Hi all, I'm just back from a wonderful week spent in Washington. I've been invited by the Starshine project director, Mr Gilbert Moore, to watch some activities going around Starshine 2 and 3. Here is a brief list of what I saw and did during this week from July 9 to 15. I will post more details later on specific topics regarding visual observation because I've learned and seen a few very interesting things. I was able to see the Stashine 2 installation into its Hitchhiker canister at NASA Goddard Space Flight Center in a clean room. There I also visited the very small office of the Orbital Information Group (OIG). I attended the Starshine 4/5 Hitchhiker Monthly Review to determine the nature of the mission where two satellites will be released simultaneously from the payload bay of Atlantis on mission STS-114 in November 2002. I visited a part of the Naval Research Lab where they integrate and test spacecrafts. I saw a test model of TiPS, ATEX/STEX, and Clementine. Also saw the now mothballed Interim Control Module that was to be attached to the back of Zarya on the ISS if the Zvezda launch would have failed. It's quite impressive to see half a billion dollars sitting inside a partly transparent container. I've also had many answers about spacecraft insulation techniques and materials. I've participated in the final assembly of the Starshine 3 satellite that looks like the Death Star from Star Wars because of its black body color and weird looking. I will come back later with details on the satellite and orbital data for the Kodiak Star mission that will launch on August 31 at 17:00 Alaska time. I also visited the National Air and Space Museum where there is a lot of spacecraft models on display. The one that caught my attention was a replica of an Iridium satellite built from spare parts. I took a lot of pictures of this bird from many angles and even simulated flares with my camera flash. I can tell you almost all surfaces on this satellite are reflective and I will put pictures on my web site. On Thursday morning, my girlfriend and I woke up early to watch the shuttle go by. I had no Internet access, was in an unknown sky environment and was not sure the shuttle would launch on time. I managed to find a TV station that reported about the upcoming launch and tried to figure out where to look in the sky using my portable computer. We went outside and waited. When the estimated time of observation arrived, I took my 20x80 and watched for it and there it was at 05:11 EDT ! It looked triangular and orange in color about 10 to 12 degrees above horizon. I guessed its azimuth at about 140 deg. It was the fastest "satellite" I've seen moving horizontaly to the left in twilight (sunrise was at 05:53). Magnitude was aroound -2. At MECO we saw like a comet tail appeared. It looked like a fuel dump of irregular shape. If it is not a usual feature, could it be the result of the new main engine being used for the first time ? If so, we could see more of these tails in the future. This tail measured about 3 degrees in length and was easy to see naked eye, it was also much whiter that the shuttle exhaust plume. It stayed visible for about a minute. The shuttle then looked like a dot and was lost behind trees at Az 95 deg and El 5 deg. Total observation time was about a minute and a half. I have now over 340 emails to read and a lot of things to do. I will post more info and links to my pictures in the weeks to come. Cheers, Dan -- Daniel Deak representant, projet spatial Starshine Drummondville, Quebec COSPAR site 1746 : 45.8537°N, 72.4857°W, 90 m., UTC-4:00 Site en francais sur les satellites: French-language satellite web site : http://www.obsat.com ----------------------------------------------------------------- Unsubscribe from SeeSat-L by sending a message with 'unsubscribe' in the SUBJECT to SeeSat-L-request@lists.satellite.eu.org http://www2.satellite.eu.org/seesat/seesatindex.html
This archive was generated by hypermail 2b29 : Mon Jul 16 2001 - 10:48:42 PDT