This Week in Space

[Christina]

Space Shuttle Atlantis is currently docked at the International Space Station, transferring equipment and experiments to the Destiny Laboratory.

Orbiting Mars, the Odyssey is using its Thermal Emission Imaging System to look at the planet carefully. Pictures are now being released daily.

themis.asu.edu/zoom-20020411a.html

The Voyager Interplanetary Mission is set to continue for another 20 years after scientists successfully activated a backup position-sensing system, including a Sun sensor and star tracker, on Voyager 1. The spacecraft had been carrying those components and other spare parts since it was launched in 1977 on what was then slated as a four-year mission.

With near-misses still a theme, the European Space Agency is trying to find ways to eliminate our planetary blind spot.

Read more about this at:
sci.esa.int/content/news/index.cfm?aid=1&cid=1&oid=29787  
Meanwhile, make a note of 2880 - the latest predicted date for an asteroid collision with Earth!

Looking down on this planet, previously dormant volcanoes in two widely separated areas of the Pacific "ring of fire" are showing signs of life, as documented by new images taken by the Advanced Spaceborne Thermal Emission and Reflection Radiometer (Aster) on NASA's Terra satellite.  Northern Chile and the Cascades of Washington State are the focus of this attention.

The images are available at:

www.jpl.nasa.gov/images/earth/volcano/index.html .

April 10, 2002

POLICE yesterday said the alien spherical object that landed in Kasambya,Kikandwa sub-county in Mubende district last month was not a meteorite but a suspected rocket fragment from outer space. Police spokesman Asuman Mugenyi, whose personnel collected the object for scrutiny, said yesterday that they were still
scrutinising the object whose whereabouts he did not disclose.

Full story here:

allafrica.com/stories/200204100271.html


And finally, Attention New Yorkers - ITHACA, N.Y. -- Carolyn S. Shoemaker, the world's most successful
living "comet hunter," will speak at Cornell University Sunday, April 21, at 1 p.m. in the David L. Call Alumni

Auditorium, Kennedy Hall. The talk is free and is open to the public.

[Christina]

This just in - watch a comet 'online' as a satellite monitors its progress around the sun..

SoHo

[dllmzca]

Great info and links, Christina!

Cheers!

[Christina]

Human Space Flight

The Crew of Atlantis are due back on Saturday 20th from all their hard work on the Space Station, including the 'Silver Team' of grandfathers 54-year old Jerry Ross and 49-year old Lee Morin who completed the structural attachment of the newest component of the International Space Station, mating two large tripod legs of a 13 ½ ton truss to the station’s main laboratory during a 7 hour, 30 minute spacewalk.

The first railcar in space crept down the track of a newly installed truss structure on Monday 15th, paving the way for the future use of the system on which the station’s robotic arm will be mounted to travel the full length of the complex. But not without some teething problems. Engineers believe that the subtle effects of weightlessness are causing the railcar to “lift” off its tracks by a microscopic distance, thus interfering with magnetic sensors that tell the transporter its position relative to each worksite. The effect is that the sensors are losing contact with magnetic positioning strips on the truss rail, preventing an automatic latching of the transporter. Manual commanding of the latching is working however, and the system is said to be in excellent working order

Now alone again aboard the ISS, Expedition Four Commander Yury Onufrienko and Flight Engineers Carl Walz and Dan Bursch spent the day configuring station systems for the temporary closure of the complex early Saturday in advance of a short departure in their Soyuz return vehicle and a relocation of the craft to another docking port. They will board their Soyuz return vehicle early Saturday for a brief flyover from its current docking location at the nadir port of the Zarya module to the Pirs Docking compartment. The relocation of the Soyuz,
which is expected to take about 35 minutes, will begin with undocking Saturday at 4:02 a.m. Central time (902 GMT).
Coverage of the operation on NASA Television begins at 3 a.m. Central time (800 GMT).

Extra Solar Planets

Is there any planet like Earth beyond our solar system?  
If so, what might it teach us about Earth's past and future?  
NASA scientists will explore the topic and answer questions from the public during a live webcast on Earth Day, Monday, April 22, from 2 to 3 p.m. Eastern time (11 a.m. to noon Pacific time).


