Posted on 01/08/2006 7:31:40 PM PST by NormsRevenge
They definitely have lots of biohazard detection etc capabilties there,, purely coincidence. ;-)
Thanks!
Great. Seems like the last peculiar spacecraft to traverse the pre-dawn sky was the remnants of Columbia.
All times in EST.
+ NASA TV on the Web
Stardust pre-return briefing
Jan. 12, 12 p.m.
NASA TV coverage begins
Jan. 15, 4:30 a.m.
Capsule touches down
Jan. 15, 5:12 a.m.
Post-recovery briefing
Jan. 15, 9 a.m.
Jose Jimenez: I am convinced that they will get me back to Earth!.......Just how far into it....that's what I'm not convinced about.
Dugway and Utah Test and Training Range is shared air space(UTTR is Air Force).
It was chosen because we have so much land, a big target.
I'll be out on I-80 watching. Have already decided on the perfect viewing area. It is a rest area that overlooks the whole range.
Going to take both digital and film pictures, and will post if anything useable.
Thanks, here's to clear skies.
Let it be said: "the book was better than the movie".
"Andromeda Strain" MUST have been fiction - the capsule landed safely.
S'funny - it doesn't look... oh, nevermind.
Can't see it from here? Was going to suggest a meet at Hawes.
Near Jim Grey.
Down here in San Diego it would be probably 1 degree over my NW horizon. I can't even see satellites if they are less than 45 degrees to the NW because of the city lights. I'm hoping Lokibob will get us some pics.
Figure 1 - Stardust Rentry Overview Map
Figure 2 - Stardust Rentry Overview Map #2
Mission Control Center Status Update
http://spaceflightnow.com/stardust/status.html
THURSDAY, JANUARY 12, 2006
With its precious cargo of comet bits nestled inside, NASA's Stardust spacecraft is soaring inbound for Sunday's fiery descent and landing in Utah that will cap a 2.88-billion mile voyage spanning 7 years of looping around the solar system.
The armored space probe raced past Comet Wild 2 in January 2004, catching particles with its racquet-shaped collector. Comets are considered ancient relics serving as frozen time capsules that hold the chemical records from a time billions of years ago when the planets were forming.
The samples were stowed in a protective capsule that will separate from the spacecraft and return to Earth to the delight of anxious scientists.
"Comets are some of the most informative occupants of the solar system," said Dr. Mary Cleave, associate administrator for NASA's Science Mission Directorate.
"Locked within the cometary particles is unique chemical and physical information that could be the record of the formation of the planets and the materials from which they were made," added Dr. Don Brownlee, Stardust principal investigator at the University of Washington, Seattle.
Stardust is scheduled to conduct its final course-correcting maneuver at 11:53 p.m. EST Friday to tweak the flight path for Earth. The craft must be aimed precisely when it deploys the powerless descent capsule at 12:57 a.m. EST Sunday. The capsule has no means of propulsion and relies solely on the mothership firing it in the proper direction to enter the atmosphere a few hours later.
The separation happens 68,805 miles from Earth. Two cable cutters sever the umbilicals connecting the capsule and mothership, then three bolts break apart. A mechanism gives the capsule a push away while imparting a 14 to 16 revolution per minute spin. That spin is designed to help keep the capsule's orientation stablized during its free flight.
The mothership performs a divert maneuver about 15 minutes after the separation event to continue flying in orbit around the Sun. Scientists are looking at ways of reusing the instrument-laden craft for future missions.
The sample return capsule enters Earth's atmosphere with a velocity of 28,860 miles per hour, making it the fastest of any human-made object. It will surpass the record set in May 1969 during the return of the Apollo 10 command module of 24,861 mph.
The point of atmospheric entry occurs around 4:57 a.m. EST at about 78 miles (400,000 feet) over northwestern California -- 12 miles inland from the Pacific Ocean and 14 miles south of the Oregon-California border -- about 551 miles uprange from the landing zone.
The region of maximum heating on the capsule's thermal shield happens 52 seconds into the re-entry at an altitude of 38 miles. The heat shield will feel an amazingly intense temperature of 4,900 degrees F.
About 62 seconds into the atmospheric descent, peak deceleration occurs at 38 times the force of gravity.
