OUTREACH March 2013
March Meeting
Oklahoma Space Alliance will meet on March 9, 2013 at Denny’s on the I-240 access road on the north side just east of Pennsylvania Avenue in southern Oklahoma City. Our business meeting will start at 2:30 p.m. with feature presentations beginning at 3:15 p.m. The street address is 1617 SW 74th Street and the phone number is 685-5414.
Our directions posted in previous issues of Outreach were unnecessarily complicated. If you take the exit at Pennsylvania coming from the east, you pass right by the entrance. If you’re coming on Pennsylvania itself, there’s an entrance from the street to the north of Denny’s.
March 9, 2013 -- OSA Meeting Agenda
2:30 PM
3:15 PM
Minutes of February Meeting
Oklahoma Space Alliance met February 9, 2013 at the Denny’s on the I-240 access road on the north side just east of Pennsylvania Avenue in southern Oklahoma City. Attending were Steve, Karen and Brian Swift, Don Robinson, Linda Shannon, Dave Sheely, Tim Scott and Syd Henderson.
Steve sent a letter to state legislators and government officials. He got three responses, including one from Governor Fallin’s science secretary.
Celebration of Human Space Flight (Yuri’s Night). Claire wants to head or find someone else to head. We can hold it at Embassy Suites on Meridian for $200 and have a cash bar, or at Marriott Gardens for $200 with no food brought in.
Topics for Meetings:
Plans for Mars. What different companies want to do.
Plans for the Moon.
Deep Space.
Asteroids.
Potential uses for L1 and L2.
Commercialization of Space, including Oklahoma businesses.
Crew vehicles and boosters.
Near zero energy paths in space.
What’s Happening in Space:
Quote: “There are those among us who will not be daunted or denied a better future or an ultimate destiny among the stars.”--Ralph Waldo Emerson
NASA will test the Bigelow expandable module on the International Space Station. The module will be launched on the 8th SpaceX cargo resupply mission in 2015. For more information, see www.youtube.com/watch?v=BSMdktpTDQQ.
We viewed a zoomable image of the entire earth at night from NASA’s Astronomy Picture of the day. It can be found at: apod.nasa.gov/apod/image/1212/dnb_land_ocean_ice.2012.3600x1800.jpg.
Carbon Planets Turn Earth’s Chemistry on Its Head: 55 Cancri e may have a crust of graphite over a layer of diamond.
We watched a tour of the interior of Endeavour.
Deep Space Industries is a privately-held American company in the asteroid mining business. They hope to offer commercial services as soon as 2016. Initially, their probes will hitch rides on other missions. We watched a promo video, as well as a video for their rival, Planetary Resources. [There’s an article on this in the May issue of Analog.—Syd]
Azerspace/AfricaSat was successfully launched into space on February 7, via an Ariane 5. This is Azerbaijan’s first commercial satellite and was constructed for them by Orbital Sciences. You can see the launch at http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nfpVqRRjLjQ. [There is also a commemorative postage stamp: See http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Azerspace.] The 10,317 kg payload to geosynchronous orbit (which also included the Amazonas 3 satellite) is a record.
An asteroid will pass within 17,100 miles of the Earth’s surface in February.
Kepler Data Suggest that Earth-size Planets May Be Right Next Door. See http://www.jpl.nasa.gov/news/news.php?release=2013-048. Up to 6% of red dwarfs, the most common type of star, may have planets in their habitable zone.
South Korea launched a rocket that put a satellite in orbit.
Our feature presentation was a tour of the International Space Station by Suni Williams.
We then went quickly through Milestones 8-12 of NSS’s roadmap to space.
[Minutes by OSA Secretary Syd Henderson.]
Viewing Opportunities for Satellites (March 9 – April 16, 2013)
You can get sighting information at www.heavens-above.com/. Heavens Above allows you to get satellite-viewing data for 10-day periods, and gives you a constellation map showing the trajectory of the satellite. Heavens Above has changed its detail view so that you can no longer get location coordinates. On the other hand, it does give very useful maps.
