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 ; Wed, 4 Jul 1990 01:55:49 -0400 (EDT) Message-ID: Precedence: junk Reply-To: space+@Andrew.CMU.EDU From: space-request+@Andrew.CMU.EDU To: space+@Andrew.CMU.EDU Date: Wed, 4 Jul 1990 01:55:17 -0400 (EDT) Subject: SPACE Digest V12 #12 SPACE Digest Volume 12 : Issue 12 Today's Topics: Re: Hubble Investigation Board Named (Forwarded) Your space program (was: Re: More on NASA 91 Appropriation Vote) Re: NASA announces next steps in Space Exploration Outreach Program (F Weather gifs/Apple IIgs A report on Giotto's earth swingby A report on Giotto's earth swingby Re: NSS protests Chinese launch pricing Administrivia: Submissions to the SPACE Digest/sci.space should be mailed to space+@andrew.cmu.edu. Other mail, esp. [un]subscription notices, should be sent to space-request+@andrew.cmu.edu, or, if urgent, to tm2b+@andrew.cmu.edu ---------------------------------------------------------------------- Date: 3 Jul 90 16:35:08 GMT From: vax8530!njzy@cu-arpa.cs.cornell.edu (T. Joseph Lazio, Cornell University) Subject: Re: Hubble Investigation Board Named (Forwarded) In article <4231@jato.Jpl.Nasa.Gov>, baalke@mars.jpl.nasa.gov (Ron Baalke) writes: > HUBBLE INVESTIGATION BOARD > The board will be chaired by Dr. Lew Allen, Director, Jet > Propulsion Laboratory, Pasadena, Calif. The other members of the > board are: > > Charles P. Spoelhof > (Retired) Vice President, Eastman Kodak Co. > Pittsford, N.Y. > > George A. Rodney > Associate Administrator for Safety and Mission Quality > NASA Headquarters, Washington, D.C. > > John D. Mangus > Head, Optics Branch, Space Technology Division > NASA Goddard Space Flight Center, Greenbelt, Md. > > Dr. R. (Bob) Shannon > Professor of Astronomy, Optical Sciences Center > University of Arizona, Tucson > > Dr. Roger Angel > Professor of Astronomy, Steward Observatory > University of Arizona, Tucson Having read _What Do You Care What Other People Think?_ by Feynmann, I am curious to know how many of these people are really independent of NASA. For those who have not read the book, Feynmann was (privately) told that he was the only independent member of the Rogers Commission; all the other members had some ties to NASA. Feynmann used the independence to ask tough questions; he was not afraid of embarrassing anybody. -- T. Joseph Lazio Cornell University (607) 255-6420 lazio@astrosun.tn.cornell.edu lazio@pulsar.tn.cornell.edu ------------------------------ Date: 3 Jul 90 08:50:00 GMT From: agate!agate!web@ucbvax.Berkeley.EDU (William Baxter) Subject: Your space program (was: Re: More on NASA 91 Appropriation Vote) In article <652.26896E39@ofa123.fidonet.org> David.Anderman@ofa123.fidonet.org (David Anderman) writes: >I'm curious to know the mechanics of how Andy Cutler gets to determine >the final mission architecture of the SEI? Or, for that matter, how you >or I could participate in the definition of the project. Dr. Cutler will have his input through the AIAA working group on the Assesment of Innovative Technologies for the Exploration of Space, of which he is a member. He says that they have not received enough ideas, perhaps because the closing date is early. Dr. Cutler remains concerned that people taking a cynical view will percieve the current exercise as a bureaucratic game designed to make in-house ideas look better by opening the door to public input just long enough to collect a few bad ideas. He would like to receive your credible and carefully considered proposals. Write them up and send them to him: Dr. Andrew H. Cutler Assistant Research Professor University of Arizona Space Engineering Research Center 4717 E. Ft. Lowell Tucson, AZ 85712 -- William Baxter ARPA: web@{garnet,brahms,math}.Berkeley.EDU UUCP: {sun,dual,decwrl,decvax,hplabs,...}!ucbvax!garnet!web ------------------------------ Date: 3 Jul 90 12:16:40 GMT From: mcsun!ukc!icdoc!zmacx07@uunet.uu.net (Simon E Spero) Subject: Re: NASA announces next steps in Space Exploration Outreach Program (F >>>>> On 30 Jun 90 03:46:36 GMT, cew@venera.isi.edu (Craig E. Ward) said: cew> In article <1990Jun29.064551.3039@cscs.UUCP> csmith@cscs.UUCP cew> (Craig E. Smith) writes: > >...expansion of English power was at least in part based on the >plundering, and exploitation of these other colonies.... cew> The part that played was very small. The real reason English colonies were cew> stronger, and why most North Americans speak English, is that the English cew> sent families. Rubbish! The real reason why the English colonies succeeded is our effortless superiority. -- ------------------------------------------------------------------------------ zmacx07@uk.ac.ic.doc | sispero%cix@specialix.co.uk | ..!ukc!slxsys!cix!sispero ------------------------------------------------------------------------------ The Poll Tax. |`And in my mind that's all you'll ever be|DoC,Imperial I'm Not. Are you?