Everything else

The next few weeks offer the chance of a lifetime to observe  the five brightest planets appearing close together in the sky. Look to the west after sunset, and even an inexperienced watcher without a telescope will see the planets changing their relative positions in a slow dance from night to night. And you can take the opportunity to pick out the destinations of three, perhaps four, of ESA's interplanetary spacecraft.

Read more at:
sci.esa.int/content/news/index.cfm?aid=1&cid=1&oid=29818

Hubble Space Telescope is seeing binary objects out in the Kuiper Belt at the edge of our system.
hubblesite.org/news_.and._views/pr.cgi.2002+04


Since its launch on February 7, 1999, the Stardust spacecraft has traveled over two billion kilometers completing one and a half elliptical orbits around the Sun. On Thursday, April 18th, the mission will reach a major milestone when it arrives at its furthest distance from the Sun, also known as its aphelion.
At this time the spacecraft will be 2.72 Astronomical Units (407 million kilometers or 253 million miles) from the Sun, and near the middle of the asteroid belt. This is the farthest distance ever reached by a solar-powered spacecraft. Far beyond the orbit of Mars, the sunlight intensity is only 13% of what we see at Earth resulting in very cold temperatures and diminished power generation by the spacecraft's solar cells.

A new comet was discovered over the Internet by a Chinese amateur astronomer visiting the website for the Solar and Heliospheric Observatory (SOHO) spacecraft. The comet "C/2002 G3 (SOHO)" was first reported on Friday, April 12, by XingMing Zhou of BoLe city, in the XinJiang province of China, who discovered the comet while watching SOHO real-time images of the Sun on the Internet. The comet is a new comet, not belonging to any known group.


And finally,
Former NASA manager of the Viking missions to Mars, James S. Martin, Jr., died April 14, in Rising Sun, Md.,
after a long battle with cancer. Martin was 81.  

Viking 1 and Viking 2, twin spacecraft launched to Mars in 1975, reached the Red Planet a year later. The two orbiting spacecraft provided the first global maps of Mars and when the two Viking landers touched down on the Martian surface, they made history by becoming the first successful mission to soft-land on the surface of another planet. Martin led this unprecedented effort and its 750-person nationwide team of NASA, industry and university engineers, scientists and technicians.

[Christina]

Seriously Pretty Pictures from Hubble!

sci.esa.int/hubble/news/imagecollection.cfm?oid=29876

I've got a new wallpaper for work now!
Woo hoo

[Gnom]

Oo... Oo... Wow!

They're also Seriously Large! I'd love to get those TIFs but they're killing my wretched modem...  

[Christina]

The medium with commentary aren't too bad, but I know what you mean...

Even I couldn't wait for the large to come up - too impatient.

[Dj]

Wow... those are seriously large... the high res jpegs are taking well over a few minutes to download on cable...

[Peter_Pevensie]

Roving reporter Peter Pevensie here...this just in!  NASA is one step closer to choosing a replacement vehicle for the aging Space Shuttle fleet.  Read an "everyman" level report here at CNN, or check out Space.com's coverage for a little more detail and some nice images of the leading contenders (great wallpaper fodder).  You real "armchair astronautical engineers" will get a boost ( )out of Aviation Week's article and it's shameless technobabble.  Finally, if you're interested in the party line, check out NASA's Space Launch Initiative page.

This is Peter Pevensie, reporting live for Christina's "This Week in Space..." ;D

[Christina]

ROTFL

Love the man's style! And so honoured to have him visit my thread  

Keep up the good work and thanks for the links.
I promise a new weekly update this weekend.

(psst, where's the Mars stuff?)

[Christina]

Human Space Flight

Latest 'Space Tourist' Mark Shuttleworth chats with Nelson Mandela - well for £25M I'd expect to get some decent conversation too! www.space.com/spacetourism/

Everything else

Life on Mars? The Translife Mars Gravity Biosatellite, will carry mice into space under simulated Martian gravity to study how partial-gravity environments affect mammals. Scientists say such information is necessary to prepare for the human exploration of Mars.  www.marssociety.org/translife/

Lecture on line - Mars Odyssey project manager, Roger Gibbs, will discuss the challenges of Mars exploration.
Webcast of the lecture will be available at 7 p.m. Thursday, May 9, at
www.jpl.nasa.gov/events/lectures/may02.html .  