The deceleration will decrease to 3 G's at entry plus one minute and 56 seconds, triggering an onboard timer. The capsule's avionics then issue the command for firing the mortar to deploy the drogue parachute at entry plus two minutes and 12 seconds. The capsule will be traveling at mach 1.4 and 20 miles overhead the landing area when the drogue chute is unfurled.
Just three minutes after slamming into the atmosphere, the falling capsule will be 15 miles above the ground and making a vertical descent.
The capsule moves within controlled airspace a minute later when it is 11 miles up.
The main parachute is deployed nearly two miles over the landing zone at 5:05 a.m. EST. This is done by cutting one of the lines holding the drogue chute, which pulls out the main chute.
The main chute's bridle holds a UHF locator beacon that is activated at deploy to assist ground teams in locating the capsule.
The 10 mile per hour touchdown at the U.S. Air Force Utah Test and Training Range, southwest of Salt Lake City, is expected at 5:12 a.m. EST. The landing area is 27 by 47 miles.
"There's a lot at stake. You just hope everything works, and I am confident it will work," said Brownlee.
"But the really big part of the research is just getting ready to start, when the material goes to the laboratory. The train is headed for the station and we're all waiting for it."
Recovery crews will move the 95-pound capsule via helicopter to the U.S. Army Dugway Proving Ground, Utah, for initial processing. The comet samples then head to NASA's Johnson Space Center in Houston for curation.
Scientists say tens of thousands of comet grains have been snared by the spacecraft's collector. Stardust flew by Comet Wild 2 on January 2, 2004, passing only 149 miles at closest approach.
The backside of the collector was used earlier in the Stardust mission, which launched atop a Boeing Delta 2 rocket from Cape Canaveral in February 1999, to pick up about 100 bits of interstellar dust grains streaming from other stars in the galaxy.
The collector used an exotic material, called aerogel, to trap the cometary particles -- impacting at speeds over five times that of a rifle bullet -- without damaging the cargo for scientists to analyze on Earth. Aerogel is 99.9 percent air and 0.1 percent silica dioxide. One thousand times less dense than glass, aerogel is like "solid smoke."
The Comet Wild 2 (pronounced Vilt 2) was discovered in 1978. Its solar orbit extended from Jupiter to beyond Uranus before 1974. But then, Jupiter's gravity altered Wild 2's course, bringing it just beyond the orbit of Mars. It now orbits the Sun once every 6.39 years.
Since Wild 2 only recently began orbiting close to the Sun, scientists believe our star's heat hasn't had enough time to damage the frozen evidence preserved inside the comet for billions of years while lurking in deep space.
"Virtually all the atoms in our bodies were in little grains like the ones we're bringing back from the comet, before the earth and sun were formed," Brownlee said. "Those grains carry elements like carbon, nitrogen and silicon from one place to another within our galaxy, and they helped form the sun, the planets and their moons."
Watch this page for live updates on Sunday morning.
SATURDAY, JANUARY 14, 2006
1830 GMT (1:30 p.m. EST)
The Stardust spacecraft is now closer to Earth than the moon. The probe crossed the moon's orbit about an hour ago.
It took Apollo astronauts three days to make the comparable 249,000-mile trek but Stardust's comet sample capsule will do it in just 16 hours and 27 minutes.
"Our entire flight and recovery team will be watching this final leg of our flight with tremendous expectation as we implement a precise celestial ballet in delivering our capsule to Earth," said Stardust Project Manager Tom Duxbury of NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory, Pasadena, Calif. "We feel like parents awaiting the return of a child who left us young and innocent, who now returns holding answers to the most profound questions of our solar system."
The final trajectory maneuver was completed by Stardust at 11:53 p.m. EST last night to align the flight path for the landing zone on the Utah Test and Training Range. The engine burn lasted 58.5 seconds and changed the spacecraft's velocity by 2.9 mph. At the time of the burn the spacecraft was about 439,000 miles from Earth, NASA officials said.
More here... http://reentry.arc.nasa.gov/viewingforum.html
http://www.ssd.noaa.gov/PS/TROP/DATA/RT/nepac-ir4-loop.html
Looks like you might get some clearing, good luck!
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