Masthead
February 2001

Welcome back from the break. As usual, there's been a lot moving on the high frontier, some up and some down. Mir unfortunately does look like it is coming down. They've lowered its orbit to the point at which they won't be able to get it back up again. The idea is to gently trim Mir's orbit so that they have plenty of fuel left to keep it stable during as much of the fiery descent as possible. One heck of a 15th birthday for Mir.
Nobody has actually dropped anything this big out of the sky before though, and so we're not sure exactly what is going to happen. Some enthusiasts are paying US$6,500 for a cruise that will take them near to the entry zone somewhere in the remote pacific: the last thing anywhere near this size that entered the Earth's atmosphere was that dirty great meteorite that punched a big hole in Siberia. There is a certain amount of trepidation in the aerospace community about how much of it will enter, and how much control we'll have over it as it comes in. Not to mention how much of a splat it's going to make.

Your Destiny

The intrepid ISS live-in crew are still going strong, and look like they'll carry on until their scheduled replacement in March. But NASA has made a decision that is considered unwise by many: The daily crew logs are now censored. They used to be available over the internet as they came in, but now NASA get to spin-doctor them first. So it has become difficult to tell exactly what is going on up there in an independent way. Perhaps the Russians will open up? Now there would be irony.

Still, Expedition One have already received their first visitors and do seem to still be in one piece. The big news at the moment is the US Destiny laboratory on shuttle flight STS-98, which has been hitched up to the space station to make room for conducting experiments in safety. All is going well except for a minor external ammonia leak, now fixed. Destiny is the cylinder being lifted out of the shuttle in the picture on the right. Onboard Destiny are 5 filled equipment racks, but before they can be used, Destiny needs to be hooked up to the rest of the ISS. During their 10-day mission, the shuttle crew performed 3 spacewalks to complete the task - one of them being the 100th US spacewalk. The crew inside the ISS should not need to do a spacewalk; in fact they really need a larger airlock to be fitted to the ISS before they can go outside as the curent one is not really big enough for a person in a spacesuit.
As well as the equipment racks, Destiny has within its 8.5m length navigation computers, gyroscopes, fire and environmental alarms, sytems to monitor the health of the station and experimental payloads, and - of great importance to the crew - a window half a metre across. The whole thing weighs 14.5 tonnes, and rumour has it that bugs were developing in the control software faster than they could be fixed, so things could get interesting up there.

A NEAR Thing

As you might have seen on the telly, the NEAR spacecraft that was orbiting the asteroid Eros, has made landfall on the fifth body to be visited by mankind's hardware. The other bodies are the Earth's moon, Venus, Mars, and Jupiter. As the Russians did the first three and ESA provided the Jupiter probe, this makes it the first American "first" to land on anything.
The landing was termed "Bonus Science" by NASA; the NEAR spacecraft was never designed to land and will not do much on the surface other than send back a radio beacon signal. Still, it was given a 10-day mission extension to use the other scientific aparatus than the cameras, which will work this close to the asteroid.
Given that Eros is best described as 'lumpy-shaped', and revolves in awkward directions, the NASA team did a good job settling it down on the surface without smashing it to bits. As it went down, the cameras were rolling and we now have pictures of the asteroid taken only a few hundred metres away - the camera can't reliably focus closer than 300 metres. The image on the right (thanks NASA) was taken at a range of 250 metres. There was one taken at 120 metres, but only half of it got received before the probe landed - probably the smoothest touchdown by any probe so far. There was some talk about making it take off again, but they decided against it in the end. Quit while you're ahead, I say. Congratulations guys.

It's Cute For A Cube

CubeSatWith similarities to Star Trek Borg spacecraft notwithstanding, OSSS are touting what they call "CubeSats" for launch into space at a cost (launch included) of US$50,000 a satellite. Basically a 1 kilo, 4-inch (10cm) cube covered in solar panels, these are still somewhat more sophisitcated devices than the original Sputnik. There is enough room inside - believe it or not - for microgravity experiments, communications systems, thrusters, cameras, dead rodents and all the other bits that make satellites what they are today. They'll even do the ground control stuff for you and e-mail you the pictures or whatever from your own personal satellite.
The very cool part is that it is possible to stack lots of identical-appearing CubeSats into a standard launch container and loft them up aboard a Russian Dnepr rocket real cheap. Which is exactly what OSSS plan to do this November, when the standard container of up to 18 CubeSats is assimilated. Did I say assimilated?

Want A Piece Of The Moon?

Well now you can buy it - if you have the money. Samples of moondust are pretty scarce as NASA isn't selling, although the Russians returned a very small sample by robotic probe of which some has been sold. Dale Gray's Frontier Status reports that grime in the bottom of a holdall Florian Noller bought as a legal memorabilia item from an Apollo 15 flight turned out to be moondust. Samples have been lifted on tape and analysed to check the authenticity. So now, for a cost of between US$995 and US$2,495 you too can own a piece of the moon with a free piece of sticky tape thrown in. The price paid for the original bag? A mere US$2,300. The drinks are on Noller.

This edition is also on the web, just point your web browser to http://olliver.family.gen.nz.   vik@olliver.family.gen.nz.

"He is a true fugitive who flees from reason." - Marcus Aurelius
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