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!

A parachute drop test for the Stardust return capsule is scheduled for February near Salt Lake City. / The 40th anniversary of the launch of Explorer 1 is tomorrow. / And it has been confirmed now that S.V.W. Beckwith, now managing director at the MPIA in Heidelberg, will become the new director of the Space Telescope Science Institute, effective Sept. 1st.

NEAR flew by the Earth; splendid pictures taken; spacecraft seen by amateurs The Near Earth Asteroid Rendezvous (NEAR) spacecraft flew by the Earth on the morning of Jan. 23rd, "right on schedule and right on target," as a jubilant Thomas Coughlin said, the Space Programs Manager at The Johns Hopkins University Applied Physics Laboratory (APL), which manages the NEAR mission. All spacecraft subsystems worked flawlessly as NEAR swooped around the Earth during a 2-hour visit for a gravity assist that put it onto the correct trajectory for a Jan. 10, 1999, encounter with asteroid 433 Eros. Many people in different countries were able to follow the swingby of the spacecraft with telescopes, binoculars or even the naked eye. The first sighting of NEAR was made at about 1:30 p.m. EST, by an astronomer in Caussols, France, using a 0.9 meter telescope, as the spacecraft approached far above the Middle East. When sighted, NEAR was 580,000 miles from Earth and within a half-mile of its expected location. Later amateur astronomers in the Western U.S. and in Hawaii saw the spacecraft when it put the solar arrays at a special angle and became a tiny star for a few seconds. Early indications are that NEAR passed within 336 miles of southwest Iran, as predicted. Then the spacecraft started taking images of Asia, Africa and Antarctica as it pulled away from Earth. Selected frames (reminiscent of the 1990 and 1992 Earth swing-by pictures from Galileo) have already been published, and a movie is to be created from the whole set. This week NEAR's Multi-Spectral Imager and its Near-Infrared Spectrograph will be calibrated using proven measurements of Earth and moon geological features. On Feb. 6 the last of the instruments will be turned off. During 1998, as NEAR closes in on Eros, scientists and engineers will be developing and testing flight and ground software for the spacecraft and finalizing procedures for the yearlong encounter with the asteroid.

NEAR's first images of the Earth CNN, ABC stories Images taken with the Spacewatch telescope showing the spacecraft at 18th mag. More information on the swingby, including sunglint sightings. NEAR Swingby News The NEAR homepage

Briefly noted:

In a Nutshell: Can the Universe be its own mother, physicists wonder. / The first module of the International Space Station called FGB is finished and will now travel to Baikonur. / There is now a Deep Field with the NTT telescope as well, part of a program to study galaxy evolution - and to rehearse VLT operations. / Check out super-sharp HST STIS images of the aurorae of Jupiter and Saturn - and images from the SOHO CDS instrument.

