Sojourner Online

SOJOURNER

The Newsletter of

the Seattle Chapter

The National Space Society

NSS Seattle

»»»»»»»»»»»»»»»»»»»»» July 1998 «««««««««««««««««««««

The National Space Society is an international membership group

dedicated to furthering the exploration and development of space. The Seattle

chapter mission is to facilitate Space Activism and all pro-Space activities; and to provide

a gathering place for space enthusiasts to meet, exchange information and ideas.

President:   Vince Creisler vincelc@hotmail.com
Vice President: Chris Vancil    CLVANCIL@aol.com
Secretary:      Randy Rumley    rjrumley@juno.com
Treasurer:   David Stuart        xsxs80a@prodigy.com
Editor:    Christopher Erickson aster@wolfenet.com

----------Board of Directors---------

Kelly Caviezel Gary Harrison Christopher Erickson

Susan Harrison Toni Rusi

------------Advisors------------

Terrill Burlison

Chapter meetings are held at 7:00 PM on the second Saturday of each month, at the

Museum of Flight; parking is available in the lot North of the museum. To receive

information regarding upcoming events please send your name and addresses

to: Randy Rumley; 12008 S.E. 223rd Drive Kent, WA 98031

so·journ(sò jûrn), to stay for a time in a place; live temporarily.

Message from the President

This month's meeting marks two years since NSS Seattle filed for a chapter application package. That chapter organization meeting was sparsely attended--Karen Cramer, Randy Rumley, Dave Stuart, Gary and Susan Harrison, and myself. Now we have nearly thirty official members and over one hundred on our e-mail list and sixty more on our snail-mail list.

We can also boast of having a newsletter, a web site, and most recently, regularly scheduled programming on public access TV--all thanks to the efforts of motivated members. Add to this our participation in several local science fiction and space events, with our own excellent displays, and it totals up to a very productive first two years. How many other newly formed chapters have done so well in so short a time? I wonder.

Let's take a moment to reflect on our accomplishments, and dedicate ourselves to another year of growth and progress for NSS Seattle.

Vince Creisler

President, NSS Seattle

A few new URLs:

Satellite photo server:

http://www.terraserver.microsoft.com/

Earth/Moon viewer:

http://www.fourmilab.ch/earthview/vplanet.html

Satellite tracker:

http://liftoff.msfc.nasa.gov/academy/rocket_sci/satellites/

A NASA style gift shop:

http://www.thespaceshop.com

Upcoming meeting

July 11, 1998

Our speaker for this meeting will be Robert P. Hoyt, Ph.D, President, CEO, & Chief Engineer of Tethers Unlimited, Inc. (hoyt@tethers.com www.tethers.com). Tethers Unlimited Inc. is an aerospace R&D Company developing long life and high strength space tether technology.

Some of you may remember a couple of years ago we had a talk on these Tether systems by Dr. Hoyt's partner, Dr. Robert Forward. It will be interesting to see how things have progressed on these projects.

Meeting Summary

June 13, 1998

At our last meeting, we had Dr. John Slough discussing the Field Reversed Configuration for Fusion propulsion. He went over the theory and showed us what is currently being done at the Redmond Physics lab. They have actually achieved high temperature plasma using their lab version. He went into the uses for fusion propulsion. For instance, for short duration trips to the outer planets and the Oort cloud, and any trips to other systems would require propulsion systems on par with fusion. Such systems would also make trips in the inner solar system much shorter. Dr. Slough went over the mathematics for spacecraft propulsion. Through this, we found that our current propulsion methods are on the low side of weak. We are only just beginning to scratch the surface of high-power propulsion.

Fusion has been said to be "20 years away" for a long time. The method discussed looks quite promising, and with any luck, may shorten that cliché by a bit.

Randy J. Rumley

Secretary, NSS Seattle

An Update on HGS-1

HGS-1 ARRIVES IN EARTH ORBIT, READY FOR CUSTOMERS

LOS ANGELES, June 17, 1998 -- The HGS-1 communications satellite arrived in geosynchronous orbit over the Pacific Ocean today, successfully completing an historic mission that sent it around the moon twice to reposition it into a useful orbit.

