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Subject: SPACE Digest V10 #74

SPACE Digest                                      Volume 10 : Issue 74

Today's Topics:
    Time Urgent: Voyager movies Oct 2 on satellite or tape
             space news from Aug 14 AW&ST
               Re: Soviet Probe to Mars
        More accessable Mars "face" reference
             VOYAGER 1 and Pluto.
               Re: VOYAGER 1 and Pluto.
     Re: Galileo Jovian atmospheric probe -- is it sterilized???
Re: First group of prospective astronauts to arrive at JSC (Forwarded)
  First group of prospective astronauts to arrive at JSC (Forwarded)
----------------------------------------------------------------------

Date:     Mon, 25 Sep 89 17:38 CDT
From: Bill Higgins-- Beam Jockey <[e-mail]>
Subject:  Time Urgent: Voyager movies Oct 2 on satellite or tape
Original_To:  SPACE

If you've got access to a satellite dish and VCR (I don't), get ready to tape
some juicy Voyager stuff.  If not, you can buy the tape.
Here's a press release I just received from JPL:
--------------------------------------------------------------------------
The recently completed Neptune Encounter Highlights tape will be transmitted
over NASA-Select on Monday, October 2.

SATELLITE VIDEO SOURCE:

GE SATCOM F2R*
Transponder 13
71 W. Longitude
3960 MHz, vertical polarization
C-band

* Institutions that are interested in receiving the transmission over
NASA-Select but are located in Alaska and Hawaii are requested to contact Terry
Brooks at [phone].

DATE/TIME:

October 2  1:00-1:29 PM Eastern Time, 9:00-9:29 AM Pacific Time

If you miss the transmission, copies of this tape may be ordered directly from
our contracting video company:

The Video Tape Company
10545 Burbank Blvd.
North Hollywood, CA 91601
[phone]

Cost: 3/4" $47.00
      1/2" $34.40
------------------------
Some highlights of the tape:

Computer animations: viewing Neptune from Triton, diving over Neptune to meet
Triton, catching Triton in its retrograde orbit, encountering Neptune's
magnetopause, close encounters with Neptune and Triton, view from Earth of
Voyager's occultation, Voyager encounters Neptune and Triton [4:34
extravaganza, I presume one of those great Jim Blinn encounter movies], nodding
image motion compensation.  That's the first ten minutes.

Created from actual Voyager images:  Neptune rotation movie, Neptune approach
movie, Neptune weather movies, Neptune global rotation, real-time images,
Voyager at Triton [3-d perspective], Neptune's rings, Neptune's atmospheric
features, Neptune's atmosphere in motion, the Great Dark Spot, flight over
Triton [3-d perspective], a farewell.
=====================================================

                      ______meson   Bill Higgins
                   _-~
     ____________-~______neutrino   Fermi National Accelerator Laboratory
   -   -         ~-_
 /       \          ~----- proton   Bitnet: [e-mail]
 |       |
 \       /                          SPAN/Hepnet/Physnet: 43011::HIGGINS
   -   -
     ~                              Internet: [e-mail]

P.S.  I post this message *purely* as an altruistic public service.  However,
if you live in the Chicago area, and you want to show your gratitude, you might
consider slipping me a copy of this tape...

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

Date: 25 Sep 89 01:40:05 GMT
From: gem.mps.ohio-state.edu!uwm.edu!mailrus!jarvis.csri.toronto.edu!utgpu!utzoo![e-mail]  (Henry Spencer)
Subject: space news from Aug 14 AW&ST

Cover story this issue is the Pegasus roll-out.  Nice-looking bird.  All
white rather than the black seen in artists' conceptions, with no markings
at all.  The one thing slightly surprising about it, to me, was that the
trailer it's on looks like it was built to carry 747s -- it's very massive.
[Built to handle Pegasus's larger successors?]  This Pegasus is complete
except that its solid motors are filled with inert ballast rather than
live fuel, for captive-carry tests.  The tests will mostly check out the
old X-15 pylon and Pegasus's adapter (necessary because the attachment
points aren't in the same places as those of the X-15); no drop tests
of the inert Pegasus are planned.  The carry tests will lead up to launch
in October.  Total development costs up to first launch are estimated
at $50M; Hercules/OSC expect to recover this within the first 20 launches.
At the moment there are either 2 or 3 firm launch bookings, depending on
how you count.  OSC expects 2 launches this year and 4-5 next year; the
assembly tooling could support 12/year.  There is growing interest in
launching small payloads, especially as a way to get flight opportunities
out of shrinking government budgets.  The first payload is a DARPA
data-relay satellite and a pair of NASA chemical-release experiments.
Launch will occur about 60 miles west of Big Sur, so that Pegasus will
be visible to the Western Test Range equipment at Vandenberg.

