Space & Astronomy/Space and Astronomy (October 1993).iso/mac/TEXT/SPACEDIG/V12_4/V12_492.TXT

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Subject: SPACE Digest V12 #492

SPACE Digest                                     Volume 12 : Issue 492

Today's Topics:
               Re: Hiten Update
             Ulysses Update #2 - 10/23/90
              Galileo Update - 10/24/90
               Future missions inquiry
        Info wanted on Space Plane and Pegasus
            Re: Pioneer 11 article
              Re: Deep Lunar Dust Story?
             Re: Theories needed on life
             Re: MAJOR SOLAR FLARE ALERT
             Re: Theories needed on life
           Jonathan's Space Report, Oct 16
                  Re: (none)
              Magellan Update - 10/22/90
                 Re: Ulysses

Administrivia:

    Submissions to the SPACE Digest/sci.space should be mailed to
  [e-mail].  Other mail, esp. [un]subscription notices,
  should be sent to [e-mail], or, if urgent, to
             [e-mail]

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

Date: 23 Oct 90 10:43:21 GMT
From: mcsun!ukc!icdoc!syma![e-mail]  (Andy Clews)
Subject: Re: Hiten Update

From article <[e-mail]>, by [e-mail] (Ron Baalke):
> Forwarded from Yoshiro Yamada
>                Astronomy Section
>                Yokohama Science Center
> ---------------------------------------------------------------
> According to ISAS, the Hiten spacecraft made its
> fifth lunar swingby on 02-Oct-90 at 12:01 JST (=UTC + 9hrs) at a
> selenocentric distance of 22,400 km.  The sixth swingby is expected on
> 03-Jan-91.

Could someone (not necessarily you, Ron, you're busy enough already :-)
please post some summary information about the mission objectives for
the Hiten craft? I remember hearing something about it quite a long time
ago but I have forgotten what it's supposed to be doing up there. It
doesn't seem to get much attention on the net - the above is the first
mention of Hiten that I've seen in this group.

Thanks


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

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

Date: 24 Oct 90 16:29:57 GMT
From: usc!wuarchive!sdd.hp.com!elroy.jpl.nasa.gov!jato!mars.jpl.nasa.gov![e-mail]  (Ron Baalke)
Subject: Ulysses Update #2 - 10/23/90


                         Ulysses Mission Status
                           October 23, 1990

     As of 9AM (PDT), Sunday, October 21, the Ulysses spacecraft is
8,944,797 miles (14,395,255 km) from Earth, and 492,882,103 miles
(793,216,855 km) from Jupiter.  These numbers are accurate to a kilometer
because Ulysses has a ranging instrument aboard.  The spacecraft is
traveling at 91,141mph (146,678 kph) relative to the Sun, and
24,465 mph (39,393 kph) relative to the Earth.

     Following scheduled closure of the main switch, the experiment switch-on
phase commenced. The first experiment to be switched on was the KEP
experiment.  This experiment will investigate the properties of energetic
particles and interstellar neutral gas.  This operation was immediately
followed by the release of all protective experiment covers, except the LAN
instrument (Low Energy Charged Particles) which will be released after the
second Trajectory Maneuver.

     Following these releases, the entrance aperture to the sensors of the
Solar Wind Plasma Experiment (BAM) was commanded to maximum.  The detailed
checkout of the KEP experiment then commenced.  This activity will be spread
out over several days.

     Heaters for the Solar Wind Ion Composition experiment (GLG) were
scheduled to be switched on at this time but the thermal environment was such
that it was not necessary to do this.  The next scheduled activity was the
switch-on of the Cosmic Dust Experiment (GRU).  However, the temperature
of the channeltron sensor was slightly warmer than desired and it was decided,
at the request of the experimenter, to delay this operation until the
temperature reduces to a value which permits the switch-on to take place.  A
maximum delay of one to two weeks is envisaged.  This activity will be
integrated with other switch-on activities and is not expected to give rise
to any re-scheduling problems.

