Oklahoma Space Alliance Home
OUTREACH May 2013
Outreach is also avaliable in pdf pdf version
May Meeting:
Oklahoma Space Alliance will meet on May 11, 2013 at Denny’s on the I-240 access road on the north side just east of Pennsylvania Avenue in southern Oklahoma City. Our feature presentations will start at 2:30 p.m. with the business meeting following at 4:15 p.m. The street address is 1617 SW 74th Street and the phone number is 685-5414.
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.
2:30 PM
- What’s Happening?
- First Antares Rocket Launch Video
- Video of Moon by Grail Spacecraft
- Hi-Res Interactive view of the Moon
- Astronaut Chis Hadfield Demo on ISS
- SpaceX Grasshopper Test Video
- Asteroid Mining News
- Mars One Colony Applications
- Progress Cargo Launch Video
- SpaceshipTwo First Powered Flight Video
- LauncherOne Announcement Video
- Feature: Commercial Space Ventures
- Deep Space Industries Video
- Planetary Resources Video
- Mars One Video
- Lunar X Prize
- Shackelton Energy
- Bigelow Aerospace
- Space Commerce Successes
4:15 PM
- Review Minutes and Agenda
- New mail
- Treasurers Report
- Report on OSIDA Meeting
- Old Business
- New Business
Minutes of April Meeting
Oklahoma Space Alliance met April 13, 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, Syd Henderson, Claire McMurray and Dennis Wigley.
This was our Celebration of Manned Spaceflight, so there was little in the way of club business.
What’s Happening in Space?
Quote: “I’d like to die on Mars, just not on impact,” Elon Musk.
SpaceX’s Grasshopper rocket successfully completed its 80-meter hover test. You can watch it here: http://www.space.com/20254-spacex-reusable-rocket-grasshopper-test.html. [SpaceX has since completed a 250-meter hover test.]
NASA’s Photo of the Day was “Light Echoes from V836 Monocerotis: http://www.nasa.gov/multimedia/imagegallery/image_feature_2472.html.
Christopher J. Cassidy is on the International Space Station. He is a former Navy Seal.
Astronomy photo of the day was the Great Nebula in Orion.
Lockheed Martin launched the SBIRS GEO-2 satellite.
XCOR announced a significant milestone in its Lynx suborbital spacecraft project. Their liquid oxygen piston pump will allow Lynx rockets to launch several times a day.
Three astronauts blasted off on an express ride to the ISS. This requires four orbits before docking rather than the previous thirty.
New Ginormous 4-Billion Panorama from the Curiosity Rover: you can view it at http://tinyurl.com/bslzofa. This is an interactive panorama.
A comet will be passing within 65000 miles of Mars next year.
Orbital Services Antares rocket was erected at a Virginia pad in preparation of an April 17 launch. It’s comparable in size to a Falcon 9.
We watched a video on how to brush your teeth in space, and now you can too: http://www.space.com/20478-how-astronauts-brush-teeth-video.html.
Celebration of Manned Spaceflight:
Quote: “The sky is dark, the Earth is blue,” Yuri Gagarin.
We watched a video, “Yuri Gagarin: First Man in Space.”
Gordon Cooper died on the same day Spaceship One won the Ansari X-Prize.
We watched a series of failed space launches.
Syd and Claire need to contact Soonercon Programming. Will we be doing the hospitality suite again?
[Minutes by OSA Secretary Syd Henderson.]
Viewing Opportunities for Satellites (May 11 – June 11, 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 May 28, and a transfer vehicle launched by Ariane will dock on June 15. 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.