Congress orders DoD to prepare a comprehensive plan for military comsat
requirements and programs for the next decade, saying that the Pentagon's
comsat architecture is in a "state of complete disarray".

House Appropriations Committee staff launches inquiry into the space
station, based on suspicions that a lot of the money is not really going
into technical development.  [What a surprise.]

NASA initial FY91 budget submission was for $17G, lowered to $14G after
OMB got a first glance at it.  The wishlist includes two orbiters,
Shuttle-C, the space-station lifeboat, and a large assortment of science
missions including Mission To Earth and Gravity Probe B.

SDI defers decision on whether to proceed with current plans or switch
the main-line effort to something else (e.g. Brilliant Pebbles), pending
a major review.  Congress expresses some skepticism about SDI chasing
fashionable ideas rather than getting its act together.

Soviet spysat, Cosmos 2030, explodes in orbit.  Believed to have been
detonated deliberately after maneuvering control was lost.  This happened
in low orbit and most of the debris has reentered already.  The Soviet
spysat programs have been very busy of late, for no obvious reason.

Cosmos 1870 radarsat commanded into destructive reentry, after the
two-year-old satellite started to fail.  A second large radarsat is
scheduled to go up next year, and there are hopes of commercial sales
of data once the third -- intended as an operational, rather than
experimental, bird -- goes up in 1992.

STS-28 deploys advanced imaging spysat Aug 8.  Satellite is an upgraded
version of the KH-11 [i.e. the KH-12?  not clear].  This bird is at a lower
altitude than the Lacrosse launched last year, and was deployed using the
arm, which Lacrosse wasn't.  A small secondary payload, developed by JPL
and Goddard, possibly for SDI, is believed to have remained aboard; seven
other unidentified experiments were aboard.  NASA is very pleased that
Columbia is back in service, given the demand for shuttle flights.

Remaining shuttle missions this year are 34 (Atlantis carrying Galileo,
Oct 12), 33 (Discovery with a DoD payload, Nov 19), and 32 (Columbia
carrying a comsat and the gear for LDEF retrieval, Dec 18).

NASA-industry team reviews options for handling possible space-station
budget cuts.  Top on the list is cutting the crew from 8 to 4; there are
a bunch of other minor things that might be done, but none with any big
impact.

Ariane 44LP [first flight of the biggest Ariane 4 configuration] booster
launches Hipparcos star mapper and TVSat 2 broadcast satellite.  [AW&ST
jumped the gun a bit and claimed that they were launched into Clarke
orbit, which as regular readers know isn't true:  Hipparcos's apogee
motor refused to fire, to the consternation of ESA's science team.]

France approves development of Spot 4, ensuring continuation of the Spot
program.  The one change made in the project to gain approval was deletion
of a multispectral scanner for crop/vegetation work, which would have
required substantial expansion of support facilities.  Design lifetime
is five years, compared to three for Spots 1-3.  The spacecraft bus
will be the same one planned for Helios, France's military spysat being
developed for launch in 1993.  Spot 4 should go up about 1994, in time
to take over from the earlier Spots [Spot 1 is in orbit and still mostly
working, Spot 2 is being readied for launch, Spot 3 is in storage for
later launch].

Classified ad for tour of soviet space facilities in Moscow and Leningrad,
Nov 3-12.  [This got considerable attention in sci.space a month or so
ago, so I'll just repeat the inquiries address rather than the whole ad:
Aerospace Marketing Group, 4131 Spicewood Springs Road, Suite G-4, Austin
TX 78759, [phone].]
--
"Where is D.D. Harriman now,   |     Henry Spencer at U of Toronto Zoology
when we really *need* him?"    | uunet!attcan!utzoo!henry [e-mail]

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

Date: 14 Sep 89 15:59:30 GMT
From: jarvis.csri.toronto.edu!utgpu!utzoo![e-mail]  (Henry Spencer)
Subject: Re: Soviet Probe to Mars

In article <[e-mail]> [e-mail] (David Pike) writes:
>...  According to CTV, among the last photos to get out showed
>SOMETHING coming at it!! ...
>If anybody out there knows what I'm talking about, please let me know
>what is supposed to have REALLY happened...

