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Edition 16 - 18 April 1999
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# A wild ride to the stratosphere in search of meteors #

14 April 1999

A Wild Ride in Search of Meteors: On April 11, NASA scientists
successfully launched a weather balloon designed to capture meteoroids
in the stratosphere.

The primary payload, a xerogel micrometeoroid collector, has been
recovered and returned to the Marshall Space Flight Center for
analysis. This story features video highlights from the flight
including the sunset as seen from 80,000 ft. and eerie gurgling sounds
caused by high altitude winds.

FULL STORY at:

http://science.nasa.gov/newhome/headlines/ast14apr99_1.htm


# Ocean expedition hopes to salvage Mercury space capsule #

17 April 1999

CAPE CANAVERAL, Florida (CNN) -- Undersea salvage experts set off this
weekend in search of a 38-year-old treasure -- the Mercury space
capsule that sank after splashdown, nearly drowning astronaut Virgil
"Gus" Grissom. 

Liberty Bell 7 carried Grissom, the second American in space, on a
15-minute suborbital flight in 1961. The flight ended dramatically
when the capsule's escape hatch blew off prematurely on splashdown. 

Grissom, wearing his bulky spacesuit, bailed out as the capsule filled
with water. 

One recovery helicopter, tethered to the capsule, struggled to keep it
afloat while a second chopper went for Grissom. He was rescued after
struggling for four minutes to stay above water, but the Liberty Bell
7 sank into nearly three miles of water. 

"Poor Gus was swimming for his life out there," said Howard Benedict,
executive director of the Astronaut Scholarship Foundation in
Titusville, Florida. 

Grissom told Benedict, an Associated Press reporter covering the space
program at the time, that the incident shook him up. 

"He said 'I did feel a little fear. I was a little scared,'" Benedict
said. "As an astronaut or a test pilot, you never say you are scared
of anything." 


Third time's the charm?

Later, when he flew the first Gemini mission with John Young, Grissom
called their capsule Molly Brown for the Broadway musical "The
Unsinkable Molly Brown." The moniker was also a tip of the hat to the
sunken Liberty Bell. 
  
Grissom's luck ran out in 1967, when he died in a fire during a
pre-flight test on the Apollo 1 launch pad. Fellow astronauts Edward
H. White II and Roger B. Chaffee also died in the blaze. 

Grissom died without ever learning why his Mercury hatch blew off. 

If the salvage mission -- funded by the Discovery Channel cable TV
channel -- brings up the Liberty Bell, NASA hopes to study the craft
and figure out what went wrong. 

It's the third attempt to find the capsule, and the search is
scheduled to last for two weeks. The exploration team will use
side-scan sonar and a remotely operated underwater vehicle to search
for the Liberty Bell, believed to be located somewhere near the
Bahamas. 

Miami Bureau Chief John Zarrella contributed to this report.

http://europe.cnn.com/TECH/space/9904/17/space.mercury/index.html


# Mir crew members complete grueling spacewalk #

16 April 1999

MOSCOW (AP) -- Two crew members aboard the Mir space station made a
grueling six-hour spacewalk Friday, but still failed to complete a
number of planned experiments. 

Russian cosmonaut Viktor Afanasyev and French astronaut Jean-Pierre
Heignere had been expected to spend about five hours outside the ship.
But various delays and problems forced them to spend an extra hour in
open space, said Vera Medvedkova, a spokeswoman for Mission Control. 

The spacewalk Friday was the fifth for Afanasyev, a veteran of two Mir
missions, and the first for Heignere. The third crew member, Russian
Sergei Avdeyev, was monitoring his crew mates from inside the Mir. 

The problems started when the crew spent extra time fixing a minor
malfunction on a spacesuit ventilation system. Medvedkova didn't say
which crew member's suit had the problem. 

Then, an experiment to test equipment used to patch holes on the ship
went awry when a container of glue failed to open in space, apparently
because of a faulty valve, Medvedkova said. 

The equipment was originally designed to seal leaks in Mir's Spektr
module, which was severely damaged when a cargo ship slammed into it
during a practice docking in 1997. Spektr has never been repaired, and
the tools never tested, because crew members at the time could not
find all the module's leaks. 

Behind schedule because of the problems, Afanasyev and Heignere then
had no time to set up a Russian device called Sprut, or Octopus, to
test radiation levels around the Mir. 

The two had less trouble with their other tasks. They attached various
organic substances in special casings to the outside of the ship to
see what happens to living matter in space, and retrieved a
French-made "meteorite trap" that was installed earlier this year to
catch microscopic debris when Mir passed through a meteor shower. 

In the final part of the spacewalk, a small satellite made by Russian
and French schoolchildren was put into space. If all goes according to
plan, the satellite will beam a recording of their voices that will be
heard on the Mir and at Mission Control, outside Moscow. 

The Mir's current three-man crew is possibly its last. If outside
investors cannot be found to foot the 13-year-old station's $250
million yearly costs, the cash-strapped government may have to discard
it in August. 

The United States has been pressuring the government to dedicate
itself to the International Space Station, a 16-nation project that
has been delayed by Russia's inability to build key components on
time. 

