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ShareDec. 24, 1999 — NASA's achievements in 1999 extended from terrestrial airport runways to extrasolar planets and addressed concerns ranging from the environmental to the cosmological. Background information is available to illustrate the top 10 NASA stories of the year at the URLs listed. Plans are to air NASA's major 1999 video stories on NASA TV Tuesday, Dec. 21, through Thursday, Dec. 23, at noon and to list its top ten Internet stories at URL: http://www.nasa.gov/newsinfo/top10_99.html
Hubble Illuminates Universe's Rate of Expansion
Hubble scientists found a value for how fast the universe is expanding after eight years of painstaking measurement. The rate of expansion, called the Hubble Constant, is essential to determining the age and size of the universe. Measuring Hubble's constant was one of the three major goals for the telescope when it was launched in 1990. http://oposite.stsci.edu/pubinfo/pr/1999/19/index.html
Astronomers Find Evidence of First Planet Orbiting a Pair of Stars
Astronomers funded by NASA witnessed for the first time a distant planet passing in front of its star, providing direct and independent confirmation of the existence of extrasolar planets that to date has been inferred only from the wobble of their star.
http://bustard.phys.nd.edu/MPS/
Mars Global Surveyor Provides First Global 3-D Map of Mars
An impact basin deep enough to swallow Mount Everest and surprising slopes in Valles Marineris highlight a global map of Mars that will influence scientific understanding of the red planet for years. Generated by the Mars Orbiter Laser Altimeter (MOLA), the high- resolution map represents 27 million measurements gathered in 1998 and 1999. http://ltpwww.gsfc.nasa.gov/tharsis/mola.html
Gamma Ray Burst Imaged for First Time
Astronomers racing the clock managed to take the first-ever-optical images of one of the most powerful explosions in the Universe -- a gamma ray burst -- just as it was occurring on Jan. 23, 1999. Such bursts occur with no warning and typically last just for a few seconds.
http://science.nasa.gov/newhome/headlines/ast27jan99_1.htm
First Female Shuttle Commander
Orbiter Columbia's 26th flight (July 22-27) was led by Air Force Col. Eileen Collins, the first woman to command a Shuttle mission. STS-93 successfully carried to orbit the Chandra X-Ray Observatory, the third of NASA's "Great Observatories," joining the Hubble Space Telescope and the Compton Gamma Ray Observatory. http://www.jsc.nasa.gov/Bios/htmlbios/collins.html
First Docking of Space Shuttle with International Space Station
STS-96 was the four-million-mile flight of Discovery, from May 27 to June 6, on which the crew performed the first Shuttle docking to the International Space Station and delivered more than 3600 pounds of supplies -- ranging from food and clothes to laptop computers -- for the first crew to live on the station next year. http://spaceflight.nasa.gov/shuttle/archives/sts- 96/index.html
New Technology to Help Planes Land More Safely in Bad Weather
NASA and industry partners have developed new technology to allow planes to land safely in bad weather on parallel runways spaced as closely as 2,500 feet apart. Airports where this new approach, which expands on existing communication and navigation technology, could improve on- time arrivals are Detroit, Seattle, Minneapolis and Memphis.
http://www.aero-space.nasa.gov/
Chandra, Third Great Observatory, Begins Work
After barely two months in space, NASA's Chandra X-Ray Observatory in September took a stunning image of the Crab Nebula, the most intensively studied object beyond our solar system, and revealed something never seen before: a brilliant ring around the nebula's heart.
X-34 Rocket Plane Takes to the Sky for Safety Checks
Locked to the belly of its newly modified L-1011 carrier aircraft, a test version of NASA's X-34 rocket plane made its first flight in June as part of a certification process. The prototype of the robotic spacecraft will test new technologies and methods of operations needed to develop low-cost reusable space vehicles. http://stp.msfc.nasa.gov/pathfinder/pathindex.html
Flagship of NASA's Earth Observing System Launched Dec. 18
Almost on the eve of the millennium, Terra was launched into space from Vandenberg Air Force Base, CA, and at press time, was operating as expected. The mission will enable new research into the ways that Earth's land, oceans, air, ice and life interact as a whole climate system.
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