archive: SETI CCNet DIGEST 03/02/99: STARDUST SPECIAL
SETI CCNet DIGEST 03/02/99: STARDUST SPECIAL
Larry Klaes ( lklaes@bbn.com )
Thu, 04 Feb 1999 15:27:57 -0500
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>Subject: CCNet DIGEST 03/02/99: STARDUST SPECIAL
>Date: Wed, 3 Feb 1999 11:07:17 -0500 (EST)
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>CCNet DIGEST, 3 February 1999: STARDUST SPECIAL
>-----------------------------------------------
>
>(1) STARDUST STATUS REPORT
> Ron Baalke <BAALKE@kelvin.jpl.nasa.gov>
>
>(2) UNIVERSITY OF KENT ON A WILD COMET CHASE!
> Peter Bond <100604.1111@compuserve.com>
>
>(3) CHICAGO INSTRUMENT TO GET CLOSE LOOK AT COMET DURING STARDUST
> MISSION
> Steven N. Koppes <s-koppes@uchicago.edu>
>
>(4) AN ALTERNATIVE APPROACH TO "STARDUST"
> THE TIMES, 3 February 1999
>http://www.sunday-times.co.uk:80/news/pages/Times/frontpage.html?1617548
>
>(5) NEW SATURN-SIZED PLANET FOUND
> BBC Online Network
>
>(6) CALIFORNIA FIREBALL
> Skywayinc@aol.com
>
>====================
>(1) STARDUST STATUS REPORT
>
>>From Ron Baalke <BAALKE@kelvin.jpl.nasa.gov>
>
>January 29, 1999
>
>Ken Atkins, STARDUST Project Manager
>
>Welcome to Launch Week: Just one week to go and the excitement is
>building here at the Cape and in the Flight Operations areas at
>Lockheed Martin in Denver and at JPL. As you already know, if you've
>been watching the action through the WebCams, spacecraft close out
>activities were completed in the Payload Hazardous Servicing Facility
>(PHSF). The spacecraft was given a final weighing, mated with the
>Star-37 upper stage, and transported to Pad SLC-17A. There it was
>hoisted to the top of the Delta II's second stage and secured in place
>in the "White Room". The transport canister was removed, the room
>stabilized for cleanliness and the clean-air shroud installed. Spin
>table rotation was checked and Friday the spacecraft was powered-up,
>completed "aliveness testing," and flight software updates were loaded
>and successfully checked out on both sides of the flight computer.
>
>The launch vehicle team held their Launch Site Readiness Review on
>Wednesday. Progress is ahead of schedule on the Delta rocket. On
>Thursday, a Delta II sister rocket launch was attempted at Vandenburg
>AFB, CA. The launch was aborted moments before lift-off when one of its
>two vernier engines did not ignite. The rocket detected the problem
>and stopped the ignition sequence prior to the ignition of the main
>engine. Boeing believes they understand what happened and, at present,
>we don't believe this event will delay the STARDUST launch next
>Saturday.
>
>We are one week from Launch!! Our launch is scheduled for Saturday,
>Feb. 6, 1999. There is a single instantaneous launch opportunity
>available that day at 4:06:42 p.m. EST. The next available window is on
>Sunday, Feb. 7 at 4:04:15 p.m. EST. Liftoff will occur from Pad A at
>Launch Complex 17 on Cape Canaveral Air Station.
>
>Stardust will fly through the dust cloud that surrounds the nucleus of
>a comet-and for the first time ever, bring cometary material back to
>earth. The spacecraft will also collect interstellar dust from a
>recently discovered flow of particles that passes through our solar
>system from interstellar space. Comets may be the oldest, most
>primitive bodies in the solar system, a preserved record of the
>original nebula that formed the Sun and the planets.
>
> PRELAUNCH NEWS CONFERENCE
>
>A prelaunch news conference is scheduled for Friday, Feb. 5 at 2 p.m.
