October 2000
OK,
so the 100th Space Shuttle flight ever was not exactly plain
sailing. It took pilot Pamela Melroy four launch attempts to get all 2.5
million parts (no kidding) that make up Discovery to leave the pad
in close formation: The first attempt was called off when NASA became suspicious
that some bolts weren't undoing properly and one of the fuel valves was
acting up. This could have resulted in some parts leaving the formation
in an unscheduled manner, so they replaced the dodgy bits. The new bolts
didn't work properly either, but didn't cause an incident.
The second attempt was called off when it got too windy to load the
thousand-odd tonnes of fuel into the enormous shuttle fuel tank. The third
attempt was stopped when a sharp-eyed worker with binoculars discovered
a free-range retaining pin. These pins have straps on and 
are
used everywhere to stop tools etc. falling in awkward places during assembly.
The pin ironically fell in an awkward place during assembly, where they
(a) couldn't reach it and (b) if it fell off it'd hit the engines at several
times the speed of sound. Someone is going to be told to be tidier with
their tools, methinks.
The main part of the mission is to attach the Z1 truss and a large
mating adaptor/airlock (PMA-3, light-coloured nozzle at the bottom right
of the image) to the International Space Station (ISS).
This is nothing to do with a Z1 hernia, more closely resembling high-tech
scaffolding with a satellite dish sticking out of it as in NASA's picture
on the left. It carries four swiveling gyroscopes that are used to keep
the ISS pointed in the right direction, some serious electrical switchgear,
and sturdy brackets to attach on a bunch of solar cells that will be bigger
in area than a footie field.
As well as fitting a truss, they've had some simulated emergencies
up there, mostly practicing the retrieval of drifting astronauts with the
aid of a cunning jetpack. As I write this, Discovery is 
de-orbiting,
and by the time you get to read it on Halloween the first permanent crew
("Expedition
1") should be on their way up in a Russian
soyuz spacecraft
for a 4-month stopover.
Oh, if you're wondering why there wasn't so much of the momentous 100th
event on TV, it's because the TV transmitter aerial broke. This was also
the docking radar aerial, but the manual docking worked fine.
Last of The Pioneer?
Now one of the sad bits, so everyone go "Ahhhh."
Pioneer 10 has
gone quiet. Launched on March 2nd 1972 it opened the way to the exploration
of deep space, showing us what could be done with the now commonplace gravity
assist manoeuvres, crossing the asteroid belt for the first time, and determining
just how tough a spacecraft had to be to survive, say, the radiation belts
around Jupiter. It even had this stamp made after it.
Although its mission officially ended on 31st March 1997,
it was still tracked and contributing to advanced research as it traveled
off into the constellation Taurus. 7 Billion miles gone, but it'll be 2
million years before it passes the stars in that direction. There is a
fair chance that it might be picked up again in December, but it's far
from home and its nuclear batteries have been running for nearly 30 years.
Huygens
Probe Problems
There's a probe on it's way to Saturn, called
Cassini
which is named after a 17th century Italian-French astronomer dude who
discovered four moons and the big gap in Saturn's rings. Now we know the
gap isn't empty, but hey.
Are you old enough to remember when the Voyager probes went
past Saturn and returned all these mind-boggling pictures of moons with
volcanoes, strange weather patterns, and pictures of ice moons shattered
by gigantic meteor strikes? Well when Cassini gets to Saturn, we're
likely to get most of Earth's astronomers all excited again as similar
images come in from Saturn. It's the one with rings, right? Don't be confused
by Cassini sending back pictures of Jupiter over the next few months;
it's only flying past.
Anyway, there's a huge moon called Titan - the biggest moon around
in fact, it has its own weather system, continents and so forth. Unfortunately
it has lots of methane clouds, so we're not sure what the 'so forth' component
is exactly. Enter Huygens, a probe that will parachute through the
murk and show us what's down there. However, there is a small but significant
problem: As the probe drops away, it's radio frequency will appear to change
to Cassini in the same way that a car's horn changes tone as it
drives past you. ESA forgot to allow for this. Oops. This is not a complete
show-stopper, but it does mean that the way the mission is run will have
to be changed to keep the difference in speed as low as possible.
Mars
Takes Off
Last month, Launchpad reported that the Poms are readying for an
altitude record for amateur rockets (http://www.mars.org.uk)
at Black Rock desert in Nevada. Phobos-EAV didn't quite get to 15,000 metres,
but they did get as far as 11,000 metres and smashed the UK record, increasing
it by 2½ times! The launch on the 1st October was pretty
darned impressive as you can see on the right.
Not only the UK record fell here, but the European record too. As they
were out in the middle of the desert and had their backup rocket Phobos
3 with them, they had a bad case of 'what the heck' and launched that
too. It made nearly 5km, which alone would have broken the UK record. Congratulations
guys!
As to the others who are entering for the CATS prize, JP
Aerospace launched a test rocket with 20% strength motors from the
ground. It made about 5km too, but the "real thing" will be launched from
under a balloon as well as with a bigger motor. HARC
have set a launch date of the 29th October, and the Danish
Space Challenge aren't releasing anything in English. My knowledge
of Danish is limited to pastries.
This edition is also on the web, just point your web browser
to http://olliver.family.gen.nz. vik@olliver.family.gen.nz.
"The important thing is not to stop questioning."
- Albert Einstein
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main page http://olliver.family.gen.nz/launchpad