Usually I use http://spaceflight.nasa.gov/realdata/sightings/. This actually gives coordinates at 20-second intervals from when the satellite rises, not from when it peaks. I’m using one-minute intervals. It also doesn’t give you information for Tiangong 1. Sky Online (the Sky & Telescope web site) carries International Space Station observation times for the next few nights at skyandtelescope.com/observing/almanac.
With the addition of the solar panels, the International Space Station can be as bright as magnitude -3.5, making it brighter than all the stars other than the Sun and all the planets other than Venus, although magnitude -2 to -3 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 more difficult to see. China’s Tiangong 1 space station can get up to magnitude -0.6, which is brighter than all the night stars except Sirius and Canopus.
Missions to and from the Space Station may change its orbit. The next manned mission to the Space Station launches on March 28, but a Dragon capsule docked on March 3. Be sure to check Heavens Above or www.jsc.nasa.gov/sightings before going out to watch just in case.
China is planning one more mission to the Tiangong-1 space station in June. It will be deorbited in late 2013. No more missions to the Hubble Space Telescope are planned, but it should function at least until 2014.
All the passes of the Hubble Space telescope were early morning and/or abbreviated, so I’m not listing them this month.
ISS March 12, 2013
Time Position Elevation
7:09 a.m. 196° 18°
7:10 178 30
7:11 134 40
7:12 90 31
7:13 71 19
ISS March 14, 2013
Time Position Elevation
7:03 a.m. 242° 19°
7:04 253 35
7:05 305 61
7:06 20 41
7:07 35 17
ISS March 15, 2013
Time Position Elevation
Appears from Earth’s shadow
6:13:57 a.m. 193° 44°
6:14:43 130 61
6:16 71 37
6:17 59 20
Tiangong 1 March 16, 2013
Time Position Elevation
Appears from Earth’s shadow
6:12:36 a.m. 174° 39
6:13:01 148 42
6:15:52 75 10
Tiangong 1 March 17, 2013
Time Position Elevation
Appears from Earth’s shadow
6:39:52 a.m. 265° 24°
6:41:24 336 57
6:44:21 67 10
Tiangong 1 March 27, 2013
Time Position Elevation
Appears from Earth’s shadow
6:32:58 a.m. 303° 11°
6:35:08 24 58
6:38:04 105 10
ISS April 3, 2013
Time Position Elevation
6:11 a.m. 320° 20°
6:12 327 37
6:13 25 70
6:14 112 43
6:15 122 22
Tiangong 1 April 5, 2013
Time Position Elevation
8:41:12 p.m. 228° 10°
8:44:35 149 54*
8:41:22 74 15
Vanishes into Earth’s shadow
*Passes very close to Sirius.
Tiangong 1 April 6, 2013
Time Position Elevation
9:08:25 a.m. 261° 10°
9:11:16 338 48
9:12:52 44 22
ISS April 7, 2013
Time Position Elevation
9:00 p.m. 224° 20°
9:01 222 38
9:02 137 87
9:03 54 45
9:04 50 22
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 International Space Station at 6:13 a.m. on April 3, look to-and-a-half fist-widths east from due North, and then seven fist-widths above the horizon.
All times are rounded off to the nearest minute except for times when the satellite enters or leaves the shadow of the Earth. The highest elevation shown for each viewing opportunity is the actual maximum elevation for that appearance.
Space News
SpaceX’s second resupply mission to the International Space Station arrived on the morning of March 3. The Dragon capsule was captured by the robotic arm and berthed to the Station. Dragon delivered 1,268 pounds of supplies and will return with 2,668 pounds of scientific samples from experiments aboard the station. Among the various new experiments include the growth of plants and E. coli in microgravity, how space affects small batteries, and the growth of dendrites in molten metals. Dragon will return on March 25.
The US House of Representatives has unanimously voted to rename the Dryden Flight Research Center at Edwards Air Force Base as the Neil A. Armstrong Flight Research Center.
