NASA Launches Terra Satellite 63
adenied wrote to let us know that on Dec 16, NASA successfully launched the Terra Earth Observing System (EOS). This particular satellite is the going to be the flagship of the new EOS system. With this, and other satellites doing similar work, NASA will continue to study the Earth, which has been some of their best work recently.Update: 12/20 08:18 by H :Thanks to Dennis Gerasimov of NASA for clearing up some of the details - click below to learn more.
I would like to point out a mistake in article http://slashdot.org/articles/99/12/18/2340212.shtml about Terra satellite. Terra is not a flagship of EOS program. Terra is the first mission that will be fully integrated into EOS program. The flagship satellite TRMM (Tropical Rainfall Measuring Mission) was launched by NASA together with NASDA (Japan) on November 27, 1997. The satellite is still operational and collects data. More info can be found at http://trmm.gsfc.nasa.gov and the resulting data is located at TSDIS project (the ground data processing system for TRMM) at http://tsdis.gsfc.nasa.gov.
Re:Don't be fooled. (Score:3)
Right. Paranoia, then?
Don't you think it's a mite bit suspicious that they just happen to put a new, state-of-the-art observation satellite in orbit just before January 1? In case you've been living in a liberal delusional dreamworld or under a rock, there is overwhelming evidence that martial law will be declared in the USA on January 1, 2000,
I hear this a lot, though not always January 1, 2000; several such dates have come and gone.
And though I probably don't do as much research as some, I have seen NO evidence that martial law will be declared in the USA on Jan 1. Certainly not "overwhelming". Yes, the religious fundamentalists and conspiracy theorists have been saying similar things for years, but what basis is provided for me to believe or even attempt to verify these claims? Obviously not everyone believes every word of the Bible, which eliminates one source of your authority on this subject.
As to the satellite, no, it's not suspicious, any more than the 7500-odd satellites already up there and already mapping the entire planet in real time.
with a permanent suspension of the Constitution. King Klinton isn't letting go of power that easily. His worshippers (what else can you call mindless slaves who think that an admitted sodomist belongs in the White House?)
"Worshippers"? Don't know which rock YOU'VE been living under, but they've already tried to impeach the jerk. It lost public support because America got tired of hearing about blowjobs and vaginally inserted cigars on the evening news. It lost public support because Americans found it just as hard to support Republicans who were behaving just as despicably during the whole deal. It lost public support because the catfights have gone on in Washington for SO LONG, with no discernable result (i.e. no discernable difference between a Republican and a Democrat, except maybe who they blame for the ills of the world right before proposing the same old solutions: ban everything and raise taxes) that most Americans have stopped caring. Does your post here go a long way toward fixing that apathy? I doubt it, it'll get ignored along with all the other Y2K conspiracy theories this time of year anyway. Are you working to reverse that apathy? Not really.
don't care about the law, they just want to keep him in power at any cost. They won't complain about losing their rights. Neither will the media, who for seven long years have steadfastly refused to cover any story that reflects badly on King Bill.
Then what the HELL was that whole Monica Lewinsky thing about? Certainly didn't reflect GOOD on old Bill, and I don't think you can make a case that the media has "refused to cover it".
This is all very convenient for King Klinton, of course, because it fits into his plans perfectly.
So here we have it. For the last nine months, a gaggle of laughably implausible agents provocateurs have committed high-profile violent crimes -- but not one of them has come to trial.
The conspiracy widens.
Think about that. Where is Buford Furrow now? There's a total news blackout, isn't there? That's because he's back home in Langley, Virginia, with his feet up, enjoying the rewards of a job well done.
The media has been too busy watching airplanes and space probes fall out of the sky, and too busy blaming Quake and Rammstein for that little thing in Colorado. I grant you that the media, in its rush to blame violent games for youth violence, suddenly grows lax when day traders and middle-aged white supremacists take up arms. But I don't think there is evidence of a conspiracy, unless you count the racist undercurrent America publicly tries to forget it has.