A slightly garbled report.  The facts are:

1. Phobos 2 was supposed to turn away from Earth, snap some pictures of
    Phobos, and turn back to Earth to transmit them.  It started
    this maneuver but did not complete it.

2. Some signals from P2 were picked up afterward, and they showed some
    indications that the probe might be spinning.

3. All attempts to re-establish communication were unsuccessful.

4. At least one of the pictures taken shortly before this showed what
    might have been an object nearby.  If it was real, it might
    have been either (a) debris in Phobos's orbit, or (b) Phobos 2's
    own jettisoned propulsion module.

5. One major theory about the cause of the failure is that Phobos 2
    collided with the unknown object.  This is plausible.

6. The reason for the failure is not known for sure.
--
V7 /bin/mail source: 554 lines.|     Henry Spencer at U of Toronto Zoology
1989 X.400 specs: 2200+ pages. | uunet!attcan!utzoo!henry [e-mail]

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

Date: 13 Sep 89 23:44:25 GMT
From: g.gp.cs.cmu.edu![e-mail]  (Karl Kluge)
Subject: More accessable Mars "face" reference

Try Mark Carlotto's paper in _Applied Optics_, May (?) 1988

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

Date: 13 Sep 89 20:17:42 GMT
From: wrksys.dec.com![e-mail]  (CUP/ASG, MLO5-2/G1 6A, 223-3283)
Subject: VOYAGER 1 and Pluto.


        How close will VOYAGER 1 come into range of the planet Pluto?
    I do not assume that it will be close enough for any data to be
    recorded.

        Thank you,

        Larry Klaes  [e-mail]
             or - ...!decwrl!wrksys.dec.com!klaes
                 or - [e-mail]
                     or - [e-mail]

        EJASA Editor, Astronomical Society of the Atlantic

             N = R*fgfpneflfifaL

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

Date: 14 Sep 89 16:05:53 GMT
From: jarvis.csri.toronto.edu!utgpu!utzoo![e-mail]  (Henry Spencer)
Subject: Re: VOYAGER 1 and Pluto.

In article <[e-mail]> [e-mail] (CUP/ASG, MLO5-2/G1 6A, 223-3283) writes:
>        How close will VOYAGER 1 come into range of the planet Pluto?

Not very.  Looking at the whole solar system, V1 is sort of vaguely near
Pluto.  That means a few hundred million kilometers from it.  It's not
going to get any closer.
--
V7 /bin/mail source: 554 lines.|     Henry Spencer at U of Toronto Zoology
1989 X.400 specs: 2200+ pages. | uunet!attcan!utzoo!henry [e-mail]

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

Date: 14 Sep 89 22:51:17 GMT
From: mailrus!jarvis.csri.toronto.edu!csri.toronto.edu![e-mail]  (Wayne Hayes)
Subject: Re: Galileo Jovian atmospheric probe -- is it sterilized???

In article <[e-mail]> [e-mail]
(Vincent J. Erickson) writes:
>And where are your references? Or have you performed these experiments
>yourself? Please forward us the data so we may all be impressed.

Ok.  First, I got the method wrong, but the effect is the same. As someone
already pointed out, it's radiation pressure that causes small particles to
spiral into the sun, not solar wind.  From George O. Abell, _Exploration_
of_The_Universe 4th Ed. (1st year astronomy text at U of Toronto),
p. 387 - 388:

    Particles smaller than about 1 micron in size are "blown" out of
    the solar system by radiation pressure. [Larger particles] spiral
    inward toward the Sun, because of the Poynting-Robertson effect...
    ... A particle 1 mm in diameter that originates in the region of the
    asteroid belt spirals into the Sun in only 10 million years. Even
    a particle 10 cm across at the Earth will spiral in given 10^8 years.

Ok, so there's a question here. Are the smallest microbes larger or smaller
than a micron?  Biologists?

>I never proposed such an idea as fact; if you had read my text I was
>quite careful to be very forgiving of the fact that it could be
>totally wrong.

I wasn't really yelling at you personally, sorry.

