OUTREACH November 2008
November Meeting (Note change in meeting date)
Oklahoma Space Alliance will meet at 3:00 p.m. on Saturday, November 15 at the Koszoru house in Norman. Prospective members are also welcome. Their house is at 514 Fenwick Court in Norman.
This is the meeting at which we nominate officers. If you wish to serve as an officer of Oklahoma Space Alliance, please let us know at the meeting or contact Syd by e-mail at [email protected]. Syd will be sending out election ballots around the beginning of December by both e‑mail and snail mail. If you wish to be an officer, please contact him by December 1. Elections will be held on the Christmas Party on December 20
The usual route to get to the Koszoru house is blocked by road construction, so I'll have to send you in the back way. Take the Robinson Street west exit off I-35. Rambling Oaks intersects Robinson Street just west of this exit, between Arby's and Waffle House. Go south on Rambling Oaks about a quarter mile until it turns due west. Fenwick Court is the second street on the right after this turn. Tom's house is the last on the left side.
Agenda:
1) Introductions (if necessary)
2)
Read and approve agenda
3)
Read and approve minutes and reports of activities
4)
Read and discuss mail
5)
Old Business
a) Nomination of Officers
b) Yuri’s Night 2009
c) Space Week Project for Second Life
d) Start Up Kit for Chapters in Second Life
e) 40th Anniversary of Moon Landing (July 2009)
f) Space Calendars. Tom took ten 2009 space calendars to the 99s Museum of Women Pilots to sell at their concession stands, but we should have a bunch more to sell.
g) Rocket Racing League
h) Christmas Party
6)
New Business
a) Space Solar Power
7)
Create New Agenda
Minutes of October Meeting
Oklahoma Space Alliance met at the 99s Museum of Women Pilots in Oklahoma City on October 18. In attendance were Tom and Heidi Koszoru, Claire McMurray and Syd Henderson. After this meeting we adjourned to Denny’s on I-240 for a business meeting.
If we wish to meet at the 99s Museum, we would have to meet on Saturday afternoon, probably at 2:30 p.m. since the 99s Museum closes at 4:00 p.m. They have a meeting room on the second floor and a board room with a round table on the first floor. There is a $5.00 admission fee to the Museum, so we’d need to take that into account if we decide to have meetings there.
Carolyn Smith, who is head of the Museum these days, gave us a tour of the Museum. The Ninety Nines, Inc, International Organization of Women Pilots was founded in 1929. The name comes because the organization was founded by 99 women pilots. Their first president was Amelia Earhart. They have a model of Amelia Earhart’s birthplace at the Museum as well as a couple of displays devoted to her. They also have displays to other women pilots, of course, including early pioneers, Jackie Cochran, who was the first woman to break the sound barrier and Eileen Collins, the first woman to pilot the Space Shuttle. They have one large map devoted to the First Women’s Transcontinental Air Race in 1929. (The women’s cross-country race is known as the Powder Puff Derby.)
Tom suggested doing a Casino Night with the Knights of Columbus to benefit the 99s Museum. Carolyn has to present it to the Museum’s board. We could serve food, but nothing sticky and definitely not barbecue. We don’t need much lead time to set up a casino night.
The Ninety-Nines have a public relations firm that they’ve been using for years, so if we do activities with them, we can let that firm handle the publicity.
After our tour of the Museum, since we had not had time to go through the agenda, we adjourned to Denny’s.
For Space Week, Tom did the Great Space Race at the University of Michigan on Friday (the 10th, I think). The NSS did a Second Life party on Saturday of Space Week.
For the anniversary of the moon landing, plan A is to do a thing with KTOK Radio, plan B is a mall display, and plan C is a library display. We should try to do an activity with children. If we do something at a library, should it be in Moore or Norman?
We ate, put together an agenda, and adjourned.
