Jonathan's Space Report No. 527 2004 Jun 2, Denver, Colorado ------------------------------------------------------------------------------- At the American Astronomical Society in Denver, the science highlight was an all-day session of the spectacular first results from the Spitzer Space Telescope. Warmest congratulations to my many friends involved in the Spitzer mission. IRAS, the US-UK-Netherlands satellite which flew the first significant infrared mission in 1983, wasn't very sensitive, even though it cataloged hundreds of thousands of infrared sources. It also had poor angular resolution, giving a very fuzzy image of the sky. ISO, Europe's follow-on mission in the 1990s, gave excellent results on bright sources in our Galaxy but was beset with calibration problems which limited its ability to study faint extragalactic objects. Spitzer takes far sharper and deeper images, far more sensitive spectra, and appears to be by far the most well calibrated infrared mission to date. It has shown itself able to reveal beautiful detail in nearby star forming regions and to detect faint and distant galaxies. After multiple cutbacks, redesigns and descopes, my friends used to joke that SIRTF/Spitzer, the last of NASA's Great Observatories program, was now only a 'Pretty Good Observatory' but I think we now have to apologize and welcome it fully into Great Observatory status together with Hubble, Chandra, and the deceased Compton. NASA Administrator Sean O'Keefe, in a speech on Jun 1 to the American Astronomical Society meeting in Denver, clarified NASA's new strategy by confirming that basic astronomy research remains part of NASA's mission - something that had not been entirely clear in the confusion at NASA HQ and elsewhere following the presidential announcement of the Exploration initiative and the subsequent budget revisions. He mentioned future (and recently delayed) research missions such as Constellation X by name -to audible sighs of relief from those sitting near me - and acknowledged the success of Explorer missions like WMAP. However, things got a bit murkier in a later press conference (he did not take questions from the astronomer audience) when he was asked whether the astronomical community's own assessment of science priorities remained valid. The Decadal Survey study is astronomy's traditional method of avoiding internal food fights at budget time by establishing a consensus beforehand - in the latest study, prioritizing the JWST and Con-X missions. O'Keefe implied that the science community's opinion was only one input among many to the priorities for the science program. He referred to the new priorities as `a matter of sequencing', which I take to be code for saying that planet-finding missions are to be given priority over black-hole and early-universe studies at least in the near term. (Perhaps he just meant that we need to do the Webb Telescope first and then Con-X, but that doesn't explain some of the other budget shifts in favor of missions like TPF.) Astronomers at the meeting seemed reassured that there seems to be a commitment to carry out the broad astrophysics program in the long run, but concerned that the new process of mission prioritization appears much less transparent and more top-down in contrast to the peer-community involvement of the past. The new NASA strategy is still evolving, so it's possible that a more open process will emerge. O'Keefe addressed another specific concern of the astrophysics community, the future of the Hubble Space Telescope, by announcing a request for proposals for a robotic HST servicing mission. This would leverage existing efforts such as the ASTRO/Orbital Express automated rendezvous mission and the Canadian SPDM 'robot hand'; in one scenario, a robot spacecraft would rendezvous and dock with HST, attaching itself to the end of the aft shroud. The basic version would contain a deorbit module to remove HST safely from orbit. A second, enhanced version could attach new batteries and gyros to the spacecraft, prolonging its life before deorbit. A third version would also use a robot arm to replace the WFPC-2 camera with the already-built WFC-3, and possibly open the aft shroud to install the COS spectrograph, making Hubble able to take spectra of objects 10 times fainter than it is now able to. We'll see when the proposals come in whether the third version (the one astronomers are interested in!) is plausible. I believe that it is all realistic, with the possible exception of the COS installation - the astronauts have had some trouble in the past reclosing the doors, and I'm not sure how easy it will be for a robot to do this, but maybe it's fine. The big issue is the funding - O'Keefe refused to speculate on the cost but some rumours talk of a billion-dollar class mission. He did say that most of the cost would come from the Exploration budget (rather than science) since the point is partly to develop a general capability for robotic servicing. ESA has completed its report on the Beagle 2 Mars lander failure, but the report has not been publicly released. Nevertheless, a press release indicates several areas identified as possible contributors to the failure: problems due to shocks from pyro firings in spacecraft separation events; problematic cross-connected wiring; possible collision between the lander and its jettisoned heat shield, and possible air bag or parachute failure. Progress M-49 (spacecraft Progress 7K-TGM No. 249) was launched from Baykonur on May 25. The vessel carries cargo for the Space Station, including spacesuit Orlan-M No. 27, and is ISS flight 14P. The spacecraft docked with the Zvezda module on May 27 at 1355 UTC. Kosmos-2407, launched on May 28 into a 400 km, 65 degree orbit is a US-PU electronic intelligence satellite for the Russian Navy. The USAF weather satellite DMSP Block 5D-2 F-11 (S-12), launched in 1991 and retired in 1995, has exploded in orbit with debris objects generated. It seems likely the fragmentation was due to either a battery explosion or to residual fuel in the attitude control system. Table of Recent Launches ----------------------- Date UT Name Launch Vehicle Site Mission INTL. DES. Apr 16 0045 Superbird 6 Atlas IIAS Canaveral SLC36A Comms 11A Apr 18 1559 Shiyan 1 ) CZ-2C Xichang Imaging 12A Naxing 1 ) Tech 12 Apr 19 0319 Soyuz TMA-4 Soyuz-FG Baykonur LC1 Spaceship 13A Apr 20 1657 Gravity Probe B Delta 7920 Vandenberg SLC2W Science 14A Apr 26 2037 Ekspress AM-11 Proton-K/DM-01 Baykonur LC200/39 Comms 15A May 4 1242 DirecTV-7S Zenit-3SL Odyssey, Pacific Comms 16A May 19 2222 AMC-11 Atlas IIAS Canaveral SLC36B Comms 17A May 20 1747 ROCSAT-2 Taurus Vandenberg 576-E Imaging 18A May 25 1234 Progress M-49 Soyuz-U Baykonur LC1 Cargo 19A May 28 0600 Kosmos-2407 Tsiklon-2 Baykonur LC90/20 Sigint 20A .-------------------------------------------------------------------------. | Jonathan McDowell | phone : (617) 495-7176 | | Somerville MA 02143 | inter : jcm@host.planet4589.org | | USA | jcm@cfa.harvard.edu | | | | JSR: http://www.planet4589.org/jsr.html | | Back issues: http://www.planet4589.org/space/jsr/back | | Subscribe/unsub: mail majordomo@host.planet4589.org, (un)subscribe jsr | '-------------------------------------------------------------------------'