S P A C E V I E W S 1999.12.01

http://www.spaceviews.com/1999/12/

*** News ***
Mars Polar Lander Completes Maneuver
NASA Prepares for the Challenge of a Mars Landing
Shuttle Launch Delayed Again
Proton Grounded Until March
Galileo Completes Second Io Flyby
Six New Extrasolar Planets Discovered
Communications Satellite Beats Out Mars Airplane for First
Mars Micromission
SOHO Enters Safe Mode
Atlas, Soyuz Boosters Launch on Same Day
Dealer Offers to Fly Memorabilia on Mir
Astronomers See Lunar Leonid Impacts
NASA Center Outlines Future of Space Transportation
Astronomers Devise New Way to Measure Distances to Gamma-Ray
Bursts
Terra Finally Ready to Get Off the Ground
SpaceViews Event Horizon
Other News

Editor's Note: With all the space news in the last week, this issue of
SpaceViews is a news-only edition; we'll return to our usual mix of
news, in-depth articles, book reviews, and letters to the editor next
week.

Also, to keep up-to-date with the progress of the Mars Polar Lander
mission, check our our special section at
http://www.spaceviews.com/features/mars/ . This has articles and
other resources about Mars and Mars Polar Lander. Also, SpaceViews
articles, in addition to images, online chats, video feeds, and other
features, will be available on December 3 at the "Mars Madness" site
provided by Starport.com (http://www.starport.com), in partnership
with the National Space Society and SpaceWatch.com.



*** News ***

Mars Polar Lander Completes Maneuver

The Mars Polar Lander (MPL) spacecraft successfully performed
a maneuver Tuesday, November 30, that keeps the spacecraft on course
for a landing on the Red Planet at the end of the week.

MPL fired a set of small thrusters for 12.6 seconds at around
1 pm EST (1800 UT), adjusting the spacecraft's velocity by 2.1 kmph
(1.3 mph), a small fraction of the spacecraft's 19,000 kmph (11,900
mph) current velocity.

The slight tweak, though, was enough to make sure the
spacecraft was on the proper course for a landing on Mars in three
days' time. "The current estimates show that we are right on target,"
said Sam Thurman, flight operations manager. "The navigation team
says we are very close to the target point for atmospheric entry on
Friday."

MPL is scheduled to land in the south polar regions of Mars at
3:01 pm EST (2001 UT) Friday, December 3, although the 14-minute light
travel-time delay will mean data from the time of landing would not
arrive until 3:15 pm EST (2015 UT).

In order to make that landing, though, the spacecraft must fly
through a corridor in the Martian atmosphere 10 km (6.2 mi.) wide and
40 km (25 mi.) long, thus the need to keep the spacecraft as close to
its planned trajectory as possible.

Tuesday's maneuver was the fourth in a series of trajectory
correction maneuvers (TCMs) planned during the cruise phase of the
mission, as the spacecraft traveled through interplanetary space from
the Earth to Mars. A fifth and final TCM, if needed, would be
performed Friday at 8:30 am EST (1330 UT). A decision to perform that
maneuver would be made early Friday.

Close attention has been paid to the trajectory of MPL since
the loss of its sibling spacecraft, the Mars Climate Orbiter, which
ended up tens of kilometers off course by the time it reached Mars
September 23, burning up in the Martian atmosphere as it attempted to
go into orbit around the planet.

After a preliminary investigation into the loss of MCO, extra
staff has been added to prevent a similar fate befalling MPL. "A
large team has been working since Thanksgiving, doing everything
that's necessary to get us on the proper flight path for a good entry
position," Thurman said.



NASA Prepares for the Challenge of a Mars Landing

Mars Polar Lander is not the first mission to attempt to land
on the Red Planet, nor the largest. But right now, in the eyes of
both NASA and outside observers, it might be the most important.

Coming two months after its sibling mission, the Mars Climate
Orbiter, was lost to an error attributed to larger management
problems, the success of Mars Polar Lander (MPL) will be seen as a
sign that the space agency has its house back in order, while a
failure -- for whatever reason -- could have serious repercussions for
NASA and its Mars exploration program.

MPL is set to touch down in layered terrain near the south
polar cap of Mars Friday, December 3, at 3:01 pm EST (2001 UT),
although mission controllers will have to wait 14 minutes for signals
from the lander to traverse the gulf between Mars and Earth to know
that the spacecraft made it down.

Landing on Mars is no easy task. Only three NASA missions
have attempted a landing on Mars before MPL -- Vikings 1 and 2 in 1976
and Mars Pathfinder in 1997 -- and all of those had mitigating factors
that made them arguably less challenging that MPL.

The Viking 1 and 2 landers spent several weeks in orbit around
Mars while scientists scouted out the ideal landing location and made
sure all systems on the spacecraft were working well. Mars Pathfinder
made a direct landing on Mars, like MPL will do, but Pathfinder used a
system of airbags to cushion its landing in a manner more forgiving
than MPL's more traditional retrorockets and landing legs.

Meanwhile, the most successful of the former Soviet Union's
several Mars landing attempts was Mars 3 in 1971, which transmitted
all of 20 seconds from the surface after landing before contact was
lost.

