Date: Tue, 16 Mar 93 05:00:10 From: Space Digest maintainer Reply-To: Space-request@isu.isunet.edu Subject: Space Digest V16 #316 To: Space Digest Readers Precedence: bulk Space Digest Tue, 16 Mar 93 Volume 16 : Issue 316 Today's Topics: Alignment of planets? Anon and message cancellation A site for orbital elements? Beyond 1000! (2 msgs) Building WF/PC-2 CD's in space Clementine, SDIO, ABM Treaty Fallen Angels Life in the Galaxy Lunar Ice Transport Mars exploration plans, and absence thereof (2 msgs) Treaties etc. (was Clementine etc.) Without a Plan Welcome to the Space Digest!! Please send your messages to "space@isu.isunet.edu", and (un)subscription requests of the form "Subscribe Space " to one of these addresses: listserv@uga (BITNET), rice::boyle (SPAN/NSInet), utadnx::utspan::rice::boyle (THENET), or space-REQUEST@isu.isunet.edu (Internet). ---------------------------------------------------------------------- Date: Mon, 15 Mar 1993 15:37:45 GMT From: Edmund Hack Subject: Alignment of planets? Newsgroups: sci.space In article <11MAR199310064244@mars.lerc.nasa.gov> seove@mars.lerc.nasa.gov (ERIC OVERTON) writes: >Will an alignment of the planets occur in the near future >like in the year 2000? Will all the planets be in this >alignment? > >Eric The planets are all in alignment right now! They are all lined up in the SAME PLANE. I feel the energy flowing this instant.... or is that the heating system blowing on me? -- Edmund Hack - Lockheed Engineering & Sciences Co. - Houston, TX hack@aio.jsc.nasa.gov - I speak only for myself, unless blah, blah.. "Everybody wants prosthetic foreheads on their real heads" "I'm not an actor, but I play one on TV." ------------------------------ Date: Mon, 15 Mar 93 05:00:10 GMT From: Cameron Newham Subject: Anon and message cancellation Newsgroups: sci.space Hmmm, I've been following this discussion of anon. postings and message cancellations for a while now. Firstly, my apologies for posting a non-space related post, but I feel this is an important issue in what I consider to be one of the best newsgroups and one of my favs. Now - as to anon. postings. I see no reason why such a service should cause so much concern - it's so petty. Anyway, there are several reasons why we shouldn't be overly concerned about it :- 1) many people (inc. myself) are using home computers to link in and we can be anybody we like - just by changing a couple of environment variables for our news readers. 2) If you remove the anon. service, someone else would start one up. 3) It's not doing anyone any great harm. 4) If there wasn't so much bickering and argument about it, it would tend to be less of an issue - cf The Satanic Verses by S. Rushdie. As to message cancellation - what gives you the right to cancel messages unless you are the author? If you feel the need for a moderated group to remove anon. postings, then maybe there should be a vote and creation of a moderated space related group. Hijacking (netjacking?) someone elses post is anti-social AND a limitation of freedom. On the other side of the fence, I DO find it annoying that some clever fellow has decided to use the anon. postings to oppose the idea of this automatic moderator. I really don't wish to see any more of these posts as they add nothing to the discussion of space and are causing people to get heated over this anon. issue when it ain't necessary. I guess it's the result of point 4. above :( thanks, cameron. ------------------------------------------------------------------------------- | _ _, ____ _ __ _ .__ | | |(__(_|_/ / /_(/_/ (_(_)_/ /__ | UN-altered REPRODUCTION and DISSEMINATION | | | of this IMPORTANT information is ENCOURAGED. | |cam@syzygy.DIALix.oz.au | | |cam@adied.oz.au | -- R. E. McElwaine, BS Phys/Astro UW-EC | ------------------------------------------------------------------------------- ------------------------------ Date: Mon, 15 Mar 1993 09:53:53 GMT From: M{kel{ Veikko Subject: A site for orbital elements? Newsgroups: sci.space,sci.astro In article <14900.2ba20383@cpva.saic.com> thomsonal@cpva.saic.com writes: > Can anyone here suggest a site that would be interested in > maintaining an ftp-able archive of artificial satellite orbital > elements? archive.afit.af.mil Satellite software,documents,elements 129.92.1.66 /pub/space ftp.funet.fi PC,Mac,CP/M,Atari,Amiga,databases,Unix, 128.214.6.100 HP48,OS/2,texts,News,solar reports,images, /pub/astro Satellite elements,FAQ kilroy.jpl.nasa.gov Satellite elements,spacecraft info 128.149.1.165 /pub/space ------------------------------ Date: Mon, 15 Mar 1993 09:15:17 GMT From: Adrian Hassall Lewis Subject: Beyond 1000! Newsgroups: sci.space