SOHO loss blamed on human error! But Olympus experience gives hope for recovery The ESA/NASA investigation into the loss of contact with the SOHO spacecraft on June 25th has released an interim report: errors in two command sequences and a wrong response to SOHO's reaction are to blame for the crisis! But hope prevails: In 1991 ESA lost contact to the experimental communications satellite Olympus under similar circumstances, and one month later contact was reestablished and the satellite saved. So far SOHO hasn't responded to the frequent wake-up calls from the Deep Space Network (DSN), but that is what one would expect: The spacecraft's attitude is such at the moment that almost no sunlight falls onto its solar arrays - the batteries are empty. But since SOHO's axis of rotation is stable in space, the situation should improve by September, when the arrays are illuminated again. If the spacecraft comes alive again and can be commanded, it will be a tedious process to 'defrost' its fuel system as well as the valuable scientific instruments. The mistakes by ground control that led to the present situation could be due to work shifts that were too long, a report in Space News of July 13th speculates. Also, SOHO had to fight with lots of other s/c for time with the DSN all the time, increasing the stress for its controllers even more.

Press Release on the Interim Report The Interim Report itself What's New with SOHO BBC story on the report An old story on SOHO: What solar particles can do to LASCO's CCD chips

The circumstellar disk of Epsilon Eridani bears some resemblance to the solar system - and there is even some indication of planet formation right now: a press release and stories by BBC, SpaceViews and ABC. The AXAF has completed its environmental tests: Eurekalert, SpaceViews. The next Soyuz launch to Mir will be delayed: SpaceViews. There are even more doubts about the 'Mars bacteria', says a GaTech press release. And: superconductivity at room temperature?!? A press release from Buffalo [later toned down]...

New Soft Gamma Repeater discovered: NASA's MSFC explains! Also more on SGRs and magnetars. Automated space docking hailed as major achievement: The successful first docking experiment of Japan's ETS-VII can now be seen on a special web page. Also stories by CNN, SpaceViews and ABC TUBSAT-N has been heard from, reports a press release from TU Berlin. And this September there will be even more TUBSATs. And finally, Cornwall braces for the 1999 eclipse: a BBC report.

Planet B alias Nozomi has left the Earth... ... but will stay in the neighborhood. An M-5 rocket launched from the Kagoshima Space Center on the island of Kyushu early on July 4th, to the day one year after the Pathfinder landing (that was intentional): The booster successfully placed Planet-B, renamed Nozomi ("Hope") after launch, into Earth orbit. But because the M-5 rocket is not powerful enough to send Nozomi on a direct trajectory to Mars, the spacecraft will spend the next several months in an elliptical Earth orbit. Two lunar flybys will provide the final kick needed to reach Mars. Once Nozomi arrives at Mars in October 1999, it will enter an elliptical orbit around the planet. A suite of 14 instruments from five nations - including Germany which provided a dust counter - will study the planet's upper atmosphere and ionosphere. When close to Mars, the spacecraft will carry out studies of the lower atmosphere and surface of the planet, and study the interaction of the atmosphere with the solar wind in more distant portions of its orbit. (adapted from a SpaceViews story)

The German Experiment (Munich Dust Counter): Pressemitteilung + German homepage + English homepage. More links in the previous update! New stories by SpaceViews, CNN, Florida Today, ABCNEWS, BBC One year after Pathfinder: CNN pages, ABC pages; Mars stereo pairs The Mars Society

