Space & Astronomy/Space and Astronomy (October 1993).iso/mac/TEXT_ZIP/daily/921121.ZIP/921121.DFC

Text File | 1992-12-18 | 17KB | 410 lines

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20-Nov-92 Daily File Collection
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KSC SHUTTLE STATUS 11/20/92


              SPACE SHUTTLE WEEKLY STATUS SUMMARY
                    Friday, November 20, 1992

George H. Diller
Kennedy Space Center


Vehicle: OV-103/Space Shuttle Discovery
Current Location: Launch Pad 39-A
Mission: STS-53 DoD   Inclination: 57 degrees
Launch Date: Dec. 2   06:59 a.m. EST   Nominal Landing Site: KSC
Mission duration: 7 days 5 hours 54 minutes   Crew Size: 5


STS-53 IN WORK TODAY:

- aft main engine compartment closeouts
- main propulsion system insulation foaming
- solid rocket booster closeouts
- changeout of #1 Data Display Unit
- payload interface verification test (IVT)
- OMBU leak checks


STS-53 WORK COMPLETED:

- payload installation
- avionics bay closeouts
- orbiter aft confidence test
- disconnect/closeout APU #1 fuel pump inlet pressure transducer


STS-53 WORK SCHEDULED:

- final ordnance work Sunday
- OMS/RCS fuel tank pressurization Sunday
- load mass memory units on Monday
- external tank purges on Tuesday


ISSUES & CONCERNS: None



Vehicle: OV-105/Orbiter Endeavour
Location: OPF Bay 1
Primary Payload: TDRS-F/IUS-13 + Diffuse X-Ray Spectrometer (DXS)
Mission: STS-54                    Inclination: 28.45 degrees
Launch Timeframe: January Wk 2     Nominal Landing Site: KSC
Mission Duration: 6 days           Crew Size: 5


STS-54 IN WORK:

- weight and center of gravity determination
- mating to orbiter transporter


STS-54 WORK SCHEDULED:

- rollover to Vehicle Assembly Building transfer isle Saturday
- attach lifting sling and orbiter lifting preps Saturday night
- mate to external tank and solid rocket booster stack Sunday


STS-54 WORK COMPLETED:

- TDRS-F fueling at Pad 39-B
- aft compartment closeouts
- crew compartment closeouts
- external tank door functional test
- orbiter structural leak check
- aft compartment leak check
- right nose wheel changeout
- nose wheel steering retest
- payload airborne support equipment Interface Verification Test
- DXS Interface Verification Test




Vehicle: OV-102/Orbiter Columbia
Current location: OPF Bay 2
Mission: STS-55/Spacelab-D2         Inclination: 28.45 degrees
Launch timeframe: February, wk 4    Nominal Landing Site: KSC
Mission Duration: 8 days 22 hours   Crew size: 7


STS-55 IN WORK:

- powered-up orbiter systems electrical testing
- freon closed-loop coolant system modifications
- X-ray reaction control system bellows
- OMS/RCS pressure decay test
- tile repairs
- installation of payload bay liners
- stacking left-hand solid rocket booster in VAB High Bay 3


STS-55 WORK SCHEDULED:

- configuration of payload bay for Spacelab-D2
- tile post flight inspections
- tile repair
- chin panel rework
- auxiliary power unit leak and functional checks


STS-55 WORK COMPLETED:

- removal of three main engines
- remove and replace window #1
- remove forward reaction control system
- payload bay deconfiguration
- orbiter structural inspections

     Source:NASA Spacelink    Modem:205-895-0028  Internet:192.149.89.61
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DAILY NEWS/TV SKED 11/20/92

Daily News
Friday, November 20, 1992  24-hour audio service at 202/755-1788

 % Space flight management sets December 2 as launch date for STS-53;
 % Third NASA Town Meeting begins today at 1:00 pm from Indianapolis;
 % DOD payload scheduled for launch aboard Scout from Vandenberg tomorrow;
 % Best evidence yet for Black Holes presented by team of Hubble astronomers.

