Return-path: X-Andrew-Authenticated-as: 7997;andrew.cmu.edu;Ted Anderson Received: from hogtown.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, 18 Apr 91 02:12:47 -0400 (EDT) Message-ID: Precedence: junk Reply-To: space+@Andrew.CMU.EDU From: space-request+@Andrew.CMU.EDU To: space+@Andrew.CMU.EDU Date: Thu, 18 Apr 91 02:12:40 -0400 (EDT) Subject: SPACE Digest V13 #423 SPACE Digest Volume 13 : Issue 423 Today's Topics: NASA Headline News for 04/15/91 (Forwarded) NASA Headline News for 04/16/91 (Forwarded) Re: SSF Micro-g Re: Earth/Moon formation Administrivia: Submissions to the SPACE Digest/sci.space should be mailed to space+@andrew.cmu.edu. Other mail, esp. [un]subscription requests, should be sent to space-request+@andrew.cmu.edu, or, if urgent, to tm2b+@andrew.cmu.edu ---------------------------------------------------------------------- Date: 17 Apr 91 06:55:03 GMT From: usenet@ames.arc.nasa.gov (Peter E. Yee) Subject: NASA Headline News for 04/15/91 (Forwarded) NASA HEADLINE NEWS Internal Communications Branch (P-2) NASA Headquarters Monday, April 15, 1991 Audio Service:202/755-1788 This is NASA Headline News for Monday April 15, 1991 The Space Shuttle Atlantis is currently on schedule to begin the trip back to the Kennedy Space Center tommorrow morning, landing tomorrow afternoon at KSC. This schedule will be confirmed at a ferry readiness review this afternoon. For the orbiter Discovery, the aft compartment is being closed out and payload processing continues on schedule. The two-day flight readiness review for STS-39 starts today and may be wrapped up by day's end, at which time the launch date for this mission will be announced. In the meantime, in preparation for Columbia's STS-40 mission, close-out work on the elevons and reaction control system is underway. In the Vehicle Assembly Building, the solid rocket boosters have been stacked and preparations are underway to mate the external tank with the SRB's this Thursday. Rollover of the orbiter for mating with the ET and the SRB's is scheduled for April 24, and rollout to the launch pad on May 4. Japan's BS-3H Communications satellite is scheduled to be launched on Friday, April 19 aboard General Dynamics Atlas 1 rocket from Cape Canaveral, Florida. NOTE: Disregard the initial information about Galileo as it was inaccurate. Today Marshall Space Flight Center Spacemobile lecturer, Will Robertson, will make several presentations at Columbia State Community College, Columbia, Tennessee, to high school students from 11 Tennessee schools. The Marshall education office worked with Rep. Bart Gordon's (D-Tenn., 6th District) Office to set up the presentations. Last month, Marshall's three Spacemobile lecturers visited 39 schools, conducting 143 presentations which reached a student audience of 21,909. They also conducted seven teachers workshops sessions with 70 teachers. As a related piece of information, the majority of the NASA Field Centers participated extensively in National Engineers Week in February. Overall, approximately 481 NASA employees spoke to more then 31,000 students at 176 schools nationwide. For everyone who's ever looked up at the sky and wondered: Tonight on PBS, the six-part series, "Astronomers," premieres, and will explore the heavens through the work of various astronomers, including the "sidewalk stronomer," John Dobson, who brings astronomy and his telescopes to people in the street. The series begins at 8:00 pm tonight and is on for the next five Mondays. Here's the broadcast schedule for Public Affairs events on NASA Select TV. All times are Eastern. NASA Select TV is carried on GE Satcom F2R, transponer 13, C-Band, 72 degrees W Long., Audio 6.8, Frequency 3960 MHz. Monday, 4/15/91 12:00 noon Space Basics 1:00 pm STS-1 Anniversary Program from KSC 2:00 pm STS-1 10th Anniversary Roundtable Discussion from JSC All events and times may change without notice. This report is filed daily, Monday through Friday, by 12:00 pm, Eastern. It is a service of NASA Headquarters Office of Public Affairs. Contact: CREDMOND on NASAmail or at 202/453-8425. ------------------------------ Date: 17 Apr 91 07:16:52 GMT From: usenet@ames.arc.nasa.gov (Peter E. Yee) Subject: NASA Headline News for 04/16/91 (Forwarded) Headline News Internal Communications Branch (P-2) NASA Headquarters Tuesday, April 16, 1991 Audio Service: 202 / 755-1788 This is NASA Headline News for Tuesday, April 16, 1991 . . . Jet Propulsion Laboratory Galileo flight controllers and project management continue to examine data sent by the spacecraft during its incomplete unfurling of its high gain antenna last Thursday. The antenna was commanded to unfurl, but JPL controllers did not get indications in either the spacecraft spin rate, which would have slowed, or in the antenna-deployment limit switches, that the antenna properly opened. There are several possible causes under current investigation, as well as several possible fixes. * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * NASA management yesterday selected April 23 as the target launch date for the STS-39 Department of Defense mission aboard Discovery. Discovery is on Pad 39-A and nearly ready to support the flight. Activity today includes cryogenic servicing for the two major DoD payloads, AFP-675 and the Infrared Background Signature Survey experiment. Columbia's stack is ready for installation of the external tank today. Following completion of the STS-40 stack, Columbia is expected to be rolled to the Vehicle Assembly Building on April 24 and mated. Rollout of Columbia to launch pad 39-B could occur as early as MayJ4. Atlantis is expected to leave Edwards Air Force Base by early this afternoon. It was to have been airborne earlier this morning but was held up by a minor mechanical problem associated with a 747- carrier aircraft mounting bracket. The current flight plan calls for a refueling stop at Kelly Air Force Base, San Antonio, and then on to the Shuttle Landing Facility at Kennedy Space Center, if weather and time allow. Atlantis could layover at Columbus, Miss., Air Force Base if weather or time do not allow a direct flight to Kennedy from Kelly. * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * Goddard Space Flight Center flight controllers report that the Gamma Ray Observatory spacecraft is doing well in its 287 by 280 mile- high orbit. The observatory is in a normal, solar-array-to-the-sun mode and all batteries are fully charged. Command and telemetry are reported to be excellent, as is the spacecraft's temperature. Activity at the Goddard Payload Operations Control Center this week is centered around turn-on activities associated with GRO's instruments. Instrument calibration is expected to begin by the end of the month and to take two weeks to complete. * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * The STS-37 flight crew post-mission press conference will be held this Friday, April 19, at the Johnson Space Center briefing facility in Bldg 2. Mission commander Steve Nagel and the other four crewmembers will describe their mission and show video of their deployment of the Gamma Ray Observatory and dual spacewalks. The briefing will be carried live on NASA Select TV on Friday at 10:00 am EDT. * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * Ames Research Center reports that their Education office conducted 21 teacher workshops in three states last month. In addition to the teacher activity, Ames also visited 63 schools in California, Utah and Washington. The office also provided the keynote speaker for a young women's forum at San Ramon, Calif. The forum focused on future possibilities for America's young women and was entitled "Expanding Your Horizons." Here's the broadcast schedule for Public Affairs events on NASA Select TV. All times are Eastern. NASA Select TV is carried on GE Satcom F2R, transponder 13, C-Band, 72 degrees W Long., Audio 6.8, Frequency 3960 MHz. Tuesday, 4/16/91 2:00 pm Senate Subcommittee on Science, Technology and Space (Albert Gore, D-Tenn, chairman) hearing on Space Station Freedom. 6:00 pm Probable replay of Senate Subcommittee on Science, Technology and Space (Albert Gore, D-Tenn, chairman) hearing on ozone depletion. Taped this morning at 9:00 am. approx. 