Copyright 1999 The Associated Press. All rights reserved. This
material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten, or redistributed.

http://europe.cnn.com/TECH/space/9904/16/russia.spacewalk.ap/index.html


# Air Force investigation into botched launch affecting NASA #

17 April 1999

CAPE CANAVERAL, Fla. (AP) -- An Air Force investigation into a botched
satellite launch could mean another delay for NASA's $1.5 billion
Chandra X-ray telescope. 

The Air Force has impounded an upper-stage motor intended for the
telescope, to be launched in July aboard space shuttle Columbia. It's
the same kind of motor that apparently malfunctioned April 9 and left
the military's newest Defense Support Program satellite stranded in a
useless orbit. 

The missile-warning satellite is spinning so fast in its lopsided
orbit that Air Force controllers have yet to unfurl its
electricity-generating solar panels. 

"They're continually trying to work with it," Staff Sgt. Steve Horton
of Schriever Air Force Base in Colorado said Friday. "There's always a
hope that they can recover it and rescue it and get it into its proper
orbit." 

The $250 million satellite needs to be in a circular 22,300-mile-high
orbit in order to perform its job for the Pentagon. 

The National Aeronautics and Space Administration is working with the
Air Force's accident investigation board, which convened earlier this
week. 

The Air Force must deliver the impounded Boeing-built motor to NASA by
the end of April if the space agency hopes to meet its July 9 launch
date for Chandra, said payload manager Scott Higginbotham. 

The telescope-delivery mission already is a year late because of bad
circuit boards that had to be replaced in Chandra and other problems. 

"It's almost to the point where it doesn't faze me because I'm getting
used to it," Higginbotham said. "It is a little bit frustrating
because we've been planning and planning and planning to execute this
flow for over a year now. We're ready to go do it." 

He noted, however: "This telescope is a multibillion-dollar
investment. You can rest assured the program is not going to go launch
it until all the open questions have been answered." 

Chandra, a Hubble-caliber observatory, should have rocketed into orbit
last summer. Unlike Hubble, the X-ray telescope will be placed in an
orbit too high to be reached by spacewalking astronauts so it will be
irreparable once launched. 

Copyright 1999 The Associated Press. All rights reserved. This
material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten, or redistributed.

http://europe.cnn.com/TECH/space/9904/17/stranded.satellite.ap/index.html


# Russia launches U.S. satellites #

16 April 1999

MOSCOW (Reuters) -- Russia launched a set of four Globalstar
communications satellites on Thursday from its cosmodrome at Baikonur
in Kazakhstan, a duty officer at mission control said. 

"I can confirm that three were launched at 8:28 a.m. (0428 GMT) and
twelve seconds, and a fourth four seconds later," he said. 

The launch was the third in a Russian commercial program launching low
orbit communications satellites for the U.S.-based system, which will
provide worldwide mobile telephone service. The previous Russian
launch was on March 15. 

Russia's space program earns precious cash from commercial launches.
The United States has threatened to curb expansion of the program if
Russia does not end what Washington says are exports of nuclear and
missile technology to Iran. 

Copyright 1999 Reuters. All rights reserved. This material may not be
published, broadcast, rewritten, or redistributed.

http://europe.cnn.com/TECH/space/9904/16/satellite.launch.reut/index.html


# Astronomers discover new solar system #

15 April 1999

WASHINGTON (CNN) -- Astronomers said Thursday they had discovered the
first solar system with multiple planets outside our own, with three
massive planets orbiting a sun-like star. 

All three planets circling the star Upsilon Andromedae are gas giants
like Earth's big neighbor Jupiter. However, an Earth-type planet might
also be a part of this system, one researcher said. 

"Our observations can't rule out Earth-sized planets as well in this
planetary system, because their gravity would be too weak for them to
be detectable with present instruments," Peter Nisenson of the
Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics said in a statement. 

Astronomically, the system is not far away: 44 light years. Its sun is
so near and bright, it can be seen by the naked eye during summer and
fall. 

Scientists have previously identified at least 18 extrasolar planets,
but this was the first time they detected a system comparable to the
nine-planet grouping that includes Earth. 

"What we have found now, for the first time ever, is indeed a full
fledged system of planets around the star Upsilon Andromedae," said
Geoffrey Marcy, professor of astronomy and physics San Francisco State
University. 

The finding suggests that there may be far more planets in our galaxy
than previously thought, the researchers said. 

"When I look up at the stars now at night I can imagine easily that
every one of them has planet around them," says Debra Fischer, a
professor of physics and astronomy at San Francisco State University. 

Astronomers have searched for planets outside our solar system by
focusing on the behavior of certain sun-like stars, such as Upsilon
Andromedae. 

Stars with a characteristic wobble are believed to have a large planet
orbiting around them, with enough gravity to tug on the star. 

Astronomers had earlier identified one of the three planets -- the
closest one to this star -- but only recently determined that there
were two others from their gravitational affect on Upsilon Andromedae.


Can they support life? Scientists don't know, because present
technology is not advanced enough to determine what the planets are
made of. That, Marcy says, is astronomy's next challenge. 

San Francisco Bureau Chief Greg Lefevre and Reuters contributed to
this report.

http://europe.cnn.com/TECH/space/9904/15/new.solar.system/index.html

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