"Landing on another planet is probably the most difficult
thing we do," noted Ed Stone, director of the Jet Propulsion
Laboratory (JPL), earlier in the month.

That alone would be enough to make this mission one of the
most challenging the space agency has performed in years. But this
mission has garnered additional attention in the wake of the loss of
MCO, with the concern that the same lax management that led to MCO
going off course could doom MPL.

The preliminary investigation into the loss of MCO also
included a look at MPL. It was a good thing, too: one investigator
noticed that the spacecraft's descent engine, used for the final
approach to the surface, might not function properly in cold
temperatures. Engineers have since decided to turn on the
spacecraft's propellant heaters several hours earlier than planned, to
make sure the engine is warm enough.

JPL has also brought in over 30 senior engineers as an
advisory team and peer review for the project, and has made other
changes in project management, navigation, engineering, and other
areas to avoid any other oversights that could endanger the mission.

Still, rumors swirl around the mission, ranging from concerns
about the pyrotechnics that will separate the aeroshell from the
lander after entry into the Martian atmosphere, to concerns about the
state of the software used on the spacecraft.

And if MPL should fail, for whatever reason, it could spark
not only a major reconsideration of NASA's "faster, better, cheaper"
philosophy of low-cost missions, but a reexamination of NASA's
long-term plans for Mars exploration, which include several more
orbiters and landers, culminating in a sample return mission with
France in 2005.

Until Friday, though, Mars Polar Lander team members will be
busy doing all they can to ensure the success of the mission. And the
rest of the world will be watching and waiting, anxiously.



Shuttle Launch Delayed Again

NASA shuttle managers have decided to delay the next shuttle
mission three days to allow more time to make additional wiring
repairs, the space agency announced Monday, November 22.

Shuttle managers elected to push back the launch of the
shuttle Discovery three days to December 9 in order to make new
repairs to wiring between the shuttle and its external tank. Minor
damage to the wiring was discovered during an inspection the week
before.

The delay gave workers time to make the repairs while allowing
them to take the Thanksgiving holiday weekend off. A new flight
readiness review will be convened December 1 to evaluate the status of
the shuttle.

If the December 9 date holds, the shuttle would lift off at
1:10 am EST (0610 UT), with a landing back at the Kennedy Space Center
December 18 at about 10:15 pm EST (0315 UT December 19).

Pushing the launch back to the 9th leaves little room for
additional delays. NASA officials have previously said that they
would not launch the shuttle after December 14, which would require a
landing on Christmas Eve. NASA wants to avoid having the shuttle in
orbit over Christmas, as well as over the New Year in the unlikely
event of Y2K computer problems, thus if the launch does not occur by
the 14th it would be delayed until January.

The Hubble Space Telescope servicing mission took on a new
urgency earlier this month when the orbiting observatory entered a
safe mode after a fourth gyro failed, leaving the telescope without
sufficient pointing accuracy to perform scientific observations.

Four astronauts will perform a series of spacewalks during the
mission to replace the gyros on Hubble, as well as make computer and
electronic upgrades to the telescope.



Proton Grounded Until March

Russia will likely keep its troubled Proton booster grounded
until March in order to complete engine upgrades, creating potential
additional delays for the International Space Station, an industry
publication reported November 24.

Aerospace Daily quoted Russian officials who said the Proton
booster, which has failed in two of its last four launches, would
remain grounded until the engines of the second stage of the booster
can be upgraded.

The second-stage engines of the normally-reliable Proton have
been implicated in both launch failures. A Proton crash July 5 was
traced to a fault weld in a turbopump of a second-stage engine, which
led to an explosion that destroyed the stage and caused the upper
stages and payload to crash in Kazakhstan.

While the investigation into the October 27 Proton crash is
still underway, the accident appears similar to the July accident, in
that a failure of the second stage engine was the most likely cause of
the crash. A preliminary report on the crash was delivered to Russian
Prime Minster Vladimir Putin on November 17, and a final report is due
this month.

Engines in the boosters involved in both failures came from
the same batch produced by Russia's Voronezh factory in 1993,
Aerospace Daily reported. They were made after a nine-month plant
shutdown, and officials, including Russian Space Agency chief Yuri
Koptev, speculate that workers and tools were not properly certified
before production resumed.

Voronezh had already been modernizing the Proton's
second-stage engines, work that had been accelerated after the July
accident. While the upgraded engines should be completed by the end
of this year, the work needed to install the engines on existing
Protons and prepare them for launch will push back the next Proton
launch until at least March.

That date would mean an additional delay for the International
Space Station and its Zvezda service module, to be launched on a
Proton. Earlier in November Russian officials had said that the
launch of Zvezda would not occur before February, although they
claimed problems with American components were behind the delay.

Moreover, while the Proton could return to service in March,
it is not clear the Zvezda would be the first payload for the Proton.
There are several commercial payloads due to be launched on Protons,
and officials may not wish to place a valuable payload such as Zvezda
on the first upgraded Proton.

A new launch date for Zvezda will likely be announced after a
General Designers' Review of ISS, scheduled to be held in Moscow
December 2, Aerospace Daily reported.



