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Aviation History
2000
2000 - 0710.PDF
SPACEFLIGHT TRW equips Aqua for observation mission TRW HAS COMPLETED the integration of the six sci ence experiments to fly on the Aqua satellite, formerly the Earth Observing System (EOS) PM. The satellite, being built with a sister spacecraft, EOS Chemistry, for the NASA Goddard Space Flight Center, will fly in December. The Aqua, which will comple ment the first EOS spacecraft, the Terra polar-orbiting platform launched last year, will take cli mate-related measurements of die atmosphere, cloud cover, precipi tation, snow cover and sea ice. The mission will assess long-term envi ronmental changes, identifying human and natural causes, and advance development models for long-term forecasting. While Lockheed Martin-built lerra is the original large platform designed for the EOS programme, the Aqua and EOS Chemistry are based on smaller, standardised, spacecraft buses that allow instru ments to be attached on a "mix and match" basis. 3 Soyuz TM cosmonauts to bring Mir out of mothballs TIM FURNISS/LONDON THE LAUNCH of a Soyuz TM spacecraft from Baiko nur, with the first cosmonaut crew to man die Mir space station since it was modiballed lastyear, will take place on 3 April. The pressurised environment on the Mir has been checked auto matically and the launch given the all-clear. Flight commander Sergei Zale- tin and flight engineer Alexander Kaleri may be joined on the 45-day mission by a Russian' actor, Vladimir Steklov, if financial terms with the MirCorp company can be finalised. Steklov has passed his flight medicals, but his flight is still in doubt because of payment delays. Despite interest created by the recent agreement by MirCorp with RSC Energia to commer cialise the Mir, however, no firm offers have been made to use the station, reports Valeri Korzun, head of die cosmonaut corps based at Star City. MirCorp is reported to have organised foreign funding for a tether experiment to be conducted at the Mir. A Progress Ml tanker will deliver a cable unit to the Mir in May and cosmonauts Zaletin and Kaleri will install the two-part, 2km (1.2 mile)-long reeled dielec tric cable and 6km-long conductor on the outside of the Mir's Kvant module. A redundant manned man oeuvring unit, last used by a space- walking cosmonaut in 1990, will be attached to die cable network. The unit will be released, pulling the 6km cable out to its full length and using the attached dielectric cable to create an electric current of about 2kW. The electric current could be used for moving die space station. Russian acting president Vladi mir Putin, meanwhile, says mea sures will be taken to preserve the Mir. The need to support further operations on the orbiting space base are "convincing", Putin says. "Space exploration is not simply a matter of prestige and a show of the country's might. It is a funda mental area of economics and sci ence," he says. Putin adds that Russia would "abide by its commitments to the International Space Station". Russia also says diat it is prepared to assist China in the creation of its own space station, but Putin denies that it made approaches to that country, offering the Mir orbital space base. 3 NEAR monitors asteroid rotation THE NASA NEAR Earth Asteroid Rendezvous (NEAR) spacecraft has entered a lower, 200km (125 miles), orbit around the asteroid Eros after two orbit correction manoeuvres. Next month NASA hopes to conduct a third short engine burn, moving the spacecraft into a 100km orbit By May, the NEAR will be moved as close as 50km to Eros, where it will remain for sev eral mondis. It will dien be manoeuvred into a deeper orbit as part of the compre hensive imaging and monitoring by the pathfinding craft, which became the first to go into orbit around an asteroid on 14 February. Towards the end of the year, the NEAR s orbit will again be reduced to enable it to fly to within a few kilometres of the surface, possibly even touching it, at very low speed, creating a "divot" in its surface. The NEAR also carries an X-ray and gamma-ray spectrometer, to A montage of images from the NEAR shows the rotation of the asteroid Eros map the elemental composition of the asteroid, and a laser altimeter. Images taken so far show evidence of a layered structure, which may indicate that the 33km-diameter asteroid is a remnant of a larger parent body that broke apart. The images also show a higher density of craters than observed during die fly-bys of anodier main-belt aster oid, Gaspra, by die NASA Galileo spacecraft in 1991. Galileo also made a fly-by of asteroid Idar in 1993, while NEAR made a flv-bv of asteroid Mathilde in June 1997'. • Discovery craft gathers star dust NASA's DISCOVERY pro gramme spacecraft, the Star dust, launched on 7 February last year, has deployed its interstellar dust collector. The Stardust, due to rendezvous with the comet Wild 2 in 2004 where it will collect cometary par ticles, will spend the next three months collecting interstellar dust particles in the solar system. The spacecraft will collect the dust in a bed of aerogel - a light, porous material that will preserve the shape and chemical composition of the dust grains. Another collection period will take place in 2002, when the Stardust's motion will parallel die dust stream. The aerogel, mounted on the deployable disc-like collector, w ill be used to collect the comet dust from Wild 2. The collector will be inserted into a small recover)' cap sule, which will return to Eardi in 2006 for analysis. • 24 FLIGHT INTERNATIONAL 14 - 20 March 2000
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