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 ; Thu, 20 Dec 1990 01:41:58 -0500 (EST) Message-ID: Precedence: junk Reply-To: space+@Andrew.CMU.EDU From: space-request+@Andrew.CMU.EDU To: space+@Andrew.CMU.EDU Date: Thu, 20 Dec 1990 01:41:21 -0500 (EST) Subject: SPACE Digest V12 #681 SPACE Digest Volume 12 : Issue 681 Today's Topics: Galileo Update - 12/12/90 space news from Nov 19 AW&ST Voyager Update - 12/13/90 UNDERSTANDING SOLAR TERRESTRIAL REPORTS - DOCUMENT CONTENTS 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: 13 Dec 90 00:08:18 GMT From: snorkelwacker.mit.edu!usc!elroy.jpl.nasa.gov!jato!mars.jpl.nasa.gov!baalke@bloom-beacon.mit.edu (Ron Baalke) Subject: Galileo Update - 12/12/90 GALILEO STATUS REPORT December 12, 1990 The Galileo spacecraft completed sending back the images for the Earth spin movie were earlier today. All but 22 (10 contiguous in one segment, 12 contiguous in another) of the 1500 images were successfully retrieved. This loss was expected due to DSS (Deep Space Station) view period constraints; the loss has a minor effect on the integrity of the spin movie. Some of the Earth images are being shown on the TV monitors at JPL. Galileo, speeding away from Earth, will continue to collect valuable Earth science data for the next several days. Tomorrow, in addition to continued science activities, a SITURN to lead the sun will be performed. ___ _____ ___ /_ /| /____/ \ /_ /| | | | | __ \ /| | | | Ron Baalke | baalke@mars.jpl.nasa.gov ___| | | | |__) |/ | | |___ Jet Propulsion Lab | baalke@jems.jpl.nasa.gov /___| | | | ___/ | |/__ /| M/S 301-355 | |_____|/ |_|/ |_____|/ Pasadena, CA 91109 | ------------------------------ Date: 13 Dec 90 06:24:41 GMT From: usc!cs.utexas.edu!news-server.csri.toronto.edu!utzoo!henry@apple.com (Henry Spencer) Subject: space news from Nov 19 AW&ST [This is a heavy news week.] Space station designers trying to decide whether it is more important to get started on the latest redesign or finish the enormously complex series of preliminary design reviews on the last design. NASA favors the latter, on the grounds that much of it will not need to be re-done. [Wanna bet?] X-30 contractor team announces first design cycle should be complete by February. Galileo to take a slow-motion movie of Earth after close approach, taking one frame a minute for a full day to show a full rotation of the Earth in one minute at standard movie rates. The next Earth encounter, two years from now, will include an attempt to get a shot of the Moon and the Earth together. Magellan went on strike :-) for 41 minutes Nov 15, but mapping is expected to resume within a few hours, due to improved spacecraft software and ground procedures. There appears to be an occasional random fault in the attitude control system, which is tentatively blamed for the chaos in August too. Atlantis launched Nov 15, carrying a 22klb eavesdropping satellite said to be aimed mostly at the Gulf area. Titan IV launched Nov 12, carrying a missile-warning satellite for Gulf surveillance. Oddly, although the payload is virtually identical to the warning satellite carried up by the shuttle a while ago, the Titan one is secret and the shuttle one wasn't. 1991 shuttle manifest announced, 6-7 flights. STS-39 in Feb-March will carry the (military) Cirris infrared Earth-observation telescope plus an infrared-background-survey experiment. The Gamma Ray Observatory will go up in April, accompanied by some EVA experiments. SLS-1 (Spacelab Life Sciences) will go in May, another TDRS in June, and another missile- warning satellite in July. Spacelab J, the Upper Atmosphere Research Satellite, and the International Materials Lab will fight it out for the last 1-2 slots. [Prediction: Spacelab J, being Japanese, will lose.] Drawings of a large Soviet design study [note, just a design study, despite some claims otherwise] for a reusable heavylift booster, using four flyback strap-on boosters plus a winged core stage whose large nose-mounted payload fairing would slide back over the body somewhat to give a better shape for reentry and gliding flight. All liquid-fuelled, naturally. The boosters might be derivatives of the Energia strap-ons, while the core stage would use three Energia core engines (Energia uses four). Space Studies Institute [!] signs deal to represent NPO Energia in the Americas, for sales of Energia and Buran launch services and payloads aboard Mir. SSI does not plan any challenge to current US government objections to flight of US payloads on Soviet boosters. [Curious; see next item.] Space Studies Institute signs letter of intent with NPO Energia for launch of SSI's privately-funded Lunar Prospector mission [a lunar polar orbiter carrying a gamma-ray spectrometer]. US and Canadian electric utilities discuss rapid development and launch of a solar-storm-warning satellite to help protect power-distribution networks against high solar activity. The utilities fear possible repetitions of the 13 March 1989 storm, which plunged Quebec into a nine-hour blackout, nearly blacked out the entire US Eastern Seaboard as well, and caused serious malfunctions and significant equipment