Nov 19 1985
From The Space Library
NASA announced it had added an educational experiment package sponsored by the Charleston County, South Carolina school district to the Astro-1 payload aboard the Space Shuttle Columbia scheduled for launch March 6, 1986. The Astro-1 complement of three ultraviolet astronomical instruments and a special visible-light, wide-field camera system would study Halley's Comet and other celestial objects during its nine-day flight in space. The primary objective of the student project, called "Can Do," was to photograph Halley's Comet; middle school students (grades 6 through 8) would then study and interpret astronomical photos obtained from the flight.
The photographic equipment-four 35mm still cameras equipped with lenses addressing a particular aspect of cometary science-would be in a canister normally used for Get Away Special experiments. The camera package, developed with the participation of the National Geographic Society, would use a newly developed color film with unprecedented film speeds to photograph the dim tail of Halley's Comet. The color photos would complement the black-and-white images obtained by Astro-1's own image-intensified, scientific wide-field camera.
In addition, the canister would contain a separate package of passive student experiments including biological samples, magnets, and two kinds of accelerometers to study effects of microgravity.
The Charleston County Schools, in cooperation with NASA's Educational Affairs Division, developed a broad program of astronomical science and related educational activities that they would offer to other students throughout the nation. These included concurrent ground-based photography by student groups to compare with results from the Space Shuttle-based photos, teaching packets for classroom use, and comparative studies of Comet Halley through interviews with people who recalled the comet's passage in 1910. (NASA Release 85-154)
The TOMS, or Total Ozone Mapping Spectrometer, aboard Nimbus-7 made measurements the previous week indicating that the gas cloud ejected from the Nevado del Ruiz volcano in Columbia released twice as much sulfurous gas into the sky as the 1980 eruption of Mount St. Helens and five times as much as the 1982 eruption of Galung-gung in Indonesia, the NY Times reported. Dr. Arlin Krueger of the Goddard Space Flight Center said that within 14 hours of the November 13 eruption, the cloud spread over an area of 600,000 sq. km (230,000 sq. miles).
NASA researchers designed TOMS to monitor changes in earth's protective ozone layer, and it scanned the stratosphere at a succession on ultraviolet wavelengths whose relative intensities provided an index of ozone abundance. But the TOMS readings could also identify sulfur dioxide.
The sulfur cloud, 14 hours after the main eruption, spread chiefly to the east, covering most of Colombia and part of Venezuela. One arm of the cloud reached as far south as the equator in Colombia and as far north as Lake Maracaibo in Venezuela.
Because TOMS was not used for day-to-day weather forecasting, it was not ordinarily subjected to a rapid-analysis process. As soon as the Colombian eruption occurred, however, Dr. Krueger and his colleagues began to study its readings. The sulfur dioxide, he said, "shows up very well." Although estimates of the cloud's volume were preliminary, Krueger said it appeared much smaller than that formed by the eruption in 1982 of El Chichon in southern Mexico. Visible and infrared data from National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration satellites had traced El Chichon's dust, which formed a narrow plume, through one complete circuit of the globe from April 5 to April 15, 1982.
Although Nevado del Ruiz's sulfur cloud was extensive, it did not appear sufficient, with its associated ash cloud, to have an effect on climate. Whereas El Chichon's sulfur cloud was traced around the world, researchers expected del Ruiz to dissipate within days without any severe environmental effects. (NYT, Nov 19/85, A14)
1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 21 22 23 24 25 26 27 28 29 30