Galileo Completes Second Io Flyby

The Galileo spacecraft completed its second close flyby of Io
late Thursday, November 25, but not before overcoming some last-minute
problems.

Galileo passed 300 km (186 mi.) above the south pole of Io at
11:40 pm EST (0440 UT November 26), its closest approach yet to the
volcanic moon. The flyby was the second close apparoach to the moon in
as many months.

However, just four hours before the time of closest approach,
strong radiation caused Galileo's main computer to reset, putting the
spacecraft into a safe standby mode and stopping scientific
observations.

Ground controllers then sprang to action, preparing a set of
commands that would restore Galileo to normal operations. Those
commands were transmitted to Galileo and successfully executed by the
spacecraft at 11:45 pm, five minutes after closest approach.

"With so little time to spare, it would have been easy to
think 'no way' can we do this," said Galileo project manager Jim
Erickson. "But our team members jumped to the challenge, in some cases
leaving behind half-eaten Thanksgiving dinners."

Galileo team members were prepared for the possibility of such
radiation-induced glitches, having observed some similar, but less
serious, glitches during the October 10 flyby. "This planning paid
off in a big way," said Erickson.

Despite being shut down for several hours, Galileo should
still be able to perform about half of the planned observations of Io,
JPL officials said, as well as all observations of Europa planned for
a separate, more distant, flyby.

This flyby comes towards the end of Galileo's two-year
extended mission, and nearly four years after the spacecraft arrived
at Jupiter. There has been some discussion of extending Galileo's
mission an additional year, including a third close flyby of Io, but
no decision about this extension has yet been made.



Six New Extrasolar Planets Discovered

A team of veteran planet-hunting astronomers have discovered
extrasolar planets around six more Sun-like stars, as well as
indications of several more around stars already known to have
planets, astronomers announced Monday, November 29.

While several of the new planets are in regions around their
stars that could support life, the elliptical nature of their orbits
led one of their discoverers to conclude that solar systems like our
own, with a set of planets in near-circular orbits, may be the
exception and not the rule.

The six newly-discovered planets are all believe to be gas
giants, with masses ranging from 0.8 to 6.6 times the mass of Jupiter,
our solar system's most massive planet. The planets all orbit stars
similar to the Sun, at distances of 65 to 192 light-years from the
Earth.

The planets were discovered by Steven Vogt of the University
of California, Santa Cruz; Geoff Marcy of the University of
California, Berkeley; Paul Butler of the Carnegie Institution of
Washington; and Kevin Apps, a student at the University of Sussex in
England. Marcy and Butler have discovered a large fraction of the
known extrasolar planets, and have worked with Vogt and Apps in past
planetary discoveries.

The discoveries were made by analyzing spectroscopic data
obtained from the Keck Observatory in Hawaii, looking for
characteristic Doppler shifts in spectral lines from the stars as the
star "wobbles" under the gravitational influence of an orbiting
planet.

Five of the six planets discovered are in orbits that lie in
or near their star's "habitable zone", the region around each star
where temperatures would support liquid water, and thus open the
possibility for life. One of the planets, orbiting the star HD
134987, would have an average equilibrium temperature, ignoring
atmospheric effects, of 42 degrees Celsius (108 degrees Fahrenheit.)

More troubling, though, is that all six new planets lie in
eccentric orbits. In an extreme case, the planet orbiting HD 222582
has a 576-day orbit that takes it between 0.39 and 2.31 AU (58.5 to
346 million km, 36.2 to 214 million mi.) from the star, the most
eccentric extrasolar planet yet discovered.

By contrast, all the planets in our solar system except Pluto
lie in near-circular orbits. However, the only extrasolar planets
with such low eccentricities have been those that orbit within a few
million kilometers of their parent stars.

These findings could have a significant impact on solar system
theories. "It is beginning to look like neatly stacked, circular
orbits such as we see in our own solar system are relatively rare,"
Vogt said.

That conclusion is drawn from a sample of only 29 stars known
to have extrasolar planets. Of those, only one is known to have more
than one planet, but some preliminary findings by Vogt and colleagues
may change this. Studies of two others stars known to have one
planet, HD 217107 and HD 187123, show long-term trends which may imply
the existence of one or more additional planets.

"It will take years of additional observations to work out the
masses and orbits of these companions, but the evidence suggests there
are a fair number of multiple planet systems out there," Vogt said.

The discoveries are helping scientists understand the
frequency and nature of other solar systems. "We're rapidly gaining
information about Jupiter-sized planets, their orbits and orbital
distances," noted Morris Aizenman of the National Science Foundation,
which NASA, funded the work. "We hope to have enough information soon
to tell us what fraction of nearby stars have Jupiter-sized planets,
and ultimately, how many stars throughout the galaxy have planets of
any size."

While the discoveries were formally announced Monday in
advance of their publication in a paper in the Astrophysical Journal,
five of the six were quietly published online earlier in the month and
previously reported in SpaceViews.

[Editor's Note: for additional details about all six new
planets, see the full version of this article online at
http://www.spaceviews.com/1999/11/29a.html.]