| Spongiform Encepalophaphy' T Tikkaram |College,London SW7 ------------------------------------------------------------------------------ ------------------------------ Date: 28 Jun 90 01:55:05 GMT From: att!mcdchg!laidbak!obdient!vpnet!vortex@ucbvax.Berkeley.EDU (Jason J. Levit) Subject: Weather gifs/Apple IIgs I see there was a post on how to get the weather images to work on a Mac, but I own an Apple IIgs, and I'd like to get the same thing. I know it can be done, but I'm having problems Is there anyone else out there that is getting the gifs for an apple IIgs, or knows how to do it? My major problem is downloading them from the unix system here to my IIgs. It seems they are in the binary format, but I can't get them to download right. Thanks for the help! ------------------------------------------------------------------------------ : A good planet is hard to find. Jason J. Levit : : Let's save this one! vortex@vpnet.chi.il.us : ------------------------------------------------------------------------------ APPLE II FOREVER! ------------------------------ Date: 3 Jul 90 15:01:55 GMT From: mcsun!unido!mpirbn!p515dfi@uunet.uu.net (Daniel Fischer) Subject: A report on Giotto's earth swingby Just 24 hours ago, earth was visited by a spacecraft that had left here on an Ariane rocket exactly 5 years ago: GIOTTO. The following article (which I've just decided to spontaneously submit to Sky & Telescope, so please do not distribute it yet!) summarizes what I've learned on a nice news conference at the European Space Operations Center at Darmstadt, 3 hrs after the swingby: Earth Swingby: Giotto on its way to Comet Grigg-Skjellerup! It was an absolute first in space history: a spacecraft returning to earth from the depths of the solar system, to receive a gravity assist for a new job. On 2 July 1990 at 10:01:18 Universal Time, precisely five years after its launch, the European Giotto spacecraft approached earth to 22730 km over Australia, raced past earth in a wide hyperbola with a speed of 6.3 kilometers per second, and changed its orbit from one inside earth's to one outside - to meet comet Grigg-Skjellerup on 10 Juli 1992 at 15:30 Universal Time +/- a few minutes. One week after its spectacular encounter with Halley's comet on 14 March 1990 Giotto had been put into a peculiar orbit that went 6 times around the sun while earth performed five orbits. On 2 April 1986 Giotto had been put into hibernation and was on its own for the next 4 years. Amazingly it was on the very first attempt on 19 February 1990 that the spacecraft replied to a wake-up call transmitted by NASA's Deep Space Network 70-meter antennas. At this point Giotto was still 102 Million km from earth, and only its Low Gain Antenna was working. It took another six tense days until the s/c could be commanded to also turn its parabolic High Gain Antenna towars earth, and a full two months more until the detailed checkout of the spacecraft systems and science instru= ments could begin. Giotto was too hot, initially, only 0.75 AU from the sun, with the thermal systems badly damaged in the Halley coma, but in April it was cool enough to work with. As it turned out, the essential systems of the s/c were in remarkably fine state despite their 5 years in space (and a nominal lifetime of just 13 months). But several redundancies were lost, and no mistakes can be afforded now. The results from the 11 scientific experiments were mixed. Completely out of work are the Neutral Mass Spectrometer and regrettably also the Halley Multicolor Camera, the only imaging system on board. Its electronics and mechanics are well, but a part of the baffle tube is stuck in front of the optics - all images returned are just black. Two other instruments are fine but cannot be used at Grigg-Skjellerup: for the Ion Mass Spectrometer, the flyby velocity (14km/s instead of the 68 km/s at Halley's) is too slow to get results, and the entrance window of the PIA dust analyser points into a direction that was useful only at Halley's. Seven instruments, however, are fully or almost fully at work! There is the Energetic Particles Analyser, the Optical Probe Instrument, the Magnetometer (all three just as new), the Johnstone Plasma Analyser and the Reme Plasma Analyser (both partially damaged) and the Dust Impact Detection System, which can still count dust particles. The radio science is well, also, since it needs just a strong radio signal to get information from doppler shifts and the like. This means a shift of interest for Giotto from the questions asked at Halley's: the main interest now is in plasma physics. As the Giotto scientists summarize in a recent report to ESA's Science Programme Committee, there will be > characterisation of the changing features of the solar-wind flow (by JPA), > observation of cometary pick-up ions and anomalous acceleration (JPA,EPA), > determination of electron densities (RPA), > observation of upstream waves, determination of the locations of the various boundaries (bow shock, ionopause, cometopause etc.), and observation of the magnetic pile-up region and cavity immediately around the nucleus (MAG), > determination of the dust spatial density and size distribution and the optical properties of the dust grains (DID and OPE), > and the detection of discrete gaseous emissions, as well as the determi= nation of combined dust and gas densities (OPE and Radio Science). The ESA committee was impressed enough to vote for the GIOTTO EXTENDED MISSION on 13 June; while the roughly 7 million $ spent for reactivating Giotto have been taken from ESA's science budget, the approx. 