* * * * * * * * * * * * * * * *

Office of Space Flight managers concluded their flight readiness review of
Discovery's upcoming STS-53 mission for the Department of Defense and set
December 2 as the launch date for the flight.  The launch window for Discovery
opens at 6:59 am EST on Wednesday, Dec. 2.  This will be Discovery's 15th
flight and its first since returning to the fleet following a refurbishment and
upgrade at Rockwell International's Palmdale, California, orbiter facility.

STS-53 is a 7-day mission and will be the last scheduled major military flight
on a shuttle.  Mission commander for the flight is David Walker, who will be
making his third space flight.  Mission pilot, making his second shuttle
flight, is Robert Cabana. Also onboard for the mission are veteran mission
specialists Guy Bluford and James Voss and rookie mission specialist Michael
Richard Clifford.

* * * * * * * * * * * * * * * *

NASA Administrator Daniel Goldin and other agency officials are in Indianapolis
today for the third in the Town Meeting series of outreach programs to give the
American public an opportunity to learn about and comment on the civil space
program.  The forum will begin at 1:00 pm EST in the University Place
Conference Center on the grounds of Indianapolis' Indiana-Purdue University
Place. The forum will follow the style of the previous two Town Meetings (held
in Hartford and Raleigh) with a presentation by Administrator Goldin, who will
then entertain questions from the audience.  This will be followed by a
presentation from a NASA panel led by Assistant Deputy Administrator Charles
Bolden. The panel will also take questions from the audience.  The Town Meeting
will be televised live on NASA Select television.

* * * * * * * * * * * * * * * *

NASA has rescheduled the launch of the Scout rocket carrying the Department of
Defense Miniature Seeker Technology Integration payload for tomorrow, Saturday,
Nov. 21.  The launch window opens at 8:45 am EST and extends one hour until
9:45 am.  The launch will be from Space Launch Complex 5 at Vandenberg Air
Force Base. This is the seventh launch attempt for the rocket.  The previous
attempts had been scrubbed for range control, vehicle power supply or guidance
system, or ground support equipment problems.

* * * * * * * * * * * * * * * *

NASA and university astronomers yesterday presented the first visual data
representing the long-hypothesized accretion disk associated with the infall of
material to the center of a Black Hole. The photo of the disk was taken by the
Hubble Space Telescope's Planetary Camera and is of the core of the galaxy NGC
4261 in the Virgo Cluster of galaxies located some 45 million light-years from
Earth. Although black holes are still theoretical constructs and have not been
conclusively proven to exist, the astronomy team which presented the new data
said this is the best evidence yet and contributes to mounting proof for the
existence of black holes.  The Hubble view of the disk of NGC 4261 is
complemented by radio telescope views which show twin, streaming jets of matter
spewing at right angles to the plane of the accretion diskPanother element in
the growing list of clues that black holes are real and not just hypothetical.

Astronomers and astrophysics researchers are hopeful of being able to use
spectroscopy to study the motion of the gas within a few dozen light-years of
the proposed NGC 4261 black hole following the planned late-1993 servicing
mission to correct for the aspherical aberration in Hubble's primary mirror.
Such spectroscopic studies might allow for the final, positive, proof of a
black hole by accurately measuring the mass, and therefore gravity, of the
object at the core of the accretion disk.

   Here's the broadcast schedule for Public Affairs events on NASA Select TV.
Note that all events and times may change without notice, and that all times
listed are Eastern. Live indicates a program is transmitted live.

