Space & Astronomy/Space and Astronomy (October 1993).iso/mac/TEXT/SPACEDIG/V11_4/V11_476.TXT

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Subject: SPACE Digest V11 #476

SPACE Digest                                     Volume 11 : Issue 476

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Today's Topics:
          Re: space news from April 2 AW&ST
               Re: Where is everything?
               Re: HAWAII AND STAR WARS
               Re: HAWAII AND STAR WARS
              Re: SPACE Digest V11 #430
               Re: Where is everything?
              Re: space station software
           Image processing and telescopes
              Galileo Update - 06/01/90
              ROSAT IN ORBIT!!!!
----------------------------------------------------------------------

Date: 1 Jun 90 04:48:02 GMT
From: attcan!utgpu!utzoo![e-mail]  (Henry Spencer)
Subject: Re: space news from April 2 AW&ST

In article <[e-mail]> [e-mail] (Bill Newman) writes:
>At sea level, you get very nearly .2 atm of O2.  People without special
>training can hike over passes which are nearly 20,000 feet (uh, 6000
>meters :-) though some of them will get altitude sickness trying...

In fact it is *just barely* possible to climb Mount Everest - 29,000ft --
without oxygen.  It's been done.  It's so marginal that it is possible
only because Everest is near the equator:  the overall atmospheric
circulation of Earth, warm rising air at the equator moving north and
then falling near the poles, slightly increases atmospheric density
at high altitude near the equator, just enough to make the peak of
Everest reachable.
--
As a user I'll take speed over|     Henry Spencer at U of Toronto Zoology
features any day. -A.Tanenbaum| uunet!attcan!utzoo!henry [e-mail]

------------------------------

Date: 1 Jun 90 11:04:46 GMT
From: mcsun!ukc!icdoc!syma![e-mail]  (Andy Clews)
Subject: Re: Where is everything?

From article <[e-mail]>, by [e-mail] ("1st Lt. Henry S. Cobb"):
> Apollo 10 is just one example (although, as far as I can tell, it's the only
> piece of Apollo left in any orbit).

Weren't some of the Saturn IV-B stages, used for translunar injection,
fired off into solar orbit after separation from the LEM/CSM assembly? I
know others were sent crashing into the moon deliberately to measure
seismic affects.

--
Andy Clews, Computing Service, Univ. of Sussex, Brighton BN1 9QN, England
JANET: [e-mail]   BITNET: [e-mail]

------------------------------

Date: 1 Jun 90 06:15:06 GMT
From: zaphod.mps.ohio-state.edu!unix.cis.pitt.edu!dsinc!netnews.upenn.edu!linc.cis.upenn.edu![e-mail]  (Robert Rubinoff)
Subject: Re: HAWAII AND STAR WARS

In article <[e-mail]> [e-mail] (Henry Spencer) writes:
>Unfortunately, the California desert doesn't have several thousand miles
>of ocean downrange.

Not *currently*, but if the current suggestions about the greenhouse effect are
correct, it might in 20 or 30 years. And that's probably less time than it
would take to get the spaceport built...:-)

   Robert

------------------------------

Date: 31 May 90 20:08:19 GMT
From: skipper![e-mail]  (Al Bowers)
Subject: Re: HAWAII AND STAR WARS

In article <[e-mail]> [e-mail] (Henry Spencer) writes:

>(Other posters have already dealt fairly well with the pseudo-ecological
>hysteria composing much of the rest of the message.  If you want to see
>a thriving wildlife refuge, visit the Cape sometime.)

Actually of all the available launch sites in the United States that
one could pick, the Cape is the most heavily impacted environmentally.
Try visiting Wallops Island, or White Sands, or (if you can) Jackass
Flats, Tonopah Test Range, Vandenberg or Barking Sands.  BTW, Barking
Sands is on Kauai and Sandia regularly conducts SDI tests there
already.  While the Cape is an excellent example of the worst that can
happen (which really isn't all that bad, IMHO) the others show
environmental protection that goes far beyond what those same sites
would be without the government facilities.

