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From: gsh7w@astsun.astro.Virginia.EDU (Greg Hennessy)
Newsgroups: sci.astro,sci.space,sci.space.shuttle
Subject: Shtttle status at 1/10:46 amet
Message-ID: <1990Dec3.173554.28191@murdoch.acc.Virginia.EDU>
Date: 3 Dec 90 17:35:54 GMT
Sender: news@murdoch.acc.Virginia.EDU
Organization: University of Virginia
Lines: 26

There is a problem with the Imaging Pointing System (IPS) on the
shuttle. The IPS is not stable, and has large drifts. This means that
the planned calibrations of the HUT and WUPPE have not been done.
Software patches have been developed, and uplinked, had at this time
11:30 AM Central Standard Time, Monday Dec 4th, the calibration of HUT
and WUPPE is being redone. Currently the science plan is about 12
hours behind schedule, and probably will end up about 18 hours or so
behind schedule. The impact on the science will be less than just the
simple loss of time, since all of the high priority targets will be
rescheduled. BBXRT has an independent pointing system, and after the
alighnemt of their instrumetn, they will be able to observe
independently. The observation needed for the alighment has been done,
and the results of that calibaration are being checked currently. The
UIT telescope is waiting for the IPS to start working before taking
data. The instrument is fine, and if the IPS is not fixed in the next
shift, UIT will just open its shutter and take pictures of random
peices of the sky. Since the field of view of UIT is so large (40 arc
minutes, twice the area of the full moon) theree will always be
SOMETHING in teh field of view. The only concern is a very bright star
in t he field of view may damage the camera.

--
-Greg Hennessy, University of Virginia
 USPS Mail:     Astronomy Department, Charlottesville, VA 22903-2475 USA
 Internet:      gsh7w@virginia.edu  
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