Space & Astronomy/Space and Astronomy (October 1993).iso/pc/text/spacedig/v13_1/v13_189.txt

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Subject: SPACE Digest V13 #189

SPACE Digest                                     Volume 13 : Issue 189

Today's Topics:
                   S.E.T.I
     Scientists find rare isotope on NASA spacecraft (Forwarded)
             Re: Martian mystery?
    Re: SPACE Digest V13 #102 (What's the Moon good for?)
           33a72pr (was Re: Mars Mystery?)
     Re: Commercially-funded Space Probes (was Re: Space Profits)
       Shapes From Shading? (was: Re: Martian Mystery?)

Administrivia:

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

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

Date: 21 Feb 91 17:02:11 GMT
From: mcsun!ukc!newcastle.ac.uk!turing![e-mail]  (William.Hey)
Subject: S.E.T.I

Hello,

Please send me any information regarding SETI theories,
projects etc.

This is just for general interest, and it's time  I know
more about it.

Thanks,

Bill Hey

Astrophysics - Newcastle University
[e-mail]

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

Date: 22 Feb 91 01:38:59 GMT
From: trident.arc.nasa.gov![e-mail]  (Peter E. Yee)
Subject: Scientists find rare isotope on NASA spacecraft (Forwarded)

Sarah Keegan
Headquarters, Washington, D.C.                              February 21, 1991
(Phone:  [phone])

Jim Sahli
Marshall Space Flight Center, Huntsville, Ala.
(Phone:  [phone])


RELEASE:  91-30

SCIENTISTS FIND RARE ISOTOPE ON NASA SPACECRAFT


     Scientists from several U. S. government and university
laboratories will report today finding the rare atmospheric isotope
Beryllium-7 present on the surface of NASA's Long Duration Exposure
Facility (LDEF).

    The isotope Beryllium-7 is radioactive and produced naturally by
cosmic ray reactions in the Earth's atmosphere.  Although very rare,
the isotope is detectable by modern nuclear instrumentation and has
been studied in the past as a means of tracing the distribution and
transport of atmospheric gases in the lower atmosphere, said Dr.
Gerald J. Fishman of NASA's Marshall Space Flight Center, Huntsville,
Ala.

    "The finding is thought to be significant from at least two
different aspects," said Fishman.  "First, it is known that the isotope
is mainly produced at much lower altitudes in the atmosphere than where
the LDEF was orbiting.  The detection and measurements show that some,
as yet undetermined, process efficiently carries it to high altitudes.

    "Additional and more detailed measurements of this type may lead to
a better understanding of the movement of rare atmospheric components
over the globe at high altitudes," he said.

    "Secondly, prior to this finding, there was only one atmospheric gas
known to strongly interact with orbiting spacecraft.  That gas, atomic
oxygen, has been found to be very significant, leading to the
degradation of various spacecraft surfaces.  The detection of
Beryllium-7 on the LDEF surface will allow scientists to study in
greater detail the interaction of gases with spacecraft in low Earth
orbit," said Fishman.

    "A team of scientists found the isotope on the LDEF during
measurements at the Kennedy Space Center shortly after its return.  At
approximately the same time, researchers working with removed external
spacecraft components at the Marshall Space Flight Center and the
University of Alabama, Huntsville, confirmed the Beryllium-7 presence
and showed that it was confined to a very thin layer -- the surfaces on
the leading edge of the LDEF," said Fishman.  The NASA scientist is
part of a radiation group investigating materials and radiation data
returned from LDEF.

    The finding involved the collaboration of scientists from the
Marshall Space Flight Center; Universities Space Research Association,
Huntsville; University of Alabama, Huntsville; Naval Research
Laboratory, Washington, D. C.; University of Florida; Institute for
Space Science and Technology, Gainesville, Fla; and Mississippi State
University.

    The Long Duration Exposure Facility was returned from space by
the Space Shuttle Columbia in January 1990 after nearly 6 years in
Earth orbit.

    LDEF is a 12-sided cylindrical structure 30 feet long and 14 feet
in diameter.  The LDEF spacecraft was designed to test the performance
of spacecraft materials, components and systems that have been exposed
to micrometeroids, space debris, space vacuum, atomic oxygen, solar
ultraviolet and space radiation for an extended period of time.

    LDEF carried 57 experiments and involved participation of
several hundred scientists and engineers in the data analysis. The Long
Duration Exposure Facility program is managed by NASA's Langley
Research Center, Hampton, Va.

    This first observation of the isotope on the surface of an
orbiting spacecraft was reported in the British scientific journal
Nature today.

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

Date: 21 Feb 91 00:42:45 GMT
From: optilink![e-mail]  (Clayton Cramer)
Subject: Re: Martian mystery?

In article <[e-mail]>, [e-mail] writes:
> A few nights ago, on a late night talk show, a gentleman was promoting
> a book about UFO's and the like.  I generally don't pay too much attention
> to such discussions but he had one piece of evidence that he claimed was
> photo of the Martian surface.  The photo appeared to show a huge face
> and a pyramid.  Of course he claimed that they were not natural features
> and had to be made by some intellignet life.  Are these photos really
> of the surface of Mars, has anyone heard of these photos before, and what
> is the commonly accepted interpretation of these photos?
>
> Just curious,
> Tim McCollum  (tpm4017@panam)

I've seen the pictures, it looks like a face, in much the same
way that playing "Stairway to Heaven" backwards sounds like "My
Sweet Satan" -- if you know what to listen for, and imagine real
hard, you might be persuaded.

