HOUSTON Shuttle managers are playing it safe and not setting a tentative launch date during Novembers Leonid meteor shower.
NASA spokesman James Hartsfield said shuttle managers are more focused on completing wiring inspections and repairs for the fleet, but the Leonid shower is also a consideration for setting launch dates.
"It certainly plays into that," he said. "We do have a rule not to fly during those times."
Hartsfield added the space agency also schedules around Augusts Perseids shower.
The Leonid shower is scheduled to peak on Nov. 17 and NASA has set a tentative earliest launch date as Nov. 19.
The Leonids consist of particles from the comet Tempel-Tuttle that last passed by the sun in late 1997. The showers typically peak every 33 years with the last happening in 1966.
Predicting meteor showers is akin to predicting the weather, though some forecasts call for the storm to be lighter than in 1966, said James Wooten, planetarium astronomer at the Houston Museum of Natural Science.
"The model says one thing while nature does something else," he said. "You have to stick your head out the window and see whats happening."
Wooten said viewers should at least be able to see a shower of 100 meteors per hour and possibly a storm with 500 or more per hour.
The dust-sized particles rarely make it past the Earths atmosphere, but they could cause problems for orbiting spacecraft.
The particles travel close to 155,000 miles per hour and on impact create a plasma or electrical charge that could damage a spacecrafts electrical components.
In 1993, the Olympus communication satellite was struck during a Leonids shower and went off the air due to electrical problems, according to the Aerospace Corp. website.
The company offers common sense tips such as delaying launch till after the shower, powering down systems in craft already aloft, and pointing electrically-sensitive sides of the craft away from the potential meteorite strikes.
Wooten said the best time to see the Leonids is between 2 a.m. and dawn on Nov. 17.
Not everybody with their eyes on space avoids the Leonids, however.
NASAs Ames Research Center in Mountain View, Calif. plans on sending two aircraft up to study the meteorites, and Marshall Space Flight Center in Huntsville, Ala. will send aloft a sensor and video camera-equipped balloon in attempt to capture particles.
advertisement
