S P A C E T E A M O N L I N E
UPDATE # 76 - March 29, 1999
PART 1: Prepare students to attend a launch
this summer
PART 2: Upcoming Live Events
PART 3: Female Frontiers Puzzle
PART 4: Responding to your needs
PART 5: Avoiding Unnecessary Launch Scrubs
PART 6: Status of Columbia processing
PART 7: Subscribing & unsubscribing: how to
do it!
PREPARE STUDENTS TO ATTEND A LAUNCH THIS SUMMER
As you probably know, STS-93 is currently scheduled to be launched July
9 at 1:19 a.m. EST. To read more about this mission, see the Female
Frontiers project at: http://quest.arc.nasa.gov/frontiers
We would like to help you prepare your students in two ways:
1. Instructional materials are being designed for use in a 4th through
8th grade classroom. They are cross-curricular in nature so that a teacher
can engage students with the subject matter one day as a language arts
activity and another as a mathematics activity. Also included is a
mini-literature unit using the picture book:
Ruth Law Thrills a Nation by Don Brown.
The curriculum focuses on three specific areas:
a. Shuttle Aeronautics which includes math and science activities
b. Woman's Work, a study of this history of change and timelines.
c. Commander Collins, primarily a study in goal-setting
2. Student Ambassadors, ranging in age from 14 - 18 will be representing
youth around the world as they travel to the Florida and report back what
they find from a kid's perspective. They will be writing daily journals
and meeting live online with students several times as they tour the
Kennedy Space Center, visit the wildlife preserve at the cape, and attend
the launch of this historic mission! Meet these girls, selected and
sponsored for the purpose of serving as youthful emissaries, Tuesday, May
11 at 10:00 a.m. Pacific Daylight Time.
Learning doesn't have to stop for the summer!
Linda
UPCOMING LIVE EVENTS:
QuestChats require pre-registration.
->Tuesday, April 6, 8:30 a.m. PDT (11:30 a.m. EST)
Dale Lueck, as design engineering lead is involved with designing
instruments for chemical analysis and process control. Recently, he was
assigned as the design engineering lead for the Analytical Instrumentation
Control Group at Kennedy Space Center. Read Dale's profile and field
journals at http://quest.arc.nasa.gov/space/team/lueck.html
Register for this chat at: http://quest.arc.nasa.gov/space/chats
Thursday, April 8, 1999, 10 a.m. PDT (1 p.m. EST)
Dionne Jackson, is an analytical chemist responsible for testing and
identifying metal alloys that are used as flight hardware and in
supporting equipment and structures. Read Dionne Jackson's profile at
http://quest.arc.nasa.gov/space/team/jackson.html
Register for this chat at http://quest.arc.nasa.gov/space/chats
->Thursday, April 15, 1999, 9 a.m. PDT (Noon EST)
Debra Reiss-Bubenheim is project manager and scientist, Life Sciences
Division and is working on an experiment scheduled to fly on the upcoming
STS-93 mission. The project will focus on how microgravity affects how the
brain develops and communicates with
muscles in the body. Read her profile at:
http://quest.arc.nasa.gov/space/team/reiss.html
Registration for this chat will begin on April 1 at
http://quest.arc.nasa.gov/space/chats.
Thursday, April 22, 10:00 a.m. PST (1 pm EST)
ISS-Behind the Scenes: Join us for the continuing series of broadcasts
from the Kennedy Space Center ISS program. This month we'll step Inside
the Vertical Assembly Building, which at this moment houses Columbia (the
STS-93 shuttle) and Chandra STS-93's major payload! See:
http://quest.arc.nasa.gov/ltc/sto/iss
Tuesday, May 11, 1999,10:00 a.m. PDT (1:00 p.m. EST)
Meet your Student Ambassadors who will represent you at the launch of
STS-93. This Webcast will also serve as an optimum time to test your
technologies so you are ready for the live events from Kennedy Space
Center in July! Event Page is located at:
http://quest.arc.nasa.gov/ltc/sto/frontiers/ambass.html
->Wednesday, May 19, 1999, 10:00 a.m. PDT (1:00 p.m. EST)
The ISS Tour of the Mockup and Training Facility at JSC
Join us for the on-going tour guide at Johnson Space Center (JSC) in
Houston, Texas for our regularly scheduled tour of the International Space
Station mockup and training facility.Information on this event is
forthcoming.
For continuing Female Frontiers schedule see:
http://quest.arc.nasa.gov/space/frontiers/schedule.html
For April Space Team Online chats see:
http://quest.arc.nasa.gov/space/chats
FEMALE FRONTIERS PUZZLE
Note: By popular demand, the due dates have been extended to accommodate
the different schools' spring break schedules.