--Minutes submitted by OSA Secretary Syd Henderson
Viewing Opportunities for Satellites (November 15 – December 20)
You can get sighting information at www.heavens-above.com/. Heavens Above allows you to get Station data for 10 day periods, and gives you a constellation map showing the trajectory of the satellite. If you go to the bottom of the map page, it will give you a really detailed map with the location at 10 or 15-second intervals, depending on detail. In fact, the detailed charts will even show you the tracks against maps of the constellations, which should help you if you are familiar with the night sky.
Sky Online (the Sky & Telescope web site) carries station observation times for the next few nights at skyandtelescope.com/observing/almanac. Note that with the addition of the solar panels, the magnitude of the Space Station can be as bright as magnitude -2.7, making it brighter than all the stars other than the Sun, although magnitude -1 to -2 is more likely. The Hubble Space Telescope can get up to magnitude 1.5, which is brighter than the stars in the Big Dipper, although, since it is lower in the sky, it is a bit more difficult to see.
Missions to the Space Station or Hubble Space Telescope may change its orbit. The next shuttle launch to the Space Station is November 1, so may affect some of these times. The repair mission to the Hubble Space Telescope has been postponed until May 2009 at the earliest. This will be the final repair mission unless NASA decides that it will require a crew to de-orbit the Space Telescope.
Station November 19, 2008
Time Position Elevation
6:20 p.m. 207° 18°
6:21 190 34
6:22 127 51
6:23 75 31
Vanishes into Earth’s shadow
Station December 7, 2008
Time Position Elevation
6:13 p.m. 335° 16°
6:14 354 27
6:15 38 36
6:16 82 26
Passes just above Pleiades
Vanishes into Earth’s shadow
HST December 7, 2008
Time Position Elevation
Passes 3° above Jupiter and Venus
6:52 p.m. 223° 21°
6:53 204 28
6:54 177 31
6:55 150 28
Vanishes at 139° 24°.
Station December 8, 2008
Time Position Elevation
6:39 p.m. 296° 16°
6:40 281 31
6:41 227 48
6:42 170 32
6:43 153 16
HST December 8, 2008
Time Position Elevation
6:50 p.m. 227° 21°
6:51 208 28
6:52 180 32
6:53 152 28
Vanishes at 137° 22°
Station December 9, 2008
Time Position Elevation
5:29 p.m. 332° 16°
5:30 350 28
5:31 40 38
5:32 86 28
5:33 104 16
Station December 9, 2008
Time Position Elevation
6:48 p.m. 230° 20°
6:49 211 27
6:50 184 31
6:51 157 27
6:52 140 21
Vanishes into Earth’s shadow.
Station December 10, 2008
Time Position Elevation
5:55 p.m. 292° 17°
5:56 274 30
5:57 224 42
5:58 175 29
5:59 158 16
Pass times are from Heavens Above
Key: Position is measured in degrees clockwise from north. That is, 0° is due north, 90° is due east, 180° is due south, and 270° is due west. Your fist held at arm's length is about ten degrees wide. "Elevation" is elevation above the horizon in degrees. Thus, to find the Space Station at 6:48 p.m. on December 9, measure five fist widths west of north, then two fist-widths above the horizon.
In addition to the J-Pass program which I use to provide this satellite viewing data, J-Pass provides a service called J-Pass Generator, which will e‑mail you sighting information for the next three days for up to ten satellites. For more information, go to science.nasa.gov/Realtime/JPass/PassGenerator/.
Sky Viewing
The December issue of Astronomy has their Sky Guide for 2009. I’ve added a bunch of celestial events to the Calendar.
Mercury is approaching superior conjunction on November 25 (that is, it’s on the opposite side of the Sun from Earth) and is currently invisible. It will move into the evening sky in late December, reaching greatest elongation on January 4.
Around December 29, Mercury will be 2° below Jupiter, passing 1.3° south of it on December 31. At this time, Mercury will be magnitude -0.7 and Jupiter magnitude -2.0. On December 29, the thin crescent Moon will be about 6° to the upper left of Jupiter.