damage in many areas. A small satellite would be parked in a halo orbit around the Earth-Sun L1 point [where ISEE-3 was stationed for some years]. It would be quite simple, carrying a UCLA magnetometer and an LANL plasma analyzer. The utilities hope that it could be up by 1992, given rapid commercial development, launch on Pegasus, and commercial funding throughout. The utilities hope that NOAA would contribute some money -- and indeed, both NOAA and the USAF are interested -- but government budgeting is too slow for the perceived urgent need. Senior Soviet officials outline a proposal for a US-USSR Mars mission by 2011, calling for a joint space station for unmanned-probe assembly, a reusable tug for hardware transport, a living module for crew transport (built by the USSR), and a manned lander (built by the US), all launched by improved Energias. Image of the Caribbean from China's Feng Yun 1B weather satellite, which apparently uses the same signal format as the US's NOAA/Tiros series. Feature article on MBB's proposal for a German X-plane, dubbed "Hytex", as an experimental precursor to the large hypersonic booster for Saenger. Hytex first flight would be 1998. It would be slightly larger than the X-15, powered by kerosene/hydrogen turbo/ramjets, and capable of Mach 5.5. It is envisioned as a joint European project; Sweden has already joined, Italy is expected to join soon, and other countries are being courted. It is considered a necessary preliminary to Saenger because too many key technologies cannot be tested on the ground. "We can't do propulsion integration on the basis of numeric simulation." Reaching the desired speed would be easy; the tricky part is making Hytex a reasonably good simulation of the Saenger first stage. Originally Hytex was going to be a two-stage mini-Saenger, "...but the aerodynamicists thought they could predict the [staging] effects, so the technology demonstrator did not need to be a two-stage vehicle.". It will fly from the ground, and will be manned. An air launch from an A300 was considered, but it would have complicated the propulsion design badly. Testing within densely-populated Europe was felt to require human pilots, horizontal takeoff, conventional landing, and no jettisoned parts. Materials will be largely conventional for the sake of development schedule. [And to think it took the Germans to do this... This is precisely the sort of thing NASA could have, and should have, been doing 15 years ago.] Plans for increasing the number of US imaging spysats, for the sake of disarmament-treaty monitoring, are on hold due to high cost and debate about the need. Inmarsat approves world's first commercial satellite telephone installation, on a Gulfstream 4 business jet. [The G4 is one of the high-end business jets, meant for long-haul work.] More are expected within weeks, followed by airliner installations. (Several have flown experimentally in airliners.) Racal and Honeywell, together the only supplier, have over 40 orders already. Hubble repairs will require the most ambitious EVA of any shuttle mission yet, tentatively three major spacewalks. The first will replace the solar arrays in an attempt to cure the persistent jitter problem. [They were slated for eventual replacement anyway.] The second would replace the Wide Field/Planetary Camera with WFPC2, which will incorporate correcting mirrors to cope with Hubble's aberrant optics. [WFPC2 was planned for this mission anyway, since the WFPC technology has been advancing rapidly.] The third would be the most interesting part; see 2nd next paragraph. A reboost is not likely to be necessary, although one is planned as part of the second maintenance mission in 1996. NASA would like to do the three spacewalks in one flight, despite the demanding schedule, because of the shortage of shuttle missions and a desire to try out intensive spacewalk operations in preparation for the space station. Hubble's solar-array jitter problems actually appear to be a combination of two separate wobbles, an end-to-end 0.1Hz flexing during sunlight-shadow transitions, and a 0.6Hz sideways flexing during sunlit periods. The first has been dealt with by software, but the second then caused trouble. It is possible that a fully adequate software solution may not be feasible, given the limited computer power available. ESA (which supplied the arrays) and NASA are still trying to sort out the exact nature of the problems. The big question is how to deal with the effect of the aberration on the four "axial" instruments. NASA has ruled out anything that might risk disturbing the major mirrors or contaminating the optics, which are already returning major results despite the problems. One possibility is to just try to deal with the Faint Object Camera and leave the photometer and spectrographs alone. ESA will decide on the best approach to the FOC in January. Building a new one is probably too expensive, but in-space alterations are possible. It would require opening sections that were never meant for on-site servicing, but it is considered less difficult than the successful Solar Max repair in 1984. A more daring