[Christina]

Human Space Flight

ISS expedition crew 4 are beginning packing ready to swap with crew 5 in early June.
Spaceman Shuttleworth liked trip so much, he wanted to buy the module!  www.space.com/missionlaunches/soyuz_nope_020507.html

Extra Solar Planets

The study of 'sunspots' on Red Giants may lead to new discoveries
www.space.com/scienceastronomy/astronomy/spinning_star_020503.html
While NASA looks at a couple more ways to try and find those balls of rock out there
tpf.jpl.nasa.gov/

Everything else

Yet another satellite joins the teeming hordes out there. Aqua will collect data on global precipitation, evaporation and the cycling of water.  This information will help scientists all over the world to better understand Earth's water cycle and determine if the water cycle is accelerating as a result of climate change.

In the Guinness Book of World records - the solid with the lowest density! A version ofthe Aerogel which NASA has aboard the Stardust craft has gained this prestigious title. Wow. stardust.jpl.nasa.gov/tech/aerogel.html

More lovely pictures from the Hubble Space Telescope.
www.jpl.nasa.gov/images/wfpc .
And the surface of Mars here
themis.la.asu.edu/latest.html

And if you get a clear sky on May 13th, look up as the Moon will join five visible planets to perform a seldom-seen celestial show.
To see the conjunction of the planets and moon, look in the western sky above the horizon just after sunset. Look for Venus, the brightest star in the group. Red Mars will be right below, and Jupiter, which appears white, will be topmost. Mercury is closest to the horizon, and Saturn is just below Mars.
The next time these bodies will be grouped so closely
together will be in September 2040.

[Christina]

Human Space Flight

www.space.com/missionlaunches/baikonur_roof_020513.html   Accident at Baikonur Cosmodrome.

Meanwhile on the ISS, science continues: In the Destiny laboratory, the crew wrapped up work this week with an experiment that grew the first zeolite crystals, a key element of refining processes used in the petrochemical industry on Earth, in a Destiny Laboratory furnace. The experiment had been delivered last month aboard the shuttle Atlantis and the completed crystals will be returned to scientists on the ground by Endeavour. In addition, work continued on the Biomass Production System, a plant growth experiment, with the crew regularly preserving Brassica plant samples and checking the growth chambers' status.

And as an aside - wanna buy one shuttle, hardly used?
www.space.com/news/spacehistory/buran_auction_020509.html

Extra Planets

Jupiter overtakes Saturn as 'planet with most moons in our system' Web Site:      www.ifa.hawaii.edu/~sheppard/satellites/jup.html
May 16, 2002 UH Astronomers Announce Discovery of 11 New Satellites of Jupiter

Everything else

Want your name on an asteroid?
www.planetary.or.jp/muses-c/pc/en/
The TPS/J program seeks to send names of at least one million people from around the world aboard the spacecraft to land on the surface of the asteroid. The names will be etched on an aluminum foil sheet enveloped inside a target marker, a softball-sized artificial ball. The target marker will be released onto the asteroid surface as a guiding landmark, enabling the spacecraft to touch down on sample-collecting sites safely and correctly.

And in the US Government:
PRESS RELEASE
Date Released: Wednesday, May 15, 2002
House Science Committee, Democratic Membership

Lampson Introduces Bill to Stimulate Human Space Exploration (Washington) - U.S. Rep. Nick Lampson (D-TX) introduced bipartisan legislation today to establish a series of goals to advance the nation's human space flight program over the next twenty years.
Among the goals specified in the bill, the eight-year goal would require the development and flight demonstration of a reusable space vehicle capable of carrying humans from low Earth orbit to libration points in space, which could be used to assemble large-scale scientific observatories far beyond low Earth orbit. The twenty-year goal would require development of a reusable vehicle to carry humans to and from Martian orbit, development of a human occupied research facility on one of the moons of Mars, and development of a reusable vehicle to carry astronauts from Martian orbit to Mars and back.

And finally
Good Housekeeping awarded the Stardust web site as their "Site of the Day" on May 1, 2002. stardust.jpl.nasa.gov

[Gnom]

Of those, one Buran was turned into a space-themed restaurant at Gorky Park in Moscow

And why wasn't I being told about that when I visited Moscow? We ate at McDonalds!    

[Christina]

The article says 'was'. It might not still be there.

But the one in Australia is still up for sale!

www.space.com/news/spacehistory/buran_auction_ends_020523.html