Kevin wrote: >They say graviy probe b will point to IM Pegasi, within a >range of 1/100,000th of a degree. So very precise pointing. >So because of that, flare predictions could be made. Ah, >but to spoil the fun, from what I understand, the satellite >wil rotate along the axis which points to the star. So a >spinning satellite, so look out for flashing:) After Mike said a couple of nights ago that the scientific instrument is flying free inside of what Mike called a "van", I went to the GP-B web site and Science@NASA: http://einstein.stanford.edu/ http://science.nasa.gov/headlines/y2004/26apr_gpbtech.htm to read up on it. The scientific heart of the mission is floating free inside the van or shell, which is spin- stabilized at .1 to 1 rpm, according to this site: http://samadhi.jpl.nasa.gov/msl/QuickLooks/gravpbQL.html (I can't read the GP-B site again very well from home due to my old, slow dialup-connected PC. But I would think that site mentions the spin-stabilization also.) Ed Cannon - ecannon@mail.utexas.edu - Austin, Texas, USA ------------------------------------------------------------------------- Subscribe/Unsubscribe info, Frequently Asked Questions, SeeSat-L archive: http://www.satobs.org/seesat/seesatindex.html
This archive was generated by hypermail 2b29 : Thu Apr 29 2004 - 04:38:11 EDT