Klebold and Harris were dupes, drugged to the gills and brainwashed by members of the psychiatric profession. They did their job too, although they probably never even understood what was happening. And what exactly was the job? The "job" was to scare the tender, bedwetting liberals into banning guns. And it worked. This year, we've witnessed an historically unprecedented (with the exception of Nazi Germany) crackdown on the fundamental human right to self-defense. Nice going, guys. A perfect plan, perfectly executed.
Oh boy, you just HAD to fold Harris and Klebold into your conspiracy theory, didn't you? Our credulity is stretched beyond the snapping point already, so I guess you didn't have much to lose.
Anyway. Harris and Klebold are exactly what the American people have constructed: an image of ourselves, pompous bigoted violent creatures whose only hope in life is that Hollywood will fight for the movie rights. They did what they did because we let them, and the "crackdown" on the fundamental right to self defense is NOTHING more sinister than an attempt to avoid blaming ourselves. Sinister, yes, but not quite what you're trying to say here either. And again, do you provide a solution? Yes: blame the government for what we have allowed to happen.
No one is taking away our "fundamental right to self defense". If you still want guns, you can still buy them - at a big discount if they've been used in a murder, too, since that seems to be the REAL use for guns around here. And for that matter, you can STILL buy mace, pepper spray, tasers, knives, etc. And if you want to take up a martial art, go right ahead.
But it takes a lot of explaining to convince me we have a "fundamental right" to fully automatic weaponry. Even if you expect us to "defend" ourselves against a government takeover, remember the US government still has enough nuclear devices on hand to destroy the surface of this planet 12 times over, and if they're as maniacally power-greedy as you say, they would probably use THOSE and I don't think Charlton Heston can sell you anything to defend against a tactical nuke. Be realistic here.
We're not up against amateurs here, are we?
Assuming we're "up against" anything more real than phantom conspiracies only you can see?
Seems to me we're "up against" a government full of bungling greedy bureaucrats who are 100x more interested in keeping the lobbyists and their business buddies happy than actually DOING anything. Yes, we're also up against a CIA and an NSA who have nothing important to do now that the cold war is over, so they've chosen to spy on us - but if you think Clinton has anything to do with that you're REALLY delusional.
No, we're not. But you know what? They're not up against amateurs either. And their propaganda is pathetically flimsy, because they've gotten lazy from all these years of directing it at half-witted East Coast Liberals who believe anything they're told. It doesn't wash with real Americans. It never did and it never will.
I think this whole paragraph's coherence entirely depends on your definition of "real Americans". And something tells me your idea of a "real American" is the kind of person who convinced me to stop going to church. (Quoth a sunday school teacher, circa 1992: "Lincoln wanted to free the slaves, so he was assassinated. Maybe he should have taken the hint.")
We're well-informed, and we know what they've got in store for us.
Of COURSE you do. I'd REALLY be worried if you didn't know what the shadow governments in your mind had planned for you.
When they declare martial law they may have a brand new "eye in the sky" to help track us, but they can't just scan the whole country at once. At that resolution they'll learn nothing.
Um... I just realized something. They've had this kind of ground-watching surveillance technology for years now anyway. They can read the license plate of my car from orbit. This launch adds NOTHING to their capabilities - it is what it claims to be, a scientific instrument.
Be more worried about big cities where you're always on a camera somewhere.
They'll have to find us before they can track us, and it won't be easy. They'll block the roads and punish motor travel with a summary death sentence
Interesting idea. Wonder if your theory has accounted for all the consequences of the US government trying something so far off the map. Usually these conspiracy theories involve concentration camps for nonChristians. Summary death sentence for starting a car? Does your conspiracy include every other nation on Earth, who would take SOME kind of action in the face of such a bizarre law? We stepped in on Kuwait, think if our own country was stopped in its tracks by these outlandish things you describe, that England, Japan, Canada, and so on wouldn't at least complain loudly? Or is it all One World Order like all the other conspiracy theories?