francis@cs.adelaide.edu.au (Francis Vaughan) writes: >In article , pgf@srl03.cacs.usl.edu (Phil G. Fraering) writes: >|> I'm just sounding out some disturbing ideas I had, when I realized that >|> the US _is_ making an "investment" in new high technology that the >|> people on TV and CNN and in the administration berate us for not >|> making, and the only coverage on TV of this comes from science >|> shows out of Oz that most people can't get to watch. >Hmmm, I guess that if you call Beyond 2000 a science program you >really must be fed on a poor diet. I rather liked the >(inadvertent?) mis-titling given to the program by the origonator >of the this thread. It seems to capture a lot of local feeling >about the quality of the program. I find Beyond 2000 good mind >numbing stuff when I want to veg in front of the tube, but >painfully difficult to watch othertimes as they blithly report >what has been common knowledge for some years as scientific >breakthrough. They suffer from the "one hundredths of the width >of a human hair" syndrom all to often, and cronicly seem to miss >the point of many stories. My favorite must be the reporter that [...] >For high quality I havn't seen better then the Brits, Horizon >and the like are very very good. > Francis Vaughan FYI, "Beyond 2000" started off as "Towards 2000", and was made by the Australian Broadcasting Corporation. It was a very well regarded program and (I think) won several TV awards. For some inexcuseable reason, the ABC axed it, and the reporters/format/etc went to a commercial station becoming the more popular, but less sound "Beyond 2000" (and it continued to win TV awards). The ABC, realizing its mistake, started a new science program "Quantum", which is also winning awards. NOTE however, the awards won by the ABC programs are things like UN awards, but "Beyond 2000" picks up TV magazine readers awards. Which is better? Popularizing science or getting the facts 100% correct? ajax ------------------------------ Date: 15 Mar 93 10:32:55 -0600 From: Bill Higgins-- Beam Jockey Subject: Beyond 1000! Newsgroups: sci.space In article <1o15ak$3e8@huon.itd.adelaide.edu.au>, francis@cs.adelaide.edu.au (Francis Vaughan) writes: > In article , pgf@srl03.cacs.usl.edu (Phil G. Fraering) writes: > I find Beyond 2000 good mind > numbing stuff when I want to veg in front of the tube, but > painfully difficult to watch othertimes as they blithly report > what has been common knowledge for some years as scientific > breakthrough. [...] > The style of the show seeks to sensationalise and often > trivialise much work, and has a habit of also mixing in utter > dross and occasionally features fringe science with no caveat > warning the naive veiwer. As a kid my interest in science and technology was *greatly* stimulated by the American magazines *Popular Science* and *Popular Mechanics*, which practiced a school of cornball gosh-wow journalism similar to that of *B2K*. I don't think it did much damage to my scientific education, and I am inclined to be tolerant of such popularization. (However, it probably led directly to my addiction to Tom Swift novels for a few years...) > For high quality I havn't seen better then the Brits, Horizon > and the like are very very good. Many Americans don't realize that plenty of episodes of the British series *Horizon* are transported across the Atlantic, get their serial numbers filed off, and appear on PBS as *Nova* episodes. In some cases I suspect they even replace the British narration with a Yank-accented voice. -- O~~* /_) ' / / /_/ ' , , ' ,_ _ \|/ - ~ -~~~~~~~~~~~/_) / / / / / / (_) (_) / / / _\~~~~~~~~~~~zap! / \ (_) (_) / | \ | | Bill Higgins Fermi National Accelerator Laboratory \ / Bitnet: HIGGINS@FNAL.BITNET - - Internet: HIGGINS@FNAL.FNAL.GOV ~ SPAN/Hepnet: 43011::HIGGINS ------------------------------ Date: 15 Mar 93 14:36:17 GMT From: Jack Hudler Subject: Building WF/PC-2 Newsgroups: sci.space,sci.astro In article <1o0h4e$cr1@huon.itd.adelaide.edu.au> francis@cs.adelaide.edu.au writes: >Arrggghhhh! this gets worse. This is actually rather interesting, >anyone got any real numbers? Perhaps I could work it out, but >it doesn't say whose hair, where on the body or whether it is is >summer or winter, or indeed whether it is an African or European >swallow :-) > Like the previous article I too would like to know "what is the airspeed velocity of an unladen swallow" both African and European. :-) Oh! and while your at it, how do these actuator wiggles work. ------------------------------ Date: 15 Mar 93 15:09:25 GMT From: Eric Rothoff Subject: CD's in space Newsgroups: sci.space I was wondering, about a