Major studies agree: The Universe will expand forever! A major breakthrough in observational cosmology was the highlight of the 191st Meeting of the American Astronomical Society last week in Washington, DC: Several of the most advanced methods to study the geometry of the Universe have narrowed down critical parameters so much that the eternal expansion of the Universe can be considered practically certain. One methods studies the lightcurves of extremely distant supernovae, another one the sizes of radio galaxies and a third the number of large galaxy clusters - and all agree that the Universe contains only about 1/5 of the mass needed to cause its eventual recollapse. The most dramatic method tries to construct a "Hubble diagram" for Type Ia supernovae at redshifts near z ~1 and beyond. Automatic search programs can now yield 'discoveries on demand' (so that even HST time for the fainter ones can be booked in advance), but only last year it became clear that Ia supernovae did exist indeed in the young Universe (see Perlmutter, Nature Jan 1, 1998, p. 51-4). And now several dozen cases allow to narrow down the overall density of the Universe: That is possible because beyond z~0.4 the dependence of the apparent maximum brightness of these supernovae (which reach the same absolute brightness [after a well-understood correction has been made]) from z differs slightly but significantly for various world models. About 15 new discoveries with z~1 just in late December by Perlmutter's highly organized, large team have now narrowed down the choice of Universes considerably (and already made above-mentioned Nature paper obsolete): It can now be said with high certainty that a Universe with a critical density (Omega=1) and no cosmological constant (Lambda=0) is impossible - this very simplest of all possible Universes, favored by many theoreticians, is all but gone. Either we live in a very low-density Universe with a small Lambda (which is still a bit greater than zero, though) or a flat Universe with Omega near 0.25 and Omega(Lambda) near 0.75. More supernova discoveries at high z (which are also hunted by a second group, P. Garnavich & al.) will soon narrow down the ranges even more. Another method to derive Omega looks at the number of massive distant clusters of galaxies: If the mass density of the Universe is high, the tug of the matter would have inhibited the formation of such large clusters until fairly recently in cosmic history. But Bahcall & al. find 3 to 5 orders of magnitude (!) more of these clusters at high z - and actually even the existence of just one would already have been enough to kill am Omega=1 Universe! The conclusion from this study is Omega=0.2 +/- 0.1, in agreement with the supernova work. The third method looks at the angular size of large, bright radio galaxies like Cyg A, where the distance between the hotspots in the two radio lobes can be measured in the sky (by high-resolution radio telescopes like the Very Large Array) - while at the same time the true linear distance can be caluculated with a reliable model. Depending on the geometry of space itself, the apparent size of the radio galaxy changes with z in a different manner. And once more the result (by Daly & al.) is Omega=0.2 for a flat Universe. The amazing agreement especially between the 1st and the 3rd method is very encouraging: These are the only two methods to measure the geometry of space directly (with the exception of certain studies of gravitational lenses). But could all three approaches contain systematic flaws simultaneously? That is possible, of course, but very unlikely - and esp. the supernova hunters have virtually excluded all sources of systematic problems (with the exception perhaps of a dust-reddening effect that requires even more modelling). By the year 2000 the state and fate of the Universe will be known in great detail: For the first time in history, Saul Perlmutter put it, we can ask the experimentalists and not the philosophers what the Universe is like. (News Conferences, Talks & Posters at the 191st AAS Meeting, Jan. 8...10, 1998)	Here you can find a collection of major stories from the 191st AAS Meeting, which is also discussed at length in the weekly bulletin of Sky & Telescope. There are several links to the Supernova Method: Here is the page of Perlmutter's team and their news release, and here are also the results from Garnavich's group, based mainly on three particularly distant Type Ia supernovae. Some information on the use of radio galaxies for cosmology is on this page. Need an introduction to cosmology - or all the math about Lambda? And finally there are reports on the various Omega < 1 studies from ABCNEWS, USA Today and Florida Today.
Lunar Prospector in mapping orbit! The Lunar Prospector has reached its final mapping orbit on Jan. 15th, nine days after launch (that was delayed by one day): It is circling the moon at an altitude of 100 to 120 km, with the spin axis normal to the ecliptic plane. The science instruments are already operating and collecting "excellent data", and measurements of the orbit are being obtained by the Deep Space Network: Not only do they help determining the precise path of the spacecraft, but they can also be used to learn about the Moon's complex gravitational field. Only shortly before the Athena II rocket took off it became known that deep inside the Lunar Prospector are a few grams of Gene Shoemaker's ashes - that will 'land' on the Moon once the mission is over and the Lunar Prospector is deliberately crashed into the surface.	Here are a pre-launch story with a cute animated GIF, reports on the launch delay and the success on Jan. 6th (stories by ABCNEWS and CNN) as well as on the arrival in lunar orbit. Lunar Prospector Status Reports a tribute to Gene
