On August 28, 1999, the Mir space station was abandoned for the second time since it was launched on February 19, 1986. The first time the station was left uncrewed was in September 1989. By far the world's longest-serving space station, Mir orbited the Earth for over 13 years and hosted 135 people.

The Mir crew, Commander Viktor Afanasyev, Sergei Avdeyev and French astronaut Jean-Paul Haignere safely returned to Earth aboard a Russian Soyuz spacecraft.

"With grief in our soul we're abandoning a piece of Russia, abandoning something we constructed in space, and it's unclear what we'll build next," Afanasyev said just before leaving Mir.

Russian space officials are seeking private investors to fund a new crewed flight. If they are not able to raise funds for another mission, a so-called "funeral team" will visit Mir for about a month to gradually reduce its orbit and completely shut the station down. It would later be deorbited to burn in the Earth's atmosphere and fall into the Pacific Ocean.

Updated: 23 September 1999 - by Gregory A. Smith

LAUNCH DATE - FLIGHT - VEHICLE

FEBRUARY ? 2000 - 1R - Russian

22 JAN 2000 - 2A.2 - US STS-101

FEB 2000 - 3A - US STS-92

MAR 2000 - 2R - Russian Soyuz
(Expedition 1 Crew)

MAR 2000 - 4A - US STS-97
APR 2000 - 5A - US STS-98
(Destiny Laboratory Module)

Russian mission managers announced a new delay in the launch of the Zvezda Service Module . The launch, over two years behind schedule, is now slated for February. The cause of the delay was reported as unspecified problems with the American Shuttle schedule. No mention was made of the ban on rocket launches from Baikonur where the module will be launched on a Proton rocket (SpaceViews citing Itar-Tass).

Excerpt from FRONTIER STATUS 175, November 5, 1999 - by Dale M. Gray - with permission

In October the two ISS modules in orbit were moved to a higher orbit in order to get a wider clearance from some orbiting space junk.

The Zvezda Service Module will be launched atop a Proton rocket to serve as the early living quarters for the first permanent residents of the ISS and will take over control and propulsion capability for the expanding station from the Zarya module, which was launched last November. About nine days after its launch, the ISS will link up with Zvezda using Zarya's jet thrusters during a series of rendezvous maneuvers.

Updated: 9 November 1999 - by Gregory A. Smith

NASA's chief Daniel Goldin, speaking at the Space Frontier Foundation Conference September 24, announced a new plan for NASA to turn operation of the Space Station over to private enterprise -- perhaps within the next decade.

After a period of five to ten years of operation, NASA would be willing to hand its portion of the station over to private industry. The move would free NASA to concentrate on exploring the solar system. NASA would retain a major presence on the station, but as a tenant. Under NASA's current plan, NASA retains control of the station while leasing up to 30 percent or more of the station to commercial ventures. - Excerpt from FRONTIER STATUS 09/24/99 - by Dale M. Gray
with permission
Frontier Status reports are weekly updates chronicling progress of the emerging space frontier. Frontier Status archives are hosted at www.cortesi.com/frontier

The International Space Station on-orbit assembly began 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 in December, 1998.

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.

- by Gregory A. Smith

On November 4, NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory released photographs of the volcano Prometheus on the Jovian moon Io. The photographs show volcanic characteristics similar to those found on the Hawaiian volcano Kilauea. The volcano has been active for at least 20 years. The 50 to 100 km high volcanic plume has been observed by Voyager, the Hubble Space Telescope and now by Galileo. The photos reveal that after the lava reaches the surface, it travels for up to 100 km in lava tubes before spreading out on the surface. The volcanic plume appears to be the interaction of the lava with sulfur-dioxide "snow". The photographs are part of a batch of images captured during Galileo's Io encounter on October 10. The transmission and subsequent release of the photograph was delayed until recently due to Galileo's slow speed of data transmission.