The Western Aeronautic Test Range will be renamed after Hugh Dryden, who supervised the development of the X-15 rocket plane and was later Deputy Administrator of NASA for seven years. Dryden was also Director of NACA (the agency which became NASA) for 11 years, and according to Tom Wolfe, was the man who first advanced the idea to President Kennedy of sending a man to the Moon. By renaming the test range, Dryden will continue to be honored and his association with Armstrong commemorated.
Mars Rover Curiosity suffered a computer glitch on the morning of February 27 and went into safe mode. The rover is switching to its backup computer, which needs to be brought up to date. This takes about a week, so Curiosity may well be up and running by the time you read this. The computer with the glitch will then be restored as a backup. Corrupted computer files cause the glitch, which may be due to an errant cosmic ray.
Curiosity has been analyzing samples pulverized from a rock nicknamed “John Klein,” part of a survey to determine if Mars may have once had conditions favorable to supporting life.
Although we have two comets coming this year, they’re nothing compared to what Mars has coming. On October 19, 2014, Comet Siding Spring will pass within 65,000 miles of Mars. Given how messy comets can be, Mars should have a pretty good meteor shower.
There is a slight (one in 10,000) chance of an actual collision, in which case things get apocalyptic (for Mars). The comet nucleus could be as large as 40 miles across, in which case it could produce a crater 500 miles across (!). In comparison, Chicxulub crater, the one in the Yucatan created 63 million years ago by the dinosaur-slayer, is 110 miles across. However, conservative estimates of the size of the comet’s nucleus yield a modest crater that is 100 miles across and 6 miles deep.
This isn’t likely to happen, of course, but we should be getting some spectacular pictures from our orbiters and rovers at Mars. Assuming they survive. Story at www.skyandtelescope.com/news.
The meteor that exploded over Chelyabinsk in Russia on February 15 injured about 1500 people with no reported deaths. Most of the injuries were caused by flying glass caused by the shockwave from the explosion, with only a couple of injuries considered serious. Considering that the energy of the explosion is estimated as half a megaton (more than ten times the energy of the explosions of the Hiroshima and Nagasaki bombs combined), and the meteor exploded over a city of a million people, the lack of deaths is surprising. The explosion occurred more than ten miles above the ground and the amount of heat produced was a lot less than that of a nuclear explosion. The mass of the meteorite is now estimated at 11,000 tones.
The meteor apparently created an eighteen-foot wide hole in the ice covering Lake Chebarkul, but, if so, the fragment creating the hole hasn’t been found. Meteoric debris has been found on the surface of the lake.
Since many Russian cars carry dashboard cameras (allegedly to protect drivers in traffic disputes, but I speculate they all work for Google), this was probably the photographed meteor in the history of the Earth, and you can find lots of video on YouTube.
By coincidence, asteroid 2012 DA14 passed 17000 miles from the surface of the Earth only sixteen hours after the meteor explosion. The two objects were in very different trajectories and in different orbits, so weren’t related. The asteroid’s mass is now estimated at 40,000 tons, or about four times that of the Chelyabinsk meteor.
In the wake of the two visitations from space, the threat of an asteroid has gotten more attention from governments and the United Nations, and a boom market was created for Russian meteorite fragments.
In January, Robert Chornock et al. submitted a paper that Supernova PS1-10afx* was 10-20 times as bright as expected, and they proclaimed it a new type of supernova. However, except for the brightness, the supernova seems like a normal Type Ia supernova.
Robert Quimby et al. at the University of Tokyo would like to differ, and their February 12 abstract claims that, since the supernova looks so much like a type Ia, it actually is a normal supernova of that type magnified by an invisible gravitational lens. A gravitational lens has been suspected, but no galaxies or other objects have been sighted between the supernova and us. Thus Quimby’s team postulates a blob of dark matter, such as a dark dwarf galaxy.
Since the existence of an invisible blob of dark matter would be really difficult to prove, this dispute could go on a while.
