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New: An experimental German companion to the CM.
3 astronomy events among "Breakthroughs of the Year": AAAS Release, Fla. Today.
Coming solar maximum expected to be average, latest models say: Space.com.
"Millennial" full moon on Dec. 22 not a record setter, as many think: Fla.Today.
Update # 163 of December 18th, 1999, at 21:45 UTC
Another disaster at French radio observatory: fatalities in helicopter crash at Plateau de BureThe Cosmic Mirror has learned from sources in the French-German-Spanish IRAM institute (later confirmed by wire services) that at least 3 people have died in a helicopter crash at the Plateau de Bure observatory in the French Alps. Two more passengers are still missing and presumed dead in the rough mountain terrain next to the radio observatory - the same facility where 20 support personell had been killed in a cable car disaster in July (see Update # 138). Since then helicopters had been used to carry passengers and supplies to the otherwise inaccessible plateau. Details of the new accident are still sketchy, but bad weather and especially strong winds may have been a factor. |
IRAM Homepage and de Bure Homepage; Spain's IRAM Page. |
Terra in orbit - launch at the last minute!The expensive Terra spacecraft is in a near-perfect orbit, following another dramatic countdown. Only seconds before the launch window closed, the Atlas 2A had finally lifted off at 18:57 UTC on December 18th - high winds had caused trouble but changes in the flight profile eventually allowed to compensate and the rocket was cleared to go. At 19:11 UTC the spacecraft separated from the Centaur upper stage, and a few minutes later contact was established.
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Fla. Today Countdown page and Spaceflight Now's Mission Status Center. Homepage, another homepage and yet another one. Plus NASA's Earth Science Enterprise homepage. Pre-launch press releases from JPL, RAS, ILS, LockMart, a big collection by ASTRONET. Launch coverage by CNN, SpaceViews, Space Daily, Space.com, AP. Post-delay coverage by CNN, BBC, Space Daily, Space.com, SpaceViews. Pre-launch coverage by Fla. Today, Space Daily, Wired, Space.com. In other Earth observation news: Third New Millennium Earth Observer selected - the Geostationary Imaging Fourier Transform Spectrometer: JPL Press Release. |
A very last launch attempt for Discovery on Dec. 20th?For the 2nd day in a row NASA had to scrub Discovery's launch because of extremely poor weather. Last night the countdown had been continuing until the t-9 minutes hold, but "just about everything" had been wrong with the weather, as a NASA spokesman put it on Sky News - and today it was decided not even to start fueling the shuttle. That should have meant an end to the launch attempts this years - but NASA officials are now checking whether the post-landing safing work could be shortened. If so, Discovery could still launch on Monday morning on a shortened 8-day mission leading to landing on December 27. Backup landing days would be on the 28th and 29th.Discovery's mission must last at least 8 days in order to perform the three most important spacewalks to repair the Hubble Space Telescope's broken pointing system and install new electronics. NASA says it will not launch Discovery if it could not perform at least an 8-day flight, have backup landing attempts and complete an orderly shutdown of computers before the new year. On late Friday, NASA's space flight chief had first announced that a Sunday try was under consideration - and would depend on how workers felt: "If we feel that the team is fatigued, we're not going to try it." A decision is expected on the afternoon of Dec. 19 UTC.
Discovery launch postponed by 24+ hours!According to Spaceflight Now's Mission Status Center and Florida Today, "NASA has scrubbed tonight's planned launch of Shuttle Discovery. The mission has been postponed at least 24 hours because of concerns about welds in the shuttle's aft engine compartment. Managers need more time to review paperwork regarding welding on the external tank and inside the orbiter." The launch has been reset for 1:47 UTC on Dec. 18th, while landing will remain scheduled for Dec. 26 so the shuttle will be safely secured in its processing hangar before the end of the year.
