Posted on 08/05/2003 6:00:27 PM PDT by WSGilcrest
MINUTEMAN LAUNCH TOMORROW
A Minuteman III strategic missile is scheduled for launch from Vandenberg AFB early Wednesday morning, August 6th. The routine test will send three unarmed warheads on a ballistic (non-orbital) trajectory to the central Pacific.
The vehicle will probably leave its silo at northwest Vandenberg at 01:31 PDT or sometime shortly afterward. The launch window extends from 01:01 to 07:31* PDT.
The vehicle will quickly climb into the night sky and send the warheads on a 30-minute trip to the Reagan Test Site at Kwajalein atoll, some 4,200 nautical miles downrange.
*The Vandenberg AFB news release gives the end of the launch window as 07:01. Every previous Minuteman III launch I can recall used a six hour window. That would make the end of the window 07:01.
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MINUTEMAN III FLIGHT EVENTS
The following table is a generic listing of flight events for Minuteman III launches from Vandenberg AFB. The times, altitudes, and distances may vary slightly for each launch.
Downrange Time Altitude Distance mm:ss Event (NM) (NM) ----- ----------------------- -------- --------- 00:00 Stage 1 ignition 0 0 01:01 Stage 2 ignition 16 18 02:06 Stage 3 ignition 49 120 03:05 Stage 3 separation 123 210
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LAUNCH OBSERVING TIPS
The Minuteman III is bright during its boost (launch) phase. Weather permitting Wednesday's launch should be visible to the unaided eye for hundreds of miles.
Although the naked eye is a good instrument, you will see much more if you use optical assistance. Binocular are good, but tripod-mounted binoculars are even better. The best view will be through an astronomical telescope.
One of the more interesting aspects of the launch occurs following stage 1 - stage 2 separation at T+ 01:00. At that time, the spent first stage will still be burning as it tumbles, creating a flashing point of light.
Coastal low clouds and fog could be a problem at launch time. If you live within 50 miles of the coast, try observing the launch from the mountains above 3,000 feet.
If you see the launch, be sure to send me a detailed report.
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The following is a news release from Indiana University.
WORLD'S LARGEST ASTRONOMICAL CCD CAMERA INSTALLED July 29, 2003
BLOOMINGTON, Ind. -- The world's largest astronomical camera has been installed on Palomar Observatory's 48-inch Oschin Telescope in California. This telescope has been working to improve our understanding of the universe for nearly 55 years. The new upgrade will help it to push the limits of the unknown for years to come.
The new camera is known as QUEST (Quasar Equatorial Survey Team). Designed and built by astrophysicists at Indiana and Yale universities, QUEST recently "saw" its first starlight and is now scanning the sky.
In 2001, an electronic camera known as the Near-Earth Asteroid Tracker was installed in the Oschin Telescope. The camera, which employed a charge-coupled device (CCD) to detect light, was very successful. During its tenure on Palomar, the NEAT team discovered 189 near-Earth asteroids and 20 comets.
A charge-coupled device is a light-sensitive integrated circuit that stores and displays the data for an image in such a way that each pixel in the image is converted into an electrical charge whose intensity is related to a color in the visual spectrum. The QUEST camera has an array of 112 CCDs.
The Oschin Telescope had to undergo some major changes to accommodate the QUEST camera. Under the oversight of Richard Ellis, director of Palomar Observatory, this process was guided by Robert Thicksten and Hal Petrie of the California Institute of Technology. The delicate installation of the camera and its electronics inside the telescope was hand led by Mark Gebhard (Indiana University), William Emmet (Yale University) and David Rabinowitz (Yale University). The camera's readout electronics were constructed in the Physics and Astronomy departments at Indiana University by Gebhard and Brice Adams, under the direction of James Musser, Kent Honeycutt and Stuart Mufson. The hardware for the QUEST camera was constructed by the Yale University Physics Department under the direction of Charles Baltay.
In addition to the usual point-and-shoot mode, the new camera is designed to work in the drift scan mode. The telescope is pointed at the sky but does not move to counteract the rotation of the Earth. Instead, various objects in the sky gradually drift across the field of view at the same rate as the computer records data from the CCDs, producing photographs that are long strips of the sky. Astronomers will use these photographic slices of the sky to look for quasars, supernovae, asteroids and more.
Last year, Caltech astronomers Chad Trujillo and Mike Brown used the NEAT camera on the Oschin Telescope to find the distant world known as Quaoar. Quaoar is about half the size of Pluto, making it the biggest object to be found in our solar system since Pluto was discovered in 1930. Quaoar is the largest known member of the Kuiper Belt, a swarm of thousands of icy objects that orbit beyond Neptune. Brown is convinced there are more big Kuiper Belt objects, possibly as big as the planet Mars, and he will use QUEST to look for them.
Other scientists plan to use the camera to find objects that might be quasars. Quasars are the very bright cores of distant galaxies that are thought to contain supermassive black holes. They are among the most luminous objects in the universe. Any quasar candidates that are found with the Oschin Telescope will be looked at again with Palomar's 200-inch Hale Telescope. Those objects that the Hale Telescope confirms to be quasars will be the targets of more detailed study with one of the 10-meter Keck Telescopes in Hawaii.
A similar approach will be used as distant galaxies are probed in a search for exploding stars known as supernovae. The QUEST camera will do the survey work, suspected supernovae will be looked at with the Hale Telescope, and supernovae of the right type will be scrutinized at one of the Keck Telescopes. Astronomers will use data from these exploding stars to try to confirm that the universe is accelerating as it expands.
Palomar Observatory, owned and operated by the California Institute of Technology and located in north San Diego County, Calif., supports the research of Caltech faculty and students, and that of researchers at Caltech's collaborating institutions: Indiana University, Cornell University, Yale University and the Jet Propulsion Laboratory.
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PENTAGON RELEASES REPORT
The Department of Defense recently released a report to Congress on the Military Power of the People's Republic of China. The report covers a variety of topics including China's missile and space capabilities.
A copy of the report is available on-line at:
http://www.defenselink.mil/pubs/20030730chinaex.pdf
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GLOSSARY
mm:ss Minutes and seconds NM Nautical miles. A nautical mile is 6,076.115 feet in length. The statute mile used in everday life is 5,280 feet long. PDT Pacific Daylight Time T+ Elapsed time since launch
I will probably miss this launch.
Actually the above is not true.
Palomar is getting a giant, 161-megapixel CCD camera for a new generation of survey work. The camera, named QUEST (for the Quasar Equatorial Survey Team)
Despite some reports, QUEST is not the world's biggest astronomical CCD camera. That title is still held by the 340-megapixel MegaPrime camera newly installed on the Canada-France-Hawaii Telescope atop Mauna Kea, Hawaii.
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