    But I *still* think that it's impossible.  The biggest step
is still getting a microbe out of Earth's atmosphere.  You can't accelerate
a microbe up to 11 km /s to escape the Earth's gravity without a mighty
big push.  Any material thrown up by a huge meteor impact will probably
be vapourized either by the impact with the Earth or the subsequent traversion
through the atmosphere at more than 11 km / s.  And even if it survives
into space in a body of rock that was large enough to get through the
atmosphere without at least melting, that body would NOT be pushed outward,
but would subsequently spiral into the Sun, as the above quote shows.


    The average air particle at sea level travels at 5 km / sec (no
reference here. We worked it out in second year physics lab. Gee, I guess
I can say  "Yeah, I *did* do the experiment myself, what's it to ya?" :-))
This speed decreases with mass of the particle (ask any thermal physicist).
Microbes just don't go 11 km /s in our atmosphere, and survive, period.

--
"If I had only known, I would have been a locksmith."   -- Albert Einstein

Wayne Hayes    INTERNET: [e-mail]    CompuServe: 72401,3525

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

Date: 15 Sep 89 01:38:51 GMT
From: rochester![e-mail]  (Brian Yamauchi)
Subject: Re: First group of prospective astronauts to arrive at JSC (Forwarded)

In article <[e-mail]> [e-mail] (Peter E. Yee) writes:
>     Approximately 100 of the nearly 2500 total applicants are
>expected to be interviewed here over the next several weeks for
>an opportunity to be among the final 15 to 20 who will be named
>as astronaut candidates in January 1990.

Since I'm sure that these 100 meet the basic academic, professional, and
medical requirements, on what basis are the final 15-20 chosen?

_______________________________________________________________________________

Brian Yamauchi                University of Rochester
[e-mail]        Computer Science Department
_______________________________________________________________________________

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

Date: 15 Sep 89 00:40:02 GMT
From: trident.arc.nasa.gov![e-mail]  (Peter E. Yee)
Subject: First group of prospective astronauts to arrive at JSC (Forwarded)

Sarah Keegan
Headquarters, Washington, D.C.                 September 14, 1989

Jeffrey Carr
Johnson Space Center, Houston


RELEASE:  89-143

FIRST GROUP OF PROSPECTIVE ASTRONAUTS TO ARRIVE AT JSC

     The first of several groups of prospective astronauts will
arrive at the Johnson Space Center, Houston, on Monday, September
18, to begin a week of orientation, interviews and medical
evaluations.

     Approximately 100 of the nearly 2500 total applicants are
expected to be interviewed here over the next several weeks for
an opportunity to be among the final 15 to 20 who will be named
as astronaut candidates in January 1990.

     The first group of 20 will consist of Paul J. Bertsch,
Johnson Space Center, Houston; Jay C. Buckey, M.D., Dallas,
Texas; Leroy Chiao, Ph.D., Danville, Calif.; Michael R. Clifford
(Maj., USA), Seabrook, Texas; David B. Cripps (Maj., USA),
Edwards, Calif.; Steven R. Hamel (Lcdr, USN), Ft. Washington, Md;
Bernard A. Harris, Jr., M.D., Johnson Space Center; David E.
Hollowell, Ph.D., Los Alamos, N.Mexico; James A. Jones (Lcdr,
USN) Virginia Beach, Va.; Michael E. Lopez-Alegria (Lt.,USN),
Waldorf, Md.; Ellen Ochoa, Ph.D., Ames Research Center, Mountain
View, Calif.; Thomas P. Phelan (Lt., USN), Hollywood, Md.; Kent
V. Rominger (Lt., USN), California, Md.; James C. Seat (Maj.,
USAF), Edwards, Calif.; Mark D. Shackelford (Maj., USAF),
Edwards, Calif.; Richard A. Stevens (Maj. USAF), Edwards, Calif.;
Keith A. Taylor, Sc.D., Copley, Pa.; Donald A. Thomas, Ph.D.,
Johnson Space Center; Carl E. Walz (Capt., USAF), Henderson,
Nev.; and Dorothy J. Zukor, Ph.D., NASA Headquarters, Washington,
D.C.

     Astronaut selections are conducted on a bi-annual basis.
The number of candidates selected every two years will vary based
on flight rate, program requirements and attrition.

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

End of SPACE Digest V10 #74
*******************