[Prev][Next][Index][Thread]
(meteorobs) Excerpt from "CCNet 15/2001 - 29 January 2001"
More nationalism-baiting, controversy-mongering debate over the "status" of
Pluto as a planet. (What on earth does Pluto have to do with NEOs, in any
case??) Minus that material, there is just one item worth reading for regular
sky watchers, about the coming fiery demise of Mir, which strangely includes
some info about Mission Shoemaker-NEAR as well. Otherwise, nothing of direct
interest to meteoricists in this issue. However, I felt the items on India's
recent horrible disaster worth distributing as widely as possible.
Clear skies and strong umbrellas!
Lew Gramer, inhabitant of "Terrestrial Belt Object #3"
------- Forwarded Message
From: Benny Peiser <B.J.Peiser@livjm.acdot uk>
To: cambridge-conference <cambridge-conference@livjm.acdot uk>
Subject: CCNet 29 January 2001
Date: Mon, 29 Jan 2001 11:59:57 -0000
CCNet 15/2001 - 29 January 2001
------------------------------
(1) 20,000 FEARED DEAD: DESPERATE SEARCH FOR INDIAN QUAKE SURVIVORS
BBC Online News, 29 January 2001
(2) PLEASE HELP INDIA'S QUAKE VICTIMS
http://news.bbc.codot uk/hi/english/world/south_asia/newsid_1139000/1139932.stm
[...]
(6) WARY SCIENTISTS GUIDING SPACE DEBRIS BACK TO EARTH
Andrew Yee <ayee@nova.astro.utorontodot ca>
[...]
========================================================================
(1) 20,000 FEARED DEAD: DESPERATE SEARCH FOR INDIAN QUAKE SURVIVORS
>From the BBC Online News, 29 January 2001
http://news.bbc.codot uk/hi/english/world/south_asia/newsid_1142000/1142168.stm
The rescue operation for survivors of the devastating earthquake in the
Western Indian state of Gujarat is getting increasingly desperate. Fours
days after the earthquake hit, Indian officials and foreign relief workers
say hopes are fading of finding more survivors.
It is now feared that as many as 20,000 people may have died, and there are
thousands of bodies still buried under collapsed buildings.
http://news.bbc.codot uk/hi/english/world/south_asia/newsid_1142000/1142168.stm
========================================================================
(2) PLEASE HELP INDIA'S QUAKE VICTIMS
FOR DONATIONS, SEE:
http://news.bbc.codot uk/hi/english/world/south_asia/newsid_1139000/1139932.stm
========================================================================
(6) WARY SCIENTISTS GUIDING SPACE DEBRIS BACK TO EARTH
>From Andrew Yee <ayee@nova.astro.utorontodot ca>
The Mercury News, 25 January 2001
[http://www0.mercurycenter.com/partners/docs1/000231.htm]
Thursday, Jan. 25, 2001, 10:54 p.m. PST
Derelict space station just one of many castoffs
Wary scientists guiding debris back to Earth
BY SETH BORENSTEIN, Mercury News Washington Bureau,
sborenstein@krwashington.com
WASHINGTON -- For decades, rocket scientists have concentrated on the
herculean task of putting objects into orbit. But as more satellites,
used-up rocket parts and space junk crowd Earth's orbit, there's a new area
of concern: getting things down -- safely.
It's not as easy as just letting gravity take its course, although that also
will happen to dozens of bits of artificial space debris this year.
"What's tough is not bringing something down, but bringing something down in
a controlled way," said former Air Force chief scientist Daniel Hastings,
professor of astronautics at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology.
"Bringing it down in a way that you don't run into something."
The next big thing to fall will be the old Russian space station Mir. At
9:30 p.m. PST today, a remote-controlled cargo ship will dock with Mir and
start pushing it down into the atmosphere. If everything goes at planned, on
March 6 the nearly 15-year-old station will take a fiery dive into a remote
spot in the Pacific Ocean east of Australia. NASA says the chance of the
286,600-pound Mir hitting anyone is virtually zero.
In the next few weeks, rocket scientists also will steer another space
vehicle into a crash landing on a distant asteroid and watch as at least
nine pieces of space junk careen into Earth uncontrolled.
Why all the falling junk?
Because when the sun has a stormy year in its 11-year cycle of storm
activity, such as the period we are in now, the Earth's upper atmosphere
warms up and expands. As the atmosphere expands into the vacuum of space
where the space junk is orbiting, the drag on the lower objects increases.
The increased drag pulls the objects toward Earth, said Nicholas Johnson,
the program manager and chief scientist for NASA's orbital-debris program.