Communications Satellite Beats Out Mars Airplane for
First Mars Micromission

A high-profile proposal to fly an airplane on Mars on the
100th anniversary of the Wright Brothers' first flight has been passed
over in favor of a communications satellite as the first in a series
of planned Mars micromissions, NASA announced Monday, November 29.

The Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL) said it had selected a
proposal from Ball Aerospace and Aerojet to build a Martian
communications and navigation spacecraft as the first spacecraft of
the Mars Micromission Project, an effort to develop low-cost
spacecraft to complement the currently-planned series of Mars orbiters
and landers.

The spacecraft, scheduled for launch in the spring of 2003,
would be the first of what NASA calls the Mars Network: an orbiting
constellation of spacecraft that would provide improved communications
for Mars landers and orbiters, as well as serve as a Martian analogue
of the Global Positioning System.

The spacecraft is also the first of a series of low-cost
"micromissions" planned by NASA to perform additional science missions
at Mars, as well as support services for existing missions. NASA
expects the micromissions to cost about $50 million each, a fraction
of a full-fledged Mars mission.

To keep costs down, the small spacecraft -- weighing no more
than 220 kg (485 lbs.) -- will use a basic spacecraft bus designed by
Ball Aerospace and a propulsion system provided by Aerojet, with
slight differences depending on if the spacecraft is designed to be an
orbiter or a lander.

Each micromission spacecraft would be launched as a secondary
payload on a commercial Ariane 5 launch. It would then use its own
propulsion system, combined with a series of Earth and Moon flybys, to
each Mars. The launches would be provided for free by the French
space agency CNES as part of a cooperative agreement with NASA.

"The combination of the common spacecraft design and the
piggyback launch is essential to achieve the Mars Micromission Project
goals of frequent low-cost access to Mars," said David Lehman, JPL's
Mars Micromission project manager. "We plan to be able to launch at
least two Mars Micromission spacecraft during every Mars opportunity,
about every two years."

Lehman said about half of the micromissions would be used to
build up the Mars Network, with the other half used for
competitively-selected science missions.

The as-yet-unnamed communications spacecraft beat out a
highly-publicized proposal to send an airplane to Mars as the first
micromission. The plane, specially-designed to fly in the extremely
thin Martian atmosphere, would have made its flight on December 17,
2003: 100 years to the day after Orville and Wilbur Wright made the
first flights of a heavier-than-air powered aircraft at Kitty Hawk,
North Carolina.

The concept, previously submitted as a proposal for a
Discovery-class mission last year but not selected, was resurrected in
February as the first in a new series of micromissions, and was
heavily promoted by NASA Administrator Dan Goldin during a February
press conference when Goldin unveiled the proposed NASA budget for
fiscal year 2000.

Several media outlets had previously reported that the Mars
Airplane Project had been delayed or cancelled outright. Sources said
the complexity of developing an aircraft that could be deployed and
fly in the Martian atmosphere had driven up the projected cost of the
project well beyond the $50 million pricetag for micromissions.
Officials at NASA Headquarters the the Langley Research Center, where
the Mars Airplane efforts were centered, did not reply to requests for
comment.

Regardless of any problems with the Mars airplane proposal,
recent events have shown the need for a dedicated network of
communications satellites on Mars. The Mars Climate Orbiter (MCO)
spacecraft was to serve that role for the Mars Polar Lander (MPL)
mission, relaying transmissions from the spacecraft to the Earth.
With the loss of MCO, MPL will instead have to rely on the Mars Global
Surveyor spacecraft when available, or transmit directly to Earth at a
lower data rate.

The agreement between JPL and Ball and Aerojet is contingent
on NASA providing the funding needed for the micromission program. A
decision on funding is expected by February.



SOHO Enters Safe Mode

The joint ESA-NASA Solar and Heliospheric Observatory (SOHO)
spacecraft entered a protective safe mode Sunday, November 28, project
officials reported Monday.

SOHO entered a safe mode when the spacecraft's Attitude
Control Unit reset for an unknown reason. The computer reset
triggered an Emergency Sun Reacquisition (ESR) mode, a type of safe
mode when the spacecraft tries to repoint the spacecraft back towards
the Sun, transmitting engineering data instead of the usual science
data.

Controllers are working to restore the spacecraft to normal
operations, and believe that should be completed before December 2,
the fourth anniversary of the launch of the solar observing
spacecraft.

SOHO, which observes the Sun from the Earth-Sun L-1 point, 1.5
million km (900,000 mi.) from the Earth, is no stranger to problems.
In June 1998 series of problems, including controller error, sent SOHO
tumbling. The spacecraft remained out of contact with the Earth until
August, and did not return to normal operations again until October,
after a long recovery operation. Two of the three gyroscopes on SOHO
failed to work after that incident.

In December 1998 the last working gyro on SOHO failed, putting
the spacecraft into another safe mode. New software that allows the
spacecraft to maintain its attitude was uploaded and the spacecraft
returned to operations in February. A more robust version of the
gyroless attitude control software was uploaded in October.