     On Tuesday,  October 23, the Cosmic Ray and Solar Particle Experiment
(SIM) will be switched on.  This will be followed on October 24 by the
switch-on of the Magnetic Field Experiment (HED).
      ___    _____     ___
     /_ /|  /____/ \  /_ /|
     | | | |  __ \ /| | | |      Ron Baalke         | [e-mail]
  ___| | | | |__) |/  | | |___   Jet Propulsion Lab | [e-mail]
 /___| | | |  ___/    | |/__ /|  M/S 301-355        |
 |_____|/  |_|/       |_____|/   Pasadena, CA 91109 |

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

Date: 24 Oct 90 17:43:59 GMT
From: sdd.hp.com!elroy.jpl.nasa.gov!jato!mars.jpl.nasa.gov![e-mail]  (Ron Baalke)
Subject: Galileo Update - 10/24/90


                          Galileo Status Report
                            October 24, 1990

     The health of the Galileo spacecraft continues to be excellent.  On
October 22, a command was sent to reset the Command Loss Timer to 216
hours, the planned value of this mission phase.  Another East/West
navigation pass delta DOR (Differential One-way Ranging) activity was
successfully completed using the 70 meter Goldstone antenna and 34
meter Madrid antenna.  Today an attitude control star scanner intensity
calibration will be performed.  This calibration is part of planned
periodic calibrations of the attitude control elements.
      ___    _____     ___
     /_ /|  /____/ \  /_ /|
     | | | |  __ \ /| | | |      Ron Baalke         | [e-mail]
  ___| | | | |__) |/  | | |___   Jet Propulsion Lab | [e-mail]
 /___| | | |  ___/    | |/__ /|  M/S 301-355        |
 |_____|/  |_|/       |_____|/   Pasadena, CA 91109 |

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

Date: 22 Oct 90 00:04:05 GMT
From: bacchus.pa.dec.com!news.crl.dec.com!decvax.dec.com!watmath!watmath.waterloo.edu![e-mail]  (Murray S. Kucherawy)
Subject: Future missions inquiry

I'm looking for information about the upcoming shuttle mission which was
originally scheduled for December but has been pushed back to April.
Can anyone tell me which mission it is (I think Roberta Bondar is scheduled
to be on the crew), so I can look it up in the fleet manifests, etc.?

advTHANKSance...

============================== Murray S. Kucherawy ==========================
University of Waterloo, Ontario, Canada       2A Math (Comp Sci/Comb. & Opt.)
Internet: mskucherawy@<machine>.UWaterloo.ca  UUCP: uunet!watmath!mskucherawy
<machine> ::= { watmath | dahlia | trillium | orchid }

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

Date: 22 Oct 90 16:39:44 GMT
From: microsoft![e-mail]  (Steve Hastings)
Subject: Info wanted on Space Plane and Pegasus

I would like to find more information about the Space Plane.  I have an
article in the November 1989 _Discover_ magazine about a proposed space
plane that would have four different engine systems: a turbojet to lift off
the ground and accelerate to Mach 2, a ramjet to go to Mach 8, a scramjet
to go to Mach 20, and liquid-hydrogen rockets to leave the atmosphere and
go to orbit.  This proposed plane also has an (elegant || baroque) system
for cooling the skin of the plane when it heats up from atmospheric
friction: run the liquid hydrogen through pipes near the skin.  This cools
the skin -- and heats the hydrogen, putatively allowing more thrust.

Does anyone know of any articles about this?  (Other than the one in the
November 1989 _Discover_! :-)  Email me or post discussion on the net.

Second question:  does anyone know of any magazine articles at all about
the Pegasus system?  I read a "What's New" entry about it in _Popular
Science_ but I want more details.  I especially want to read about the
successful launch of Pegasus earlier this year.
--
Steve "I don't speak for Microsoft" Hastings    ===^=== :::::
uunet!microsoft!steveha  [e-mail]    ` \\==|

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

Date: 23 Oct 90 22:20:50 GMT
From: mnetor!utzoo![e-mail]  (Henry Spencer)
Subject: Re: Pioneer 11 article

In article <[e-mail]> [e-mail] (Richard A. Schumacher) writes:
>If Pioneer 11 is abandoned, will that free enough money for
>the Magellan extended mission?

Not likely.  Pioneer 11 was not absorbing much manpower.
--
The type syntax for C is essentially   | Henry Spencer at U of Toronto Zoology
unparsable.             --Rob Pike     |  [e-mail]   utzoo!henry

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

Date: 22 Oct 90 05:11:08 GMT
From: mnetor!utzoo![e-mail]  (Henry Spencer)
Subject: Re: Deep Lunar Dust Story?

In article <[e-mail]> [e-mail] (S Schaper) writes:
>...If there was serious concern continuing I doubt they would have sent the
>men, but we had already had surveyor on the moon...