HGS-1 was launched last Christmas Day. Because of a malfunctioning launch vehicle, it was left in an unusable, highly elliptical orbit. Insurers declared it a total loss for its original purposes, which was for communications and television services in Asia. Hughes Global Services, Inc. (HGS) obtained title in April to the fully functional satellite, an HS 601HP model built by Hughes Space and Communications Company (HSC).

Hughes orbital engineers devised a novel mission to salvage the satellite, using lunar gravity to improve the resulting orbit once the satellite returned to Earth. That flyby, in mid-May, was the first commercial mission to the moon. Encouraged by the precision of that mission, Hughes performed a second lunar rendezvous this month to further improve the orbit. The second mission concluded today. At 11:29 a.m. PDT, Hughes satellite controllers fired the on-board motor for 12 minutes, which slowed the spacecraft enough to enter a circular orbit 22,300 miles (36,000 km) above the equator. HGS-1 will be "parked" in a dormant state over the Pacific until Hughes finds customers for it.

HGS-1 made its first swing around the moon May 13. On May 16, as the satellite approached Earth, controllers slowed it down by firing the on-board rocket motor. This put the satellite into a 15-day orbit around Earth with an apogee -- the farthest distance from Earth -- of about 303,000 miles (488,000 km). The moon is about 250,000 miles away (402,000 km).

On June 1, controllers nudged the satellite into position for a second lunar flyby. It passed the moon again on June 6, at a distance of nearly 21,300 miles (34,300 km) from the surface, which is about 52 times farther than the initial lunar encounter of 3,883 miles (6,200 km). A small firing of the rocket motor June 11 reoriented the satellite for its final orbit around Earth.

Last Sunday at 9:15 a.m. PDT, controllers fired the motor for 46 minutes, and again for two minutes at 10:50 a.m. These burns slowed HGS-1 into a 46-hour orbit ranging in altitude from 22,300 miles (36,000 km) to 51,000 miles (82,000 km). Tuesday, controllers performed a 28-minute burn at 7:29 a.m. PDT, putting it into a nearly circular 28-hour orbit. Today's burn captured it in a 24-hour, Geosynchronous orbit, so that it will orbit Earth at the same speed that the planet rotates. It will stay at roughly the same spot above Earth, but will drift a few degrees north and south of the equator every day. "The lunar recovery mission team did an outstanding job. Everything has gone just as predicted, "Swanson said. "It really validates the viability of this technique for future missions." Hughes Global Services is a subsidiary of Hughes Space and Communications Company (HSC), the world's leading manufacturer of geostationary commercial communications satellites.

Scientists and engineers from both HGS and HSC are taking part in the mission. Both companies are units of Hughes Electronics Corporation. PanAmSat Corporation, of which Hughes Electronics is the majority owner, has been providing critical command and tracking support for the mission through its ground station in Fillmore, California. The earnings of Hughes Electronics are used to calculate the earnings per share attributable to GMH (NYSE symbol) common stock.

Contributed by:

Chris Vancil

Vice-President, NSS Seattle

SOHO SPACECRAFT OBSERVATIONS INTERRUPTED

{NASA RELEASE: 98-112}

Ground controllers lost contact with the NASA/European Space Agency (ESA) Solar and Heliospheric Observatory (SOHO) spacecraft June 24 during maintenance operations.

SOHO went into emergency sun reacquisition mode, and ground controllers lost contact with the spacecraft at 7:16 p.m. EDT on June 24. This mode is activated when an anomaly occurs and the spacecraft loses its orientation toward the Sun. When this happens, the spacecraft automatically tries to point itself toward the Sun again by firing its attitude control thrusters under the guidance of an onboard Sun sensor.

Efforts to re-establish contact with SOHO did not succeed and telemetry was lost. Subsequent attempts using the full NASA Deep Space Network capabilities have so far also not been successful.

Engineers from NASA and ESA are attempting to reestablish contact with the spacecraft.

SOHO is a joint mission of the European Space Agency and NASA. It was launched aboard an Atlas IIAS rocket from Cape Canaveral Air Station, FL, on Dec. 2, 1995, and mission operations are directed from NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center, Greenbelt, MD.