week ago there was a discussion about the effects of radiation on computer's RAM and magnetic hard drives. Would CD-ROM or CD-WORM be effected in the same way? Thanks, Eric Rothoff rothoff@egr.msu.edu -- ________________________________________________________ | | | | Eric G. Rothoff | "Life is a game, LIVE IT! | | rothoff@egr.msu.edu | don't hide from it. | ------------------------------ Date: 15 Mar 93 15:17:51 GMT From: fred j mccall 575-3539 Subject: Clementine, SDIO, ABM Treaty Newsgroups: sci.space In flb@flb.optiplan.fi ("F.Baube x554") writes: >SDIO has been shooting holes in the ABM Treaty for a *long* time. >Ten years ago, after noting that the treaty prohibits tests against >objects in space, they announced their intention to conduct tests >against *points* in space. How's that shooting holes in the Treaty? Sounds to me more like shooting thorugh a hole that is already there. >Relevance to sci.space ? Hm-m-m .. maybe detour all that >SDIO money and hardware into unabashedly civilian programs ? Only if they let SDIO continue to run it. If you hand it to NASA, I'm left with the impression that it will just sort of 'disappear', a victim of NIH. -- "Insisting on perfect safety is for people who don't have the balls to live in the real world." -- Mary Shafer, NASA Ames Dryden ------------------------------------------------------------------------------ Fred.McCall@dseg.ti.com - I don't speak for others and they don't speak for me. ------------------------------ Date: Mon, 15 Mar 93 15:02:14 GMT From: Dave Jones Subject: Fallen Angels Newsgroups: sci.space fred j mccall 575-3539 (mccall@mksol.dseg.ti.com) wrote: > In <1993Mar9.185539.10315@pixel.kodak.com> dj@ekcolor.ssd.kodak.com (Dave Jones) writes: > > >Daniel Myers (myers@cs.scarolina.edu) wrote: > >> > >> I am VERY interested in this topic. How does one on internet reach > >> anyone on BIX? > >> > > >Since last month, its just been a matter of e-mailing "userid@bix.com". > > >Don't expect immediate receipt of your mail on BIX. Its > >a dial-up service and some busy souls may only jump in once a week > >(hopefully not much more: mail is expired after 15 days). > > >If you want to trawl for more IDs, buy Byte or Windows magazines, or join us > >on BIX! > > However, if you elect to join it rather than mail to it, you should be > aware that at least some of the top management (assuming it hasn't > changed radically since I was there) is relatively intolerant of > criticism and requires the maintenance of a certain amount of > 'politically correct' tone (this last may only really be enforced on > people who are also critical of BIX management). > This is not at all true. You'll find all the yahoos you want on Jerry Pournelle's own set of conferences, collectively known as the 'tojerry' exchange. You'll also find Henry on tape delay, so to speak. Selected utterances are relayed to the 'space' topic, as is much of sci.space.news, strictly on a one-way basis. -- ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||Marketing is the business of selling || Honk if you like Einstein |||||||||||projects to management. ||------------------------------------------------------------------------ ||Dave Jones (dj@ekcolor.ssd.kodak.com)|Eastman Kodak Co. Rochester, NY | ------------------------------ Date: Mon, 15 Mar 93 17:38:35 MET From: PHARABOD@FRCPN11.IN2P3.FR Subject: Life in the Galaxy >Date: 12 Mar 93 23:34:20 GMT >From: Jeff Bytof >Subject: Life in the Galaxy > > Some Thoughts on Technological Life in the Galaxy > ------------------------------------------------- [stuff deleted] >Date: Sat, 13 Mar 1993 21:57:54 GMT >From: Josh Hopkins >Subject: Life in the Galaxy [stuff deleted] If I may jump in ? Has there ever been an estimation of the rate of (hypothetical) Galactic civilizations which had to leave their original planet because of some expected cosmic cataclysm (collision with some planetoid object, disparition of their CO2 because of increasing heat, transformation of their Sun into a red giant, nearby giant star threatening to become a super-nova, detection of black hole(s) moving in the vicinity, ...) ? And has there been an estimation of the rate of these expelled civilizations which could have chosen to become nomadic, that is to say not fixed inside a solar system ? (I agree that the final result may be a few per cent of a few per cent of N = 0, but what if it were N >> 0 ?) J. Pharabod ------------------------------ Date: 15 Mar 93 09:05:44 GMT From: Stewart T Fleming Subject: Lunar Ice Transport Newsgroups: sci.space In article <1nj5ueEk6f@uni-erlangen.de>, bon@lte.e-technik.uni-erlangen.de (Uwe Bonnes) writes: >more