The Joint Newsletter of
The Seattle Area Chapters of
The National Space Society
NSS Seattle
And
The Mars Society Puget Sound
»»»»»»»»»»»»»»»»»»»»» September 1999 «««««««««««««««««««««
Volume 1, Issue IV
Contents:
Rain from outer space!
August 27, 1999: On a clear day in west Texas, on March 22, 1998, a meteorite fell to Earth and was seen by a group of boys. They picked up the stone and it made its way to the Johnson Space Center (JSC) for analysis. In a JSC clean room two days later, the grey rock was opened with a hammer. Scientists found blue and purple halite inside. Halite is a salt crystal, similar to table salt. The crystals were up to 3 milimeters (less than a tenth of an inch) in diameter. These are the largest halite crystals ever seen by scientists in any extraterrestrial material. The presence of water inside the crystals was confirmed using several forms of scientific analysis. The crystals have turned blue and purple by radiation, and are estimated to be 4.5 billion years old. That means that the trapped water could predate the sun and planets in our Solar System. According to the authors, a brine solution must have been present when the Solar System was formed. The brine could have been flowing within the asteroid itself when it was in space or it could have been deposited on the asteroid by a passing object, such as a comet. See Page 8 for related story
NSS SEATTLE Proceedings
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@galaxy-7.net
Vice President: Chris Vancil
CLVANCIL@aol.com
Secretary/Editor:
Randy Rumley
rjrumley@juno.com
Treasurer:
David Stuart
DSTUART@prodigy.net
Special Projects Manager:
Christopher Erickson aster@wolfenet.com
----------Board of Directors---------
Kelly Caviezel Gary Harrison Christopher Erickson
Susan Harrison Toni Rusi
------------Advisors------------
Terry Burlison
Chapter meetings are held at 7:00 PM on the second Sunday 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(sņ jūrn), to stay for a time in a place; live temporarily.
President's Message
NSS Seattle now seems firmly established as a National Space Society chapter, three years after its formation. However, many of the same individuals first organizing our chapter still serve as chapter officers.
Where among our chapter's ranks are new faces willing to step up and help keep the ball rolling? This needs to happen to insure this chapter's future existence. If only the same few people are interested in NSS Seattle's operation, our chapter will be just a hollow shell.
I, for one, will not be seeking the Presidency for the year 2000. After overseeing NSS Seattle's organization these past three years, I feel my purpose as Chapter President has been accomplished. The position of President for next year will most likely be filled by reshuffling among the remaining officers, but this still leaves an opening for an additional officer. The call for new officer candidates goes out next month. I ask all members to take a serious look at helping to run this chapter.
Vince Creisler
President NSS Seattle
August 8, 1999 Meeting
Last month, Thom Johnson gave us an update on one of the other Aerospace companies that is located in the Puget Sound region; Kistler Aerospace. This company has been hard at work to bring a real reusable launch vehicle into the market. Thom has been with the company for some time. The company is proceeding with construction of their two stage reusable rocket. 75% of the hardware has been constructed, and the Russian nk-33 and nk-43 engines have been upgraded and tested. The launch site is still in need of work, and they are looking for industry investment. Members of the chapter had been anticipating this talk for some time. It will air on TCI channel 29, some time soon. I'll let you know when at a later time.
September 12, 1999 Meeting
This month, Forrest Bishop will talk to us about the following: a few minutes on a sneak preview of "Machines Alive", a television series about nanotech, biotech, machine ecosystems, space development, etc. Then he will discuss a project of his called "Venture Mars": Venture Mars An extreme undertaking requires severe measures. The mainstream proposals to date have fatal flaws: 1) The core is rotten. 2) No sustainable goals. Tourism over development. 3) Using historical analogies. NASA: "Send the Hilton Hotel." (Battlestar Glactica) (Robert) Zubrin: "Send a Winnebego." Bishop: "Build the infrastructure first." *Start small: Forward-deployed robotics. *Use commercial launch services. *One way tickets. Pioneers as shareholders. *Private financing. Microstock. *Development over science. *No terraformation plans. *Products from Mars Check his site at: http://www.speakeasy.org/~forrestb
As always, we will continue discussion of various space-related subjects until we are kicked out of the room.