>EST in the KSC News Center auditorium. This will be broadcast on NASA
>Select cable TV. Participating in the briefing will be:
>
>Dr. Carl Pilcher, Science Director, Solar System Exploration
> NASA Headquarters
>
>Ray Lugo, NASA Launch Manager
> Kennedy Space Center
>
>Rich Murphy, Delta Mission Director/Flight Director
> The Boeing Company
>
>Dr. Kenneth Atkins, Stardust Project Manager/Spacecraft Mission
> Director Jet Propulsion Laboratory
>
>Joseph Vellinga, Stardust Program Manager
> Lockheed Martin Astronautics
>
>Dr. Donald Brownlee, Stardust Principal Investigator
> University of Washington
>
>Joel Tumbiolo, Launch Weather Officer
> Department of the Air Force
>
>A post-launch news conference will also be held on Saturday, Feb. 6 at
>6 p.m. in the KSC News Center auditorium. The status of the Stardust
>spacecraft will be provided by the spacecraft mission director at that
>time.
>
>For more information on the STARDUST mission - the first ever comet
>sample return mission - please visit the STARDUST home page:
>
>http://stardust.jpl.nasa.gov
>
>========================
>(2) UNIVERSITY OF KENT ON A WILD COMET CHASE!
>
>>From Peter Bond <100604.1111@compuserve.com>
>
>ROYAL ASTRONOMICAL SOCIETY PRESS INFORMATION NOTE
>Date: 2 February 1999
>Ref. PN 99/04
>
>Issued by:
>Peter Bond,
>RAS Space Science Advisor.
>10 Harrier Close,
>Cranleigh,
>Surrey, GU6 7BS,
>United Kingdom.
>Phone: +44 (0)1483-268672
>Fax: +44 (0)1483-274047
>E-mail: 100604.1111@compuserve.com
>
>http://www.ras.org.uk/ras
>
>INFORMATION ON CONTACTS AND ILLUSTRATIONS IS GIVEN AT THE END OF THIS
>RELEASE.
>
>UNIVERSITY OF KENT ON A WILD COMET CHASE!
>
>A UK-built experiment will soon be heading towards Comet Wild 2
>(pronounced "Vilt-2") as part of NASA's exciting STARDUST mission.
>Professor Tony McDonnell and Dr. Mark Burchell from the University of
>Kent will be among the scientists at the Kennedy Spaceflight Centre in
>Florida who are eagerly anticipating the forthcoming mission to capture
>and return a sample of cometary material.
>
>Stardust is currently set for launch on Saturday, February 6. After a
>five year voyage to reach its target, Stardust will fly past the comet
>in January 2004. Approaching at a speed of 6 km/s (14,000 mph),
>Stardust will capture the tiny dust particles that make up the comet's
>tail, eventually returning them to Earth in January 2006. In order to
>avoid damaging the fragile particles, panels of aerogel - sometimes
>called 'solid smoke' because of its extreme lightness - will be exposed
>to the dust stream and used to entrap them.
>
>The overall dust environment around the comet will also be studied in
>detail. One of the instruments used to measure the characteristics of
>this dust is a sensitive dust detection system.
>
>This Large Area Momentum Sensor (LAMS) is mounted on Stardust's front
>bumper shield. The circular shield, which consists of three layers, is
>used to protect the vulnerable spacecraft from high speed impacts. At
>the rear of the shield is a set of microphones, designed by Kent in
>collaboration with the University of Chicago. These will listen to the
>'sound' of the dust particles as they strike the spacecraft.
>
>The microphone attached to the back of the external aluminium layer
>will record impacts from smaller particles. Larger grains which
>penetrate the aluminium will be detected by a second microphone fixed
>to a layer of Nextel cloth. The number of impacts on the shield will be
>counted from the number of electrical pulses picked up by the Kent
>sensors, while the voltage of each pulse will enable particle mass to
>be calculated.
