20/40 Anniversaries

Cosmiverse; April 13, 2001; Space News: "Forty Years and Still Going Strong" 

Associated Press; April 7, 2001; Science: "Space Shuttle Anniversary Marked" 

Reuters; April 8, 2001; Science: "Russia Celebrates First Space Flight 40 Years Ago"

Cosmonaut Gagarin

Twin anniversaries that fell on the same day were celebrated this week.  Forty years ago, on April 12, 1961, a 27-year-old Russian lieutenant was launched on an R-7 rocket to become the first human in space.  Yuri Gagarin's single 108-minute orbit marked his place in history and his early death seven years latter cemented it. 

Gagarin was well liked by the other five cosmonauts in training for the first manned flight.  According to Pavel Popovich, one of the original Soviet cosmonauts: "At one time they asked us cosmonauts who should be the first to go into space and every single one of us said Gagarin." 

As a result of the flight Gagarin became an icon of 20th century technical progress.  The engaging former farm boy was feted around world.  Celebrities jostled each other to shake his hand.

His allure was sealed by a mysterious 1968 plane crash that ended his life.  In the eyes of the Russian people he will forever be the young flag bearer of the glory years of the Soviet space program.  

Young and Crippen with shuttle -- NASA

While the Russian manned space transportation program never progressed beyond the capsule stage (the Russian shuttle never flew manned) the post-Apollo U.S. program set out to develop a reusable space plane.  Budget cuts and program problems turned the plane into a glider, with a disposable main fuel tank, that first took-off on April 12, 1981 -- exactly 20 years after Gagarin's flight.  

The two-day flight of Columbia, the first Space Shuttle orbiter, was designated STS-1 (Space Transportation System) and carried veteran Moon walker John Young as pilot and rookie astronaut Bob Crippen as co-pilot.  The five shuttles that have flown into space have accumulated over 100 missions these past 20 years carrying every thing from spy satellites, the Hubble Space Telescope (some say the Hubble is just a spy satellite pointed out), space probes, and foreign dignitaries.   

At an anniversary party at the Kennedy Space Center Crippen stated that "People talk about the aging space shuttle, but we've only used up about 25 percent of the structural life and it probably has a lot more than that."  He added: "That vehicle is capable of flying another 20-plus years and I personally believe that it will be doing that.''

Mystery of the Jupiter Flash

CNN.com/Space; April 13, 2001; In Brief: "Jupiter unleashes mysterious bright flash"

The aurora phenomena on Earth is driven by interactions between our planet's magnetic field and particles from the Sun.  While Jupiter has a much stronger magnetic field it is also much further from the Sun.  Yet it too has aurora -- the most powerful in the Solar System.  The model for Jupiter's aurora depends on energy from that planet's rapid rotation.  Scientists have been making observations of aurora on that gas giant planet with passing space probes and the Hubble Space Telescope in order to learn more about this mechanism.  But a Hubble observing run in September 1999 obtained an anomalous observation that puzzles scientists.

"The amount of energy released is comparable to an atomic bomb blast."
-- Team Member Randy Gladstone

The event was a bright ultraviolet aurora emission that in seconds increased in brightness by 30 times before fading out.  "The amount of energy released is comparable to an atomic bomb blast," scientific team member Randy Gladstone said.  The research team published this observation in the April 12 issue of Nature.  

Something NEAT for an Historic Telescope 

JPL; April 12, 2001; Press Release: "NASA to track more asteroids with new NEAT camera"

Edwin Hubble at the Oschin telescope in 1949. Courtesy of The Archives, California Institute of Technology

"This will be a new lease on life for a very famous survey telescope, which conducted the first comprehensive survey of the northern skies in the 1950s and which is now targeting some exciting astronomical goals - searching for near-Earth asteroids and examining supernovae and their role in determining the fate of the cosmos," said Palomar Observatory director Richard Ellis.

Ellis is talking about a new camera attached to the 1.2-meter (48-inch) Oschin telescope at Palomar that will take part in NASA's Near Earth Asteroid Tracking (NEAT) system and provide data for the Nearby Supernova Factory (NSF) search.  The camera takes 48 million pixel images using a three-eyed lens design and can cover 3.75 square degrees of sky per image.  The imaging system can be configured to take wide area or narrow area images to a deeper magnitude.  This addition to the NEAT system will cover 1.5 times as much sky as the NEAT camera at the Maui Space Surveillance Site's 1.2-meter (48-inch) telescope in Hawaii.  

The camera was part of an upgrade that included modern automation of the old telescope.  This computer upgrade allows the NEAT camera to image 1,000 locations a night compared to the 10 of the prior manual system.  The telescope can even be remotely operated by the NEAT team at JPL.  These improvements allow most  of the accessible sky to be imaged each month. 

The NEAT project is part of NASA's effort to discover 90% of all near-Earth asteroids by the year 2010.  As a bonus the NEAT data will be analyzed by the NSF project at Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory to search for supernovas in galaxies that are in the NEAT image frame.

Longer Lived Than Some Rock-Stars

smh.com.au; April 14, 2001; Page One: "Space Probe Falls Silent in Deep Space After 29-Years"

Pioneer 10 Launch -- NASA

"Dead at 29 years" would be a said epitaph for anyone's obituary, but is pretty good for a space probe designed to last only two years. The hardy Pioneer 10 space probe's demise was surmised last month when an Australia tracking station at Tidbinbilla, near Canberra, failed to make contact with the cosmic voyager. Launched on March 2, 1972 the probe made an historic pass by Jupiter in late 1973 and continued toward the outer solar system. For the next two decades it passed the orbits of all the outer planets and is now almost twice as far from the Sun as Pluto. (For mission details see NewsNotes: 12.01 A Pioneer Continues to Break New Ground.)  Though officially "retired" in 1997 the plutonium powered probe was contacted a few times each year to check its progress and gather data about the space environment far from the Sun.

Last heard from in August, the probe was moving at a brisk 12.24 km/s and is now about 11.56 billion km out. At that distance it would take half-a-day for radio signals to reach the probe from Earth and another half-day to receive a reply. On its present course and speed it will take 2-million years for Pioneer to flyby another star. If any inhabitants exist around that star -- Aldebaran, 68 light years away -- they may discover a message from Earth behind the communications dish.  This message is on a little gold plaque engraved with a picture of a man and woman, a depiction of our solar system, information on our systems location in the galaxy, and even an outline drawing of the Pioneer itself.

"They ... have long exceeded their warranty. The original mission was 21 months."
-- Pioneer project manager Dr. Larry Lasher

Pioneer's almost three decades of contact with Earth is attributed to its durable plutonium power systems.  Solar power being impractical at great distances from the Sun, this is the power source of choice for craft that travel to Jupiter and beyond.  While ground based stations have plenty of power to signal Pioneer, the craft responds with an 8-watt transmitter -- far weaker than the power output of a car brake light.

An American tracking station was next to try to contact Pioneer and it too failed. A tracking station in Spain will try this month and next to make contact. "They ... have long exceeded their warranty. The original mission was 21 months," says Pioneer's project manager Dr. Larry Lasher. He is not prepared to write-off the historic probe until more contact attempts fail.  Tidbinbilla's operations manager Mr. Ricardo agrees. "We will keep on waiting. Pioneer is out there, somewhere," he said.