Aiming High : NASA Primed for a Year of Spectaculars
Move over, Sir Edmond Halley. Yours is not the only celestial spectacular this year. Far from it.
By the time 1986 has ended, scientists hope to have pulled off a host of extravaganzas in what promises to be the best year ever for space science.
The year’s highlight will be the summer launching of the Hubble Space Telescope, a $1.2-billion orbiting marvel that will allow astronomers to peer so far into the universe that they will almost see back to the beginning of time. The telescope, which some regard as the most important scientific instrument ever built, will be able to examine celestial objects as they appeared up to 12 billion years ago.
Banner Year in Space
Add to that the launching of one spacecraft to study the sun and of another to probe Jupiter as well as the first launching of a manned vehicle into polar orbit around the Earth and you have the ingredients for a banner year.
Jesse Moore, head of the U.S. space shuttle program, said, “1986 will be a spectacular year for us.”
No wonder the brightness of Halley’s Comet dims a bit as it intrudes on the busiest year in the history of the National Aeronautics and Space Administration.
For all the excitement, however, some Californians will remember 1986 as the year the space program came home. NASA and the Defense Department expect to begin launching space shuttles from Vandenberg Air Force Base on the Central California coast as early as mid-July; so far, all manned space flights have begun at the Kennedy Space Center at Cape Canaveral, Fla., and most have ended at Edwards Air Force Base in Southern California.
Space buffs, though, need not wait until July to begin celebrating this extraordinary new year.
A Uranus Flyby
Later this month, a hardy, little spacecraft called Voyager 2, the same one that furnished spectacular photographs of Jupiter in 1979 and Saturn in 1981, will fly past the planet Uranus, the seventh planet from the sun, as scientists continue to explore what Burton Edelson, the NASA chief scientist, describes as the solar system’s “cold countryside.”
On Jan. 24, Voyager will pierce the Uranian system like a bullet through a target, passing among the planet’s nine mysterious rings and its five known moons, to give scientists their first close-up look at a strange planet that has been inexplicably tipped over on its side. Uranus is pointing its south pole at the sun. From the Earth, the system looks much like a target. (Voyager 2 is expected to return pictures from Neptune, the eighth planet, in 1989, before leaving the solar system forever.)
Space buffs who like their schedules compact might want to set aside much of May for near back-to-back shuttle launches from the Kennedy Space Center. Two missions with major scientific objectives will be launched--one five days after the other ends--demonstrating the maturity of the shuttle program. By May, NASA will have its second Kennedy launch complex completed, giving it the capacity for near-simultaneous launches.
The first May mission is what is left of what was to have been a major U.S.-European effort, with NASA and the European Space Agency each furnishing satellites for a study of the sun’s polar regions. Because of other priorities and budgetary considerations, NASA abandoned its part of the project, so only the European probe will be launched. NASA remains a project partner in that the U.S. agency will launch the probe from the shuttle May 15.
Difficult Task
Scientists have long wanted to get a look at the sun’s polar areas, where so much of the solar activity that affects the Earth’s weather is thought to originate. That is no easy task, however, because it requires the probe to travel in an orbit that is perpendicular to the Earth’s. The craft, called Ulysses, will use Jupiter as a gravitational turning post, flinging itself out of the plain of the Earth’s orbit and over the sun’s poles. It is scheduled to arrive there in late 1989.
On May 21, five days after that launching mission ends, the second mission begins when the spacecraft Galileo will be launched toward Jupiter. NASA hopes to put a slight detour into Galileo’s course, sending it in for a close encounter with the asteroid 29 Amphitrite before it flies on to Jupiter. It will take two and a half years to reach Jupiter and NASA will not decide until after the launch whether it wants the craft to fly past the asteroid.
Galileo will go into orbit around the giant planet and even send a probe into its dense atmosphere. The probe is expected to send back data for about an hour before it is crushed by the heavy ammonia clouds around the planet.
In both missions, the payloads will be boosted from the shuttle with powerful Atlas-Centaur rockets, the first time that that system has been used.
Moreover, there is considerable concern among some scientists that one or possibly both missions may be delayed because the shuttle has never been used as a launch platform for interplanetary probes. Any delay could last as long as a year because both missions depend on other planets being exactly in the right positions at launch time.
Year’s Big Event
In August, the year’s biggest event occurs when the Hubble Space Telescope will be launched. This sophisticated instrument, which Moore has described as “the most important scientific instrument ever built,” will be placed by a shuttle crew in permanent orbit 368 miles above the Earth, where it will operate free of the distortion and screening effect of the Earth’s atmosphere. The telescope is expected to be a cornerstone for astronomical research for decades.
Subsequent shuttles will regularly visit the 90-inch telescope to update its system and repair its components.
Large telescopes such as this, in a sense, are like time machines, capturing images of objects as they were, not as they are. Because of the universe’s size, it takes millions, even billions, of years for those images, in the form of light, to reach the Earth from distant objects, and the Hubble Space Telescope will enable astronomers to study the universe’s evolution by focusing on objects as they appeared billions of years ago.