In fact, Surveyor was carefully designed so that its footpad pressure was
the same as the LM's, and the very first picture from Surveyor 1 was a
closeup of one footpad.
--
The type syntax for C is essentially   | Henry Spencer at U of Toronto Zoology
unparsable.             --Rob Pike     |  [e-mail]   utzoo!henry

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

Date: 22 Oct 90 08:13:39 GMT
From: munnari.oz.au!bruce!monu1!vaxc![e-mail]  (Joe Voros)
Subject: Re: Theories needed on life

[e-mail] writes:
> Could someone theorize on what humanoid life would be like on a planet 3 or 4
> times the size of the Earth.  I'm looking for theories on body structure,
> societies, technology, psychology, etc.  Thanks, I appreciate any speculation.

The classic book on ETI is ``Intelligent Life in the Universe'' by Carl
Sagan and Josef Shklovskii.  That's the best place to start.

--
``The path to the future lies through the corpus callosum.''  Carl Sagan.

Joe Voros, Physics Dept, Monash University, Clayton, VIC, 3168, Australia.

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

Date: 22 Oct 90 14:56:53 GMT
From: swrinde!zaphod.mps.ohio-state.edu!wuarchive!rex!rouge![e-mail]  (Fraering Philip)
Subject: Re: MAJOR SOLAR FLARE ALERT

I guess now would be a good time to put off on that trip to Mars.
Then again, my homemade cold fusion drive needs the palladium plates
cleaned anyway.

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

Date: 22 Oct 90 14:54:01 GMT
From: usc!wuarchive!rex!rouge![e-mail]  (Fraering Philip)
Subject: Re: Theories needed on life

In article <[e-mail]> [e-mail] (Joe Dellinger) writes:

  >Human eyes
  >strangely put the detector layer BEHIND the layer that feeds the detector
  >layer. Stupid design; we have to look through all that junk. Octopus eyes got
  >lucky and evolved it the other way around.

Funny, I thought this was sci.space.

Anyway, about the human eye, that might not be a bug but a feature. Those
cells might filter out some UV or may actually be non-imaging photoreceptors.

Anyone ever get a throbbing in the sinus while in the presence of strong UV,
like a welding machine or blacklight?

Phil Fraering
[e-mail]

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

Date: 22 Oct 90 14:58:28 GMT
From: frooz!cfa250![e-mail]  (Jonathan McDowell)
Subject: Jonathan's Space Report, Oct 16


Jonathan's Space Report

Oct 16 1990 (no.56)
----------------------------------------------------

Atlantis has been rolled out to the pad for mission
STS-38. Columbia has been rolled out for another
tanking test. Discovery is on its way back to Florida.

Gennadiy Manakov and Gennadiy Strekalov continue in orbit aboard the
Mir/Kvant/Kvant-2/Kristall/Soyuz TM-10/Progress M-5 complex.  They will
make an EVA in a few days.

A Chinese Fanhui Shi Weixing (FSW, experimental recoverable satellite)
was launched on Oct 5 by CZ-2C launch vehicle from Jiuquan. It will
probably stay in orbit for 8 days. The flight is the first Chinese
life sciences mission.

Two Hughes communications satellites, SBS 6 and Galaxy VI, were launched
on an Ariane 44L vehicle, flight V39, from Kourou on Oct 12.  SBS has a
complicated history.  In 1980, Satellite Business Systems, a consortium
of IBM, Aetna, and Comsat, launched its first satellite for Ku-band
(14/12 GHz) business data relay services.  In Jul 1984, Comsat left the
consortium.  In Jul 1985, Satellite Business Systems was sold to MCI;
four satellites were now in orbit.  Then, in (I think) 1987, the fleet
was sold off.  SBS 1 and 2 were sold to Comsat, SBS 3 remained with MCI,
and SBS 4 was sold to IBM's Satellite Transponder Leasing Corp (STLC)
together with the SBS 5 and 6 satellites still on the ground.  Finally,
in Apr 1990, Hughes Communications Inc (HCI) bought STLC from IBM.
This leaves the fleet as follows:

Satellite/type    Launch Date    Vehicle        Owner        Owner
                       (at launch)    (now)
SBS 1    HS376    1980 Nov 15    Delta 153   SBS        Comsat Corp
SBS 2    HS376    1981 Sep 24    Delta 156   SBS        Comsat Corp
SBS 3    HS376    1982 Nov 11    STS 5        SBS        MCI Comms. Corp
SBS 4    HS376    1984 Aug 16    STS 41-D    SBS        Hughes HCI
SBS 5    HS376    1988 Sep  8    Ariane V25  IBM STLC    Hughes HCI
SBS 6    HS393    1990 Oct 12    Ariane V39  Hughes HCI  Hughes HCI

There are no more SBS satellites to come. (It's possible I may have
got some of this story wrong, and I welcome additions/corrections).