(according to the documents I've seen, the pretext will be an attempt to cut down on "pollution" -- a phenomenon for which no credible evidence exists,
Remind me next time I'm in a big city and my eyes water for no discernable reason. Remind me the next time it's mid-December before the first snowflake touches my front yard. Remind me the next time the rivers are clogged with dead fish.
And come to think of it, you have it all backwards anyway. Pollution is a documentable and measurable phenomenon, yet you don't believe it exists. Instead you have massive conspiracies and police states operating in your head, for which no credible evidence exists out here in the real world. Oh-kay...
but never mind that, it's the least of our worries). They can do that, but so what? We just won't use the public roads. The public roads are, in any case, the greatest known symbol of the enslavement of this once-great nation: A public works project worthy of the Pharoahs, paid for by a Pharaonic system of confiscatory taxation[1] and slave labor. (If you pay taxes, you are a SLAVE because you do not own the products of your labor. Period. End of story.)
I'm a slave anyway, because if I tell Howard W. Sams Inc. to stick it, I don't get to keep the source code I wrote. SO? You can make such everyday stuff sound so evil by way of semantics, one thinks your whole message depends entirely in the notion that the reader will fall for the sensationalism without trying to THINK about it. But you'd never do a thing like that, right?
I do not care to benefit from such a system. God created the Earth, not the Federal Government.
Someone needs to remind the Federal Government of this. But I digress.
It is blasphemy, a personal offense against God Almighty, for them to attempt to limit or direct my movements on God's Earth.
So do I commit blasphemy by denying you access to my living room should you come knocking? But I guess since you seem to be defining the rules here, you can apply the word blasphemy to anything you want.
Against any attempt to deny me this greatest of God's gifts, I am authorized by Natural Law to defend myself, with deadly force if need be.
The greatest of God's gifts is a soul, which you have ruined by filling yours to the core with fear, hatred, paranoia, dogma, and delusions. No soul OR mind could operate properly under those conditions.
You say you plan to defend yourself with deadly force. Against who? United States citizens, probably men aged 18-25 who probably signed up for guard duty to help pay for college. If the US DOES become Nazi Germany, it's not exactly going to repopulate its armed forces with clones or robots, these are ordinary recruits, people like ME, who are just as alive as you, who would be in basically the same predicament you are. But you know what? That won't matter to you, because the fundamental right to defend yourself against the United States takes predecence in your mind over the right to try to win those soldiers over to your cause. If it goes the way you say it will, they'll be as pissed about the totalitarian government as you are (what soldier wants to go home to a world where cars are outlawed?) - but you'll never know, because you will shoot first and ask questions later. Am I right?
[1] Confiscatory Taxation: At the end of the day, when all Federal, State, and Local taxes are added up, including sales tax, property tax, automobile tax (which is an interference with travel, and therefore blasphemous)
Oh good! That means when people cut me off in traffic, and I shout "go to Hell" I'm not really cursing, just stating fact! After all, they're interfering with my travel.
While we're at it, stoplights, poorly written directions, nails, and fallen trees are also blasphemies.
, and all of the other nickle'n'dime taxes you are forced to pay every day of your life -- at the end of the day, when you add them all up, it comes to just about exactly 70% of your income. Seventy percent. Think about that. Taxes in the old Soviet Union were less than that. The taxes levied by the Pharoahs of old were only 25%.
Therein lies the paradox. You're right about the taxes. But the solution to the tax problem is NOT to take up arms - otherwise that little armed revolution 220 years ago might have accomplished some more long-term results.
There is freedom worth dying for, and freedom worth killing for. But until we get the future you prophesy, and we won't, all this talk of "deadly force" is woefully out of place. At any rate, America has not even BEGUN to voice its displeasure with the tax rates, so I'd think we have a lot of unexplored avenues well in advance of "shoot the bastards".