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Launch of Discovery tonightThe much-delayed launch of the space shuttle Discovery for mission STS-103 (see Updates # 161 and 162 for success criteria and lots of links) is still set for tonight, although yet another potential problem has cropped up: Inspectors have uncovered a welding mistake on pressurized propellant lines manufactured for an External tank designated for a future shuttle mission - a wrong mix of metal alloys had been used. Analysis of whether the same might have happened to Discovery's ET is underway, so far no trouble has emerged. If the shuttle makes it during tonight's launch window, the timeline would be as follows:
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Mission Status Center from Spaceflight Now. KSC Shuttle Status of Dec. 18. Post-scrub coverage by BBC, ABC, AP, Space.com, SpaceViews (Sunday launch also called off), Space.com (fueling delayed), CNN, SpaceViews (Monday launch considered), Fla. Today. Post-delay coverage by Fla. Today, Space Daily, Space.com, SpaceViews. Pre-delay coverage by Space.com, SpaceViews, Fla. Today, CNN, BBC, ABC. Collected press releases by ASTRONET. |
Efforts to contact MPL still not overFlight controllers for Mars Polar Lander have continued their attempts to communicate with the spacecraft so that they can be certain they have exhausted all possibilities before they conclude their search. While a recovery is still a possibility, the likelihood of hearing from the lander is considered remote at this point. The communication strategy in the coming week is based on the assumption that the clock on the spacecraft was reset - one of the final scenarios foreseen in the complicated "failure trees" involving multiple failures onboard.In parallel with the communications attempts, the MGS will start taking high-resolution images of the landing site to search for signs of the lander. The search area that the orbiter will be looking at is an ellipse roughly 20 km x 10 km. The orbiter may be able to spot the parachute or the shadow of the lander. The imaging begins December 16; it will take about 2 weeks to cover the search area with its high-resolution camera. If the search comes up empty, another area about 30 km down-track will be investigated - it's there where the MPL might have crashed if the landing procedure had failed. |
MPL Status Report of Dec. 15. Young to lead Mars Program Assessment Team - A. Thomas Young has been named by Dan Goldin to chair the Mars Program Independent Assessment Team which will review the agency's approach to robotic exploration of Mars in the wake of the recent loss of the MPL: NASA Press Release, Space.com, SpaceViews. Continuing coverage: CBS (scenarios for a failure), The Why Files (MPL as the latest spacejunk...), JPL Universe ("The Challenges Ahead" - a long essay), Space.com (fate of 2001 lander), SpaceViews (continuing search). |
| Balloon flight will help scientists understand how to shield Mars crews: a cosmic-ray experiment will circle the South Pole, in oder to develop a better understanding of cosmic radiation that might endanger astronauts on deep space missions. The experiment comprises two packages, each housing three identical sets of dosimeters - film emulsions, plastic sheets, and thermoluminescent detectors - each covering about 2 square inches. |
NASA Science News. |
Ulysses dust data show: We're inside an interstellar cloudThe force of sunlight is keeping part of our solar system dust free - at least free from a particular type of dust: This effect was discovered in data from the dust counter onboard the Ulysses spacecraft, and it lends support to the view that our solar system is moving through a cloud of dust and gas that is made of the same stuff as interstellar clouds observed elsewhere in our galaxy. Interstellar dust grains of a particular size, not too big and not too small, were missing from the volume of space between two and four times the distance of the Earth from the Sun. After eliminating all other possible explanations, it was concluded that the pressure of sunlight was keeping the dust grains out of this region of space: The particles were just the right size for sunlight to have this effect.The discovery says something about the optical properties of the banished dust grains: The best match was with a mixture of silicates detected in interstellar clouds elsewhere in the Milky Way, suggesting that we are moving through an identical cloud. The notion that we are travelling through an interstellar cloud is not new. But where did the cloud come from? We don't know the whole history of these grains, which is why they're so intriguing. They could have originated in supernovae explosions, or they could be the outflow of old stars which give out star dust when they get old. |
ESA Science News and MPG Press Release. Coverage by ExploreZone, RP, Space.com. In other interplanetary news: The first pictures from Galileo's November Io flyby have been released: Photojournal entries # 2518, 2519, 2520 and 2525 plus a NASA Press Release and BBC and Space.com stories. An image from the October flyby has been refined: Photojournal entry # 2517. And new ground-based Io images have been released: Photojournal entries # 2522 and 2523. Deep Space 1 remains in safemode - the startracker is apparently lost, and ways must be found to point the spacecraft without it: Mission Status of Dec. 17. |
Geminids gave nice showThe Zenithal Hourly Rate at times exceeded 100, and this time the extended display could be seen around the world: some photographs, a BBC story, NASA Science News, ASTRONET's collection. Of course that was no match whatsoever for the Leonids storm one month earlier - when seen from the right longitudes, of course.Hubble vs. an amateur telescopeCompare an image of the nebula NGC 604 in the galaxy Messier 33 taken with a 12.5 inch RC with the same nebula imaged by Hubble...Still 3 concepts for the NGST under discussion: Space.com. Light reflection off exoplanet now publishedThe possible discovery of light from Tau Bootis reflected by its planet (discussed in Update # 158 story 3) has now been published in Nature of Dec. 16th: the (revised) paper as a preprint, a Nature Science Update and coverage by Space.com, Fla. Today, ABC, BBC, SpaceViews, NYT, RP, Welt, ZEIT, SPIEGEL.How the planetary transits were already in the Hipparcos files (mentioned in Update # 159 sidebar of story 2): ESA Science News. And who noted the transits first? Space.com. |
Decisive test for a Black Hole in the Galactic Center proposedWithin a few years radio astronomers could have a clear proof that the concentration of 2.6 million solar masses in the center of the Milky Way is really a Black Hole - or this popular interpretation of the data would be in trouble. New model calculations (with relativistic ray tracing) predict that the BH would cast a shadow of 30 micro arc seconds diameter, an angular scale which should become accessible to short radio wavelength interferometry soon: the original paper, a JHU Press Release, a slide show and coverage by ExploreZone = Space.com and Space Daily.Radical hypothesis for the young EarthIf the Earth's axis was tilted by 70 degrees billions of years ago, several climatological problems would go away, new models show. Such a strong tilt could have been caused by a giant impact, but how the axis moved back to today's moderate 23 degrees angle is another question: EurekAlert, Space Daily.
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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