In April 1998, SOHO successfully completed its nominal two-year mission to study the Sun's atmosphere, surface and interior. Major science highlights include; the detection of rivers of plasma beneath the surface of the Sun; the discovery of a magnetic "carpet" on the solar surface that seems to account for a substantial part of the energy that is needed to cause the very high temperature of the corona, the Sun's outermost layer; the first detection of flare-induced solar quakes; the discovery of more than 50 sungrazing comets; the most detailed view to date of the solar atmosphere; and spectacular images and movies of coronal mass ejections, which are being used to improve the ability to forecast space weather.

More information and images from SOHO can be found on the Internet at: http://sohowww.nascom.nasa.gov/

Contributed by:

Chris Vancil

Vice President, NSS Seattle

NASA Instruments on Japanese Planet-B Spacecraft will aid studies of Martian upper atmosphere

{NASA RELEASE: 98-119}

A NASA instrument to measure the gas composition of the upper atmosphere of Mars and hardware to support a radio science experiment is flying on a Japanese spacecraft known as Planet-B.

The Neutral Mass Spectrometer (NMS) instrument and Ultra Stable Oscillator was scheduled for launch aboard Planet-B on July 3, 1998, from the Kagoshima Space Center on Kyushu Island, Japan. The launch was apparently a success.

"The Neutral Mass Spectrometer will enable us to measure the chemical composition of the upper atmosphere of Mars on a global scale, which has never been done before," said Dr. Hasso B. Niemann, the NMS principal investigator at NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center's Laboratory for Atmospheres in Greenbelt, MD.

Previous upper atmospheric composition measurements were done in only two locations as NASA's Viking landers entered the Martian atmosphere on July 20 and Sept. 3, 1976, respectively.

The radio science hardware was built by the Johns Hopkins University Applied Physics Laboratory in Laurel, MD, under contract to NASA. The ultra-precise signals generated by the oscillator serve as a very accurate clock to enable analysis of the Martian atmosphere and to help guide the spacecraft as it orbits the red planet.

Planet-B is designed to perform long-term studies of the upper Martian atmosphere and ionosphere, and its interaction with the solar wind. After launch, the Planet-B spacecraft will be placed into Earth orbit and will use two swingbys past the Moon to establish conditions for a final trajectory to Mars.

Once the spacecraft reaches Mars, which is now scheduled for Oct. 11, 1999, it will be placed into a highly elliptical or "egg-shaped" orbit stretching from 93-186 miles (150-300 kilometers) to about 17,000 miles (27,300 kilometers) above the surface. The low-altitude portion of the orbit will be used for remote sensing of the lower atmosphere and surface, and for direct measurements of upper atmosphere and ionosphere. The more distant parts of the orbit will allow instruments to probe the ions and neutral gas escaping from Mars, which interact with the charged-particle "wind" blowing outward from the Sun. Ionization of the upper atmospheric gas by solar radiation produces the charged-particle atmosphere (ionosphere) that acts as an obstacle to the solar wind.

This radiation produces species of gas not seen in Mars' lower atmosphere, such as nitric oxide, or dissociates the atmosphere into single atomic species, such as atomic oxygen. If these neutral or ionized species possess enough energy, they can escape the gravitational pull of Mars, resulting in a net atmospheric loss. Measurements of lighter species such as atomic hydrogen and deuterium also can provide clues about the evolution of the Martian atmosphere.

Mars has little or no intrinsic magnetic field to interact with this process, making it more like Venus in this respect than Earth. The upper atmosphere of Venus and its solar wind environment were studied for almost 14 years by the U. S. Pioneer Venus Orbiter spacecraft from a similar, highly elliptical orbit.

The Planet-B NMS instrument is a state-of-the-art enhancement of the Pioneer Venus mass spectrometer, weighing only six pounds (2.8 kilograms). To conserve space and weight, electronic items such as transistors and integrated circuits were removed from their outer casings and placed in larger packages called hybrid circuits.

Data from previous Mars exploration spacecraft such as Mariner 9 indicate that dust storms near the surface can heat the lower atmosphere and increase the gas density in the upper atmosphere where Planet-B will make its measurements. The U.S. Mars Surveyor 1998 mission known as the Mars Climate Orbiter, due for launch this December, carries an instrument called the Pressure Modulated Infrared Radiometer, which will provide complementary information on the lower atmosphere and its response to dust storms.