>
>UKC team member Dr. Mark Burchell said, "Using the special facilities
>in our laboratory, we have been able to recreate the high speed impacts
>on a mock-up of the Stardust spacecraft. This allowed us to test the
>microphones which will 'listen' to the impacts on the real spacecraft as it
>flies past the comet."
>
>Dust particles ejected by comets are thought to have been preserved in
>almost pristine condition since our Solar System formed some
>4,600,000,000 years ago. Professor Tony McDonnell, Director of the
>Unit for Space Sciences, pointed out that "since comets are probably
>the most primitive objects in our Solar System, this is a very
>important mission which will greatly extend our understanding of them
>and of the conditions out of which our Solar System developed".
>
>Also involved in the team is postgraduate student Bryan Vaughan, who
>will be basing his doctorate thesis on the University of Kent Stardust
>research.
>
>The University of Kent involvement with this NASA mission is funded by
>a grant from PPARC, the UK Particle Physics and Astronomy Research
>Council.
>
>Stardust is a prelude to an even more ambitious European Space Agency
>mission called Rosetta. A number of UK groups are involved in this
>mission, including the University of Kent, the Open University, and
>Rutherford Appleton Laboratory. Scheduled for launch in 2003, Rosetta
>will actually land a probe on the surface of a comet, but not until the
>year 2011!
>
>NOTES.
>Stardust will be the first spacecraft ever to bring cometary material
>back to Earth for analysis by scientists worldwide. Its main objective
>is to collect return particles flying off the nucleus of Comet Wild-2.
>It will also bring back samples of interstellar dust, including the
>recently discovered dust streaming into the Solar System from other
>stars. Ground-based analysis of these samples after their return in
>January 2006 should yield important insights into the evolution of the
>Sun and planets, and possibly into the origin of life itself.
>
>Other objectives are to take pictures of the comet, count the comet
>particles striking the spacecraft, and produce real-time analyses of the
>composition of the material ejected by the comet.
>
>Stardust is the fourth of NASA's low-cost Discovery missions.
>
>CONTACT:
>In Florida:
>Prof. Tony McDonnell: (001) 407-783-2230
>At UKC:
>Dr. John Zarnecki, +44 (0)1227-823237 Fax (for all) +44 (0)1227-62616
>E-mail: J.C.Zarnecki@ukc.ac.uk
>Dr. Simon Green, +44 (0)1227-823780 E-mail: S.F.Green@ukc.ac.uk
>Dr. Neil McBride, +44 (0)1227-827654 E-mail: N.McBride@ukc.ac.uk
>Unit for Space Sciences and Astrophysics Office, +44 (0)1227-459616
>
>Further details can be found on the World Wide Web as follows:
>UKC STARDUST Home Page: http://wwwspace.ukc.ac.uk/stardust.html
>UKC Space Activities: http://wwwspace.ukc.ac.uk/
>NASA STARDUST Home Page: http://stardust.jpl.nasa.gov/
>
>======================
>(3) CHICAGO INSTRUMENT TO GET CLOSE LOOK AT COMET DURING STARDUST
> MISSION
>
>>From Steven N. Koppes <s-koppes@uchicago.edu>
>
>Depending on the feedback you're getting from the survey, here's a news
>release that may interest the CCNet list.
>
>Cheers, Steve
>
>
>February 2, 1999
>For immediate release
>
>Contact: Steve Koppes
> (773) 702-8366
> s-koppes@uchicago.edu
>
>Chicago instrument to get close look at comet during Stardust mission
>Launch scheduled for Feb. 6
>
>A University of Chicago instrument will be riding shotgun on the first
>spacecraft designed to return a sample of a comet to Earth. NASA plans
>to launch the Stardust spacecraft to Comet Wild-2 as early as Feb. 6.