ISS May 17, 2013
Time Position Elevation
5:31 a.m. 233° 24°
5:32 239 45
5:33 348 80
5:34 39 39
5:35 44 21
ISS June 3, 2013
Time Position Elevation
10:56 p.m. 259° 18°
10:57 296 29
10:58 316 40
10:59 2 32
11:00 23 20
HST May 18, 2013
Time Position Elevation
9:58 p.m. 219° 21°
9:59 200 27
10:00 173 30
Vanishes into Earth’s shadow
HST May 19, 2013
Time Position Elevation
9:54 p.m. 224° 21°
9:55 205 28
9:56 177 31
9:57 150 27
Vanishes into Earth’s shadow
HST May 20, 2013
Time Position Elevation
9:49 p.m. 227° 21°
9:50 207 28
9:51 180 31
9:52 153 27
Vanishes into Earth’s shadow
Tiangong 1 May 24, 2013
Time Position Elevation
9:43 p.m. 232° 10°
9:46 150 64
9:48 70 13
Tiangong 1 May 25, 2013
Time Position Elevation
10:05 p.m. 263° 10°
10:07 338 45
10:10 52 12
Tiangong 1 June 3, 2013
Time Position Elevation
10:04 p.m. 305° 10°
10:07 23 49
10:08 80 31
Vanishes into Earth’s shadow
ISS June 4, 2013
Time Position Elevation
10:08 p.m. 234° 24°
10:09 241 46
10:10 357 78
10:11 39 37
10:12 43 20
ISS June 5, 2013
Time Position Elevation
9:18 p.m. 204° 20°
9:19 187 36
9:20 133 50
9:21 81 35
9:22 65 20
Tiangong 1 June 6, 2013
Time Position Elevation
9:30 p.m. 290° 10°
9:33 210 56
9:35 134 15
Vanishes into Earth’s shadow
ISS June 7, 2013
Time Position Elevation
4:38 a.m. 310° 23°
4:39 307 45
4:40 182 85
4:41 137 40
4:42 135 21
ISS June 7, 2013
Time Position Elevation
9:17 p.m. 254° 18°
9:18 269 31
9:19 313 45
9:20 6 36
9:21 26 21
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 Tianggong-1 at 9:46 p.m. on May 24, measure three fist-widths east of due south, then about six-and-a-half 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 Probes
I’ve added new missions to the Space Calendar. Many of these are European Space Agency missions, some of which are in collaboration with NASA. [Some may not appear each issue because I edit the calendar sometimes for space.] The ESA missions are generally part of their Cosmic Vision 2015-2025, except apparently for LISA Pathfinder.
LISA Pathfinder is a mission to test technology for the detection of gravity waves. It is primarily an ESA project, but has some technology from NASA. LISA Pathfinder will use lasers to measure the distance between two gold-platinum cubes. It is capable of measuring a distortion of 2 picometers (that’s a trillionth of a meter, or 1.5% of the radius of a helium atom) and a turn of ten billionths of a degree. As project scientist Paul McNamara likes to point out, that’s the angle subtended by an astronaut’s footprint on the Moon.
The reason this is LISA Pathfinder is the proposed Laser Interferometer Space Antenna (LISA), which will use lasers to measure fluctuations in distance between three spacecraft, which are in an equilateral triangle with sides three million miles long. LISA should be able to detect gravity waves from binary stars and supermassive black holes.
LISA Pathfinder will be launched in 2015 and will be parked in a halo orbit around the Earth-Sun L1 point. That’s the one between the Earth and the Sun. LISA doesn’t have a launch date yet, although 2025 was proposed as part of the ESA’s Cosmic Vision program. LISA would not be at a Lagrangian point. It would be in Earth’s orbit, but 50 million miles behind and tilted sixty degrees to the ecliptic.
One thing I don’t understand about this experiment is why the light pressure from the lasers doesn’t push the satellites apart, ruining the distance measurements. Perhaps the important thing is that the satellites form an equilateral triangle and stay in that configuration.
For more information on LISA Pathfinder, visit the project website at http://sci.esa.int/lisapf or http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/LISA_Pathfinder. For information on LISA see http://sci.esa.int/lisa, http://lisa.nasa.gov/ or http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Laser_Interferometer_Space_Antenna.
The Euclid space telescope is designed to search for dark matter and dark energy by looking at more than two billion galaxies spread over a third of the sky. Dark matter is detectable by its gravity, which acts as a gravitational lens, distorting the light from galaxies more distant than the dark matter. We generally see several images of the same galaxy, but if alignment is perfect, we see a ring. Another term for gravitational lens is “gravitational mirage.”
Dark energy is what is apparently causing the acceleration of the expansion of the Universe. This acceleration was first detected by the distribution of supernovae in distant galaxies, and Euclid can analyze it by galaxy distribution, including what are called baryon acoustic oscillations—that is, fluctuations in the distribution of matter in the Universe caused by sound waves in the plasma produced by the Big Bang. (In other words, the cosmic egg rang like a bell.)
Euclid is a combination of two earlier proposed missions, the Dark Universe Explorer (DUNE) and the Spectroscopic All Sky Cosmic Explorer (SPACE), thus eliminating two acronyms at once! NASA will be contributing twenty infrared detectors, but otherwise this is an ESA project. Launch is projected for 2020, and it will be in a halo orbit around the Earth-Sun L2 point.
For more information on Euclid, visit the project website at
http://sci.esa.int/euclid, or http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Euclid_(spacecraft).