COBE finds the Diffuse IR Background Another story from the Washington conference regarding the very big picture: Astronomers have assembled the first definitive detection of a background infrared glow across the sky produced by dust warmed by all the stars that have existed since the beginning of time - the Cosmic Infrared Background Radiation or CIBR. This telltale IR radiation (not to be confused with the Cosmic Microwave Background Radiation or CMBR from the Big Bang!) puts a limit on the total amount of energy released by all the stars in the universe. Astronomers say this will greatly improve development of models explaining how stars and galaxies were born and evolved after the Big Bang. The discovery reveals a surprisingly large amount of starlight in the universe cannot be seen directly by today's optical telescopes, perhaps due to stars being hidden in dust, or being too faint or far away to be seen. It culminates several years of meticulous data analysis from the Diffuse Infrared Background Experiment aboard NASA's Cosmic Background Explorer (COBE), which was launched in 1989: The data - from the DIRBE instrument - had been in the public domain for many years, but only in 1997 two independent teams were sure that they had successfully subtracted all the 'foreground' IR radiation from the solar system and the Milky Way. There is now a significant glow at 140 and 240 micrometers, with the same intensity in all directions and no fine structure. This makes it hard to guess in which distance the glowing sources are and what objects they are, but several physical arguments leave no other interpretation than warm dust. The most likely scenario is thus that we are seeing the sum of all the starlight ever generated in distant galaxies, re-radiated by dust there. The unexpected preponderance of far infrared light implies that many stars have "fallen between the cracks" in ultra- sensitive visible light probes of the distant corners of the universe, such as the Hubble Deep Field.	The discovery, also reported by Science News, CNN and ABCNEWS. COBE's homepage and a tutorial for DIRBE, the instrument that made the IR background discovery. There is also a related story from the ongoing analysis of the Hubble Deep Field: After one subtracts all the galaxies, there is mainly noise and thus no diffuse background in the HDF in the visible light. And several studies indicate a clustering of galaxies even at high z, which puts an important constraint on formation models.
After 36 years: Astronaut/senator Glenn to fly again into space Is it an important scientific experiment for the study of aging, a welcome symbolic event (signifying whatever, that 'the right stuff' is still there?) - or a useless and even dangerous publicity stunt for NASA, perhaps even forced onto the agency by political means? The U.S. media are abuzz with the news that NASA has indeed given the go-ahead for John Glenn, the first American to orbit the Earth (in 1962), to return to space in a shuttle this fall. There could be some science in this adventure: the bone loss suffered by astronauts is somewhat similar to processes in the elderly, and having a 77 years old person in microgravity might lead to some interesting effects. Glenn has passed the medical exam for his flight, but what if something unexpected happens - will the mission be aborted? The opinions about Glenn's reflight range from celebration to outright condemnation...	The decision of NASA today, as reported by ABCNEWS and CNN - and a harsh commentary! Glenn's homepage An interview A teacher also gets to fly: the return of NASA's "civilians in space" program.
No end in sight: HST yields Hubble Constants of 57, 69, 83 km/s/Mpc ... While the geometry of the Universe has become surprisingly clear (see lead story), the same cannot be said of its absolute scale (which doesn't affect the conclusions regarding Omega much): At the Washington conference various groups and individual researchers once more reported Hubble Constants of 57, nearly 70 and 83 to 87 - all based on observations with the Hubble Space Telescope! And at the end of this year the funding for the "Ho Key Project" runs out, a complex undertaking that had set itself the task of nailing down to Hubble constant to within 10 percent. All methods use the HST to get the distance to relatively nearby galaxies (with the help of Cepheids and other standard candles that can be calibrated in the Milky Way), and then use secondary standard candles to get out into the distance where the expansion of the Universe dominates the redshifts. This sounds simple - and yet there are still widely varying results. The Key Project will "decide" its final value of Ho during closed sessions this year: The idea is to use as many secondary distance indicators as possible and make everything fit. From one member I learned that the team is closing in on Ho just below 70 (close to where they were last summer; see Update #56). But there are also those who use only Type Ia supernovae as secondary standard candles - and reach about 57. And yet another faction still arrives at values between 80 and 90 km/s/Mpc ...	Here are the publications of the H0 Key Project. That's what the low Ho faction says. And here are the homepage, a press release and more scientific details from one of the best-known (and most viciously attacked) 'high Ho cosmologists'.