--
Albion H. Bowers  [e-mail]  ames!elxsi.dfrf.nasa.gov!bowers

------------------------------

Date:         Fri, 01 Jun 90 15:43:22 EST
From: peter <[e-mail]>
Subject:      Re: SPACE Digest V11 #430

THANK YOU VERY MUCH FOR YOUR MAIL.

                                         YOURS TRULY
                                                     PETER EMTAGE

------------------------------

Date: 1 Jun 90 16:43:29 GMT
From: pasteur!helios.ee.lbl.gov!hellgate.utah.edu!cs.utexas.edu!news-server.csri.toronto.edu!utgpu!utzoo![e-mail]  (Henry Spencer)
Subject: Re: Where is everything?

In article <[e-mail]> [e-mail] ("1st Lt. Henry S. Cobb") writes:
>Apollo 10 is just one example (although, as far as I can tell, it's the only
>piece of Apollo left in any orbit)...

Well, with the exception of a Saturn V third stage or two.  The ones from
the early lunar missions were thrown away into solar orbit.  (Later ones
were crashed on the Moon for the benefit of the Apollo seismometer network.)

>Where are all the Surveyors, Rangers,
>Lunar Orbiters, and Mars probes?  Especially the ones that crashed.  Is
>anyone keeping track of this stuff?

I don't know of any systematic inventory.  The Surveyors are on the lunar
surface, intact (except for Surveyor 2 -- engine failure -- and possibly
Surveyor 4 -- total communications failure but it might have landed).
Rangers 6-9 are on the Moon in pieces, as are the Lunar Orbiters by now.
The successful Mars-flyby probes are in various solar orbits, as are some
of the unsuccessful Rangers.  Mariner 9, the Viking orbiters, and Phobos 2
are in various orbits around Mars, although Mariner 9 was predicted to
enter Mars's atmosphere sometime around the turn of the century, as I recall.

>... Anything left in lunar
>orbit for more than a year without stationkeeping has crashed.  This includes
>all the other LEM ascent stages (except 13, of course).  My LEM GNC friend
>indicated that the LEMs, at least, may have had some help in crashing.  He
>didn't come right out and say it, but he mentioned that "the flight directors
>didn't want any leftovers cluttering up the orbit...

I'm not sure about the first lunar-landing Apollos, but the LM ascent stages
from the later ones were crashed deliberately, again for the benefit of the
seismometer network.  Their locations -- well, their impact points! -- are
known quite accurately.  I think I remember seeing a paper in Science about
one of those crashes, which not only pinpointed the impact point but also
sketched out the impact pattern for secondary objects thrown up by the
impact.
--
As a user I'll take speed over|     Henry Spencer at U of Toronto Zoology
features any day. -A.Tanenbaum| uunet!attcan!utzoo!henry [e-mail]

------------------------------

Date: 1 Jun 90 13:28:56 GMT
From: eagle![e-mail]  (Dave McKissock)
Subject: Re: space station software

In article <[e-mail]> [e-mail] (Ted Fabian) writes:
>In article <[e-mail]> [e-mail] (Thomas A. Bitterman) writes:
>>
>>    Does anyone out there have some information on the computer
>>systems to be used in Space Station Freedom?  In particular:
>
>I'll try to provide some information.. but realize, I'm not an expert, and my
>opinions are my own...

Ted Fabian works in the Information Systems branch of the Space Station
Freedom directorate here at LeRC. He is very knowledgeable about the
Information Systems in use for Space Station, but a little weak in the
area of flight software. Not that I am an expert in flight software either,
but I am in an System Engineering & Integration & have a little visibility
into the area of your questions.

>>
>>1) Who will be the vendor? (IBM, Unisys, DEC, NEC)  Is there some sort
>>    of nationality restriction for security reasons?
>
>
>if you believe the ads that appearred in trade magazines about a year ago
>or so, you would have seen IBM PS/2 class machines on a 100mb fiber ring
>being advertised as the "same machine and network that will fly on the
>Space Station..."