Solar Orbiter or SolO, as its name implies, will be devoted to studying solar physics. To do this, it will be placed in a highly elliptical orbit inside the orbit of Mercury, approaching closer than twenty million miles of the Sun.
A peculiarity of this orbit is that at closest approach, Solar Orbiter will be moving at the right velocity that it will match the Sun’s rotation, so it will appear to hover over the same spot on the Sun. This will make it possible to view solar flares as they are happening, provided, of course, they erupt in the right spot.
Solar Orbiter is primarily an ESA mission, with some contribution from NASA. It will, however, be launched from Cape Canaveral in January 2017. The mission will last seven years, which overlaps that of NASA’s Solar Probe Plus, the next item.
For more information on Euclid, visit the project website at http://sci.esa.int/solarorbiter, or http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Solar_Orbiter.
Solar Probe Plus or Solar Probe+ (formerly NASA Solar Probe) is a NASA/Johns Hopkins mission that will approach within 3.7 million of the surface of the Sun. This means that it will actually pass through the outer corona of the Sun. It will also become the fastest manmade vehicle of all time, with a peak velocity of 120 miles per second. The orbit is extremely elliptical, with aphelion of 65 million miles.
Reaching such a difficult orbit is going to require seven flybys of Venus between September of 2018 and October of 2024, with the first close approach to the Sun coming on December 19, 2024. The final orbital period will be 88 days, which is the same as the orbital period of Mercury. I think that’s a coincidence.
To protect the spacecraft at closest approach, it will have a shield of carbon composite. The spacecraft also retracts its primary solar array during closest approach to the Sun, relying on a smaller secondary system that is cooled with fluid.
For more information on Solar Probe Plus, visit the project website at
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Solar_Probe_Plus or visit http://solarprobe.jhuapl.edu/.
JUICE is the JUpiter ICy Moons Explorer, which is not only a strained acronym, but leaves off the M from “Moons.” I call it JIME in protest. JIME will spend two and a half years orbiting Jupiter and visiting Europa, Ganymede and Callisto, then go into orbit around Ganymede at least a year.
All three of these moons are believed to have oceans of liquid water beneath their icy surfaces. The hope is that the moons will serve as natural laboratory for the study of potentially habitable worlds orbiting gas giants. Ganymede is of particular interest due to its own magnetic field which protects its surface to a certain extent from Jupiter’s magnetosphere. JUICE’s radar will actually penetrate Ganymede’s interior looking for the interior ocean.
JUICE will take a roundabout path to Jupiter, using gravitational assists from Earth and Venus. It will take seven and a half years to get to Jupiter. Once it is in Jupiter orbit, it will use gravitational assists from the moons to change orbits, some 25 in total. Since it will not visit Io, it will stay outside Jupiter’s main radiation belts.
JUICE is tentatively scheduled for launch in 2022 via an Ariane 5 rocket. Arrival at Jupiter is 2030 and insertion into Ganymede orbit is 2033.
JUICE is essentially a revival of NASA’s Jupiter Icy Moons Orbiter (JIMO), which was cancelled in 2005 while still in an early planning stage. ESA and NASA would have followed up with a joint mission. When that too was cancelled in 2011, the ESA decided to carry on and the result became JUICE.
For more information on JUICE, visit the project website at http://sci.esa.int/juice or visit http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jupiter_Icy_Moons_Explorer.
CHEOPS, the Characterizing ExoPlanet Satellite, is a space telescope dedicated to studying exoplanets that transit their star’s disk. This sounds similar to Kepler, but, whereas that studied a particular patch of sky, CHEOPS will be looking at nearby and bright stars, particularly those already known to have planets. CHEOPS is powerful enough to detect planets not much larger than Earth.
CHEOPS is a joint project of the ESA and the Swiss Space Office, and is scheduled for launch in 2017. For more information, visit the project website at http://sci.esa.int/cheops or visit http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/CHEOPS_%28spacecraft%29.
Space News
A company named Uwingu is having a contest to name the planet Alpha Centauri Bb, which the International Astronomical Union thoroughly disapproves of, since the IAU decides on the official names of astronomical objects. The purpose of the contest is to raise money for space grants, and, presumably, Uwingu. Both Uwingu and the IAU stress that the winning entry wouldn’t be official.
For the record, the winner for Alpha Centauri Bb was Albertus Alauda after the nominator’s grandfather. #2 was Rakhat, a planet in the Alpha Centauri in Mary Doria Russell’s novel The Sparrow.