Briefly noted:

In a Nutshell: Check out a number of new MGS Mars images, and there are also new hi-res images from Pathfinder(newly processed, that is). / Two EVAs were performed on Mir, the 2nd involving David Wolf for the 1st time. / There is yet another site (in German) discussing the famous Greenland event; even here it is now stated that the mysterious cloud was unrelated to the bolide and that is is likely that no impact occured at all. / New data indicate that the diameter of the Sun could vary. / The lucky finder of a meteorite sold it for $ 38 000. / GPS helps monitoring the growth of mountains. / And there are plans for a privately financed lunar sample return mission.

January 6-10 (event happened)	191st Meeting of the American Astronomical Society in Washington, D.C., U.S.A.: About 2000 astronomers and 120 journalists are expected - including yours truly.	AAS Homepage, Meeting Program / one early press release
January 7 (02:28 UTC; event happened)	Launch of the Lunar Prospector, NASA's first lunar mission in 25+ years (and the first American one since Clementine, 4 years ago).	Homepage at Ames / NSSDC entry / Project Moonlink
January 23 (event happened)	Earth Swingby of the NEAR spacecraft on its way to asteroid Eros - which will be reached in December.	The NEAR Earth Flyby page
January 29	Signature of the international contracts on the International Space Station (International Space Station Inter Governmental Agreement and Memorandum of Understanding)	The ISS homepage
February 15	Voyager 1 overtakes Pioneer 10 and becomes the farthest-travelled man-made object to leave the Solar System.	Voyager Interstellar Mission / VIM at MIT / JPL Space Calendar
February 26	Total Eclipse of the Sun in Northern South America and the Caribbean - promising excellent weather. Again, yours truly will be there (in Curaçao)	NASA Eclipse Bulletin / a preview by Sky & Telescope / SOHO & the eclipse / Curaçao's eclipse page
April 26	Cassini flies by Venus to get a gravity assist on its way to Saturn. For budgetary reasons, no scientific observations seem to be planned (in contrast to Galileo's cruise science).	Cassini's homepage / information on the cruise and the new timetable
May 18 to 24	International Air Show in Berlin (ILA 98) - throughout the 90's this has been the smallest but also by far the most space-oriented of the 3 great European air shows.	Preliminary homepage / new homepage under construction
May 28	Shuttle Discovery launches with the Alpha Magnetic Spectrometer (AMS) which will be tried out during this last Mir docking mission before it will go onto the International Space Station. AMS is the brainchild of Nobel laureate Samuel Ting: the ultimate test of whether there are significant amounts of antimatter in the Universe. And it will also check for some candidates for dark matter.	Mission STS-91 AMS site at CERN / Ting's Nobel Prize / China's role in AMS Mir site at NASA
late May (to be confirmed)	3rd and final test launch of the Ariane 5 (A503), with a re-entry demonstration experiment and a commercial payload (tbd).	Ariane homepage / TEAMSAT on 502 / why 501 failed
June (to be confirmed)	First launch of a Delta 3 rocket, the more powerful successor of the famous Delta 2.	Delta 3 homepage / Wade page
"before June 15" (says ESO in January)	First Light for the Very Large Telescope of the European Southern Observatory, for Unit Telescope UT1.	VLT homepage / First light infos ESO Press Releases for 1998
