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By Daniel Fischer Every page present in Europe & the U.S.!
| Ahead | Awards 
The latest issue!
| An experimental German companion. Current mission news: MGS (latest pictures!) + Cassini + Galileo + NEAR |
IoD. NEAR closes in with first OCM: News Flash, Weekly Status, SpaceScience.
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Galileo survives 3rd Io encounter - this time without any trouble!The Galileo spacecraft has scored another success by completing its third and closest flyby of Jupiter's volcanic moon Io, dipping to only 199 kilometers above the fiery surface on Feb. 22nd. "We're thrilled that this flyby went well. If all continues as planned, this new data will round out our Io photo album and the wealth of information gathered during the Io flybys last October and November," said Galileo Project Manager Jim Erickson. The signal indicating that the flyby took place was received on Earth at 14:32 UTC. The spacecraft's camera and other instruments were poised to capture the encounter with images and other observations.If all goes according to plan, the data will be transmitted to Earth over the next several months for processing and analysis. Io lies close to Jupiter in a region bombarded by intense radiation from the giant planet. Because that radiation can wreak havoc with spacecraft instruments, components and systems, each Io flyby has kept Galileo team members on the edge of their seats. Galileo has already survived more than twice the radiation it was designed to withstand! While approaching Io, the spacecraft experienced a radiation-related false reset of its main computer, but onboard software correctly diagnosed this as a false indication and went ahead with the Io encounter unaffected. |
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SRTM returns with 222 hours of radar dataThe six astronauts aboard Space Shuttle Endeavour glided to a smooth landing at the Kennedy Space Center precisely at sunset on Feb. 22nd at 23:22 UTC, to complete a mission spanning almost 7.5 million kilometers in 181 orbits - it was the 50th shuttle landing at KSC and the 21st consecutive one. The last 24 hours preceding the smooth return had been quite confusing, however, with weather problems threatening both the KSC and the Edwards AFB landing sites - for a while there was even talk of diverting Endeavour to the White Sands Missile Range in New Mexico where only one shuttle has ever landed, back in 1982.The data brought home by Endeavour's crew was collected during 222 hours and 23 minutes of around-the-clock radar mapping operations and would be enough to fill more than 20000 CDs. "It's 30000 pounds of complex stuff with thousands of parts - all built by the lowest bidder - and it worked just perfectly," said project scientist Michael Kobrick: "It's the sexiest radar on or off the planet." Endeavour's radar covered 99.98 percent of the planned mapping area - land between 60 degrees north latitude and 56 degrees south latitude - at least once. About 94.6 percent of it was covered twice. Only about 200 000 square kilometers in scattered areas remained unimaged, most of them in North America and most already well mapped by other methods. The total area covered by the radar is more than 123 million square kilometers. The slight problems with the stability of the radar mast in orbit due to its thruster failure are evident in the raw data, say SRTM specialists from the German processing center DFD, but the effect will be compensated completely during data processing. At first, though, copies of the 300+ tapes filled in orbit are made at KSC to preserve the data - only then sets of tapes will be flown to the Jet Propulsion Laboratory and the DFD, where researchers will begin many months of computer processing to turn the measurements into the global Digital Elevation Models (DEMs). So, how much will data products from the mission cost? "Prices for SRTM DEMs will be competitive and comparable to market prices," says the DFD: "Final prices and data policy will depend on the data quality and will be announced after the mission."
Also aboard Endeavour was a student experiment called EarthKAM which took
2715 digital photos during the mission through an overhead flight-deck
window. The NASA-sponsored program lets middle school students select
photo targets and receive the images via the Internet. The pictures are used in
classroom projects on Earth science, geography, mathematics and space
science. More than 75 middle schools around the world participated in the
experiment, which set a record. On four previous flights combined, EarthKAM
sent down a total of 2018 images.
