Oct 7 2002
From The Space Library
Space Shuttle Atlantis STS-112 launched from NASA's KSC in Cape Canaveral, Florida, at 2:46 p.m. (CDT). The Shuttle's crew included Commander Jeffrey S. Ashby, Pilot Pamela A. Melroy, and crew members Sandra H. Magnus, Piers J. Sellers, David A. Wolf, and Fyodor N. Yurchikhin. STS-112's major objective was to deliver and install the Starboard One (S1) Truss, the second segment of the ISS's Integrated Truss Structure. Astronauts Sellers and Wolf planned to make three spacewalks during the installation mission~ designated ISS Assembly Mission 9A~ to install and activate the truss. Other mission objectives included transferring experiments and payloads from Atlantis to the ISS, deploying the station's second S-Band communications system, and installing external camera systems. (NASA, “STS-112: Extending the Space Station's Backbone,” http://spaceflight.nasa.gov/shuttle/archives/STS-112/ (accessed 17 October 2008); NASA, “STS-112 Overview,” http://spaceflight.nasa.gov/shuttle/archives/STS-112/mm-STS-112.pdf (accessed 17 October 2008).)
Scientists from California Institute of Technology announced that they had used NASA's HST to measure the true size of an orbiting, planet-like body beyond Pluto. The sphere was the most distant object that a telescope had measured within Earth's solar system. Like its neighbor Pluto, the object, which is nearly 4 billion miles (6.4 billion kilometers) from Earth, lies in the Kuiper Belt, an icy debris field that extends 7 billion miles (11.3 billion kilometers) beyond the orbit of Neptune. Using the HST, scientists Michael E. Brown and Chadwick A. Trujillo were able to determine several properties of the sphere, including its diameter of 780 miles (1,250 kilometers). Although too small to be a planet, the sphere, which Brown and Trujillo named Quaoar~ after a creation deity of the Native American Tongva people~ has planet-like traits that Pluto lacks. For example, Brown and Trujillo found that Quaoar has a circular orbit around the Sun and is in the same plane as the other planets in Earth's solar system. Brown and Trujillo announced their findings at the annual meeting of the American Astronomical Society's Division for Planetary Sciences. (NASA, “Hubble Spots an Icy World Far Beyond Pluto,” news release 02-190, 7 October 2002; Usha Lee McFarling, “Pluto's Not So Alone Out There, It Appears,” Los Angeles Times, 8 October 2002.)
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