* PS1=Pan-STARRS1, the telescope that discovered it and this month’s comet. Pan-STARRS is the Panoramic Survey Telescope and Rapid Response System, based on the Big Island in Hawaii. Sources mentioning the comet drop the hyphen and often capitalize the all the letters.
Sky Viewing
[Data for this section from Astronomy, Sky & Telescope, Wikipedia and NASA.]
Reports from Argentina are that Comet PanSTARRS was magnitude 2.3 on March 1 and visible in Buenos Aires despite light pollution. This implies to me that it may indeed reach first magnitude around March 9. It’s going to be visible in the western sky starting around March 10. On March 12, Comet PanSTARRS will be left of the crescent Moon in the west after sunset, and will be visible for about a week afterward.
A word of warning: “first magnitude” doesn’t mean quite the same for a comet as for a star, because a comet is spread over a larger area. The tail may not be visible at all except through binoculars, especially since the twilight will be interfering with viewing the comet.
The Lyrid meteor shower peaks on April 22. These generally produce 10 – 25 meteors/hour, but on rare occasions get up to 100 meteors/hour. Unfortunately, the Moon is full on April 25 and will interfere with viewing.
Jupiter is high in the south after sunset, at magnitude -2.3, and will continue to dominate the evening sky through the end of April. Don’t confuse it with Sirius, which is lower in the south and not quite as bright. Jupiter is still in the constellation Taurus; the bright star a couple of degrees to the left is Aldebaran. The V-shaped group of stars below and surrounding Aldebaran are the Hyades star cluster. (Aldebaran itself looks as if it’s part of the cluster, but in reality it is twice as far away and much brighter.) The Pleiades star cluster is to the right of Jupiter and lower in the sky.
Saturn is currently rising around 11:00 p.m. and is magnitude 0.4 and gradually brightening. It is located in the constellation Libra. By the time it reaches opposition on April 28, Saturn will be magnitude 0.1. That makes it nearly as bright as Arcturus, which is the brightest star in the Northern Hemisphere. The rings are still tilted about twenty degrees to our line of sight.
That’s about it for planet viewing at the moment. Mercury, Venus and Mars (and Neptune, too) are all too close to the Sun to be seen, and Uranus is about to join them. Neptune was in conjunction on February 21 and Mercury was inferior conjunction on March 4. Venus and Uranus are both in conjunction with the Sun on March 28, as is Mars on April 17.
Mercury will theoretically be visible around the end of March, reaching greatest elongation at the end of the month. However, this is a poor elongation and will probably require binoculars.
Programming Notice: NASA TV on the Web
Watch NASA TV (Public, Media and Education Channels) on your computer using Flash, Windows or QuickTime at http://www.nasa.gov/multimedia/nasatv/index.html.
NASA TV Schedules are available at http://www.nasa.gov/multimedia/nasatv/schedule.html
Highlights:
March 11: 10:30 a.m.: NASA Exploration Design Challenge Kickoff Event.
March 13: 4:10 p.m. - ISS Expedition 34/35 Change of Command Ceremony.
March 14: 3:45 p.m. - ISS Expedition 34 Farewells and Hatch Closure Coverage (hatch closure scheduled at 4:15 p.m.). 7:15 p.m. - ISS Expedition 34/Soyuz Undocking Coverage. 9:45 p.m. - ISS Expedition 34/Soyuz Deorbit Burn and Landing Coverage (Deorbit burn scheduled at 10:04 p.m., landing near Arkalyk, Kazakhstan scheduled at 10:57 p.m.) - JSC (All Channels),
March 28: 2:30 p.m. - ISS Expedition 35/36 Soyuz TMA-08M Launch Coverage Launch scheduled at 3:43 p.m. 8:45 p.m. - ISS Expedition 35/36 Soyuz Docking Coverage (Docking scheduled at 9:31 p.m.)
March 29: 12 a.m. - ISS Expedition 35/36 Soyuz TMA-08M Hatch Opening and Other Activities. Hatch Opening scheduled at 12:30 a.m.)