I believe that IBM is the vendor for the DMS (Data Management System) for
SSF.  That is essentially the computers that operate in the various
systems and the networks that let them talk to each other.

I believe there are a couple different network types, with the lowest
level being a 1553 bus.  I don't know if the higher level ones are
indeed fiber or not.

>>
>>2) What language will be used?  If not Ada, why not?

>Ada is the language that was chosen as the primary language to be
>used as part of the Software Support Environment (SSE)..  I assume
>that the folks responsible for developing the various control systems
>are using ADA... I've not heard otherwise..
>
>as for other software being developed for non-flight related
>activities such as testing and analysing data, I've seen a mix of
>Fortran, C, Pascal, APL, and whatever else the particular engineer
>knows how to code...

Ada is the baseline language for all flight software.  One estimate shows
1.7 million lines of Ada code for the whole kit and caboodle (source
J. Finncannon/NASA LeRC.)

Other software (analysis, etc.) is being written in other languages, not
as Mr. Fabian describes, because those are the languages the engineers
know, but because they are the appropriate languages for the various
tasks.  It is not easy to interface to NASTRAN with Ada. And Ada,
although a fine language for embedded software, is not well used for
engineering analysis applications. For example, I am on a team which is
developing some software to predict the performance of the SSF electrical
power system, and we are using good ole FORTRAN.

>>3) Who will write the software?  Will it be farmed out, or written in-
>>    house, or both?

>Flight related control software (assuming I understand what that is) is
>being developed through a contract that was awarded about two years ago
>to Lockheed.  The contract (SSE) calls for a number of Software Production
>Facilities (SPF) to be put in place at each NASA site and Work Package
>Contractor.. I beleive 6 or 7 of these machines are currently installed..

Lockheed is the contractor for SSE, which is not the flight software, but
a development environment for writing, testing, interfacing the software.
The actual software is being developed by the various Work Package
contractors and subcontractors who are designing/building the various
elements and systems for SSF. Rocketdyne, for example, is the prime
contractor for the SSF electrical power system, and they are writing flight
software using Lockheed provided tools.

>Non-fight related software (mostly administrative and management) is
>being developed through a contract that was awarded about two and a half
>years ago to Boeing.  The contract, Technical and Management Information
>System (TMIS), is supposed to provide for a technical database of information
>used to build the Space Station which will be available for futre
>reference... and to provide for automation functions (email, networking,
>workstations, application tools, etc.) for the day to day work in
>developing the Space Station...

Well, not to slight Boeing/TMIS, they are developing some of the
administrative and management software (I am able to answer this message
through the TMIS system) but they are not developing all the non flight
related software.  These items (administrative, system management, analysis
test, etc. etc.) are being developed by the work package contractors,
NASA engineers, Boeing, Lockheed, etc. etc.

>>4) How will software maintenance be carried out?  Will there be on-site
>>    programmer/debuggers?  Does NASA need volunteers? :-)

>software maintenance where?? on the Station??  I doubt it..
>
>more than likely, there will be Engineering Support Centers set up either
>at some or all of the NASA sites..  Work Package Contractor and Civil
>Service employees would  staff these centers during missions, and would
>have the responsibility of maintaining and monitoring the onboard
>systems..  but plans I've heard about for this type of thing are still
>to far into the future, and/or constantly being affected by budget cuts..

That is about right.

------------------------------

Date: 1 Jun 90 13:40:00 EDT
From: "V70D::HUNTRESS" <[e-mail]>
Subject: Image processing and telescopes
To: "space" <[e-mail]>

Many people have contacted me directly for a copy of the image processing
code for telescopes (from DEC 87 Byte).  I have forwarded as many copies
as I could, unfortunately many have bounced.  I have submitted the
program (FERRET.ASM) to WUARCHIVE.WUSTL.EDU, so anyone who contacted me
and didn't get a reply should try looking there (but feel free to try me
again if you cant find it).  I would be very interested to hear if anyone
has success with this code.