Venus is approaching its greatest eastern elongation on January 14, and is currently shining at magnitude -4 in the western sky at sunset, which will brighten to about -4.3 by the end of December. Venus will have a spectacular conjunction with Jupiter around 7:00 p.m. on November 30, when the planets are only 2° apart. The crescent moon will be a few degrees below them in the sky. This will be the best Venus-Jupiter conjunction for quite a few years, but not as great as the one last February when they were half a degree apart.
Mars is in conjunction with the Sun on December 5, and will not be visible for several months.
Despite its conjunctions with Mercury and Venus, Jupiter will be becoming less visible for the rest of the year as it approaches conjunction with the Sun on January 24.
Saturn is currently rising around 1:00 a.m. and is magnitude 1.1 in the constellation Leo. It’s slightly brighter than Regulus, the first magnitude star in the Sickle in Leo. Saturn will be rising earlier in December, but will not get any brighter because the rings are almost edge-on. Although the rings are within 1° of being edge-on in December, they actually will open up a trifle as Saturn nears opposition in March, then they will close until they appear edge-on in September, about the same time Saturn is in conjunction with the sun.
Uranus (magnitude 5.8) is still in the constellation Aquarius and Neptune (magnitude 7.9) are in the southern sky through the evening. Neptune just stopped its retrograde motion (i.e. it’s stopped moving backward across the sky), and Uranus does the same on November 27. You can see Uranus easily with binoculars (and sometimes with the naked eye in very dark skies), but Neptune requires more work. There are locator maps on the Sky Online website. Go to www.skyandtelescope.com/observing/ataglance and click on the link near the bottom.
Pluto is not only too dim to see without a powerful telescope, it is in conjunction with the Sun on December 22.
The Leonid Meteor Shower peaks around dawn on November 17 and the Geminid Meteor Shower peaks on the morning of December 13. Both will be drowned by the Full Moon. Thus, if you want to see meteors, you might want to wait for the Ursid Meteor Shower, which peaks between 2:30 and 4:30 a.m. on December 22. This isn’t usually anything special, but this year’s might peak at about 30 meteors/hour. The Quadrantid meteor shower peaks on January 3, 2009, and is normally one of the year’s best. Quadrans is an obsolete constellation; the radiant is in northern Boötes.
You may be able to see the asteroid Vesta in December, when it reaches magnitude 7. It’s near the star Alpha Piscium and should be findable with binoculars. See the December Astronomy for a map.
Note: Information for this section obtained from SkyandTelescope.com and the November and December issues of Astronomy.
Calendar of Events
November 14: Launch of Space Shuttle Endeavour and the Multi-Purpose Logistics Module to the Space Station, 6:55 p.m. CST.
November 14: Oklahoma City Astronomy Club meeting, 7:30 p.m., Science Museum Oklahoma (formerly Omniplex). John Cowan will be talking on “The Ages of the Oldest Stars in the Universe.” There is a novice session at 6:45 in the planetarium. Web site is www.okcastroclub.com
November 15: [Tentative] Oklahoma Space Alliance meeting at 3:00 p.m. Location to be announced.
November 17: Peak of Leonid meteor shower. (See “Sky Viewing.”)
November 29: Dark Sky Party at Cheddar Ranch Observatory starting at sunset. For more information and directions, visit www.okcastroclub.com.
November 30 –December 1: Conjunction of Venus and Jupiter. They will be within 2° of each other.
December: First launch of the US Air Forces X-37B Orbital Test Vehicle.
December 5: Mars is in conjunction with the Sun.
December 12: Oklahoma City Astronomy Club Christmas Party, 7:30 p.m., Science Museum Oklahoma (formerly Omniplex). There is a novice session at 6:45 in the planetarium. Web site is www.okcastroclub.com.
December 13: Peak of Geminid meteor shower. (See “Sky Viewing.”)