Calendar of Events
Sometime in 2013: The student-built nanosatellite, Aalto-1, will become Finland’s first satellite. A summary in English of the mission is at https://wiki.aalto.fi/display/SuomiSAT/Summary
Late in 2013: China deorbits its Tiangong-1 space station and launches Tiangong-2.
Late in 2013: China’s Chang’e 3 rover lands on the Moon. This will be the first spacecraft to make a soft landing on the Moon since 1976.
March 8 - 22: Comet PanSTARRS is at peak visibility, and may reach magnitude 0.
March 8: Oklahoma City Astronomy Club meets at Science Museum Oklahoma (formerly the Omniplex). There will be a novice session in the planetarium at 6:45 p.m., followed by a club meeting at 7:30 p.m. See http://www.okcastroclub.com/ for details.
March 9: Oklahoma Space Alliance meeting at Denny’s on the I-240 access road on the north side just east of Pennsylvania Avenue in southern Oklahoma City. See “March Meeting” on page 1.
March 9: Messier Marathon at the Cheddar Ranch Observatory, for Oklahoma City Astronomy Club members and their invited guests. See http://www.okcastroclub.com/ for details.
March 13: [Tentative.] Oklahoma Space Industry Authority Meeting at 1:30 p.m., Oklahoma Department of Transportation Building in Oklahoma City.
March 14: Return of ISS Expedition 33/34 members.
March 28: Launch of three Expedition 35/36 members via Soyuz from the Baikonur Cosmodrome in Kazakhstan to the Space Station.
March 28: Venus is in superior conjunction with the Sun.
March 28: Uranus is in conjunction with the Sun.
February 16: Mercury is at greatest western elongation, 28° from the Sun (hence can be seen before sunrise).
April 5: First Cygnus test flight to the ISS.
April 10: [Tentative.] Oklahoma Space Industry Authority Meeting at 1:30 p.m., Oklahoma Department of Transportation Building in Oklahoma City.
April 12: Oklahoma City Astronomy Club meets at Science Museum Oklahoma (formerly the Omniplex). There will be a novice session in the planetarium at 6:45 p.m., followed by a club meeting at 7:30 p.m. See http://www.okcastroclub.com/ for details.
April 13: [Tentative] Oklahoma Space Alliance meeting at 2:30 p.m. Exact time and location to be announced.
April 17: Mars is in conjunction with the Sun.
April 18: European Space Agency’s Automatic Transfer Vehicle 4 (aka Albert Einstein) is launched to the ISS.
April 22: Peak of the Lyrid meteor shower.
April 28: Saturn is at opposition.
No earlier than April 28: Launch of IRIS, the Interface Region Imaging Spectrograph, which will trace the flow of energy and matter into the Sun’s corona and photosphere. See http://iris.gsfc.nasa.gov/ for details.
May 8: [Tentative.] Oklahoma Space Industry Authority Meeting at 1:30 p.m., Oklahoma Department of Transportation Building in Oklahoma City.
May 9-10: Annular solar eclipse visible in northern Australia and central Pacific.
May 10: Oklahoma City Astronomy Club meets at Science Museum Oklahoma (formerly the Omniplex). There will be a novice session in the planetarium at 6:45 p.m., followed by a club meeting at 7:30 p.m. See http://www.okcastroclub.com/ for details.
May 11: [Tentative] Oklahoma Space Alliance meeting at 2:30 p.m. Exact time and location to be announced.
May 11: Mercury is in superior conjunction with the Sun.
May 23 – 27: ISDC 2013, the National Space Society’s 32nd Annual International Space Development Conference, San Diego, California. For more information, visit http://isdc.nss.org/2013.
May 28: Launch of three Expedition 36/37 members via Soyuz from the Baikonur Cosmodrome in Kazakhstan to the Space Station.
May 28: Triple conjunction of Jupiter, Venus and Mercury; they are within 3° of each other
June 2013: Shenzhou-10 space mission to Tiangong-1 [not Tiangong-2 as reported in earlier issues of Outreach].