What's scariest is that you yourself cannot hear how you sound. One imagines you hiding in a bunker, dressed in camo, surrounded by stockpiles of guns "awaiting the inevitable". All because what? The Bible says so? What the Bible says is so lost in translation and so symbolically worded (in Revelation) it can say anything you want it to say. (That's why it sells so well.) What other evidence do you have, that wasn't forwarded it to you in a nice long linear chain with no outside supporting evidence? Above all, what do you expect all of US to believe, when you post unverifiable paranoid rantings (which are so common on the Internet they're now just boring) anonymously on Slashdot? To say that few Slashdot readers follow your politics is an understatement; indeed, most of them think any such Government Takeover will be religious conservatives declaring martial law, banning the Internet, and hoarding all the money on behalf of their corporate friends. How many people do you expect to convert with this, out of the hundreds (debatable, since you posted anonymous and got a 0 score) who will read it? Five? Three? Fewer? What salesman tries to sell Lego sets at a nursing home, or Rogaine to a roomful of pregnant women? Yet you want to sell a conspiracy theory here? You're yelling into the wind.
Re:Slightly off topic - TANSTA "EOS System" (Score:1)
Dan
Terra Status (Score:1)
Terra was launched on December 18th 18:57:39Z and it was a beautiful launch. After months (years) of delays and setbacks, seeing it go up was a great feeling. I think many people felt that it would never happen, but we are finally up.
Yes, Originally we were supposed to launch on the 16th. Launch was scrubbed at T-39seconds because someone made some changes to the launch database, and they never bothered to do a practice run with the new database. A decision from upon high came to scrub Saturday's launch at around 9:30 PM EST to check the database and make sure it is right.
We at the operations center found out about it as a rumor from the guards at VAFB.
The high gain antenna was deployed on Sunday, and we successfully had a few TDRSS contacts. Until about 354-03:15Z where the HGA stopped moving. A spacecraft emergency was declared, and an anomaly team was called, but there is still no verdict on what caused the problem.
We have had several OMNI TDRSS contacts since the anomaly, and we are no longer in spacecraft emergency mode.
Hopefully the problem will be solved as part of the shakedown process. Life is a little bit too exciting here at the MAR, but it keeps me awake for the night shift.
Regardless of the issues that have happened so far, we still hope to get good science out of this thing and have it running nominally soon.
this is press (Score:1)
may crash
jk
Re:Budget (Score:2)
I work at TRW (the company that produced this spacecraft, and some of the other recent NASA successes (e.g. Chandra)) and am privvy to the actual production costs. Obviously, I cannot give out figures, but we got good money's worth on this one.
NASA was particularly smart on this one, in that it is making two. EOS Chemistry is a follow-on, that reuses much of the existing spacecraft design (new payload, though) so we were able to realize a lot of savings by just referencing the original paperwork for many of the components (such as the propulsion system, which I got to work on briefly.)
Re:Earth Bound? (Score:2)
Terra is in a "Low Earth Orbit" (LEO), and as such, will eventually crash back into Earth. In fact, NASA is requiring LEO satellites be de-orbited at end of life, as a way to keep trash out of orbit. (For several spacecraft I've designed this is an annoyingly design-driving requirement; simple spacecraft are being made complicated by the need for a beefy propulsion system simply to make it crash into Earth before it's dead. But keeping space clean is a noble and correct thing to do.)
So that I can blatantly plug my own company, here's my company's news release [businesswire.com], a page [trw.com] describing the spacecraft briefly, a more detailed one [trw.com] and another that describes [trw.com] the follow-on spacecraft we're making. I don't know why TRW doesn't toot its own horn more, it's done some of the coolest physics-breaking things in the last fifty years, of any of the aerospace companies.
Re:Budget (Score:2)
I work at TRW (the company that produced this spacecraft, and some of the other recent NASA successes (e.g. Chandra)) and am privvy to the actual production costs. Obviously, I cannot give out figures, but we got good money's worth on this one.
NASA was particularly smart on this one, in that it is making two. EOS Chemistry [trw.com] is a follow-on, that reuses much of the existing spacecraft design (new payload, though) so we were able to realize a lot of savings by just referencing the original paperwork for many of the components (such as the propulsion system, which I got to work on briefly.)