We will also have our 'Let's go to the new world' T-shirts available, and The Mars Society Puget Sound Chapter will have a couple of interesting books on Mars available for sale.
Mars Society Puget Sound Proceedings
The Mars Society was founded in August 1998 and is an international organization dedicated to furthering the goal of the exploration and settlement of the Red Planet.
This will be done by:
*Broad public outreach to instill the vision of pioneering Mars.
*Support of ever more aggressive government-funded Mars exploration programs around the
world.
*Conducting Mars exploration on a private basis.
Officers of Mars Society Puget Sound
Jim Burk, President
Dustin Green, Vice President
V Mark Tye, Secretary
David Stuart, Treasurer
Randy Rumley, Editor, Sojourner
From the Founding Declaration of The Mars Society
The time has come for humanity to journey to Mars.
We must go for the knowledge of Mars. Our robotic probes have revealed that Mars was once a warm and wet planet, suitable for hosting life's origin. But did it? A search for fossils on the Martian surface or microbes in groundwater below could provide the answer. If found, they would show that the origin of life is not unique to the Earth, and, by implication, reveal a universe that is filled with life and probably intelligence as well. From the point of view learning our true place in the universe, this would be the most important scientific enlightenment since Copernicus.
We must go for the knowledge of Earth. As we begin the twenty-first century, we have evidence that we are changing the Earth's atmosphere and environment in significant ways. It has become a critical matter for us better to understand all aspects of our environment. In this project, comparative planetology is a very powerful tool, a fact already shown by the role Venusian atmospheric studies played in our discovery of the potential threat of global warming by greenhouse gases. Mars, the planet most like Earth, will have even more to teach us about our home world. The knowledge we gain could be key to our survival.
Please check out the Primary Mars Society Web site: http:// www.marssociety.org
President's Report
September 1999
The 2nd Mars Society convention was a success! Almost a dozen members of our chapter attended the four day event held in Boulder and heard talks from Buzz Aldrin, James Cameron, Robert Zubrin, Kim Stanley Robinson, Chris McKay, and many others. I personally gave talks on Internet issues, MarsNews.com, the Ares CDROM, and a short speech at the Law & Governance task force meeting. All in all, it was an exciting event and we all have come back energized and ready to work on our projects.
Members are now receiving the first issue of the Ares CD, but we have already started work on the second issue, which we must be finished with by November 1st. The focus for this issue will be Educational Outreach, and we'll be running most of the Mars curriculum being worked on by many teams
around the world. Zubrin and other Society members have some official Mars Society curriculum that will be highlighted. In addition, we'll also be running our standard fare of Mars images, multimedia features, research papers, and more.
MarsNews.com was honored with an award from Popular Science magazine and is mentioned on P. 54 of the September 1999 issue. This is the most prestigious award given to the site, but it comes at a somewhat turbulent time as the site is being reorganized, moved, and a volunteer corps established to maintain it. If you are interested in helping or offering input, contact me about being put on the new "marsnews-co-chapters.marssociety.org" discussion list.
We captured a lot of video at the convention and have a lot from last year's. We also have a lot of other space related videos and other materials. Many other chapters have materials such as this to share, so the Mars Society will be setting up some kind of online exchange where chapters can get "trinkets & trash" for sale at events and share video & information more effectively. Stay tuned for news about this and other efforts going on.
Until next month, on to Mars!
