Los Alamos National Laboratory
Gary Kliewer, (505) 665-2085/[email protected]
BANNER YEAR IN SPACE AHEAD FOR LOS ALAMOS
LOS ALAMOS, N.M., April 8, 1997 -- Los Alamos National Laboratory scientists are looking to the heavens, working toward a record year of space science. Missions scheduled for launch this year that include instruments designed and built at Los Alamos will study Earth's atmosphere and the region between Earth and the sun, survey the moon and explore neighboring planets. Numerous successful ongoing programs continue to provide unique astrophysical data as well.
Following are some highlights of Los Alamos instruments heading into space this year:
* FORTE is a small satellite designed to test technologies for possible use as part of the U.S. nuclear detection system. Scheduled for launch by a U.S. Air Force Pegasus-XL rocket in July, FORTE's all carbon-composite structure weighs only 90 pounds, allowing a heavier payload to be delivered to orbit than a similar-size satellite built with conventional materials. FORTE, the Fast On-orbit Recording of Transient Events satellite, also will help scientists investigate Earth's ionosphere and understand the physics of lightning. FORTE is a complete system, including the satellite, a ground station and a team to operate the craft and analyze the scientific data.
* The Lunar Prospector, a spacecraft that will fly in a low polar orbit around the moon, is slated for launch in September. Three spectrometers from Los Alamos have been incorporated into the NASA craft that will map minerals on the surface, catch signs of seismic activity and hunt for water. Water ice is believed to be trapped just beneath the surface in the perpetual shade of craters at the lunar poles. Lunar Prospector will be one of the first efforts to sample the moon since the Apollo missions 25 years ago.
* NASA's Advanced Composition Explorer, or ACE, mission is scheduled for launch in October with two Los Alamos sensors aboard. These instruments were originally flight spares for the Ulysses mission and have been modified, refurbished and tested for ACE. The ACE spacecraft will orbit at the gravitational balance point between Earth and the sun for at least two years. The Los Alamos instruments will provide baseline measurements of the solar wind in support of a study of isotopic abundances of solar particles and cosmic rays. ACE will also provide continuous real-time monitoring of the solar wind for use in space weather forecasting by the Air Force and the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration.
* The joint NASA/European Space Agency Cassini mission to Saturn also is scheduled for launch in October. The Cassini spacecraft will include a mass spectrometer and an ion beam spectrometer from Los Alamos that will give scientists new information about the region of space dominated by Saturn's magnetic field. The instruments will measure and identify a wide variety of atomic and molecular particles with unprecedented accuracy when Cassini reaches the ringed planet early next century.
Los Alamos also manufactured the nuclear batteries and heating units for the Cassini spacecraft. Radioisotope thermoelectric generators, or RTGs, use heat from the decay of plutonium-238 -- an isotope with a half-life of 87.7 years -- to produce electric power and warm the craft. They are the only option on missions to the outer planets, where solar power or batteries are impractical. Los Alamos operates the only facility in the United States capable of making Pu-238 heat sources.
Safety tests that support the launch approval process required for nuclear payloads are designed and conducted at Los Alamos and other locations. Tests performed by Los Alamos have evaluated heat source response to explosions, atmospheric re-entry, high-velocity impact, sea water immersion and exposure to burning propellant.
Los Alamos' contributions to space science are not limited to the engineering of instruments and letting them fly. The Laboratory participates in on-going data collection and analysis from numerous spacecraft and programs. A few highlights:
* In 1996 Ulysses, which carries a Los Alamos solar wind plasma experiment, returned to low heliographic latitudes, having nearly completed its first polar orbit around the Sun. The Los Alamos experiment has revealed basic differences between the north and south in the way in which the large-scale structure of the solar wind evolves with increasing distance from the Sun.
* An instrument on the POLAR spacecraft, the Imaging Proton Spectrometer, is generating the first images of changes in the radiation belts that surround Earth. When images of radiation belts as viewed from above the poles are combined with measurements from satellites passing through the belts, it gives scientists an important new tool for studying and predicting changes in conditions in the magnetosphere, an invisible extension of Earth's magnetic field.
* Los Alamos researchers compiled the most complete data available on conditions in the magnetosphere during a major space storm that swept around Earth in January 1996. POLAR and several Los Alamos instruments positioned in high orbits recorded the effects on energetic particles in Earth's radiation belts. POLAR is part of the International Solar-Terrestrial Physics program, a collaboration of NASA, the European Space Agency and the Japanese Institute of Space and Aeronautical Science. From ground observatories, satellites, spacecraft and computer simulations and models, ISTP is building a comprehensive picture of Earth's magnetosphere and how it interacts with the sun.
* Now reaching its four-year launch anniversary, ALEXIS/Blackbeard is an astrophysics and geophysics research satellite monitoring celestial X-rays and making broad-band VHF measurements. The Blackbeard instrument has been observing strange radio bursts called Trans-Ionospheric Pulse Pairs, or TIPPs. In 1996, Los Alamos researchers reported the first simultaneous Blackbeard observations and multiple ground station measurements of TIPPs. The new evidence suggests that TIPPs come from thunderstorms and probably comprise one atmospheric event and its reflection off Earth.
Los Alamos National Laboratory is operated by the University of California for the U.S. Department of Energy.
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