The Planet-B project is managed by the Institute of Space and Astronautical Science (ISAS) within the Japanese Ministry of Education. Planet-B carries 14 instruments from Japan, Canada, Sweden, Germany and the United States. ISAS personnel will operate the spacecraft and its instruments. The spacecraft was built by the Nippon Electric Corporation and will be launched by the new M-5 rocket. This rocket is designed to expand Japan's launch capability for the inner planets and beyond.

Further information on the NASA portion of the Planet-B mission and related graphics can be obtained via the Internet at the following URL:

http://webserver.gsfc.nasa.gov/Code915/planetb.html

Contributed by:

Chris Vancil

Vice President, NSS Seattle

Sea Launch

The voyage to Home Port is underway

Assembly & Command Ship 'Commander':

The waves of progress are now in motion! On June 12, The Sea Launch Assembly and Command Ship set sail from St. Petersburg, Russia on a voyage destined for HomePort at Long Beach, California.

In transit, the ship's crew will be busy at work. They will complete installation and testing of launch support equipment, they will track measurements of the two Zenit rockets and two Block DMs that are on board, and they will conduct maintenance and monitoring exercises of the vessel.

During launch operations, the 'Sea Launch Commander' houses the mission control center of the Sea Launch system, providing communications with the launch vehicle, spacecraft, and customer facilities.

The 'Sea Launch Commander' Sailing Route will take it through the Panama Canal to get to the home base of Longbeach, California. For a map of its progress, go to the following URL:

http://www.boeing.com/defense-space/space/sealaunch/shiproute.html

The Launch Platform 'Odyssey':

As the months count down to first launch, the platform begins its journey across the ocean to arrive on-site at Home Port. On June 21, the 440-foot-long and 220-foot-wide Launch Platform 'Odyssey' set sail from Vyborg, Russia carrying with it the transporter erector, fueling systems for the rocket and automated control systems. In transit, the crew will be busy with final installation and testing of launch support equipment.

During launch operations, this specially designed self-propelled, semi-submersible launch complex houses the integrated launch vehicle while transiting to the launch site. In preparation for launch, the platform is lowered to stabilize the launch pad and once in position, the automated transporter/erector erects the integrated launch vehicle and maintains stability for launch.

The 'Odyssey' will be travelling on a different route than the 'Commander', instead of the Panama Canal, it will traverse the Mediteranean and the Suez Canal before sailing through the Indian Ocean and on through the Pacific. For a progress map, please visit the source of this information at the following URL:

http://www.boeing.com/defense-space/space/sealaunch/platformroute.html

Compiled by:

Randy J. Rumley

Secretary, NSS Seattle

Thoughts on the International Space Development Conference

[ISDC]

Attending an International Space Development Conference places one among hundreds of Space Pioneers, Activists, Explorers and future Space Citizens. This brings each attendee face to face with the broad diversity in ideas and visions in getting humanity into Space. Needless to say this is a very invigorating experience and I wish that each of you has the chance to attend a few of these in the coming years. The purpose of these conferences is not to focus on a few concepts or explore highly technical subjects, [there are numerous conferences that do that] but rather to showcase the diverse Space related concepts that are in progress and on the horizon. This is so that you and I, as Space Enthusiasts, can stay abreast of and in touch with these concepts and with the people working on them.

A Quick review – ISDC Milwaukee

This International Space Development conference was held in Milwaukee over the Memorial Day weekend. Three to five tracks were running at a time plus a display/dealers room and many impromptu gatherings to discuss ideas, projects & events. Robert Zubrin gave a number of spirited presentations, a few of which we have obtained home video tapes. [As a side note, when I talked with Zubrin I noted that he had spirited away an NSS-Seattle member to work with his team. He replied that Gary Snyder was a great addition to the team & that they were keeping him as busy as possible. He also suggested that NSS-Seattle should visit Gary at the 'Mars Society' founding convention in Colorado on August 13-16.]