June 23-24 (to be confirmed)	Meeting of the ESA Council at Ministerial Level in Brussels, Belgium. Crucial decisions, especially regarding the uncertain future of Europe's space science programs, are expected.	ESA Press Releases
June 30 and July 9	Launch of the first segments of the International Space Station: The proton launch of the Russian-made (and U.S.-paid) Functional Cargo Block (FGB) is followed closely by the first assembly flight, mission STS-88 for shuttle Endeavour, which brings Node 1 and will feature three spacewalks.	ISS homepage / assembly sequence FGB / STS-88 / Node 1
July 1	Launch of the first New Millennium Program mission, Deep Space 1, which will fly to an asteroid, by Mars and to a comet - and will try out a dozen novel space technologies on the way. Most important among them: an ion engine, used in deep space for the first time.	Deep Space 1 homepage The New Millennium Program
August 6	Launch of the first Japanese mission to a planet, Planet B to Mars. It will orbit the planet from Oct., 1999, and study mainly the interaction of Mars' upper atmosphere and the solar wind. And Planet B carries a camera specifically to photograph Phobos and Deimos.	Homepage at ISAS / Info on an MGS site and in the NSSDC data base Mars / Phobos
September 15	Launch of the Wide Field IR Explorer (WIRE), a NASA Small Explorer capable of detecting typical starburst galaxies five billion light-years away and luminous protogalaxies at much greater distances. The satellite will survey about 100 square degrees of sky during a four-month mission.	Homepage at JPL
October 15	Launch of the Far UV Spectroscopic Explorer (FUSE), using the technique of high-resolution spectroscopy in the far-ultraviolet spectral region. FUSE uses four mirror segements to reflect the light to focus. The ultraviolet light seen by FUSE is dispersed by four gratings.	Homepage at JHU
October 30	First launch from the Sea Launch platform, the first commercial launch "site" that is floating in the open sea.	Sea Launch homepage / Kvaerner page / GSFC stats
ca. November (it is hoped)	Launch of the Advanced X-ray Astrophysics Facility (AXAF), a major NASA X-ray astronomy satellite that was to go in August but is delayed because the testing software at TRW was not ready. The spacecraft itself is fine.	Homepage at MSFC
November 17 (around 19:40 UTC)	Possible Meteor Storm by the Leonids, best viewed from Eastern Asia. The interest in this potentially spectacular event is great, both in the professional and amateur community. While a replay of the legendary 1966 Leonid storm (40 meteors per second) is unlikely, several meteors each second are a possibility. The actual outburst lasts less than one hour.	Leonid'98 Meteor Outburst mission homepage at NASA - Ames / Predictions / "The King of Meteor Showers" / earlier outbursts
December 10	Launch of the Mars Surveyor 98 Orbiter (to be followed by a lander in early January, 1999): It carries the Pressure Modulator IR Radiometer (PMIRR) from the ill-fated Mars Observer as well as the lightweight Mars Color Imager (MARCI) and will also serve as a radio relay for 5 years after its 2 year main science mission.	Mars Surveyor 98 homepage Science Instruments / MARCI
December 20 to January 10, 1999	Arrival of the NEAR Spacecraft at its destination, asteroid Eros - on Dec. 20 the first braking maneuver of the Eros rendezvous takes place. By January 12, 1999, NEAR should be in orbit around the minor planet - a first in space exploration! The mission ends on Feb. 6, 2000, with a landing attempt!	NEAR homepage at JHU / Timeline for NEAR Amazing Radar images of Eros and an ephemeris