Jim Burk
President, Mars Society Puget Sound
Convention Portrait: Clockwise from top left: Sean McGill, Curtis Snow, Jim Burk, Chris Vancil, Randy Rumley, Dean Calahan, David Stuart, Ben Huset (from:Minnisota) Photo by Ben Huset
More pictures at: http://www.freemars.org/mnfan/marsconf2/roll01/index.htm
Conventional Impressions
V. M. Tye, Secretary
While the Second International Convention of the Mars Society had neither the unbridled excitement of starting a new adventure nor quite the international flavor that the first one did, it nevertheless was a comfortable gathering of old friends and acquaintances who had shared the experiences of starting a new organization dedicated to one of mankind's grandest achievements: the settlement of another planet.
In numerous discussions throughout the day and bull sessions late at night one theme kept resurfacing and that is the feeling that the many space advocacy organizations, aerospace industries, legal, and educational institutions are going to have to co-ordinate their efforts more effectively to bring this to pass rather than by working separately. This, then, begged the question of who or what organization would one want to see taking a leadership position? Most in The Mars Society share a certain aloofness to having outsiders dictate the direction of our organization and those in other organizations would view us with the same disdain. Some well-established space groups have grown complacent and seem to exist only to perpetuate themselves while others have leadership hostile to outside ideas and unwilling to co-operate with other groups for fear of losing power. These characteristics of groups and government entities are well understood and they must serve as a constant reminder of both what we have to overcome in our associations with others and what we must not let The Mars Society evolve into. I think you can see the complexity of the problem facing us.
It leaves one aghast when he looks at the enormous task ahead. The general thinking is that this will take a massively parallel effort on the part of many individuals and organizations around the world working together toward a few common goals to achieve it.
I don't mean to sound too down about this because things really are progressing. The Seattle group has actually accomplished a lot in its first year…web sites, Ares CD-ROM, speaking engagements. Other chapters are equally active and the National is on schedule with its first big project the Mars Arctic Research Station. If we can keep up this methodical pace for the long haul we just might be able to see a resurgence of interest by the rest of humanity followed by a new drive into space.
Martians of the Earth, GO HOME!
NASA and JPL Press Releases
Mars Polar Lander To Arrive On Smooth, Layered Terrain
August 25, 1999
A strip of gentle, rolling plains near the Martian south pole will serve as a welcome mat when NASA's Mars Polar Lander touches down on the red planet on December 3.
NASA unveiled the landing site, a swath of terrain measuring about 4,000 square kilometers (1,500 square miles), at a briefing today at NASA Headquarters, Washington, DC.
"We looked for a site with slopes no steeper than 10 degrees," said Project Scientist Dr. Richard Zurek of NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory, Pasadena, CA. "We chose a location with some surface features but no cliffs or jagged peaks, because the spacecraft will be able to land safely, yet we'll still accomplish our science goals."
The landing site is located at 76 degrees south latitude and 195 degrees west longitude, near the northern edge of the layered terrain in the vicinity of the Martian south pole.
"We believe this layered terrain is a record of climate changes on Mars and, in a sense, digging into its surface will be like reading tree rings or layers in an ice core," Zurek said. "The presence of fine layers of dust and ice with varying thickness will indicate changes in weather patterns and layer formation that have been repeated in recent history. In addition, we may find evidence of soil particles that formed in ancient seas on Mars and were later blown into the polar regions."
The landing will be targeted to the center of the site, a rectangular area 200 kilometers (125 miles) long and 20 kilometers (12-1/2 miles) wide. The site was selected after the project team studied pictures and altimeter information gathered by NASA's Mars Global Surveyor, which is currently orbiting the planet. The search was narrowed to four sites before the final location was chosen. A backup landing site is located nearby, at 75 degrees south latitude and 180 degrees west longitude.
"For the next several weeks, we'll study newly transmitted Mars Global Surveyor images," said Flight Team Manager Dr. Sam Thurman at JPL. "If necessary, we can retarget for the backup landing site as late as early October, when the flight team begins preparations for landing."
The December 3 landing occurs toward the end of spring in the Martian southern hemisphere. The sun will shine all day, moving higher and lower in the sky but never dipping below the horizon. This nonstop sunshine will power the lander's solar panels for 90 days, until the Martian seasons change and the lander's mission ends.