On the other hand, asteroid 101955 has been renamed by a contest won by nine-year-old Michael Puzio, who suggested the name Bennu, after an Egyptian bird god. An Egyptian name is appropriate because Bennu is the destination of the probe OSIRIS-REx; the bird god was chosen because the probe looks like images of Bennu. The name has been submitted to the IAU for approval, but I imagine this one they’ll approve.
Sky Viewing
Mercury is currently nearing its May 11 superior conjunction with the Sun, and hence is not visible. However, it will become visible late in the month, which is fortunate because it, Venus and Jupiter are having a triple conjunction on May 26 and 27. They will all be within two degrees of each other, and should be visible thirty minutes after sunset. The three planets will remain close together through early June, and Mercury, for once, is the highest of the three in the sky.
Venus has finally passed superior conjunction with the Sun and is magnitude -3.9. Right now it’s still very low in the western sky just after sunset, but it’s gradually going to gain in altitude through October, glowing brighter each night.
Mars was in conjunction with the Sun on April 17 and won’t become visible until late June, when it will rise about an hour before the Sun.
Jupiter is still visible in the western sky at sunset, but it is moving in the opposite direction of Mercury and Venus and will be lost in the Sun’s glare through most of June. Its conjunction with the Sun is June 19.
Saturn, on the other hand, just passed opposition and is visible all night long at magnitude 0.2. It’s currently located in a rather dim part of the constellation Libra about halfway between Spica and Alpha Librae. If you look in the southeastern sky after sunset, Saturn will be the brightest “star” you see. Saturn’s rings are well open so this is a good time to look for it.
Uranus is in the eastern sky just before dawn. By the end of the month it will be rising about 3:00 a.m. Uranus is magnitude 5.9 and is in the constellation Pisces.
Neptune is also in the eastern sky before dawn, and is located in the constellation Aquarius. Neptune is rising about 90 minutes before Uranus.
Sky & Telescope has a finder chart online for Uranus and Neptune, http://media.skyandtelescope.com/documents/Uranus-Neptune-2013.pdf. But if you’re really feeling ambitious and have access to a powerful telescope, there is a large finder map for Pluto on pages 52-53 of the June issue of Sky & Telescope.
[Data for this section from Astronomy, Sky & Telescope, Wikipedia and NASA.]
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:
May 12, 2:40 p.m.: Change of command ceremony on the ISS.
May 13, 5:45 p.m.: Undocking of Soyuz from ISS. 8:15 p.m.: Re-entry and landing. Landing is 9:31 p.m. CDT.
May 22, 7:30 – 11:00 a.m.: and 12:00 – 5:00 p.m. coverage of the 2013 Lunabotics Mining Competition.
May 23, 7:30 – 11:00 a.m.: and 12:00 – 5:00 p.m. coverage of the 2013 Lunabotics Mining Competition.
May 23, 7:30 – 11:00 a.m.: and 12:00 – 3:00 p.m. coverage of the 2013 Lunabotics Mining Competition.
May 28, 2:30 p.m.: Coverage of launch of ISS Expedition 36/37 crew. Launch is 3:31 p.m. 8:30 p.m.: Docking coverage. Docking is at 9:17 p.m.
Space Calendar
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. at Denny’s on the I-240 access road on the north side just east of Pennsylvania Avenue in southern Oklahoma City.
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.
June 8: [Tentative] Oklahoma Space Alliance meeting at 2:30 p.m. at Denny’s on the I-240 access road on the north side just east of Pennsylvania Avenue in southern Oklahoma City.
June 12: [Tentative.] Oklahoma Space Industry Development 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.
June 26: 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.
July 1: Pluto is at opposition.
July 9: Mercury is in inferior conjunction with the Sun.
July 10: [Tentative.] Oklahoma Space Industry Development 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. at Denny’s on the I-240 access road on the north side just east of Pennsylvania Avenue in southern Oklahoma City.
July 30: Mercury is at greatest western elongation, 20° from the Sun (hence can be seen before sunrise).
August 4: The asteroid Juno is at opposition, reaching a peak magnitude of 6.6.
August 10: [Tentative] Oklahoma Space Alliance meeting at 2:30 p.m. at Denny’s on the I-240 access road on the north side just east of Pennsylvania Avenue in southern Oklahoma City.
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 14: [Tentative.] Oklahoma Space Industry Development Authority Meeting at 1:30 p.m., Oklahoma Department of Transportation Building in Oklahoma City.
August 24: Mercury is in superior conjunction with the Sun.
August 26: Neptune is at opposition.
September 11: [Tentative.] Oklahoma Space Industry Development Authority Meeting at 1:30 p.m., Oklahoma Department of Transportation Building in Oklahoma City.
September 14: [Tentative] Oklahoma Space Alliance meeting at 2:30 p.m. at Denny’s on the I-240 access road on the north side just east of Pennsylvania Avenue in southern Oklahoma City.
September 25: Launch of three Expedition 37/38 members via Soyuz from the Baikonur Cosmodrome in Kazakhstan to the Space Station.
October: [Moved from August.] 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 the project webpage at http://sci.esa.int/gaia or http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gaia_(spacecraft).
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 9: [Tentative.] Oklahoma Space Industry Development Authority Meeting at 1:30 p.m., Oklahoma Department of Transportation Building in Oklahoma City.
October 12: [Tentative] Oklahoma Space Alliance meeting at 2:30 p.m. at Denny’s on the I-240 access road on the north side just east of Pennsylvania Avenue in southern Oklahoma City.
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 9: [Tentative] Oklahoma Space Alliance meeting at 2:30 p.m. at Denny’s on the I-240 access road on the north side just east of Pennsylvania Avenue in southern Oklahoma City.
November 11: [Moved from September.] Space-X’s third resupply flight to the ISS.
November 13: [Tentative.] Oklahoma Space Industry Development Authority Meeting at 1:30 p.m., Oklahoma Department of Transportation Building in Oklahoma City,
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 11: [Tentative.] Oklahoma Space Industry Development Authority Meeting at 1:30 p.m., Oklahoma Department of Transportation Building in Oklahoma City.
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.
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 6, 2014: Space-X’s fourth resupply flight to the ISS.
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: Launch date of Hayabusa 2 sample return mission to asteroid 1999 JU3. Web site is www.jspec.jaxa.jp/e/activity/hayabusa2.html.
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: The European Space Agency launches LISA Pathfinder. LISA=Laser Interferometer Space Antenna, a gravitational wave detector that is a joint ESA/NASA project. Web site is http://sci.esa.int/lisapf.
Sometime in 2015: India launches Chandrayaan II. This mission will include a lunar rover. For more information, visit http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chandrayaan-2. [Moved from 2014.]
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.
Sometime in 2015: Russia launches the lander of 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 2014.]
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: The European Space Agency/JAXA BepiColombo Mercury Orbiter is launched. Home page is http://sci.esa.int/bepicolombo.
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.
Sometime in 2016: Russia launches the orbiter of the “Luna-Glob” mission. [See 2015 for the lander launch.]
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 101955 Bennu and return samples. (This is the same asteroid as before. It now has a proper name.) For more information, visit http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/OSIRIS-REx or http://science.nasa.gov/missions/osiris-rex/.
Sometime in 2017: Launch of the European Space Agency’s CHEOPS space telescope, which will study exoplanets, which transit their star’s disc. Project website is http://sci.esa.int/cheops.
January 2017: Proposed launch date for the European Space Agency/NASA Solar Orbiter (SolO), which will orbit the Sun at a distance closer than Mercury. Web site is http://sci.esa.int/solarorbiter.
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.
July 30, 2018: Proposed launch date for Solar Probe Plus, which will study the corona of the Sun from within four million miles. For more information, visit http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Solar_Probe_Plus or http://solarprobe.jhuapl.edu/. (This spacecraft will fly by Venus seven times to refine its orbit.)
Sometime in 2020: Launch of the European Space Agency’s Euclid space telescope. This will map the distribution of dark matter and search for evidence of dark energy. The Euclid website is http://sci.esa.int/euclid. Sometime in 2022: Proposed launch date of JUICE, the Jupiter Icy Moon Explorer, by the European Space Agency. The JUICE web site is http://sci.esa.int/juice.
January 2022: BepiColombo arrives at Mercury orbit.
Sometime in 2023: Arrival of OSIRIS-Rex at the near-earth asteroid 101955 Bennu to 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.
December 19, 2024: Solar Probe Plus makes its first pass through the outer corona of the Sun. [See July 30, 2018.]
Sometime in 2030: JUICE achieves Jupiter orbit. [See 2022.]
Sometime in 2033: JUICE achieves Ganymede orbit. [See 2022.]
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].
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Contact person for Oklahoma Space Alliance is Claire McMurray
(Please use Syd Henderson as temporary contact)
PO Box 1003
Norman, OK 73070
Webmaster is Syd Henderson.
Copyright ©2013 Oklahoma Space Alliance.