November 8
Shuttle Main Engine Test to be Shown Live on the Internet
CAPE CANAVERAL, Fla. -- Before any Rocketdyne main engine is loaded into the rear end of a shuttle orbiter, it first must be fired on a Mississippi test stand at NASA's Stennis Space Center. Other hot firings there test new components and technologies that might be used on future engines.
And now, for the first time, one of those relatively routine test firings will be broadcast live on the Internet Friday beginning at 6:30 p.m. EST (2330 GMT), with the actual 520-second-long exercise starting at 7 p.m. EST (0000 GMT Saturday).
"This is an opportunity to share the excitement of a Space Shuttle Main Engine test with others," said Robert Lightfoot, NASA's director of the Propulsion Test Directorate at Stennis. "We hope to give them a 'virtual' thrill by sharing the experience online."
Log onto the Stenni Space Center web site at http://www.ssc.nasa.gov and follow the instructions.
NASA Scrubs Monograph About Space Myths and Hoaxes
NASA has abandoned plans to publish a lengthy tome by noted space historian Jim Oberg aimed at squelching the nasty, yet persistent rumors that humanity didn't actually land on the Moon.
"The focus of the monograph was being severely distorted in the media," NASA spokesman Bob Jacobs told SPACE.com. "The intent of the research was to undertake a serious, scholarly look at the origin of hoaxes and myths relating to space flight. There was never any intent to produce a document to convince conspiracy theorists the moon landings were not a hoax."
Jacobs said that educators who are often asked about these fake Moon landing claims and other myths by students were particularly interested in seeing the NASA monograph produced.
Those teachers may yet have their wish fulfilled.
Oberg tells SPACE.com that he's already seeing commercial interest for such a book and is now collecting and evaluating offers.
"Since I will own the copyright, I probably will make more money off the project. If NASA wants to use the final product, they'll have to buy it like everybody else," Oberg said. "I applaud the vision of former NASA historian Roger Launius, who conceived of the need for this project, and it will be completed now even if NASA no longer thinks it's worthwhile."
ICESat Prepares to Give Earth an Icy Stare
The Ice, Cloud, and Land Elevation Satellite -- ICESat for short -- is ready for a winter sendoff from Vandenberg Air Force Base in California. ICESat is built to detect the height of the Earth's polar ice masses. From this data, scientists can ascertain changes in the amount of water stored in the polar deep freeze - tied to global sea level change and detecting changes in Earth's climate.
The spacecraft carries a spiffy Geoscience Laser Altimeter System (GLAS), along with precision navigation gear. From space, ICESat's laser gear can measure the changes in ice thickness over millions of locations in both Greenland and Antarctica.
Ball Aerospace in Boulder, Colorado built the ICESat. Once in orbit and checked out, the spacecraft is to be operated by the University of Colorado's Laboratory for Atmospheric and Space Physics.
-- Leonard David
November 7
CONTOUR Investigation Using New Software to Probe Mishap
New software is being used to help uncover the cold hard facts about NASA's lost to space Comet Nucleus Tour (CONTOUR) spacecraft.
The probe fell silent on August 15 shortly after the craft fired its onboard solid rocket motor. That boost out of Earth orbit was to give CONTOUR the travel orders to visit two comets over the next six years. Finding out what happened to the spacecraft and why is on tap for a special NASA mishap investigation team.
To help that group sort out CONTOUR's woes, a new software tool -- the InvestigationOrganizer -- is being used to improve the accident investigation. NASA's Ames Research Center developed the Web-based tool that provides information storage, management, and analysis capabilities to accident investigation teams.
NASA mishap investigation teams in the past tend to be disparate and cumbersome. Teams have no standard methods or tools for information storage, management, dissemination or analysis. The hope is that the InvestigationOrganizer software can help defuse these problems.
The CONTOUR mishap investigation team has found the software helpful. They've used the InvestigationOrganizer to assist investigators by entering and correlating more than 800 pieces of information, including 145 CONTOUR mission review documents and more than 50 photos of the solid rocket motor and other components. The tool also contains a representation of all the main spacecraft systems, cross-linked to relevant documents.
"The new tool has been particularly useful in organizing and prioritizing the relevant information for the CONTOUR mishap investigation board," said Theron Bradley, the space agency's chief engineer and board chair in a NASA press release. The board expects to issue its findings in phases regarding CONTOUR as further information becomes available.
-- Leonard David
Branding the Space Station
It's one small step for marketing! The European Space Agency (ESA) has hired a public relations firm to raise commercial demand for using the International Space Station - even using the complex for entertainment and tourism.
ESA has appointed Ogilvy Brand Relations of Brussels, Belgium to promote using the European portions of the ISS for marketing, sponsorship, and other less conventional space activities.