Launched on January 3, 1999, Mars Polar Lander will study the soil and look for ice beneath the surface of the Martian south pole. The lander also carries two Deep Space 2 microprobes that will be deployed about five minutes before the spacecraft enters the Martian atmosphere. The microprobes will smash into the planet's surface and penetrate the soil to look for water ice. The microprobes were developed under NASA's New Millennium Program.
Images of the landing site and additional information about Mars Polar Lander are available at the following web site:
http://mars.jpl.nasa.gov/msp98/lander/
Additional information about Deep Space 2 is available on the web at:
JPL manages Mars Polar Lander and the New Millennium Program for NASA's Office of Space Science, Washington, DC. JPL is a division of the California Institute of Technology, Pasadena, CA.
NASA Selects Space Technology 3 Industry Partner
NASA has selected Ball Aerospace & Technologies Corp., Boulder, CO, to build two spacecraft for a unique, formation-flying mission. The Space Technology 3 mission will use separate spacecraft to create a virtual large telescope looking out to the Milky Way galaxy and beyond, much larger than any instrument that could be carried by one satellite alone.
Scheduled to launch in early 2005, this interferometry mission is part of NASA's New Millennium Program, which tests new technologies so that they may be confidently used on science missions of the 21st century.
The contract to Ball Aerospace is valued at approximately $50 million. The two spacecraft will launch together into an orbit around the Sun. After launch, the spacecraft will undergo calibration tests before separating to conduct formation flying and interferometry experiments. The mission is expected to last six months.
For JPL, Ball Aerospace will develop and build the spacecraft and will integrate and test the completed systems. Spacecraft operations will be controlled from facilities at the University of Colorado's Laboratory for Atmospheric and Space Physics. Ball Aerospace & Technologies Corp. is a subsidiary of Ball Corp.
JPL, which manages the New Millennium Program, is developing the mission's interferometer and formation flying sensor technologies. Space Technology 3 is managed for NASA's Office of Space Science, Washington, DC, by JPL, a division of the California Institute of Technology.
New Cassini Moon Images Show Spacecraft Camera Is In Top Form
Image Advisory September 1, 1999
New images and brief movies of the Moon, taken by the camera system on NASA's Saturn-bound Cassini spacecraft when it flew through the Earth-Moon system two weeks ago, are available at http://photojournal.jpl.nasa.gov/ and at
http://ciclops.lpl.arizona.edu/
The black-and-white lunar images were among a sequence taken of the Moon by Cassini's sophisticated camera during the August 17 flyby of Earth. Cassini, launched in October 1997, flew past Earth to gain enough energy to reach distant Saturn in 2004, where the spacecraft will make detailed studies for four years.
"These are the first images taken by Cassini for both photogenic and scientific purposes, and they illustrate that the cameras are functioning beautifully," said Dr. Carolyn C. Porco, team leader of the 14-member Cassini imaging team and an associate professor of planetary sciences at the University of Arizona in Tucson.
The images released today are a wide-angle movie, a narrow-angle video clip, the Moon in ultraviolet and a "triptych" (a three-paneled composite image) of the Moon. The face of the Moon seen in these images is nearly identical to that seen from Earth.
They were taken from a distance of about 234,000 miles (377,000 kilometers) about 80 minutes prior to Cassini's closest approach to Earth. The lunar images were taken to calibrate the camera system using a familiar and well-studied target. (No images of Earth were planned or taken during Cassini's flyby.)
At Saturn, Cassini's imaging system will search for lightning, investigate the cloud structure and meteorology of Saturn's and Titan's atmospheres, image the surfaces of Saturn's many icy satellites, study the ring system, and peer through the hazy atmosphere of Titan to view that moon's intriguing surface. The camera system is one of a dozen scientific instruments on the spacecraft.