SOHO's primary mission ended in April 1998, but the spacecraft
is now in an extended mission to monitor the Sun through the peak of
its 11-year activity cycle that will last through 2003, if the
spacecraft remains healthy.

Some scientists are holding out for an even longer mission.
"What I would really like to see is the spacecraft carry out
observations for a full solar cycle of 11 years," said Bernhard Fleck,
ESA's SOHO project scientist, earlier this year.



Atlas, Soyuz Boosters Launch on Same Day

A Soyuz and an Atlas booster each successfully launched
communications satellites into orbit less than 12 hours apart on
Monday, November 22.

The Soyuz lifted off on schedule at 11:20 am EST (1620 UT)
from Baikonur, Kazakhstan. The satellite separated from the Soyuz's
Ikar upper stage as planned a few hours after launch, and signals from
the satellites were acquired by ground stations. A Globalstar
spokesman said company officials were "thrilled with the success of
the launch."

The satellites will be raised into their operational orbits at
an altitude of 1,414 km (877 mi.) over the next several weeks, joining
44 other Globalstar satellites already in orbit, the company said.

The launch was previously scheduled for November 15, but
delayed when Kazakhstan enacted a ban on all Baikonur launches in late
October after the second failure of a Proton rocket in less than four
months. Kazakhstan lifted the ban on all launches other than the
Proton on November 18 after reaching an agreement with Russia.

The successful launch means there are now 48 satellites in
orbit, completing the planned constellation of satellites needed to
provide global phone service. "We have a full complement of 48
satellites supporting our roll-out of commercial service and are
exceedingly pleased with the satellites' health and performance," said
Bernard Schwartz, Globalstar chairman and CEO, in a post-launch
statement.

Less than 12 hours later, the Atlas 2A lifted off on schedule
at 11:06 pm EST (0406 UT November 23) from Pad 36B at Cape Canaveral.
There were no problems reported with the countdown or the launch,
which placed into orbit the UHF Follow-On (UHF F/O) F-10 satellite.

The launch was delayed 24 hours when a low-voltage reading was
discovered in the booster's main battery, which required more time to
replace than the two-hour launch window accorded. In addition,
weather for Sunday night's launch attempt was questionable, with rain
reported in the area in the hours leading up to the scrubbed launch.

The UHF F/O F-10 satellite, a customized version of the Hughes
HS 601 commercial communications satellite, will provide ultra-high
frequency and other protected communications for the Department of
Defense and several other government agencies. The satellite will
operate from an orbital slot at 72 degrees east, and has a 14-year
design life.

The launch was the fourth Atlas mission of the year, and the
first since an Atlas 2AS placed the Echostar 5 satellite into orbit
September 23.



Dealer Offers to Fly Memorabilia on Mir

A German space memorabilia dealer is offering collectors and
the general public a unique opportunity: a chance to fly their own
items on the Russian space station Mir.

Florian Noller, owner of the Spaceflori space memorabilia web
site (http://fly.to/spaceflori) as well as a memorabilia dealer, says
he plans to offer the service through his connections with Russian
cosmonauts scheduled to fly on Mir and the International Space
Station, provided he runs into no entanglements with NASA.

"The Russians open more and more of their space program to
commercial ventures," Noller told SpaceViews. This includes
cosmonauts willing to fly items such as photos, pins, CDs, and postal
envelopes in their personal mass allowance, for a fee. Such
arrangements are made with the cosmonauts on an individual basis
through Noller, and not through an agreement with a company or agency.

Cosmonauts have in the past been allowed to take almost
anything into orbit that they wanted, as long as fit into their mass
allowance. "They had a regular post office on Mir where they serviced
covers from collectors, philatelists and also from several involved
companies like RKK Energia that made official envelopes," Noller said.

Cosmonauts have been allowed to sell these items to supplement
their meager incomes, which Noller estimates to be about $200 a month.

The cost of flying an item is negotiated on a case-by-case
basis. Noller noted as a reference that the cost of flying 1 kg (2.2
lbs.) to Mir is $20,000, and that each cosmonaut has a personal mass
allowance of 1.5 kg (3.3 lbs.).

One space memorabilia expert believes that this offer will
attract a lot of interest among both collectors and the general
public. "There is definite interest among collectors," said Robert
Pearlman of collectSPACE, a space memorabilia web site. "Having the
opportunity to pre-select an item to become space memorabilia is a
definite draw."

"There are certainly business and promotional reasons why
someone would want to fly items to space," Pearlman added. "It is
also just this type of activity that triggers the 'millennium' spirit
-- with the coming of a new century, flying something into space seems
the ultimate purchase."

The next opportunity to fly such items into space is on
Russia's last scheduled mission to Mir. That mission, which will be
devoted to preparing the station for deorbiting, is tentatively
scheduled for February. Items to fly on that mission need to be in
Star City, Russia by December 12.

Noller said he hopes that cosmonauts will be able to fly
similar items on the International Space Station. That may run afoul
of NASA, however, which prohibits its astronauts from selling stamps
or other memorabilia. Such regulations date back to the Apollo
program, when the three-man crew of Apollo 15 was reprimanded for
carrying stamp covers on their mission and later transferring them to
dealers for sale.