Re:Time for NASA & the US government to step aside (Score:1)
Ah! the GNU space project!
Hackers all over the world are cooperating to build a spaceship
Ofcourse we might want to build it based on old reliable technology... like... V2?
We can call it FAV - FAV Ain't V2
... (Score:2)
Anyway, it would be really nice if NASA were more active in PR for this kind of stuff - their TV show.. well... stinks. hours of nothing punctuated by the heavy breathing of some guy going "okay.. it's now t-minus 15:43 to launch *heavy breathing* CHECK 193! CHECK 193! *heavy breathing*".... no wonder they can't secure any funding. Get deep throat off the air and put some inspiring music on during launch (I dunno, Hall of the mtn. king would run nicely for the 5 minutes or so until main launch sep).
Incase you were wondering... I was only watching TV because I botched a kernel recompile and left my system unusable (note to self: deleting /lib/modules/* is bad).
"Some of their best work lately." (Score:1)
As a former employee (and still recovering refugee) of a NASA contractor though, I can testify that present-day NASA suffers from much more than its share of Dilbert-syndrome. Long gone are the days of Apollo. I think a lot of the really smart people left NASA years ago driven out by the bureaucrats.
When I heard they (NASA) were looking for the parachute of the failed Mars probe, I just naturally assumed they were looking for it in a warehouse down in Florida in order to verify the presumption that they'd simply forgotten to pack it!
(just joking, mostly.)
Budget (Score:1)
EOS vs. Space Station (Score:2)
Bob Park's WN page [aps.org] at the American Physical Society (suggested keywords: eos earth observing space station) to see how often the budget of the EOS has been threatened, and occasionally gutted to make up for overruns in the International Space Station account. The launching of Terra (assuming it has lifted off) is bittersweet, though definitely a step in the right direction. I only wish solid science was regarded with even half the importance as good PR in congress. Maybe we would be farther along in understanding global warming and other serious concerns.
Adding a sense of urgency to these missions, the NY Times has an
article [nytimes.com] today claiming 1999 will join 1998 as the one of the two hottest years on record.
Re:Don't be fooled. (Score:1)
--
"HORSE."
Re:positive press (Score:1)
Life on Terra? (Score:1)
Maybe they will find some intelligent life there. (One can always hope.)
Re:... (Score:1)
I watched it as well. A nominal launch, everything went quite uneventfully.
I agree, while I do enjoy watching NASA TV, I found it to be at its best when they treated the last Hubble repair mission like NBC treats a baseball game and had an actual announcer and also had Story Musgrave doing color commentary. And he oughta know, he spent some time up there fixing Hubble himself.
Well I definitely wouldn't want any music involved. Just give me some guy interpreting what the launch control guys are babbling about. And I definitely think they need better audio production, starting with better gear. I'd be happy to consult for them if and when they decide to upgrade their audio production facilities. :-)
Nah, GNU principles just don't work with hardware. (Score:1)
I'd prefer something like the delta clipper - straight out of the comics.
no go on Dec 16th (Score:2)
Terra did not lauch on the 16th; I was in an auditorium at Goddard (I'm contracting at TRW on EDOS [nasa.gov], the EOS Data and Operations System) watching the launch attempt on Thursday. They had to delay to get a glider out of the airspace (!), then the lauch was cancelled at the last minute; I think they failed to get an expected signal from the spacecraft indicting it was powered up. Whole bunch of disappointed people, let me tell you.
They rescheduled to Saturday (the 18th), and apparently it's up [nasa.gov].
Terra is the first of the EOS satellites, with several instruments designed to gather information about global climate change (global warming, pollution, cloud cover, and so o.) and large-scale weather patterns. It's the satellite formerly known as AM-1, "AM" because it's in a polar sun-synchronous orbit that crosses the equator in the morning when conditions over land are clearest. Next to lauch will be Aqua (nee PM-1), which crosses in the afternoon for observations over water.
