From: Craig Tupper (dtupper@hq.nasa.gov)
Salutations!
What’s new in the past week at http://spacescience.nasa.gov/ :
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NEAR is in orbit around Eros! Following an engine firing on Valentine’s
Day, the spacecraft was captured by the weak gravity of the asteroid. The
first images from orbit have been released. http://near.jhuapl.edu/
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Stardust’s aerogel collectors will be extended on February 22, to attempt
the capture of interstellar dust grains from a stream that flows into our
solar system. Stardust’s primary mission is to capture comet dust and
return it to Earth, but the solar system is a dusty place, we might as well
do some sweeping up while we’re on the way to the comet.
http://stardust.jpl.nasa.gov/
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New research supported by our Astrobiology program reveals that the Earth
got so cold 2.4 billion years ago that even the equator was icy — a
condition now known as “Snowball Earth.” It would’ve been a bad day for a
lot of microbes.
http://broccoli.caltech.edu/~media/Press_Releases/PR12031.html
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HST is providing a great view of the evolution of supernova 1987A. The
ring around the supernova is starting to heat up, as the fastest moving
debris from the immense stellar explosion starts to collide with it.
http://oposite.stsci.edu/pubinfo/pr/2000/11/index.html
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The STARSHINE satellite, designed to study the influence of solar activity
on our planet’s atmosphere and built by school kids, will burn up upon its
return to Earth on February 18 or 19. If you are in the right place at the
right time, you might be able to see it re-enter.
http://www.spacescience.com/headlines/y2000/ast16feb_1.htm
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Our Comet Nucleus Tour (CONTOUR) mission just took a big step closer to its
launch; the project has received approval to begin building the spacecraft.
CONTOUR will launch in July 2002, and make close passes by at least two
comets.
press release at ftp://ftp.hq.nasa.gov/pub/pao/pressrel/2000/00-026.txt
CONTOUR page at http://www.contour2002.org/
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Atom-smashing experiments at a particle accelerator in Switzerland may have
created free quarks, the form of matter that is believed to have filled the
universe for the first fraction of a second of its existence.
http://www.cern.ch/CERN/Announcements/2000/NewStateMatter/
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Jupiter’s massive storms resemble Earth’s but are powered by the planet
itself, not the sun.
http://www.news.cornell.edu/releases/Feb00/Jupiter.storm.bpf.html
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Launch of Cluster II this summer is on track following the maiden flight of
the Fregat upper stage. Cluster is a European-led mission to study space
weather; we have contributed a number of science instruments and other
hardware. http://sci.esa.int/cluster/
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Finally, the bad news: launch of the Japanese/U.S. Astro-E spacecraft
occurred last week, but the spacecraft has been lost. The Japanese project
web site carried this statement:
“After 6 years of hard work by a dedicated staff of scientists, engineers,
and administrators, Astro-E was launched on February 10, 2000 at 1030 JST,
from Kagoshima Space Center… Unfortunately, there was a problem with the
first stage of the M V rocket. Astro-E could not obtain the necessary
altitude for a proper orbit. As a result, the satellite was declared
unusable.”
Regrets to everyone involved, on both sides of the ocean.