Big role for France in Mars Sample Return By the end of the year there will be a Memorandum of Understandig, a formal contract between NASA and France's space agency CNES: The cooperation between both agencies will increase, with a joint Mars Sample Return Mission in 2005 (with the samples on Earth in 2008) as the linchpin. France's contributions will be at least to provide the launch services with an Ariane 5 as well as an orbiter. Furthermore, scientific instruments could be supplied by France and other European countries (with Germany and Finland in influential roles) - including perhaps a network of up to four geophysical stations called Netlanders. The main lander, the rover that will collect the samples and other mission elements will remain NASA's responsibilities, while the precious samples become property of NASA and CNES. (AW&ST June 29, 1998, p. 27)	NASA news release + Space Views coverage; CNES Homepage Planet B launch on July 4th! SpaceViews report, ASTRONET reports, Infos from NSSDC, NASA (about the NMS experiment) and the Planetary Society MGS pictures of dunes on Mars plus a new MPF image of "Big Crater"
Io volcanoes hottest in solar system The volcanoes on Jupiter's moon Io sizzle at the highest recorded surface temperatures of any planetary body in the solar system - only the Sun's surface is even hotter. This is an important clue to understanding geophysical processes within Io, which may be similar to the early stages in the evolution of Earth, Venus and other planetary bodies. At least 12 different vents on Io spew lava at temperatures greater than 1200 degrees Centigrade. One volcanic vent may be as hot as 1700 deg C - about three times hotter than the hottest sunlit surface of Mercury. The surface temparatures on Io, which is 2 billion km from the sun, stay well below freezing (minus 153 deg C) except for the volcanic hot spots. The latest temperature measurements are more than double the highest temperatures recorded by the Voyager spacecraft in 1979. (adapted from a Brown University News Release of July 2nd, 1998, that gave all temperatures only in Fahrenheit - yuck!!!)	JPL and Brown News Releases, and reports by SpaceViews, CNN and ABC More solar system news: A new class of asteroid, with an orbit completely inside Earth's. 1998 ML14 will come close to Earth in August. There was an unexpected meteor outburst in late June that is discussed in the IMO News
Editorial New UFO "study" fails to impress What happens when a physicist from Stanford University with a long interest in paranormal phenomena gathers nine respected scientists from around the world and has them hear about the best 'physical evidence' for UFOs - but only from seven UFO believers and not a single critical researcher? You get a report calling for more scientific studies, of course, for expensive equipment and even the strange advice that "the possibility of health risks associated with UFO events should not be ignored." The strange gathering happened last fall in the U.S., and the results of the workshop have now been published in a journal for "anomalous" studies (as well as on the net). News media have hailed it as the first scientific investigation of UFOs in 30 years, but it isn't. The whole approach was biased in that it was decided from the outset that the question of 'physical evidence' (such as photographs and radar phenomena but also strange markings on the ground) was totally separate from the social context of the UFO phenomenon. And not one expert was invited to discuss the latter - which, as every serious UFO researcher will agree, is the key to understandig what has been going on since 51 years now. So the planetologists, astronomers, radiation biologists etc. were confronted with what basically is 'fringe' material to the much larger modern UFO myth and less-than-balanced analysis thereof. The bold conclusions the panel agreed on afterwards (which even call for "one or more mobile 'observatories'" with tons of instruments) are simply not justified. And to compare UFOs with meteorites (objects from the sky that at first no one believed in and that turned out to be a scientific sensation) is nothing but wishful thinking. Only the social aspect of the UFO myth and its changes over the years might be worthy of some further scientific inquiry. DF	The UFO "Study", the respective Stanford Univ. Press Release that made it 'newsworthy', a typical report and a better one (both from the BBC), plus a commentary (from ABC) A field guide to critical thinking, Saucer Smear, R. Sheaffer's UFO Pages, TUFOP and more UFO skeptical pages A collection of critical UFO material: UFO FAQ, UFO dictionary entry, Alan Hale on UFOs, UFO Mythology, The real Roswell coverup (book review), the 'Alien Autopsy' hoax, and the 'Space Shuttle UFO' UFOs and the CIA (this is not the final word either!); UFOs and the FBI (yep, the real X Files...)