On a related topic:  A friend of mine is heavily involved in packet radio
(wide area networking sans cables) and he told me about a setup
somewhere in the northwest (he said Oregon) that consists of a telescope,
a video camera (or CCD) and a packet radio node running TCP/IP.  Apparently
you Email the time and coordinates of the sky that you want to see, and it
mails you back an image!  Cool, or what?  Has anyone else ever heard of
this setup?
===============================================================================
|  Gary Huntress            |    For a linear fit          |
|  Naval Underwater Systems Center    |    obtain two data points        |
|  Newport RI                |                      |
|  [phone]            | The most common elements in the     |
|  [e-mail]        | universe are hydrogen and stupidity |
|=============================================================================|
|  "Disclaimer?  We don' need no steenking dislaimer"                  |
===============================================================================

------------------------------

Date: 1 Jun 90 20:18:15 GMT
From: zaphod.mps.ohio-state.edu!usc!elroy.jpl.nasa.gov!jato!mars.jpl.nasa.gov![e-mail]  (Ron Baalke)
Subject: Galileo Update - 06/01/90


                              GALILEO
                       MISSION STATUS REPORT
                           June 1, 1990

     As of noon Friday (PDT), June 1, 1990, the Galileo spacecraft is
97,707,550 miles from the Earth, 46,123,940 miles from Venus and traveling
at a heliocentric velocity of 60,145 miles per hour.  The spacecraft is
is spining at 3.15 rpm and the downlink telemetry rate is at 40 bps.
Round trip light time is 17 minutes, 30 seconds.

     A SITURN to lead the sun was successfully performed on May 29 to put the
spacecraft attitude sun point angle at 3.5 degrees.  The spacecraft's
performance during this activity was as expected and without incident.

     Cruise Science Memory Readouts (MROs) were successfully performed for
the Extreme Utraviolet (EUV), Magnetometer (MAG) and Dust Detector (DDS)
instruments on May 29 and June 1.  The EUV MRO conclusively demonstrated the
reconfiguration of the Fixed Pattern Noise Table (FPNT) and the proper
operation of the instrument.

     A telecommunications system Command Detector Unit (CDU) Signal-to-Noise
Ratio (SNR) test was successfully completed on May 31.  This periodic test
provides performance information relative to the spacecraft's digital Command
Detector Unit used to detect uplink command bits and route them to the Command
Data Subsystem (CDS).

     In addition to the CDU telecommunication test, a radio receiver
Automatic Gain Control (AGC) test was successfully completed on June 1. This
periodic test provides performance information relative to the spacecraft radio
frequency subsystem's receiver automatic gain control elements.

     The AC/DC bus imbalance measurements remained very stable.  The imbalance
measurements fluctuated less than 0.5 volt over the entire period.

     The Deep Space Network (DSN) reports that the load balance task is now
complete at the 70 meter antenna station in Spain (DSS-63) and that the
station should return to service on June 4 as scheduled.
       _   _____    _
      | | |  __ \  | |       Ron Baalke           |  [e-mail]
      | | | |__) | | |       Jet Propulsion Lab   |  [e-mail]
   ___| | |  ___/  | |___    M/S 301-355          |
  |_____/ |_|      |_____|   Pasadena, CA 91109   |

------------------------------

Date: 1 Jun 90 23:01:26 GMT
From: frooz!cfa250![e-mail]  (Jonathan McDowell)
Subject: ROSAT IN ORBIT!!!!

The ROSAT x-ray astronomy satellite was launched from LC17B at Cape
Canaveral at 2148UT today (Jun 1).  Launch was delayed several minutes
when an airliner strayed into the launch area.  Orbit insertion occurred
at 2159UT and the orbit was circularized at 2226UT.  The spacecraft was
due to separate from the Delta second stage at 2230, but loss of data at
the Indian Ocean ground station prevented confirmation of the event at
the time I am writing this (2250UT).  The Harvard-Smithsonian ROSAT team
rented a satellite dish to watch NASA Select, and celebrated with beer
and pretzels...

ROSAT observations will begin in a few weeks with the X-ray all sky
survey. Next year, observatory-type pointed observations will be made.


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------------------------------

End of SPACE Digest V11 #476
*******************