10 million needed for executing the Extended Mission will have to be collected from ESA's member states separately. It is an 'Optional Programme', no country is forced to pay for Giotto's second appointment, but the changes for financing are quite good. While the plasma investigations are basic research with sometimes little interest in the comet itself (it'll just serve as a small, gas-emitting body thrown into the solar wind), the dust studies also have an engineering side. The inactive Grigg-Skjellerup is much more like the preferred target comets of future space missions than the active Halley. Thus it offers the last opportunity to study the dust env used up, and the technicians and scientists will be on many other projects already (even in 1990 is proved hard to reunite the teams of 1986). But in about 50 years from now, Giotto will once more return to the vicinity of earth: it might be caught (if somebody will still care then) and end up in a space museum... (C) 1990 by Daniel Fischer --- comments to: p515dfi@mpifr-bonn.mpg.de (I'll be on vacation within 12 hours, though, til 28 July) ------------------------------ Date: 3 Jul 90 15:04:13 GMT From: mcsun!unido!mpirbn!p515dfi@uunet.uu.net (Daniel Fischer) Subject: A report on Giotto's earth swingby Just 24 hours ago, earth was visited by a spacecraft that had left here on an Ariane rocket exactly 5 years ago: GIOTTO. The following article (which I've just decided to spontaneously submit to Sky & Telescope, so please do not distribute it yet!) summarizes what I've learned on a nice news conference at the European Space Operations Center at Darmstadt, 3 hrs after the swingby: Earth Swingby: Giotto on its way to Comet Grigg-Skjellerup! It was an absolute first in space history: a spacecraft returning to earth from the depths of the solar system, to receive a gravity assist for a new job. On 2 July 1990 at 10:01:18 Universal Time, precisely five years after its launch, the European Giotto spacecraft approached earth to 22730 km over Australia, raced past earth in a wide hyperbola with a speed of 6.3 kilometers per second, and changed its orbit from one inside earth's to one outside - to meet comet Grigg-Skjellerup on 10 Juli 1992 at 15:30 Universal Time +/- a few minutes. One week after its spectacular encounter with Halley's comet on 14 March 1990 Giotto had been put into a peculiar orbit that went 6 times around the sun while earth performed five orbits. On 2 April 1986 Giotto had been put into hibernation and was on its own for the next 4 years. Amazingly it was on the very first attempt on 19 February 1990 that the spacecraft replied to a wake-up call transmitted by NASA's Deep Space Network 70-meter antennas. At this point Giotto was still 102 Million km from earth, and only its Low Gain Antenna was working. It took another six tense days until the s/c could be commanded to also turn its parabolic High Gain Antenna towars earth, and a full two months more until the detailed checkout of the spacecraft systems and science instru= ments could begin. Giotto was too hot, initially, only 0.75 AU from the sun, with the thermal systems badly damaged in the Halley coma, but in April it was cool enough to work with. As it turned out, the essential systems of the s/c were in remarkably fine state despite their 5 years in space (and a nominal lifetime of just 13 months). But several redundancies were lost, and no mistakes can be afforded now. The results from the 11 scientific experiments were mixed. Completely out of work are the Neutral Mass Spectrometer and regrettably also the Halley Multicolor Camera, the only imaging system on board. Its electronics and mechanics are well, but a part of the baffle tube is stuck in front of the optics - all images returned are just black. Two other instruments are fine but cannot be used at Grigg-Skjellerup: for the Ion Mass Spectrometer, the flyby velocity (14km/s instead of the 68 km/s at Halley's) is too slow to get results, and the entrance window of the PIA dust analyser points into a direction that was useful only at Halley's. Seven instruments, however, are fully or almost fully at work! There is the Energetic Particles Analyser, the Optical Probe Instrument, the Magnetometer (all three just as new), the Johnstone Plasma Analyser and the Reme Plasma Analyser (both partially damaged) and the Dust Impact Detection System, which can still count dust particles. The radio science is well, also, since it needs just a strong radio signal to get information from doppler shifts and the like. This means a shift of interest for Giotto from the questions asked at Halley's: the main interest now is in plasma physics. As the Giotto scientists summarize in a recent report to ESA's Science Programme Committee, there