The puzzle is now online at:
http://quest.arc.nasa.gov/space/events/ffpuzzle.html
Question #3: Answers due by Wednesday, April 14, 1999
Fill in the blanks:
Chandra will try to "target the age of the universe".
By combining Chandra's data and Drs. John Carlstrom and Marshall Joy's
radio interferometers, they will try "to probe tiny fluctuations in the
-------
Question 2: Answers due by Tuesday, April 7, 1999:
Why was there a delay in the shipping of the Chandra Observatory to KSC
that caused the launched to be postponed to July?
Send your answers to Student Ambassador, Stephanie Wong:
wongtong@connect.ab.ca
-------
Answer to Question 1: The Chandra X-ray Observatory (that will be carried
into space aboard STS-93) is one of NASA's Great Observatories. a) Which
are the other observatories? b) Which one had a repair mission and c)
what are its new scientific instruments?
Answer:
a) Hubble Space Telescope and Compton Gamma Ray Observatory
b) The Hubble Space Telescope was repaired
c) New Instruments:
Space Telescope Imaging Spectrograph (STIS),
Near Infrared Camera and Multi-Object Spectrometer (NICMOS)
RESPONDING TO YOUR NEEDS
Our recent survey asked: "Were your needs met?" and many responded with
requests and suggestions for improvement. For the next several weeks I
will attempt to respond to some of the comments we see repeated over time:
* As I write I think there must be another way to put the ships in the
space
I'm sure there probably is another and a better way, and I'm sure that as
research continues at NASA and other entities, improvements will continue.
I think one of the thrills of working at NASA and on the Internet is that
things progress continuously and keeping up is an ever-learning
experience.
If you have suggestions, did you know that there's a place at NASA
prepared to "hear" your ideas? NASA encourages the submission of
unsolicited proposals to receive unique and innovative research aligned
with the agency's mission. Proposals may be submitted to:
NASA Headquarters
Mail Code CO
300 E St. SW
Washington DC 20546
* Full story with pictures should be sent to the subscribers in their
e-mails rather than going to the site itself
You may notice that my Updates are sent to you each week in text only (and
I think that's what you are referring to, right?). Though I recognize that
many e-mail accounts can receive graphics imbedded in the message body,
most e-mail accounts still cannot at this time. Some even have serious
problems with any kind of formatting, like bolding and underlining. In
order to reach the majority of our constituents, I choose to send text
only and reference the online versions of journals, as an example. Perhaps
one day things will change and all e-mail will receive graphics - after
all, not too many people are still viewing a non-graphical website
anymore!
* How can I share more with Space Team Online without being internet
accessible?
This is an interesting question, and I'm not quite sure how to reply,
since in fact NASA Quest is an Internet-based outreach project. We came
into being as a part of the movement towards getting good Internet content
into the classroom, so I suppose I feel a bit like a fish asked to swim
out of the water. I am however, very reluctant to lose positive inputs
that could help improve what we offer, so if you lack Internet access, and
you have information to contribute, snail mail us at: NASA Quest, NASA
Ames Research Center, MS T28-H, Moffett Field, CA 94035-1000.
[Editor's note by Brandt Secosh: As a retired military pilot, I have
always had a great respect for weather and the potential dangers that are
associated with it. Here at Kennedy Space Center, Frank Merceret and John
Madura operate the KSC Weather Office. They help the Center and its
programs to avoid or prepare for weather hazards. They also help develop
new techniques and technologies for improving weather observation and
forecasting.
See version with photos at:
http://quest.arc.nasa.gov/space/team/journals/merceret/03-11-99.html]
AVOIDING UNNECESSARY LAUNCH SCRUBS
by Frank Merceret
http://quest.arc.nasa.gov/space/team/merceret.html
March 11, l999
Interviewer: Brandt Secosh
Over the last six months, Frank has been focusing on ways to improve
launch availability by reducing the number of scrubs and delays in
launches without compromising safety. All of the weather
launch-commit criteria (LCC) and landing flight rules (FR) that we
have in place are designed to enable us to operate safely. They
prevent situations such as having people or launch vehicles hit by
lightning or equipment damaged by high winds.
Lightning has an incredible potential for destruction in its natural
state. To make matters worse, launching a rocket through clouds can
"trigger" a lightning strike even when the charge in the clouds is not
strong enough to make lightning naturally. An Atlas Centaur 67 was
destroyed by this phenomenon in 1987, and more than a decade earlier,
Apollo 12 triggered lightning two times during ascent. The Apollo
lightning strike led to the beginning of lightning research programs that
continue today.