"On ISS there will be NASA 'law', which basically means that
carrying philatelic items is prohibited," said Noller. "I doubt,
however, NASA will risk political and financial problems because of
complaining about cosmonauts carrying philatelic covers."



Astronomers See Lunar Leonid Impacts

Amateur astronomers in the United States and Mexico have
observed that they believe to be several Leonid meteors striking the
Moon, the first confirmed lunar impact observations of any kind.

The first lunar impact was observed by Brian Cudnik of
Houston, who noticed a flash on the dark side of the lunar disk at
10:46 pm CST November 17 (0446 UT November 18). The flash was also
observed by David Dunham in Maryland, who saw the flash in two frames
of a video recording. Analyzing his video, Dunham estimates that
flash reached a peak brightness of at least 3rd magnitude.

Since that initial report, Pedro Valdes Sada, an observer
located near Monterrey, Mexico, reported seeing two similar flashes in
his video of the moon, at around 0514 and 0515 UT. Those flashes have
been confirmed by Dunham, who saw them on his video as well.

Dunham believes all three flashes are associated with Leonid
meteors striking the moon. The peak of the Leonid storm on Earth was
at 0200 UT, and Dunham notes that the Moon would be at the same solar
longitude, and thus be in the peak of the storm, about three hours
later.

These observations were part of a concerted effort by many
amateur astronomers to witness lunar impacts, given the predicted
surge in Leonid meteors this year and a favorable observing geometry.
Several astronomers predicted that the flashes created as the meteors
vaporized on impact with the moon would be faint but visible from the
Earth with even modest amateur telescopes.

The observations are also the first confirmed observations of
a lunar impact. A 1953 photo of the Moon by Dr. Leon Stuart shows an
anomalous bright spot near the terminator that some have interpreted
as the flash from a meteor impact.

There is also evidence that monks in Canterbury, England,
observed an impact on the moon in June 1178. Astronomer-geologist
Jack Hartung has linked the observations recorded by the monks with
the crater Giordano Bruno, one of the youngest craters on the Moon.

Last year, astronomers also saw indirect evidence for Leonid
impacts on the Moon. Boston University astronomers noticed the Moon
generated a short-lived tail of sodium atoms that were kicked up by
Leonid impacts and then swept back away from the Moon by the solar
wind. The tail was noticed by astronomers when the Earth swept
through it a few days after the peak of the Leonids.



NASA Center Outlines Future of Space Transportation

Air-breathing rockets catapulted from maglev tracks, solar
sails, and even fusion and antimatter drives are part of one NASA
center's plan for 21st century space transportation.

The plan, created by the Advanced Space Transportation Program
(ASTP) at NASA's Marshall Space Flight Center, seeks to create a road
map of technologies that will provide less expensive and more reliable
space transportation in the coming decades, in order to enable the
human settlement of space.

"If you look at where we were as a civilization 1,000 years
ago, or just 100 years ago, it's quite realistic to expect human
settlements in space in the 21st century," said Garry Lyles, ASTP
manager.

At the beginning of the plan are three existing experimental
programs -- X-33, X-34, and X-37 -- designed to test technologies for
"second-generation" reusable launch vehicles (the shuttle is
considered the "first-generation" RLV.) NASA engineers hope these
technologies will help reduce the cost of reaching low Earth orbit
from the current prices of up to $10,000 per pound to $1,000 per
pound.

ASTP is looking beyond those programs, however. Engineers are
looking at technologies that would be ready by 2025 that would be able
to reduce the cost of access to tens of dollars per pound, while at
the same time raising the reliability of vehicles to levels equal to
or even greater than commercial airliners.

This work, performed under the "SpaceLiner 100" name, is not
intended to come up with a specific design for a third-generation RLV,
but develop the technologies needed to enable the development f such a
vehicle.

However, this has not stopped engineers from coming up with
designs that incorporate these desired technologies. One such design
out of Marshall uses a spaceplane catapulted off a magnetic levitation
(maglev) track at nearly 1,000 kmph (600 mph). The vehicle then uses
a rocket-based combined cycle engine, a new type of airbreathing
engine, to reach orbit.

SpaceLiner 100 work will begin in earnest in fiscal year 2000,
one year earlier than planned, thanks to an extra $80 million added to
NASA's budget by Congress.

Other technologies that are being considered as part of ASTP's
plan include solar sails, tethers, fusion and antimatter propulsion
systems, and even "breakthrough propulsion physics" areas that could
permit faster-than-light travel in the far future.

Development of these technologies should open space for a
wider range of uses, ASTP officials believe. "Once we bring the cost
and safety of space transportation in line with today's airlines, I
believe we'll have a growth of people doing business in space," said
Lyles. "The opportunities for scientific research and new space
industries are limitless."

"Safe, reliable, affordable transportation has been the key to
exploration and development of frontiers that emerged throughout
history," said Row Rogacki, director of the Space Transportation
Directorate at Marshall. "Transportation is again the driver as we
boldly prepare to explore and develop the largest frontier of all --
the space frontier."



