USA/SPACE COMPTON GAMMA RAY OBSERVATORY DUMPED (2) скачать в хорошем качестве

USA/SPACE COMPTON GAMMA RAY OBSERVATORY DUMPED (2)

(4 Jun 2000) English/Nat XFA NASA put on a big light show early on Sunday, but it's not yet sure whether there were any witnesses. The space agency deliberately crashed a 17-ton satellite into a remote section of the Pacific Ocean. The Compton orbiting observatory was launched from Cape Canaveral in Florida in 1991. The 670 (m) million dollar project was supposed to last two years, but was up and running for more than nine, providing a wealth of data for astronomers. A failed gyroscope prompted the space agency to decide in March to dump the Compton. Its 370-mile orbit would have kept it aloft for another 11 years but if more equipment failed, engineers would not be able to control the vehicle and it would make a dangerous random return to Earth. So early on Sunday, the observatory was lined up for a final, fiery plunge to the ocean as NASA set out to deliberately crash a satellite for the first time ever. Engineers directed the Compton through a series of suicide rocket firings that dropped it from a high orbit and sent it plunging to Earth. The 17-ton spacecraft worked perfectly through a final 30-minute rocket firing and then engineers watched on instruments in mission control as the speeding satellite heated, broke apart and then went silent. The craft began coming apart about 0214 local time and engineers estimated that it would take as long as 20 minutes for some of the lighter pieces finally to hit the water. An Air Force observation plane reported sighting pieces of the spacecraft falling toward the ocean. It was estimated that about six tons of superheated metal survived the scorching re-entry and splashed in the Pacific. NASA targeted an impact corridor some 25-hundred miles long and 16 miles wide starting southeast of Hawaii and ending about 680 miles south of the Galapagos Islands. Tracking signals from the spacecraft's final minutes indicated that its surviving pieces would safely hit the target, far from any land. Among the pieces predicted to survive re-entry and hit the ocean were six 18-hundred pound aluminum I-beams and parts made of titanium, including more than five-thousand bolts. NASA engineers had calculated that if Compton was allowed to fall on its own, there was a chance of one in a thousand that someone would be killed. A controlled re-entry dropped the odds of a fatality to about one in 29 (m) million. The operation all apparently went smoothly. SOUNDBITE: (English) \"Four or five months ago Godder came to me with a plan to renter Compton in the safest possible way - they made some promises and I'm very pleased to say that Godder has delivered.\" SUPER CAPTION: Dr. Edward Weiler, Associate Administrator Space Flight SOUNDBITE: (English) \"Some of you who are watching this today, that was a result of a lot of practice, about 130 hours of simulations the team went through including simulating a nominal mission and contingency situations that could have occurred at any time during the mission, practice and practice over and over again to make sure the mission goes smoothly.\" SUPER CAPTION: Mansoor Ahmed, CGRO Reentry Mission Manager In nine years of observations, Compton has changed the way astronomers view the universe. The craft detected more than 26-hundred gamma ray bursts and showed that they are occurring throughout the universe. Astronomers have written about two-thousand papers based on data from Compton and more than 100 astronomers annually used the spacecraft to make observations. UPSOUND: (English) SUPER CAPTION: Tom Quinn, Scene Director, NASA Find out more about AP Archive: http://www.aparchive.com/HowWeWork Twitter:   / ap_archive   Facebook:   / aparchives   ​​ Instagram:   / apnews   You can license this story through AP Archive: http://www.aparchive.com/metadata/you...