will be > characterisation of the changing features of the solar-wind flow (by JPA), > observation of cometary pick-up ions and anomalous acceleration (JPA,EPA), > determination of electron densities (RPA), > observation of upstream waves, determination of the locations of the various boundaries (bow shock, ionopause, cometopause etc.), and observation of the magnetic pile-up region and cavity immediately around the nucleus (MAG), > determination of the dust spatial density and size distribution and the optical properties of the dust grains (DID and OPE), > and the detection of discrete gaseous emissions, as well as the determi= nation of combined dust and gas densities (OPE and Radio Science). The ESA committee was impressed enough to vote for the GIOTTO EXTENDED MISSION on 13 June; while the roughly 7 million $ spent for reactivating Giotto have been taken from ESA's science budget, the approx. 10 million needed for executing the Extended Mission will have to be collected from ESA's member states separately. It is an 'Optional Programme', no country is forced to pay for Giotto's second appointment, but the changes for financing are quite good. While the plasma investigations are basic research with sometimes little interest in the comet itself (it'll just serve as a small, gas-emitting body thrown into the solar wind), the dust studies also have an engineering side. The inactive Grigg-Skjellerup is much more like the preferred target comets of future space missions than the active Halley. Thus it offers the last opportunity to study the dust enviroment of such a nucleus first-hand, before missions like Comet Rendezvous Asteroid Flyby and Comet Nucleus Sample Return dare to actually orbit one resp. to even land and dig on one. Grigg- Skjellerup orbits the sun every 5.1 years, with a perihelion distance of .99 and an aphelion distance of 4.93 AU: it belongs to Jupiter's familiy and often experiences close encounters with this giant. The last one, in 1964, e.g. altered G-S' inclination from 8 degrees to the present 21 degrees. While the last apparition in 1987 was well observable and resulted in good astrometry (and also lots of amateur sightings at 11th mangnitude), the 1992 apparition will be extremely poor, with only 14mag and almost no visibility from the Northern hemisphere. This will surely hamper astrometric measurements of its precise position and thus the navigation for Giotto, but ESA still hopes to approach the nucleus by less than 1000 km. The chance for a hit on the nucleus is very remote, of course, but *if* it should happen , there would be quite a display - according to estimations by Fred Whipple... Giottos Swingby at earth had been prepared by 25 small attitude and orbit maneuvers that took just 6 kg of its Hydrazine fuel, 18 kg is still left in the tanks. The final correction on 30 June had put Giotto on such a fine trajectory that it missed the point of closest approach to earth by just 5 km and arrived only 2 seconds early. Only a minor orbital tweak will be required before another two-year hiberation will begin for the spacecraft, which is not to be reawakened before April of 1992. The gravity assist was absolutely essential for reaching the Grigg-Skjellerup rendezvous point: it gave Giotto an additional 3.1 km/s of orbital energy (while unmeasurably slowing down the earth, of course) - buring all fuel on board at once would just have resulted in a velocity increase of 16 meters per second. And what is going to happen after the Grigg-Skjellerup adventure? There will definitively be no third comet on the list: fuel will by then be used up, and the technicians and scientists will be on many other projects already (even in 1990 is proved hard to reunite the teams of 1986). But in about 50 years from now, Giotto will once more return to the vicinity of earth: it might be caught (if somebody will still care then) and end up in a space museum... (C) 1990 by Daniel Fischer --- comments to: p515dfi@mpifr-bonn.mpg.de (I'll be on vacation within 12 hours, though, til 28 July) ------------------------------ Date: Wed, 4 Jul 90 00:07:41 EDT From: kfl@quake.LCS.MIT.EDU (Keith F. Lynch) To: utgpu!utzoo!henry%news-server.csri.toronto.edu@uunet.uu.net Subject: Re: NSS protests Chinese launch pricing Cc: kfl@quake.LCS.MIT.EDU, space+@andrew.cmu.edu > Complaints about the pricing being too low always seem to be > implicitly based on the assumption that Chinese costs are similar > to those of the Western suppliers, which is clearly untrue, because > they provide poorer service in simpler ways with lower-cost labor. Of course. Since there is no free market in labor in China, the government has what amounts to slave labor. I don't see that it's even meaningful to say whether this constitutes a subsidy or not. Their whole economy is twisted beyond recognition. And I have never understood why people who protest at dealing with South Africa don't seem to mind the far vaster and more universal tyranny of the communist world. ...Keith ------------------------------ End of SPACE Digest V12 #12 *******************