Return-path: X-Andrew-Authenticated-as: 7997;andrew.cmu.edu;Ted Anderson Received: from beak.andrew.cmu.edu via trymail for +dist+/afs/andrew.cmu.edu/usr11/tm2b/space/space.dl@andrew.cmu.edu (->+dist+/afs/andrew.cmu.edu/usr11/tm2b/space/space.dl) (->ota+space.digests) ID ; Sun, 25 Feb 90 01:26:38 -0500 (EST) Message-ID: Reply-To: space+@Andrew.CMU.EDU From: space-request+@Andrew.CMU.EDU To: space+@Andrew.CMU.EDU Date: Sun, 25 Feb 90 01:26:15 -0500 (EST) Subject: SPACE Digest V11 #79 SPACE Digest Volume 11 : Issue 79 Today's Topics: Galileo Update - 02/23/90 What happened to Pegasus? Re: New private home satellite network Re: space news from Jan 15 AW&ST * SpaceNews 26Feb90 * ---------------------------------------------------------------------- Date: 24 Feb 90 04:09:01 GMT From: cs.utexas.edu!usc!elroy.jpl.nasa.gov!jato!mars.jpl.nasa.gov!baalke@tut.cis.ohio-state.edu (Ron Baalke) Subject: Galileo Update - 02/23/90 GALILEO MISSION STATUS REPORT FEBRUARY 23, 1990 As of noon Friday (PST), February 23, 1990, the Galileo spacecraft is 43,558,340 miles from the Earth, 4,474,870 miles from Venus and is traveling at a Heliocentric velocity of 90,700 miles per hour. Perihelion will occur on February 25. Round trip light time is 7 minutes, 40 seconds. Galileo is in cruise mode-dual spin with a spin rate of 3.15 rpm as measured by its star scanner. The spacecraft's attitude sun point angle is at 1.9 degrees. A total of 1746 real-time commands have been transmitted to Galileo sinced its launch on October 18. The Venus Earth (VE-1) stored sequence became active on February 19, as planned. This sequence controls spacecraft activities from February 19 through March 26. A total of four SITURNS were successfully performed without incident on February 17, 19, 20 and 22. The SITURNS during this mission phase are nominally planned to lead the sun by about 2.3 degrees. The telemetry downlink data rate was successfully configured to 40 bps coded, as planned. It is pointed out that the available telemetry rate for all activities between February 17 and March 6 will be at 40 bps. In fact, between March 6 and March 26 (near the end of VE-1 sequence), the telemetry data rate must further be reduced to 10 bps in order to maintain the required link Bit Error Rate (BER) based on predicted telemetry link performance. The eighth RPM thruster "flushing" activity was successfully completed on February 21. The activity "flushed" the Z, L and S thrusters only. The P-thrusters were not flushed since they are used to perform the SITURNS. Unlike previous "flushing" activities, the thruster temperature profiles for the Z, L and S thrusters were not available due to the low sample frequency associated with the 40 bps downlink telemetry data rate. It is pointed out that successful "flushing" activity was inferred from other spacecraft measurements/events, including attitude control performance and thruster counts. Telecommunication system elements characterization tests involving the Command Detection Unit (CDU) and elements of the Radio Frequency Subsystem (RFS) were successfully performed, as planned on February 21 and 22; no anomalies or surprises were observed. Spacecraft temperatures/pressures are all well within acceptable ranges as the spacecraft nears perihelion on February 25; no concerns for any hardware have been identified. The three fields and particles instruments (PWS, EPD and PLS), which expressed some limited thermal concern, were powered off, as planned, post-Venus Encounter and are expected to be thermally safe through perihelion. Science memory readout (MRO) for the DDS, MAG and EUV instruments was successfully performed, as planned. Periodic MROs allow selected cruise science data to be returned to Earth expeditiously despite the present low telemetry data rate capability. The AC/DC bus imbalance measurements have remained stable. The AC imbalance measurement (48.75 volts) has indicated a "hard" short from the low side to chassis for the last three days. The DC imbalance measurement has remained relatively stable varying between 21 and 21.3 volts. It is pointed out that other power-related telemetry measurements (bus voltages, bus load currents, shunt current) and subsystem engineering telemetry measurements are as expected. Ron Baalke | baalke@mars.jpl.nasa.gov Jet Propulsion Lab M/S 301-355 | baalke@jems.jpl.nasa.gov 4800 Oak Grove Dr. | Pasadena, CA 91109 | ------------------------------ Date: 24 Feb 90 16:23:57 GMT From: zaphod.mps.ohio-state.edu!sunybcs!ubvms!v071pzp4@think.com Subject: What happened to Pegasus? Does anyone know what's been going on with the Pegasus launcher by Orbital Sciences Corp. lately? Were'nt they supposed to launch soon? I imagine its been delayed; if it had launched we all would have heard. But what's the holdup? Thanks in advance. Craig Cole University