Briefly noted:

Various launches around X-mas were successfull (apart from a failed Proton launch): Early Bird 1 will deliver images with 3 meters resolution for Earth Watch, bringing spy satellite quality to everyone. And there are now 10 ORBCOMM- and 2/3 of all Iridium-s/c in orbit, after yet another launch.

Can it be true? Sophisticated statistical analysis has revealed a 28-day period in the flux of solar neutrinos, says a Stanford researcher - but it doesn't make sense with 'normal' particle physics. Is this the final proof that neutrinos have a (small) magnetic moment as well as a tiny mass?

In a Nutshell: There is a third GRB with an optical counterpart. / NASA is preparing an Ultra-Long Duration Balloon that can carry a big space telescope around the Earth for 100 days. / Whether something crashed in Greenland after the big bolide of Dec. 9, is still not known, but there are still reports coming in. / Eta Carinae is in a special state - is it a double star? / "Snottites" in a Mexican cave could be the best Martians we know...

The most visible change to the ISS (do I need to mention here that the International Space Station is called just that and not "Alpha"?) under this scenario would be the installation of a prototype TransHab inflatable module, 7 x 8 meters large - and engineering model is already under construction. Other changes to the Station would be the installation of an experimental 2nd life support system that works without outside supplies of water and air (and uses mainly plants to do the work) and the application of super-miniaturized "nano electronics" that would also be essential for a manned Mars mission. (AW&ST Dec. 8, 1997,. p. 39-40)

While the Mars Mission itself is far from certain (and will only be thought viable if it is possible to reduce its cost to some 25 billion dollars), the Space Station is very real - and is costing real money. Apparently the cost overruns have now reached at least 817 million dollars, causing major concern among U.S. politicians. Until today about 21 billion dollars have already been spent for the ISS! (SpaceViews Update Dec. 15, 1997)

Dust Storm on Mars felt by Global Surveyor

Surveyor's first direct encounter with the effect of these storms occurred early on the morning of November 28th when the spacecraft encountered a 120% increase in atmospheric density during an aerobraking pass on orbit #51. Shortly afterward, Flight Operations Manager Joe Beerer gave the order for the spacecraft to perform a short firing of its thruster rockets to raise the altitude of the orbit's low point. Later another maneuver was performed. According to the atmospheric advisory group, the dust storm now appears to be fading in intensity, and the flight team has begun to return the spacecraft to its normal pace of aerobraking. (MGS Status Report Dec. 12, 1997)

"Cosmic Snowball Fight" at science meeting

Basically we are left with three possibilities (again summarized here and discussed here and in great depth here):

• Lou Frank is right and his 'snowballs' are exceedingly bizarre objects that not only no one else can detect but that also defy physics in almost every respect. That would be a scientific revolution - but then again "extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence"!

• It might also be that the atmospheric holes exist but the 'snowballs' do not: That's a scenario proposed by experts in meteor phenomena (the same Sandia Nat'l Labs group that got the SL9 Jupiter impact phenomena right). Could it be that ordinary interplanetary meteoroids hitting the Earth's atmosphere cause fancy effects that cause dark spots above or in the Earth's dayglow layer?

• Or is the view right which by now most experts subscribe too (even some who had switched sides enthusiastically towards the reality of the dark spots earlier this year): The atmospheric holes do not exist and are just instrument noise. According to reports, almost a fight broke out on stage between Frank and his critics about this explanation, one faction calling the other one incompetent.

Briefly noted:

Did a major meteorite hit Greenland? The fireball phenomenon on Dec. 9th is undisputed: There were lots of eyewitnesses and physical data and reports are still coming in. But the search for an impact site was unsuccessful so far. Meanwhile in Colombia, a meteorite is blamed for a fire.

The first mirror of the Very Large Telescope is in Chile and has now reached Cerro Paranal. First light for the Unit One telescope of the VLT could come in March, 1998!

The planet of 51 Pegasi is real and not an illusion caused by weird stellar oscillations as had been claimed (see the detailled coverag in Update #53!): Independent checks for the tell-tale changes in the spectral lines didn't find a thing, so there must really be a planet tugging on the star. On the other hand one of the famous pulsar planets is now in doubt and could be an illusion from interplanetary effects.

In a nutshell: There are spectacular new HST images of planetary nebulae. / The launch of the AXAF satellite will probably be delayed. / The 2000th Gamma Ray Burst has been detected by the Compton GRO. / The German Inspector minisatellite malfunctioned when it couldn't be maneuvered in the vicinity of Mir. / There are new splendid images of Europa and scores of other important Galileo discoveries during the primary mission - and the closest Europa flyby yet has started the Galileo Europa Mission. / And the FORTE spacecraft is studying complex lightning phenomena.

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