Live From Mars was active July 1996-December 1997.
PART 1: RSVP for September 12 WebChat
PART 2: Special Back-to-School Edition Next Week
PART 3: New Fall LFM Program
PART 4: NASA to Rebroadcast PTK/LFM Programs
PART 5: Mars Global Surveyor Flight Status
PART 6: Subscribing & Unsubscribing: How to do it!
RSVP FOR SEPTEMBER 12 WEBCHAT
Everybody's favorite, Ken Edgett from Arizona State University, will be our guest for the Friday, September 12 WebChat from 9-10 a.m., Pacific. Be sure to attend as next week is a big week for Mars Global Surveyor. On Sept. 9 MGS pressurizes its tanks for the orbit insertion burn on Sept. 11. Ken will be overflowing with exciting new information for us. In addition to being a planetary geologist and affiliated with the Thermal Emission Spectrometer instrument onboard MGS, Ken is also the director of the Arizona Mars K-12 Education Program. This promises to be a full chat, so register early!
SPECIAL BACK-TO-SCHOOL EDITION NEXT WEEK
To welcome you to the new school year with Live From Mars, next week you will receive a special back-to-school edition of LFM Updates. It will contain an overview of the many learning opportunities available from the LFM Project.
NEW FALL LFM PROGRAMS
Two new one-hour Live From Mars programs will be broadcast this fall. "LFM 4: Destination Mars" will be aired Thursday, October 30, 1 p.m., Eastern. "LFM 5: Today on Mars" is scheduled for Thursday, November 13, 1 p.m., Eastern. "Destination Mars" is on tape (not live) and will replay the highlights of the two, one-hour '96-'97 specials and the two, two-hour summer specials. The tape will also contain at least three new segments: an update of Pathfinder's first weeks/months on Mars, including a "guided tour" of the landing site; a guide to LFM Web resources; and a report on Global Surveyor's Mars Orbit Insertion and first few weeks in orbit. "Today on Mars" will include the first science from Mars Global Surveyor (MGS). This live program will feature results from an online collaborative activity designed to engage students in measuring weather locally to compare and contrast results with those obtained from Pathfinder and MGS. The program, last in the currently planned series of Live From Mars specials, will also point to ways in which students and teachers can use the Internet to follow MGS's primary mapping mission (March 98) and other upcoming NASA Mars missions, beginning with Surveyor '98. Broadcast details will be published as soon as they are known.
NASA TO REBROADCAST PTK/LFM PROGRAMS
If you do not have access to the first two Live From Mars programs, now is the perfect time to record/watch them! Remember, the LFM Teacher's Guide provides you with a series of recommended hands-on activities to implement prior to student viewing. The Teacher's Guide can be found at: http://passporttoknowledge.com/lfm/teachers/learning.html September 19 Live From Mars Program I "Countdown" (rebroadcast of live performance) Level: Grades 4-12 Length: 57:30 "Countdown" introduces a new series of Passport to Knowledge electronic field trips. Live From Mars Program I takes students behind closed doors at Cape Canaveral to see NASA's Pathfinder spacecraft close-up, just days before its successful early December '96 launch, and invites students and teachers to follow Pathfinder and Mars Global Surveyor online via the Internet and with hands-on discovery activities throughout the next two school years. September 22 Live From Mars Program II: "Cruising Between the Planets" Level: Grades 4-12 Length: 60:00 This program offers a behind-the-scenes report at NASA's Jet Propulsion Lab, the lead center for planetary exploration. It begins with how rocket fuel, momentum, gravity and ingenuity get spacecraft from Earth to Mars and reports on the progress of Pathfinder and Global Surveyor. Portraits of the men and women who control the missions and who built and tested the robotic rover, Sojourner are also included. The video concludes with highlights of hands-on student activities such as the LFM Planet Explorer Toolkit, the Egg Drop Challenge, and Red Rover, Red Rover. Programs are broadcast at the following times: 2-3 p.m., 5-6 p.m., 8-9 p.m., 11 p.m.-12 a.m., 2-3 a.m. All times Eastern. NASA TV may preempt scheduled programming for live agency events. NASA-TV coordinates can be found at: GE-2, Transponder 9C at 85 degrees west longitude, vertical polarization, with a frequency of 3880 MHz, and audio of 6.8 MHz.
MARS GLOBAL SURVEYOR FLIGHT STATUS
[Editor's note: This status report was prepared by the Office of the Flight Operations Manager, Mars Surveyor Operations Project, NASA Jet Propulsion Laboratory.] August 29, 1997 Mars Global Surveyor continues to perform excellently as it continues on a path that will reach the red planet just under two weeks from now. The spacecraft is currently 3.56 million kilometers from Mars and is closing that gap at rate of 247,000 km per day. On Monday at 9:30 a.m. PDT, the onboard flight computer commanded Surveyor's small rocket thrusters to fire for 12 seconds. Eric Gratt of the navigation team reports that this tiny burn altered the velocity by 0.29 meters per second and was performed to make final, pre-arrival adjustments to Surveyor's flight path. Specifically, the maneuver altered the tilt of the spacecraft's flight path with respect to the Martian north pole by 3.3 degrees. Monday's maneuver was the last in a series of four trajectory correction maneuvers designed to refine the spacecraft's flight path to Mars. The first maneuver occurred shortly after launch in November 1996, the second occurred in March 1997, and the third was canceled by chief navigator Dr. Pat Esposito because it was not needed. Today, the flight team transmitted the T1 command sequence to Surveyor. This sequence will activate on Tuesday, September 2 at 7:00 a.m. PDT, and contains commands that will ultimately control the spacecraft during the Mars orbit insertion burn on September 11. In the unlikely event that communications is lost before arrival, Surveyor now possesses the ability to enter Mars orbit without any further instructions from mission control. In other news, some of the long-range images of Mars obtained by the camera last week have been placed on the Surveyor web site. The camera team, led by Dr. Michael Malin, is currently processing the other images. These remaining images will be placed on the web site shortly after they are released at a press conference on Tuesday, September 9. The URL to download the images is: http://mgsw3.jpl.nasa.gov/sci/images/img_current.html After a mission elapsed time of 295 days from launch, Surveyor is 240.69 million kilometers from the Earth and is moving in an orbit around the Sun with a velocity of 21.92 kilometers per second. This orbit will intercept Mars 13 days from now, slightly after 6:00 p.m. PDT on September 11 (01:00 UTC, September 12). The spacecraft is currently executing the C11 command sequence, and all systems continue to be in excellent condition.
SUBSCRIBING & UNSUBSCRIBING: HOW TO DO IT!
If this is your first message from the updates-lfm list, welcome! To catch up on back issues, please visit the following Internet URL: http://passporttoknowledge.com/lfm/updates To subscribe to the updates-lfm mailing list (where this message came from), send a message to: In the message body, write these words: subscribe updates-lfm CONVERSELY... To remove your name from the updates-lfm mailing list, send a message to: In the message body, write these words: unsubscribe updates-lfm If you have Web access, please visit our "continuous construction" site at http://passporttoknowledge.com/lfm