>
>Stardust will be blasted with a hail of dust particles traveling
>nearly four miles per second as the spacecraft approaches to within 93
>miles of Comet Wild-2 (pronounced "Vilt"-2) in 2004. 8A special shield
>called the bumper shield will protect the main body of the spacecraft
>as it passes through the glowing gas cloud that surrounds the comet's
>solid nucleus. The detectors for Chicago's Dust Flux Monitor Instrument
>will be mounted on the front of the bumper shield.
>
>"There, they will be exposed to the full force of the dust flux to
>measure the size of the dust particles the spacecraft encounters and
>map their distribution around the comet's nucleus," said Anthony
>Tuzzolino, Senior Scientist at Chicago's Laboratory for Astrophysics &
>Space Research.
>
>The DFMI was not originally part of the Stardust mission. Noel Hinners,
>vice president of spacecraft contractor Lockheed Martin Astronautics,
>suggested its addition to provide rapid measurement of the dust density
>around the comet to help engineers and flight controllers assess the
>health and safety of the spacecraft as it approaches the comet. Ben
>Clark, also of Lockheed Martin, led the effort to find a way to
>integrate the experiment and the spacecraft, the design for which was
>already nearly complete.
>
>"Our instrument performs an important health-hazard function,"
>Tuzzolino said. "Conditions may be far more hazardous than we thought
>as we approach the comet." If so, DFMI data will warn mission
>controllers that it is time to take protective measures for the
>spacecraft.
>
>Scientists also will correlate DFMI's data with the samples that
>Stardust will collect from the comet and return to Earth in 2006.
>Stardust will use a material called aerogel to collect the samples
>without damaging or altering the speeding particles. Aerogel is a
>silica-based solid with a porous, sponge-like structure that consists
>mostly of empty space. "It is so light that it has been called 'solid
>smoke,'" Tuzzolino said.
>
>The other instruments aboard Stardust include a camera to take detailed
>photographs of the comet's surface features, and the Cometary and
>Interstellar Dust Analyzer, which will analyze the composition of the
>comet's dust particles.
>
>The DFMI consists of an electronics box, two detectors mounted on the
>front of the spacecraft's bumper shield and two acoustic sensors,
>measurements from which will be analyzed by a team headed by Professor
>J.A.M. McDonnell of the University of Kent in England.
>
>The detectors consist of a polarized plastic material. "The material is
>similar to Saran wrap," Tuzzolino said. The material generates an
>electrical pulse when hit by small, high-speed particles, even those
>many times smaller than a sand grain.
>
>The two acoustic sensors are embedded between layers of the shield that
>protects the spacecraft from impacting dust particles. "The acoustic
>sensors will be triggered by a large impact particle that hits the
>shield anywhere," said LASR Senior Scientist Bruce McKibben.
>
>Stardust will meet Comet Wild-2 at a distance of 242 million miles from
>Earth, following a flight trajectory that will loop twice around the
>sun. The spacecraft will loop once more around sun after its comet
>encounter on the way back to Earth.
>
>The trajectory will take Stardust close to several meteor streams that
>the DFMI may be able to detect. The first such opportunity will occur
>April 20, 1999 when Stardust comes within 3.5 million miles of the
>Orionid meteor stream. The Orionid meteors, left in the wake of Comet
>Halley, can be seen from Earth each October.
>
>The DFMI may also be able to detect particles of interstellar dust,
>which NASA's Ulysses spacecraft recently discovered streaming into the
>solar system.
>
>"There is a chance that we can identify the trajectory of incoming
>particles that must have come from interstellar space," said John
>Simpson, Arthur Holly Compton Distinguished Service Professor Emeritus
>in Physics. "This is matter that is involved in the origin of the solar
>system itself. It's primordial material."
>
>Stardust will be the 34th space-science mission Simpson and Tuzzolino
>have participated in, starting with Pioneer 2 in 1958. Last November,
>Tuzzolino received the NASA Public Service Medal for his role in the
>development of cosmic ray and dust detectors, including the first to be
>sent to Mercury, the moon, Mars, Jupiter and Saturn. All of their
>experiments have been aimed at understanding the origin of elements and
>matter that formed Earth's galaxy and solar system.
