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Discovery astronauts snap clearer photos of Hale-Bopp
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August 12, 1997
Web posted at: 11:25 a.m. EDT (1525 GMT)CAPE CANAVERAL, Florida (CNN) -- Space shuttle Discovery's astronauts took more and better pictures of the Hale-Bopp comet Tuesday with a small ultraviolet telescope.
It was the second time the astronauts used the window-mounted telescope, and scientists said the images of Hale-Bopp were much clearer than those collected over the weekend. The crew beamed down the images, which were displayed on a large screen in Mission Control.
Hale-Bopp passed closest to Earth early this spring and was visible to the naked eye for several weeks. It is now much farther from Earth.
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The images cannot be gathered from the ground -- ultraviolet rays are invisible from Earth, because the atmosphere obscures them.
This is the first space tryout of the $500,000 telescope, developed by Southwest Research Institute in San Antonio, Texas.
Snowballs from space
A satellite released from Discovery, meanwhile, has found evidence that supports a controversial theory that snowballs the size of a house are pelting Earth's atmosphere.
Preliminary findings from an ultraviolet telescope on the satellite indicate a considerable amount of hydroxyl in the atmosphere at the high northern latitudes. That means lots of water vapor, said Robert Conway, a planetary physicist at the Naval Research Laboratory.
Conway said one possible explanation for all this water vapor at altitudes of 43 miles to 56 miles (69 km-90 km) is large space snowballs, a theory presented by a University of Iowa physicist in May.
Another possibility is that it's coming from meteorites, Conway said Monday.
"This is where all the junk that we sweep through as the Earth goes around the sun, this is where it has to come through, and maybe some of that junk is snowy comets," he said. "But there are other things, and I think we need to look at all of them."
When Conway's telescope flew in space in November 1994, it detected almost no hydroxyl above 43 miles at the middle latitudes, he said. This time, it's checking the far north: Alaska, northern Canada, northern Russia, Greenland and Sweden.
Testing the robotic arm
The satellite, which also is gathering data on Earth's ozone layer, has been flying free of Discovery since Thursday. The astronauts will swing by to retrieve it on Saturday, two days before their mission ends.
On Monday, astronauts Stephen Robinson and Jan Davis used an experimental 5-foot robotic arm to repeatedly lift a
1 1/2-foot box out of the cargo bay. Japan's space agency developed the jointed, remote-controlled arm, a prototype of which will fly on the future international space station. The arm also was tested Sunday.Japanese program manager Masanori Nagatomo said he was pleased with the results, despite interruptions caused by severe safety restrictions. Such tight limits won't be necessary on the space station, he said.
Testing the robotic arm is just one of about two dozen experiments being conducted by Discovery's six astronauts.
The Associated Press contributed to this report.
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