at Buffalo ------------------------------ Date: Fri, 23 Feb 90 11:01:46 PST From: pjs@aristotle.Jpl.Nasa.Gov (Peter Scott) Subject: Re: New private home satellite network maytag!looking!brad@iuvax.cs.indiana.edu (Brad Templeton) writes: >NBC and some other cable/media companies are launching a home satellite >network. Private 18 inch dish which is easy to install, 102 channels, >all digital, HDTV and more -- cost around $300/year, plus $250 for >dish. >[...] >What if a private concern, based on some lax-law island, were to get >together $300 million an launch one of these things? They could start >completely uncensored, unregulated TV -- assuming they got somebody >(the Chinese?) to launch it. > >What would happen? Would governments let it be? Would they try to jam >it? Shoot it down? Is there any sort of space law or space treaty that >would govern something like this? There's some precedent in the "pirate" radio stations that operated outside the 3- (later, 12-) mile limit around the British coast starting in the early sixties. [The only music radio available in Britain was the BBC, which aired about 30 minutes of popular music per week at a ridiculous hour; people who wanted to listen to that kind of music had to tune into stations in Luxembourg and the Netherlands. Naturally, a demand sprang up...] Despite suggestions to torpedo the ships (and despite numerous claims of interference with emergency services, few of which were authentic), the British government did not take direct action against the ships because they were in international waters. [There was an instance where the police boarded a station on an ex-WWII fort in the Thames estuary as part of a murder investigation, and a subsequent hearing saw some inventive testimony from the government designed to bring the fort within territorial waters based on low tide water levels.] They did attempt to jam the ships, a largely useless effort since a ship using a [in one case] 105kW transmitter at sea generated a more powerful beam due to water reflection than did the 1MW jamming transmitter on land... and the ships would change their frequencies regularly, often hanging out close to BBC stations so that the government got complaints from their listeners that the BBC stations were jammed too. What they eventually did in 1967 was pass an outrageous law which made it illegal for any British citizen to support the ships in any way (supply, employment, advertising, you name it), and all but one ship closed down. In order to keep going, their deejays were virtual fugitives, living mainly in Spain, and the supply operations were highly covert, managed from the Netherlands. Advertising was bought by overseas offices of companies with UK outlets. In order to make a request, you had to write or call an office in Spain. There were instances of people being warned by the police for displaying bumper stickers with the station's name on it and one man was jailed for selling promotional merchandise. All this suggests that while direct action against an illegal video satellite is unlikely, there is an impressive arsenal that a government could unleash on the ground to hamstring their operations. I doubt that the US government would go to such lengths, but the British government for one is another story (do they still require a transmitter license for cordless phones?) Peter Scott (pjs@grouch.jpl.nasa.gov) ------------------------------ Date: 23 Feb 90 18:47:41 GMT From: zaphod.mps.ohio-state.edu!swrinde!cs.utexas.edu!hellgate.utah.edu!uplherc!esunix!bambam!bpendlet@think.com (Bob Pendleton) Subject: Re: space news from Jan 15 AW&ST From article <1990Feb16.055039.11227@utzoo.uucp>, by henry@utzoo.uucp (Henry Spencer): > [From Flight International, 3 Jan:] > McDonnell Douglas reports imminent cost overruns on its USAF contract to > launch Navstars on Deltas. They're blaming it on half a dozen different > things, which boil down to minor technical problems plus seriously > optimistic cost estimates. [Ah, those cheap expendables with their > well-known, predictable costs.] Hercules Inc. posted a $100 million loss this quarter. The first losing quarter in 70 some odd years. The entire loss was the result of mistakes made by the Aeorspace devision. Part of the loss can be explained by the cost of blowing up a brand new solid propellant mixing plant. But most of the loss is due to grossly underbidding the fixed price contracts for the Titan IV and Delta II solid boosters. After so many years of bidding for cost plus contracts they didn't really know how to bid for a fixed price contract. They don't seem to know what the real costs are. The actual loss by the Aerospace division is said to excede $200 million. Heads are reportedly bouncing all over Magna, Utah as Hercules Inc. restructures the management of Hercules Aerospace. I've read