun, SOHO is now using its roll maneuver wheels. This is the first time that a spacecraft equipped with gyroscopes has carried on working without them. After three years of operations, ESA and NASA are now expecting the mission to continue until 2003. The extension will allow SOHO to observe intense solar activity when the number of sunspots reaches a maximum around mid-2000.	Press Release on the 2nd rescue. SOHO science: The exact source of the fast solar wind has been found by SOHO's SUMER instrument: the gaps between the granulation cells. A Press Release and stories from the BBC and CNN.

New HST views of circumstellar disks have just been released: STScI Press Release. The Znamya 2.5 experiment was a total failure and Progress as well as the 'broken' mirror have already reentered (stories also from ABC, BBC and Mir News). What had been planned is told at sites from from Russia and Sky & Tel.. There will be no minor planet number for Pluto anytime soon, the IAU has decided, because there wouldn't be a consensus for such a move (see also Update # 119). The campaign for "(10 000) Pluto" is therefore over, and the vocal opposition can be quiet. More Pluto remarks from Kansas, New Mexico and the UK - and news about the Ice&Fire Mission. More observations with ROSAT will be performed for about a week starting Feb. 11th! The spacecraft isn't dead yet (as was reported) but should have enough gas (for the PSPC detector) left for some more nice science. That's what a source in the project has told me. First Light for Subaru! See the first pictures from the new Japanese 8 m telescope, while the 3rd 8 m mirror for the VLT has safely arrived at Paranal.

What a sight: One of the most spectacular images ever of a brilliant fireball has been captured by the European Network of cameras - here are the details plus the picture. Persistent trains of Leonid meteors have been caught on video. The penumbral eclipse of the Moon on Jan. 31 has been observed in Jordan. Galileo is in a safe mode again but seems to have been able to get its data during the final Europa flyby: Status reports of Feb. 1 and 5. This month's Hubble Heritage picture shows the ring around Supernova 1987A in the broader context of the star forming region where the explosion took place 12 years ago: an STScI PR, a BBC-Story and more background on the supernova rings. The EOS AM-1 spacecraft is now called, guess what, Terra. The 2nd test of the X-38 was a success.

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