Walking on Mars is easy... ... once you've got there, of course: European physiologists have found out, that walking a given distance requires only half as much energy on Mars (with 40% of Earth's gravity) than here. That seemingly trivial result actually involved a lot of physics calculations - and even experiments during parabolic flights. When you walk, you're constantly 'falling forwards' while restoring your initial height in a pendulum-like fashion. The optimum walking speed for humans on Mars, it turns out, is 3.4 km/h (instead of 5.5 km on Earth). Now we know... (Cavagna & al., Nature June 18, 1998, p. 636)	Cavagna's institute One year after Pathfinder: What we learned - a JPL Press Release and SpaceViews and CNN stories. Also: Pathfinder manager T. Spear retires.
Astronomers aghast about "space mirror" plans First they wanted to organize a race from the Earth to the Moon with solar sails ("photonic propulsion") as the only "engine" - and when neither this 'space regatta' nor other applications of solar sails for propulsion materialized, the idea changed. Now the plan is to use giant mirrors in Earth orbit to illuminate selected spots on Earth, esp. in the Arctic during wintertime. The mirror design is derived from the solar sail idea. Everyone agrees that this concept doesn't make any sense economy-wise (launching the mirror-carrying satellites is way to expensive), but one small prototype flew 5 years ago, and the next experiment, again on a Progress transport ship departing from Mir, is being planned for this November. Astronomers around the world are already up in arms about this "Znamya 2.5" flight, let alone possible successors. (New Scientist June 20, 1998, p. 4 etc.)	"Space Regatta Consortium" pages The 1993 flight Future plans New Scientist story on Znamya International Dark-Sky Association
New controversy about 1997 XF11... This time it's not about whether there was ever any danger of this asteroid hitting the Earth in 2028: Everyone seems to agree by now that even the positions of the asteroid measured between Dec. 97 and March 98 should have been sufficient to demonstrate that there was no chance for a collision with Earth in October 2028. But what about ... 2037? New - controversial - calculations seem to show that, when we only had poor knowledge of XF 11's orbit, there was a small possibility of a change in the asteroid's orbit during a close flyby of the Earth in 2028 that could have led to a collision some orbits onward, e.g. in 2037. That possibility is now out of the question as well, since the 1990 data points found later put the asteroid at a much greater miss distance (around 900 000 km) in 2028. And still, asteroid researchers around the world are still fighting over what exactly we did know during the hectic hours of March 11 and 12, 1998: With the apparent possibility of a collision in the decades after 2028, was it, with hindsight, correct after all to call XF11 a possible Earth collider? In any case the new debate makes it even clearer that getting a consensus among asteroid researchers within a few days before making a public announcement (as is the 'official' policy right now, at least in the U.S.) might never work...	1997 XF11 Homepage You can follow the often wild discussions in the small world community of asteroid researchers as well as about every bit of progress in this field at the remarkable CCN Archives. Find the first statement about the 2037 possibility at the beginning of the digest for the first week of June and the discussion all over the 2nd week. These are huge textfiles for scholarly use, not Internet fast-food... New: a Homepage for the very successful LINEAR asteroid search!

SOHO silent forever? Mission controllers have lost contact with the solar observatory on June 25th during a routine operation, and apparently there is little hope to save it. Funds had been allocated for operations until 2003... (Another Press Release, SpaceViews, BBC and ABC stories) Mir is nearly broke and could be abandoned soon.

A new extrasolar planet - the closest to Earth yet - has been found with the radial velocity method: It's orbiting Gliese 876, 15 light years from Earth! (Science News, SpaceViews and ABC stories on the discovery, plus new planet discoverers' homepage) Meanwhile ESO announced the discovery of the first circumstellar disk around a massive star.

New great VLT images: a strange galaxy, M83 and a planetary nebula. Neptune's Triton heating up: Hubble observations show a trend since the Voyager visit in 1989. (ABC story)

"Mars Express" project gains momentum There could be a European Mars orbiter - and perhaps even a lander - in 2003 after all: The "Mars Express" proposal fared well at a meeting of ESA's Science Programme Committee in late May, competing studies have been commissioned for the construction of the spacecraft, its payload has been selected - and a call has been issued to space institutions around Europe: If you can, promise us a small lander by July 3rd! There seems to be broad support for the mission - that would refly some of the instruments of the Mars'96 orbiter lost in 1996 - across the European space agencies. And they would even consider delaying the infrared satellites FIRST and Planck one more year (to 2007), whether they can be merged into one mission or not (the SPC is opposing such a merger because it threatens to sacrifice the capabilities of both missions). A final decision on whether Mars Express will come is due at the next SPC meeting in November.	Mars Express Homepage Project Status on June 19, FIRST/Planck options, ESA Science More Mars: Planet B information (launch on July 4th!), Mars in 3D, and new MGS images (even more are here)
Another delay hits Lunar A The launch of Japan's next Lunar mission has been delayed another time: Trouble with the penetrators and their batteries won't permit a launch before August or September. The mission had already suffered the 'loss' of one of the three penetrators, because an additional battery had become necessary for the orbiter, to stay alive in the Moon's shadow. With only 2 penetrators, though, the seismological capabilities of Lunar A are compromised. But it should still be able to tell us whether the Moon has an iron core and how large it is. (Space News June 15th, 1998)	Lunar A information The Selene mission has also been redesigned and is now simpler: an orbiter + lander in 2003. (Space News June 15th)
All Gamma Ray Bursts linked to ... supernovae? Is it a bizarre coincidence or the crucial clue to the solution of the Gamma Ray Burster puzzle? All six supernovae of the rare classes Ib and Ic of the last 6 years seem to have relations to GRBs that the BATSE instrument on the Comption Gamma Ray Observatory has detected! And supernovae of other types (Ia and II) show no such correlation. Two astronomers from Texas have constructed an intriguing model from this finding that has all GRBs occuring during the core collapse of massive stars. But the physics are still full of assumptions and problems (e.g. each GRB has to produce both an isotropic and a beamed component of gamma radiation) - judge for yourself! (Wang & Wheeler, preprint)	The Preprint GRB980425 could be such a case. Another wild theory - for the mega-burst 971214. BATSE Homepage