December 20: [Tentative] Oklahoma Space Alliance Christmas Party at 3:00 p.m. Location to be announced.
December 22: Ursid Meteor Shower peaks, 2:30 – 4:30 a.m. (See “Sky Viewing.”)
December 31: Mercury and Jupiter are 1.3° apart.
January 3, 2009: Peak of Quadrantid meteor shower. (See “Sky Viewing.”)
January 4, 2009: Mercury is at greatest eastern elongation, 19° east of the Sun (hence can be seen after sunset).
January 14, 2009: Venus is at maximum eastern elongation, 47.1° east of the Sun.
January 24, 2009; Jupiter is in conjunction with the Sun.
January 26, 2009: Annular solar eclipse visible in Indonesia.
February 12, 2009: Neptune is in conjunction with the Sun.
February 12, 2009: Launch of Discovery to the Space Station.
February 13, 2009: Mercury is at greatest western elongation, 26° west of the Sun (hence can be seen before sunrise).
February 16, 2009: Launch of the Kepler Mission, which will look for Earth-sized and smaller planets around other stars. For more information, visit kepler.nasa.gov/.
February 19 – 22, 2009: Spacefest 2009 in San Diego, California. For information, visit novaspace.com/spacefest/.
February 25, 2009: The dwarf planet Ceres is at opposition in Leo, shining at magnitude 6.9 and visible through binoculars.
March 2009: Dawn asteroid probe flies by Mars.
March 1, 2009: Mercury is 0.6° south of Mars.
March 2, 2009: The Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter is launched. It will assume a polar orbit. The mission will last at least a year. For more information, visit en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lunar_Reconnaissance_Orbiter or lunar.gsfc.nasa.gov/. [Postponed from October.]
March 8, 2009: Saturn is at opposition.
March 12, 2009: Uranus is in conjunction with the Sun.
March 27. 2009: Venus is in inferior conjunction with the Sun.
March 30, 2009: Mercury is in superior conjunction with the Sun.
April 22, 2009: Peak of Lyrid meteor shower.
April 26, 2009: Mercury is at greatest eastern elongation, 20° east of the Sun (hence can be seen after sunset).
May 2009: Launch of Space Shuttle Atlantis on the fifth and final servicing mission to Hubble Space Telescope. [Updated November 9.]
May 15, 2009: Launch of Endeavour with third section of the Japanese Kibo Module to the Space Station. [This may be moved to avoid conflict with the Hubble mission.]
June 5, 2009: Venus is at greatest western elongation, 46° from the Sun (hence can be seen before sunrise).
June 13, 2009: Mercury is at greatest western elongation, 23° from the Sun (hence can be seen before sunrise).
June 23, 2009: Pluto is at opposition.
July 22, 2009 (July 21 in America): Total solar eclipse visible in central and eastern India, Bhutan and China. This eclipse will be visible to more people than any other in history (provided the sky is clear, of course).
August 10, 2009: Saturn’s rings are edge-on with respect to the Sun.
August 12, 2009: Peak of Perseid meteor shower.
August 14, 2009: Jupiter is at opposition.
August 17, 2009: Neptune is at opposition.
August 24, 2009: Mercury is at greatest eastern elongation, 27° from the Sun (hence can be seen after sunset).
September 4, 2009: Saturn’s rings appear edge-on.
September 17, 2009: Uranus is at opposition.
September 17, 2009: Saturn is in conjunction with the Sun.
September 30, 2009: MESSENGER's third flyby of Mercury.
October 2009: Russia launches Phobos-Grunt, a sample return mission to Martian moon Phobos. For more information, visit en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Phobos-Grunt.
October 5, 2009: Mercury is at greatest western elongation, 18° from the Sun (hence can be seen before sunrise).
October 8, 2009: Mercury is 0.3° south of Saturn.
October 13, 2009: Venus is 0.6° south of Saturn.
October 21, 2009: Peak of Orionid meteor shower.