Friday, November 20, 1992
Live   12:00 pm  NASA Today news program, today
                  featuring a report on a new way to correct for flaws in
                  the Hubble Space Telescope's primary mirror; a look at a
                  computer partner to assist launch control technicians; a
                  look at what turned out to be not quite the baked product
                  hoped for in an experiment performed on the STS-47
                  mission this past September; and as usual a look back at
                  this day in NASA history.
        12:15 pm  Aeronautics & Space Report.
        12:30 pm  Quiet, Fast, Safe, Airplanes.
Live     1:00 pm  NASA Town Meeting from University Place
                  Conference Center, Indiana-Purdue Universities ,
                  Indianapolis.
         8:00 pm  12:00 midnight -NASA Today and subsequent
                  programming repeats.

NASA Select TV is carried on GE Satcom F2R, transponder 13, C-Band, 72 degrees
West Longitude, transponder frequency is 3960 MegaHertz, audio subcarrier is
6.8 MHz, polarization is vertical.
     Source:NASA Spacelink    Modem:205-895-0028  Internet:192.149.89.61
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11/19/92:  DATE SET FOR LAUNCH OF DoD PAYLOAD ABOARD DISCOVERY

Jim Cast
Headquarters, Washington, D.C.              November 19, 1992

George Diller
Kennedy Space Center, Fla.

EDITORS NOTE:  N92-99


        Managers today officially targeted Dec. 2 for launch of the Space
Shuttle Discovery on its 15th mission.  The decision was made at the conclusion
of today's STS-53 Flight Readiness Review at NASA's Kennedy Space Center, Fla.
The launch window opens at 6:59 a.m.  EST.

        The primary payload for this ninth dedicated Department of Defense
(DoD) mission is designated DoD-1 and is classified.  Although there will be no
public discussion of the identity or purpose of DoD-1 operations before, during
or after the mission, a number of secondary experiments in the cargo bay and in
Discovery's cabin will be conducted openly throughout the planned 7-day, 5-hour
flight.

        Commanding this 53rd Space Shuttle mission aboard the newly-
refurbished Discovery will be 48-year-old Navy Captain David Walker, making his
third Shuttle flight.  Sitting in the right seat will be Pilot Robert Cabana,
43, a Marine Colonel making his second flight.

        Three mission specialists will round out the five-man STS-53 crew: Air
Force Colonel Guion Bluford, 50, making his fourth flight; and two Army Lt.
Colonels -- James Voss, 43, making his second flight, and Michael Richard
Clifford, 40, flying into space for the first time.
     Source:NASA Spacelink    Modem:205-895-0028  Internet:192.149.89.61
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11/19/92:  HUBBLE DISCOVERS A DISK FUELING A LIKELY BLACK HOLE

HQ 92-208/HST BLACK HOLE

Paula Cleggett-Haleim
Headquarters, Washington, D.C.             November 19, 1992

Jim Elliott
Goddard Space Flight Center, Greenbelt, Md.

Ray Villard
Space Telescope Science Institute, Baltimore, Md.



RELEASE:  92-208


     Astronomers using NASA's Hubble Space Telescope (HST) have gotten their
best look yet at the disk of material that surrounds and is being pulled into a
suspected black hole.

     The disk is at the core of a galaxy in the Virgo Cluster 45 million
light-years from Earth. Dr. Walter Jaffe of Leiden Observatory in The
Netherlands said the disk is tipped about 60 degrees -- enough to provide
astronomers with a clear view of the galaxy's bright hub.

     "The nucleus is probably the home of a black hole with a mass 10 million
times that of our sun," Jaffe said. "This is our best view to date of the
immediate surrounding of the nucleus of an active galaxy," the name given
galaxies that emit especially strong radiation indicating that they harbor
powerful energy sources.

     "This is the first case where we can follow the disk's gas in an orderly
way down to the immediate environment of the black hole," said co-investigator
Dr. Holland Ford of The Johns Hopkins University in Baltimore.

     The observations, made with the Wide Field/Planetary Camera (WF/PC) in the
planetary camera mode, make a strong contribution to mounting evidence for the
existence of black holes in the universe, the two astronomers said.

     A black hole is a theoretical object that is believed to form after a
massive star collapses.  The star's matter is so densely compacted that it has
a powerful gravitational pull that traps all matter that comes near it.