Giving up? Or just not ready yet? (Score:1)
Maybe shows like Star Trek share some of the blame. After seeing how easily Kirk and Picard warp from one end of the galaxy to another, how they get through even while being shot to pieces by the Villain of the Week, it's a bit of a comedown when you see the near total inability of a space station to recover from what was essentially a light bump. The bulk of our space technology after 3 decades is still a bunch of high tech cards and egg shells. And the public has come to realise that for our and their lifetimes space travel will be little more than publiscised, intensively managed,
Re:What fuel did it use? (Score:1)
It used two solids in conjunction with a liquid engine for liftoff, with two additional solids that lit later into the flight. They held onto the burnt solids for a while after burnout (the ground lit ones). I can only assume for balance purposes.
Anyone know for sure?
Time for NASA & the US government to step aside (Score:1)
Re:Budget (Score:1)
Re:EOS -- ugh (Score:1)
The one thing that is finally starting to be recognised is that they need to fund the backing science just as much as the technical side of the missions. Better late than never...
Useful information about Terra and EOS (Score:4)
I hope you all find this information informative and useful.
_____________________________________
NASA's Slack Webmasters. (Score:2)
December 17, 1999
NASA Launch Managers postponed today's launch of the Terra spacecraft today from VAFB, CA, due to launch ground system problems. The launch has tentatively been rescheduled for no earlier than Saturday, December 18, 1999, at 1:33PM EST (10:33AM PST) with a launch window of 25 minutes.
There has been no update to the site since then, however, so we don't really know if it went off or not. Did this thing actually launch?
//Phizzy
Great (Score:1)
Re:NASA's Slack Webmasters. (Score:2)
One of the Goddard sites has the news [nasa.gov] if you need to see it to believe it.
Breaking news (Score:2)
Launching early saturday morning, the Terra satelite was to climb into orbit aboard it's powerfull Atlas rocket and release itself into orbit.
Early reports seem to indicate that the Terra orbiter has been shot from the sky from a mars death ray.
The last telemetry from the orbiter show data being recieved from the direction of the planet mars.
Unconfirmed reports of the decryption effort seem to indicate that the martians are "Sorry about that last one" and they continue with attempts to explain, "It was going to land on our polar golf course".
The message is still being decrypted in small segments, and will be released when available.
_____________________________________
Hah! (Score:1)
Slightly off topic - TANSTA "EOS System" (Score:1)
Regards,
January
Re:This is good for Nasa (Score:2)
Irony is funny.. (Score:1)
Teke a look at some past pictures. (Score:1)
giving up (Score:2)
I mean, once I thought it plausable to have some space colonies by year 2000 and time travel 2010.
It was my favorite debate subject
These days I doubt if I'll live to see another lunar landing...
Re:giving up (Score:1)
Not only does it feel that way, it is that way. But it's not so much that we're peculiarly uninterested now, it's that we were peculiarly interested before. When you come right down to it, what did we get--directly--out of landing men on the moon? (Note that I said 'directly,' I am well aware of all the technological byproducts of the push to develop the ability). And how much money did we spend on it? Looking at it that way, it's amazing we ever did it. And the only reason we did was because we wanted to beat the old USSR to it. The space age was a side effect of the cold war, really, and of the 'red scare'...without the competition, there's no national fervor for doing anything, and cost becomes the only thing people think about.
*shrug*
Maybe if we set up some other world superpower to compete with again, we could PT Barnum the populace into being excited about space. I'm sure the CIA could do something with China...
Pretty animations (Score:2)
What I wonder: How do they keep the cartoonist from burning up on reentry?...
Underworld and NIX (Score:1)
MJP
finally (Score:1)
Re:when will the new shuttle be ready? (Score:1)
No (Score:2)
But maybe you have a point. Why would they launch another satellite when they can just simulate [atr.co.jp] it all here on earth?....
What fuel did it use? (Score:1)
Mark Duell
Earth Bound? (Score:1)