On Tuesday, November 2, Galileo fired its thrusters to adjust its course for a second Io flyby on November 25. During the second flyby, the spacecraft will pass over Io's south pole at an altitude of 300 km. The thruster firing will also position the craft for future encounters should the Galileo mission be extended. Funding for the mission runs out on December 31.
- Excerpt from
FRONTIER STATUS 175, 5 November 1999 by Dale M. Gray
with permission
Frontier Status reports are weekly updates chronicling progress of the emerging space frontier. Frontier Status archives are hosted at www.cortesi.com/frontier

There will only be one more flyby of Io , the "Io 25" flyby on November 26, 1999, the last encounter of the Galileo Europa Mission . During the Io 25 flyby, Galileo will pass Io at an altitude of 300 km. This is 64 times closer than Voyager 1 and 3761 times closer than Voyager 2.

See Io's Alien Volcanoes at NASA's Space Science News for an article on Io's volcanoes and what researchers hope to learn from next week's close encounter.

You might also want to check out the article "Sulfuric Acid Found on Europa" which discusses the implications that this discovery makes regarding the possibilities of life's biochemistry on Europa. NASA Space Science News can be found at science.nasa.gov .

Update: 9 November 1999 - by Gregory A. Smith

Spacecraft Health:

"All subsystems continue to report nominal status."
- MGS Mission Status Report, 23 September 1999

Updated: 27 September 1999 - by Gregory A. Smith

Mars Orbital Camera (MOC)
Thermal Emission Spectrometer (TES)
Mars Orbiting Laser Altimeter (MOLA)
Radio Science Investigations (RS)
Magnetometer/Electron Reflectometer (MAG/ER)
Mars Relay Communications Experiment

NEAR is presently 328,317.4 Km from Eros (204,006.6 miles).
Y2K related testing continued with the brassboard this week.
- Excerpts from the
NEAR WEEKLY REPORT - September 24, 1999

Updated: 27 September 1999 - by Gregory A. Smith

The first rendezvous burn of the NEAR spacecraft's bipropellant engine, scheduled for December 20th, 1998 was not completed as planned due to a sudden communication failure. Signal recovery was too late to continue with the rendevous burn and the rendevous with Eros, set for 10 January 1999, was lost. The NEAR spacecraft passed within 4,542 miles of Eros on December 23, 1999. Near will pass Eros again in May 2000 and the mission team will attempt another rendevous then.

Updated: 29 September 1999 - by Gregory A. Smith

The Lunar Prospector mission ended July 31, 1999, with the spacecraft targeted to impact in a permanently shadowed crater near the south pole, at -87.7 deg latitude, 42 deg longitude.

It was hoped that the spacecraft would impact into the water ice deposits which may exist in the crater and that ground- and space-based telescopes would be able to identify water or OH liberated during the impact. No successful detection has been reported.

SPACE UPDATE will continue to provide links and updates regarding the ongoing scientific analysis of data garnered from the Lunar Prospector mission for one year from the end of mission.

Lunar Prospector's final experiment has failed to prove the existence of water ice at the Moon's south pole. A team of researchers at The University of Texas at Austin proposed that LP be crashed into a permanently shadowed crater that the spacecraft had shown to contain large amounts of hydrogen. The proposal was accepted, and the team then led efforts to detect the presence of hydroxyl (OH) molecules, which would be quickly formed from any water vapor liberated by the crash.

At the American Astronomical Society's Division for Planetary Sciences meeting in Padua, Italy, the team announced that analysis of ultraviolet spectra taken with the Hubble Space Telescope, MacDonald telescope in Texas, and the Keck I telescope in Hawaii has been completed, and no hydroxyl emission lines have been found. There are several possible reasons why water was not detected during this experiment. Water may not be present in the crater (the hydrogen may be just hydrogen, not water) or, if present, may be in the form of hydrated minerals that would not release the water during an impact. Even if water ice is present in the crater, the spacecraft may not have impacted into an area rich in ice. And even if LP did strike ice, the water vapor may not have reached a position where it could be seen by the telescopes.

It will be possible to repeat the experiment in the future if other lunar orbiting spacecraft conclude their missions with enough fuel left to allow them to be crashed into a permanently shadowed crater with elevated hydrogen levels.

Source: NEW RESEARCH ON LUNAR PROSPECTOR'S MOON CRASH DOES NOT REVEAL EVIDENCE OF WATER
UT ENGINEERING NEWS

Updated: 13 October 1999 - by Chris Peterson

On March 5th, 1998 Lunar Prospector project scientist announced that the Lunar Prospector had returned data that indicates that there is a high probability of water ice existing at both the north and south poles of the Moon. The presence of a significant amount of water on the Moon could be important in the establishment of human communities beyond Earth.