>
>The DFMI is a descendant of Chicago's Dust Counter and Mass Analyzer
>instrument that flew on the Soviet Union's Vega 1 and Vega 2 missions
>to Halley's Comet in 1986. Simpson invented the instrument concept in
>1983, with Tuzzolino playing a key role in its rapid development and
>testing.
>
>On the Vega missions, Chicago scientists discovered to their surprise
>that tiny dust particles streaming from the comet had survived to the
>outer bounds of the comet's coma, the spherical cloud of glowing gas
>that develops around a comet's solid nucleus as it approaches the sun.
>
>"We were able to show that the particles coming off the comet's nucleus
>had to be a conglomerate, probably bound together by an ice glue,"
>Simpson said. "Then, as it carried far out into space, the ice glue
>dissolved, releasing the very small stuff that would have otherwise
>disappeared if it had come directly from the comet."
>
>Two other instruments related to the DFMI are components on NASA's
>current Cassini mission to Saturn and on the Air Force's unclassified
>Advanced Research and Global Observation Satellite.
>
>Simpson and Tuzzolino built Cassini's High Rate Detector, part of the
>larger Cosmic Dust Analyzer from Germany, which will collect and
>analyze dust particles found in interplanetary space and those that form
>the major components of Saturn's rings.
>
>The ARGOS Space Dust instrument, devised by Simpson, Tuzzolino and
>McKibben, will measure the mass, speed and trajectory of cometary dust
>particles and man-made space debris found in low-Earth orbit when launched
>later in February.
>
>The $350,000 DFMI was funded by NASA for Stardust, the fourth mission
>in the space agency's Discovery Program of smaller, faster, cheaper
>missions. The Stardust scientific team is led by University of
>Washington astronomy professor Donald Brownlee.
>
>###
>Editor's Note: An image of the researchers with a model of Stardust and
>a prototype of their detectors is available upon request.
>
>NASA Stardust home page: http://stardust.jpl.nasa.gov
>
>University of Washington Stardust home page:
>http://www.washington.edu/newsroom/stardust/stardust.html
>
>University of Kent Stardust home page:
http://wwwspace.ukc.ac.uk/stardust.html
>
>Radio stations: The University of Chicago has an ISDN line. Please call for
>information. For more news from the University of Chicago, visit our
>Web site at http://www-news.uchicago.edu
>
>=================
>(4) AN ALTERNATIVE APPROACH TO "STARDUST"
>
>>From THE TIMES, 3 February 1999
>http://www.sunday-times.co.uk:80/news/pages/Times/frontpage.html?1617548
>
>CAPTURING THE COMET'S TAIL
>
>By Nigel Hawkes, Science Editor
>
>ON SATURDAY the Stardust satellite is due for launch from Cape
>Canaveral in Florida, bound for the comet Wild 2. Its aim is to capture
>the comet's tail and bring it back to Earth. The tiny dust particles
>that make up the tail could help to answer a question once dismissed as
>scarcely worth consideration: did life begin in space?
>
>When Sir Fred Hoyle and Professor Chandra Wickramasinghe, of Cardiff
>University, suggested this 20 years ago, they were ignored. But the
>discovery of organic chemicals on Halley's Comet, and the claims
>made in 1996 of the detection of microfossils in a meteorite from Mars,
>changed things. Investigations of panspermia (as the theory is called)
>came to be seen as legitimate, says Professor Wickramasinghe, but
>unfortunately they were too late to influence the experiments on
>Stardust, which do not include any search for living microbes.