Cassini is a joint mission of NASA, the European Space Agency and Italian Space Agency, and is managed by NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory, Pasadena, CA, for NASA's Office of Space Science, Washington DC. JPL is a division of the California Institute of Technology, Pasadena, CA.
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Mars Polar Lander Mission Status
September 1, 1999
NASA's Mars Polar Lander spacecraft fired its maneuvering engines for 30 seconds this morning to fine-tune its flight path for arrival at the Martian south pole on December 3. The burn began at 10:07 a.m. Pacific Daylight Time and increased the speed of the spacecraft by 2.3 meters per second (about 5 miles per hour) so that the Lander will arrive at Mars one hour earlier than previously planned.
"It is like we are flying from New York to California and with today's maneuver we decided to land in Los Angeles instead of San Diego," said Dr. Sam Thurman, flight manager for the Mars Polar Lander at NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory. "During the next few months leading up to landing, we'll conduct additional maneuvers that will further adjust the flight path, similar to deciding which specific runway at LAX we want to land on."
The landing site, announced last week, is located at 76 degrees south latitude and 195 degrees west longitude, near the northern edge of the layered terrain in the vicinity of the Martian south pole. The Lander is now 36.5 million kilometers (22.7 million miles) from Mars, traveling at a speed of 3.7 kilometers per second (about 8,300 miles per hour) relative to the planet.
Mars Polar Lander is managed for NASA's Office of Space Science by JPL. JPL is a division of the California Institute of Technology, Pasadena, Calif.
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NASA Space Shuttle news
Shuttle managers recently reviewed the progress of electrical wiring inspections and repairs on Endeavour and Discovery. Although the work is progressing well, evaluations of the findings thus far are continuing and managers have expanded the inspections based on those findings, including further inspections of areas below the floor of the payload bay. The time required to complete the work is still being assessed. Managers do not plan to discuss target launch dates for upcoming missions until more of the work has been completed, however it is anticipated that no mission could technically be ready for launch before mid-October at the earliest.
Although damage to wiring has been found and repaired in each orbiter, the primary focus of the inspections and repairs is to put measures in place that ensure damage to wiring does not recur. Those measures include installing flexible plastic tubing over some wiring, smoothing and coating rough edges in the proximity of wiring, and installing various other protective shielding where needed. Also, the ground procedures and equipment used when preparing the orbiters for flight are being revised to reduce the potential for technicians to cause inadvertent damage, and plans are being formulated to ensure that electrical wiring is subject to a thorough inspection regularly as part of standard shuttle maintenance.
"Our focus is to be absolutely certain that we do our very best to find, fix and prevent any recurrence of this problem," Space Shuttle Program Manager Ron Dittemore said. "We will not discuss potential launch dates for upcoming missions until we are satisfied that we have done everything we need to do to fly safely. That has and will always be our top priority."
When completed, the technicians will have inspected roughly 100 miles of electrical wiring in each of the four Shuttle orbiters, comprehensively covering the vast majority of the main electrical wiring from nose to tail of the spacecraft. The areas designated for inspection have been identified by gauging their susceptibility to damage by the amount of work generally performed in those areas in the past; past modifications made to the orbiter in those areas; and the past record of wiring damage reports in those areas.
Although numerous locations throughout the orbiters have been identified that require additional preventative measures, the number of places identified in each orbiter where wire has required repair includes:
Endeavour -- 38
Discovery -- 26
Atlantis -- full inspections will begin later this month.
Columbia -- other than initial inspections associated with the short experienced during STS-93, full wiring inspections will be performed when Columbia arrives at the Boeing North American shuttle factory in Palmdale, Ca., late this month.
The repaired wires include areas such as connectors that require some additional insulation and other improvements. Less than half of those identified above are locations where wire repairs related to nicks and other inadvertent damage were required. The inspections have revealed no wiring problems related to age or wear factors.
Payload engineers have determined that the bent freon line associated with the SRTM payload will be repaired with a brace and replacing the line will not be necessary. The bent line was reported earlier this month by a technician working in that area. The freon line is part of a cooling system for some of the SRTM electronics.
