For my fellow space junkies out there, here's a newsletter by the guy that writes a column on te same subject for each issue of S&T. If you like it you can subscribe per the info at the bottom. Patrick Jonathan's Space Report No. 519 2004 Jan 29, Garching bei Munchen ------------------------------------------------------------------------------- The NASA/JPL Mars Exploration Rover B (MER-B, MER-1) "Opportunity" landed on Mars successfully on Jan 25. On 0433 UTC on Jan 25, Opportunity's MER-1 cruise stage separated. The lander and the cruise stage entered the Martian atmosphere at 0448:42 UTC; the cruise stage burnt up as planned, and the lander deployed its parachute after a successful reentry at 0503 UTC, followed by heatshield jetison, airbag deployment and retro rocket firing, with touchdown around 0454:33 UTC (this was the expected time, I haven't seen a precise actual time). The airbags bounced several times and began rolling at 0500 UTC, coming to rest a few minutes later. Petal opening was at 0706 UTC, turning the spacecraft right way up and revealing the rover inside. Light time to Earth at the time of landing was 11 min 4s. The Meridiani site is at about 2 S, 354 E. The airbag-enclosed lander came to rest inside a small (20 m diameter) crater. The rover deployed its wheels on Jan 28 and will roll onto the surface at the weekend. Its landing site has been renamed the Challenger Memorial Station; the Spirit site has been named the Columbia Memorial Station and some hills near the site are named the Apollo 1 Hills, individually Grissom, White and Chaffee hills. Recall that the Viking 1 lander was named Mutch Memorial Station after Viking imaging team member Thomas Mutch, and the Pathfinder landing site was called Sagan Memorial Station after Carl Sagan. In July 2001 Dan Goldin announced that Viking Lander 2 would be called Soffen Station after the late Gerald Soffen, but to my knowledge no press release or written announcement about this was ever made, and I'm not sure if it's official. For the MER sites, there seems to be some ambiguity about whether the Station is just the lander, or some poorly defined area surrounding the lander, or all the way to the local horizon. The Spirit rover, exploring Gusev crater, entered safemode on Jan 20 because of a file system problem in the vehicle's flash memory. Controllers are repairing the problem and a full recovery is now expected; Spirit successfully returned a new surface image on Jan 28. A Progress M1 cargo ship is scheduled for launch on Jan 29 to bring supplies to the ISS. Editorial --------- My sources confirm that the Hubble servicing mission cancellation decision was indeed made on grounds of expediting the completion of ISS and the limited gains from extending Hubble's life, and not largely on safety grounds per se. Recall that the Columbia accident board explicitly commented that the mission should not be precluded. Now if the pragmatic reasons for the move were admitted, I might agree with the decision anyway if alternate facilities for ultraviolet astronomy are to made available - but I'm not too optimistic about that. Whatever the merits, it is clear that major problems remain with vertical communication in the NASA organization - the folks on the Hubble team should really have been made more aware that this decision was being weighed rather than being reassured that SM4 was almost certain to happen and totally blindsided by the cancellation news (at least, that's my impression as an outsider after conversations with several Hubblers.) I don't know where in the management chain this communications failure happened. Table of Recent Launches ----------------------- Date UT Name Launch Vehicle Site Mission INTL. DES. Dec 2 1004 USA 173 ) Atlas IIAS Vandenberg SLC3E Sigint 54A USA 173 P/L 2? ) Sigint 54C Dec 5 0600 Gruzomaket Strela Baykonur PL132 Test 55A Dec 10 1742 Kosmos-2402 ) Proton-K/Briz Baykonur PL81/24 Navigation 56A Kosmos-2403 ) Navigation 56B Kosmos-2404 ) Navigation 56C Dec 18 0230 UHF F/O F11 Atlas IIIB Canaveral SLC36B Comms 57A Dec 21 0805 GPS SVN 47 Delta 7925 Canaveral SLC17A Navigation 58A Dec 27 2130 Amos-2 Soyuz-FG/Fregat Baykonur PL31/6 Comms 59A Dec 28 2300 Ekspress AM-22 Proton-K/DM-2M Baykonur PL200/39 Comms 60A Dec 29 1906 Tan Ce 1 CZ-2C Xichang Science 61A Jan 11 0413 Estrela do Sul Zenit-3SL Odyssey Comms 01A .-------------------------------------------------------------------------. | Jonathan McDowell | phone : (617) 495-7176 | | Somerville MA 02143 | inter : jcm@host.planet4589.org | | USA | jcm@cfa.harvard.edu | | | | JSR: http://www.planet4589.org/jsr.html | | Back issues: http://www.planet4589.org/space/jsr/back | | Subscribe/unsub: mail majordomo@host.planet4589.org, (un)subscribe jsr | '-------------------------------------------------------------------------'