June 8: [Tentative] Oklahoma Space Alliance meeting at 2:30 p.m. Exact time and location to be announced.
June 12: [Tentative.] Oklahoma Space Industry Authority Meeting at 1:30 p.m., Oklahoma Department of Transportation Building in Oklahoma City.
June 12: Mercury is at greatest eastern elongation, 24° from the Sun (hence can be seen after sunset)
June 14: Oklahoma City Astronomy Club meets at Science Museum Oklahoma (formerly the Omniplex). There will be a novice session in the planetarium at 6:45 p.m., followed by a club meeting at 7:30 p.m. See http://www.okcastroclub.com/ for details.
June 19: Jupiter is in conjunction with the Sun.
July 1: Pluto is at opposition.
July 9: Mercury is in inferior conjunction with the Sun.
July 10: [Tentative.] Oklahoma Space Industry Authority Meeting at 1:30 p.m., Oklahoma Department of Transportation Building in Oklahoma City.
July 13: [Tentative] Oklahoma Space Alliance meeting at 2:30 p.m. Exact time and location to be announced.
July 30: Mercury is at greatest western elongation, 20° from the Sun (hence can be seen before sunrise).
August 2013: Launch of Gaia (Global Astrometric Interferometer for Astrophysics), the European Space Agency successor to Hipparcos. Gaia will provide data on one billion stars in the Milky Way, including distances, proper and radial motion, and spectroscopic info burying astronomers in data. Gaia will also observe asteroids closer than the Earth to the Sun. For more information, visit http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gaia_(spacecraft) or http://www.esa.int/export/esaSC/120377_index_0_m.html.
August 4: The asteroid Juno is at opposition, reaching a peak magnitude of 6.6.
August 12: Launch of LADEE (Lunar Atmosphere and Dust Environment Explorer). For more information, visit http://www.nasa.gov/mission_pages/LADEE/main/index.html.
August 12: Peak of the Perseid meteor shower.
August 24: Mercury is in superior conjunction with the Sun.
August 26: Neptune is at opposition.
September 25: Launch of three Expedition 37/38 members via Soyuz from the Baikonur Cosmodrome in Kazakhstan to the Space Station.
September 30: Space-X’s third resupply flight to the ISS.
October 3: Uranus is at opposition.
October 8: Mercury is at greatest eastern elongation, 25° from the Sun (hence can be seen after sunset)
October 31: Venus is at greatest eastern elongation, 47° from the Sun (hence can be seen after sunset)
November: Comet C/2012 S1 (Comet ISON) will approach within 1.1 million miles of the Sun and be visible to the naked eye. It may well be visible during the daytime.
November 3: Hybrid solar eclipse. This will begin as an annular eclipse east of Florida, and will be total on a path from the mid-Atlantic through central Africa.
November 6: Saturn is in conjunction with the Sun.
November 18: Launch of the Mars Atmosphere and Volatile EvolutioN orbiter (MAVEN). (Launch windows extend through December 7.) The project web site is http://lasp.colorado.edu/home/maven/.
November 18: Mercury is at greatest western elongation, 19° from the Sun (hence can be seen before sunrise).
November 25: Launch of three Expedition 38/39 members via Soyuz from the Baikonur Cosmodrome in Kazakhstan to the Space Station.
December 13: Peak of the Geminid meteor shower.
December 29: Mercury is in superior conjunction with the Sun.
Sometime in 2014: First test flight of the Orion Multi-Purpose Crew Vehicle.
Sometime in 2014: India launches Chandrayaan II. This mission will include a lunar rover. For more information, visit http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chandrayaan-2.
Sometime in 2014: Russia launches the “Luna-Glob” mission, which will deploy 13 mini-probes upon the lunar surface. For more information, see http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Luna-Glob. [Moved from 2012.]
January 2014: Comet C/2012 S1 (Comet ISON) approaches with 37.2 million miles of Earth. It should be much brighter than Venus at this point. On January 8, it will be within two degrees of the North Star.
January 5, 2014: Jupiter is at opposition.
