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Aviation History
2000
2000-1 - 0163.PDF
Deep Space 1 back on course TIM FURNISS/LONDON N\S Vs Deep Space 1 inter planetary space explorer has re-fired its Ion engine after a seven- month space rescue by flight con trollers. The craft is now heading towards an encounter with the comet Borrelly in September 2001. Deep Space l's star tracker, which is responsible for determin ing the probe's orientation, ceased operating last November. The craft had successfully completed its pri mary mission - to demonstrate new technologies for future deep space exploration spacecraft, including an artificial intelligence system. Engineers restored the craft's Bight control by writing new com puter programs to use its imaging camera for orientation instead of the star tracker. Deep Space 1 has regained full three-dimensional control by using the camera to take pictures of a reference star. As the spacecraft rotates and the reference star appears to drift away from the centre of the camera's view, programs analyse the images The Ion engine on Deep Space is operational again Joint exploration of Jupiter planned AFIVE-MONTI I collabora tion between NASAs Galileo Jupiter orbiter and the Saturn- bound Cassini spacecraft is to start in October. When Galileo orbits Jupiter at a distance of 464,000km (288,000 miles), Cassini will be about 9.6 million kilometres above the giant planet en route to Saturn. The mis sions will allow NASA to observe Jupiter and its moon, Io, from two different viewpoints simultaneous ly during a solar eclipse of the plan et on 29 December. NASA will also study the solar winds and high-speed dust streams coming from the volcanic, sul phurous moon. The only light to be seen during the eclipse, will be from Io's volcanic gases. Meanwhile, the. US National Research Council has recommend ed that NASA crash the Galileo orbiter into Jupiter's atmosphere at the end of its mission to protect die moons, Io and Europa, from poten tial contamination from Earth microbes. Europa is of concern because it may be covered with a liquid water ocean under an ice |iack, which could encourage the growth of foreign organisms. 3 NASA starts work on Compton successor ATEAM led by scientists at NASAs Marshall Space Flight Center in JHuntsville, Alabama, is developing a burst monitor to fly on the Gamma Ray Large Area Space Telescope (GLAST). GLAST will be launched in 2005, succeeding the Compton gamma-ray observatory, which was de-orbited in June. The GLAST burst monitor, which is part of the spacecraft's large area telescope, is intended to provide the broadest energy cover age available on a single spacecraft for gamma-ray studies. "We want to discover how these bursts light up the universe with such a tremendous amount of energy," says Dr Charles Mee'gan, a Marshall Center astrophysicist and principal investigator for the GLAST project. "Gamma-ray bursts are still one of the greatest mysteries of astro physics. The total amount of ener gy emitted by all the stars in our galaxy is not as much energy as that released by one gamma-ray burst in a few seconds." In 10s, a gamma-ray burst can discharge thousands of times more energy than die sun will give off in its entire lifetime. Meegan says the GLAST burst monitor will observe most of the energy released by a burst, while the pri mary telescope will detect the highest energy gamma rays emit ted during the blast • RS-72 Pathfinder engine completes tests ASTRIUM AND Boeing have completed tesring of the RS- 72 Pathfinder upper-stage engine with a 14th and final 60s, 100% power firing at NASA's White Sands, New Mexico, test site. The engine is a derivative of the Astium Aestus upper-stage engine for the Ariane 5 and the Boeing Rocket-, dyne XLR-132. The Pathfinder is capable of firing for 2,500s with multiple restart capability. Q and determine how to reorientate the craft to bring the star back to its intended location. Meanwhile, a 20s engine burn by- NASA's Near Earth Asteroid Rendezvous (NEAR) spacecraft on 7 July reduced its 50km (30 miles) circularorbit around the asteroid Eros to an elliptical one of 50 x 35km. The orbit will be circu larised to 35km on 14 July. Eros is an oblong asteroid, so NEAR will come as close as 19km to some parts of its surface. After a close survey of the aster oid, NEAR will be boosted back to a 50km circular orbit by two engine burns on 24 and 31 July, followed by two more burns to take die craft out to 100km for a global survey. It is possible that the craft will later be taken into an even closer orbit. J NEWS IN BRIEF • STARCHASER LAUNCH Starchaser successfully launched a 6m (20ft)-tall, two- stage test rocket to 20,000ft (6,100m) from Morecambe Bay in the UK on 6 July to test the emergency escape system rocket designed for use on its Thunderbird booster. The UK company hopes to win a $10 million offered by US- based X-Prize Foundation by launching three people on two consecutive suborbital space flights during two weeks in 2004. It is one of 18 interna tional contestants in the com petition and hopes to launch its first X-Prize Thunderbird model on a test flight in 2001. • FLIGHT DELAYS Several more unmanned test flights of the ShenZhou spacecraft will be needed before the first Chinese manned mission, unofficial reports from China suggest. The second flight of an unmanned ShenZhou is likely in October, but a maiden manned flight will now take place in 2002, rather than next year as planned, say officials. FLIGHT INTERNATIONAL 18 - 24 July 2000 43
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