Astronomers Devise New Way to Measure Distances to Gamma-Ray Bursts

A new technique that allows astronomers to measure the
distance to powerful gamma-ray bursts (GRBs) may help them understand
the nature of the early universe, scientists said this week.

A group of astronomers led by Jay Norris of NASA's Goddard
Space Flight Center have found a way to measure the inherent
brightness, and thus distance, to GRBs by measuring a lag between the
arrival of gamma rays of different energies.

Norris's group found that, for a single GRB, gamma rays of
higher energies arrive earlier than those of lower energies. The
brighter the burst, the shorter the gap in the arrival times.

The timing thus gives astronomers a way to measure the
absolute brightness of the GRB. They can then compare this to the
observed brightness of the burst as seen at Earth, and from this
derive the distance to the burst.

The method is analogous to Cepheid variables, a commonly used
"standard candle" used to measure distances to distant stars and
galaxies. The brightness of a Cepheid variable star is a function of
the period of its brightness variations. By measuring that period,
astronomers can find the absolute brightness of the star and, by
comparing it to the measured brightness, compute the distance to it.

The new gamma-ray timing technique should prove useful to
astronomers since they have had few tools with which to gauge the
distance to these powerful but brief sources of energy. Of the
thousands of GRBs detected over the last thirty years, fewer than 10
have had an afterglow or host galaxy that could be detected by optical
telescopes, which could then measure the redshift and thus distance to
the burst.

The GRBs whose distance have been gauged by optical redshifts
have been found to be extremely distant. A GRB observed in January
was found to be about 10 billion light-years from the Earth.

Because GRBs appear to be very distant, and thus very old,
they could provide insights on the early nature of the universe. "If
our finding holds up, this could be a new window on the distant
universe," said Norris. "Many gamma-ray bursts can be detected beyond
the farthest supernovae and quasars we can now see."

The new technique, however, does not help explain what
produces GRBs. More than 100 theories have been proposed to explain
the bursts of energy as powerful as anything since the Big Bang,
although many astronomers now link GRBs to supernovae or hypernovae, a
particularly powerful type of supernova.



Terra Finally Ready to Get Off the Ground

After years of delays, and its fair share of criticism, NASA's
Earth Observing System (EOS) will finally begin operations in December
with the launch of the Terra spacecraft.

Terra, formerly known as EOS AM-1, is the first in a series of
ten spacecraft to be launched in the next decade to study the Earth
and its environment from orbit. It is scheduled for launch atop an
Atlas 2AS booster from Vandenberg Air Force Base, California, on
December 16.

Terra carries five instruments that will study various aspects
of the Earth's land and water masses and its atmosphere. "Terra will
simultaneously study clouds, water vapor, aerosol particles, trace
gases, terrestrial and oceanic properties, the interaction between
them and their effect on atmospheric radiation and climate," said
Yoram Kaufman, Terra project scientist.

Kaufman said Terra will specifically study changes in the
Earth's "radiation budget", a measure of all the inputs and outputs of
radiative energy, such as heat and light, along with changes in the
land and ocean surfaces of the Earth and their interaction with the
atmosphere. "Clearly comprehending these interactive processes is
essential to understanding global climate change," Kaufman said.

After launch Terra will be placed in a Sun-synchronous orbit
705 km (438 mi.) above the Earth. The orbit is designed so that the
spacecraft always crosses the equator at 10:30 am local time, the time
of day when cloud cover over land is at a minimum.

The launch of Terra comes about a year and a half late. Terra
was scheduled for launch in June 1998, but was delayed a year because
of problems with EOS Data Information System (EOSDIS), the software
system that controls the EOS satellites and stores data collected by
them. EOSDIS had been plagued by computer code that has more than
doubled in size, while the annual turnover rate of programmers
exceeded 35 percent.

Terra was then pushed back an additional six months because of
problems with the Centaur upper stage used on the Atlas 2AS that kept
all Atlas boosters grounded for several months.

The problems with Terra and EOS in general have raised the ire
of Congress, which as recently as this year attempted to make
significant cuts into NASA's Earth Sciences program, of which EOS is
the cornerstone. However, in the end Earth Sciences got essentially
full funding for fiscal year 2000.

The spacecraft, originally named EOS AM-1 because it was the
first EOS spacecraft to fly in a Sun-synchronous morning orbit, was
renamed Terra after a student competition completed earlier this year.



SpaceViews Event Horizon

December 3 Mars Polar Lander lands on Mars

December 3-5 Planetfest '99, Pasadena, CA

December 3 Ariane 4 launch of the Helios 1B French military
reconnaissance satellite from Kourou, French Guiana
at 11:22 am EST (1622 UT).

December 4 Pegasus XL launch of seven ORBCOMM communications
satellites, from a L-1011 aircraft off the coast from
Wallops Island, Virginia, at 1:46 pm EST (1846 UT).

December 7 Orbital Minotaur launch of JAWSAT multi-satellite
payload from Vandenberg Air Force Base, California,
at 9:12 pm EST (0212 UT December 8).

December 9 Launch of the shuttle Discovery on mission STS-103
(Hubble Servicing Mission 3A), from the Kennedy Space
Center, Florida at 1:10 am EST (0610 UT).