The Sloan Digital Sky Survey has seen its First Light: Homepage, stories by ABC and BBC The STScI will host the NGST One more nice image from TRACE

A new spectral class L has been introduced ( story by ABC, homepage of the 2MASS Survey) Has coronal heating been explained? One scientist thinks so. Also: giant convective cells on the Sun. And: mysteries of the aurora - an arc crosses the North Pole

New HST images: a ring of starbirth and nova shells (described here) The VLT took its sharpest image: 0.27" resolution! Almost to the day 50 years after the 5 m Hale telescope at Palomar Observatory started to work.

Neutrinos have mass - of cosmological importance! An international team of physicists announced today at "Neutrino '98", an international physics conference underway in Takayama, Japan, that the Super-Kamiokande Experiment has found evidence for non-zero neutrino mass. The experiment yields results that are outside the standard theory of particle physics. Until now, there has been no firm evidence that neutrinos possess mass. The new evidence is based upon studies of neutrinos which are created when cosmic rays, fast-moving particles from space, bombard the earth's upper atmosphere producing cascades of secondary particles which rain down upon the earth. The Super-Kamiokande group uses a large tank of highly purified water in the Kamioka Mine. By classifying the neutrino interactions according to the type of neutrino involved (electron-neutrino or muon-neutrino) and counting their relative numbers as a function of the distance from their creation point, we conclude that the muon-neutrinos are "oscillating". Oscillation is the changing back and forth of a neutrino's type as it travels through space or matter. This can occur only if the neutrino possesses mass. The Super-Kamiokande result indicates that muon-neutrinos are disappearing into undetected tau-neutrinos or perhaps some other type of neutrino (e.g., sterile-neutrino). The experiment does not determine directly the masses of the neutrinos leading to this effect, but the rate of disappearance suggests that the difference in masses between the oscillating types is very small. Nonetheless "Neutrinos cannot now be neglected in the bookkeeping of the mass of the universe," said one of the scientists. The muon-neutrino mass, while the smallest yet observed for elementary particles, is still sufficient that the relic neutrinos made in staggering numbers at the time of the Big Bang, account for much of the mass of the universe. (combined from several news releases)

All the news about the discovery! A different version of the announcement A rather technical paper ABCNEWS.com coverage, SpaceViews story Various Homepages of the Super-Kamiokande: in Japan, Boston and Hawaii Other news from the high-energy Universe: On board space shuttle Discovery that is now docked to Mir is the prototype of a detector for antimatter and certain types of dark matter - the AMS magnet which will go to the ISS in 2002 for its real science run. The multi-national project was started by nobel laureate Sam Ting. New computer simulations of the evolution of the Universe help to distinguish between various models.

Rover thrown off Mars 2001 lander! There won't be another rover going to Mars in 2001: NASA has deferred the mission of the Athena payload and its high-capacity vehicle - and thus also the start of sample collection on Mars for later retrieval - to 2003. The faster - cheaper - better approach that has worked so well with the Mars missions of 1996 (and hopefully 1998/99) didn't work anymore when a rover had to be developped that can travel for many kilometers on Mars. Two more years of development time - and a general slowing down of the current 'storm towards Mars' - was called for. The redesigned 2001 lander (the 2001 orbiter will fly as planned) will now probably be more or less of a reflight of the 1999 Mars Polar Lander - but with a landing site close to the equator instead of near the South Pole. One wild idea is to go into the Valles Marineris and land close to one of the Canyon walls - that would be quite a sight! But there would be no mobility. (Space News June 1st, 1998, p.1+19)

Homepage of the 2001 Mars missions (update announced for August!) - The Athena rover payload - The Mars Polar Lander (1999) Other Mars news: The launch of Japan's Planet B has apparently been set for July 4th - one of many ill-documented future ISAS missions. Meanwhile ESA's Mars Express (2003) has a selected payload - but still no final go. More findings from the MGS camera (complete list of all releases - plus the complete 1st Science paper), MOLA and TES (SpaceViews story).