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Many hints of a global fabric in ErosThe images seen to date provide a tantalizing glimpse of what lies in store for NEAR as it begins its year-long study of Eros. In the images of the first few days in orbit there are many hints of an underlying global fabric: nearly parallel markings, chains of small craters or pits and grooves. One interpretation of the global fabric is that it is the surface manifestation of stratigraphy - that is, layered structure - which was produced while Eros was part of a much larger parent body that was disrupted long ago by a monstrous collision. In other words, the global fabric may be a signature of ancient geologic activity (for example, volcanism) on the parent body of Eros.The size of this putative parent body and the time at which it would have disrupted are not known, but it must have been much larger than the present maximum diameter of Eros (33 km) - it may or may not have been larger than the present-day 500-km asteroid Vesta. Another interpretation is that the global fabric results from large-scale fractures within Eros caused by a giant impact, which may have occurred on the parent body of Eros (so we would not necessarily see the huge crater on present day Eros). We will learn much more from higher resolution images, spatially resolved spectral maps, composition data, and altimetry later in the mission. Regarding the impact craters on the surface, it is already clear that Eros does not have a high density of giant craters as found on Mathilde, where the giant craters approach geometric saturation. And it is also clear that Eros does not have a paucity of craters, especially large ones, as does Gaspra. The NEAR data show that Eros has an older surface than Gaspra - Gaspra is less heavily cratered because it has not been exposed to bombardment as long. However, since we are still uncertain about collision rates in the asteroid belt at present and in the distant past, we cannot actually state an age for either asteroid. |
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Stardust starts to collect interstellar dust particlesA spacecraft on the first mission to collect material from beyond the moon and bring it to Earth began collecting interstellar dust on Feb. 22 - Stardust is flying near the main asteroid belt in an area with a thin current of dust that originated outside the solar system: Mission Status, Flight Director's Report, CNN, BBC, SPIEGEL, Space.com and again Space.com, SpaceViews storiesPioneering radio telescope to closeThe 12 Meter Telescope, located on Kitt Peak in southern Arizona, will shut down on July 1, several years earlier than planned, a victim of tight budgets - the telescope, built in the late 1960s, was the first sensitive to light at millimeter wavelengths: Homepage, Space Daily, SpaceViews.Interplanetary shock wave passes EarthA wave of plasma and magnetic fields from a Feb. 17 coronal mass ejection passed by Earth on Feb. 20 - geomagnetic activity is up, but this event may not cause significant aurora: SpaceScience, BBC story.Stormy Sun bad for business? It's getting stormy outside our atmosphere, and unless companies that operate satellites start cooperating, cell phones and credit card transactions could become unreliable: Discovery. Astronaut threat is blowing in the solar wind: The 40 or so astronauts that NASA plans to send to space this year for construction of the ISS may face lethal doses of solar radiation when a period of intense space weather peaks in the coming months: Space.com. What do we do when the Sun dies?Life on Earth could be offered an unlikely escape route from the fiery fate that the sun has in store for us in a few thousand million years time - a second star passing through the solar system would pull the Earth from the clutches of the dying sun's gravity and send our planet hurtling into outer space: Nature Science Update.The end of the Earth is a popular topic these days, at witnessed by press releases from U. Mich, Penn State and Iowa State and stories from BBC, RP and Discovery, EZ, Space.com. The world's largest (near) IR sensorThe Rockwell Science Center has announced the successful development of the world's largest infrared image sensor for astronomical use - it has nearly 4.2 million pixels, and wavelengths between 900 nm and 2.5 microns can be detected: Space Daily.Britain wants to put a 4 m telescope next to the VLTThe Executive Board of the UK Visible and Infrared Survey Telescope (VISTA) project announced on Feb. 23 that it wants to put a new and powerful astronomical telescope at the ESO Paranal Observatory - this 4-meter telescope is a specialised wide-angle facility equipped with powerful cameras and efficient detectors that will enable it to obtain deep images of large sky areas in short time: ESO Press Release.Giant satellite wing deployments captured on cameraFor the first time from space, video images have been captured of a commercial satellite unfolding its solar wings in geostationary orbit - two video cameras specially modified to withstand the rigors of a rocket launch and the extreme temperature variances in space captured the 30-minute-long sequence of the spacecraft's solar wings unfolding, panel by panel, until the satellite reached its full wingspan of 34 meters: Hughes Press Release, pictures, SpaceRef and Space Daily versions. |
An "obituary" for StarshineThe Starshine satellite is no longer orbiting the earth - it was last tracked at 15:08 UTC on February 18, 2000, and apparently flamed out in bright daylight high above the Pacific Ocean on its 4211th revolution around the earth: Home Page, Decay Page, an earlier Discovery story.Plesetsk may become Russia's main spaceportDespite the country's ongoing economic problems on February 18 the Russian government considered a Federal Program for the development of Plesetsk spaceport - this program, if successfully realized, could become a milestone in the history of the Russian space program: Space.com.Japan plans shuttle runway on Kiribati - Japan signed a deal on the 23rd with the Kiribati government to build a landing strip for an unmanned space shuttle in the tiny South Pacific republic: AFP. Satellite images show effects of urban sprawlNew images from Earth-observing satellites are documenting the effects of urban sprawl on the landscape, hinting at adverse long-term consequences related to the rapid growth of cities: CNN.Contest to name the Cluster satellites startedEvery citizen of an ESA member state is invited to come up with four names for the 4 Cluster satellites to be launched in June and July: ESA Science News.ESA also looks for Science Fiction ideas "viable" for real use - "a study on technologies and concepts found in Science Fiction, in order to obtain imaginative ideas potentially viable for long-term development by the European space sector": ITSF Homepage. New Hayden Planetarium opens in NYCAmidst a strange controversy about an old meteorite on display there, New York's Hayden Planetarium has reopened after years of renovations and upgrades: Homepage, a huge story collection from the NYT and stories from CNN, Fla. Today and the NYT.The meteorite controversy: AP, NYT. KSC Visitor Center redevelopment nears completion - visitors at the Kennedy Space Center Visitor Complex now can listen to an astronaut, touch a piece of Mars and learn more about the space race of the late '50s and 60s: Homepage, Fla. Today.
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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