>
>He is putting his faith in a cheaper experiment planned by the Indian
>Space Research Organisation. With collaboration from scientists at
>Cardiff, it intends to launch a series of balloons into the
>stratosphere and use them to collect samples of air at different
>heights. If the panspermia hypothesis is true, the Earth is bombarded
>by micro-organisms from outer space, which we cannot detect because
>they are identical to those already present on the Earth's surface.
>
>Previous balloon experiments have detected micro-organisms at heights
>of almost 25 miles. There was also a hint that the number of microbes
>increased with altitude, which would certainly support the idea of an
>extraterrestrial source. But in the 1960s and 1970s, comparatively
>primitive techniques made it difficult to eliminate the possibility of
>contamination by microbes from the surface of the Earth.
>
>The key, then, is to ensure absolute sterility of the pumps that will
>suck in the air, and highly sensitive techniques for detecting any
>bacteria or other microbes in the air once it has been brought back to
>Earth. Microbes of extraterrestrial origin would be expected to contain
>different ratios of isotopes of carbon, oxygen and hydrogen from
>terrestrial ones, enabling a clear identification to be made.
>
>How many microbes might be picked up? Professor Wickramasinghe has
>attempted a calculation. It is estimated that about 500 tons of
>extraterrestrial material reaches the Earth from space every day. Any
>microbes contained within it would be starved of nutrients and in a
>state of suspended animation, which means they would be very small.
>Estimating their mass, and guessing that one particle in every 100
>reaching the Earth is a microbe, he concludes that there might be as
>many as 1,000 per litre of air at a height of 30km. Since the balloon
>can take a sample of 50 to 100 litres of air, it could capture as many
>as 100,000 microbes - well above the detection level.
>
>The balloon could be flown by the end of this year, at a cost of
>£150,000. Most will be provided by the Indian Government, but the UK
>end of the project needs to raise £50,000. Grants are to be sought from
>the research councils - but other sources would be equally welcome.
>
>Copyright 1999, The Times Newspapers Ltd.
>
>=====================
>(5) NEW SATURN-SIZED PLANET FOUND
>
>>From the BBC Online Network
>
>The new planet is the size of Saturn, making it the smallest yet
>discovered
>
>By BBC News Online Science Editor Dr David Whitehouse
>
>Scientists at the Geneva Observatory have discovered a new planet
>circling a star almost identical to our Sun.
>
>It is the eighteenth planet known to be orbiting another star but is
>important because the mass of the new planet is similar to that of
>Saturn in our solar system. Previously discovered extra-solar planets
>have been somewhat larger.
>
>FULL STORY:
>http://news.bbc.co.uk/hi/english/sci/tech/newsid_270000/270532.stm
>
>=========================
>(6) CALIFORNIA FIREBALL
>
>>From Skywayinc@aol.com
>
>Meteor Streaks Across Western Sky
>
>Tuesday, February 2, 1999; 2:13 p.m. EST
>
>SAN FRANCISCO (AP) -- A small meteor streaked across the Western sky
>this morning, startling people from San Francisco to Las Vegas, more
>than 400 miles away. ``It was bright and blue and really fantastic,''
>one caller told San Francisco radio station KCBS.
>
>Radio stations in several other cities, including Santa Barbara and San
>Bernardino in Southern California, also had people calling in about the
>mysterious light. People reported seeing it for about five seconds, at
>about 6 a.m.
>
>The object was probably a fireball, or ``bolide,'' according to Jose
>Olivarez, director of the Chabot Observatory and Science Center in
>Oakland. ``From the description, I'd say it was simply a small
>meteorite that entered the atmosphere,'' he said. ``It's not unusual,
>but it was clear last night so lot of people saw it.'' Olivarez said he
>didn't see the meteor himself.
>
>Callers said the bright light zipped across the sky, moving from East
>to West and vanishing over the horizon. Sometimes missile launches have
>been mistaken for meteors, but the Air Force said it had not launched a
>missile at Vandenberg Air Force base.
>
>Copyright 1999, AP
>
>----------------------------------------
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