See the CNN SCI-TECH article on Lunar Prospector's ice discovery at: CNN SCI-TECH Space - 05 March 1998 - Scientist: There is ice on the moon

For more information about ice on the Moon, check out the article "Ice on the Bone Dry Moon" by Dr. Paul D. Spudis in "Planetary Science Research Discoveries"

Also, check out the way cool Lunar Prospector "Data Viz" data visualization page.

"The Cassini spacecraft is in an excellent state of health and is operating normally."

10/1/99: Cassini Weekly Significant Events (JPL)

The Cassini spacecraft will arrive on orbit around Saturn in 2004. Cassini will study the great ringed planet, its moons and ring system for at least four years. It will also deliver a scientific probe called Huygens which will parachute to the surface of Saturn's largest moon, Titan.

Updated: 4 October 1999 - by Gregory A. Smith

The Japanese "Nozomi" Mars probe was successfully launched on July 3, 1998 from the Kagoshima space center in Japan. Unfortunately, the spacecraft used more propellant than planned in a course correction maneuver on 21 December 1998 after a 20 December Earth flyby left the craft with "insufficient acceleration". The good news is: Nozomi will reach Mars. The bad news: the arrival of Nozomi at Mars has been delayed four years from its originally scheduled rendezvous in 1999. The spacecraft will continue in a heliocentric orbit until it encounters Mars in December of 2003.

Nozomi is the first Japanese space mission to Mars. It is also the first non-U.S. or Russian space flight to another body in the solar system.

A Mars orbiting aeronomy mission, Nozomi is designed to study the martian upper atmosphere and its interaction with the solar wind. Instruments on the spacecraft will measure the structure, composition and dynamics of the ionosphere, aeronomy effects of the solar wind, the escape of atmospheric constituents, the structure of the magnetosphere, and dust in the upper atmosphere and in orbit around Mars. The mission will also be returning images of Mars' surface and the martian moons Phobos and Deimos.

The nominal mission is planned for one Martian year (approximately two Earth years). An extended mission may allow operation of the mission well beyond the original two years.

Updated: 1 October 1999 - by Gregory A. Smith

Deep Space 1's star tracker instrument, which has experienced problems for more than a year, has once again caused the spacecraft to put itself in a safe standby mode. There have been a number of instances in the past when the star tracker has been briefly unable to determine the spacecraft's precise orientation. Previously, normal operation has always resumed in a matter of seconds or minutes, but the current malfunction, which began on November 11th, has not yet been rectified. The spacecraft will remain in safe mode, with non-essential devices turned off, the high-gain antenna disengaged, and communication with Earth using the low-gain antenna, until the problem can be better understood.

Deep Space 1 completed its primary mission in September and has been in a relatively inactive cruise phase pending its comet encounters in 2001. During the cruise phase DS1 has been obtaining images of well-known objects such as Mars and Jupiter with its combined visible camera and imaging spectrometer instrument in order to allow better calibration of the instrument.

Another instrument experiencing some difficulties is the Plasma Experiment for Planetary Exploration. Degradation of the instrument may prevent it from measuring the composition of some of the complex ions it may encounter at the comets, but it will still be able to measure the energy and direction of ions and electrons such as those found in the solar wind and in the expanding cloud of gas and dust which surrounds a comet when it is near the Sun.

Deep Space 1 is now 241 million kilometers (=150 million miles =13.5 light minutes) from Earth. Source: Deep Space 1 Mission Status November 17, 1999

Updated: 18 November 1999 - by Chris Peterson

NASA's Deep Space 1 experimental spacecraft successfully flew closely above the surface of asteroid 9969 Braille at 9:46 p.m. Pacific time Wednesday, July 28 (04:46 Universal Time July 29), using a sophisticated new space autopilot system, exceeding 100 percent of the mission's objectives.

Deep Space 1 flew within an estimated 26 kilometers (16 miles) of asteroid 9969 Braille. Data from the spacecraft's infrared sensor indicate that the small asteroid may be similar to Vesta, one of the largest in the main asteroid belt.