"In the past, human spaceflight has, wrongly, retained an exotic and elitist image. With the ISS, this is changing. Human spaceflight will become an everyday experience," explains Jrg Feustel-Bechl, ESA. s Director of Manned Spaceflight and Microgravity. "The station offers companies and organizations the opportunity, for the first time, to exploit manned spaceflight for commercial purposes. By opening a unit exclusively devoted to marketing the station's facilities, ESA is leading the ISS commercialization effort," he said in an ESA press statement.
Ogilvy Brand Relations will help ESA develop the station. s brand image and design a communications strategy to put the ISS in the public eye in Europe and to raise its potential among the European business community.
Not only will the communications program focus on research and development in fields of health, biotechnology, environment, food, and new materials. It will also reach out to newer kinds of space entrepreneurs, active in marketing, entertainment and tourism, ESA explains.
-- Leonard David
Mini-Astronote: Today is the 35th Anniversary of the Surveyor 6 launch. The Surveyor series of robotic probes carried out the first NASA lunar soft landings, all to prepare for the Apollo program.
November 6
China to Beef Up Boosters, Earth-monitoring Satellite SystemsChina plans to step up the performance and reliability of its Long March rocket series, as well as proceed with building a next generation set of boosters. Rocket propellants to be used in the new, more powerful launchers are non-toxic and non-polluting.
One mission for a more powerful booster: Hurling into orbit a 20-ton space station to be staffed by Chinese astronauts.
Space experts taking part in a just concluded China International Aviation and Aerospace Forum 2002 outlined several future goals. Among them, a push for manned space flight in the "near term."
Sun Laiyan, secretary-general of the Commission of Science, Technology and Industry for National Defense, outlined the nation's satellite plan during his speech at the Forum.
According to the People's Daily, Sun said China would speed up the research and development of 8-10 kilowatt large-scale communication satellite common platforms, capable of performing for 15 years. China's aerospace industry will establish a trio of meteorology, resource and ocean satellite systems and an environment and disaster monitoring satellite system.
-- Leonard David
November 5
NASA: The Truth is ... Going to be Really, Really Long
CAPE CANAVERAL, Fla. -- Tired of the recently persistent tabloid hype suggesting the Apollo lunar landings never happened, NASA's history office is fighting back.
NASA chief historian Roger Launius has commissioned a 30,000-word monograph from noted space author Jim Oberg that is to be published in about a year.
"Launius commissioned me to summarize the rebuttals for all of the major 'hoax' accusations," Oberg told SPACE.com. "I intend also to have a chapter on 'independent proofs' that the landings were real. They also want me to discuss the sociological context of this belief it was a hoax."
Oberg's work will deal directly with the claims made by some that the Moon landings were faked because, among other reasons, you couldn't see stars in the dark lunar sky; or that the landings did happen and NASA has supressed proof that alien artifacts were found on the Moon.
Russia to Develop Two Cosmodromes
SVOBODNYI COSMODROME, Amur Region. (Interfax) - Russia will develop two cosmodromes, Plesetsk in the Arkhangelsk region and Svobodnyi in the Amur region, Defense Minister Sergei Ivanov told the press as his visited Svobodnyi on Tuesday.
One cosmodrome is not enough for Russia, he said.
Asked about the outlook for the Baikonur cosmodrome in Kazakhstan, Ivanov said: "Russia pays $115 million in rent for that cosmodrome. Now you may make your own conclusions."
November 4
Most Magnetic Object in the Universe Identified
Scientists have identified the most magnetic object known in the Universe, the result of the first direct measurement of a magnetic field around a peculiar neutron star first observed nearly 25 years ago.
By following the fate of a tiny proton whipping about at near light speed close to the neutron star with NASA's Rossi X-ray Explorer satellite, scientists calculated this star's magnetic field to be up to 10 times more powerful than previously thought -- with a force strong enough to slow a steel locomotive from as far away as the Moon.
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This object, named SGR 1806-20, is one of only ten unusual neutron stars classified as magnetars, thousands of times more magnetic than ordinary neutron stars and billions of times more magnetic than the most powerful magnets built on Earth. The strength of its magnetic field is approximately a million billion (10^15) Gauss, according to a team led by Alaa Ibrahim, a doctoral candidate at George Washington University conducting research at NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Md.
Other magnetars could be just as magnetic, although direct measurements have not yet been made, the team said. The Sun's average magnetic field (or dipole), in comparison, varies between 1 and 5 Gauss. Results are published in two articles in Astrophysical Journal Letters .
More than 3 Million Names Headed to Mars
More than three million people have signed up to have their names included on a DVD that will fly to Mars with NASA. s Mars Exploration Rover mission, slated to land on Mars in 2004. The deadline to submit names is Nov. 15, and you can do it here. Last time we checked, there were few options on the Red Planet regarding playback, but it sounds like fun anyway.
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 away. Image Credit: Robert Mallozzi, University of Alabama, Huntsville)