Safety is the primary area of concern for launch operations; however, we
also need to avoid unnecessary scrubs and delays. When a launch is
delayed, someone has to pay the cost. Scrubbing a
Shuttle flight after the vehicle has been fueled costs more than half a
million dollars each time it happens. The KSC Weather Office has been
refining the lightning launch criteria used for Shuttle launches as well
as unmanned space vehicles to reduce the number of scrubs and delays
without reducing safety. These refinements are made possible by new
technologies for detecting and locating lightning and new knowledge about
how lightning occurs. Some of this new technology and new knowledge has
been generated right here at KSC.
Wind is also another factor that is considered for weather launch
commit criteria. Ground winds that are too high can stress the
mechanical structure of the vehicle and possibly even damage it.
Unanticipated changes in the upper air wind can make it impossible
for a rocket to follow its planned flight path and may stress it to the
breaking point. That's because each launch vehicle is "pre-programmed" for
the winds expected along the planned flight path. The vehicle has the
ability to compensate for these winds by changing the thrust vector of the
main engines by "gimbaling" -- tipping the engines from side to side as
required. If the wind differs by too much from what was expected, it is
possible that the engines may reach the maximum gambal angle and not be
able to correct for that condition. Should that happen, the spacecraft
would go off course and possibly jeopardize the mission. Besides affecting
the flight trajectory, unexpected upper level winds can cause significant
aerodynamic stressing of the vehicle and its components that can result in
failure and possibly breakup.
Many tools are used to observe and forecast weather. To mention a few,
weather balloons are commonly used to measure the winds and temperatures
from the surface to more than 60,000 feet above ground. A balloon takes
about one hour to get to 60,000 feet. Conditions are always changing in
our atmosphere and the wind is no exception. In order to get wind data
faster, a Doppler Radar Wind Profiler (DRWP) has been installed at Kennedy
Space Center. The DRWP can measure the wind direction and velocities every
five minutes! The DRWP is not a new piece of equipment; however, the
software that this piece of equipment uses had to be completely rewritten
to bring it up to a level of accuracy and speed necessary to use it
operationally. Before this upgrade, the winds could only be evaluated
once every 30 minutes (only twice as fast as balloons) and the accuracy
was not consistently good enough. Frank has recently had a paper accepted
for publication by the Journal of Atmospheric and Oceanic Technology on
the vertical resolution of the wind profiler. Look for publication of this
paper soon!
In the last couple of months, Frank has been working on ground wind
and lightning launch commit criteria. He points out that the criteria for
lightning are the most complicated to evaluate. They are VERY
specific. If we were to simply say, for example, that we do not launch
whenever there is any lightning or storm clouds nearby then we would
rarely get to launch - especially during the summer in Florida! The
criteria must be realistic while keeping safety as the overriding factor.
The result is a set of multiple rules, each concerned with preventing a
certain kind of risk. Most rules have exceptions based on scientific
analysis of data or theory that allow safe flight under specified
conditions even when the rule is otherwise violated. This is the type
refinement to the rules that the lightning scientists and forecasters have
worked on over the past several years. A set of new rules adopted recently
have decreased the number of lightning scrubs and delays by 25%. This
increases launch availability by approximately 1%. That doesn't sound like
much, but when you consider the cost of delaying or scrubbing a launch, it
can add up to millions of dollars quickly.
It was quite an interesting day in the weather office with Frank
Merceret! It is my hope that Frank will host a Space Team Online web
chat soon!
STATUS OF COLUMBIA PROCESSING
Below, we provide reports on the processing of Shuttle Columbia taken from
the detailed daily reports found at the NASA Shuttle Status web site at
http://www-pao.ksc.nasa.gov/kscpao/status/status.htm
At times, these reports will contain jargon and unfamiliar terms; our
intent is not to confuse you but to provide a glimpse at all the steps
involved.
Columbia is jacked and leveled in VAB high bay 2 undergoing routine system
observation during a temporary storage period. Columbia will remain in the
VAB until mid-April, when Shuttle Discovery rolls out of OPF bay 1.
Columbia will then be transferred to OPF (Orbiter Processing Facility) bay
1 to complete STS-93's orbiter pre-launch preparations.
Don't miss our peek inside the VAB on April 22 - see the schedule above!
SUBSCRIBING & UNSUBSCRIBING: HOW TO DO IT!
If this is your first message from the updates-sto list, welcome!
To catch up on back issues, please visit the following Internet URL:
http://quest.arc.nasa.gov/space/updates
To subscribe to the updates-sto mailing list (where this message came
from), send a message to:
listmanager@quest.arc.nasa.gov
In the message body, write these words:
subscribe updates-sto
CONVERSELY...
To remove your name from the updates-sto mailing list, send a message to:
listmanager@quest.arc.nasa.gov
In the message body, write these words:
unsubscribe updates-sto
If you have Web access, please visit our "continuous construction"
site at http://quest.arc.nasa.gov/space
|