"This is a dramatic finale to an amazingly successful mission," said Dr. Marc Rayman, chief mission engineer and deputy mission manager. "With AutoNav's successful piloting of the spacecraft, we've completed the testing and validation of the 12 new technologies onboard and possibly acquired important science data, including photos."

- July 29, 1999
NASA MEDIA RELATIONS OFFICE
JET PROPULSION LABORATORY

Deep Space One is the first deep space mission of NASA's New Millennium Program. The New Millennium Program (NMP) is an agressive technology demonstration established to validate advanced technologies while returning science data.

Updated: 19 November 1999 - by Chris Peterson

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

The Board has been studying why the error was not detected before MCO was lost. Among the contributing factors identified by the Board were inadequate training and communications between different teams that worked on the mission. MCO was the first Mars mission that handed over operations from the group that built the spacecraft to a new multimission operations team. The navigation team was overworked, they were not sufficiently briefed on the differences between the ways that Mars Global Surveyor and MCO were pointed in space, and their work was not peer reviewed by independent experts.

The Board will continue its investigation and present another report by February 1, 2000.

Sources: MARS CLIMATE ORBITER FAILURE BOARD RELEASES REPORT, NUMEROUS NASA ACTIONS UNDERWAY IN RESPONSE (JPL)

NASA: Human error caused loss of Mars orbiter (CNN.com Tech-Space)

The Mars Climate Orbiter was essentially a Mars weather satellite. Its main mission was to analyze the atmospheric composition and weather. The atmospheric sounding and imaging phase was scheduled to last for one Mars year (687 Earth days).

The spacecraft was also to act as a data link to relay information from its companion spacecraft (the Mars Polar Lander) back to Earth. JPL reports, however, that most if not all of the science from the Mars Polar Lander will be acquired by direct links to Earth and through the currently orbiting and operational Mars Global Surveyor.

In its role as a data relay the Mars Climate Orbiter was to have been operational for at least 5 years in order to support the '01 Mars mission, which is to arrive at Mars in January 2002, and other future missions.

Updated: 19 November 1999 - by Chris Peterson

A 12 second thruster firing of the Mars Polar Lander at 10:28 am PST has put the Mars Polar Lander on track for a December 3 landing near the south pole of Mars. At the time of the maneuver, the spacecraft was only 11 million miles from Mars. The firing was delayed for ten days so that the software could be checked for problems such as the one that resulted in the loss of the Mars Climate Orbiter. The next course correction is slated for November 30 (JPL/NASA; Florida Today).
- Excerpt from FRONTIER STATUS 175, 5 November 1999 - by Dale M. Gray
with permission
Frontier Status reports are weekly updates chronicling progress of the emerging space frontier. Frontier Status archives are hosted at www.cortesi.com/frontier

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.

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 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: 27 September 1999 - by Gregory A. Smith

NASA's Deep Space 2 microprobes, due to smash into the surface of Mars near the planet's south pole on Dec. 3, have been named Amundsen and Scott in honor of the first explorers to reach the South Pole of Earth. - NASA HQ RELEASE: 99-135, November 15, 1999

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 shields. 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. The Deep Space 2 probes are designed to operate and transmit data until the batteries are depleted, which is expected to occur 1 to 3 days after impact.

Scientist hope these probes will help discover clues to Mars' past climate, including the apparent mystery of the "disappeared" 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 be relayed to earth via the Mars Global Surveyor (MGS) Spacecraft, which has been orbiting the Red Planet since September 1997.

The target area is located within the northern boundary of the martian polar layered terrain, near 76 degrees south latitude, 195 degrees west longitude. The landing area for both probes should be about 50 to 100 km from the Mars Polar Lander touchdown site. This area is considered to be an important reservoir of water, carbon dioxide and other volatiles on Mars.

Updated: 16 November 1999 - by Gregory A. Smith

"The STARDUST spacecraft continues to operate normally in cruise sequence SC009, cruising in the main asteroid belt about 2 AU from both the Earth and Sun."

- STARDUST Status Report - September 24, 1999

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.

Updated: 27 September 1999 - by Gregory A. Smith