November 17, 2009: Peak of Leonid meteor shower.
December 2009: The Mars Science Laboratory is launched. See marsprogram.jpl.nasa.gov/msl/ for details.
December 14, 2009: Peak of Geminid meteor shower.
December 18, 2009: Mercury is at greatest eastern elongation, 20° from the Sun (hence can be seen after sunset).
December 21, 2009: the eclipsing binary Epsilon Aurigae begins its total eclipse. This will last until March 12, 2011. This is the known eclipse of any eclipsing binary.
January 2010: Annular solar eclipse visible in central Africa.
January 11, 2010: Venus is in superior conjunction with the Sun.
January 27, 2009: Mercury is at greatest western elongation, 25° from the Sun (hence can be seen before sunrise).
January 29, 2010: Mars is at opposition with magnitude -1.3.
February 11, 2010: Launch of Atlantis to the Space Station. This is last scheduled mission for Atlantis.
April 8, 2010: Launch of Discovery to the Space Station. This is the last scheduled launch for Discovery.
May 31, 2010: Launch of Endeavour to the Space Station. This is the last scheduled mission for any space shuttle.
June 2010: Hayabusa returns to Earth with a sample of asteroid Itokawa. This will be the first asteroid sample returned to Earth. Web site is www.isas.jaxa.jp/e/enterp/missions/hayabusa/index.shtml.
June 2010: Japan launches the Venus Climate Orbiter (aka Planet‑C) to Venus. Web page is www.jaxa.jp/projects/sat/planet_c/index_e.html.
July 10, 2010: The Rosetta comet probe passes asteroid 21 Lutetia.
July 11, 2010: Total solar eclipse in southern Chile and Argentina.
September 21, 2010: Jupiter is at opposition. This is the closest Jupiter will come to Earth in the next 20 years, about 370 million miles.
October 2010: The Mars Science Laboratory rover lands on Mars. See marsprogram.jpl.nasa.gov/msl/ for details.
December 2010: Japan’s Venus Climate Orbiter arrives at Venus.
October 2011: Dawn probe orbits Vesta. See dawn.jpl.nasa.gov/ or en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dawn_Mission for details.
March 18, 2011: MESSENGER goes into orbit around Mercury.
October 2011 – April 2012: Dawn probe orbits Vesta.
Sometime in 2012: Russia launches the “Luna-Glob” mission which will deploy 13 mini-probes upon the lunar surface.
March 3, 2012: Mars is at opposition at magnitude -1.2. This is the worst opposition for the next twenty years.
April 2012: Dawn probe leaves orbit around Vesta for Ceres.
June 6, 2012: Venus transits the Sun's disk. The early part of this will be visible from the United States, but the full transit will only be visible from the western Pacific Ocean, eastern Asia, eastern Australia, and eastern Indonesia including New Guinea.
Sometime in 2013: ESA launches the ExoMars Mars Rover. For more information, visit en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Exomars.
June 2013: Earliest date for the launch of the James Webb Space Telescope.
August 2013 (approximate): The European Space Agency/JAXA BepiColombo Mercury Orbiter is launched. Home page is sci.esa.int/science-e/www/area/index.cfm?fareaid=30.
August 2014 - December 2015: The Rosetta space probe orbits comet Churyumov-Gerasimenko. In November, 2014, it will release the Philae lander. See September 5, 2008 for website information.
Sometime in 2015 or 2016: Launch of SIM PlanetQuest (aka the Space Interferometry Mission). This mission was originally supposed to have been launched in 2005 and has been delayed at least five times. It was recently moved from 2012. For more information, visit en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Space_Interferometry_Mission.
February 2015: Dawn space probe arrives at Ceres. Operations are scheduled to continue through July. Dawn may continue on to other asteroids if it is still operational.
July 14, 2015: The New Horizons probe passes through the Pluto-Charon system. The New Horizons web site is pluto.jhuapl.edu/.
