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By Daniel Fischer Every page present in Europe & the U.S.!
| Ahead | Awards 
The latest issue!
| A German companion! (SuW version) Current mission news: MGS (latest pictures!) + Cassini + Galileo + NEAR |
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New distance record for a Gamma-ray Burst: z=4.5The redshift of the afterglow of GRB 000131 has now been measured to z=4.50 - it is the most remote gamma-ray burst ever observed. The exceedingly powerful flash of light from this event was emitted when the Universe was very young, less than about 1.5 billion years old, or only roughly 10% of its present age. The brightness of the exploding object was enormous, at least 10^12 times that of our Sun, or thousands of times that of the explosion of a single, heavy star, a supernova. GRB 000131 and other gamma-ray bursts are believed to have taken place in remote galaxies.However, due to the huge distance, it has not yet been possible to see the galaxy in which the GRB 000131 event took place (the "host" galaxy). From the observed fading of the afterglow it is possible to estimate that the maximum brightness of this explosion was at least 10,000 times brighter than the host galaxy - the inferred isotropic energy release in gamma rays alone was approximately 10^54 erg (depending on the assumed cosmology). The rapid power-law decay of the afterglow, however, indicates a collimated outflow, which relaxes the energy requirements by a factor of up to 200. |
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ESA's science plan gets full approvalAt its 92nd meeting, on 11-12 October 2000, ESA's Science Programme Committee took the final step to consolidate the future of the science program by unanimously endorsing the recommendations of the Space Science Advisory Committee of 15 September, which proposed a package to be implemented in the years 2008-2013 (see Update # 204). The package consists of five missions and one reserve, namely:
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Another dust disk around a star with a planethas been discovered surrounding iota Horologii - it is already the fourth known example of a star with both a disk and a planet, that combination may be comparatively common among solar-type stars. Our own Solar system also contains dust which can be observed as the "zodiacal light", a cone of faint light extending above the western horizon soon after sunset or the eastern just before sunrise: The same phenomenon should thus be observable from the planet orbiting iota Horologii.Last year the star was found to have a planetary companion, at least twice as heavy as Jupiter, the largest planet in the Solar System. It was the first exoplanet to be discovered in an almost earth-like orbit (see Update # 143 small items), and now the combination of a coronographic mask and adaptive optics has allowed the imaging of iota Hor's environment. The dust disk seen there (with some difficulty) is quite extended: It is detected to a distance of about 65 AU or 10 billion km from the star. |
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The first science observations with Gemini Northshow a bow shock of the star IRS8 close to the Galactic Center. The vast extent and extreme clarity of the Gemini infrared images offer tantalizing hints that the center of our galaxy is home to even more exotic objects than once believed, at least one of which Gemini has revealed clearly for the very first time. IRS8 was only an ill-defined smudge until Gemini came along: Now its advanced optics show that IRS8 appears to be a star that is plowing through a poorly understood gas and dust cloud near the galactic center. Moving relative to the cloud, the star creates a very obvious bow-shock wave, similar to the wave that forms in front of a boat as it goes through water. |
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Discovery undocks from StationDicovery left the ISS on Oct. 20 at 15:08 UTC and will return to Earth on the 22nd at 18:13 UTC. The last two EVAs on Oct. 17 and 18 have gone without hitches just as the others, and on the 19th the action had shifted back inside the ISS, as the astronauts completed connections for the newly installed Z1 external framework structure and transferred equipment and supplies for the first resident crew of the Station. The crew also tested the four gyroscopes in the truss, the Control Moment Gyros, which will be used to orient the ISS: The crew spun up the gyros to about 100 revolutions per minute, largely to confirm their speed and power consumption. They will ultimately be spun up to about 6000 rpm once they assume attitude control of the ISS following the arrival of the U.S. Laboratory Destiny, scheduled for January.