possibility is to remove the photometer entirely and replace it by a module which would swing correcting optics into the light path going into the other three axial instruments. There is already a spare axial-instrument box, built as a filler in case one of the instruments was not ready for launch for some reason. The trick will be making the optics boom sufficiently adjustable by remote control on a tight development schedule. [It's a pity to sacrifice the photometer. It is the least-used instrument mostly because it is aimed at exploring a whole new area of observations -- very rapid light fluctuations -- that is simply inaccessible from the ground, and consequently is too poorly known to attract lots of observing interest yet. Alas, this is nevertheless probably the best thing to do.] USAF is ahead of schedule on activating the second Titan IV launch pad at the Cape, set to be used first to launch NASA's Mars Observer in 1992. The first Titan IV launch from Vandenberg will be next year; that pad was accepted by the USAF last month. Letter from Robert J. Naumann of Huntsville: "As the former project scientist for the habitat and laboratory modules, I and others in my working group shared a vision of the space station as a national microgravity laboratory where, for the first time, we would have the power, duration, and laboratory resources to carry out microgravity experiments in an interactive manner..." He's given up on that due to the steady shrinkage of power, facilities, and crew time, and says it's time to push for second best, a man-tended free-flier to at least give continuous high-quality microgravity. Letter from Thomas Armstrong of Paramount, Calif, observing that the X-30 would appear to have a serious control problem in common with the space shuttle: its longitudinal control surfaces are too far aft. The result is that their flap action dominates their elevator action, so pulling the nose up makes the aircraft sink *faster*, while pushing it down *reduces* the sink rate. This happens to some extent on all delta-wing aircraft, but on draggy unpowered craft like the shuttle orbiter, it is a major problem. The landing technique is quite unlike that used to land a normal aircraft, and it puts quite a strain on the pilot. "Add to this an apparent lack of direct forward viewing and the X-30 may prove to be one cubic handful to manage during final flare and landing." -- "The average pointer, statistically, |Henry Spencer at U of Toronto Zoology points somewhere in X." -Hugh Redelmeier| henry@zoo.toronto.edu utzoo!henry ------------------------------ Date: 13 Dec 90 22:57:28 GMT From: usc!elroy.jpl.nasa.gov!jato!mars.jpl.nasa.gov!baalke@ucsd.edu (Ron Baalke) Subject: Voyager Update - 12/13/90 VOYAGER STATUS REPORT December 13, 1990 Voyager 1 The Voyager 1 spacecraft collected routine UVS (Ultraviolet Spectrometer) data on sources HD206165, HD217675, and HR264. On December 4, one frame of high-rate PWS (Plasma Wave) data was recorded. On December 6, a TLC (Tracking Loop Capacitor) test was performed from the 70 meter station in Spain, but there was no downlink station coverage for it. A Dummy CC command was transmitted to the spacecraft on December 5 to reset the Command Loss Timer; receipt of the command was verified. Voyager 2 The Voyager 2 spacecraft collected routine UVS data on source 3C273. UVS data were acceptable except for a short period on December 3, which was noisy. On December 4 a frame of PWS data was recorded on the DTR (Digital Tape Recorder) for future playback. On December 6, the scan platform was slewed to sky position OV to search for oxygen emissions. On December 3 the SFOC (Space Flight Operations Center) PC interface to the Voyager DACS (Data Capture and Staging) Reed-Soloman decoder was installed; neither the FOT (Flight Operations Team) nor SCT (Spacecraft Team) was informed of it's installation or of the use of it to process spacecraft data until the next day. CONSUMABLE STATUS AS OF 12/13/90 P R O P E L L A N T S T A T U S P O W E R Consumption One Week Propellant Remaining Output Margin Spacecraft (Gm) (Kg) Watts Watts Voyager 1 5 36.2 + 2.0 366 55 Voyager 2 7 39.3 + 2.0 370 61 ___ _____ ___ /_ /| /____/ \ /_ /| | | | | __ \ /| | | | Ron Baalke | baalke@mars.jpl.nasa.gov ___| | | | |__) |/ | | |___ Jet Propulsion Lab | baalke@jems.jpl.nasa.gov /___| | | | ___/ | |/__ /| M/S 301-355 | |_____|/ |_|/ |_____|/ Pasadena, CA 91109 | ------------------------------ Date: Thu, 13 Dec 90 21:05:02 MST From: std_oler%HG.ULeth.CA@vma.cc.cmu.edu (Cary Oler) Subject: UNDERSTANDING SOLAR TERRESTRIAL REPORTS - DOCUMENT CONTENTS X-St-Vmsmail-To: ST%"space+@andrew.cmu.edu" /\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\ The document "Understanding Solar Terrestrial Reports" has been completed and is ready for distribution. It is an extensive document covering a great many topics. Due to the enormous number of requests that have been received for this document, it was decided that the document should first be distributed over the nets before being sent out directly to those individuals who requested it. This will significantly reduce the amount of