stuff deleted > >???? is this sci.fiction??? Yes. Clarke, Arthur C. Cited in _2061 : Odyssey 3_, 1990. >Uwe Bonnes bon@lte.e-technik.uni-erlangen.de STF -- sfleming@cee.hw.ac.uk, sfleming@icbl.hw.ac.uk Top-down design is the enemy. "What do you care what other people think ?" - A. Feynman The Reality Distortion Field is ON. ------------------------------ Date: Mon, 15 Mar 1993 15:21:49 GMT From: Gary Coffman Subject: Mars exploration Newsgroups: sci.space In article collins@well.sf.ca.us (Steve Collins) writes: > >I know some folks working on MESUR at JPL and I think you would be hard >pressed to keep them from using VR at some level, especially if the >full MESUR network is flown. I think that you should expect VR access to >the Mars Observer data as well. As the technology becomes available >comercially, it my become hard to get the old flat displays we are used to >now. >When was the last time you saw a card reader or a current loop tty?... Last weekend. I was touring the computer center of a large public hospital, marveling at all the big X window color displays, when I spied two keypunch machines and a card reader over in one corner of the computer room. They still run payroll off of card decks, it's too important to trust to anything less. Gary -- Gary Coffman KE4ZV | You make it, | gatech!wa4mei!ke4zv!gary Destructive Testing Systems | we break it. | uunet!rsiatl!ke4zv!gary 534 Shannon Way | Guaranteed! | emory!kd4nc!ke4zv!gary Lawrenceville, GA 30244 | | ------------------------------ Date: Mon, 15 Mar 1993 11:47:15 GMT From: Nick Szabo Subject: plans, and absence thereof Newsgroups: sci.space,alt.sci.planetary baalke@kelvin.jpl.nasa.gov (Ron Baalke) writes: >You make two statements here that seem to contradict each other. You >say manned landings are utterly stupid, but then say settlements should >be one of our long term goals. The contradiction vanishes if we consider the extensive industrial requirements for sustainable, self-funding space settlement, as opposed to the tin-can, expensive and temporary "manned bases" currently envisioned by those in power at Houston and Huntsville. Space settlement is a long-term vision; short-term NASA pork & glory with astronauts has practically nothing to do with it, except for the _prima facia_ presence of "man in space". For industry we need extensive quantities of native water & organics, plus some metal & silicon regolith, and advanced miniaturized chemical reactors and robots to process and assemble into propellant, shielding, large structures, etc. We need to explore unique environments for their utilization possibilities: comet tail gas/plasma manipulation, the Io/Jupiter plasma torus (no energy crisis there!), etc. Native materials and environments open up a plethora of industries: microgravity/vacuum, large-scale plasma processing, etc. which I've described in other posts, while enabling and funding for the longer-term vision of settlement. The much-touted "life sciences" stuff is worthless if we haven't solved these problems of private funding and affordability via space industrialization. It just doesn't make any difference for the next 20+ years how long an abnormally healthy adult human can stay in microgravity below the Van Allen Belts. That question is completely unimportant in the short term and only sheds minor light on the long-term viability of people living on the Moon & Mars. The life sciences questions, including Mars & Moon gravity levels and the normal free-space radiation levels, can be examined much more thoroughly and far more efficiently with the <$1 billion bolo "LabRatSat" than with the $multi-hundred-billion astronaut missions. The microgravity industry and all the space sciences are far more effectively done by automated spacecraft in their proper orbits, instead of instruments forced onto astronaut stations, bases, etc. for political reasons. Commercial and military operations also need their own unique orbits and capabilities, not an idiotic, dictatorial NASA "infrastructure" of Shuttle and Space Station. The tasks of developing commercial space industry is terribly downplayed at JPL, perhaps because you assume naively that someobody else in NASA is taking care of this, and that your own main task, planetary exploration, has no relevance to applications. The long-term visions of large-scale space industrializaton and space settlement are entirely missing from JPL's plan, replaced by the lame bow to the Huntsville and Houston astronaut cult. It's important JPL maintain and expand upon its own vision instead of succumbing to these idiots due to their short-term political clout and their narrow-minded insistence