The last crackpot I heard making this claim was Prof. Churchman
at UC Berkeley.  (I'm not sure what dept. he is a professor in,
but I believe he runs the Peace Studies program there).

--
Clayton E. Cramer {uunet,pyramid,pixar,tekbspa}!optilink!cramer
"Well, maybe the Holocaust was right *for that culture*." -- a moral relativist
with whom I work.
You must be kidding!  No company would hold opinions like mine!

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

Date: 20 Feb 91 13:39:28 GMT
From: udecc.engr.udayton.edu!blackbird.afit.af.mil!lonex.radc.af.mil![e-mail]  (William J. Szarek)
Subject: Re: SPACE Digest V13 #102 (What's the Moon good for?)

The moon is there so we can surf and scoop babes dude, no problem.
easy
buzz

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

Date: 21 Feb 91 17:33:34 GMT
From: [e-mail]  (Kevin William Ryan)
Subject: 33a72pr (was Re: Mars Mystery?)


    Well, here goes. I'm posting cleaned versions of the two 'mars face'
images in uuencoded GIF format. To view them uudecode the files and load
them into the nearest GIF viewer. Questions about decoding and viewing
are referred to alt.sex.graphics and alt.graphics.pixtools - I won't be
answering them.

    The first section is the original data that accompanied the images
(huge mothers, over 1Kx1K). I am not certain of the details of this
ascii information, so you're on your own. It contains location, sun
angle, and a bunch of other stuff.

    The images here are cleaned - they are 128x128 clips from the big
image, median filtered to remove (considerable) noise and contrast
stretched for details. The ugly black spots are camera defects, as far
as I can tell.

    The second section is the uuencoded .GIF - I suggest you just run
this entire mail message through uudecode and it should give you the
binary .GIF file. If you have problems, remove everything before the
'begin' line and try again.

                                                        kwr

Internet: [e-mail]

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

10571600 L 1
CVO75 1B  PICNO= 035A72        C
FILTER 4 (CLEAR) EXP   34 MSEC  FGD 111
CFSC  26588045       OET-GMT  76 207 15 25 14
TPER +00 12 05
CRNG=  5239 KM  HFOV=   55 KM  VFOV=   50 KM    SCL=   46  M/PXL
CSMEAR=  2.5 PXLS
SMRDIR= 216 DEG FROM UP     HRA 278 DG
CNOR AZ 154 DG SUN AZ  88 DG S/C AZ 323 DG
INA 79 DG  EMA 10 DG        CPHA  86 DG
SUNS LS=  99.2 DG  EDR= CN1244 01  MAX-D=
CLAT   C= +40.90  UL= +41.14  UR= +40.28  LL= +41.52  LR= +40.65
CLONG  C=   9.52  UL=   8.76  UR=   9.28  LL=   9.77  LR=  10.28        L

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`
end

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

Date: 22 Feb 91 02:35:17 GMT
From: prism![e-mail]  (Matthew DeLuca)
Subject: Re: Commercially-funded Space Probes (was Re: Space Profits)

In article <[e-mail]> [e-mail] (Charles Frank Radley) writes:
[...]
>    It calls for an international regime to regulate and TAX all
>revenues or extra-terrestrial mining operations of all member
>states.   Member states are not permitted to authorize private
>mining operations.
>   Sorry to disappoint you.
>   I hope you do not plan to defy the United Nations.......these
>days that can become very unpleasant.

It all depends on who you are.  If the U.S. authorizes 3M to conduct
mining operations supported by a U.S. lunar base, I seriously doubt
we are going to let a bureaucracy interfere in this.  The U.N. is pretty
much irrelevant, except when we can use it to our advantage.  Whether or
not this is a good thing is subject to some debate, but that's the way
it is.

--
Matthew DeLuca
Georgia Institute of Technology      Do not meddle in the affairs of wizards,
Office of Information Technology     for they are subtle, and quick to anger.
Internet: [e-mail]

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

Date: Thu, 21 Feb 91 08:52:46 PST
From: [e-mail]
X-Vmsmail-To: UTADNX::UTSPAN::AMES::"[e-mail]"
Subject: Shapes From Shading? (was: Re: Martian Mystery?)


    Shortly after I mailed a posting about the "face" on Mars, I
realized I had misspoken about looking at it in 3D.  I'm starting to get
enough mail about that to warrant a public retraction.
    Of course, I should have said I looked at the data in pseudo-3D. I
just mapped brightness to height, which only gives an approximation of
spatial reality, though it does help understanding a little better than
just looking at the image.  For example, in the dark side of the "face",
just about where the lower cheek would be, there is a very dark place
which is clearly real.  In the image, it is impressively dark, but looking
at it in pseudo-3D reveals that it is about twice as dark as the bright
places are bright, relative to the surrounding area.
    But there are people who have worked and are working on this
problem, mainly in the area of computer vision.  I found a book in the UTD
library about computer vision called _From Pixels To Predicates_, edited
by Alex Pentland, which has a chapter about infering shapes from shading.
Also, what about _Mars: The Movie_, _Miranda: The Movie_, and _LA (you
guessed it): The Movie_.  Those weren't all produced from stereographic
pairs were they?  Maybe someone from JPL can tell us about shading to
shape inference

_____________
Dale M. Greer, whose opinions are not to be confused with those of the
Center for Space Sciences, U.T. at Dallas, UTSPAN::UTADNX::UTDSSA::GREER
      While the Bill of Rights burns, Congress fiddles. -- anonymous

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End of SPACE Digest V13 #189
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