Other items on the agenda at ISDC: There was a very good history and up-to-date report on the Galileo mission by mission manager Bill O'Neil. One of the small panels I found interesting was a testing report on Lunar concrete by Dr. T. Lin who used actual lunar samples from the Apollo flights to create concrete for structure testing. He then made comparisons with concrete made with simulated lunar soils and earth materials, the results being that a very high strength lunar concrete can be made with a minimum of imported material while utilizing resources on the moon. Buzz Aldrin gave a good luncheon talk about his "Sharespace" concept [see Ad Astra, May 1998] but spent more time talking with NSS Oregon. He discussed with them rendezvous trajectories for the lunar radar impactor probe project planned to locate lava tubes on the moon [NSS Oregon has done substantial research on Lava Tubes and their usefulness as habitat space on the moon]. Peter Kokh, the conference organizer, also had a workshop/panel about a 'Lunar University' with the idea of setting up the structure for academics, learning & research on or near the moon with formal training & classes. This idea being part of the 'Living and Working in Space' view of NSS, since people in colonies on the moon are in the near future [40 years or so].

I spent a number of hours in NSS chapter related discussions & workshops, including;

1.) Establishing a video tape sharing or library system between chapters.

2.) Chapter/ headquarters interaction.

3.) A Discussion on the elimination of the ISDC conferences, or complete change in type/style.

4.) Chapters Assembly meeting that discussed the topics of the chapter interest survey (Vince Criesler answered this for NSS-Seattle) concerning chapter operations, projects, events & headquarters.

5.) There was some lively discussion about NSS fundraising & methods.

All in all this was a good conference with over 500 attending. I wish that the many interesting panels were not happening concurrently. This made it impossible not to miss interesting topics, but that points to the wide variety of Space activities that are of interest these days.

Contributed by: David Stuart

News Release

from ScienceDaily

(http://www.sciencedaily.com)

University of Hawaii astronomers have discovered a new type of asteroid, whose orbits lie completely within the orbit of the Earth.

Previously, all known asteroids traveled in an orbit farther from the Sun than the Earth, over at least a portion of their journey.

"All other efforts to discover asteroids on a collision course with the Earth are being directed at a region of the sky almost opposite the Sun," said David Tholen, planetary astronomer at the Institute for Astronomy.

"The significance of this discovery is that we would have otherwise never found this new asteroid because it apparently doesn't travel to that region of the sky being scanned by other search efforts."

If such an asteroid's orbit around the Sun intersects with the Earth's orbit, it could hit the Earth and we would have never seen it coming, said Tholen. We would have been caught unaware by an asteroid approaching us from the daytime side of the sky, he said.

Tholen and graduate student Robert Whiteley made the observation using a specialized camera fitted on the University of Hawaii's 2.24-meter telescope atop Mauna Kea last February.

While scanning the dusk and dawn skies to assess the size and number of asteroids within the Earth's orbit, Whiteley spotted the object, since designated 1998 DK36, on his computer screen, shortly after Tholen had recorded the images at Mauna Kea Observatory and sent them to Whiteley's computer via the Internet.

Additional observations made the following night made it possible to compute a preliminary orbit of the object around the Sun. Tholen said the exact size and shape of the asteroid orbit remain uncertain. However, the orbit's farthest point from the Sun could be determined relatively accurately, and it appears to be very close to, but slightly inside the orbit of the Earth.

The asteroid is thought to be about 40 meters in diameter, similar in size to the one that flattened the Tunguska region of Siberia on June 30, 1908, as well as the iron object that produced Meteor Crater in Arizona 50,000 years ago.

Could it collide with the Earth?

"We were unable to obtain enough observations to perform a formal probability calculation, though the best-fitting orbit has the object passing an apparently safe 750,000 miles from the Earth's orbit," said Tholen. "To do a better job with such discoveries, we really need to have a telescope that we can dedicate to such difficult observations."

"1998 DK36 is nothing to lose sleep over," said Tholen. "It's the ones we haven't found yet that are of concern."

Found by: David Stuart, Treasurer, NSS Seattle

What's on the web (the ever growing list of URLs):

The Astrobiology Web:

http://www2.Astrobiology.Com/astro/

(astrobio@reston.com)

The Virtual Space Museum:

http://www.ccas.ru/~chernov/vsm/halls.htm

ISS assembly sequence:

http://station.nasa.gov/core.html

Space Place:http://www.thespaceplace.com/

Space Race:http://www.nasm.edu/GALLERIES/GAL114/SpaceRace/