     Black holes to date are theoretical because their gravitational pull is so
great that not even light can escape.  Therefore, they cannot be seen.
Astronomers infer a black hole's existence by its gravitational influence on
the motion of stars and other material near it.

     The galaxy, designated NGC 4261, was selected for study because it is one
of the brightest in the Virgo Cluster.

     "The galaxy is unremarkable in visible light," said Jaffe. "However,
observations with radio telescopes show a pair of opposed jets emanating from
the nucleus and spanning a distance of 88,000 light-years." Spectroscopic data
from the Observatory del Roque de los Muchachos in the Canary Islands show
ionized gas in the nucleus moving at speeds approaching several million miles
an hour, or one percent of the speed of light.

     "Most astronomers believe both phenomena, which have been seen earlier in
radio galaxies and quasars (active nuclei of remote galaxies), to be caused by
material being swallowed by massive black holes hiding in the nuclei of large
galaxies," said Ford.

     The dark, dusty disk which is 300 light-years across, represents the cold
outer region which extends inwards to within a few hundred million miles of the
suspected black hole.  This disk feeds matter into the black hole, where
gravity compresses and heats the material to tens of millions of degrees.  Some
hot gas squirts out from the black hole's vicinity like twin streams of water
from a lawn sprinkler.

     "The spin axis of the disk orients the radio jets," said Ford. "The
cooler, outer regions of the washer-shaped disk confine the ionizing radiation
from the hot interior into a pair of cones whose axes are parallel to the radio
jets."

     Because dust and cool gas (neutral hydrogen) are not normally found in
elliptical galaxies, the presence of a disk at all provides a mystery.  Much of
the dust should have been destroyed quickly by the hot gas in the galaxy.  One
possible explanation is that the dust is a remnant of a spiral galaxy that was
swallowed by NGC 4261 in the recent past.

     After the scheduled Space Shuttle servicing mission for Hubble in late
1993, the researchers hope to use spectroscopy to study the motion of the gas
within a few dozen light-years of the black hole.  This might allow them to
prove the existence of the black hole by accurately measuring its mass.

     The researchers also hope to use spectroscopy to infer the thickness and
shape of the inner parts of the disk that are too small to be seen even with
the HST.


     The results are to be published in the Astrophysical Journal.
Co-investigators with Ford and Jaffe are Robert O'Connell (University of
Virginia, Charlottesville), Laura Ferrares (Johns Hopkins University,
Baltimore) and Frank van den Bosch (Leiden Observatory, The Netherlands).

     The Hubble Space Telescope is a project of international cooperation
between NASA and the European Space Agency.

     Source:NASA Spacelink    Modem:205-895-0028  Internet:192.149.89.61
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MGN REPORT 11/20

Magellan Status

Status report of Magellan for Friday, November 20, 1992:

1.   Magellan continues to operate normally, performing a
     starcal and desat on each orbit and transmitting a
     carrier plus 40 bps X-band signal.

2.   The spacecraft has completed 6136 orbits of Venus; 500 so
     far in Cycle 4, which will end on May 25, 1993.

3.   Tuesday, November 17, the project conducted a design
     review of an aerobraking experiment to be conducted at
     the end of Cycle 4.  Preliminary modeling of dynamic
     pressures, temperatures and attitude control indicate
     that circularizing the orbit on an aerobraking plan which
     proceeds aggressively for the first several weeks, and
     backs off in the later stages, appears to be very
     feasible.

4.   A Spacecraft Team Technical Interchange Meeting (TIM) was
     held on Thursday.  The spacecraft performance has been
     excellent since the last TIM although there have been 12
     TWTA SSOs, including five on Tuesday, and there has been
     some increase in the slippage of the Solar Array Drive
     Mechanism since the end of the apoapsis occultation
     season.
     Source:NASA Spacelink    Modem:205-895-0028  Internet:192.149.89.61
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