On Feb. 12, the NASA exploratory spaceship NEAR-Shoemaker will finish its
examination of the asteroid Eros in what mission manager Bob Farquhar called
"a blaze of glory." The ship will be steered into the bone-shaped space rock
for a slow-motion crash. Close-up photos of the crash are expected to be
transmitted -- and then NEAR-Shoemaker, now more than 192 million miles from
Earth, will join the space boneyard.
Satellites, rocket parts and other space junk usually fall uncontrolled back
to Earth. Most burn up on the way down. But in addition to Mir's plummet
into the Pacific, at least nine other artificial space objects will tumble
back to the planet, NASA predicts.
Saturday, the remnant of a Delta rocket launched in 1977 should fall back to
Earth, according to NASA's space-object "decay forecast." On Feb. 24, the
4,761-pound Russian Coronas I cosmic-ray-observing satellite, launched in
March 1994, is expected to fall back to Earth. Some of the satellite will
hit the ground, NASA predicts, because it's too big to burn up entirely on
re-entry.
But scientists say it's highly unlikely that anyone will get hurt.
Since the Space Age dawned in 1957 with the launch of Sputnik, 26,643
artificial objects -- from rocket parts to the International Space Station
-- have gone into orbit around Earth. So far, 17,681 of those have come back
down. Not one person has been hit or hurt.
When Skylab fell on Australia in 1979, the only damage was to NASA's budget.
It got a ticket for littering from an Australian city council.
The closest call was last April, when two 100-pound metal canisters, debris
from a 1996 Delta rocket launch, fell near some workers in South Africa.
"Earth's a big place," Johnson said. For every inch of space where there is
a human, there is many thousands of times more unoccupied space.
"Eventually, statistics say someone's going to get hit," Johnson conceded.
"There's no doubt about that."
As for the falling and failing Mir, Russian officials have had problems with
communications and stability for the now-empty space station. The plan is to
control the station's descent through two engine firings on the cargo ship,
dropping the station to lower orbits until it comes through the atmosphere
in one large piece.
"We should do everything possible to ensure a safe descent of Mir," Yuri
Semyonov, head of the Russian rocket firm Energiya, said this week.
So what are the odds of an individual getting hit by an object from space?
Johnson said NASA hasn't really calculated that figure because it's too
complicated. Instead, NASA focuses on particular falling objects and
calculates the odds of them hitting a person. NASA's goal is to keep the
odds at 1 in 10,000, or greater.
Because there are 6 billion people in the world, that means an individual's
chances of getting hit by each falling object are 1 in 60 trillion -- if
NASA's goal is met for every falling object.
That means getting clobbered by space junk is much less likely than other
catastrophes that could befall a person.
For example, based on annual causes of death in America, the National Safety
Council figures that over a lifetime an American has a 1 in 4,762 chance of
dying from something falling on him or her, such as a tree blown over by
wind.
In 1995, with Earth's orbit becoming a little more crowded, the United
States and most of the world's other space-traveling countries agreed to a
plan that would require space objects to return to Earth 25 years after they
ran out of fuel.
"It seems like 'Armageddon' and Bruce Willis, but the fact is that we have a
pretty good understanding of where these objects are going to go," said
American University astronomer Richard Berendzen. "The physics does become a
tad tricky when you are dealing with drag" and when the satellite
disintegrates.
"I think this is a little bit of a merger of exact science and art at this
stage," Berendzen said.
For NASA's calculations on what space debris will come down in the next six
months or to see a list of objects in space, go to Web site
http://oig1.gsfc.nasadot gov/scripts/foxweb.exe/app01?
Click on the "OIG Main Page" link, then on the "Reports" link.
To find out where Mir is, go to
http://liftoff.msfc.nasadot gov/temp/mir_loc.html
For the NEAR-Shoemaker mission, go to
http://near.jhuapldot edu/NEAR
) 2001 The Mercury News.
--------------------------------------------------------------------
THE CAMBRIDGE-CONFERENCE NETWORK (CCNet)
--------------------------------------------------------------------
The CCNet is a scholarly electronic network. To subscribe/unsubscribe,
please contact the moderator Benny J Peiser <b.j.peiser@livjm.acdot uk>.
Information circulated on this network is for scholarly and educational
use only. The attached information may not be copied or reproduced for
any other purposes without prior permission of the copyright holders.
The fully indexed archive of the CCNet, from February 1997 on, can be
found at:
http://abob.libs.ugadot edu/bobk/cccmenu.html
DISCLAIMER: The opinions, beliefs and viewpoints expressed in the
articles and texts and in other CCNet contributions do not necessarily
reflect the opinions, beliefs and viewpoints of the moderator of this
network.
------- End of Forwarded Message
To UNSUBSCRIBE from the 'meteorobs' email list, use the Web form at:
http://www.tiacdot net/users/lewkaren/meteorobs/subscribe.html
Follow-Ups: