According to a November 18 Reuter's story on the HoustonChronicle.com, "Russia is likely to extend the life of its 12-year-old Mir space station until mid-2000," a year later than the Russians had previously pledged. The Russians had promised to bring down Mir next June in order to focus its limited financial resources on the new International Space Station.

The current crew (Mir 26) which arrived in August 1998, are Commander Gennady Padalka and Flight Engineer Sergei Avdeyev.

The (final?) Mir crew, Viktor Afanasyev and Sergei Treshchev, will replace Padalka and Avdeyev in February, 1999. Previously, the "final" Mir crew was expected to stay aboard Mir for a 5 month stay before deorbiting the Mir Space Station in July/August 1999.

Perhaps this legacy of human space flight is no longer destined to burn in the fire of re-entry into Earth's atmosphere within the next 2 years!

Updated: 2 December 1998 - by Gregory A. Smith

Launch Date - Flight - Vehicle

20 NOV 1998 - 1A/R - Russian
04 DEC 1998 - 2A - US STS-88
MAY -- 1999 - 2A.1 - US STS-96
JULY -- 1999 - 1R - Russian
AUG -- 1999 - 2A.2 - US STS-101
OCT -- 1999 - 3A - US STS-92
DEC -- 1999 - 4A - US STS-97

The International Space Station on-orbit assembly has finally begun with the successful completion of Space Shuttle Endeavour's mission to connect the first two elements of the station.

Mission STS-88, also known as Assembly Flight 2A, completed its mission to connect the U.S. built "Unity" module to the Russian built "Zarya" (Sunrise) Control Module and ended its nearly twelve day mission with a landing on runway 15 at NASA's Kennedy Space Center on December 15, 1998 at 10:53pm EST.

Zarya was successfully launched by the Russians on November 20, 1998, from the Baikonur Cosmodrome in Kazakhstan, not far from where Yuri Gagarin became the first human to be launched into space over 37 years ago.

Assembly Flight 2A - Zarya and Unity

Updated: 16 December 1998 - by Gregory A. Smith

03 Mar 2000 - Mars Mapping Begins
15 Jan 2002 - Mars Relay Mission
01 Dec 2004 - End of Mission

The Mars Climate Orbiter spacecraft rode to space on a Delta II rocket.

The Mars Climate Orbiter will have a 10 month journey to the red planet. On about September 23, 1999, it will commence an aerobraking maneuver to achieve Mars orbit insertion (MOI). This eliptical capture orbit will be incrementally reduced by successive passes through the thin upper atmosphere. After about 2 months the orbit will be circularized using onboard hydrazine thrusters into a circular polar mapping orbit (altitude ~ 400 km.)

The overall theme of the 2 part Mars Surveyor '98 mission is "volatiles and climate history". Once the Mars Climate Orbiter reaches its final orbit it will commence surface mapping, while another instrument package is analyzing the atmospheric composition and weather. The spacecraft will also act as a data link to relay information from its companion spacecraft (the Mars Polar Lander) back to Earth. The atmospheric sounding and imaging phase is scheduled to last for one Mars year (687 Earth days).

In its role as a data relay the Mars Climate Orbiter should be operational for at least 5 years. This will allow an encore data relay performance for the '01 Mars mission, arriving in January 2002.

Updated: 15 December 1998 - by Jim Warnock

The Mars Polar Lander was successfully launched on a Delta II launch vehicle from Launch Complex 17B at Cape Canaveral Air Station in Florida on January 3, 1999 at 20:21:10 UTC (15:21:10 EST).

Mars Polar Lander's interplanetary cruise to Mars will take 11 months. In December, 1999, the lander will enter the Martian atmosphere directly from the hyperbolic transfer orbit at 7 km/s. The Mars Polar Lander must decellerate from 7 km/sec to 2.4 meters/sec for a safe Martian touchdown. This will be accomplished by aerobraking with an ablative heatshield, a parachute deployment and a final rocket propulsion firing for a soft landing.

The target a landing zone is close to Mars' south pole at 73 to 76 degrees south latitude. This high latitude region has "layered terrain" which should have water ice near the surface and might show evidence of past climatic variations.

The science payload on the Mars Polar Lander includes:

Deep Space 2 New Millennium Microprobes (see Deep Space 2)
Mars Descent Imager (MARDI)
Light Detection and Ranging (LIDAR)
Mars Volatiles and Climate Surveyor (MVACS)
Stereo Surface Imager (SSI)
Robotic Arm & Camera
Meteorological Package (MET)
Thermal and Evolved Gas Analyzer (TEGA)
Mars Microphone

The lander's primary mission is 90 days.

Updated: 6 January 1999 - by Gregory A. Smith

Piggybacked on the Mars Polar Lander spacecraft are two "Deep Space 2" (DS2) microprobes.

About the size of basketballs, the microprobes will separate from the Mars Polar Lander after 11 months in transit to Mars. The DS2 probes are designed for a "passive" atmospheric entry using only their heat sheilds. There are no parachutes or rockets to slow the probes prior to impacting the surface of Mars. The spacecraft are designed to survive an 80,000 G impact, penetrate the surface up to 3 feet, and gather subsurface data.

The DS2 probe mission's scientific objectives are to: 1) test for the presence of water ice below the surface, and if ice exists, attempt to resolve the mineral phases in which the ice is stored; 2) determine the thermal and physical properties and temperature gradient of the subsurface material; 3) measure the atmospheric pressure and temperature.

Scientist hope these probes will help discover clues to Mars' past climate, including the apparent mystery of the "dissapeared" surface water. Does the water that may have caused the erosional features we can see today now exist as permafrost? If so, what implications would that have for possible life forms? Information on soil temperature, ices, air pressure, and solar measurements will all be relayed to the Mars Climate Orbiter, which will be overhead 10 times a day to relay the data back to Earth.

The target area is located within the northern boundary of the martian polar layered terrain, near 73 degrees south latitude, 210 degrees west longitude. The landing area for both probes should be about 50 to 100 km from the Mars Surveyor '98 Lander touchdown site. This area is considered to be an important reservoir of water, carbon dioxide and other volatiles on Mars. The total cost of development of the Deep Space 2 probes was $29.2 million. Updated: 6 January 1999 - by Gregory A. Smith

The primary goal of the Stardust mission is to collect dust and volatile samples of comet Wild 2, and samples of interstellar dust grains, and return the samples to Earth for analysis. The spacecraft will also send back images of the comet, counts of comet particles striking the spacecraft and conduct real-time analysis of the compositions of the particles and volatiles.

Stardust will use a unique substance called aerogel to capture and preserve the cometary and interstellar materials for return to Earth.

Stardust will be the first space mission ever to return extraterrestrial material from beyond the orbit of the Moon. Stardust is also the first U.S. mission dedicated solely to cometary research.

by Gregory A. Smith

Lunar-A's launch was originally scheduled for February or March of 1999. Due to problems with the penetrator batteries and an addition of an extra orbiter battery and removal of one of the three penetrators, the launch has been rescheduled for August or September, 1999.

Lunar-A is a Japanese lunar orbiting mission. Lunar-A will carry a mapping camera and two 13kg surface penetrators. The surface penetrators are equipped with seismometers and devices to measure heat flow. The seismometers will monitor moonquake activity over the course of a year and this information will be used to learn about the structure of the Moon's interior and the size of the core. The heat flow measurements will provide information on the thermal state and evolution of the Moon. The penetrators will be individually released and impact the Moon at 250 to 300 m/s, burrowing 1 to 3 meters into the surface. Each penetrometer contains a two-component seismometer, a heat flow probe, a tiltmeter, an accelerometer, a radio transmitter and an antenna. The instruments are powered by Li-SOCL2 (super lithium) batteries with an expected lifetime of one year.

After deploying the penetrators, the orbiter will move up to a 200 to 300 km near circular mapping orbit. Data will be stored in memory in the penetrators and transmitted to the orbiter when it transits over each penetrator every 15 days.

A monochromatic mapping camera with a resolution of 30m will be used to take images near the terminator, where the lighting will enhance subtle topographic features.

Updated: 2 December 1998 - by Gregory A. Smith