8:00 pm Probable replay of Senate Subcommittee on Science, Technology and Space (Albert Gore, D-Tenn, chairman) hearing on Space Station Freedom. All events and times may change without notice. This report is filed daily, Monday through Friday, by 12:00 pm, Eastern. It is a service of NASA Headquarters Office of Public Affairs. Contact: CREDMOND on NASAmail or at 202/453-8425. ------------------------------ Date: 17 Apr 91 16:18:37 GMT From: agate!bionet!uwm.edu!caen!news@ucbvax.Berkeley.EDU (Ken Sheppardson) Subject: Re: SSF Micro-g aws@iti.org (Allen W. Sherzer) writes: >kcs@sso.larc.nasa.gov (Ken Sheppardson) writes: >> >> For what 'politically unpopular design changes' did the micro-g >> community ask? > >You need to ask Nick that but I would guess he means the life science >centrifuge. The micro-g people didn't like it and Congress cut funds for it >last year. So how is that a 'politically unpopular design change'? 'Politically unpopular' with whom? (I'm asking Nick, of course, if that is indeed what he was talking about.) :) > >> In what way did NASA tell the people who sign the checks to go to hell? > >The Appropriations Subcommittee which signs the checks for the station has >said several times they wanted Freedom as a microgravity facility first and >formost. Check. >The current restructuring says it will be a microgravity platform >for a few years until PMC and then it becomes life sciences. I wouldn't quite word it that strongly, but I agree that the emphasis will shift to life sciences. In particular, life sciences to support SEI. As you point out, micro-g folks tend not to appreciate things like centrifuges that disrupt their environment. Even having astronauts onboard all the time is going to disrupt the micro-g environment, which is why I said that by the time we get to PMC, most of the micro-g folks will probably have moved off to man-tended free flyers. It's not that as a result of restructuring they're no longer accommodated, and it's not that NASA has told the Appropriations Subcommittee to go to hell. It's just that a manned platform doesn't serve the micro-g communities needs as well as a man tended platform does (from a micro-g environment standpoint). >It therefore is now life science first and formost with microgravity >as available. In fact, it's a micro-g platform first and foremost, to be phased over to life sciences as the micro-g folks move off and as SEI starts asking for more data. Of course up to this point we've been talking about the phasing as planned to date. We may run into a situation, given the "go as you pay" approach, where we hold at MTC for an extended period. A few cuts in budget requests here, a few negative launch margins there -- not to mention another shuttle -- accident, and this whole discussion is irrelevant. > Allen =============================================================================== Ken Sheppardson Email: kcs@sso.larc.nasa.gov Space Station Freedom Advanced Programs Office Phone: (804) 864-7544 NASA Langley Research Center, Hampton VA FAX: (804) 864-1975 =============================================================================== ------------------------------ Date: 17 Apr 91 21:36:49 GMT From: dog.ee.lbl.gov!hellgate.utah.edu!cs.utexas.edu!news-server.csri.toronto.edu!utzoo!henry@ucbvax.Berkeley.EDU (Henry Spencer) Subject: Re: Earth/Moon formation In article <-8bG2m1r1@cs.psu.edu> okunewck@psuvax1.cs.psu.edu (Phil OKunewick) writes: > Several theories had been proposed about the earth/moon formation. >The capture theory ... The moon-split-off-from-earth theory ... Actually, the modern theory -- not universally accepted but rapidly gaining ground -- is that the Moon is the result of a non-centered impact of a Mars-sized object on Earth late in its formation. The collision throws out a huge splash of mantle material, some of which can easily end up in orbit. The orbit would start out quite elliptical, but tidal forces would circularize it. This explains why the Moon's composition resembles the Earth's mantle closely, while being poorer in heavy metals than one would expect from an independently-formed body. -- And the bean-counter replied, | Henry Spencer @ U of Toronto Zoology "beans are more important". | henry@zoo.toronto.edu utzoo!henry ------------------------------ End of SPACE Digest V13 #423 *******************