Dear Satellite Observers: We're going to be launching our newest astronomy satellite as a secondary on the ICESAT Delta II launch from Vandenberg AFB. This is currently scheduled for late afternoon (local time) on December 19th. CHIPS is about a meter square and about 20 cm deep. One major face is essentially covered with solar cells. There are smaller solar panels on each of the other surfaces. The rest of the satellite is covered in multi-layer insulation. There is a picture of the satellite in the December 2002 "Mission Update" column in Sky & Telescope magazine. At first we'll be relatively close to the ICESAT spacecraft and to the Delta-II second stage so it may be a little difficult to visually distinguish tiny CHIPS from the very large ICESAT and Delta-II second stage. We've specified pointing information to the booster folks and expect to be released with our main solar panels facing the Sun. But we do expect to have some level of tumble. We aren't planning on turning on our pointing system until a couple of weeks into the mission. But we'd like to get some confirmation that we have a reasonable rotation rate. Yes, we can get this information from NASA and NORAD, but we're a small, very low cost, mission and don't plan to have them do the measurement unless we suspect some sort of emergency. So the amateur community would be providing a unique and valuable service. I've talked to the Principal Investigator for the mission and have gotten permission for this solicitation to the amateur satellite community. We'd like to get photoelectric (or perhaps video?) observations of our satellite soon after launch. For the first dozen observations that we find useful in determining our rotation rate I'll put together a certificate of thanks (suitable for framing! 8) and get it signed by the PI for the contributor. Sorry, we can't offer any compensation or defray your expenses in getting the information to us. Thanks for your help and I hope this will be a fun challenge for the community! -- Will Marchant marchant@ssl.berkeley.eduNOSPAM http://chips.ssl.berkeley.edu/~marchant/ ----------------------------------------------------------------- Unsubscribe from SeeSat-L by sending a message with 'unsubscribe' in the SUBJECT to SeeSat-L-request@lists.satellite.eu.org http://www.satellite.eu.org/seesat/seesatindex.html
This archive was generated by hypermail 2b29 : Sat Dec 07 2002 - 10:29:17 EST