And new: An experimental German companion to the CM.
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The surprise Leonids Storm of 1999 with
5000 meteors/h: a detailled report from Jordan with many links to other sites! |
| Also nice: Mercury in front of the Sun on Nov. 15 - animations and pix from TRACE! | And: 30 years ago Apollo 12 went to the Moon - several stories from Space.com. |
Update # 157 of November 11th, 1999, at 17:00 UTC
(lead updated Nov. 14th from Amman, Jordan)
Expectations for 1999 Leonids toned downFurther work on the modelling of the Leonid meteoroid distribution in space (see Updates # 153 and 155) has led to the prediction of a maximum zenithal hourly rate (ZHR) for this year of only 500 this year (perhaps augmented by a few hundred older 'background' Leonids) - but the outlook for 2001 and 2002 has gotten even brighter! Here is the latest table based on the work by D. Asher & R. McNaught, providing for each upcoming crossing of an old dust trail from comet Tempel-Tuttle the time in UTC, how many comet revolutions around the Sun that trail has made, the max. ZHR to be expected from the respective dust trail and the age of the Moon:
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Many Links regarding the Leonids and the speculative "LINEARids" (that some expect to happen on Nov. 11 at 19:40 UTC) can be found in the Updates # 153 and 155. More special pages for the Leonids: Leonids Live from NASA, ESA, MAC'99 (airborne campaign), Leonidstorm.com, AKM. And: an article in German about the state of predictions! More stories on the Leonids: UWO Press Release (what the Canadians are up to this time), NASA Science News (on what they might do to the Moon), Space Daily, CNN, Space.com, MSFC News (NASA's plans for the Leonids), AF News (airborne campaign), NASA Science News (more NASA plans), RP, ESA Science News (SOHO preparations). Leonids for Educators: Thursday's Classroom, parts 1, 2, 3 and 4. Stories on the LINEARids: NASA Science News, BBC Online, Space.com. Another sky event in November - the transit of Mercury on Nov.15: ESA Science News. |
Independent panel reports about the MCO scandalWide-ranging managerial and technical actions are underway at the JPL in response to the loss of the Mars Climate Orbiter and the initial findings of the mission failure investigation board, whose first report was released on Nov. 10th. Focused on the upcoming landing of NASA's Mars Polar Lander, these actions include: a newly assigned senior management leader, freshly reviewed and augmented work plans, detailed fault tree analyses for pending mission events, daily telecons to evaluate technical progress and plan work yet to be done, increased availability of the Deep Space Network for communications with the spacecraft, and independent peer review of all operational and contingency procedures.The board recognizes that mistakes occur on spacecraft projects, the report said. However, sufficient processes are usually in place on projects to catch these mistakes before they become critical to mission success. Unfortunately for MCO, the root cause was not caught by the processes in place in the MCO project. The failure board's first report identifies eight contributing factors that led directly or indirectly to the loss of the spacecraft. These contributing causes include inadequate consideration of the entire mission and its post-launch operation as a total system, inconsistent communications and training within the project, and lack of complete end-to-end verification of navigation software and related computer models. The 'root cause' of the loss of the spacecraft was the failed translation of English units into metric units in a segment of ground-based, navigation-related mission software, as NASA had previously announced. And the failure review board has identified other significant factors that allowed this error to be born, and then let it linger and propagate to the point where it resulted in a major error in the understanding of the spacecraft's path as it approached Mars. |
Press Release on the report's findings and a summary of the press conference. Coverage by CNN, BBC, ABC, Space.com (several stories), SpaceViews. Related Mars news: Potential pyrotechnics problem on MPL close to solution? During the course of the MCO investigation (see main article) a severe problem with the pyrotechnics of the Mars Polar Lander has been uncovered, as first sketchily reported by SpaceRef. The NASA investigators had found that cold temperatures could affect the performance Mars Polar Lander's descent engine, which begins firing at about 2 km altitude during the descent to Mars surface. Procedures to warm up the engine system prior to firing have now been developped, and updated operations plans call for turning on propellant system heaters several hours prior to the spacecraft's entry into Mars' atmosphere. That should increase the expected temperature of the descent engines to 8 degrees Celsius - at this temperature, the engines should perform as designed: Mission Status of Nov. 8, SpaceViews coverage. How the NPC recedes from the MPL landing site is being monitored frequently by the MGS' TES instrument: TES data picture. NASA scraps plans for Mars airplane in 2003 - it's too expensive: Space.com. More payload for Mars Express selected: ESA Science News. |
Wild parties on Mars will be essential ...... for the first Martian colony to work: This provocative prediction by a San Francisco space journalist is based on the Shetland islands, 150 km north of Scotland. There almost everybody has satellite TV and is wired to the world - and still the young are leaving for more interesting places on Earth. The same scenario, says Donald Robertson, would be likely with the first small Martian colonies: While they would be well connected to Earth, the latter would probably be just too tempting after a while. "Very early on, and however much it costs," Robertson concludes, "there must be room for young colonists in an alien environment to indulge in new industries, philosophies, economic ideals, wild parties, strange arts and, yes, loud music that their parents don't understand." (Space News of Nov. 8, 1999, p. 26) |