that everyone agree with their pathetic "vision" or get out. (Sorry for the harsh language, but the gall of Dennis Wingo to sit here and use my tax money to harangue me that the problem with the space program is that everybody in the U.S. doesn't agree with and fork over money for his archaic Plan which has already squandered $100's of billions, just torks the hell out of me. Again my apologies to yourself and third parties). >First, what is the difference between pure science and >gathering knowledge? How can you do one without doing the other? It makes a difference in target, funding, DSN scheduling, etc. priorities. Currently these are officially supposed to be determine solely by "scientific value". Adding prospecting as a second goal would favor targets close and promising as a source of ores or important bulk materials get higher priority when prospecting is taken into account. This means moon, Apollo-Amors, Jupiter-family comets, and Mars get the nod more often over the gas giants, Pluto, long-period comets, etc. It means funding a study to look for signs of gold ores from the MO minerological data, or to look at the platinum concentrations in meteors, etc. I'm not talking about exclusion here; just giving the nod to prospecting targets a little more often even if the pure science is less interesting, and doing more prospecting-related studies. In hand with that, working with industrial equipment design teams & developing a new vision and plan of space industrialization, to replace the archaic, early-20th century science fiction cliches that now dominate the rest of NASA. This gives JPL its own unique path into the future, a chance to search a knowledge space that up until now has almost entirely been ignored by scientists & engineers concentrating on the pure science aspect, or the bizarrely misplaced astronaut "visions" emanating out of Huntsville and Houston. BTW, there are many space scientists involved in developing this new vision including John Lewis (Arizona State U.), Eleanor Helin (Caltech?), Steve Ostro (JPL), etc. There are also some brilliant engineers, like Bob Zubrin at Martin Marietta and Tony Zuppero at DOE. It would be quite something to see JPL get these folks together with some Space Studies Institute people (eg Freeman Dyson) for a conference. SSI develops long-term space industrialization/settelment scenarios quite independently of short-term NASA politics, it has a plethora of good ideas to bring to the table. Nick Szabo szabo@techbook.com -- Nick Szabo szabo@techboook.com ------------------------------ Date: Mon, 15 Mar 1993 12:01:31 GMT From: Nick Szabo Subject: plans, and absence thereof Newsgroups: sci.space,alt.sci.planetary michaelc@hardy.u.washington.edu (Mike Courtney) writes: >Wow, you must REALLY be sore about getting canned from JPL... Au contrair, I left JPL on quite freindly terms after completing the normal student internship, and declined an invitation to work there permanently in favor of a higher paying private sector job. (Actually JPL is technically private sector and pays higher than the rest of NASA, but even so not enough....:-) I still think JPL the best NASA center, but it may be deteriorating, judging from recent posts from there. (Either the recent reports or the very creative and insightful people I had the privelege to know at JPL may not be representative, however). (Of course after that last post they might not like me so much! But I was referring to people all across NASA and space fandom who think their own "vision" should be everybody else's, and most specifically I was thinking of Dennis Wingo who thinks this about the most obsolete and cliched and destructive "vision" currently infecting NASA. The hubris at JPL comes from those space scientists and planners who think pure science should be funded irrelevent of its possible applications. Also I'm not talking about Ron Baalke himself, just about what he's reporting). -- Nick Szabo szabo@techboook.com ------------------------------ Date: Mon, 15 Mar 93 13:46:48 EET From: flb@flb.optiplan.fi (F.Baube x554) Subject: Treaties etc. (was Clementine etc.) Phil G. Fraering > Saying the Russians and other citizens of the CIS should be responsible > for the debts of previous dictatorial governments would still be slavery > and morally repugnant as such even if they could pay for it... and they can't. Yup, international law's a bitch. This even happens to our *friends*, like the Phillipines for instance. We let'em run up a tab while ol' Ferdinand pocketed a goodly chunk of it all, and then they're obligated to repay it. We're hardly blameless, the US of A. -- * Fred Baube GU/MSFS * We live in only one small room of the * Optiplan O.Y. * enormous house of our consciousness * baube@optiplan.fi * -- William James * It's lo-og, it's lo-og, it's big, it's heavy, it's wood ! * It's lo-og, it's lo-og, it's better than bad, it's good ! * #include ------------------------------ Date: Mon, 15 Mar 1993 10:33:15 GMT From: Nick Szabo Subject: Without a Plan Newsgroups: sci.space,talk.politics.space wingo%cspara.decnet@Fedex.Msfc.Nasa.Gov writes: >In my opinion the space program has a fundamental problem that cannot be >solved by Allen and I reaching for the jugular. The American space program >today has no central, unifying sense of purpose. Would that it were true. The fact is that the obsolete, bizarrely expensive religious sacraments of shuttle, space station and future plans for "manned bases" still dominate the thinking and funding of our civilian program, while producing practically no advance towards anything useful, such as a sustainable human presence in space or serving the needs of people on earth. Until we _lose_ the delusional, cultish cant of Wingo's, that our vision must be one (his) and must never change, regardless of changes in technology, politics, etc., NASA and space fans will continue beating our heads against a brick wall. -- Nick Szabo szabo@techboook.com ------------------------------ Date: Mon, 15 Mar 93 17:34:27 EST From: MAILRP%ESA.BITNET@vm.gmd.de Press Release Nr.11-93 Paris, 15 March 1993 Spacelab D-2 ready for launch March 21, 1993 has now been set as the launch date for Shuttle Mission STS-55. Shuttle Columbia and her seven- member crew will fly the second German Spacelab mission (D-2) on a nine day space journey dedicated to fundamental research in the fields of life sciences, material sciences, Earth observation and robotics. The launch window opens at 15h52, Paris time (9h52 local time at Kennedy Space Centre, Florida). This Spacelab flight- the 7th for the ESA developed manned orbiting laboratory- will carry 92 experiments. 32 of them have been developed with ESA's funding. The responsibility for the complete scientific programme is in the hands of DLR- the German Aerospace Research Establishment- which from its D-2 dedicated space operation control centre in Oberpfaffenhofen (Munich, Germany) will perform all payload operations. The ESA facilities on board Spacelab include Anthrorack, a laboratory for research in human physiology in space developed for ESA by Aerospatiale (France) as prime contractor. Anthrorack will be used to perform an integrated screening of the human body in space as it is able to take simultaneous measurements of the respiratory, cardiovascular and endocrine systems. The astronauts will undergo different sets of tests at regular intervals during the mission. ESA's Advanced Fluid Physics Module (AFPM) developed for ESA by Alenia (Italy) will instead accommodate five experiments for research in fluid physics, while six experiments in the field of materials research will be also flown. Two further ESA experiments flying on Spacelab D-2, the Crew Telesupport Experiment and the Microgravity Measurement Assembly, will serve to validate concepts designed for the future Columbus Attached Laboratory. ESA's astronaut Ulf Merlbold, who flew twice in space with Spacelab 1 in 1983 and IML-1 in 1992 and served as back-up for ESA's payload specialist Wubbo Ockels for the German D-1 mission in 1985, will be in the control room at Oberpfaffenhofen as science coordinator and will support the activities of his astronaut colleagues: the Germans Hans Schlegel and Ulrich Walter from DLR and NASA's commander Steve Nagel, pilot Tom Henricks, mission specialists Jerry Ross, Charles Precourt and Bernard Harris Jr. The highlights of the Spacelab D2 mission can be followed via satellite daily between 11:00hrs and 17:00hrs (between 14:00hrs till about 20:00hrs on the day of the launch): "ALL- TV", a special TV progamme produced by DLR- and supported also by ESA- will be retransmitted by the German telecommunications satellite DFS2 Kopernicus. The technical data for the transmission are as follows: Satellite position: 28,5 degrees E, Transponder: A2 Downlink frequency: 11,525 GHz, Polarisation: X Audio frequency: 6,56 MHz For accreditation at the D-2 press center in Oberpfaffenhofen, please contact by fax DLR Public Affairs office, Linder Hoehe, D-5000-KOELN PORZ (Germany), Fax +49 2203.601.3249. During the mission, information can be obtained via the press center at DLR Oberpfaffenhofen : Tel: +49 89.500.4669 - Fax : +49 8153.28.1606.   ------------------------------ End of Space Digest Volume 16 : Issue 316 ------------------------------