that Hercules stock dropped to it's lowest price in decades, reportedly $30/share, or roughly $10/share below book value. Even though Hercules has been working hard to get into the commercial launch business with its Pegasus and Taurus launch vehicles and its commercial participation in Titan IV and Delta II it is clear that the change over from defense contractor to space entrepreneur is a long and dangerous one. Bob P. -- Bob Pendleton, speaking only for myself. UUCP Address: decwrl!esunix!bpendlet or utah-cs!esunix!bpendlet X: Tools, not rules. ------------------------------ Date: 24 Feb 90 02:04:15 GMT From: att!tsdiag!ka2qhd!kd2bd@ucbvax.Berkeley.EDU (John Magliacane) Subject: * SpaceNews 26Feb90 * Bulletin ID: SPC0226 ========= SpaceNews ========= MONDAY FEBRUARY 26, 1990 SpaceNews originates at KD2BD in Wall Township, NJ, and is distributed weekly around the world on UseNet and Amateur Packet Radio. It is available for UNLIMITED distribution. * SAREX-2 TESTING CONTINUES * ============================= Last week, the Shuttle Amateur Radio Experiment #2 (SAREX-2) packet radio station underwent extensive testing at the Marshall Space Flight Center in Huntsville, AL according AMSAT Area Coordinator Ed Stluka (W4QAU). This testing was being perfomed in conjuction with the training of STS-35 Payload Specialist Ron Parise (WA4SIR) in the use of the ASTRO-1 experiment which will be primary payload on that shuttle mission. The primary payload, ASTRO-1, will be used to conduct a number of astronomical experiments. During the several days of testing this week, radio amateurs in the Huntsville area were invited to connect to WA4SIR and to receive a QSO number. This special packet radio station flying on STS-35 on May 9, 1990 will give each radio amateur who connects to WA4SIR a QSO number confirming their contact. When the connecting station sends their QSL card in with this contact number, they will receive back a beautiful QSL card commemorating this HAM IN SPACE shuttle flight. The SAREX-2 packet radio station consist of a Motorola 2M FM H/T with 5 watts ouput, a Heathkit HK-21 TNC-2, and a GRiD laptop computer that has a 40 MB hard disk drive to store the calls of all the stations connecting to WA4SIR during the nine day mission. The specially written software which will be running the SAREX-2 packet station is designed to allow for completely unattended operation and logging of the calls of all connecting stations. It will also prevent duplicate QSO numbers being sent! Although no digipeating will be allowed through SAREX-2, connecting to this packet station will be like any terrestrial packet contact. Just use your TNC along with your 2m tranceiver, and everything else is the same. After you have connected and received your QSL number from WA4SIR, on subsequent orbits you can watch for the SAREX-2 message beacons being sent periodically. The message beacons will contain information about the flight of STS-35 and other interesting items. Look for more information about the SAREX-2 mission in AMSAT News Service (ANS) bulletins and on AMSAT HF/VHF nets in the next couple of months. For more specific information about the ASTRO-1 payload, contact the SPACELINK BBS at (205) 895-0028. [Story via AMSAT-NA News Service] * MICROSAT OBJECT NUMBERS * =========================== The following are the corrected Object and Catalog numbers which apply to all MICROSAT/UoSAT element sets after orbit #260: SATELLITE INT'L OBJECT CATALOG NAME NUMBER NUMBER UO-14 90-05B 20437 UO-15 90-05C 20438 AO-16 90-05D 20439 DO-17 90-05E 20440 WO-18 90-05F 20441 LU-19 90-05G 20442 * OSCAR-11 NEWS * ================= Here's an actual computer status information message received from OSCAR-11: **UOSAT 2 COMPUTER STATUS INFORMATION** FAD1 Operating System v2.0b Today's date is 24 /2 /90 (Saturday) Universal Time is 1 :46 :27 Auto Mode is selected SPIN PERIOD IS - 278 Z MAG firings = 0 + SPIN firings = 33 - SPIN firings = 20 RAM Wash Pointer at D299 WOD commenced 24 /2 /90 at 0 :0 :10 with channels 10 ,11 ,19 ,29 , Last cmd was 109 TO 0 WITH DATA 0 Attitude control initiated, mode 1 Data collection in progress Digitalker active * FEEDBACK WELCOMED * ===================== Feedback regarding SpaceNews can be directed to the editor (John) via any of the following paths: UUCP : ucbvax!rutgers!petsd!tsdiag!ka2qhd!kd2bd PACKET : KD2BD @ NN2Z (Neptune, New Jersey) MAIL : John A. Magliacane Department of Electronics Technology Brookdale Community College Newman Springs Road Lincroft, New Jersey 07738-1599 U.S.A. <<< Stay on course......Say YES to Morse! >>> -- AMPR : KD2BD @ NN2Z (Neptune, NJ) UUCP : ucbvax!rutgers!petsd!tsdiag!ka2qhd!kd2bd "For every problem, there is one solution which is simple, neat and wrong." -- H.L. Mencken ------------------------------ End of SPACE Digest V11 #79 *******************