February 14, 2014: Launch of Japan’s Astro-H X-ray astronomy spacecraft. For details, visit http://astro-h.isas.jaxa.jp/index.html.en.
April 14-15, 2014. Total eclipse of the Moon visible from North America.
April 15, 2014: The asteroids Vesta and Ceres are both at opposition.
July 2014: Proposed launch date of Hayabusa 2 to asteroid 1999 JU3.
August 2014 - December 2015: The European Space Agency’s Rosetta space probe orbits comet Churyumov-Gerasimenko. In November 2014, it will release the Philae lander. Web page is www.esa.int/SPECIALS/Rosetta or visit en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rosetta_%28spacecraft%29.
October 8, 2014: Total eclipse of the Moon visible from almost all of the Pacific Ocean, eastern Australia and western North and South America.
October 19, 2014: Comet Siding Spring will pass within 65,000 miles of Mars. There is a 0.01% probability of an actual collision.
Sometime in 2015: China launches the Tiangong-3 space station. This will eventually become the core of a large Chinese space station in the 2020s.
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/.
August 15, 2015: [Moved from 2014.) The European Space Agency/JAXA BepiColombo Mercury Orbiter is launched. Home page is sci.esa.int/science-e/www/area/index.cfm?fareaid=30\
Sometime in 2016: ESA launches the ExoMars Mars Orbiter. This mission will include a static lander, but the rover will be launched in 2018. For more information, visit en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Exomars.
March 2016: Proposed launch date for InSight, a lander that will probe the interior of Mars. For information, see http://insight.jpl.nasa.gov/.
July 2016-2020: The New Horizons probe visits the Kuiper Belt.
September 2016: Launch of OSIRIS-Rex, the Origins Spectral Interpretation Resource Identification Security Regolith Explorer, which will orbit the near-earth asteroid 1999 RQ36 and return samples. For more information, visit http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/OSIRIS-REx or http://science.nasa.gov/missions/osiris-rex/.
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.
Sometime in 2018: ESA launches the ExoMars Mars Rover. For more information, visit en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Exomars.
Sometime in 2018: Earliest date for the launch of the James Webb Space Telescope.
January 2022: BepiColombo arrives at Mercury orbit.
Sometime in 2024: Arrival of OSIRIS-Rex at the near-earth asteroid 1999 RQ36 and return samples. (See September 2016.)
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.
Oklahoma Space Alliance Officers, 2013 (Area Code 405)
Steve Swift, President 496-3616 (H)
Claire McMurray, Vice President 329-4326 (H) 863-6173 (C)
Syd Henderson, Secretary & Outreach Editor 321-4027 (H) 365-8983 (C)
Tim Scott, Treasurer 740-7549 (H)
Tom Koszoru, Update Editor 366-1767
OSA E-mail Addresses and Web Site:
(Replace "at" with @ symbol.)
sswift42 at aol.com (Steve Swift)
sydh at ou.edu (Syd Henderson)
ctscott at mac.com (Tim Scott)
cliffclaire at hotmail.com (Claire McMurray)
T_Koszoru at cox.net (Heidi and Tom Koszoru)
john.d.northcutt1 at tds.net (John Northcutt)
lensman13 at aol.com (Steve Galpin)
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
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.
Science Museum Oklahoma (former Omniplex) website is www.sciencemuseumok.org. Main number is 602-6664.
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. Executive Director is Gary Barnhard [email protected]. The Chapters Coordinator is Bennett Rutledge 720-529-8024. The address is: National Space Society, 1155 15th Street NW, Suite 500, Washington DC 20005 Web page is space.nss.org.
The Planetary Society phone 626-793-5100. The address is 65 North Catalina, Avenue, Pasadena, California, 91106-2301 and the website is www.planetary.org. E-mail is [email protected].
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].
`
Contact person for Oklahoma Space Alliance is Claire McMurray
PO Box 1003
Norman, OK 73070
Webmaster is Syd Henderson.
Copyright ©2013 Oklahoma Space Alliance.