July 2016-2020: The New Horizons probe visits the Kuiper Belt.
August 21, 2017: The next total solar eclipse visible in the United States, on a pretty straight path from Portland, Oregon to Charleston, South Carolina. St. Louis is the biggest city in-between.
August 2019 (approximate) BepiColombo arrives at Mercury orbit.
April 8, 2024: A total solar eclipse crosses the US from the middle of the Mexico-Texas border, crosses Arkansas, southern Missouri, Louisville, Cleveland, Buffalo and northern New England.
August 12, 2045: The next total solar eclipse visible in Oklahoma. This one is also visible in Salt Lake City, Denver, Little Rock (again), Tampa Bay and New Orleans.
Space News
The Phoenix Mars lander fell silent on November 2, and NASA has given up trying to recontact it. The spacecraft was expected to fall silent anyway with the Martian winter coming on, but a dust storm on October 28 cut off the sunlight it needed to recharge its batteries. Phoenix landed on the northern Martian plains on May 25, and made spectacular finds of water ice, perchlorates, calcium carbonate and clay.
NASA will try to reestablish contact for several weeks, and also when spring arrives on Mars, but the solar arrays are expected to be damaged enough by carbon dioxide and water ice that the craft probably won’t survive. In any case, the mission was a great success and the Phoenix team has enough data to keep them busy for months.
India’s Chandrayaan-1 achieved lunar orbit on November 8, marking India’s first entry into space exploration beyond Earth orbit. The spacecraft was launched into Earth orbit on October 22, firing its engines at each perigee to gradually increase its apogee until the Moon captured the spacecraft. Chandrayaan is now in a highly elliptical orbit which will gradually be shrunk to an orbit 60 miles above the lunar surface.
India’s is the sixth space program to place a spacecraft in lunar orbit. The others are the United States, Soviet Union/Russia, European Space Agency, Japan and China.
India will launch its second lunar mission, Chandrayaan-2, either in late 2009 or early 2010. That one will include a lunar rover which will operate for a month. “Chandrayaan,” logically, means “moon vehicle” in Sanskrit.
For more information on Chandrayaan, see the October 27 issue of Aviation Week & Space Technology, en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chandrayaan or http://www.isro.org/chandrayaan/htmls/home.htm
The surface of the dwarf planet Eris seems to have changed since its discovery. Observations made in 2005 found nitrogen was more abundant closer to the surface, but the new observation finds its abundance increases with depth. Both studies seem valid, so scientists are looking for an explanation to reconcile them. Possibilities suggested are a change in weather (which seems unlikely because Eris is much farther from the Sun than Pluto), or some sort of volcanism, which suggests Eris has an internal heat source. Or the two studies may somehow simply have gotten different parts of the surface, which would mean the composition of the surface varies over large areas. [Source: www.newscientist.com article by Rachel Courtland, 10 November 2008.]
The Cassini spacecraft has revealed that both of Saturn’s poles feature enormous hurricanes with winds up to three hundred miles per hour. The cloud wall of the southern one is 18,000 miles across (more than twice the diameter of the Earth), and up to 40 miles tall.
The northern hurricane, oddly, has a bright core with winds up to 350 miles an hour. The winds slacken around this core, then kick up again further out. These outer clouds are in the shape of a hexagon, which suggests some kind of a periodic effect. Saturn’s north pole is currently in darkness, but we should be getting a better view next year when springtime arrives there.
The Hubble Space Telescope is working again after a one month vacation. The electronics failed on September 27, so NASA had to switch to a back up unit, which took to the end of October to become fully operational.
As a consequence, NASA needs a replacement backup unit, which means that the Hubble repair mission, which had been scheduled to begin October 14, has now been moved to next May at the earliest. If we’re really lucky, it might occur during the International Space Development Conference, which is in Orlando, Florida this year.