time and work involved in distributing the document to those who requested it. To all those who requested the document, thanks for being patient. It is hoped the document will prove useful and informative. The document has been divided into two independent parts. Due to the size of the document, each part has been divided into several "sections." All of the sections have been uuencoded. To obtain the complete document (both parts), collect all of the sections which appear over the networks for BOTH parts and follow the instructions contained in each message. After uudecoding both parts, you should have two files "part1.doc" and "part2.doc" which can then be printed out separately. This document is printer-ready. It should be globally compatible with all printer types. If any of you have problems printing out the document or do not obtain all of the sections within a couple of weeks, notify "std_oler@hg.uleth.ca" of your problems so they can be worked out. The table of contents for both parts of the document have been extracted and reprinted below: PART I: MORPHOLOGICAL ANALYSIS OF PHENOMENA Introduction .................................................... 1 Characteristics of the Sun ...................................... 2 Sunspots and the Solar Flux ..................................... 3 The Sunspot Cycle ............................................... 6 The 22 Year Solar Cycle ......................................... 6 The Solar Atmosphere ............................................ 7 The Photosphere ................................................. 7 The Chromosphere and Spicules ................................... 8 The Corona and Coronal Holes .................................... 9 Forms of Solar Activity ......................................... 10 Plages and Faculae .............................................. 11 Prominences and Filaments ....................................... 12 Solar Flares .................................................... 14 Polar Cap Absorption Events ..................................... 16 Significance of Sweep Frequency Events .......................... 17 The Slowly Varying Component .................................... 17 Type I Bursts and Radio Noise Storms ............................ 18 Type III Radio Bursts ........................................... 18 Type V Radio Burst Emissions .................................... 19 Type II Radio Bursts ............................................ 19 Continuum Type IV Radio Bursts .................................. 20 The Earth's Magnetic Field ...................................... 21 Geomagnetic Substorms ........................................... 22 Geomagnetic Storms .............................................. 23 Ionospheric Effects of Geomagnetic Storms ....................... 24 Radio Signal Propagation ........................................ 25 Propagation of VLF Signals ...................................... 26 HF Signal Propagation ........................................... 26 Long-Distance VHF Signal Propagation ............................ 29 Characteristics of Auroral Activity ............................. 31 Auroral Relationship with Geomagnetic Activity .................. 31 Significance of Aurora's to Astronomers ......................... 33 Auroral Classifications ......................................... 33 The Impacts of Geomagnetic Storms and Solar Activity ............ 35 Magnetic Storm Induction ........................................ 36 Atmospheric Circulation Modifications ........................... 38 Atmospheric Pressure Responses to Solar Flares .................. 38 Atmospheric Electrical Enhancements following Major Flares ...... 40 Geomagnetic Effects on Atmospheric Pressure ..................... 42 Concluding Remarks .............................................. 44 PART II: INTERPRETING THE REPORTS Introduction .................................................... 1 The Solar Terrestrial Forecast and Review ....................... 2 Summary of Solar Terrestrial Activity ........................... 2 Short Term Solar Terrestrial Forecast ........................... 5 Solar Region Summary ............................................ 6 Geomagnetic Activity Summary .................................... 8 10-Day Geomagnetic Activity Forecast ............................ 9 Graphical Analysis of Solar Activity ............................ 10 20-Day Solar Activity Forecast .................................. 10 HF Radio Signal Propagation Predictions ......................... 11 VHF Propagation Prediction Charts ............................... 14 Auroral Activity Predictions .................................... 15 Monthly Solar Terrestrial Review ................................ 16 Geomagnetic Storm Alert ......................................... 16 Concluding Remarks .............................................. 17 Comments and/or questions regarding this document are welcomed and may be directed to "std_oler@hg.uleth.ca". /\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\ ------------------------------ End of SPACE Digest V12 #681 *******************