December 10 Ariane 5 launch of the European Space Agency's X-Ray
Multi-Mirror (XMM) observatory from Kourou, French
Guiana

December 11 Titan 2 launch of a Defense Meteorological Satellite
Program satellite from Vandenberg Air Force Base,
California.




Other News

Extrasolar Planet Confirmation: Several teams of astronomers have
independently confirmed the existence of an extrasolar planet
discovered earlier in November when it passed in front of its star as
seen from the Earth. Transits by the gas giant that orbits HD 209458
have been observed by astronomers in Spain, the U.K., and the U.S.
One group at the High Altitude Observatory of the National Center for
Atmospheric Research reports in a paper submitted to a journal that
they observed transits by the planet in September, two months before
the discovery was announced by astronomers in California and
Tennessee. The transits are the first observed by an extrasolar
planet and provide a confirming for existing methods of discovering
these new worlds.

New Telescopes Get to Work: Two new, innovative -- but very different
-- telescopes have released their first results late last month. An
array of telescopes atop Mount Wilson, California, operated by Georgia
State University, achieved first light on the night of Monday,
November 22, when two of the facility's six telescopes were used to
observe two stars. Light from those two telescopes, part of the
Center for High Angular Resolution Astronomy (CHARA) Array, were
combined in a process known as optical interferometry, which promises
to provide extremely high resolution images of the surfaces of
Sun-like stars and efforts to discover additional extrasolar planets.
Another new telescope, the Hobby-Eberly Telescope (HET) at McDonald
Observatory in west Texas, has completed its commissioning phase and
has entered an early operations phase, observatory officials announced
recently. The telescope, designed primarily for spectroscopy, boasts
the largest single astronomical mirror in the world, 11 meters (36.3
feet) in diameter. However, the design of the telescope, in which the
primary mirror is fixed and objects tracked using a secondary mirror,
limits the maximum usable aperture of the telescope to 9.2 meters
(30.4 feet). The success of the telescope has spawned development of
a twin in South Africa, as the South African government announced
November 25 that it would commit 50 million rands (US$8.15 million) to
the project, in addition to a nearly-equal amount contributed by
universities in Germany, Poland, and the United States.

H-2 Debris Search: Two Japanese government agencies conducted a
ten-day search in the Pacific Ocean for debris from an H-2 rocket
which went out of control and was destroyed shortly after launch
November 15. The search, which wrapped up November 30, was designed
to look for and photograph debris from the first stage, whose main
engine is the likely culprit for the launch failure. The National
Space Development Agency of Japan (NASDA) and the Japan Marine Science
and Technology Center (JAMSTEC), who worked together in the search,
have yet to report on the results from the expedition.

New NASM Director: Jack Dailey, the associate deputy administrator
for NASA, has been named as the new director of the National Air and
Space Museum (NASM), the Smithsonian Institution announced Wednesday,
November 24. Dailey, a retired Marine general who had been at the
space agency since 1992, will take over as director of the museum in
January. He will replace Donald S. Lopez, who had been serving as
acting director of the NASM since July, after the death of
then-director Donald Engen in a glider accident. Dailey will be
responsible for the museum's main complex on the Mall in downtown
Washington -- said to be the most-visited museum in the world -- as
well as development of the new Dulles Center in northern Virginia,
which will hold hundreds of air and spacecraft, including the shuttle
Enterprise, when completed in 2003.

Galactic Clouds and Crashes: Astronomers who have accurately measured
for the first time the distance to an unusual set of gas clouds have
also managed to solve one of the key puzzles to galactic evolution.
In a pair of papers published in the November 25 issue of the journal
Nature, astronomers believe that a massive set of gas clouds, located
10,000 to 40,000 light-years above the plane of the Milky Way galaxy,
supply the galaxy with metal-poor gas to sustain the formation of new
stars. The results mark the first time an accurate location to the
clouds had been obtained, and also explains why both young and old
stars in the disk of the galaxy appear to have the same content of
heavy elements, or metals, even as stars create more metals as they
evolve and die... Images from the Hubble Space Telescope show that up
to 30 percent of a particular class of galaxies known as
ultra-luminous infrared galaxies (ULIRGs) surveyed by astronomers are
involved in multiple mergers, where more than two galaxies are
colliding with one another. The images provide an insight into the
conditions of the early universe, were galaxy collisions were much
more common.

Briefly: An ad for a networking product by Siemens, appearing in some
computing industry publications like Infoworld, includes a provocative
quote by director Michel Comte: "I will make my next movie on the
moon." While it appears that he is just extolling the virtues of a
networking product that allows him to keep in touch with film crews
around the world, maybe he's thinking about a role in the Artemis
Project... Meanwhile, the current issue of Talk magazine includes
attention-grabbing phrase "Liz Hurley on Mars". Turn inside, though,
and you'll find an extremely silly three-page photo spread featuring
the actress/model taking a "vacation" on the Red Planet, complete with
"Martians" in green body paint. (Apparently Mars really does need
women?) If you can get past that, though, you'll find a nice little
article about astrobiologist Chris McKay and the old Mars Underground.


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