Discovery crew half through complex ISS assembly missionThe Discovery astronauts have by now installed both the Z1 truss and an additional docking port, the Pressurized Mating Adapter 3, as well as performed two of the four planned EVAs. During the 2nd on Oct. 16 the Z1 Truss was readied for the installation of the large solar arrays that will be delivered by the next shuttle crew in late November. It was the eighth space station assembly space walk (with a total time of 55 hours, 50 minutes), the 52nd EVA in the space shuttle program and the 91st by Americans in the history of the U.S. space program. With the addition of the Z1 Truss and a mating adapter, the station has gained about 10 metric tons during STS-92. It now weights about 73 tons.During the 6-hour, 28-minute space walk on Oct. 15, the astronauts had connected 10 electrical umbilicals to provide power to heaters and conduits located on the Z1 truss, relocated and deployed two communication antenna assemblies and installed a toolbox for use during future on-orbit construction. The day before Japanese Astronaut Koichi Wakata, at controls in the shuttle cockpit, had maneuvered Discovery's robotic arm to lift the Z1 truss out of the shuttle's payload bay and berth it to a port on the station's Unity connecting module - the berthing was the first time the U.S.-developed attachment system has been used in orbit, and the equipment worked flawlessly. Over the course of the station's future assembly, similar attachment systems will be used over 100 times. The berthing occurred about two hours behind schedule due to a short-circuit aboard the shuttle early in the crew's day that cut off power to some equipment Wakata would need. The short cut power to three pieces of equipment: an Orbiter Interface Unit that provides data and commanding from the shuttle to station systems, an Orbiter Space Vision System that provides a computerized alignment aid for operating the robotic arm and a television camera located at the bottom of the payload bay that faces upward to provide a supplementary visual cue. Flight controllers and the crew quickly developed a plan to use backup equipment and alternate power to regain all functions except the camera, and Wakata began lifting the truss from the shuttle bay about 2 hours and 15 minutes later than originally planned. The backup arrangement worked perfectly. The electrical bus that experienced the short will remain powered off and will have no impact on the rest of the mission's activities. Because activities were behind schedule following the morning workaround, flight controllers opted to defer the transfer of some gear from the station's Unity module to the Zarya module until the crew next enters the station, planned for day nine of the mission. In Unity, Pilot Pam Melroy and crewmate Jeff Wisoff opened the hatch where the new truss was attached and, inside a pressurized dome, installed grounding connections between the framework and the station. Afterward, the crew exited the station and sealed the station's outermost hatch. |
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Mir's fate still hanging in the balance"MirCorp is currently begging Energia on its knees not to deorbit the station," says Rosaviacosmos spokesman Sergey Gorbunov: While a major summit of Russia's space planners on October 19 has not come up with a final decision on Mir's fate, there seemed to have been a wide consensus that getting rid of the station after its 15-year anniversary in space next February would be the best way to go - despite MirCorp's plans to use it commercially until at least 2001. Gorbunov also disputed the company's claims that it had financed the launch of a Progress transport ship currently on the way to Mir: Apparently it was paid for by the government in order to stabilize Mir's orbit for a final few months. |
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NEAR starts to close in on ErosWith a few bursts from its thrusters on Oct. 13, NEAR Shoemaker has performed the first of the maneuvers that will send it on a low pass over Eros later this month. A two-minute engine burn nudged the spacecraft from a 100-km orbit - where it had been gathering global images and other data for the past five weeks - toward a tighter orbit 50 km from Eros. An engine burn Oct. 20 will circularize the 50-km orbit, before a maneuver Oct. 25 starts NEAR Shoemaker on a gradual pass to within 5 to 6 km of the asteroid's surface. That's closer than commercial airliners cruise over land - and a spot from which the NEAR team figures to gather some breathtaking data. Several hours after the closest approach - which actually happens on Oct. 26 - another maneuver will lift NEAR Shoemaker toward a 200-km orbit. |
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Compiled and written by Daniel Fischer
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