Space-Related Articles
The 11 October issue of New Scientist is dedicated to carbon-free sources of energy, including a windmill being developed with 250-foot blades. The European Union is looking into windmills with 425-foot blades, although there is some doubt whether they would be economically viable. (Although they’d have that all-important coolness factor.) In addition to solar cells, which bring in the space connection, they mention another way of using the sun’s energy to make power: concentrating the Sun’s rays to heat up liquid (typically water or oil, although molten salts sodium or potassium nitrate are more efficient for storage). Whenever you have a temperature difference, you can generate electricity. Currently the price of solar-concentrated power is half the price of that from photovoltaic cells, but four times that from coal.
And of course, there are discussions of tidal, wave, geothermal, and biomass energy generation. They also mention Robert F. Kennedy, Jr.’s advocacy of a high-voltage DC power grid. Although alternating current is more efficient over short distances, direct current becomes cheaper over distances over five hundred miles. If you’re generating electricity in the Mojave Desert, distance becomes a big consideration.
[Huffington Post recently linked to an article on tiny nuclear reactors with no moving parts that could supply electricity to up to 20,000 homes. I gather they may rely on radioactivity rather than fission or fusion, but I couldn’t be sure from the article.]
Oklahoma Space Alliance Officers, 2008 (Area Code 405)
Tom Koszoru, President 366-1797 (H)
Claire McMurray, Vice-President/Update Editor 329-4326 (H) 863-6173 (C)
Syd Henderson, Secretary & Outreach Editor 321-4027 (H)
Tim Scott, Treasurer 740-7549 (H)
OSA E-mail Addresses and Web Site:
(add @ for word "at" where appropriate)
claire.mcmurray at sbcglobal.net (Claire McMurray)
T_Koszoru at cox.net (Heidi and Tom Koszoru)
sydh at ou.edu (Syd Henderson)
ctscott at mac.com (Tim Scott)
lensman13 at aol.com (Steve Galpin)
dmcraig at earthlink.net (Nancy and David Craig).
E-mail for OSA should be sent to [email protected]. Members who wish their e-mail addresses printed in Outreach, and people wishing space-related materials e-mailed to them should contact Syd. Oklahoma Space Alliance website is osa.nss.org/index.html. Webmaster is Syd Henderson.
Other Information
Air and Space Museum: Omniplex, Oklahoma City, 602‑6664 or 1-800-532-7652.
Oklahoma Space Industrial Development Authority (OSIDA), 401 Sooner Drive/PO Box 689, Burns Flat, OK 73624, 580-562-3500. Web site www.state.ok.us/~okspaceport.
Tulsa Air and Space Museum, 7130 E. Apache, Tulsa, OK 74115.
Web Site is www.tulsaairandspacemuseum.com. Phone (918)834-9900.
The Mars Society address is Mars Society, Box 273, Indian Hills CO 80454. Their web address is www.marsociety.org.
The National Space Society's Headquarters phone is 202-429-1600. The Chapters Coordinator is Bennett Rutledge 720-529-8024. The address is: National Space Society, 1620 I (Eye) Street NW Ste. 615, Washington, DC 20006. Web page is space.nss.org.
NASA Spacelink BBS 205-895-0028. Or try www.nasa.gov. .
Congressional Switchboard 202/224-3121.
Write to any U. S. Senator or Representative at [name]/ Washington DC, 20510 (Senate) or 20515 [House].
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National Space Society has a special $20 introductory rate for new members ($35 for new international members). Regular membership rates are $45, international $60. Student memberships are $20. Part of the cost is for the magazine, Ad Astra. Mail to: National Space Society, 1620 I (Eye) Street NW, Washington DC 20006, or join at space.nss.org/membership. (Brochures are at the bottom with the special rate.) Be sure to ask them to credit your membership to Oklahoma Space Alliance.
To join the Mars Society, visit. One-year memberships are $50.00; student and senior memberships are $25, and Family memberships are $100.00. Their address is Mars Society, Box 273, Indian Hills CO 80454.
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