Orbiter Atlantis is currently being stored inside the Vehicle Assembly Building, awaiting the opening of Orbiter Processing Facility bay 3. Wiring inspections will begin once Atlantis is moved to the OPF. Orbiter Columbia continues to undergo routine post flight-deservicing in Orbiter Processing Facility bay 3. Workers are preparing the orbiter for its upcoming Orbiter Maintenance Down Period (OMDP) in Palmdale, CA. Once at Palmdale, extensive wiring inspections will be conducted. Columbia is scheduled to be mounted atop NASA's modified Boeing 747 on Sept. 22. The ferry flight from KSC is scheduled to begin on Sept. 23 with an overnight stop at Luke Air Force Base in Arizona. Current plans have Columbia arriving in Palmdale on Sept. 24. Because the orbiter can not be flown through precipitation of any kind, ferry flight plans are contingent upon weather conditions in the flight path.
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Local interest and information
Some information additions regarding Thom Johnsons talk about Kistler Aerospace.
GenCorp Aerojet successfully test fired the first U.S.-modified NK-33 Russian engine to be used on the K-1, the world's first fully reusable launch vehicle. The 145-second test, varying in thrust from 177,000 to 354,000 pounds, exceeded actual launch flight duration of 135 seconds and demonstrated the performance and control needed for the entire K-1 vehicle boost phase. Check out Kistler Aerospace at: http://www.kistleraerospace.com
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Interplanetary Network
Abstract from IEEE COMPUTER, September 1999
V. M. Tye
NASA and the international space community plan to begin a series of missions to Mars in 2001. A critical concern for both manned and unmanned missions to Mars and other parts of our solar system is the ability to transmit video, audio, and research data effectively and efficiently. In response to this NASA and the US Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA) have agreed to provide funding for one year for architectural design and for testbed development of the Interplanetary Network (IPN).
A six-person core team based at the Jet Propulsion Lab in Pasadena, CA. will lead the IPN project and will work with several Universities. Vint Cerf, an Internet pioneer who is lending his expertise, said that further funding should follow if the group can demonstrate successful design and prototyping.
According to the article, the current approach will likely be to have local versions of the Earth's Internet on planets, moons, or space stations or space craft. These local networks would be connected via gateways to the long haul radio links like we currently use and this is where things get messy. Due to the long propagation delays the group will concentrate on developing modifications to the traditional Internet Protocals to handle the extreme latency and missing packets and a host of related issues.
The desirable long term effect of this work will be to have in place a set of standards and proven equipment designs that will facilitate international space missions and help create a commercially viable space-communications infrastructure. This will be increasingly important to research institutions and private companies that will be handling most of the smaller space missions as NASA begins to focus mainly on cutting-edge projects. Some tentative schedules are included in the article but it won't be until the 2007 to 2010 time frame before we see most of this in place.
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More Space Rain.
The Houston Chronicle online is reporting that a second meteorite with the Halite crystals. This second meteorite fell in Morocco in August of 1998. One of the same researchers, Michael Zolensky, cracked open a piece of the 300 lb (originally) meteorite and found similar crystal formations with similar ages (4.5 billion years). Two meteorites with these characteristics lead the researchers to believe that water in the early solar system was common. It will probably lead to more meteorites being brought in for testing as soon as they are found. More water will likely be found in them.
This meteorite (nicknamed "Zag") was brought to the researchers attention quickly enough that it was not ruined by the weather of earth. A small amount of rain on the chunk and the Halite would have washed away. If you are really interested in this, small pieces (selling by the gram) may still be available at Internet auction sites like ebay.
Thanks to Dustin Green for bringing this to my attention. Ed.
Note:
We will welcome any articles, editorials, referrals, or new web sites from any Chapters member. Please let us know. If you have ideas for speakers and/or projects for the chapter, let any officer know by E-mail, or in person at a meeting. Thank you.
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