___________________________________
|Current STS status:              |
|Orbiters                         |
|                                 |
|OV-102 Columbia        LC39B     |
|OV-103 Discovery       Eglin AFB |
|OV-104 Atlantis        LC39A     |
|                                 |
|ML/ET/SRB stacks                 |
|                                 |
|ML3/STS-35/ET/OV102    LC39B     |
|ML1/STS-38/ET/OV104    LC39A     |
|ML2                    VAB       |
-----------------------------------

(c) 1990 Jonathan McDowell

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

Date: 22 Oct 90 17:27:49 GMT
From: swrinde!zaphod.mps.ohio-state.edu!usc!elroy.jpl.nasa.gov!jato!mars![e-mail]  (Ron Baalke)
Subject: Re: (none)

In article <[e-mail]> [e-mail] writes:
>Mr. Baalke; I thank you very much for your excellent periodic postings on the
>Spacenet of the doings of JPL.  I wonder if it is possible to receive these
>updates without having to deal with the rest of the postings on the net.
>I am an undergrad with a limited amount of mem-space, and I am mostly interested
>in the postings concerning the spacecraft.  Could you possibly send the
>messages directly to me or direct me to a board that you send these posts to
>that has less arguements? Thank you for your time... John Goodrich as

Yes, I maintain a mailing list where my postings are automatically emailed
to people on the mailing list.  I've added your name to the list.  The mailing
list is also tied in with Peter Yee's mailing list, so you will also get
the NASA/Space Shuttle updates.

By the way, in case you've wondered why Peter hasn't posted anything in the
past week, his news machine has been down.  Hopefully it will be up soon.
      ___    _____     ___
     /_ /|  /____/ \  /_ /|
     | | | |  __ \ /| | | |      Ron Baalke         | [e-mail]
  ___| | | | |__) |/  | | |___   Jet Propulsion Lab | [e-mail]
 /___| | | |  ___/    | |/__ /|  M/S 301-355        |
 |_____|/  |_|/       |_____|/   Pasadena, CA 91109 |

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

Date: 23 Oct 90 03:20:56 GMT
From: csusac!csuchico.edu!petunia!usc!sdd.hp.com!elroy.jpl.nasa.gov!jato!mars.jpl.nasa.gov![e-mail]  (Ron Baalke)
Subject: Magellan Update - 10/22/90


                            Magellan Status Report
                               October 22, 1990

     The Magellan spacecraft has now completed 273 mapping orbits around
Venus.  The spacecraft and radar systems are performing nominally, with the
exception of a slight solar panel oscillation and a suspect tape recorder.
The cause og the zero-filled radar data frames has been traced to track 2
of the spacecraft tape recorder A.  In the past two weeks, the rate of
zero-filled frames has increased from 0.1% to 30%.  A single zero-filled
frame causes the SAR (Synthetic Aperture Radar) Processor to reject the frame.

     Corrections include reprogramming the on-board mapping sequence to avoid
the faulty track on the tape recorder, and modifying ground processing
to allow partial frames of valid radar data.

     Over the weekend, 53 orbits of SAR data were processed into image
swaths.
      ___    _____     ___
     /_ /|  /____/ \  /_ /|
     | | | |  __ \ /| | | |      Ron Baalke         | [e-mail]
  ___| | | | |__) |/  | | |___   Jet Propulsion Lab | [e-mail]
 /___| | | |  ___/    | |/__ /|  M/S 301-355        |
 |_____|/  |_|/       |_____|/   Pasadena, CA 91109 |

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

Date: 22 Oct 90 15:54:53 GMT
From: mnetor!utzoo![e-mail]  (Henry Spencer)
Subject: Re: Ulysses

In article <[e-mail]> [e-mail] (Robert W Murphree) writes:
>possibility of an extended mission for Ulyssess?  After 1995 comes and the
>south pole of the sun is past, what's to stop Ulyssess from making the
>trip again and again? ...

The possibility of an extended mission has been mentioned, but power output
from the RTG will be down significantly and this will cause problems.  (It
is already down noticeably from what was originally intended, thanks to
all the launch delays.)
--
The type syntax for C is essentially   | Henry Spencer at U of Toronto Zoology
unparsable.             --Rob Pike     |  [e-mail]   utzoo!henry

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

End of SPACE Digest V12 #492
*******************