Did life come from Mars, travelling on meteorites Space.com, ExploreZone speculate. In other interplanetary news: Europe is going to the moon - the Science Programme Committee has finalized all aspects of the SMART-1 mission (described in detail in Update # 153 story 5): ESA Science News. Europa exploration should share priority with Mars, an advisory committee says: Space.com. Pioneer 10 gets new life - one of NASA's longest-running missions will be used to test advanced communication technology that would be put to use on future deep-space missions: SpaceViews. |
Gamma bursts ... without gamma rays?As if the phenomenon of Gamma Ray Bursts weren't mysterious enough, there now seem to be celestial phenomena with exactly the same X-ray flashes that accompany GRBs - but for which now GRB is seen. So far these flashes have only been spotted by the wide-angle X-ray instruments of the BeppoSAX X-ray satellite, so no exact positions are known. But from now on the narrow-field X-ray cameras will go after these X-ray flashes and get good coordinates so that optical and radio telescopes can have a detailled look. One possibility is that these are "dirty GRBs" where interstellar gas blocks all gamma rays. (Science of Oct. 29, 1999, p. 893) |
Other GRB news: A correlation between absolute GRB brightness and the amount of flickering during the burst has emerged (the brighter the flickering), but only 6 GRBs have secure redshifts so far. One year from now the correlation should be confirmed or have gone away. If it stays, we would have a new method to measure GRB distances! (ibid.) |
HST Servicing Mission to go on Dec. 6thSpace Shuttle Discovery is scheduled to roll out to Launch Pad 39B on Nov. 13: The remainder of Discovery's processing schedule leads to a target launch date of Dec. 6, with the 42 minutes window opening at 7:37 UTC. The orbiter would then return on Dec. 16 at 5:45 UTC. During the 10-day mission (STS-103) astronauts will perform four spacewalks to replace failed gyros on the Hubble Space Telescope that permit it to point in the proper direction, as well as other upgrades and repairs to the orbiting observatory. |
STS-103 information and a BBC story. Coverage by SpaceViews. Old news from Hubble: The Trifid nebula observations already mentioned in Update # 133 (small stuff) are now also available as an STScI Press Release, with subsequent coverage by CNN, BBC. |
Night skies are bright as in daytime: fireball startles GermansAn extremely bright fireball, probably a meteor, was seen widely on the morning of Nov. 8 in various parts of Northern Germany. When the skies were clear, it could be seen as a very bright spot in the sky, elsewhere even thick clouds were lit up, almost as bright as in daytime: Yahoo News (disappears after a few days).A 'Richter scale' for space weatherhas been introduced by NOAA, to characterize the severity and impact of upcoming solar storms on public safety and services: Press Release, coverage by Space.com, ABC, SpaceViews, ExploreZone."Superthin" galaxies are common in the Universeand these extremely simple disk systems can provide unique constraints on galaxy disk formation and evolution without looking beyond the local universe: Paper by Matthews & al.A systematic offset between pulsars and their supernova remnantshas been discovered when catalogs of these two end products of the evolution of massive stars have been cross-correlated. The pulsars not only rarely sit in the centers of the SNRs, they are overwhelmingly offset in the same direction! The origin of this statistically significant effect may lie in a differential Galactic rotational velocity between stars and gas in the interstellar medium: Paper by Lorimer & Ramachandran.Strange astrophysical papersrecently found on the astro-ph preprint server include...
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Zvezda launch now set for FebruaryThe launch of the Zvezda service module, a key component of the International Space Station (ISS), will delayed until at least February, Russian sources reported November 5th: SpaceViews.Proton grounded until 2000, but Baikonur to resume operations: Space.com. First flight of X-33 delayed again? A problem with one of the liquid hydrogen tanks on the X-33 may push back the first flight of the experimental suborbital vehicle until early 2001: Fla. Today, Washington Post, SpaceViews. Two new competitors for the X Price - they join 15 other groups vying for a $10 million prize for the first vehicle, capable of carrying three people, that flies to an altitude of 100 km twice in a two-week period: Space.com, SpaceViews. New distance record for Kuiper Belt Object1999 DG8 travels 200 AU from the Sun: BBC.Sandia's 'Z machine' simulates neutron starsA machine in New Mexico that creates temperatures rivaling those of the sun is helping physicists examine up-close what happens to iron in the grip of black holes and neutron stars: Press Release, coverage by BBC.LIGO gravitational wave detector to be inauguratedon Nov. 12 when the Livingston, La., site opens its doors: Homepage, inauguration special pages.What gravitational wave observatories will see - one of the best candidates for creating strong gravity waves is the collision of two black holes: Nature Science Update. Gravity Probe B faces costly delayIt costs already $535 million, but another $21m might be needed to get NASA's controversial gravity experiment GPB alias Relativity Mission off the ground. And the launch (set for next October) could be delayed by several months: Thermal problems with an epoxy resin need to be solved. (Nature of Nov. 4th, 1999, p.7)
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All other historical issues can be found in the Archive.
The U.S. site of this Cosmic Mirror has been visited
since it was issued (the German site has no counter).
Compiled and written by Daniel Fischer
(send me a mail to [email protected]!), Skyweek