The telescope should be able to look about seven times farther into the universe than scientists have been able to see before, providing a glimpse of the universe as it looked at a time near its birth.
Moment of Creation
It is all part of a continuing quest to recapture the moment of creation, a word that has religious overtones but appears throughout technical literature because no one has come up with a better term to describe the point at which time, as we know it, began.
With all that, a visit by the most fabled wanderer in the solar system, Halley’s comet, seems like icing on the cake. Scientists around the world will turn their finest instruments on Halley’s this year, stripping away the last remnants of a mystery that has terrorized and tantalized mankind for more than 2,000 years. The comet is named after Halley because the British astronomer predicted in 1758 that it would return.
While the view from the Northern Hemisphere will be far short of the spectacular apparitions of years past, it has not dampened scientific interest in the comet.
Five space probes will fly past the comet in March, sending back warehouses of data about a dirty snowball plunging through space.
Japanese Probes
Two of the probes are Japanese, the first spacecraft launched by that nation. But they will pass so far away from the comet that their contribution is perhaps more symbolic than anything else, but a reminder nevertheless that Japan is moving in on the space business. Two others are from the Soviet Union, which is also showing increased interest in interplanetary exploration, repeatedly upstaging the United States in that arena. The fifth represents a remarkable entry into the interplanetary race by Europe.
The European probe, called Giotto, was launched atop a European rocket and is the first interplanetary craft launched by that part of the world. Giotto is to pass within about 300 miles of the comet, leading some scientists to speculate that it will be destroyed in the process. The closest the other probes will come to the comet will be thousands of miles.
But even if it is destroyed, Giotto will first have time to send back close-up comet photos, providing a dramatic reminder that space exploration is no longer the exclusive domain of the United States and the Soviet Union.
Not Left Out
That doesn’t mean American scientists will be left out altogether, however. Hardly.
Halley will be in its most active phase in February, when it passes closest to the sun, which provides the energy that gives the comet its luminosity as seen from Earth. But the comet will then be on the sun’s opposite side and will not be visible from Earth. Only one spacecraft will be able to study it then--Pioneer 12, a U.S. craft that is orbiting Venus. Pioneer 12 will use its ultraviolet spectrometer to provide photographs of the comet as it would appear if people could see ultraviolet light.
Then, at the same time as the international comet-flybys, three American astronomers will be aboard the space shuttle, using a sophisticated observatory to study the comet. That men will actually be on hand to control the equipment as it orbits the Earth has led some scientists to speculate that the U.S. mission may produce the best results of all.
For now, one thing is certain. By the time Halley finally makes its closest pass by the Earth in April, it will have been probed, studied, analyzed and theorized to death.
Vandenberg’s Debut
The year will also mark the beginning of manned space launches from Vandenberg Air Force Base.
Nearly every space vehicle launched from Florida carries a payload that was either originated, designed or built by someone or some institution in California. For all these years, the aerospace industries, research institutions and think tanks of California that have contributed so much to the nation’s space program have had to send emissaries east to witness the most dramatic moment--the awesome, Earth-shaking launch into space.
But starting possibly as early as mid-July, NASA and the Pentagon will begin launching space shuttles from Vandenberg.
Finally, the hundreds of thousands of Westerners who have faithfully trekked over the years to the high desert to watch shuttles land will have a chance to see the other end of the drama. Those who have been close enough to see it know it is something to behold. The Earth literally trembles as the powerful rockets lift the shuttle to its own thunderous applause, providing a demonstration of mind over matter that is seldom rivaled. Even critics of the high cost of space exploration have marveled at the sight and have been humbled by the astounding display of harnessed power.
Pentagon Secrecy
The federal government decided to build a second Vandenberg launch complex to provide a secure place for the Defense Department that would guarantee the secrecy of its space operations and to launch shuttles, for the first time, into polar orbit, rather than equatorial orbit. The Earth will revolve within the shuttle’s polar orbit, exposing nearly its entire surface to the crew and the orbiter’s cameras. It should be quite a sight from space as the shuttle flies over the frozen polar regions at 17,000 miles an hour.
Although most Vandenberg flights are and will be secret, the first launch will be relatively public so that Americans may take part by witnessing the historic event.
After that, a space program that has always been distinguished by its high visibility will be somewhat withdrawn behind the walls of government secrecy as the shuttle takes on more and more of a military signature. And because of that, for many scientists involved in space research, 1986 will probably be remembered with mixed feelings, perhaps bittersweet at best. There is growing concern among many of them that an $8-billion, manned orbiting space station mandated by the Reagan Administration will drain funds to the point that little will be left for scientific research, especially in the area of interplanetary probes.
There are no “new starts” for planetary missions in NASA’s budget, meaning it will probably be many years before another year comes along like 1986. The only projects with even preliminary financing are a scheduled 1988 launch of a radar-mapping craft to Venus and the 1990 launch of an orbiting weather station to Mars.
